Americans under 40 years of age are the most receptive to buying a Chinese automotive brand if it were offered in the U.S., despite high privacy concerns among all age groups, according to a new poll by auto marketing research and consulting firm AutoPacific.
The Long Beach, California firm reports that 45 percent of U.S. citizens under 40 say they would definitely buy a vehicle from a Chinese brand, compared to just 4 percent of those 60 or older at the opposite end of the spectrum.
An additional 31 percent responded with a “maybe” to the question “would you consider buying a new vehicle from a Chinese brand?” This means consideration for buying a vehicle from China is at 76 percent for the under-40 demographic in the U.S. overall. AutoPacific president and chief analyst Ed Kim notes that “a surprising number of American consumers are familiar with Chinese car brands even though none are sold here currently.”
In the 40 to 49 age group, 35 percent of people said they would “definitely” consider a Chinese vehicle, with another 23 percent of “maybes.” For 50 to 59, these numbers drop to 11 percent and 31 percent respectively, with over-60 Americans at 4 percent definitely and 22 percent maybe.
Where all age groups are in near-agreement are worries about privacy related to vehicles from China. A full 73 percent of Americans under 40 are concerned about Chinese vehicle privacy, with 44 percent “strongly” concerned and the rest “somewhat” concerned. At the upper end of the age scale, 81 percent of Americans over 60 have privacy concerns.
Ed Kim said that this suspicion is “likely to eventually subside,” pointing out “most of the connected smartphones, smart watches, laptops, connected home devices we are comfortable using every day are in fact manufactured in China.”
Consumers also said they’d be more willing to consider a Chinese brand if the vehicle itself were produced in the United States. Among under-40 respondents, 39 percent said that U.S. manufacture would significantly increase their chances of buying a China-branded vehicle, while even 12 percent of over-60 individuals said the same. Production in Canada or Mexico also boosted purchase consideration, though not as much.
AutoPacific consumer insight manager Robby DeGraff says “younger generations of shoppers are clearly aware of the enticing products Chinese automakers are cooking up overseas” and know that the vehicles will eventually arrive on American shores.
The Biden administration is taking steps to delay that eventuality, with a recent boost of tariffs on EVs made in China from the previous 25 percent to a new 100 percent.
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Don't take this as an attack on anyone. The demographics and math just show this to be the current situation...
I think in the case of younger generations now, it’s more about what they can POSSIBLY buy given the current economy. Imagine just getting out of college this week to try and find a job. You are over $100k in debt already, the average house is almost $500k and the average new vehicle price is about $50k and interest rates are relatively high. They simply can’t afford to buy new things when the prices and economic bar has been set by the Baby Boomers, the largest and wealthiest generation in known human history. The Boomers have had DECADES of wealth building as a head start and there are SO MANY OF THEM that the economy is now priced at what THEY can afford to pay for everything.
I don't think any young person is looking at these cheap Chinese cars just itching to buy one as a dream car, it's just the only thing they could possibly afford.
Also, maybe one of the biggest issues facing the world today is all the retirement money that Boomers have entrusted to managers like Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street. They literally own and control everything now. It’s clear that the path forward that they have chosen to continue to grow is having laws passed around the world at the expense of younger generations’ freedoms under the umbrella of climate change and the green agenda, all to prop up Boomer 401k’s and pensions (which are massively overvalued at this point), as well as grow their own control/power/wealth, of course.
“You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” is what the youth are being told. Well, if you can’t own anything, you can’t build ANY wealth. You have to rent/lease/subscribe to everything that these institutions own.
Your numbers are far off base and continue a narrative of the deluded. According to CNN, those graduating with a bachelors degree in 20221-22, 51% have debt with an average of $29,400. There are plenty of cars under $40k and if you are starting out then a used vehicle would be a better buy. Same with your home prices, don't buy new.
According to CNN, their still looking for a Malaysian airliner 👀👀👀
Problem with younger generations (I’m last year of millennials) is that you add student loan dept high mortgage payments inflation interest rates and it all adds up. Sure each individual stat is a little higher than Gen X, which is a little higher than the boomers (except college dept, which is over double the last generation, my father left college with savings FYI) millennials/gen Z will accept any savings they can find. Hence the buzz with EV’s that is now dying as they realize the savings aren’t there.
