BYD has to me become an icon of US decline vs Chinese expansion. It’s just one example among many of China charting the way forward and innovating while the US recedes further into backward-looking, protectionist policy. See: US politicians on both sides trying to ban BYD imports rather than incentivizing stiffer competition from US automakers.
Another example: massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens up national parks for drilling and cancels solar/wind projects. You occasionally see a heartwarming post: “California adds solar panels over a canal” and it just looks cute and kind of sad compared to the massive, ambitious, and technologically superior build out of Chinese renewables.
This is to say nothing of the CCP and their record on human rights and free expression. But anyone paying attention can quite clearly see that China is winning and the US is sacrificing their global superiority at the altar of fear, ignorance, and religious nationalism.
The problem the US has, at least in this area, is that it's manufacturing is in the dumps and that's not even plainly bad thing.
No US born child in the last 30 years aspired to working a factory job. The US is an advanced economy with advanced jobs. We get degrees, we sit at desks, maybe even sit at home, work on computers, and generate an order of magnitude more wealth than our screw turning counterpart overseas.
I can tell you with first hand experience, that this problem is much deeper than "the US needs to catch up" because in reality what is happening is that China is the one playing catch up. The US is already 30 years into the endgame of economic development. China is where the US was 75 years ago, and on paper, the US has only progressed from that point.
38.9% of BYDs direct profits are from subsidies. Tesla subsidies expired already… if we are going to judge on equal footing China is subsidizing a much bigger part of BYDs sales.
That's certainly a take. China just has this decades long history of targeting foreign industries, flooding the market with that product, and then being the only one left standing.
The idea that we should allow cheap vehicles to flood the domestic market because that will "cause the US auto manufacturers compete" ignores the wholly uneven playing field at work here, and the government backed goal of one side. Just the cost of labor alone makes that not an approachable thing to do.
On the reverse "bad" US side, we have more and more international auto manufacturers building and investing in factories in the US every year. Strangely, this decision involves billions of dollars and years of work to make happen. It's not based on internet vibes.
And the "renewable" growth is really kind of misleading. They're also building more coal power plants than the rest of the earth, combined, each year. They represent ~50% of the worldwide coal power in use today and produce roughly one third of the total CO2 in the world now, almost 3x that of the US.
But I guess the future is government funded undercutting of international competitors, using technology stolen by the government from those competitors, in order to destroy those competitors, while using very dirty and cheap energy to do so? Is that the lesson we're supposed to learn from them?
Many predicted it for a long time, the US will always be a great power, for structural and geographical reasons, but it won't keep the position it had for almost a century.
The good thing about China is that apart from Taiwan they have little territoral ambitions, I don't foresee huge conflicts incoming, but I am a not entirely sure the US will manage to lost its position as gracefully as the British Empire.
It could be bad news for US citizens if their currency precipitiously lose its power, and they'll look for people to blame.
> BYD has to me become an icon of US decline vs Chinese expansion. It’s just one example among many of China charting the way forward and innovating while the US recedes further into backward-looking, protectionist policy. See: US politicians on both sides trying to ban BYD imports rather than incentivizing stiffer competition from US automakers.
The problem is, China isn't competing fairly!
As a Western manufacturer, bound to well-paying union labor and environmental protection laws, and restricted by the mechanisms of the free markets, you cannot compete with a country that employs all sorts of labor abuses (from complete ignorance about OSHA and its national equivalents over 996 work model to outright forced labor and slavery), completely wrecks its own environment and provides virtually unlimited financial funds to its companies in its quest to achieve dominance.
China is inarguably the biggest threat the entire rest of the world faces and barely anyone is even seeing the dangers.
China harvests organs of muslims. China doesn't allow LGBTQ representation on public media. China forcibly married uyghur women to handle men. It's important to remember the whole global picture before we take sides.
It makes sense to ban BUD imports but don’t you dare try and both sides this argument by saying EV and renewable power strategy are the same on both sides.
One thing China did which was smart was to start training thousands of engineers about twenty years ago, about 10x the number of US engineering graduates. That's paying off now.
