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We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere. The Chinese EV automakers are crushi
by ttul 9mo ago
We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere. The Chinese EV automakers are crushing it.
- petesergeant 9mo agoHere in Dubai too. Always rather the Careem driver turns up in a BYD than a Tesla.
- eru 9mo agoBYD is also very popular in Singapore. Single most bought car brand at the moment, I think. Their flagship show room has great beer and good food, too.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoWhen I first moved to Spain, I was surprised beer was available in McDonalds, and that people commonly had beer with lunch. But not even here do we have beer available in car show rooms, that seems like the slightly wrong place for that, especially considering how strict Singapore seems from the outside.
- rswail 9mo ago25 years ago I was on a project that was based out of offices next to a BMW factory, so we got canteen privileges, and the food was awesome, and beer was available as one of the beverages. This was at a car plant for people working in manufacturing.
- davidw 9mo agoAt the university canteens/cafeterias in Italy they had wine and beer on tap next to the soda. It wasn't very good, but I was amazed the first time I just saw the tap there in the middle of the cafeteria where anyone could just go refill when they wanted.
- rswail 9mo agoCar show rooms are about catering to clients, selling them both a vehicle and a lifestyle, plus people are much more likely to make deals when they're offered food and drink. Makes sense anywhere :)
- embedding-shape 9mo ago> Makes sense anywhere :) Well, almost anywhere. There are places where if you have a beer with lunch and they saw you arrive in a car, they'll ask you for your car keys otherwise they'll call the police on you. Daily life works differently around the world :)
- psunavy03 9mo agoI'm glad I don't live in a place where one beer would cause that. Several, yes, that's certainly an issue. But so much of the world seems to have lost the ability to be reasonable in favor of black-and-white thinking. For those without religious objections or addictions, one glass of beer or wine with a meal is a complete nothingburger. Yes, it technically impairs your reaction times, but not enough to be a crime.
- bookofjoe 9mo agohttps://etsc.eu/issues/drink-driving/blood-alcohol-content-bac-drink-driving-limits-across-europe/ https://etsc.eu/issues/drink-driving/blood-alcohol-content-b...
- embedding-shape 9mo agoYeah, Sweden is one hell of a place, few places have so many sticklers for rules collected in one place, for better or worse. And it's a very secular place in general, but very "zero tolerance" when it comes to drinking and driving, but completely opposite when it comes to "drinking too much only on weekends".
- eru 9mo agoI just looked it up, and the limits in Singapore would probably let you get away with one or two beers before a drive (assuming an adult male). Though I suspect the BYD folks would want to avoid any hint of impropriety, so they probably will only let you drink there _after_ your test drive. But I've only ever ate and drank at their showroom, I never went to the car side of the business.
- tokai 9mo agoGetting customers to drink alcohol is a classic sales trick.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoRight, but in countries where they're very strict about drinking and driving, you won't see even salespeople trying to get people drunk while selling a car.
- psunavy03 9mo ago"Drinking alcohol" does not necessarily equate to "getting drunk." At least if you're a grown adult and not in undergrad anymore.
- iammjm 9mo agoAre undergrads supposed to get drunk more easily than older adults? How would that work? Unless you actually meant children and not young adults
- ReptileMan 9mo agoDrinking is a skill. It takes time to develop. Teens and the likes - their main goal is to get wasted and fast.
- eru 9mo agoThat's a very American view.
- ReptileMan 9mo agoAbsolutely not. Just that in Europe we start heavy drinking from 12, so by the time we are 16 we know how to properly imbibe.
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- aatd86 9mo agoYeah, unless it is a subtle message to convey that their autopilot is top notch haha
- eru 9mo agoWhy? Just make sure the customer who's test driving has the beer and wine after the ride. And their companions you can fill up before to put them in a good mood.
- fifilura 9mo agoThe only reason to get a car in Singapore is to give the tired father an air-conditioned place outside the crammed apartment to go and have a nap :).
- eru 9mo agoWell, it's also quite useful when you have to ferry multiple kids and their crap around. And jokes aside, many people also need a car for work. Eg if you are a real estate agent, and always flitting around between different showings.
- batiudrami 9mo agoThey are huge in Australia too. And the advice basically everyone gives is "if you're going electric, you'd be crazy not to consider BYD first". A couple of years ago the only notable EVs you'd see were Teslas, now you'd see at least 2-3x as many BYDs.
- gonzo41 9mo agoI do like that BYD cars are opinionated which is a feature that is somewhat lacking in modern cars.
- 0x138d5 9mo ago>opinionated I'm intrigued. What do you mean?
- gonzo41 9mo agoI was always stuck by how different all the cars in the BYD line are. There are some pretty bold styling and fitout choices between the models. I have mostly driven BMW and Toyota sedan and fwd's. And as you progress in car price and size its a matter of getting more features, and a better version over the cheaper model. The BYD's all seem really different,
- vintermann 9mo agoIsn't that the opposite of being opinionated? In software I've heard "opinionated" about programs that limit configurability in favor of one fits all default. I believe it was Ruby on Rails which popularized the term. For cars, I guess Henry Ford's anecdotal comment that "you can have any color you like as long as it's black" was a form of opinionated design. If BYDs cars are all different, surely they're less opinionated?
