The difference in taxis in shenzhen a few years ago astonished me. Either filthy, ragged, diesel VW passats, or incredibly high tech BYD electric SUVs.
They were impressive back then, will be interesting to see what BYD can do with an affordable EV.
It would be interesting to see a Chinese manufacturer taking the lead in the automobile segment. Wonder how it will affect politically.
It was all Korean or Japanese dominance till now with KIAs/Hyudai and Toyotas.
American cars brands mostly fail outside the US.
There's no "would" about it, it is happening if the 2030 all-EV timetable is kept to. Other than Tesla, western (that includes Japan and South Korea) car makers stand to lose everything vice versa China who stand to gain everything with the current politics.
Indeed, companies like VW, BMW, Mercedes, Ford, GM, Hyundai/KIA, Nissan, Honda etc are going to lose everything compared to a new entrant which doesn't have a single vehicle on sale in the markets where those brands have long been established players. They must be quaking in their boots. /s
The 2030 timetable is not going to be met by any single manufacturer, if it is going to be met to begin with. I suspect that it is going to be pushed backwards bit by bit as reality sets in: that it always was too ambitious a target to realistically achieve. And if they stick to it, which I would find very brave it will simply mean that the price of personal transportation will skyrocket and that older non BEVs will have to hang around a little longer.
There is so much that has to work for an all electric transition for every new vehicle sold in the next 7 years to be successful that I wouldn't bet on it. I think of it more as a goal to strive for than something that is realistically achievable, but of course I hope that I'll be wrong on this. Time will tell.
China added production capacity for almost 4million EV's last year. (from 16% to 30% of 26 million). Given that Europe buys 12 million cars per year, hitting that goal would be straightforward for China.
You need to look at the size of the internal market first. I'm not saying it can't happen, just that I think that it is very unlikely that we'll see any of those here in numbers that would significantly impact the current division between US/Europe/Japan/Korea.
Also keep in mind that whatever goals have been set that Europe at a minimum (but probably also other territories) are going to want to have a very large slice of the labor/manufacturing pie. If that isn't on offer then the tariffs will likely kill the market to protect local competitors, of which there are plenty.
I don't think production capacity is one of the main reasons for not reaching the goal, rather it will be Lithium availability and charging infrastructure.
Yes, that happened. But in a way it proves my point: if a local manufacturer competes on quality, branding and user experience they can wipe out an outsider in a very short time. The perception of Chinese brands; Polestar excepted for the moment; is not such that people are going to pick those over the brands that have been active here for longer than people have been alive.
Apple was a well known brand name before Nokia was, and that is in part why it succeeded.
>The 2030 timetable is not going to be met by any single manufacturer, if it is going to be met to begin with. I suspect that it is going to be pushed backwards bit by bit as reality sets in: that it always was too ambitious a target to realistically achieve.
The car industry, specifically the American market, already went through the "nobody can do tha-- wait what" phase once upon a time: California was poised to enact then-considered-ridiculous emissions regulations, American car makers all complained it was impossible to satisfy and California was on the verge of shelving them when Japanese car makers (read: Honda) came in to show it can be done.
The rest is history: Japan proceeded to murder and dominate the American car market, and soon the world.
The moral to take away from that is that so long as even one manufacturer can demonstrate the feasibility of the timetable, they can and will become the new king and kingmaker of the car industry.
I'm in fact in complete agreement with you that the 2030 timetable is ridiculous and it'll probably be pushed back and back with excuses, but history has proven itself to be amusing at times.
It won't happen, ideologically, globalization is over, and the west have no more qualms about using protectionist measures. Chinese cars will be severely tariffed in countries under west influence or subject to other trade controls.
Ford & Tesla customers the world over beg to differ, and GM is sold in many countries under different brands as well. The top 20 has a number of Chinese players and they are definitely moving up year-by-year but the top 5 has been unchanged for years: VW; Toyota; Stellantis; MB; Ford. Tesla is a bit player and BYD isn't on the market so it is impossible to rate them other than as a successful domestic player.
If a Chinese manufacturer would succeed in the West my money would be on a JV between VW and FAW, BYD vehicles under the Toyota brand is another option. A Chinese manufacturer going it alone is likely not going to succeed due to the way previous Chinese brands have been received by these markets. Geely played it smart, they have acquired Volvo and with their Polestar brand they are now moderately successful in the EV only market, with 80,000 vehicles scheduled for delivery this year.
Ford’s market share continues to decline outside the U.S., dropping to below 6% in Europe and 2% in China. It’s reached a point where afore no longer provides quarterly market share numbers in Europe.
