Why would they do that? I didn't mean to suggest a regular acquisition (i.e. company X buys out company Y's outstanding shares to become the majority shareholder); I meant to suggest that these companies will likely enter Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, followed by an acquisition by a PE firm that parts the company out and sells its assets to other firms, where the brand of the old company is one of those assets, and the assembly lines are another, and the same company might want to acquire both, or just one.

Keep in mind, also, that when you buy a factory, you aren't buying the technology that runs the factory. You'd strip that out and replace it. No, you're buying the real estate, the buildings themselves, the central location close to shipping. (Which might not even be legally allowed to exist due to current zoning laws for the region, but is only grandfathered in or uniquely lobbied in to "protect local jobs.") And you're buying the pre-established arrangements with logistics providers (ports, over-land carriers, etc.) to get cars from that factory to destination cities; and the pre-established arrangements with suppliers to get regularly-scheduled shipments of raw materials like aluminum alloys, thermoplastics, minerals and lacquers to mix paint from, etc. to the factory.

It's the same reason that, say, Target wanted to acquire Zellers in Canada. There was nothing of value in any given Zellers store or warehouse; what was valuable was the real-estate and the logistics pipeline connecting the stores to the warehouses. (Target failed in Canada, but that was because they began leasing the real estate long before they were ready to begin operating the stores, just to ensure nobody else jumped on the deal. So they started with a giant debt from months of paying rent.)

At present current ICE companies are unwilling to sell these assets and electric startups are unable to afford them.

By the time that electric startups are driving current ICE companies into bankruptcy, electric startups will no longer need those assets (because they must have built their own before this happens) and therefore still won't buy them.

Please note that I'm not saying this out of pure speculation. I'm saying this because this is how past rounds of innovative disruptions played out. It is true whether we're talking about sailing ships to steam ships, wire excavators to hydraulics, integrated mills to minimills, or various generations of larger disk drives to smaller (until the rise of mobile devices making small good in and of itself ended that sequence of disruptions).

It is hard to look at what has been invested into existing auto technology and not imagine that it has to be worth something. But there is every reason to believe that it will be worth pennies on the dollar, and companies will end up in chapter 7 rather than chapter 11.

I don't think you're disagreeing with me here. I said "fire-sale" above—I meant pennies on the dollar. Liquidation of assets. It's just that PE firms think they can make money by getting underwater companies to favor ch11 over ch7, because then they can play negotiating hardball over specific assets that other companies might want (like real-estate), rather than those assets just being probated out at face value to creditors.

GM was already almost ch11'ed in 2008. They were sold to a PE firm, and the PE firm looked for buyers for its assets. They just couldn't find a buyer at the time, since the foreign electric market was still nascent, so no company wanted to grow into the American market at the time. Eventually, GM got propped up enough with government stimulus to buy itself back and keep going. If it hadn't, though, it'd probably have limped along for long enough that it could finally be sold some time in the last five years.

Also:

> By the time that electric startups are driving current ICE companies into bankruptcy, electric startups will no longer need those assets (because they must have built their own before this happens) and therefore still won't buy them.

Why wouldn't a Chinese auto-maker want to buy a set of American plants (which is to say, American real-estate to stamp out copies of their Chinese plants onto) if they wanted to expand their global business into the American market? Especially considering the likely-to-only-increase trade tariffs between the US and China—it may end up far cheaper to build a Chinese electric car intended for the US market in the US than in China.

As for the Chinese auto-maker, it is a chicken and egg problem. If the end result is Chinese EV makers having a big role in driving US auto manufacturers out of business, and they decide that they need US factories to do it, they will have to build those factories first. By the time the US auto company factories are for sale there will very much be a flavor of, "Gee, that would have been nice 5 years ago..."

That isn't to say that some Johnny-come-lately who entered the US market late won't be found to snap a few factories up. But at that point they'll probably be better off looking for buyers in unrelated industries.