Also, I highly doubt Chinese can make cars cheaper. Most cars in china are mechanically more in line with a Polaris ranger than even an old Chevy cavalier. The BYD truck revealed for Mexico is mechanically more in line with an equinox, and starts at the price of a Silverado HD 😳. Just like how china buys lots of their rice and soy from America. They can make toys…….. and that’s about it. Our mechanized industry is a well oiled machine. Now…. Our cars would be significantly cheaper if we put a freeze on EPA regs to current standards, put a freeze on MPG requirements, gas guzzler taxes, carbon credits, and broke up the big investments banks that simultaneously own all of the big 3 that are colluding for a monopoly.
Yes, it is still necessary to search for MH370,
Damn epa
Either you are not as old as I or have a bad memory. I graduated with a EE in 81. I had excellent grades from a top ranked school. I got a job no problem. Some of my friends were not so lucky. My rent ran around 40% of my income and I bought a house with a friend several years after school. Mortgage rates had come down to 13%! If I remember right, even splitting the mortgage I was paying around 50% of my net to the mortgage. I'd bought a car prior to the house(payed cash) and was around 1/3rd of my income for a year. The 70's/80's were not good times.
It's not even so much about the rates themselves, but the affordability and % of your income (post tax) required to buy something.
I think you missed the part about it took 2 engineer incomes to buy a house and way over the target of 33% of income, in my case 50%. It was ugly. I lived to make my payment.
Yeah, looking back at the data, now is the worst time since then for housing.
Baby Boomers aren't the problem. The real problem is people keep "voting" for Democrats! All Democrats do is spend way over budgets, raise taxes, create new taxes, turn criminals into victims and victims into criminals and then they expect the citizens to pay for it!
Palease!!! Fact, it was Trump that gave the wealthy a tax break. Pres. Biden has lowered the taxes for the average person. During each Infrastructure Week Trump talked a lot about doing something but he never did a damn thing in turns of creating jobs. If you would get your news from any other responsible source besides Fox Faux News you would see that Pres. Biden has done more than any president in the last 50 years. Trump is all talk and no action, unless it means filling his own pockets. He and his family bilked the government for all they could while he was in office..
Trumps Infrastructure Week never happened as promised. We never did see Trumps Health Plan that he claimed would be revealed in 2 weeks. Thanks to John McCain’s vote the ACA remained in place. So trump was going to get rid of a health care plan that millions depend on (20 million now) without a replacement. Just because trump says that he did something doesn’t mean that he did it. Fact checking trump’s statements can be a full time job.
They can do what I did after graduating: buy a used domestic car. There are hundreds of thousands of used cars less than five years old fof sale. Some are just released from car rentals with plenty of milage but in almost new conditions. So no one has to buy a cheap import at all.
Young people were conditioned to give up their privacy long ago. They grew up with school laptops that spied on everything they did and apps that sell your location data. Their assumption now is that nothing is secure, so why try? Even GM got caught up in the data collection craze and sold driving data, which has turned into a class action lawsuit. As for China, the youth doesn't care about such weighty issues. They grew up with China being praised as a trading partner and now 90% of their products are stamped with Made in China, so why would cars be any different?
Really sad statement. Previous generations would never have own a vehicle made in communist Russia. Have never driven Japanese vehicles due to an uncle killed in The Philippines in July of 1945 by a Japanese sniper. Call me an old stick in the mud backwards thinking racist - I do not care. Love our country and remember history.
In the 70's I saw WW2 veterans buying Jap cars, and I still shake my head when I see regular people driving around with the American flag on there foreign vehicle. As far as veterans buying anything foreign, they served for the right of all Americans to be free to buy what they want even though this patriot does not approve it.
Agree, I hate to see veterans with American flags on foreign cars, they say well they are made in the USA but to me they are still foreign cars. Support the country you live in!!!
Rabbi G, al and Mike: I really agree with what you are saying. Here's a true story of a personal experience I had.
About 10 years ago, I was working and in my patrol car. Living in southern California, it's certainly common to see mostly import brand vehciles. It was mid-morning and I was on patrol in a quiet area when I came up behind a nearly new Honda Accord. Of course, part of my job was to look at the plates on cars. As I pulled behind this very new Honda, I was stunned to see the car had a purple heart plate on it and the frame around the plate said they were a survivor of Pearl Harbor. As the light turned green and the Honda pulled forward, it pulled off to the side as if to park. With no cars behind me, I pulled along side the Honda and put my passenger side window down and the elderly gentlemen driving the Honda put his window down. I said to him that I noticed his purple heart plate and he said that he was a survivor and was there when the Japanese attacked. Again, stunned, I was having a difficult time processing it all. I looked at him and said, "and yet you are driving a Honda?" Now he looked stunned in my comment and was speachless. I didn't want to be rude or mean, so I just thanked him for his service to our country and drove away.
