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People responding really don't know the state of Chinese electric right now. For 2023, China's BYD has globally outsold Telsa by over 50% and 8 out of the top
by kristopolous 3y ago
People responding really don't know the state of Chinese electric right now.
For 2023, China's BYD has globally outsold Telsa by over 50% and 8 out of the top 10 brands for global electric car sales for Oct 2023 are from China.
The BYD qin plus, for instance, is about $20k, the Wuling Mini-ev is about ~$10k, Aion Y is $20k. They're eating everyone's lunch and expanding into Central America, Africa and Europe.
Cars like the Cherry QQ, which are $5,000 aren't meant to be compete with new cars but instead, to the vast majority of price-sensitive buyers who normally purchase used cars. Introduce a used-price new car, however ...
They're poised to do to the American auto market what Japan did 40 years ago and just like then, American auto seems to be asleep at the wheel.
This is a classic Clayton Christensen innovators dilemma formula.
Edit: Apparently factual statements are unpopular once again. The internet is so cool.
- tnel77 3y agoAssuming quality is good and the cars are actually safe (excellent crash test ratings, for example), I’m excited to buy one of these cars soon! I’d love an electric SUV/truck, but there’s no reality where I pay $80k. I’m interested in a $20-30k product though!
- dalyons 3y agoDo people just find these facts inconvenient? Unbelievable.
- kristopolous 3y agoIt went deep into the negatives for a bit. Often, at least with me, people mistake my efforts at sincere analysis as some kind of advocacy. I'm an American. I've never been to China or seen one of these Chinese electric cars in person but everything suggests they're on their way to a formidable auto industry in the electric and city-car/light use space - the demographic that Honda and Toyota captured in the 70s and 80s. Of course if you've done any traveling you'd find many countries have a national auto-manufacturer that's deeply popular in country without much penetration outside (take Vinfast or Saipa for instance) and the Chinese auto companies have yet to prove they can stake a foothold outside of their home country at the Kia or Mercedes level but they just started. BYD just entered Japan under 2 months ago and XPeng entered Europe only about 6 months ago. Time will tell, but we could be seeing the very early stage of Chinese auto brands becoming household names.
- throwaway4good 3y agoMost of the Teslas sold around the world, not the US, are made in China. As it looks now (in Europe); the stigma associated with China is very strong and the brands that succeed likely will be western (at least in name) but made in China.
- kristopolous 3y agoSuch as volvo. The "ownership" is kind of a weird thing ... for my interests I think it's where was it mostly designed and tested. GM is involved with Wuling for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM-Wuling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM-Wuling but I think we call this Chinese, right? Transnational industrial capitalism is weird like that.
- qwytw 3y ago> succeed likely will be western (at least in name) but made in China Not if they increase tariffs beyond the measly 10%. Which they should.
- Garvi 3y agoRacism against US economic rivals has been the MO for decades on western social media. It's certainly widely known that the US has "embedded operatives" at the biggest tech firms. This is what they do with their time. Censor anyone that doesn't get dogpiled. The dogpiles then serve as a deterrent. I will never forget the racist "covid in russia" threads in /r/worldnews. Weekly renewed threads, old ones deleted, full of people expressing their hopes for a high number of covid deaths in Asia. Some used innuendo, some were quite direct. They were all rewarded with happy points. History will treat these sites as the he modern equivalent of the hitler youth. For instance the recent US invasion and occupation of parts of Syria seems to be completely missing from peoples memories. Were Americans simply not informed in the first place? We got millions of Syrian refugees into the EU.
- kristopolous 3y agoThe term for this generally is american exceptionalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism Essentially the US pretends like it's the only country. It's softened in the past 20 years with the rise of the internet but the bubble used to be extremely strong when I was younger.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThe Model 3 in China is only ~$30k. Stuff is just cheaper in China. I highly doubt BYD could sell a car in the US for $20k.
- valianteffort 3y agoThe model 3 in china is also using chinese packaged LiFePo4 batteries as required for the deal Elon managed to work out (Tesla maintains 100% control of their chinese business). This reduces the price but at the cost of range.
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- idontwantthis 3y agoIt would make sense that the higher competition pushes all prices lower. If China had access the US market prices for all vehicles would drop there too.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> I highly doubt BYD could sell a car in the US for $20k. Yeah I see no way that happens. They have no dealer network to fall back on, so they have to either partner with someone already established, or they have to try and spin up a mobile service network like Tesla did. That costs money, and isn't going to happen while selling $20K cars.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y agoAmazon enters the chat. Or Walmart. Hell, even Costco could play well here.
- Domenic_S 3y agoi would buy the SHIT out of a costco car
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- totallywrong 3y agoThe BYD Qin Plus is over $30k in LATAM which makes it a luxury car for the region.
- fyokdrigd 3y agolatam prices are in a bubble right now. even a golf with typical latam striped down specs (no center console, no glove box, manual windows, non adjustable side mirrors, etc) is OVER $20k it seems to point down now, but who knows?
