"The only problem is Robots do not buy cars."
Very well said
@rolly777. That is the only problem but it's going to be the biggest problem of humanity in the second half of this century I guess; advanced computing technology, artificial Intelligence, highly automated production and and digital capitalism. We can talk about this for days but I'll talk about the part which is related to us and China.
I'll tell you one more interesting thing. When I was researching the EV OEMs' factories, I saw less workers in BYD's factory than the westerns OEMs' factories (Tesla, VW, Skoda, etc.) despite the labour cost is much less in China. That means China has substantial automation in its EV factories (must be the same in battery factories too).
I think it's because the Chinese is over-automating its factories as they tend to overdo everything IMO (as they did for lithium prices in 2022 and property prices in Australia and Canada).
Manufacturing companies in the western world have made more increases in productivity through lean-production methods than they have through replacing their human workers with machines.
Substantial automation requires significant capital investment which needs to be raised on the basis that it will increase the company profits sufficiently to justify it. At the moment, given the expense of automation, simply requiring more productivity from the human workers has proved to be cheaper.
Robots are a means of production, they don't work for a wage, just like any other machines, but they are very expensive and need care and maintenance too. They increase the efficiency of production, but their costs are part of the finished product, just as the costs of the raw materials are. The company can't sack the robots when the things go slow or business fails, but they have keep them and continue to do care and maintenance work on them.
And more importantly, as you said "The only problem is Robots do not buy cars."
Robots does not create new (surplus) value in the production process. Only the human workers reproduce its own value and creates surplus value in the production process. The human workers are never get paid for the full value of their labour, therefore the companies profit from the surplus value they have acquired for free. That is the main pillar of capitalism.
Smart capitalist Henry Ford who started the first automation (serial production) said, "If my workers can buy the cars they make, then I'm in business". He was paying his workers $5 per day in 1914, which doubled the average wage at the time. Ford called this compensation "profit-sharing".
IMO, China will have serious socio-economic problems if they keep increasing the automation substantially. They already have a huge industrial over-capacity. They have also now started to underestimate the western world and overestimating themselves because of that industrial power they've got. However the western world will not let China to squash their industries, especially they will defend their automotive industries at any price. I'm not sure why China can't see that and persists on trying to kill the western auto OEMs.
In regards to LTR in these matters, we are very lucky that we have the western customers and its allies. We also sell to China but it temporary as you know. We are the advancing front of this industrial war. Chinese front will have to pull back.
(20min delay)