Almost all new cars sold in Norway last year were fully electric, according to official registration data published Friday. It puts the Nordic country within touching distance of effectively erasing gasoline and diesel cars from its new car market. “2025 has been a very special car year,” Geir Inge Stokke, director of the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council, said in a statement.
My view about Chinese manufacturing is that they make things to spec. If the spec says cheap garbage, you get cheap garbage. If the spec says more premium stuff, you get that.
In my experience, the main indicator of whether something will be garbage is not the country it was manufactured in, but whether the target demographic is Americans. If it’s destined for an American retail store or webshop, it will be cheap trash. There are exceptions (as much as I hate their OS, Apple hardware is pretty nice), but generally American businesses will trade quality for margin almost every time.
There was a period where more or less all car manufacturers, regardless of country, were abandoning physical buttons and levers, and that trend is thankfully reversing. The Tesla Model 3 at some point had buttons for turn signals, and one was above the other, so you had to memorize which was in which direction. I believe The shifter was also on the touchscreen. The Cybertruck famously turns into a doorhandle-less cremation chamber in case of fire. I’m not sure I’d blame Chinese ownership/manufacturing for what appeared to be a global trend.
Considering the Volvo, I don’t think they’ve had a major shift in the market demographic as far as I know. Here in the home country of Volvo, the XC60 is like the most popular car. And they suddenly turn to shit right as the switch to Chinese manufacturing starts? (At least a Chinese platform.)
I thought I heard something about the US banning Chinese-made products and goods? So that, if true, would make the market even smaller in the US, which shouldn’t influence the quality in that way you say. But maybe other markets are also willing to compromise on quality.
Yeah, those two first paragraphs were more about Chinese manufacturing in general, not about the Volvo. The US is still full of Chinese-made stuff, it’s just a bit more expensive now. And there are no BYD cars, but as far as I know you can still get Volvos.