- dontthinktoo 9mo agoInstead of having a bland, don’t-take-any-strong-decision, please-every-one design ("un opinionated"), each car has its own very distinct design ("opinionated"). You could say that at a brand level, they are equally "opinionated" because the average car of each brand is average, but the OP argues that BYD does it by sampling N very distinct points from the car distribution, and other by sampling N times the same average point.
- testing22321 9mo agoIt’s not just tariffs. They’re not homologated to the US market, so even if you were will to pay multiples more than people in Australia do, you can’t register one in the US.
- HDThoreaun 9mo agoBYD isn’t developing an American model for multiple reasons, but the biggest one is likely tariffs.
- ulfw 9mo agoIt's 100% tariffs. So yes, it's of course tariffs. They’re not homologated because there's no point of selling something when half the price goes to import taxation
- rswail 9mo agoTariffs are exactly the reason that situation is as it is. BYD can outwait the adjustments of the US car industry to a new reality, in the same way that the Japanese did back in the 80s. Last time, the US did it by screwing the union workers of the rust belt, while also giving up on passenger cars and moving to SUV/trucks, but this time it's a complete change in technology and the US (and Japan to an extent) is having trouble reorienting its manufacturing and supply chains to support the change. If Ford can't sell an EV version of an F-150, then it has a real problem, because the rest of the world is not staying on ICE technology. Artificial trade barriers don't last.
- Spooky23 9mo agoThe Ford thing is bizarre. My brother has an F-150 Lightning. It’s an amazing vehicle that they just couldn’t market in this gonzo social landscape. He is literally the walking version of the stereotype of a rural cowboy type. He runs a small hobby farm, leases pasture to local farms. He works in financial management for a regional company and his wife is a procurement officer for a state government. They produce most of their electricity with solar. Replaced some tractor use cases with oxen. They literally don’t pay to operate their daily drivers. (A lightning and a Volt now Bolt) The lightning replaced their emergent generator when that reached its end of life. He got into this stuff after doing the numbers for the company. It’s cheaper and better to operate. Last year they bought a dozen Silverado EV pickups for their field people. They work fine where they deployed them. The workers love them and the opex is better. The self described rednecks hate it because the internet told them to. He almost removed the branding because he gets approached by people warning him about all of the terrible things that will happen.
- martinpw 9mo ago> We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere But getting hit by 50% tariffs in Mexico as of today: https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-tariffs-go-into-effect-china/ https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-tariffs-go-into-effe...
- ttul 9mo agoI wonder how long that will last. Mexican consumers are very price sensitive.
- softwaredoug 9mo agoThis is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking. Rent seeking in the long run is brittle. You get a little security now for loss of competitiveness in the future - once the rent seeking goes away, you’re screwed. You haven’t had to compete, so you haven’t adapted. Consumers flee because they’ve just tolerated you - they actively dislike being forced into fewer choices Rent seeking is industry suicide. It feels like it helps, but it’s not solving the real problem.
- missedthecue 9mo agoAt a certain level it can lead otherwise competitive companies to rest on their laurels. On another level, it would be game over without them. For example, US shipyards would simply stop existing without protection. There is no management strategy or measure they could implement that could compete with Asian shipyards.
- mkleczek 9mo agoThe theory is that in both cases (ie. with and without tariffs) shipyards are going to die sooner or later. It is better for the society to let them die as soon as possible and direct efforts to things we are better at while taking advantage of cheaper ships produced elsewhere.
- randyrand 9mo agojust don't outsource your means of defense!
- mkleczek 9mo agoWith current military technology it is not really possible, is it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdppYYfQJgg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdppYYfQJgg describes it really well. So the question is more about what part of means of defense you outsource. And what parts of means of defense are outsourced by your enemies. You don't want to base your defense on inferior shipbuilding capabilities, do you?
- libertine 9mo agoHmm, but aren't they dumping cars in the market and still not selling? They're stuck with massive amounts of unsold stock, and the market isn't taking it - something doesn't add up.
- newswangerd 9mo agoWestern auto makers are getting slaughtered by Chinese competition outside of the US (and maybe the EU? I don't know what the EU tariff situation is). I have a Chinese EV. It was half the price of an equivalent Tesla and better in every single way. Build quality and reliability have been excellent. I've driven 60,000 km with zero battery degradation. It's just sort of amazing how badly the west dropped the ball on green tech. We're also working on importing an off grid solar system from china that will easily be a third of the price that we'd get from a US supplier. One interesting thing that people don't realize with regards to the US tariffs is that a lot of goods flow through the US on their way to international markets. For a long time it has been easiest for us to buy stuff made in china from vendors such as Amazon in the US and have it shipped internationally from the US. Now with all of the tariffs we end up getting double tariffed for doing this (once when the goods enter the US and a second time when they ship to my country). As a result I'm seeing more and more people looking for ways to buy from China directly.