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This is extremely refreshing. I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. Cars and trucks are so over-engineer

This is extremely refreshing. I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. Cars and trucks are so over-engineered and come with tons of low value options intended to drive up the price. For a case in point, consider that headlights that turn on and off automatically in response to darkness (or rain) are not a standard feature on many cars, yet they include a manual switch that costs more than a photosensor only because of the trim-level upgrades. Cars could include a slot for a tablet but instead come with overpriced car stereos and infotainment systems that are always light years worse than the most amateurish apps on any mobile app store. As should be very clear by now after the 2008 US auto industry bailouts and the 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, the US auto industry is heavily protected and faces virtually no competition, which is why a common sense vehicle like the one in the article sounds revolutionary, though I imagine BYD could deliver something a lot more impressive for $10K if allowed to compete in the US without tariffs.

tw04 1y ago
>heavily protected and faces virtually no competition Huh? Out of the top 25 vehicles sold in the US in 2024, 16 of them are non-US automakers. Just because the US is actively blocking China from dumping heavily subsidized vehicles into the north american market, doesn't mean they "face no competition". Kia and Hyundai alone show that it's VERY possible to break into the US market if you have even a little bit of interest playing fair. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g60385784/bestselling-cars-2024/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g60385784/bestselling-cars...
- decimalenough 1y ago
  The only real way to break into the US market is to have factories in the US. Trucks in particular are protected by the notorious 25% "chicken tax", which has been in place since the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
  - tw04 1y ago
    >Trucks in particular are protected by the notorious 25% "chicken tax", which has been in place since the 1960s. And yet, that applies to everyone, including US automakers, which is why Ford had to do unnatural things to import the transit from Europe. They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of. Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.
    - mulmen 1y ago
      > They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of. "The US can't make anything" is an absurd delusion. We are the second most productive economy in the world. > Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security. We are fully capable of meeting our defense needs already. If you really care about reinforcing our military-industrial capability the best way to do it is to arm Ukraine.
    - warkdarrior 1y ago
      > they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of. > > Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security. Why should manufacturing jobs be well-paying? Human productivity has not kept up with business improvements at all. A contemporary robot can assemble car modules much faster than a robot from, say, the 60s. A human now works at the same speed as a human from the 60s.
      - mulmen 1y ago
        I don't think this is true. Yes robot capabilities have increased but those business processes also make people more productive. I recently toured the F-150 assembly line and it is clear a lot has been done to improve worker productivity.
      - lelandbatey 1y ago
        "Manufacturing jobs" doesn't mean doing the same job as in the 60s. Human productivity improves by offloading more to machines/tools/processes while having the humans manage other things. A human making cars now is not moving their limbs twice as fast as humans in the 60s, they're using tools that get the job done 3x faster than the person in the 60s. The jobs are actually quite different across time, but we colloquially call both "manufacturing jobs".
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA (well, they were planning a factory in Mexico, and tariffs on car parts will kill that if something doesn’t change). They already set up a bus factory in SoCal. My guess is that Chinese automakers are still hesitant about introducing their brands to Americans given politics (Volvo and Polestar are Chinese owned but I think the design is still mainly done in Sweden?). Japanese, Korean, and European brands already make a lot of vehicles to get around tariffs, although it makes sense for some sedans to be made abroad given American lack of interest in them (so economy of scales doesn’t work out), and sedans typically not being tariffed as harshly as trucks.
- worik 1y ago
  > BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA Or concentrate on the 80% of the worldmarket that is not the USA
  - stevage 1y ago
    They're very popular in Australia.
    - GFischer 1y ago
      They're selling ridiculous numbers in Brazil and Uruguay and are opening a factory there. I think they're the number one brand by sales some months in Uruguay.
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    Ya, this only applies if they even want to sell passenger cars in the USA. They definitely don’t have to.
- hansworst 1y ago
  Wouldn’t they still need to pay tariffs on all the parts they manufacture in china? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the tariffs but it sounds like Chinese companies would have to build completely separate supply chains to keep the US market
smcleod 1y ago
To be honest most of those accessories are actually incredibly cheap at manufacturing time and several have a direct impact on safety (e.g. ensuring people don't drive around with lights off). The cost usually comes as companies use them for pricing tiers where they market them as suggested extras to ratchet up profits.
- mceachen 1y ago
