One thing I think is missing from this discussion is that Brazil has already been through an earlier wave of Chinese automakers, and it shows that being Chinese, having lower manufacturing costs or offering more equipment does not automatically guarantee success. Chery entered Brazil in 2009, long before the current EV boom. Its first attempt was not particularly successful. The cars could offer a lot of equipment for the money, but the products, powertrains, dealer experience and overall strategy were not yet sufficiently adapted to Brazilian conditions and consumer expectations. Several early models disappeared. But Chery stayed. It built a factory, accumulated experience and eventually partnered with CAOA, a Brazilian automotive group with decades of experience in the local industry. CAOA had previously built its business through Ford dealerships, imported Hyundai vehicles and eventually manufactured Hyundai vehicles in Brazil. The result is that today's CAOA Chery is almost unrecognizable compared with the Chery that entered Brazil more than 15 years ago. And now CAOA is doing something similar with Changan. Changan is a separate Chinese automaker, but CAOA is using its Brazilian industrial and commercial infrastructure to manufacture and sell Changan products here as CAOA Changan. That is important because this competition is no longer limited to cheap imported EVs. Chinese-designed ICE, mild-hybrid, hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles are increasingly competing with traditional manufacturers too. JAC is a useful counterexample because its history went almost in the opposite direction. JAC entered Brazil in 2011 with a huge marketing campaign, quickly established a large dealer network and initially sold quite well. It promised Brazilian manufacturing, but that passenger-car factory never materialized. Over time its light-vehicle operation shrank dramatically and most of that original dealer footprint disappeared. So Brazil has already demonstrated something important: Chinese origin alone doesn't guarantee success. Chery initially struggled, stayed, learned, localized and found a strong Brazilian industrial partner. JAC had a much stronger initial launch but failed to establish the same industrial footprint and eventually became a much smaller player. Now we're watching a much larger second wave. BYD took over Ford's former industrial complex in Camaçari. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz's former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial relationship. GM itself is assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Ceará through products originating from its Chinese ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling. Toyota and BYD have a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture. Tesla complicates the story even further. Tesla is one of America's biggest automotive technology success stories, but its battery supply chain has always been international. Panasonic was fundamental to its early scale, while its later battery sourcing expanded to suppliers including LG Energy Solution and CATL. So the modern auto industry is already much more interconnected than “Chinese technology vs American technology” suggests. And this is why I find the comparison with Japanese and Korean automakers so interesting. Foreign manufacturers don't necessarily remain importers forever. They enter a market. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they learn. They change products, establish dealerships, find local suppliers, partner with domestic companies, hire local engineers and workers, and eventually manufacture locally. Brazil watched Japanese and Korean companies go through versions of that process. Now we're watching Chinese companies do it. And localization gives us a much better experiment for the question this thread started with. If BYD, GWM, Changan or another Chinese manufacturer loses most of its price advantage after producing in Brazil, Europe or eventually the US with local workers and local regulations, then Chinese wages, subsidies and domestic production conditions were clearly responsible for a large part of that advantage. But if a significant advantage survives localization, then wages cannot be the whole explanation. Battery costs, vertical integration, platform architecture, supplier organization, procurement, automation, manufacturing scale, development cycles and margins all become part of the answer. That's why I don't think the most interesting experiment is simply importing millions of Chinese cars into the US. Make them manufacture there. Make them employ American workers. Make them comply with American safety, labor and environmental rules. Then compare the products. Brazil is increasingly doing exactly that experiment with Brazilian workers. And after watching what happened with Chery and JAC over the last 15+ years, I wouldn't assume the result in advance. Localization can expose weaknesses just as easily as it can expose advantages.