- toast0 3y ago> non adjustable side mirrors What does that even look like? I've driven plenty of old US cars, and power mirrors pretty much weren't a thing, but the side mirrors always were mounted on some sort of swively thing so you can adjust them. Big truck mirrors might only adjust horizontally and not vertically though, but I've never seen that on a car.
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- biaachmonkie 3y agoMaybe it's because your numbers are wrong? BYD is certainly a massive and growing force in the auto industry and all signs point to that continuing, but their BEV sales 'only' are about equal to Tesla. The often quoted sales figures, that you appear to be referencing, that have them way out in the lead include ICE and Hybrid cars, so if you're going to include those you're really comparing overall auto sales not BEV sales. https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-vs-byd-2023-comparing-ev-rivals-tsla-stock/ https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-vs-byd-2023-comparing-e...
- kristopolous 3y agoBYD stopped selling ICE last year but setting that aside, if we use exclusively your reference, the trends are still showing strong growth for BYD. The ΔX is certainly not favoring Tesla for the #1 spot even by this metric if you play out only the trends documented in this single article. Christensen formula is still in play. (For people reading that's not to say it's a good stock buy, btw. Please don't try to divine financial advice from this comment)
- spaceman_2020 3y agoBYD is so ferociously competitive that India blocked a $1B investment from them in India because it was clear without massive protective taxation, they would run all local manufacturers out of the market.
- zpeti 3y agoIf we can just for a second forget about Musk's politics - it's absolutely insane to think China would be dominating both the rocket and electric car industries if it wasn't for him. (And yes, it is because of him, Blue Origin, Arianespace, and many others haven't been able to compete at the level of China, and neither have any electric car makers with BYD on a serious numbers level)
- cpursley 3y agoYep, if folks want to catch up with the Chinese EV market, this is a pretty good channel - I had no idea that they were this far along: https://www.youtube.com/@Wheelsboy https://www.youtube.com/@Wheelsboy I'm really blown away with some of their exterior designs. Less so with their touch interfaces (which range from atrocious to outright dangerous).
- gniv 3y agoThanks, I had no idea they had so many models. The car they bought looks really good too: https://youtu.be/kDRDNRuDnOA?si=DPzacq2fMcrJf-dj&t=250 https://youtu.be/kDRDNRuDnOA?si=DPzacq2fMcrJf-dj&t=250 (BYD Yuan PLUS, $21k, 480 km range).
- lowkj 3y agoThat might be the converted us$ price in China but definitely not the case everywhere they sell the car. Here in Colombia the BYD Yuan Plus EV is 199.900.000 pesos or over $49,000 usd.
- twobitshifter 3y agoThe EV situation in Asia is changing rapidly, and would shock most Americans. The number of Ora Cats, BYD, and other unknown brands on the road would be surprising at first glance. When they see the interior, technology, and range of the cars is not at all cut-rate, they understand the reason why traditional manufacturers are frightened. I read an article that said this all started with Tesla production in China needing local manufacturing to support. The Tesla way allowed Chinese brands to see what was being done and catch up almost immediately on the processes and technology. That was step 1. Step 2 was applying the better understanding of what the Asian market wants to the Tesla business model. VW was the largest Chinese manufacturer, but VW EVs have flopped and are by all measures worse than what is offered by say BYD. There was a VW anecdote about BYD having in-car karaoke and this never occurring to Germans as something people would want.
- grecy 3y agoDo we know if BYD have any plans to sell vehicles in North America? Why wouldn't they?
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoBYD has a plant in California https://en.byd.com/news/byd-and-the-city-of-lancaster-announce-lancaster-energy-module-and-electric-bus-manufacturing-facilities/ https://en.byd.com/news/byd-and-the-city-of-lancaster-announ... https://en.byd.com/bus/about/ https://en.byd.com/bus/about/ But BYD seems more advanced in getting consumer automobiles into EU markets than US markets. They also make electric busses: https://en.byd.com/news/byd-receives-largest-battery-electric-bus-order-in-u-s-history/ https://en.byd.com/news/byd-receives-largest-battery-electri...
- chiph 3y agoThat will get them around the tariffs. I'm more curious how they'll pass the NHTSA & IIHS crash testing. There's definitely a market for super-cheap cars - Malcolm Bricklin knew this when he arranged to import the Yugo GV[0] (peak sales was 48,000). But BYD has much deeper pockets that Malcolm had, so they may be able to invest in safety, a dealer network, and the market research to produce an EV that Americans will buy. The pace of new model introductions from BYD may actually work against them - the cars may be regarded as disposable, with environmental concerns over recycling the plastics and batteries. If the Han[1] is only on sale for a few years, to be replaced with an entirely different model, that also creates a brand identity problem. Compare that with Honda who has been selling the Accord since the late 1970's. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo#In_the_United_States_and_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo#In_the_United_States_and_... [1a] https://www.byd.com/us/car/han-ev https://www.byd.com/us/car/han-ev [1b] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNwaeUI4IRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNwaeUI4IRw
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoYes, a US plant is a necessary pre-requisite to not have import tariffs on the finished vehicles. I would not make the link that BYD == "super-cheap cars" BYD Han, EU price €69,990. High price. BYD Seal, EU price €44,900 and up. Not cheap, lower-middle of the pack. BYD Dolphin, E Price €29,990 and up - that's at the cheap end. But not "super" cheap. BYD Sea Lion, coming soon, around €24K / USD $26K maybe? BYD and other might (and hopefully will) go below €20K / USD $25K into the "super-cheap" category. But that's hardly the whole of or current reality of the brand. Your video link has the title calling the Han a "luxury Sedan" so I don't know why you would talk about "super-cheap", or invent concerns about model name longevity. YEs, BYD seems likely to be _in_ the super-cheap category. So will others.