Tesla is doing “well” but it’s starting from a very small base and its absolute numbers are still very low. It still hasn’t faced real competition which is only now ramping up. Let’s see how it responds.
BYD is starting to sell in Europe right now and reviews are actually quite good so we need to wait and see a bit.
I see no reason for a decent quality and affordable EV not to achieve at least relative success.
But we've seen before that any successful Chinese company is liable to be hit by Western governments' campaigns against it. So if we start to see article linking BYD to whatever awful deed you can think of towards the end of the year or next year I guess it'll mean there are doing well in the West.
> But we've seen before that any successful Chinese company is liable to be hit by Western governments' campaigns against it. So if we start to see article linking BYD to whatever awful deed you can think of towards the end of the year or next year I guess it'll mean there are doing well in the West.
I see no reason for a decent quality and affordable EV not to achieve at least relative success.
At least here in Sweden, BYD isn't really positioning itself by being more "affordable". The cheapest car they sell here is around the same price as an entry level Tesla Model 3 and quite a bit more than an entry level VW ID.3. Their SUV, that they seem to be basing most of their sales campaign around, costs a lot more than for example the Ioniq 5 and is pushing close to BMW iX prices.
Ford and Tesla? Ford exited India after failing multiple times in one of Asia's biggest markets, followed closely by Chevrolet, GM. In fact if not for Chevrolet, GM never even had a presence here. Tesla has not even entered here.
Selling in some handful countries != Success. What are their numbers in those countries, and how many countries are they leading in Vs Toyota, Hyundai.
What a weird article. Tesla rates 9 mentions, Toyota rates 17 against 20 for BYD, the subject of the article. It's laced with references to Toyota but doesn't really say much about the BYD vehicles themselves besides that they are not yet sold in the United States.
I haven't seen a single one of these and with the Chinese market as large as it is I'm sure that they could stay away from other markets for a long time without exporting their BEVs to countries where they will have to face competition from established Western brands.
Toyota itself is way behind the curve on BEVs, their JV with BYD is mostly Toyota hedging their bets that their Hydrogen path ends up being a dead end.
If you want to know more about BYD the wikipedia page is a lot more informative than this article:
not only competition but compliance. The legal obligations a car manufacturer has to satisfy in the EU nowadays is wild, IUPR, OBFCM, WLTP are just the programs regarding emission checks. There are many many more.
While their entry level car (Atto) is the same price as the cheapest spec Tesla model 3. Their Tesla model S and X equivalents (Han and Tang, respectively) start at almost half the price of the respective Teslas.
On the whole BYD don't seem to be wanting to compete at the bottom end of the market and are pricing their cars around the same level of their 'competitors'. They don't want to offer the cheapest electric SUV or even best the 'cheap' SUV, they want to offer best $80k electric SUV.
That suggests they aren't really competitors though, so either Tesla will have to drop to the point where they won't be profitable any more or there are substantial quality differences. BYD's vertical integration may become the differentiating factor if they can get the public to trust the brand.
Based on their marketing and pricing it seems their base pitch is "get a $100+k 'worth' of electric SUV for $80k". So they're competitors in the sense that they're targeting people who just about have Teslas Model X or BMW iX money, but would still like a bargain.
Interesting, ok time will tell how that will play out. Around me people are mostly rooting for MB/VW/BMW rather than American or Chinese. This is mostly a matter of perception and the dealer network and service organizations. Tesla has a very bad rep in that sense (though I do know people that have Tesla's too and they appear to be happy enough with their cars), it's all good as long as there are no problems and after that is a huge problem.
Polestar presents very well here, right now they have a better rep than Tesla which I find quite impressive, given that they are manufactured in China and sold by a relatively new sales organization. What is interesting is that somehow they've managed to sidestep the Chinese reputation issue completely and people perceive them as European, which they really are not.
> Polestar presents very well here, right now they have a better rep than Tesla which I find quite impressive, given that they are manufactured in China and sold by a relatively new sales organization. What is interesting is that somehow they've managed to sidestep the Chinese reputation issue completely and people perceive them as European, which they really are not.
I believe it's because Polestar attached itself to the Volvo brand, which is owned by Geely but is still run mostly independently in Sweden. The confusion is probably on purpose, and Polestar cars seem to be pretty good (from the reports of the few I know that own one).