It was also a little sad to see the treatment of Tesla by Biden. It was the world's leading EV company at the time but he excluded from EV get togethers because he wanted the unionised companies like GM to win. I think that sort of thing - protecting mediocre incumbents that contribute to the right politicians didn't help. Musk was a dem at the time but after that flipped to Trump and went a bit off the rails.
Tesla would be considerably more popular globally if Elon kept his political opinions to himself and exaggerated capabilities and timelines a bit less.
In some ways it’s sad to see, but I’d be lying to say I didn’t have a little happiness seeing the actions of politicians in the U.S. catch up with them.
It’s like there was this belief, we are the most powerful country in the world and we can do whatever we want. Meanwhile we see countries very much question that as we flounder in the Middle East for the umpteenth time in a few decades. We see countries start to get away from the dollar, we see countries call out our military leaders for poor planning.
It’s not like the American public deserve this, but America itself might.
I never really expected the USA to allow low tariff Chinese car imports since China has been very protective of their own car market over the last couple of decades. I did expect BYD to set up some factories in the USA (or Canada Mexico when NAFTA was still a thing) to make their EVs for the American markets (should be affordable in a third world state like Mississippi), just like the Japanese auto manufacturers did. It’s sad that we aren’t getting that anytime soon.
America has simply forgot how to build real things on a schedule and on a budget. Our only real niche now is software (with help from Indian and Chinese talent) and locked down tech that China will eventually figure out. It’s very hard to not be pessimistic about the direction the USA is going and I can see why people elected someone horrible like Trump (he promised a way out, even if it was a stupid way out that would never work).
A key point is whether a government actually cares about its citizens and their future, which also creates a side benefit for humanity in general.
It's not quite nationalism or maybe the term is being used as a disguise for something else, if those in power believe 50% or even the majority of their own population is not worth worrying about, should be "thrown away", or "removed". Out of control elitism and corruption, combined with lack of empathy and narcissism, can very easily undermine human rights, freedom, and national progress.
BYD is successful because they are cheap. For most people cars are simple utilities.
But countries either need to be protectionist or you need to lower production costs to a Chinese level. That means workers only earn the same as a Chinese worker.
You could also collect import taxes, but I think people simply cannot or don't want to afford a car that is much more expensive.
Some decry Chinese government subsidies for cars, but the truth is that these exist in western nations as well. They are sometimes indirect, but the end result is the same. The secret to cheap prices is simple labor costs.
Commonly refereed to as race to the bottom and not a new topic/problem. Car makers in countries with high labor costs could maybe pivot to luxury cars... otherwise the result of the competition is already determined.
In 50 years China will have the same problem with other countries that produce even cheaper. That is already happening and for quite a few years already.
Taxes would probably be the best solution, but they have become politicised and weaponised.
Oh, don't worry. I'm sure Mr. Stable Orange will follow the tradition and institute a Capybara tax soon, forbidding import of any foreign EV smaller than 2 meters wide and 7 meters long and having a fully enclosed body. That will show those libruls :) .
My SO bought an Ioniq 6 mostly because of the buttons and the seperate control surface for AC and such but they test drived a BYD as well which was the same as a Tesla, just one huge tablet and endless menus
Value price for us. The Sealion 7 for us had the combination of features, dimensions, range, 800v platform, for a price that was simply unbeatable (leasing).
Out of question that Volvo ex90, Kia ev9, Hyundai Ioniq 9 or even the BMW ix3 would have come on top if it wasn’t for the price.
The chinese are utilitarian but also, like anyone, care about aesthetics. Why make something that looks good enough when that isn't your main goal and the jobs already been done
USA boomer car companies run a competition on who can build the biggest crappy SUVs around sold to other boomers who now look aghast at pump prices
Europe boomer car companies can't overrun their nit-pickiness and analysis paralysis and wonder why consumers are picking the car with screens that actually work like a modern device and don't have subscription horns or some other BS like that
The complacency of American, Euro and Japanese auto manufacturers as Chinese, through domestic hyper competition and protectionism. Is going to be an MBA case study on how to fumble the bag.
