Russian Auto Industry

GarryB wrote:Any country will develop a technology if there is need and also the demand to make it profitable.

As far as I know the "profitable" thing is what matters in Russia. The reason for the lackluster of manufacture capability in Russia, despite the very strong foundation of Russian science and technology, is that the profit of industrial investment is not attractive for Russian capitalists.

As far as I know again, Russia does not have a gigantic state economy and strong grasp of government on the economy like China, to counter the profit-driven movement of pure capitalism and steer the investment into manufacture and technology like China has been doing.

Pls correct me if I am wrong.

As far as I know the "profitable" thing is what matters in Russia. The reason for the lackluster of manufacture capability in Russia, despite the very strong foundation of Russian science and technology, is that the profit of industrial investment is not attractive for Russian capitalists.

As far as I know again, Russia does not have a gigantic state economy and strong grasp of government on the economy like China, to counter the profit-driven movement of pure capitalism and steer the investment into manufacture and technology like China has been doing.

Pls correct me if I am wrong. pwnd pwnd pwnd pwnd

There is a multifaceted clusterfuck of wrong mindset that is still plaguing Russia and the Zeitgeist of the current Russian. If you really want to simplify it with your first sentence, then "Yes", you can make that claim. However, there are multitude of reasons the current Russian is plagued by a wrong mindset with low yield from their investment. One big traditional part of this is the mindset that was embedded in the 90's i.e.  "everything from the West is better" which goes hand in hand with the jewish proverb, "if it already exists don't waste your time making it yourself." The socialist times also had their part to play as the average person usually was never profit orientated nor had any experience in a capitalistic profit orientated business. The unstable times of the 90's and the collaps of the Soviet Union have created such lively conditions that no one really wanted to risk the little money they made or had on a failure prone project like self-run business. This low-risk mentality is also to some part to blame for the low investment into the economy. The overall mindset of that is, but at the same time fading due to constant demand and economical stability fading away. The real-time world development and visibility to the average person in the rest of the world is observable and vast majority of people can feel the shift.

The real life circumstances of the massive sanctions and little to no real world effect on Russia and Russians based on living standard has shown that they have a very rich soil to grow home-own businesses and projects to become more autonomous. Stability is the biggest factor to reverse and get rid of this mindset, which prevents many from making their own business. The laws on taxation, bureaucracy and interest rate for small businesses have also improved over the last 20 years.

On a side node, there are many niches which are almost monopoly for some countries/companies in the West which would be potentially profitable if Russia or China would create an own product and undercut the market prize due to lower labor and production costs. To be more specific, Germany is almost a monopoly for glue/adhesive products in all forms. One other sector which Russia and most Russians are garbage at is marketing and asking for a fair price for their products. They often undercut themselves just to please a customer, little sense of profitability in small to medium-small business. The big fishes of course are capitalists through and through since decades, however efficient and branding and marketing is still a Nemesis for us.

Part of their problem was that developing new products from scratch and getting them into mass serial production is expensive and if the EU and Asia already mass produce it and are importing it into Russia then who is going to buy a brand new untested (on the market) product from some brand new company you have never heard of because there is no way the first few years they will be able to compete with models produced in other countries despite the savings in wages.

EU food production was subsidised by their respective governments and they were already providing food to a large 600million population customer base, adding a 150 million customer market of Russia means they could start by selling at a loss to make market share and then gradually increase the price to make it profitable when the rivals are gone.

Russia struggled in their agriculture industry until the foreign cheap competition was cut off, and now it is booming with large capacity production and good clean products.

Obviously that is a combination of investment in the area and the gap in the market created by the withdrawal of imports from the EU, which made it easier to get loans and government support to fill the gap... and I suspect the same will happen with chips and other things they need.

For lots of stuff the Russians bought from other countries like electronic components, they did so because the margins are tiny so setting up production would only make sense if there were laws that forced local consumers to buy their more expensive components until they could master production and pay off all the start up loans from banks and can drop the price to close to the level of imported components that are only profitable because it is not profitable for everyone to make their own.

Only about half a dozen countries make their own chips and all the rest of the countries buy from them... it would be unreasonable to expect Russia to already be making them too because Russia had lots of other problems to deal with.

You can complain that they are short sighted but they haven't been doing nothing all this time... they had to upgrade everything and create a base and I think what they seem to have done has given them a great base to work from... they are making their own machine tools and are on the leading edge of new 3D and 5D and other D printers and 6 axis CnC machines etc etc, and working to fill the many gaps they had without getting massively into debt.