I have no doubt about that. They play it very smart, but that's kind of logical, Geely, the parent company has extensive experience in marketing vehicles of all kinds in the West and they have already learned a couple of good and practical lessons in not leaning too much on their Chinese parentage but instead to play local as much as possible.
The big Chinese car companies are managing to build compliant vehicles now. BYD, SAIC, Great Wall and Geely all sell vehicles into the EU market. It's hard, but it's not like the barrier to entry is so high these companies can't meet it.
What a weird comment. You know nothing about BYD (you just read their Wikipedia and that's all you know) yet you're sure the article is wrong. But factually, BYD is the leading ev maker.
After visiting the BVD website, what’s remarkable to me is that they’re priced from $32-40k. From the photos at least, it looks like a $100k+ car, much more luxurious than a Tesla Model S. But then again, I’m probably just used to price gouging in the US.
With some smooth curves and red paint I can make a car look like a Ferrari, but that's a lot cheaper than actually making a Ferrari.
And maybe this is the real reason why American consumers are so easily price gouged? Because they look at a car and go "it's pretty, so it must be a $100k car". (Same for paying $1000 for a phone btw)
Calling them the leading EV maker is disingenuous, they are not even close to Tesla (1.3M vehicles, all of them BEVs) and VW (570K BEVs for 2022) is very close to BYD in total number of BEV vehicles sold, the bulk of which are for the domestic market. And both Tesla and VW are not exactly sitting still.
I've been following the vehicle industry closely for many years and I would rate Geely/Polestar way ahead of BYD in getting traction in Europe as a Chinese company making inroads here (though I missed them apparently already selling in Denmark). Polestars I see pretty much daily, BYD, for all their size I've yet to come across in the wild.
If you compare by the fraction of BEVs sold in Europe then they are currently not even a bit player, though that of course can change.
One thing BYD did wrong in my opinion is that they chose to use the same brand for their big utility vehicles (buses, for instance) and their personal cars. Their large vehicles, while cheaper than the competition have a pretty bad reputation here.
BYD's EV 2023 sales target matches Tesla's sales 2023 sales target - and that's with BYD having no plans to enter the North American market in 2023. Since BYD makes more vehicles than just EVs, their total unit sales for 2023 will be over double that of Tesla's.
You rating Polestar ahead of BYD is.. Extremely uninteresting. Hacker News isn't about your opinion.
BYD is the leading maker of evs and their business is much larger in scope than other manufacturers. They also supply batteries, chipsets to other makers.
> I haven't seen a single one of these and with the Chinese market as large as it is I'm sure that they could stay away from other markets for a long time without exporting their BEVs to countries where they will have to face competition from established Western brands.
Sure, but they aren’t. These Chinese EV manufacturers are coming for the world market.
Volvo is now owned by a Chinese company, Geely, and they’re manufacturing EVs in China based on a Geely platform for global export[0]. Polestar, also owned by Geely, is a Western market EV brand exported from China[1]. BYD is already planning to build factories and sell cars in Europe[2].
Just because a Chinese company owns the brand? Because the company still operates mostly independently in Sweden, design is still in-house coming from Sweden...
No doubt, they are growing fast! And naturally they would make more than Tesla, since BYD makes more than just BEVs.
BYD's numbers often contain plugin hybrids (PHEV). So if you're trying to compare apples/apples, be sure to look at pure-battery EVs between the two.
Note 'electrified' from a different article from Barrons: "BYD delivered 206,089 electrified passenger vehicles in March [2023], up about 98% from the 104,338 delivered in March 2022. The March 2023 figures include 102,670 all battery electric vehicles and 103,419 plug-in hybrid models."
That sentence is referring to the media commentary ignoring BYD:
> Much of the media commentary surrounding Mr Toyoda’s move casts it as a response to Tesla. That is too Western-centric. Tesla may be the world’s biggest ev producer and, according to Elon Musk, its boss, so far ahead of the competition that he cannot see the number two with a telescope. Yet it ignores a Chinese newcomer that,
I'm convinced that the spate of Tesla price cuts this year are mostly to get ahead of BYD and Chinese competition as much as any other reason.
1/3rd of the world's cars are sold in China, and the EV market share went from 16% in 2021 to 30% to in 2022. IOW, production capacity increased by 4 million cars. Now China is slumping. Last year it was easy to sell an EV in China, now it's hard. So millions of Chinese EV's are going to start flooding Europe soon. Chinese already makes over half of Australia's EV's.
Once China introduces the EV equivalent of the Chevy Spark (which was one of the cheapest ICE cars ever, with an MSRP of $13K just last year) in the USA, that has a range of around 100 to 150 miles it's game over for many of these American manufacturers on the econobox type vehicles.