The point of China's mercantilist and imperialist games with electric cars, is to attack and kill Western industry, and deprive us of the ability to defend ourselves.
Traveling in Asia and South America, the primary impression I got was not that this is a war of manufacturing that we're losing but that the game is already up. Chile was full of Chinese makes and they were all surprisingly good. Riding in a Chinese MG in Taiwan or Hong Kong you suddenly realize that this isn't a future competitor. The people talking about the war of car manufacturers here seem like those Japanese holdouts who were still fighting in 1956.
It's not "surprisingly" unless you haven't bought much in the last 20 years.
China-owned brands are now often better and more premium than their Western counterparts across the entire spectrum. Give me Anker over Belkin any day. There are a few areas where the West still leads - Chinese software tends to be buggier and less polished, luxury apparel isn't at the same standard - but that lead is diminishing rapidly. Customer service could still do with some improvement: it's usually much slower and less professional, but the trade-off is it's not uncommon to end up talking to an actual engineer who can investigate and solve the problem rather than just follow a script, even at a huge company.
The worst products are now formerly high quality Western brands with PE overlords that forced them to outsource manufacturing to the lowest bidder.
Come to Australia. About two years ago there was so many Teslas. In the space of two years, I've seen twice as many BYDs. I can only imagine this will continue.
Is BYD beating Kia here in the UK? It's hard to tell from the SMMT figures [1] but it looks to me as if Kia sold just under twice as many vehicles as BYD. Given that so much of Kia's lineup is now BEV, I'm not sure who is winning.
Tesla is doing poorly here. That's almost entirely down to Musk's public image, not because BYD make better cars.
I see a lot more Kia’s but I think it’s shifting because dealerships are shifting. The Toyota dealership near me now sells Jaecoo, Cherry, etc. and I am seeing tons of the Jaecoo SUV cars around. The Pentagon Vauxhall dealership I bought my car from keeps emailing me about BYDs.
This is not surprising as other manufacturers continue moving away from producing cheap cars. One notable exception is dacia.
For all the China lovers here it's not a clear sign of Chinese superiority. I saw a video on youtube recently exploring BYD. It's success is due to the fact that the Chinese government as part of their plan to dominate the global car industry gives them massive amounts of money. Which manufacturer can compete with that? European tariffs in the near future looks likely.
Among other things the video explores some of BYD's shadier practices including artificially inflating domestic sales and not paying suppliers for up to 9 months.
I have my doubts whether their success is sustainable.
I hear this all the time, but I would point out that US car manufacturers are heavily subsidized as well. I’m sure other countries do their own things that effectively subsidize their automotive industries as well.
NAFTA and its successor keeps a lot of automotive production and assembly in North America.
The chicken tax protects American manufacturers from foreign competition on trucks and vans.
Tesla was started on the foundations of inexpensive loans and a “free” factory courtesy of government economic stimulus.
GM was bailed out and briefly owned by the federal government, saved by below-market rate loans.
Stellantis is also an organization that owes its existence on a bankruptcy bail-out package.
The US financially incentivizes car usage, period. They underfund transit projects, allow the gas tax rate to lag inflation, make zoning laws that require car ownership, and more. One great way to subsidize car companies is to make car ownership mandatory.
State and local governments frequently give tax incentives to major assembly plants in the name of preserving jobs for their constituents. For example, GM had a $60 million tax break to keep the Lordstown, OH plant open. Some of this was clawed back after the plant closed anyway.
CAFE standards incentivize manufacturers to build SUVs that aren’t practical or popular in many other markets, essentially enshrining America-specific car design, further separating the American market from global car designs. Companies like BYD can’t compete with American cars if they don’t sell models that resemble popular choices like the Ford F-150, which are designs which would be completely insane if sold in the Chinese, Japanese, and European markets.
Don't forget their rampant channel-stuffing, which is so flagrant, that it makes Ford's and GM's channel-stuffing antics look like kindergarten games in comparison.
They've been hyped up recently by that sort of thing but a lot of the success is built on a dedicated founder who is exceptional at building things and has been keeping at it for ages.