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There is another part of this discussion that makes the whole “Chinese auto industry vs American auto industry” framing much less clean than it sounds. Tesla itself is a good example. Tesla is American, but its battery supply chain has never been purely American. Panasonic was crucial to Tesla’s early scale, and Tesla later diversified its battery sourcing to companies including LG Energy Solution and CATL. So even the most successful American pure-EV manufacturer was built around a global, heavily Asian battery supply chain. Brazil makes this even more interesting because we are watching several versions of this industrial integration happen at the same time. BYD took over Ford’s former industrial complex in Camaçari and is progressively localizing production. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz’s former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial relationship in Brazil. GM itself is now assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Ceará. The Spark EUV and Captiva EV come from GM’s Chinese industrial ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling and are being assembled locally. Toyota and BYD have a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture. Nissan has had a major industrial relationship with Dongfeng in China for decades. At some point, asking whether a technology is simply “Chinese” or “Western” stops having an easy answer. And Brazil gives us another interesting experiment: range. If you look only at Brazilian homologation figures, some EVs can look surprisingly short-legged. Cars with batteries in the 50-60 kWh range can receive official Inmetro/PBEV range figures around 300 km. But the Brazilian number is deliberately conservative. Inmetro does not simply publish the raw laboratory result. Adjustment factors are applied to produce a more conservative real-world reference. The problem is that a lot of automotive discussion here then treats that number almost as the maximum distance the EV can realistically travel. Owner experience often looks very different. We now have EV owners driving these cars across Brazil, including mountainous areas and routes that climb from the coast onto the plateau. There are owners and independent tests substantially exceeding the official Inmetro range, and under favorable conditions some results get much closer to WLTP. Larger-battery EVs can exceed 400 km in real use even when their Brazilian homologated number looks much less impressive. Obviously that does not mean WLTP is guaranteed real-world range. Drive at 120 km/h, climb continuously, add headwind, temperature changes or heavy HVAC use and consumption changes dramatically. But this exposes an interesting asymmetry in how cars are discussed here. When a small 1.0-liter ICE car achieves an exceptionally good km/l result, automotive enthusiasts and media are perfectly happy to show what the car can achieve under favorable real-world conditions. With EVs, I often see the opposite. The conservative Inmetro figure gets repeated as the defining range of the vehicle, while owner consumption and independent road results receive much less attention. A much better way to discuss EV range is to show the homologation numbers and then show actual energy consumption. If an EV does 12, 15, 18 or 22 kWh/100 km, anyone can understand what a 40, 60 or 90 kWh battery means under different conditions. That's much more informative than saying “this is a 300 km car” because one homologation system printed 300 km on the label. And all of this comes back to the original Detroit question. Brazil is becoming a useful real-world laboratory because Chinese manufacturers are no longer simply shipping Chinese-built cars here. They are buying former Western factories, hiring Brazilian workers and progressively localizing production. At the same time, established American, European and Japanese manufacturers are increasingly using Chinese partners, platforms, batteries, engineering or complete vehicles. Europe is moving in a similar direction as Chinese manufacturers localize more production there. That gives us an opportunity to separate two things that are constantly mixed together in this discussion. If Chinese manufacturers lose most of their price advantage when they manufacture in Brazil, Europe or eventually the US with local workers, then Chinese wages, subsidies and domestic production conditions were clearly doing much of the work. But if a substantial advantage survives localization, then wages cannot be the entire explanation. Battery costs, vertical integration, EV-specific platforms, supplier organization, procurement, manufacturing scale, automation, development cycles and margins all have to enter the discussion. That's why I would actually find an American-built Chinese EV much more interesting than another imported Chinese EV. Require American production. American wages. American safety and environmental standards. Apply the same rules to everyone. Then compare the products. If an American-built BYD ends up costing roughly the same as an equivalent American-built GM or Ford, we learn something important about where the original Chinese cost advantage came from. But if it can still compete aggressively on price, equipment and efficiency while paying American production costs, then tariffs didn't answer the underlying competitiveness question. They only delayed the experiment.