American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Assuming that range is cut in half during the winter in the coldest scenarios and the average American commute, one way is 25 miles, 150 miles will be more than enough to replace most ICE cars. That being said, destination on a car from China probably costs $2K alone, so reaching a 13K price point anytime soon will be very, very difficult.
Supposedly the BYD Seagull can go 200KM and costs $9K in China, so we'll see. Exciting times ahead. (For reference Jiangnan used to sell ICE cars in China several years ago for less than $2K, so even though EV is cheap absolutely compared to USA, it's still much more expensive than what China could make if they continued to make ICE cars. That being said 2030 will result in banning of ICE in many regions)
> Once China introduces the EV equivalent of the Chevy Spark (which was one of the cheapest ICE cars ever, with an MSRP of $13K just last year), that has a range of around 100 to 150 miles it's game over for many of these American manufacturers.
> American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Just like how cheap Android phones in Asia resulted game over for Apple, Samsung etc. in the past 12 years?
Though cheap, the Chevy Spark had a notoriously bad transmission. This is a similar problem the Nissan Versa has, which is similarly cheap. An EV doesn't have a transmission, fortunately, so that class of problem isn't a thing.
The problem with cheap cars is that cheap ICE components result in the car failing unnecessarily early. EVs can also fail, obviously, but it's less likely to happen due to design differences.
There is no redeeming factor of the Spark other than price. And history shows that is not a guarantee at the top of car sales. Just look at the Versa (as you mentioned) and the Mitsubishi mirage. In the following list there is no real cheap car there.
#5 is the Toyota Camry, which is cheap. #12 is also cheap, as is #13, #16, #18, etc. I consider cheap to be under $30K.
This is calculated by looking at the median car sale price for new cars and taking the beginning of the 2nd quartile. Or to put it another way, cheap is when about 75% of cars are more expensive.
The Versa, Mirage and Spark would be firmly in the "cheapest" category, where 95% of cars are more expensive. Of course, they are also in the "cheap" category, but a car doesn't need to cost that little to be considered cheap (for a brand new car).
The Toyota Camry is not in the same boat as the Spark. I guess we need to clarify. You examples are talking about bottom of the barrel cheap (9K-16K in 2023). The Camry is cheap but at 26K base it is not in the same segment as the cars you describe.
The Domestic brands purposely ceded the small car market years ago. They got out of that segment completely. They focus on Crossovers, SUV, and Trucks and do quite well there. If anything the Japanese and Koreans will have trouble since they are still in that segment and sell a lot of small cars in the US. Are you even American? This has been common on the ground knowledge for years. The Chevy Spark was a flop in the US and for good reason. It is an absolutely abysmal car. I could see 100-150 mi small EVs have reasonable sales in some city markets but other than that? Its just not what Americans want. They want something that stands a chance competing with all the other big cars on the road.
They ceded the small car market because they were getting stomped on by foreign companies. Are you even American? The Toyota Camry, which is a relatively cheap car, is still #5 in top selling vehicles. If you remove trucks, it's #2.
When was the last time an American car (not truck), with an MSRP less than 30K has been in the top 5 selling vehicles? Americans can't compete on price, and so they stopped trying.
> Americans can't compete on price, and so they stopped trying.
I think Americans could probably but most American companies are just finance companies with some product attached to it. Trucks, for example, have been pushed by American car companies because they can skirt emissions laws through more lax regulations, instead of trying to build a proper less polluting car under these regulations these companies prefer to skirt them, convince consumers through deceptive marketing that "trucks are safer for your family"-type of shenanigans to make a quick buck rather than compete.
It's sad to see it happening, instead of "innovation" American companies prefer to use deception on a market because it's cheaper. It's just being cheap under the auspices of bean counters...
It's not the bean counters. Beware people wielding MBAs. They will stifle all innovation and bleed a once-successful company dry. Remember, they exist to extract value for the shareholders. You can't extract forever.
The winner of Chinese car export might be the one with the most ships.
These days car shipping is in really high demand, and cost has been rising in recent years, but shipping cost could be lower given that BYD is build their own shipping fleet.
Supposedly the BYD Seagull can go 200KM and costs $9K in China
At least in Europe, BYD is trying hard to not to appear as a 'cheap' brand. The cheapest car they sell here (Sweden) costs more than the VW ID3, and their flagship SUV is close to the starting price of the BMW iX.