- dangus 3y agoI’m more bearish of the idea of a major paradigm-shifting Chinese EV incursion to the US. The US automotive market plays a completely different game than the rest of the world, with a bunch of protections and quirks that have a great potential to stifle a disruptive innovator. First: the products themselves are regionally unique. The #1 selling vehicle in the US is the F-150, a truck that is a completely insane purchase for most of the rest of the world’s population. Japan may have disrupted the US market, but many of their vehicles they sell in big volumes are designed in America built in America sold primarily to Americans. BYD can’t sell the Qin Plus in America, they need to sell something more like the Rivian R1T. That means BYD needs a US factory to avoid the chicken tax… Second: The US already shows high willingness to “chicken tax” EVs. All the vehicles that qualify for the EV tax credit are Ford, GM, and Tesla vehicles with high domestic part counts. The government can play this game until the cows come home giving the big 3 ample time to catch up. So we’ve established that if you’re selling big volumes in America, you are producing cars in US factories. In that regard, China has a weak record of success. If they want to sell trucks in America they’ll probably have to have a UAW factory. The documentary “American Factory” comes to mind for me. At best, this means that China won’t get the typical labor cost advantage that their entire export economy thrives on. What is their competitive advantage at that point? Third: the dealer network. Operating in the US means dealing with independent dealerships often enshrined by law. Tesla had to fight an improbable battle to get to the scale it is now without independent dealerships. Fourth: the incumbents have good tech and are high volume producers in their own right. BYD is big. You know who is bigger? Volkswagen. Toyota. GM. Ford. Even Tesla is bigger by global revenue. 17 other global automotive companies pull in more revenue than BYD, and 9 pull in more revenue than SAIC. By the way, the “$5,000 used car killer” has been a legend for decades and will never happen in developed markets with strong safety regulations and demanding living standards. Americans literally do not buy city cars, new or used. Get back to me when the Cherry QQ more closely resembles the Ford Maverick.
- fragmede 3y agoA 25% import tarrif on a $4,000 car rounds it up to $5,000. Are you sure they have to manufacturer them in the US at that price point? There's no getting around the F150's dominance, but the Japanese Suzuki Samurai has an absolute cult following among the rural gearheads I know that also own F150s and 350s. I don't see why a Cherry QQ couldn't achieve the same thing in a different segment of the market on sheer price. Now, I'm skeptical that, after all the US safety regulations are met, that it could still be made for $4,000, but the utter manufacturing advantage of paying Chinese workers in Chinese factories local wages is not to be underestimated.
- tschwimmer 3y ago0% chance that US lawmakers will allow low cost Chinese EVs to enter the domestic auto market. They’ll either implement protective tariffs or regulatory barriers or both. Aside from US consumers, everyone stands to lose from cheap EVs flooding the market: oil companies, conventional domestic and import manufacturers, electric manufacturers like Tesla, dealerships, arguably even state and local governments who under current laws make less in tax revenue on electric cars.
- viraptor 3y agoSome positive names not on the list: solar importers/installers, electricians, auto repair techs who reskill to EV, everyone who breathes air (collective medical costs), EV charging networks operators, ... I'm sure there's more.
- xnx 3y agoAlso the American car buyer
- HPsquared 3y agoIndeed... There are more car buyers than car sellers. Money talks, though.
- PaulHoule 3y agoThere is a day when ‘affordable cars’ gets in the agenda but it won’t be 2024 as Biden badly needs the UAW vote. (Even though unaffordable cars may be a big reason why people perceive the economy to be bad and probably are a headwind for Biden.)
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago> BYD ... expanding into Central America, Africa and Europe. I saw a BYD logo on a vehicle on the roads of London UK a few days ago. I knew they were coming, and now they are arriving. Geely is more stealthy, Electric vehicles from Geely subsidiaries (Volvo, Polestar, LEVC) have been around for years. The last, LEVC ( https://levc.com/ https://levc.com/ ), is the current London "black cab" taxi.
- maguirre 3y agoGenuinely curious, what central American country are they expanding to?
- 4b11b4 3y agoAlso, even though they may be able to produce the car for some low amount, infrastructure doesn't exist in those new places. They can't "just expand".