Vid of Munger saying Wang Chuanfu is great and he tried to talk him out of starting a car company in 2003 https://youtu.be/PbgqkAQ41mM?t=69
Provided they are available in Canada. There’s only roughly 50k imports in the first year and that will be split across all Chinese manufactured EVs (not necessarily Chinese brands). I assume the majority will be Teslas from their Shanghai factory.
Musk was saying at the start that Tesla was going to be $80k then scale up so they would have a $10k/20k car. It looks like BYD beat them to it. I guess putting manufacturing in China, giving them all of the tricks of the trade, letting them build consolidated supply chains, letting them iterate on every aspect of manufacturing, and automate it all was a mistake in the long run. pikachu_face.jpg
Tesla severely lacks competition in the North American market. They lost all their first mover advantage by sitting back and spending significant R&D into FSD. Chinese manufacturers have some incredible innovations such as Nio’s battery swapping.
Here in Spain you see a lot of BYD, considerable amount for Europe. But when I was in Uruguay that was a shock, almost all cabs, all electric cars, and some buses are BYD.
There is a significant amount of BYD buses here in Spain, I don't live in Madrid but I go every now and then and I noticed a fair amount of electric BYD.
Also this is anecdotal, but I live in a small province capital (<100k citizens) and the urban planning councilor told me most likely most of the new buses we're getting next year will be electric and they'll probably be either BYD or eCitaros.
Why has BYD stock been trundling along? They seem like they are so far ahead: incredible blade batteries with ridiculous power density (fast charging)/efficiency/cooling, while being structurally useful (mad cool). And mad popular. I feel like I'm missing something that this company is doing such amazing good work but the stock isn't really moving.
I just signed an offer to purchase a BYD Sealion 5, plugin hybrid small-to-medium SUV.
I’ve been largely happy with my 2018 Honda Fit and briefly researched a hybrid Fit.
In ZAR, the hybrid Fit is listed as ~530K, while the BYD is 570, however the BYD is way bigger, has much nicer interior and insanely more features, including: adaptive cruise control, lane assist (it can basically drive itself for simple traffic), 360 view camera, comparatively huge screen for my Apple CarPlay, sun roof, V2L (allows 2-3kw load off the battery or engine if the battery is low).
I largely liked my Honda Fit and my Ballade (that might be a South African model name), but have been annoyed for a long time at them being laggards on things like CarPlay (at least in South Africa, apparently the Fit in other markets had offered it for much longer).
I will always wonder what Tesla could have been, hadn’t Musk gone completely off rails around the time he was presenting the cybertruck’s vision. Remember when it was pitched at 40-50k?
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 66.9 ms ] threadBut worldwide it has been for a while, no? I think total EV cars sold in 2025 BYD was top, if I remember correctly.
Another example: massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens up national parks for drilling and cancels solar/wind projects. You occasionally see a heartwarming post: “California adds solar panels over a canal” and it just looks cute and kind of sad compared to the massive, ambitious, and technologically superior build out of Chinese renewables.
This is to say nothing of the CCP and their record on human rights and free expression. But anyone paying attention can quite clearly see that China is winning and the US is sacrificing their global superiority at the altar of fear, ignorance, and religious nationalism.
No US born child in the last 30 years aspired to working a factory job. The US is an advanced economy with advanced jobs. We get degrees, we sit at desks, maybe even sit at home, work on computers, and generate an order of magnitude more wealth than our screw turning counterpart overseas.
I can tell you with first hand experience, that this problem is much deeper than "the US needs to catch up" because in reality what is happening is that China is the one playing catch up. The US is already 30 years into the endgame of economic development. China is where the US was 75 years ago, and on paper, the US has only progressed from that point.
The idea that we should allow cheap vehicles to flood the domestic market because that will "cause the US auto manufacturers compete" ignores the wholly uneven playing field at work here, and the government backed goal of one side. Just the cost of labor alone makes that not an approachable thing to do.
On the reverse "bad" US side, we have more and more international auto manufacturers building and investing in factories in the US every year. Strangely, this decision involves billions of dollars and years of work to make happen. It's not based on internet vibes.
