4 ms·

I'm still skeptical. Let's wait for a few years and see how the quality, after market and customer support really is. In my experience, that's not a strong-suit

I'm still skeptical. Let's wait for a few years and see how the quality, after market and customer support really is. In my experience, that's not a strong-suit of chinese brands.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Chinese companies iterate, learn, and adapt very quickly. If their goal is to be world-class automakers then they will quickly learn from local markets and adapt accordingly. For instance, I used to have a Huawei phone and the quality was on par with Apple and better than Samsung (taking Apple on was their goal and they executed accordingly). Tesla has been quite successful despite a few hickups along the way, including regarding quality. My guess is that Chinese brands can follow at least the same trajectory, if not better. Consider also that BYD supplies batteries to Tesla, at least in Europe. So at least on that front they seem to be world-class if not leaders.
- segfaltnh 3y ago
  Why aren't there more Chinese automakers of gasoline cars?
  - avtolik 3y ago
    There are, but they were working mostly for internal market. Their brand recognition is not good with the western audience. But now with the electric cars - it is a brand new thing, so the chinese brands can try to push in the western markets.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    There are, mostly within China. But obviously the strategy has been to leapfrog the competition and to go all in on battery tech and EVs rather than trying to play catch-up on soon-to-be obsolete tech.
  - j-a-a-p 3y ago
    The article has a nice graph where you can see Chinese had a 20 - 25% market share and the Western/Japanese has the remainder in the ICE era. Suddenly in the last years the Western/Japanse traditional manufacturers are squeezed to 40% and the trend looks, well, devastating. So yeah, the made ICEs but also in the home market that was not a convincing product.
  - RobotToaster 3y ago
    Isn't red tape to sell cars in Europe and the USA infamously difficult?
    - infecto 3y ago
      I was always under the impression it was less about red tape and more about safety standards. Most foreign cars do not meet the safety standards required in the US/EU. My favorite example is in Mexico, Toyota had a model that was more or less the same style of an early 90s Toyota. You could still buy them new in ~2016, they had no upgrades to safety etc, you would never be able to sell them in the US.
    - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
      I remember vaguely on one Chinese car in Eastern Europe cca 1 year ago, which was cheapish, but made from cheap plastics, squeaking, infotainment was booting 30 seconds and ICE engine, despite its relatively small volume was taking 10 liters per 100km. I don't think that they have sold many of them.
  - infecto 3y ago
    I did not think the other replies were very adequate so adding my thoughts. There are a lot of chinese ICE manufacturers. Even before that, there were a number of Euro/American brands that were manufacturering in China for the domestic market. In the beginning these brands were not seen as high quality or reliable. You would pay a premium for a vehicle that was not manufactured domestically, regardless if it was a domestic or foreign brand. Things have changes significantly over the last 10 years. Quality has greatly improved and there is a significant sense of national pride for these brands, which I think only helps if further the desire for these brands to build better products. The timing of quality improvements and the new global market demand for EV makes it a great time to expand. If they were to expand into the US market with an ICE platform, they would have had to fight the long uphill battle like Hyundai did to make a name for themselves.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    They have no competitive advantage on engine, while they have huge competitive advantage on battery
- torginus 3y ago
