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It appears that Chinese carmakers are working around the US tariff wall, by targeting other export markets. Southeast Asia and Latin America are importing record numbers of Chinese EVs. Some Chinese carmakers are not just exporting to these markets, but setting up shop. Which leads me to ask the question: Can legacy automakers survive without their export markets? Google’s answer: the Americans, probably; the Japanese, probably not.
Do we need to enter Western automakers into the Corporate Darwin Awards? Are they evolving themselves out of existence? Or just evolving into something else as suggested by this incisive video analysis of Ford and Toyota’s current actions? Ford is building an Ark at the skunkworks and Toyota has issued a warning that it might not survive without radical change.
At present, it looks like Chinese automakers are ignoring the US market, instead building factories in “Rest of the World” markets and exporting their world class vehicles. Don’t they care? Stella Li, quoted in a recent CleanTechnica article, says, no, they don’t. BYD can still be the #1 carmaker in the world without selling any vehicles in the USA. Think about that for a moment as the USA sinks into irrelevance and accepts the 2026 Darwin Award.
