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> Their own poor decisions resulted in China eating their lunch. China's approach was interesting. There was no giant state automaker, but about 70 of them. At

> Their own poor decisions resulted in China eating their lunch. China's approach was interesting. There was no giant state automaker, but about 70 of them. At one point, each province had its own auto industry. About like the US auto industry in 1910. There's been steady consolidation, or elimination of the losers. Mergers of China auto companies seem to be rare. Then came BYD. BYD won by sheer competence. They got good at batteries. They figured out how to make lithium iron phosphate batteries take up less volume and charge faster with their "blade battery". Now they could make safe electric cars with reasonable but not great range. Somebody at BYD had an insight - the E-Axle. The motor is mounted to the axle and differential, like a railroad locomotive bogie. The power train for a basic car or truck consists of an E-Axle, a battery, an electronics power box that handles motor, battery, and charging inputs. The electronics box talks CANbus to the dashboard and controls. Using those standard, mass-produced components, a wide variety of cars and trucks can be built. That got costs way down. Then BYD did some good car designs and got good at production. The main government incentive was help on the charging infrastructure side. Also, it's been hard for years to get a registration to drive an IC car in Beijing. There's a very limited quota. US companies are still trying to build gas cars with an electric power train substituted. This works but does not bring costs down. Tesla is electric-first, but has other problems. The "Made in China 2025" plan [1], adopted in 2015, is now mostly complete.[2] After 2019, the government of China stopped publicizing the "Made in China 2025" in foreign media, but the plan continued to be executed. South China Morning Post (2024): "The analysis found that China has met over 86% of the 260 targets under MIC25, achieving or surpassing goals in sectors such as EVs, renewable energy, robotics, and biopharmaceuticals. However, key targets in advanced photolithography, intercontinental aircraft, and new materials were missed, with new materials having the lowest completion rate at 75%" It's an impressive success of long-term planning. > their own short sighted greed coffin The $100,000 pickup truck comes to mind. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 [2] https://rhg.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Was-MIC25-Successful.pdf https://rhg.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Was-MIC25-Success...

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>Somebody at BYD had an insight - the E-Axle. A lot of similar innovations ~20 years ago at German and Italian companies like Siemens VDO or Magneti Marelli. The issue is none of them were ever put into mass production, they were just left to rot on shelves while the Chinese out innovated them. It's the exact same story how Kodak invented the digital camera but shelved it to keep its film business alive till Canon and Nikon out innovated them. >It's an impressive success of long-term planning. China and CCP really shined at this, contrary to western expectations who thought it would be another USSR 2.0 waiting for it to collapse under state mismanagement and have them sweep in and buy the nation's assets at a discount. Then in a twist of irony, the opposite happened as China turned out to be better at maneuvering capitalism than the inventors of capitalists. While the western business leaders only plan for next quarter and western politicians only plan for next election, all of which leads to short sighted greed driven "get rich quick while you still can then pull the ladder from under you" decisions on all fronts, leaving the future generations to pick up the tab and try to fix the past mistakes, all of which bogs down development, China moves at lightning speed.
- Liftyee 1y ago
  I've often wondered if this long-term planning and foresight is fundamentally incompatible with a democracy running on sub-decade cycles. I imagine the two could coexist if voters themselves were more aware of their candidates' long term effects, but they need to trust politicians to actually produce results (and not get voted out next cycle).
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >but they need to trust politicians to actually produce results (and not get voted out next cycle). Due to the lack of accountability of politicians and the greed of wealthy elites who own them, most of the democratic west became low trust societies, where people can't trust politicians to have their interest at heart anymore. That's why you see people voting the most extreme and destructive anti-establishment candidates in almost every major democracy, because voting the least worst option as was the norm, simply resulted into a slow march towards feudalism: unaffordable housing, higher taxes, stagnating wages, decline in quality of public services, increased illegal migration, etc. So why would people choose to vote for the same thing for multiple decades? That would be the definition of insanity.
senectus1 1y ago
not to mention their vertically integrated factory they're building.. https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jnv35u/byds_upcoming_ev_plant_in_zhengzhou_is_10x_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jnv3... 3200 acres... the whole damn thing is vertically integrated. they make everything for their cars in the one giant factory. Amazing stuff... BYD is destined to be bigger than toyota ever was
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  > vertically integrated factory they're building Thanks, this is something important I forgot about. Tesla and BYD went fully vertically integrated by now, while EU car companies have done the exact opposite over the last 20-30 years in the quest for maximizing shareholder returns, outsourcing everything to the cheapest bidder and resorted to mostly badge engineering, assembling cheap parts from various OEMs under high markups sometimes not even in their own factories, hoping the brand prestige alone will carry them. When you outsource everything, in time you also loose core competence. Bringing back core competence is difficult but not impossible except now they're in a recession so they have a lot less money than before to invest in innovation.
  - Animats 1y ago
    Tesla never really figured out batteries. The cell building sections of Tesla's battery plant are run by Panasonic or LG. Tesla's own people just package them up into a big battery box. As far is known publicly, Tesla has no solid state battery program. Everybody else who's big in batteries in Asia has a major solid state battery program. Volume production is still hard, but one vendor has made over 2 million samples, some of which are in test vehicles. The expected performance of solid-state batteries is 500Wh/kg, 5 minute charge, survive nail test without fire or explosion. China is mandating that safety requirement after July 2026.[1] The beginning of the end of classic lithium-ion is in sight. [1] https://battery-tech.net/china-sets-new-2026-standards-to-prevent-ev-battery-fires/ https://battery-tech.net/china-sets-new-2026-standards-to-pr...