And the "renewable" growth is really kind of misleading. They're also building more coal power plants than the rest of the earth, combined, each year. They represent ~50% of the worldwide coal power in use today and produce roughly one third of the total CO2 in the world now, almost 3x that of the US.
But I guess the future is government funded undercutting of international competitors, using technology stolen by the government from those competitors, in order to destroy those competitors, while using very dirty and cheap energy to do so? Is that the lesson we're supposed to learn from them?
The good thing about China is that apart from Taiwan they have little territoral ambitions, I don't foresee huge conflicts incoming, but I am a not entirely sure the US will manage to lost its position as gracefully as the British Empire.
It could be bad news for US citizens if their currency precipitiously lose its power, and they'll look for people to blame.
The problem is, China isn't competing fairly!
As a Western manufacturer, bound to well-paying union labor and environmental protection laws, and restricted by the mechanisms of the free markets, you cannot compete with a country that employs all sorts of labor abuses (from complete ignorance about OSHA and its national equivalents over 996 work model to outright forced labor and slavery), completely wrecks its own environment and provides virtually unlimited financial funds to its companies in its quest to achieve dominance.
China is inarguably the biggest threat the entire rest of the world faces and barely anyone is even seeing the dangers.
The U.S. record on human rights is horrific, if you see it from a global perspective (which you should). China is a saint in comparison.
It was also a little sad to see the treatment of Tesla by Biden. It was the world's leading EV company at the time but he excluded from EV get togethers because he wanted the unionised companies like GM to win. I think that sort of thing - protecting mediocre incumbents that contribute to the right politicians didn't help. Musk was a dem at the time but after that flipped to Trump and went a bit off the rails.
It’s like there was this belief, we are the most powerful country in the world and we can do whatever we want. Meanwhile we see countries very much question that as we flounder in the Middle East for the umpteenth time in a few decades. We see countries start to get away from the dollar, we see countries call out our military leaders for poor planning.
It’s not like the American public deserve this, but America itself might.
America has simply forgot how to build real things on a schedule and on a budget. Our only real niche now is software (with help from Indian and Chinese talent) and locked down tech that China will eventually figure out. It’s very hard to not be pessimistic about the direction the USA is going and I can see why people elected someone horrible like Trump (he promised a way out, even if it was a stupid way out that would never work).
It's not quite nationalism or maybe the term is being used as a disguise for something else, if those in power believe 50% or even the majority of their own population is not worth worrying about, should be "thrown away", or "removed". Out of control elitism and corruption, combined with lack of empathy and narcissism, can very easily undermine human rights, freedom, and national progress.
But countries either need to be protectionist or you need to lower production costs to a Chinese level. That means workers only earn the same as a Chinese worker.
You could also collect import taxes, but I think people simply cannot or don't want to afford a car that is much more expensive.
Some decry Chinese government subsidies for cars, but the truth is that these exist in western nations as well. They are sometimes indirect, but the end result is the same. The secret to cheap prices is simple labor costs.
Commonly refereed to as race to the bottom and not a new topic/problem. Car makers in countries with high labor costs could maybe pivot to luxury cars... otherwise the result of the competition is already determined.
In 50 years China will have the same problem with other countries that produce even cheaper. That is already happening and for quite a few years already.
Taxes would probably be the best solution, but they have become politicised and weaponised.
I'm not in the market for a new car, but anyone who has looked recently what is the draw to BYD? Is it strictly value/price?
Have their share of problems thought. IIRC climate control is often subpar.
Out of question that Volvo ex90, Kia ev9, Hyundai Ioniq 9 or even the BMW ix3 would have come on top if it wasn’t for the price.
A bit like wearing Adiboss or Gacci clothes. Nothing wrong with that.
Hopefully BYD will make something original and with style on its own.
But counter example is e.g. new Audi look like Kia.