The average American drives 40 miles per day. A car with 150 mile range gives the average American 3 days of driving while keep 10% <= battery charge <= 90%. That's not bad!
The average EV consumes 34.6 kWh per 100 miles, so a 52 kWh battery is sufficient, on average. The average home charger provides 7.2 kWh so it'll take under six hours to recharge the car at home. You can do it at night when favorable rates are available. It'll add an extra 72 kWh hours to your utility bill for the month. Even in the most expensive part of the country (USA), the Northeast, you're only going to pay $1 per day. And I could get it for under $20K? Sign me up!
If BYD/Toyota could bring such a car to the American market then it's game over for the compact and subcompact market.
We have them in Australia and they’re utter junk. I read all the hype and was interested in an affordable electric runaround car for school/shopping runs etc.. but a 15 minute test drive is enough to tell you that Toyota/Tesla/any-major-manufacturer isn’t worried about BYD as a serious competitor.
Of course they sell well in China. It’s a Chinese brand. American cars sell well in America. More news at 7.
Pretty much every market so far as well proven that cheap wins. The number of Chinese cars on Australian roads has absolutely exploded over the last few years.
It sounds like China is subsidizing a new state champion and it's time to treat them to the same treatment we gave their former state champion. Sanction it.
You talk to Charlie Munger and his beloved BYD is all he talks about.
How come these guys always get it right? In China the story is never as single "buy good businesses cheap", as we know that in China if you don't play politics you'll get kneecapped.
Let’s be real, you think China allowed Tesla to be the first private owned company for shit and giggles? It’s always been the strategy. Let Tesla hire a bunch of local people and work for a year or two. “Entice” them to leave and work for companies like BYD. It’s a win win strategy for China, you get foreign investment and they fund your local expertise to replace the same product. Especially now that Tesla uses mainly Chinese batteries, it’s pretty trivial to roll the same technology into Chinese product with a bit of political and economical incentives.
For the government, direct technology transfer is much less of an incentive than building a domestic supply chain, which helps every other player in the industry, plus Tesla and other automakers are big taxpayers.
Just because a brand sells well in China doesn’t mean it will in US/Europe. BYD had been around for a long time, and I’ve been hearing stuff like this for a decade now. But so far no major consumer Chinese brand has been able to make a serious impact abroad because the quality just isn’t there. And if you’ve lived (not visited, lived) in China and seen their processes you understand why.
Yes, Geely bought Volvo, but Volvo is still a Swedish company run from Sweden.
China is very good a manufacturing products for other companies at their specs (ie Foxconn for Apple). It performs poorly when it comes to their own brands.
Yes and no. There was a Swedish, Volvo backed, racing team called Polestar Racing that had a company called Polestar Performance that made custom tuned Volvos and worked closely with Volvo on some concept and special edition cars that Volvo sold as "Polestar Engineered". They were however never owned by Volvo, pre Geely, never a car company, and had nothing to do with electric vehicles before Geely/Volvo bought them.
Several years after Geely bought Volvo, Geely/Volvo bought Polestar Performance and the Polestar brand and decided to make them an EV brand for cars built on the new Geely platform and spun them off as a separate company.
So yes, they're technically a Swedish brand originally and technically they're spun off from Volvo. And, yes the Polestar company headquarters is in Sweden. But the Swedish Polestar company never actually made cars, they only became part of Volvo long after Volvo was part of Geely, and was almost certainly Geely's decision to spin them off as a separate EV company.
The original, 'real', Polestar still exists as Cyan Racing.
> the Swedish Polestar company never actually made cars, they only became part of Volvo long after Volvo was part of Geely, and was almost certainly Geely's decision to spin them off as a separate EV company.
correct; but the present Polestar brand is a spin-off from Volvo's in-house performance team, and the design and brand is managed from Sweden, not China (even though the money is Chinese), which is the main point I was trying to make
Polestar is 100% Chinese with a Swedish image due to its history, the cars go straight off the boat from China to the customers, sometimes passing through Volvo dealerships on the way through, who also tend to perform the service.
Only in terms of manufacturing. The design, production, international branding, etc. is all done in Sweden (with teams elsewhere), which is where it is based (along with Volvo).
> Saying that Polestar is a Chinese brand is like saying Dodge is an Italian (or Franco-Italian) brand.
Not really. Dodge has its roots in America and it employs a large number of people in the United States. Polestar does not produce in Sweden, all vehicles are produced in China.