  Driving with your lights off at dusk or dark gets you (rightfully) pulled over by law enforcement in CA. It's well-correllated with driving under the influence. I'm a huge fan of many car safety regulations, but this isn't one. (Sign me up for car-hiding-in-blind-spot notification lights on side mirrors, though, those are great)
  - the_gipsy 1y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection, and automatic light sensors save lives.
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      It could make sense. We don't know the numbers. Let's say net X lives are saved each year because of automatic lights turning on. Let's say net Y lives would be saved each year without automatic lights, via more effective detection of drunk drivers and stopping them before they kill someone. Is X > Y? We don't know. > Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection There are a lot of avenues to decrease DUI, among which one is effective detection combined with enforcement.
      - cma 1y ago
        There may be something like that that does make it counterintuitive. Usually those kind of Malcom Gladwell paradoxes end up overstated. There would be other factors, like drunk people are probably safer with their lights on too. Lane keeping probably makes it harder to detect drunk drivers too but also may make them safer.
cco 1y ago
I'll do you one better, car headlights should never be off while the motor is running. Just like motorcycles since the 70s (maybe 80s?). No switch at all, ignition on, headlights on, period.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Niche counter example: Parents who sit in their idling cars for (fucking) ages while their cars are facing the tennis courts thus blinding the player on the other side of the court for however long it takes them to either turn their car off, drive off, or someone to tell them turn their fucking headlights off.
  - dbtc 1y ago
    Simple solution: when the wheels start rolling, the lights come on. I'd still prefer to override both on/off though.
  - morepedantic 1y ago
    How long have you been holding that one?
    - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
      It's only been a recent thing, noticeably more frequent the last couple of years. Before that I've not had to intervene at all, as far as I can remember. There aren't that many courts where cars park facing them, but my home courts are one of them ;)
  - zitsarethecure 1y ago
    Along similar lines would be those people who constantly start up their cars in campgrounds after hours for whatever reason.
- actinium226 1y ago
  But what about for electric cars? Maybe whenever the car is in anything other than P, and for 5 minutes after P?
constantcrying 1y ago
>I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. The closest this comes to is a Dacia spring. Which is not a great car. The dacia could not be made at US labor costs. 15k is an absurd price, Chinese companies can do it because they pay Chinese labor costs and have serious economies of scale. Unless you sell hundreds of thousands of these a year AND pay US workers like Chinese ones, 15k will not happen.
- GoToRO 1y ago
  Dacia Spring launched in Romania at 6000$. Now it's 15-18000$ just because they can.
- rasz 1y ago
  4 door Jimny are ~$15K in Dubai.
aucisson_masque 1y ago
BYD is also heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. If the us were not to fight back, the non subsidized industries would die, Chinese would stop subsidizing, rack up the price and competition would be too difficult to start again because of the monopoly on lithium and advance on technology. It's been done thousands of times with other industries and countries. Most recently Google, who had been giving Android for free when windows phone were licensed and Samsung tyzen cost money to develop, then forced manufacturer to accept outrageous terms to ship Google play service in their phone when all competition was already dead, is now under scrutiny for antitrust.
- resters 1y ago
  China’s approach to funding BYD is meant to replace much of the capital it might raise in freer markets, providing subsidies, tax breaks, and preferential policies to offset limited access to liquid equity and debt markets. This support, totaling $10-12 billion from 2018-2022 plus in-kind benefits, mirrors the role of U.S. automakers’ $160-220 billion in public market raises and $50-100 billion in private capital, but with less financial risk for BYD due to state backing. I think what people are missing is that EVs can be dramatically simpler to manufacture than internal combustion vehicles. This leverages manufacturing advantages and so with or without subsidies, China has big advantages due to its advancements in manufacturing tech. Recall when China started making hoverboards for a fraction of the price of a Segway? Making EVs at scale required largely the same manufacturing pipeline. It is the foresight of China’s industrial policy, not the amount of subsidy that has created the manufacturing powerhouse China has become. US attempts are crude (sledgehammer) methods that leave the market far less free with mostly downside for everyone and no industrial policy goals, only domestic incumbents being protected from reality.
  - kasey_junk 1y ago
    The lack of freer markets is itself a response to the biggest subsidy the Chinese government provides its manufacturers, the currency controls.
    - 1y ago
doctorpangloss 1y ago
> in the US for under $15K even People say stuff like this. When you buy a $1 USB cable from AliExpress that probably took 25 seconds to manufacture, okay, that makes some sense, from that narrow point of view. But then the courier is going to spend like 3 minutes futzing with delivering it to you. Someone is paying something, no? You have an incomplete picture of costs, and hopefully your answer to the example conundrum isn't, "Delivery drivers are underpaid." It's more complicated than features leading to a bill of materials and time in a factory. It costs at least $15,000 to replace a roof in San Francisco, and maybe closer to $60,000. It costs basically nothing to manufacture roof tiles, and the whole thing can be done in a day. If you could answer the question why, and persuasively, you know, run for mayor.

