I tried to like Teslas, but I find them incredibly cheap and uncomfortable. The road noise is worse than a 27 year old Subaru, which I found baffling since there's not even an engine, and I thought they were supposed to be aerodynamic and smooth.
But no, they're harsh and always feel like you're driving on a noisy worn out road.
What's the appeal of Teslas? For the price premium of them, what do you actually get?
I found the user experience terrible as well - just trying to turn on the wipers or change the heat required trying to remember where they were in nested menus on a touchscreen while driving at 100kmh on the 401.
I'm no fan of Teslas but they do still have one distinguishing feature over other EVs: last I checked, they were still by far the most efficient, in terms of kWh per km. It's as if nobody else even bothers streamlining their cars, they're too busy making chunky SUVs with massive grilles.
It's weird that for petrol cars, most people are really concerned with miles-per-gallon (maybe not so much in the US, until recently), yet for EVs all anyone seems to care about is range. I guess electricity is cheap enough that efficiency doesn't really matter, except when it gives you more range?
My wife has a new EV and it says we saved 44 gallons this month and I only spent $100 on charging. $45 dollars of it was testing an expensive DC charger that’s 3x as expensive as my house.
At current US prices that would be, what, $150-$200 in gasoline? So the electricity is 2x cheaper. That’s a great saving, but you could save that much with a hybrid as well. It still seems worth making the EV as efficient as possible.
They're the safest cars on the road and they drive themselves. If you want to maximize your family's safety, you put them in a Tesla. For me, the stress of driving is completely gone now. Traffic jams, slow drivers, complicated turns in unfamiliar areas, none of that bothers me anymore.
If Chinese cars were available here for cheaper, drove themselves just as well, and were similarly safe, I'd consider them.
I'm calling BS on "road noise is worse than a 27 year old Subaru", this is an insane claim that needs some hard evidence. Please just google what you actually get, or test drive one. They've been a best selling vehicle brand for a few years, with literally millions on the road at any given time.
If you can't be bothered to operate in even a little bit of good faith, please stop littering forums.
Here in South Africa I’m seeing more and more BYDs all the time, the high fuel prices due to the Iran war is making their entry level EV pay for itself for people with any kind of commute.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
Chery brands have 24% market share car sales in S.A - it was ironic seeing the BMW dealership closing in my town and being replaced by a BYD one.
It will be interesting to see how VW responds next year with the locally manufactured small SUV Tengo targeting the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro 4 - why bother with an old Polo Vivo when you get something WAY better and modern.
VWs are decent cars, but they've been somewhat "premiumly" priced since at least 2000, in my view the brand is irrationally overvalued by South Africans.
When I looked at a Polo around 2018, the finishes were a bit nicer, but compared to the Honda Jazz I went with (with CVT, cruise control, climate control) it was considerably more expensive.
BMWs and Mercedes are apparently having a really hard time here right now. Chinese cars are really comparable in terms of features and finish but for like half the price, the only other reason to buy a luxury German car is as a status symbol, but for the genuinely affluent here, a Mercedes or BMW isn't exclusive enough.
They're not dead yet as there are still quite a few South Africans who deem it essential to their social status to have the nicest possible car at the absolute limit of what they can afford. My theory on why they do this is because others can see the car they pitch up in, but don't see that each night it's parked outdoors of a rented apartment worth barely more (possibly less) than the car.
It says Tesla registrations increase and I believe this may be a trend accross all EV brands with the influence of the Iran/US conflict on the price of gas.
You and I both know that registrations are a proxy for car purchases. (The article even says so.)
>and I believe this may be a trend accross all EV brands with the influence of the Iran/US conflict on the price of gas.
Again from the article:
>According to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, Tesla registrations across the European Union, Britain and the European Free Trade Association leaped 43.3% between January and August, outpacing the broader battery-electric vehicle market's 38.8% growth over the same period.
So tell me, again, what about my statement "Tesla is gaining share in Europe despite Chinese EVs" do you disagree with?
Yes, but that doesn't contradict my statement or support your original claim. Tesla would be challenged to polarize European customers any further than they have already.