Now they are at a point where they appear to be on the leading edge of aircraft manufacture.... the structures for the Su-57 look like something HR Geiger would design for example and their mastery of composite materials like wings and stuff seems pretty damn state of the art too.

They were never focused on material consumer goods and so it is no surprise they are not leaping forward with cars etc, but their military vehicles are moving into new generations that have no western equivalent any more... but to be fair a lot of technology used in private car design came from racing car technology and so perhaps instead of doing it that way they could get the new technologies from military vehicles which will soon be including VR goggles with heads up displays, and 360 degree camera coverage, day night and all weather, and of course electric drives and other new developments can be used by both areas.

Russians traditionally followed 5 and 10 year plans, there was no commercial risk involved... if the plan required you build a lithium ion battery production plant then that is what you did... it wasn't a question of finding investors and potential customers for the final product to put together agreements you can take to a bank to get loans to build the battery factory in the first place... no risk and properly funded is a very different environment to what they have now... even though many things are funded that way.

Nice to see the diversification of military-industrial companies going ahead, what with their new civilian product line-up courtesy of Toyota and others

I wouldn't be much triumphant about that. In most cases, lacking/having those is only a matter of law regulations, not technology.

America has HNrreP, Russia doesn't.

The irony is that the MiG-25 has ABS... when you come into land you apply the brakes before you touch down...

The only things that should be imported are specific luxury items and possibly highest quality equipment in case a local alternative is not yet ready. And possibly a limited number of normal quality equipment (of course with import tariff), in order not to completely close the market and incentivate local innovation and investment (total lack of confrontation with foreign products can also be negative).
What should never be imported are the cheap products in all sectors

I would say you need to look at local resources and demand... why ship wood and wood based products to Finland for them to make cheap furniture and then sell it to Russian customers at a mark up... Russians can design and make furniture too, and if the market is big enough in Russia why wouldn't you want to make your own?

Conversely if you have no very active shipyards like at the end of the 1990s, why would you fund a Russian company to make 1,000 ton capacity cranes when you only need about 10 of them and the prospects for export are low because the Chinese make them in enormous numbers much cheaper than any Russian company could possibly ever make them for because that Chinese company makes hundreds every year for the entire world market.

If however, you plan to expand your civil and military fleet and want to make huge ships, ice breakers, tankers, oilers, and huge cargo ships in dozens of Russian shipyards you need to upgrade then a domestic company making cranes might make sense... even if they only make half the number you need, they could also make smaller cranes and other equipment for your shipyards too.

The mistake some countries like India make is they pick the wrong thing to make for themselves.

India should not have been planning to make new heavy 5th gen fighters for itself because the technology and production skills for making a large 5th gen fighter do not correspond to skills and capabilities that could be used for other things.

Making a lead in fighter trainer aircraft could be useful because instead of just making 250 or even 500 of them you might end up making 800 or even more if the civilian population could buy a civilian version. A turboprop trainer could be used in airfields right across India and be used in enormous numbers... and the large numbers will also make them useful.

It would be the same with other things like missiles... don't make the S-400 heavy missiles... make the MANPADS... and make millions of them... and the same with ATGMs like Kornet types because such weapons are useful and become more useful if you have a lot of them.

Making electric trucks and electric buses and other electric vehicles right now would be useful and valuable work and of course making your own drones is the best way to ensure no one can cut you off.

Most countries have periods where the sky is falling... in Russia when money was flooding overseas and everyone with money was buying houses on the riviera or in Paris and of course corruption was shocking where the police were often as bad as the criminals and often they were the one and the same because crime bosses paid on time while the government didn't.

The point is that getting the right people at the top and the right attitude and India has enormous potential... comparable potential to the potential the Chinese are currently realising... I think a few Indians are hoping that the west will take all their investment and companies out of China and put them in India and India will grow and develop, but the rise of China has scared the shit out of the west... the rise of Russia has too because they weren't investing in Russia to help it... they made lots of money and still do, the point is that the investment is supposed to make money for the west but not in any way help or develop the country they are investing in because the whole point is that you invest some money into the weak broken economy and get cheap goods made super cheap you can sell to the world at great profits while your work force remains poor and weak and unable to demand better wages and conditions... they have been doing it for centuries and now they realise what they did with China they wont repeat that with India... they will want their companies to make products in their own countries instead.