  Still, it's their turn to prove themselves - buying a car with no service network, no spare parts infrastructure, and no proven track record, and no knowledge on resale value is errand I'd let others go through before me, Chinese car or not. Especially since EVs are not cheap and I'm planning to keep them for a while.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    Sure, but as I mentioned it was exactly the same with buying a Tesla... that didn't stop them despite the high price.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  China has a history of fine manufacturing and they make the iPhone there. Sure there are the factories that turn out junk appliances that are sold under famous brands but some Chinese brands want very much to win customers over with quality and innovation. In photography many of the most interesting products today come from companies like QoCam (stereo, pano, and “bullet time” cameras) or 7Artisans (affordable manual focus lenses with unusual focal length/aperture combinations…. A $200 lens from 7Artisan might compete with a $7000 lens from a Japanese brand, the $7000 lens is better but I can take pictures with the $200 lens that look like nothing you’ve seen.)
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  > Tesla has been quite successful despite a few hickups along the way, including regarding quality. Are you implying that Tesla is good quality? They are successful yes, but the hardware quality is just awful. Leaking roofs and stuff like that is not hard to get right. I rode in a BYD and it was considerably more uncomfortable than my Land Rover Defender Td5, imagine that! My truck was more comfortable as a taller person than the BYD. I don't know, I think that's still a very one-sided view. China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA. It's just a different culture around quality in my limited experience. Japan and Germany still lead imho.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    No, I am saying that they are successful despite being expensice and not so good quality. > China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA That's borderline offensive, IMO, and proved wrong by many examples.
zhdc1 3y ago
Range anxiety and charging infrastructure are also major hurdles. Around 50% of people in the EU live in apartments. Most apartments were built decades ago and lack EV chargers - and, in many cases, enough dedicated parking spots for each unit, but that's a different story. If people in the states think that charging a Model 3 or Model Y is too time consuming, when close to 90% of Americans live in single family houses, why would the majority of European car buyers be willing to switch to EVs, when they don't even have the option to install an EV charger?
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  > If people in the states think that charging a Model 3 or Model Y is too time consuming A lot of them are being told this, and they just believe it without running the numbers for their use case. For some it would be longer until infrastructure improves, but for others it would actually be less time “waiting” on their EV than their ICE car. I’m in the UK and I’ve spent 0 mins waiting on my EV charging in the last 4 months. Plug in at night and unplug in the morning. I’ve also spent 0 minutes visiting gas stations. America has bigger distances and there are other factors of course.
  - zhdc1 3y ago
    > Plug in at night and unplug in the morning. That's the issue. This simply isn't possible if you live in an older apartment complex or rely on street parking. ICE wins - at the moment - simply because it takes less than five minutes to refuel.
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      > That's the issue. > This simply isn't possible if you live in an older apartment complex or rely on street parking. This falls under the “running the numbers for their use-case” section. If you can’t charge at home it probably will be more hassle (but might not be). > ICE wins - at the moment - simply because it takes less than five minutes to refuel. So does this, because for my use-case EV wins because I don’t need to spend any minutes refuelling.