Sorry, but I really don't care about the difference here: Polestar doesn't produce a single vehicle in Europe and you are 100% aware of what that means. It means that there is a boat from China with a vehicle on it that gets sold here. That a couple of people in Sweden design it doesn't matter much to me, the whole thing is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Chinese. There is nothing wrong with that so why do you keep denying it?
> It performs poorly when it comes to their own brands.
Huawei arguably designed/produced the best flagship Android smartphones a few years ago, before it got hit by sanctions. Huawei did extremely well in Europe, becoming the largest smartphone brand for a brief time, until US sanctions crippled them (by removing access to Google services, and thus the entire Android ecosystem people use in the West).
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadThey were impressive back then, will be interesting to see what BYD can do with an affordable EV.
The 2030 timetable is not going to be met by any single manufacturer, if it is going to be met to begin with. I suspect that it is going to be pushed backwards bit by bit as reality sets in: that it always was too ambitious a target to realistically achieve. And if they stick to it, which I would find very brave it will simply mean that the price of personal transportation will skyrocket and that older non BEVs will have to hang around a little longer.
There is so much that has to work for an all electric transition for every new vehicle sold in the next 7 years to be successful that I wouldn't bet on it. I think of it more as a goal to strive for than something that is realistically achievable, but of course I hope that I'll be wrong on this. Time will tell.
Also keep in mind that whatever goals have been set that Europe at a minimum (but probably also other territories) are going to want to have a very large slice of the labor/manufacturing pie. If that isn't on offer then the tariffs will likely kill the market to protect local competitors, of which there are plenty.
Apple was a well known brand name before Nokia was, and that is in part why it succeeded.
The car industry, specifically the American market, already went through the "nobody can do tha-- wait what" phase once upon a time: California was poised to enact then-considered-ridiculous emissions regulations, American car makers all complained it was impossible to satisfy and California was on the verge of shelving them when Japanese car makers (read: Honda) came in to show it can be done.
The rest is history: Japan proceeded to murder and dominate the American car market, and soon the world.
The moral to take away from that is that so long as even one manufacturer can demonstrate the feasibility of the timetable, they can and will become the new king and kingmaker of the car industry.
I'm in fact in complete agreement with you that the 2030 timetable is ridiculous and it'll probably be pushed back and back with excuses, but history has proven itself to be amusing at times.
Ford & Tesla customers the world over beg to differ, and GM is sold in many countries under different brands as well. The top 20 has a number of Chinese players and they are definitely moving up year-by-year but the top 5 has been unchanged for years: VW; Toyota; Stellantis; MB; Ford. Tesla is a bit player and BYD isn't on the market so it is impossible to rate them other than as a successful domestic player.
If a Chinese manufacturer would succeed in the West my money would be on a JV between VW and FAW, BYD vehicles under the Toyota brand is another option. A Chinese manufacturer going it alone is likely not going to succeed due to the way previous Chinese brands have been received by these markets. Geely played it smart, they have acquired Volvo and with their Polestar brand they are now moderately successful in the EV only market, with 80,000 vehicles scheduled for delivery this year.
https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/ford-gl...
Tesla is doing “well” but it’s starting from a very small base and its absolute numbers are still very low. It still hasn’t faced real competition which is only now ramping up. Let’s see how it responds.
I see no reason for a decent quality and affordable EV not to achieve at least relative success.
But we've seen before that any successful Chinese company is liable to be hit by Western governments' campaigns against it. So if we start to see article linking BYD to whatever awful deed you can think of towards the end of the year or next year I guess it'll mean there are doing well in the West.
That's a bit of a weird turn in your comment.
At least here in Sweden, BYD isn't really positioning itself by being more "affordable". The cheapest car they sell here is around the same price as an entry level Tesla Model 3 and quite a bit more than an entry level VW ID.3. Their SUV, that they seem to be basing most of their sales campaign around, costs a lot more than for example the Ioniq 5 and is pushing close to BMW iX prices.
I haven't seen a single one of these and with the Chinese market as large as it is I'm sure that they could stay away from other markets for a long time without exporting their BEVs to countries where they will have to face competition from established Western brands.
Toyota itself is way behind the curve on BEVs, their JV with BYD is mostly Toyota hedging their bets that their Hydrogen path ends up being a dead end.
If you want to know more about BYD the wikipedia page is a lot more informative than this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto
On the whole BYD don't seem to be wanting to compete at the bottom end of the market and are pricing their cars around the same level of their 'competitors'. They don't want to offer the cheapest electric SUV or even best the 'cheap' SUV, they want to offer best $80k electric SUV.