Ironically India wants the west to abuse them so they can grow and develop with that investment, but in reality what they should be looking at is BRICS... as it expands it will become financially very very powerful and investment from financial institutions like the BRICS bank will actually drive growth and development rather than create debt slaves to get UN votes with.

The future potential of India is enormous... a few Indians I know think things were best under British rule because they were so organised, but India was never going to be India under British rule, this is their chance to shine and to solve problems and to work on important things like health and education and infrastructure... when your people start living a better life then working for it makes sense... when you work three jobs just to pay rent and put food on the table.... you need a better paying job or you need to live somewhere else.

Countries don't own technology... a significant percentage of the population can be trained to be an expert in any field and if you pay them enough they wont leave to go to another country... train teachers and train doctors and nurses and train the people you need... in many ways a communist country is easier to manage than a democracy where the people making the plans and managing everything get changed arbitrarily every election cycle.

Putin could not have done what he did in two presidencies... maybe that is why the west promotes democracy... to restrict the good any good politician that slips through their election manipulation companies like the CIA...

If it weren't for Putin and his team, the fate of Russia would have been catastrophic.....

To be fair they didn't get him for 10 years, but they certainly needed someone... I think anyone else would not have been as successful as Putin... ironically if they had had a real brutal dictator that put things in order and turned Russia into North Korea the west would not have cared as long as they could keep buying cheap energy and resources from Russia they could care less for as long as Russia stayed out of their way.

Fortunately for Russia and the west (but the leadership of the west don't understand yet how sick and depraved their path is taking them), he happened.

We need smart, patriotic, non-idealist, and visionary leadership like Putin or Xi Jinping in India.....

Every country needs such a government...

Once again, India left with nothing but big talks.

India does have talented people, but our system is rotten to the core, hence the massive brain drain to Western countries......

But that is your problem... Putin didn't fix everything on his own and he couldn't... look at how ineffectual Trump was when the American government and American media was working against him.

Putin managed to inspire those that have the power and those that control things no matter who gets elected leader to do the right thing and turn the country around for the sake of the country.

India and indeed most western countries need someone who can inspire the whole country and not just one or two parties that working together is how things are done.

No single man can do much... one man can't build a house, it takes a team, and a good team can make lots of good houses every year... the power of numbers is that one man can only do so much and there are lots of things they can't do on their own... having two men can expand the number of things you can actually do and having four men that coordinate their work can do more things and much faster than one man if they are well trained and can cooperate.

Western elections tend to be about single candidates.... me me me.

Although I don't like to blame every problem on the British invaders, but there's nothing positive I can think of about British colonialism.... Even to this day, a lot of problems can be attributed to Anglo-Saxon colonialism in India

Well case in point look at what they did to Fiji...

They turned up and took over and were not satisfied with the work ethic of the locals.

Most Fijians are considered lazy by the British because they work out how much money they need for the week... for food and housing etc and then they work that long and then go home.

There is no concept of hoarding lots of money, you work to earn what your needs require and then you go live your life... when the money runs out you come back and work.

Needless to say the British were disgusted and shipped in lots of Indians from India... pacific island paradise... who wouldn't want to live there, so Indians started taking over all the jobs in government and industry etc etc and when the British left they asked the Indians if they wanted to stay or go back to India.

The vast majority decided to stay of course because they basically run the place.

They of course had no right to bring in such workers or allow them to stay but the result is that Fijians are effectively second class citizens in their own country.

The vast majority of their armed forces are Fijians and quite often when the Indians do things they are not happy with they have a coup and a military take over, but they have a lot of problems with this.

What the British should have done was allow the local Fijians to timeshare their jobs... if they only want to work two days a week then get three or four guys to do the same job and when one has had enough they can tag team the job...

It wont cost any more, you still pay the same wage and the same hours but to three or four different people...

The sad thing is that the Fijian Indians are caught in the middle...

The "Heart of Smugness" is a very good article on the reality of British rule in India. We hear endlessly about genocide famines in the USSR
but never about the ones in India.

The irony of western democracies is that their propaganda lies about their enemies normally consist of the west accusing their perceived enemies of doing the things the West has been doing for centuries and are embarrassed about... concentration camps... torture... murdering promising politicians to prevent real human rights and democracy because they would oppose western rule...