Funny.
https://www.youtube.com/@Wheelsboy/videos
USA boomer car companies run a competition on who can build the biggest crappy SUVs around sold to other boomers who now look aghast at pump prices
Europe boomer car companies can't overrun their nit-pickiness and analysis paralysis and wonder why consumers are picking the car with screens that actually work like a modern device and don't have subscription horns or some other BS like that
China-owned brands are now often better and more premium than their Western counterparts across the entire spectrum. Give me Anker over Belkin any day. There are a few areas where the West still leads - Chinese software tends to be buggier and less polished, luxury apparel isn't at the same standard - but that lead is diminishing rapidly. Customer service could still do with some improvement: it's usually much slower and less professional, but the trade-off is it's not uncommon to end up talking to an actual engineer who can investigate and solve the problem rather than just follow a script, even at a huge company.
The worst products are now formerly high quality Western brands with PE overlords that forced them to outsource manufacturing to the lowest bidder.
Tesla is doing poorly here. That's almost entirely down to Musk's public image, not because BYD make better cars.
[1] https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/
For all the China lovers here it's not a clear sign of Chinese superiority. I saw a video on youtube recently exploring BYD. It's success is due to the fact that the Chinese government as part of their plan to dominate the global car industry gives them massive amounts of money. Which manufacturer can compete with that? European tariffs in the near future looks likely.
Among other things the video explores some of BYD's shadier practices including artificially inflating domestic sales and not paying suppliers for up to 9 months.
I have my doubts whether their success is sustainable.
NAFTA and its successor keeps a lot of automotive production and assembly in North America.
The chicken tax protects American manufacturers from foreign competition on trucks and vans.
Tesla was started on the foundations of inexpensive loans and a “free” factory courtesy of government economic stimulus.
GM was bailed out and briefly owned by the federal government, saved by below-market rate loans.
Stellantis is also an organization that owes its existence on a bankruptcy bail-out package.
The US financially incentivizes car usage, period. They underfund transit projects, allow the gas tax rate to lag inflation, make zoning laws that require car ownership, and more. One great way to subsidize car companies is to make car ownership mandatory.
State and local governments frequently give tax incentives to major assembly plants in the name of preserving jobs for their constituents. For example, GM had a $60 million tax break to keep the Lordstown, OH plant open. Some of this was clawed back after the plant closed anyway.
CAFE standards incentivize manufacturers to build SUVs that aren’t practical or popular in many other markets, essentially enshrining America-specific car design, further separating the American market from global car designs. Companies like BYD can’t compete with American cars if they don’t sell models that resemble popular choices like the Ford F-150, which are designs which would be completely insane if sold in the Chinese, Japanese, and European markets.
Vid of Munger saying Wang Chuanfu is great and he tried to talk him out of starting a car company in 2003 https://youtu.be/PbgqkAQ41mM?t=69
you can't buy BYD in the USA (thanks to Biden actually, not current admin)
BUT
there's a loophole to have a car from Canada in the USA for a year
so lease them from Canada to USA buyers for a year at a time
...if they're not banned from entering the USA altogether, which seemed to be the way the US President was leaning already.
BYD UK import tariff is 10%
BYD US import tariff is 100%
Wikipedia informs me that they stopped making ICE vehicles in 2022.
Also this is anecdotal, but I live in a small province capital (<100k citizens) and the urban planning councilor told me most likely most of the new buses we're getting next year will be electric and they'll probably be either BYD or eCitaros.
I’ve been largely happy with my 2018 Honda Fit and briefly researched a hybrid Fit.
In ZAR, the hybrid Fit is listed as ~530K, while the BYD is 570, however the BYD is way bigger, has much nicer interior and insanely more features, including: adaptive cruise control, lane assist (it can basically drive itself for simple traffic), 360 view camera, comparatively huge screen for my Apple CarPlay, sun roof, V2L (allows 2-3kw load off the battery or engine if the battery is low).
I largely liked my Honda Fit and my Ballade (that might be a South African model name), but have been annoyed for a long time at them being laggards on things like CarPlay (at least in South Africa, apparently the Fit in other markets had offered it for much longer).
BYD makes better EVs & is leading in battery tech.
FSD has been promised forever & not delivered. Now Musky says - for cars to have real FSD they need to be newer hardware tech.
Robotaxis - Waymo is better.
TL;DR Byd is amazing and fatally flawed. The details are too much to place here.