Polestar presents very well here, right now they have a better rep than Tesla which I find quite impressive, given that they are manufactured in China and sold by a relatively new sales organization. What is interesting is that somehow they've managed to sidestep the Chinese reputation issue completely and people perceive them as European, which they really are not.
I believe it's because Polestar attached itself to the Volvo brand, which is owned by Geely but is still run mostly independently in Sweden. The confusion is probably on purpose, and Polestar cars seem to be pretty good (from the reports of the few I know that own one).
I have no doubt about that. They play it very smart, but that's kind of logical, Geely, the parent company has extensive experience in marketing vehicles of all kinds in the West and they have already learned a couple of good and practical lessons in not leaning too much on their Chinese parentage but instead to play local as much as possible.
Registration rates are of the value including VAT[0]:
This is actually a bit cheaper than it was a few years ago when the top tax amount was 180%.There are some deductions for electric vehicles that are complex (and decreasing) that are best read about on the linked page.
[0] https://skat.dk/data.aspx?oid=2244599
With some smooth curves and red paint I can make a car look like a Ferrari, but that's a lot cheaper than actually making a Ferrari.
And maybe this is the real reason why American consumers are so easily price gouged? Because they look at a car and go "it's pretty, so it must be a $100k car". (Same for paying $1000 for a phone btw)
Making things pretty is cheap.
Calling them the leading EV maker is disingenuous, they are not even close to Tesla (1.3M vehicles, all of them BEVs) and VW (570K BEVs for 2022) is very close to BYD in total number of BEV vehicles sold, the bulk of which are for the domestic market. And both Tesla and VW are not exactly sitting still.
I've been following the vehicle industry closely for many years and I would rate Geely/Polestar way ahead of BYD in getting traction in Europe as a Chinese company making inroads here (though I missed them apparently already selling in Denmark). Polestars I see pretty much daily, BYD, for all their size I've yet to come across in the wild.
If you compare by the fraction of BEVs sold in Europe then they are currently not even a bit player, though that of course can change.
One thing BYD did wrong in my opinion is that they chose to use the same brand for their big utility vehicles (buses, for instance) and their personal cars. Their large vehicles, while cheaper than the competition have a pretty bad reputation here.
https://pvmagazine.nl/helft-van-de-236-elektrische-byd-busse...
And many other articles besides.
BYD is the leading maker of evs and their business is much larger in scope than other manufacturers. They also supply batteries, chipsets to other makers.
Sure, but they aren’t. These Chinese EV manufacturers are coming for the world market.
Volvo is now owned by a Chinese company, Geely, and they’re manufacturing EVs in China based on a Geely platform for global export[0]. Polestar, also owned by Geely, is a Western market EV brand exported from China[1]. BYD is already planning to build factories and sell cars in Europe[2].
[0] https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Volvo-to-ex... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/26/polesta... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/byd-build...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35554394
BYD's numbers often contain plugin hybrids (PHEV). So if you're trying to compare apples/apples, be sure to look at pure-battery EVs between the two.
Note 'electrified' from a different article from Barrons: "BYD delivered 206,089 electrified passenger vehicles in March [2023], up about 98% from the 104,338 delivered in March 2022. The March 2023 figures include 102,670 all battery electric vehicles and 103,419 plug-in hybrid models."
> Much of the media commentary surrounding Mr Toyoda’s move casts it as a response to Tesla. That is too Western-centric. Tesla may be the world’s biggest ev producer and, according to Elon Musk, its boss, so far ahead of the competition that he cannot see the number two with a telescope. Yet it ignores a Chinese newcomer that,
I mean, the CEO spends his time getting into spats on the social network he bought, so I don't think he's paying very close attention to the EV space.
1/3rd of the world's cars are sold in China, and the EV market share went from 16% in 2021 to 30% to in 2022. IOW, production capacity increased by 4 million cars. Now China is slumping. Last year it was easy to sell an EV in China, now it's hard. So millions of Chinese EV's are going to start flooding Europe soon. Chinese already makes over half of Australia's EV's.
American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Assuming that range is cut in half during the winter in the coldest scenarios and the average American commute, one way is 25 miles, 150 miles will be more than enough to replace most ICE cars. That being said, destination on a car from China probably costs $2K alone, so reaching a 13K price point anytime soon will be very, very difficult.