I'm still skeptical. Let's wait for a few years and see how the quality, after market and customer support really is. In my experience, that's not a strong-suit of chinese brands.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

Chinese companies iterate, learn, and adapt very quickly. If their goal is to be world-class automakers then they will quickly learn from local markets and adapt accordingly. For instance, I used to have a Huawei phone and the quality was on par with Apple and better than Samsung (taking Apple on was their goal and they executed accordingly). Tesla has been quite successful despite a few hickups along the way, including regarding quality. My guess is that Chinese brands can follow at least the same trajectory, if not better. Consider also that BYD supplies batteries to Tesla, at least in Europe. So at least on that front they seem to be world-class if not leaders.

segfaltnh 3y ago
Why aren't there more Chinese automakers of gasoline cars?
- avtolik 3y ago
  There are, but they were working mostly for internal market. Their brand recognition is not good with the western audience. But now with the electric cars - it is a brand new thing, so the chinese brands can try to push in the western markets.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  There are, mostly within China. But obviously the strategy has been to leapfrog the competition and to go all in on battery tech and EVs rather than trying to play catch-up on soon-to-be obsolete tech.
- j-a-a-p 3y ago
  The article has a nice graph where you can see Chinese had a 20 - 25% market share and the Western/Japanese has the remainder in the ICE era. Suddenly in the last years the Western/Japanse traditional manufacturers are squeezed to 40% and the trend looks, well, devastating. So yeah, the made ICEs but also in the home market that was not a convincing product.
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  Isn't red tape to sell cars in Europe and the USA infamously difficult?
  - infecto 3y ago
    I was always under the impression it was less about red tape and more about safety standards. Most foreign cars do not meet the safety standards required in the US/EU. My favorite example is in Mexico, Toyota had a model that was more or less the same style of an early 90s Toyota. You could still buy them new in ~2016, they had no upgrades to safety etc, you would never be able to sell them in the US.
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    I remember vaguely on one Chinese car in Eastern Europe cca 1 year ago, which was cheapish, but made from cheap plastics, squeaking, infotainment was booting 30 seconds and ICE engine, despite its relatively small volume was taking 10 liters per 100km. I don't think that they have sold many of them.
- infecto 3y ago
  I did not think the other replies were very adequate so adding my thoughts. There are a lot of chinese ICE manufacturers. Even before that, there were a number of Euro/American brands that were manufacturering in China for the domestic market. In the beginning these brands were not seen as high quality or reliable. You would pay a premium for a vehicle that was not manufactured domestically, regardless if it was a domestic or foreign brand. Things have changes significantly over the last 10 years. Quality has greatly improved and there is a significant sense of national pride for these brands, which I think only helps if further the desire for these brands to build better products. The timing of quality improvements and the new global market demand for EV makes it a great time to expand. If they were to expand into the US market with an ICE platform, they would have had to fight the long uphill battle like Hyundai did to make a name for themselves.
- fomine3 3y ago
  They have no competitive advantage on engine, while they have huge competitive advantage on battery
torginus 3y ago
Still, it's their turn to prove themselves - buying a car with no service network, no spare parts infrastructure, and no proven track record, and no knowledge on resale value is errand I'd let others go through before me, Chinese car or not. Especially since EVs are not cheap and I'm planning to keep them for a while.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Sure, but as I mentioned it was exactly the same with buying a Tesla... that didn't stop them despite the high price.
PaulHoule 3y ago
China has a history of fine manufacturing and they make the iPhone there. Sure there are the factories that turn out junk appliances that are sold under famous brands but some Chinese brands want very much to win customers over with quality and innovation. In photography many of the most interesting products today come from companies like QoCam (stereo, pano, and “bullet time” cameras) or 7Artisans (affordable manual focus lenses with unusual focal length/aperture combinations…. A $200 lens from 7Artisan might compete with a $7000 lens from a Japanese brand, the $7000 lens is better but I can take pictures with the $200 lens that look like nothing you’ve seen.)
RamblingCTO 3y ago
> Tesla has been quite successful despite a few hickups along the way, including regarding quality. Are you implying that Tesla is good quality? They are successful yes, but the hardware quality is just awful. Leaking roofs and stuff like that is not hard to get right. I rode in a BYD and it was considerably more uncomfortable than my Land Rover Defender Td5, imagine that! My truck was more comfortable as a taller person than the BYD. I don't know, I think that's still a very one-sided view. China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA. It's just a different culture around quality in my limited experience. Japan and Germany still lead imho.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  No, I am saying that they are successful despite being expensice and not so good quality. > China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA That's borderline offensive, IMO, and proved wrong by many examples.

zhdc1 3y ago

Range anxiety and charging infrastructure are also major hurdles. Around 50% of people in the EU live in apartments. Most apartments were built decades ago and lack EV chargers - and, in many cases, enough dedicated parking spots for each unit, but that's a different story. If people in the states think that charging a Model 3 or Model Y is too time consuming, when close to 90% of Americans live in single family houses, why would the majority of European car buyers be willing to switch to EVs, when they don't even have the option to install an EV charger?

thebruce87m 3y ago
> If people in the states think that charging a Model 3 or Model Y is too time consuming A lot of them are being told this, and they just believe it without running the numbers for their use case. For some it would be longer until infrastructure improves, but for others it would actually be less time “waiting” on their EV than their ICE car. I’m in the UK and I’ve spent 0 mins waiting on my EV charging in the last 4 months. Plug in at night and unplug in the morning. I’ve also spent 0 minutes visiting gas stations. America has bigger distances and there are other factors of course.
- zhdc1 3y ago
  > Plug in at night and unplug in the morning. That's the issue. This simply isn't possible if you live in an older apartment complex or rely on street parking. ICE wins - at the moment - simply because it takes less than five minutes to refuel.
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    > That's the issue. > This simply isn't possible if you live in an older apartment complex or rely on street parking. This falls under the “running the numbers for their use-case” section. If you can’t charge at home it probably will be more hassle (but might not be). > ICE wins - at the moment - simply because it takes less than five minutes to refuel. So does this, because for my use-case EV wins because I don’t need to spend any minutes refuelling.