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Felt like a pr piece when the first line said “ultra cheap”. $21,500 is no ultra cheap when you compare it to vehicles like the Chinese made BYD brand some of w
by 14 2y ago
Felt like a pr piece when the first line said “ultra cheap”. $21,500 is no ultra cheap when you compare it to vehicles like the Chinese made BYD brand some of which are $9700.
Yes it is nice to see prices come down but you are not going to convince me and millions of others that this is ultra cheap.
- ceejayoz 2y agoDo the BYD ones comply with European crash/safety standards?
- 2Gkashmiri 2y agoTata punch EV does global ncap 5 star rating at around $10k
- sottol 2y agoQuick googling showed the Tata Punch EV to cost between $15k-$19k. Afaik, the BYD Seagull is also targeting under 20k EUR in Europe, double the price in China. Might be tariffs.
- Hamuko 2y agoBYD actually got the lower end of the EU tariffs, possibly because they co-operated with the EU or they got less government subsidies.
- Bootvis 2y agoProbably more to do with the fact that all cars, imported and produced within the EU, are taxed quite heavily.
- pqtyw 2y agoIn what way? Some countries like Denmark etc. have very high sales/registration taxes (then again EVs were mostly exempt from them for quite a while, and maybe still are?). In most other countries you only need to pay VAT (~20%) but then there are various rebates/subsidies which might fully offset that (especially for cheap models like this)
- mattlondon 2y agoLooks like 5 star ratings across the board for BYD vehicles on-sale in Europe https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ratings/?selectedMake=46633&selectedMakeName=BYD&selectedModel=&selectedModelName=Model&nodeId=19322&allProtocols=true&selectedStar=&includeFullSafetyPackage=true&includeStandardSafetyPackage=true&selectedProtocols=54301,51097,49446,45155,41776,40302,34803,30636,26061,24370,-1&selectedClasses=1202,1199,1201,1196,1205,1203,1198,1179,40250,1197,1204,1180,34736,44997,54278,54293&allClasses=true&allDriverAssistanceTechnologies=false&selectedDriverAssistanceTechnologies=&thirdRowFitment=false https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra... Would not say these are ultra-cheap. There is probably a lot of "price that the market can sustain" going on here, rather than what it costs them to build the cars
- ceejayoz 2y ago> BYD vehicles on-sale in Europe But those aren't the sub-$10k ones, right?
- mattlondon 2y agoNo idea. The cheapest they have for sale in the UK is the dolphin for about £26k ("On The Road", so all tax and delivery and registration etc included), but for that you get 250+ miles range and 7s 0-60mph, which not so long ago was Tesla-only territory, and is fairly competitive with what "traditional" brands (ford, VW, etc) are offering in terms of specs and price in the UK. I don't know if they sell the exact same model (same range, same speed, same tech trim etc) for $10k but I would not be that surprised that they'd be making a huge huge outrageous profit just because they can in the UK, because that is what the competitors are charging so why not? FWIW there are cheaper things on sale in the UK but they are much lower spec. E.g. £15K OTR gets you a 45bhp (yes, 45!) Dacia Spring that will get you from 0 to 60 in 19s (19!!!) and only go 100 miles between charges. Suddenly that BYD dolphin looks amazing. There is the Citroen AMI for £7.5k OTR, but that is legally not even classified as a car (it's a "quadricycle") has a range of 46 miles, a top speed of 28mph, and has not been crash tested by EuroNCAP ... It would likely be a total shit show if it were though. The BYD looks like a decent option by comparison, but I'd personally not pick one because they are such an unknown in this country and the price needs to be even lower for me to take a punt :)
- netsharc 2y agoGot me curious, I feel like it's cheaper to build a car that complies to global safety standards rather than make differing models for domestic (Chinese) and foreign markets. At least they have 5 stars in the Euro NCAP assessment: https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/82666/euroncap-2023-byd-dolphin-datasheet.pdf https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/82666/euroncap-2023-byd-dolph... And they're being sold in Mexico in N. America, for 358,800 pesos (1), which is $18,000! (1) https://mexico.as.com/motor/byd-dolphin-mini-que-tiene-de-especial-este-auto-electrico-n/ https://mexico.as.com/motor/byd-dolphin-mini-que-tiene-de-es...
- manmal 2y agoNot to my knowledge, if you mean the models for the Chinese market. A 10k model in China is also vastly different from a 30k model in Europe. It’s quite an unfair comparison.
- pqtyw 2y agoRegardless of that you can't buy any of the $10k models in Europe anyway.
- DrNosferatu 2y agoChinese market BYDs are much cheaper because, allegedly, they don’t comply with EuroNCAP (European safety standards). European spec BYDs tend to have 5-star (max) crash ratings.
- DrNosferatu 2y ago…and the corresponding price.
- avgDev 2y agoFor the US market $21,500 would be quite cheap.
- nickthegreek 2y agoAgreed. I would trade in my current vehicle for this in a heartbeat if the topspeed was 100 and not 80.
- tinyrichard 2y agoIf they did a hot hatch version I'd consider breaking my vow to never have a new car or payment again.
- senectus1 2y agoI paid AUD$31k for my MG4... thats about USD$16k. this VW isnt "ultra cheap" at all.
- 14 2y agoYes but not ultra cheap. What we need is ultra cheap cars to make it possible so many people to enter the EV market. Currently only middle class or above can afford an EV. We also need to have our power grid supplied with clean energy to power these cars but both things need to happen. So if we could get one to happen that would be a very good start. But we also have to protect the American car industry and can't allow China to flood the market with actual ultra cheap sub $10k cars.
- manmal 2y agoWhere do you get these prices from? The cheapest BYD selling in Germany is 30k, as far as I can see. With a 20k vehicle launching sometime in 2025.
- 14 2y agoBYD Seagull is $9700. The newer models have gone up. The most basic version is more of a town car and would not meet everyones needs but plenty of people only need a town car.
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoYou can’t buy them in the US though. They might as well not exist.
- stephenr 2y agoBecause as we all know the other 7.9B people on the planet never drive. Cars are clearly a uniquely American concept.
- pqtyw 2y agoWell you can't buy them in Europe either. They are planning to launch a €20k model this year, currently the cheapest car BYD offers seems to be around €30k.
- stephenr 2y agoYou can't buy something which was just announced. Shocker. Regardless of the availability of this specific model, the parent comment still claimed that a car must be sold in the United States or it "might as well not exist".
- pqtyw 2y agoThe thread is about the $9700 model which is not available in Europe nor was its availability announced publicly.
- thuanao 2y agoWhat is it with Americans these days?
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoI’m kidding. Slightly.
- tzs 2y agoFor BYD there is a kind of backdoor. You could move to Nuevo Laredo in Mexico, which is on the US/Mexico border, and buy a Mexican BYD. Register it in Mexico and get a Mexican driver's license. Right on the other side of the border is Laredo, Texas, making it easy to come to the US for most things you want to do outside of your home if you don't want to do them in Mexico. Google is telling me that crossing the border into the US at Laredo is usually pretty quick and easy for a US citizen. Maybe VW will also bring its cheap EVs to Mexico?
- p1necone 2y ago21500 seems pretty cheap to me? Surely the most price conscious consumers would be looking at the second hand market instead anyway given how rapidly car value drops off once they're driven out of the lot.