Supposedly the BYD Seagull can go 200KM and costs $9K in China, so we'll see. Exciting times ahead. (For reference Jiangnan used to sell ICE cars in China several years ago for less than $2K, so even though EV is cheap absolutely compared to USA, it's still much more expensive than what China could make if they continued to make ICE cars. That being said 2030 will result in banning of ICE in many regions)
> American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Just like how cheap Android phones in Asia resulted game over for Apple, Samsung etc. in the past 12 years?
Then why aren't the streets full of Chevy Sparks?
The problem with cheap cars is that cheap ICE components result in the car failing unnecessarily early. EVs can also fail, obviously, but it's less likely to happen due to design differences.
[1]:https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-car...
This is calculated by looking at the median car sale price for new cars and taking the beginning of the 2nd quartile. Or to put it another way, cheap is when about 75% of cars are more expensive.
The Versa, Mirage and Spark would be firmly in the "cheapest" category, where 95% of cars are more expensive. Of course, they are also in the "cheap" category, but a car doesn't need to cost that little to be considered cheap (for a brand new car).
When was the last time an American car (not truck), with an MSRP less than 30K has been in the top 5 selling vehicles? Americans can't compete on price, and so they stopped trying.
I think Americans could probably but most American companies are just finance companies with some product attached to it. Trucks, for example, have been pushed by American car companies because they can skirt emissions laws through more lax regulations, instead of trying to build a proper less polluting car under these regulations these companies prefer to skirt them, convince consumers through deceptive marketing that "trucks are safer for your family"-type of shenanigans to make a quick buck rather than compete.
It's sad to see it happening, instead of "innovation" American companies prefer to use deception on a market because it's cheaper. It's just being cheap under the auspices of bean counters...
https://qz.com/chinese-car-makers-are-becoming-shipping-comp... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-04/china-car...
At least in Europe, BYD is trying hard to not to appear as a 'cheap' brand. The cheapest car they sell here (Sweden) costs more than the VW ID3, and their flagship SUV is close to the starting price of the BMW iX.
The average EV consumes 34.6 kWh per 100 miles, so a 52 kWh battery is sufficient, on average. The average home charger provides 7.2 kWh so it'll take under six hours to recharge the car at home. You can do it at night when favorable rates are available. It'll add an extra 72 kWh hours to your utility bill for the month. Even in the most expensive part of the country (USA), the Northeast, you're only going to pay $1 per day. And I could get it for under $20K? Sign me up!
If BYD/Toyota could bring such a car to the American market then it's game over for the compact and subcompact market.
We have them in Australia and they’re utter junk. I read all the hype and was interested in an affordable electric runaround car for school/shopping runs etc.. but a 15 minute test drive is enough to tell you that Toyota/Tesla/any-major-manufacturer isn’t worried about BYD as a serious competitor.
Of course they sell well in China. It’s a Chinese brand. American cars sell well in America. More news at 7.
How come these guys always get it right? In China the story is never as single "buy good businesses cheap", as we know that in China if you don't play politics you'll get kneecapped.
Yes, Geely bought Volvo, but Volvo is still a Swedish company run from Sweden.
China is very good a manufacturing products for other companies at their specs (ie Foxconn for Apple). It performs poorly when it comes to their own brands.
Several years after Geely bought Volvo, Geely/Volvo bought Polestar Performance and the Polestar brand and decided to make them an EV brand for cars built on the new Geely platform and spun them off as a separate company.
So yes, they're technically a Swedish brand originally and technically they're spun off from Volvo. And, yes the Polestar company headquarters is in Sweden. But the Swedish Polestar company never actually made cars, they only became part of Volvo long after Volvo was part of Geely, and was almost certainly Geely's decision to spin them off as a separate EV company.
The original, 'real', Polestar still exists as Cyan Racing.
correct; but the present Polestar brand is a spin-off from Volvo's in-house performance team, and the design and brand is managed from Sweden, not China (even though the money is Chinese), which is the main point I was trying to make
Only in terms of manufacturing. The design, production, international branding, etc. is all done in Sweden (with teams elsewhere), which is where it is based (along with Volvo).
Take a look at their job vacancies https://about.polestar.com/careers/jobs/?category=&location=...
Saying that Polestar is a Chinese brand is like saying Dodge is an Italian (or Franco-Italian) brand.
Not really. Dodge has its roots in America and it employs a large number of people in the United States. Polestar does not produce in Sweden, all vehicles are produced in China.
Huawei arguably designed/produced the best flagship Android smartphones a few years ago, before it got hit by sanctions. Huawei did extremely well in Europe, becoming the largest smartphone brand for a brief time, until US sanctions crippled them (by removing access to Google services, and thus the entire Android ecosystem people use in the West).