I don't know if that encounter made him re-think his purchase, but it's something I will never forget.
Unfortunately people have short memories when it comes to money. Then again, the US sowed the seeds of its own destruction with the Marhsall plan. Ironically it was a plan to deter communist influence in defeated enemy countries. Little did people know the ideology that was so detested at the time as the be-all-end-all for freedom is now the ideology of our largest trading partner and our biggest military threat,
Nice to see how our schools installed patriotism and history of n the lat few generations of our young people.
To be fair, if you want a nice American V8 powered vehicle, everyone is being told to eff off and buy the ugly electric powered CUVs that grandmas have asked Karen Barra to build. We're just luddites if we don't conform and consume.
No one is being told to buy an EV. You are free to pay $100k+ for a V8 equipped Escalade, but you're too poor living in yo mama's basement, scraping pennies, clipping coupons.
Personally, I went with the Ram TRX. The Escalade's 3rd row legroom sucked for my daughter, otherwise, they aren't bad SUVs. I won't be able to buy a new TRX going forward though, nor any V8 powered Stellantis vehicles. And yeah, with the BS mandates, we are being told to buy EVs.
You just contradicted yourself. If you were "being told to eff off and buy the ugly electric powered CUVs that grandmas have asked Karen Barra to buid" then you wouldn't even have been able to buy a Ram TRX in the first place.
Keep lying to yourself.
What? Stellantis just killed off their V8s. This is no longer an option with them going forward. It was done for all the mandates.
Tigger . I gave your post a thumbs up. Hopefully you were being Sarcastic !!.
I was
I thought the USA was about capitalism and free markets. Instead we're just being protectionist. Don't forget we subsidized GM and Chrysler to the tune of $80 BILLION during the 2008 financial crisis. If they can't compete after getting $80 billion in taxpayer money, then maybe they deserve Chinese competition so they can become leaner and more efficient.
Ford on the other hand took no bailout money although it still received a large line of credit.
When everything is owned by the same top institutional shareholders that also get the laws passed that they want, then no, I don't think we can really define the current system as capitalism anymore. We have anti-trust laws, but I guess nothing says the same folks can't hold and control more shares than anyone else in every company in the world that matters and steer them all.
And do you know what companies were largely responsible for the US winning WWII? GM, Chrysler and Ford. Not Toyota, Honda or Nissan. Want to know what companies we can depend on to manufacture our weapons and war machines if there is another World War……………..
It is very asinine to sacrifice what is left of our American industry for an 18th Centry ideology that only we subscribe to. How much "leaner and efficient" can the auto industry become? GM once employed 500,000 hourly employees in this country now that number is less than a tenth that and shrinking. The only way to compete with the Chinese is to agree to work for $4 an hour. Would you be willing to work for that little?
The choice is clear: either protect our industry like Japan, Korea, China, Germany et. al does, or settle for this country being a second-world nation that becomes a village economy of people making lattes and selling mortgages to each other.
From my direct experience, working with Chinese smelters and mills for metal products, they lack metallurgical expertise.
The combination of chemicals is right, but the annealing, the processes, are not correct to produce strong enough material.
I am not sure what it will take, but it is not there yet.
The Chinese have been making racing cranks for a long time, I believe, and people buying them.
If anyone has ever had any experience with Asian cast iron as is used for woodworking machinery you probably know that Asian cast iron is quite inferior to the older US made cast iron that was used on machines. I say was in past tense because we don’t have many foundries left in the US.
As long as it is disposable, and priced as such.
The other half of Americans are MAGA who love authoritarian Russia. So they should love Russia's ally, China, too!
You wanted a "global economy" ? You got it.
There is nothing wrong with foreign trade, if its fair. But blame Clinton for letting Shainah into the WTO.
The Shinese commies are not interested in fair play.. So, they should be tariffed...
Ironically the "global economy" is turning the US economy into a "Village Economy" with no manufacturing and people selling services to one another to make a living.
You sound like you've never had an honest thought of your own.
Having driven Chinese vehicles in the Middle East, they would quickly find out that the vehicles are unsuited for US driving standards.
Drive on the 5 and 85 MPH is the average speed, cops don't even bother to pull you over under 90.
They would best be served by buying used cars.