tw04 1y ago

>heavily protected and faces virtually no competition Huh? Out of the top 25 vehicles sold in the US in 2024, 16 of them are non-US automakers. Just because the US is actively blocking China from dumping heavily subsidized vehicles into the north american market, doesn't mean they "face no competition". Kia and Hyundai alone show that it's VERY possible to break into the US market if you have even a little bit of interest playing fair. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g60385784/bestselling-cars-2024/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g60385784/bestselling-cars...

decimalenough 1y ago
The only real way to break into the US market is to have factories in the US. Trucks in particular are protected by the notorious 25% "chicken tax", which has been in place since the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
- tw04 1y ago
  >Trucks in particular are protected by the notorious 25% "chicken tax", which has been in place since the 1960s. And yet, that applies to everyone, including US automakers, which is why Ford had to do unnatural things to import the transit from Europe. They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of. Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.
  - mulmen 1y ago
    > They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of. "The US can't make anything" is an absurd delusion. We are the second most productive economy in the world. > Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security. We are fully capable of meeting our defense needs already. If you really care about reinforcing our military-industrial capability the best way to do it is to arm Ukraine.
  - warkdarrior 1y ago
    > they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of. > > Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security. Why should manufacturing jobs be well-paying? Human productivity has not kept up with business improvements at all. A contemporary robot can assemble car modules much faster than a robot from, say, the 60s. A human now works at the same speed as a human from the 60s.
    - mulmen 1y ago
      I don't think this is true. Yes robot capabilities have increased but those business processes also make people more productive. I recently toured the F-150 assembly line and it is clear a lot has been done to improve worker productivity.
    - lelandbatey 1y ago
      "Manufacturing jobs" doesn't mean doing the same job as in the 60s. Human productivity improves by offloading more to machines/tools/processes while having the humans manage other things. A human making cars now is not moving their limbs twice as fast as humans in the 60s, they're using tools that get the job done 3x faster than the person in the 60s. The jobs are actually quite different across time, but we colloquially call both "manufacturing jobs".

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA (well, they were planning a factory in Mexico, and tariffs on car parts will kill that if something doesn’t change). They already set up a bus factory in SoCal. My guess is that Chinese automakers are still hesitant about introducing their brands to Americans given politics (Volvo and Polestar are Chinese owned but I think the design is still mainly done in Sweden?). Japanese, Korean, and European brands already make a lot of vehicles to get around tariffs, although it makes sense for some sedans to be made abroad given American lack of interest in them (so economy of scales doesn’t work out), and sedans typically not being tariffed as harshly as trucks.

worik 1y ago
> BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA Or concentrate on the 80% of the worldmarket that is not the USA
- stevage 1y ago
  They're very popular in Australia.
  - GFischer 1y ago
    They're selling ridiculous numbers in Brazil and Uruguay and are opening a factory there. I think they're the number one brand by sales some months in Uruguay.
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  Ya, this only applies if they even want to sell passenger cars in the USA. They definitely don’t have to.
hansworst 1y ago
Wouldn’t they still need to pay tariffs on all the parts they manufacture in china? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the tariffs but it sounds like Chinese companies would have to build completely separate supply chains to keep the US market

smcleod 1y ago

To be honest most of those accessories are actually incredibly cheap at manufacturing time and several have a direct impact on safety (e.g. ensuring people don't drive around with lights off). The cost usually comes as companies use them for pricing tiers where they market them as suggested extras to ratchet up profits.

mceachen 1y ago
Driving with your lights off at dusk or dark gets you (rightfully) pulled over by law enforcement in CA. It's well-correllated with driving under the influence. I'm a huge fan of many car safety regulations, but this isn't one. (Sign me up for car-hiding-in-blind-spot notification lights on side mirrors, though, those are great)
- the_gipsy 1y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection, and automatic light sensors save lives.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    It could make sense. We don't know the numbers. Let's say net X lives are saved each year because of automatic lights turning on. Let's say net Y lives would be saved each year without automatic lights, via more effective detection of drunk drivers and stopping them before they kill someone. Is X > Y? We don't know. > Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection There are a lot of avenues to decrease DUI, among which one is effective detection combined with enforcement.
    - cma 1y ago
      There may be something like that that does make it counterintuitive. Usually those kind of Malcom Gladwell paradoxes end up overstated. There would be other factors, like drunk people are probably safer with their lights on too. Lane keeping probably makes it harder to detect drunk drivers too but also may make them safer.

