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Content Aware · Aug 6, 2026

The AI industry has a Detroit problem and consumers will decide how it ends

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Denis Haman · Content Aware

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese cars were a bit of a joke in America. Cheap, tinny, underpowered, they were – with much help from US automotive boosters of course – derided as what you bought if you couldn’t afford a real car. Detroit, and its mighty Big Three of Ford, GM, and Chrysler, wasn’t worried.

Back then, the American car was a cultural institution well beyond mere transport. A big block US auto represented the unstoppable might of US engineering and of ballooning economic power, and you’d have been hard pushed to find anyone who thought a Toyota was going to threaten a Chevy.

But the quality gap closed, and while US rivals were focused on each other and producing larger and more lurid land yachts which raised prices and running costs, Japanese carmakers were carefully improving everything they did, from factory floor to showroom, while driving running costs lower and lower.

And then the 1973 oil crisis struck. Running costs became the top priority for consumers who no longer had the money to watch the gas needle droop with every mile. As well as bringing in the 55mph speed limit, it made usage economics a yardstick we have yet to put down.

AI is facing that moment now, and it is hard-pressed consumers who will decide its fate.

Read the full article on GPP.io

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Read the original on contentaware.substack.com

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