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

>Somebody at BYD had an insight - the E-Axle. A lot of similar innovations ~20 years ago at German and Italian companies like Siemens VDO or Magneti Marelli. The issue is none of them were ever put into mass production, they were just left to rot on shelves while the Chinese out innovated them. It's the exact same story how Kodak invented the digital camera but shelved it to keep its film business alive till Canon and Nikon out innovated them. >It's an impressive success of long-term planning. China and CCP really shined at this, contrary to western expectations who thought it would be another USSR 2.0 waiting for it to collapse under state mismanagement and have them sweep in and buy the nation's assets at a discount. Then in a twist of irony, the opposite happened as China turned out to be better at maneuvering capitalism than the inventors of capitalists. While the western business leaders only plan for next quarter and western politicians only plan for next election, all of which leads to short sighted greed driven "get rich quick while you still can then pull the ladder from under you" decisions on all fronts, leaving the future generations to pick up the tab and try to fix the past mistakes, all of which bogs down development, China moves at lightning speed.

Liftyee 1y ago
I've often wondered if this long-term planning and foresight is fundamentally incompatible with a democracy running on sub-decade cycles. I imagine the two could coexist if voters themselves were more aware of their candidates' long term effects, but they need to trust politicians to actually produce results (and not get voted out next cycle).
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >but they need to trust politicians to actually produce results (and not get voted out next cycle). Due to the lack of accountability of politicians and the greed of wealthy elites who own them, most of the democratic west became low trust societies, where people can't trust politicians to have their interest at heart anymore. That's why you see people voting the most extreme and destructive anti-establishment candidates in almost every major democracy, because voting the least worst option as was the norm, simply resulted into a slow march towards feudalism: unaffordable housing, higher taxes, stagnating wages, decline in quality of public services, increased illegal migration, etc. So why would people choose to vote for the same thing for multiple decades? That would be the definition of insanity.

senectus1 1y ago

not to mention their vertically integrated factory they're building.. https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jnv35u/byds_upcoming_ev_plant_in_zhengzhou_is_10x_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jnv3... 3200 acres... the whole damn thing is vertically integrated. they make everything for their cars in the one giant factory. Amazing stuff... BYD is destined to be bigger than toyota ever was

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
> vertically integrated factory they're building Thanks, this is something important I forgot about. Tesla and BYD went fully vertically integrated by now, while EU car companies have done the exact opposite over the last 20-30 years in the quest for maximizing shareholder returns, outsourcing everything to the cheapest bidder and resorted to mostly badge engineering, assembling cheap parts from various OEMs under high markups sometimes not even in their own factories, hoping the brand prestige alone will carry them. When you outsource everything, in time you also loose core competence. Bringing back core competence is difficult but not impossible except now they're in a recession so they have a lot less money than before to invest in innovation.
- Animats 1y ago
  Tesla never really figured out batteries. The cell building sections of Tesla's battery plant are run by Panasonic or LG. Tesla's own people just package them up into a big battery box. As far is known publicly, Tesla has no solid state battery program. Everybody else who's big in batteries in Asia has a major solid state battery program. Volume production is still hard, but one vendor has made over 2 million samples, some of which are in test vehicles. The expected performance of solid-state batteries is 500Wh/kg, 5 minute charge, survive nail test without fire or explosion. China is mandating that safety requirement after July 2026.[1] The beginning of the end of classic lithium-ion is in sight. [1] https://battery-tech.net/china-sets-new-2026-standards-to-prevent-ev-battery-fires/ https://battery-tech.net/china-sets-new-2026-standards-to-pr...