cco 1y ago

I'll do you one better, car headlights should never be off while the motor is running. Just like motorcycles since the 70s (maybe 80s?). No switch at all, ignition on, headlights on, period.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Niche counter example: Parents who sit in their idling cars for (fucking) ages while their cars are facing the tennis courts thus blinding the player on the other side of the court for however long it takes them to either turn their car off, drive off, or someone to tell them turn their fucking headlights off.
- dbtc 1y ago
  Simple solution: when the wheels start rolling, the lights come on. I'd still prefer to override both on/off though.
- morepedantic 1y ago
  How long have you been holding that one?
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    It's only been a recent thing, noticeably more frequent the last couple of years. Before that I've not had to intervene at all, as far as I can remember. There aren't that many courts where cars park facing them, but my home courts are one of them ;)
- zitsarethecure 1y ago
  Along similar lines would be those people who constantly start up their cars in campgrounds after hours for whatever reason.
actinium226 1y ago
But what about for electric cars? Maybe whenever the car is in anything other than P, and for 5 minutes after P?

constantcrying 1y ago

>I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. The closest this comes to is a Dacia spring. Which is not a great car. The dacia could not be made at US labor costs. 15k is an absurd price, Chinese companies can do it because they pay Chinese labor costs and have serious economies of scale. Unless you sell hundreds of thousands of these a year AND pay US workers like Chinese ones, 15k will not happen.

GoToRO 1y ago
Dacia Spring launched in Romania at 6000$. Now it's 15-18000$ just because they can.
rasz 1y ago
4 door Jimny are ~$15K in Dubai.

aucisson_masque 1y ago

BYD is also heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. If the us were not to fight back, the non subsidized industries would die, Chinese would stop subsidizing, rack up the price and competition would be too difficult to start again because of the monopoly on lithium and advance on technology. It's been done thousands of times with other industries and countries. Most recently Google, who had been giving Android for free when windows phone were licensed and Samsung tyzen cost money to develop, then forced manufacturer to accept outrageous terms to ship Google play service in their phone when all competition was already dead, is now under scrutiny for antitrust.

resters 1y ago
China’s approach to funding BYD is meant to replace much of the capital it might raise in freer markets, providing subsidies, tax breaks, and preferential policies to offset limited access to liquid equity and debt markets. This support, totaling $10-12 billion from 2018-2022 plus in-kind benefits, mirrors the role of U.S. automakers’ $160-220 billion in public market raises and $50-100 billion in private capital, but with less financial risk for BYD due to state backing. I think what people are missing is that EVs can be dramatically simpler to manufacture than internal combustion vehicles. This leverages manufacturing advantages and so with or without subsidies, China has big advantages due to its advancements in manufacturing tech. Recall when China started making hoverboards for a fraction of the price of a Segway? Making EVs at scale required largely the same manufacturing pipeline. It is the foresight of China’s industrial policy, not the amount of subsidy that has created the manufacturing powerhouse China has become. US attempts are crude (sledgehammer) methods that leave the market far less free with mostly downside for everyone and no industrial policy goals, only domestic incumbents being protected from reality.
- kasey_junk 1y ago
  The lack of freer markets is itself a response to the biggest subsidy the Chinese government provides its manufacturers, the currency controls.
  - 1y ago

doctorpangloss 1y ago

> in the US for under $15K even People say stuff like this. When you buy a $1 USB cable from AliExpress that probably took 25 seconds to manufacture, okay, that makes some sense, from that narrow point of view. But then the courier is going to spend like 3 minutes futzing with delivering it to you. Someone is paying something, no? You have an incomplete picture of costs, and hopefully your answer to the example conundrum isn't, "Delivery drivers are underpaid." It's more complicated than features leading to a bill of materials and time in a factory. It costs at least $15,000 to replace a roof in San Francisco, and maybe closer to $60,000. It costs basically nothing to manufacture roof tiles, and the whole thing can be done in a day. If you could answer the question why, and persuasively, you know, run for mayor.