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One thing I think this thread is showing is that the question is becoming bigger than simply "Chinese cars are cheap because Chinese workers are cheap." Wages and subsidies matter. But Chinese manufacturers are increasingly moving production outside China, which gives us a chance to test that explanation in the real world. Brazil is a particularly interesting example. For decades, the market was dominated by established American, European, Japanese and Korean manufacturers with local factories, suppliers, dealerships and huge brand recognition. Chevrolet was enormously strong, and the Onix spent years as the country's best-selling car. Now the structure is changing. BYD took over Ford's former industrial complex in Camaçari and is progressively localizing production. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz's former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial partnership and investing together in Brazil. And it gets stranger than simply "Chinese companies versus legacy automakers." GM itself is assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Brazil. The Spark EUV and Captiva EV are being assembled in Ceará using products originating from GM's Chinese ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling. Toyota has a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture with BYD. Nissan has a long industrial relationship with Dongfeng in China. Renault is partnering with Geely. So the borders between "Chinese" and "traditional" manufacturers are becoming increasingly blurry. Europe may become an even better test. Chinese manufacturers are actively looking for existing European factories rather than simply exporting everything from China. BYD says that, longer term, it expects to need three vehicle assembly plants and a battery plant in Europe. That is why I don't think the wage argument settles this. If BYD builds cars with Brazilian or European workers and most of its price advantage disappears, then labor costs, subsidies and producing in China were obviously doing a huge amount of the work. But if a substantial advantage remains, we have to ask what else explains it: battery costs, vertical integration, platform design, automation, supplier organization, scale, development cycles, margins, or some combination of them. And this is where I come back to Detroit. The US doesn't have to allow unlimited Chinese imports to test this. Require local production. Require American wages. Require US safety and environmental standards. Apply trade safeguards. Then let the products compete. Protection can give an industry time to adjust. But the important question is what Detroit does with that time. Because Chinese manufacturers aren't standing still outside the US. They're localizing production, buying or reusing factories, forming partnerships with established manufacturers and becoming part of the same global supply chains that legacy automakers use. Brazil is already experiencing that transition. Europe increasingly is too. Renault and Geely, for example, just announced another €319 million investment in their Brazilian partnership. If an American-built Chinese EV eventually costs roughly the same as an American-built competitor, we'll have learned something important about the original Chinese cost advantage. But if it can still compete aggressively on price and equipment while paying American production costs, then keeping the imported version out didn't solve Detroit's underlying competitiveness problem. It just postponed the test.

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Oh brother, you ran it through the AI detector that has a 2% false positive rate, right. It's genuinely hilarious that you think R&D on the millennium problems which are literally the edge of current human knowledge is a waste of time. True WSB regard here

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Checked it through Pangram 100% AI! my original statement is literally saying they should be doing different R&D not stopping R&D? R&D being useful doesn't mean the proof is useful hope this helps! Just paste the convo into ChatGPT and go convince the AI!

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LMAO I spent some extra time on my response and so now it's an AI generated statement? It's R&D dude should OpenAI not do R&D? Is that what you're saying? If it were up to you, we'd still be playing with fire and gathering berries. It quite literally does have real life applications if it allows us to further test and advance our technologies. Quit being obtuse. You sound dumb lol

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lets see a big ol shrek donkey d to 770

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Calling it wasted compute because the counterexample doesn’t immediately improve fluid models is a shortsighted way to look at R&D. the first transistor was a crude experimental amplifier developed as a replacement for vacuum tubes and mechanical relays, not a blueprint for smartphones, microprocessors, or cloud computing. Those much broader applications emerged through decades of continued investment in semiconductor research. Navier–Stokes is also a test of whether AI can tackle an extremely difficult mathematical problem, construct a rigorous argument, and translate it into a machine-checkable proof rather than merely produce an answer that sounds plausible. OpenAI released both its proposed proof and the Lean formalization so mathematicians can inspect and independently check the work. That capability might ultimately prove more useful on the next theorem, algorithm, or scientific problem than on this specific equation. If researchers had historically refused to invest resources in work without an obvious immediate payoff, much of today’s technology might not exist in its present form. That is the point of R&D: you develop the underlying capability before you can know every application it will eventually enable.

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D-Titty always bitching.

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Lol, your energy is that of an overexcited chihuahua. Hop off his D and try to learn something. What's the point of my post? Did you even fuckin read? The point was that he was STILL WRONG ABOUT SPCX in the overall trend. But because he got lucky on timing, he's trying to spin SPCX as a win. The point is don't hop on somebody's D so fast because you see 7+ digits in the account. Do you know how many dumb trust fund babies lose millions here a day because they think they know shit? Please. Stop being a gold digging cheerleader and try to understand why he was literally still wrong about SPCX overall. He's trying to make it seem like he wasn't. But 2%+ YTD on a stock is pretty pathetic. THATS the point. Bud.

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