BYD went from unheard of to number 2 in Australia in about 4 years. Chinese made Tesla are still holding onto 10th spot here but they have MG and Geely coming up behind them. BYD and GWM are now supported by local dealerships that have been in my town for decades and I see the cars in the local community unlike Tesla. I don't know where the Tesla sales are but they aren't around here.
I am still driving an ancient Nissan and although Electric is looking very compelling at the moment I distrust all the brands and products currently on the market regardless of nation of origin. I guess if they are all privacy nightmares then you might as well go for the cheapest.
No, between safety and emissions, a normal person effectively have to wait out the 25 year as spelled out in the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988. Once you hit that, it's relatively straightforward to import the car (straightforward if you know how to do it, there are importers who specialize in this market).
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
Even if you do wait the mandatory period or it was otherwise ok, if the government catches wind that you're trying to do something less stupid than buying the trash the current manufacturers are pedalling, they will clamp down. Kei trucks and the Mahindra Roxor are just more examples of why you can't run something more efficient down any road for various poor reasons likely because they cut into someone else's profits.
Yeah, that's the other problem... Kei cars/trucks, despite being 25 years old, have been banned in a few states because "safety" (even though you can buy a new motorcycle, or a US-spec 1950 whatever, etc).
You're probably, maybe ok for something like a 25 year old full-size car that doesn't look too wild (ie, could pass a a US-spec). Like a Japanese-market Lancer Evo, or Mitsubishi Pajero.
It's funny I don't live in the USA and my own neighbour sold his Tesla after the Nazi salute. The brand worldwide is suffering and sales are dropping everywhere, not just in the USA.
USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
"He who loves the profit of the tyrant must hate the Commonwealth, and he who loves the Commonwealth must hate the profit of tyranny, for what profits the sovereign does not always profit the Commonwealth." - paraphrased from the anti-Machiavel.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
It's not for national security. It's to protect Detroit.
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
The US could provide a means for importing cars with electronic risks - have the electronic "brain" be made in the US and have it plug into a "dumb" (or well-defined interface) body.
There is path loss to consider. I would imagine that large scale electricity generation is more efficient than small scale ICE engines, and EVs have regeneration, so probably the EVs still come out ahead.
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
lumping those all together is missing half the point, ng in at least in the us where its a by product of oil extraction is a huge step up from coal/oil and will be with us for a very long time
I live in Europe: My only “concern” about chinese cars (and I don’t mean chinese as in Volvo) that I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years. More than 500 unique models were released in
the first 6 months of 2026 alone [0]. It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago. Brands you never heared about, never updated Android versions etc
that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
Are ByD cars that interesting? Specs look good but I had a few rides in that sedan model most Ubers drive these days and it is conceptually flawed. They put batteries where you are supposed to put your feets as a rear passenger which mean that any regular adult sized person end up with their knees in the face as if they were seating on a kids chair. So uncomfortable.
With such a basic design error, I wonder how many frustrating flaws an actual owner has to put up with. I've driven chinese rental cars in Mexico (an MG SUV and a chevrolet small sized sedan) and both had electronic issues. For instance the rear window heating of the MG would startup on its own once every other time their was a significant bump on the road (which happens frequently in MX) and the actual touch sensitive non mechanical button buttons weren't very sensitive so it was a pain in the ass to turn it off. Both android systems were absolute crap with annoying bugs. Overall not a very pleasant experience.
I dunno, spent previous summer in China riding ride shares (Didi mostly I think) almost daily and it was nice change when the car for once eat not BYD, they are absolutely dominating the market in China, majority of ride share cars were BYD, can't complain about rear seats, everywhere hey generous, same thing can't be said about front seat though as tall passenger.
I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.
We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.
Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.
Though they won't, because I imagine recycling/refurbishing is not nearly as profitable as selling new models that lose 25% of their value the moment they're driven off the lot.
And no exec wants to explain to shareholders why their revenue from new model year sales are down 20% because they've cannibalized it with a new but lower-margin revenue stream.
wut, after market parts in PRC is incredibly robust, they hammer out generics for western auto, of course they keep domestic stocked for ever with original tooling. There's no giant dumps for "dicarded" EVs that can't get parts or service, there's lots for retired fleet cars, i.e cars that were serviced for so long that they've been driven to death and retired (600000km / 8 years service life) or in some cases potemkin cars to steal subsidies, but even the latter shows PRC can basically conjure components on a whim if there's any profit. They can literally conjure up EVs as disposable financial instruments.
Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).
While I've occasionally had an engine part fail most of the major repairs I've needed to do to cars over the years has been suspension related, it's consistently abused and closest to the road / debris.
That said... many of the different EVs sit on the same base, so maybe it won't actually be as hard to get parts as it seems.
Chinese EVs are more eclectic than western EVs. But ya, suspension parts....are those things that automakers innovate on? Though I guess BYD is an exception, since they own their own parts maker.
Innovation is rare among the broad consumer car market but modify to fit new bodies and motor layouts, yes, for sure. For most mainstream cars however you'll often find that a few models per generation for any given manufacturer either share parts or are interchangeable.
That's absolute nonsense. So what if it's an EV? It still requires replacement door hinges, fenders, panels, suspension parts, wiring harnesses, software updates, etc. Repairing a car is a great deal more complex than simply changing oil or replacing brake pads. All mechanical objects experience wear and tear and require maintenance.
The discussion was availability of spare parts, not reliability. And has already been brought up, reliability won't save you from needing parts when someone plows into your rear bumper. Or when suspension parts fail, which they do on every car.
Fender benders? Suspension wear? Brakes (yes, EVs still have them)? Rust/corrosion? Dead pixels? Torn/worn/faded interiors?
Heck, I just dumped an 8 year old BMW because the interior stitching was coming apart. Nothing mechanically wrong, just yellow fluff poking out of the seams. Easier to sell it than try to get it fixed.
They might not need them as often but if they produce them even less than it's still an issue. Insurance costs on Teslas is high and the rental company Tesla apocalypse happened because of the difficulties maintaining fleet repairs.
100s of models share a few standard platforms with like 80% parts commonality in the broader ecosystem. A subbrand from one of the giants with staying power is going to be fine, someone in PRC going to keep after market parts flowing forever, like they do for western brands. Of course whether this convenient/ubiquitous in reign like Europe depends on geopolitics, if EU going to make it hard for PRC producers then PRC producers going to have hard time with EU consumers, which arguably is the point. Really have to see what PRC plants in EU starts delivering, ultimately there's no reason for rest of EU to be dependant on German or French cars if they have Chinese cars at home.
Cars are often sold. If everyone knows that nobody will buy it in 15 years, the person buying it in 12 years will pay less, which means the person buying in 9 years pays less, etc, so the person buying new doesn't recoup as much and has less to spend on a replacement.
I mean, I drive a Toyota Venza from 2011 and finding parts outside of shelling out insane amounts of cash to Toyota is a pain, and that's Toyota. There seem to be random bits an parts that are unique to my car.
> "many households already own one vehicle," so the "automotive market must shift from the traditional era of increasing volume to one that considers growth based on the premise of existing vehicle ownership."
This sounds like companies trying to add subscriptions or other costs to get access to car features.
It would be extraordinarily simple to remedy this: Require by law the technical ability to physically disable all remote communication to and from a vehicle, and prohibit any remote communication requirement from the core functions of a vehicle.
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
---
Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
Just to add a different perspective. As a mexican, I often wonder how the future will look like for those cars in terms of repairability. I don't think lots of people are really pondering wether the car company will be here long enough to provide a reasonable amount of support for the niche technical issues that will arise.
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
A car battery with reduced range is still perfectly useable as a storage battery for a PV system. I got a high-voltage hybrid inverter when I built our PV (solar) system specifically for that reason: high-voltage EV batteries will appear on the market which I can use to create energy storage. Commercial storage systems are still too expensive for what they offer but used EV batteries are starting to appear at far more reasonable price levels. If a pack which used to store 90 kWh now only stores 70 kWh but costs 1/10 of a similarly-sized commercial storage system when combined with a suitable controller then I'd just get a bunch of them.
The Chinese have certainly taken over far more than just the Mexican market. You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these days, and while Toyotas were selling like hot cakes in Pakistan the dealerships have gotten huge waitlists for the Chinese ones now. As others have mentioned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity. I can confidently assume a Toyota from 1993 is still just being broken in at 150K miles, no clue if the same can be said about these with all the varieties and electronic components.
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
I'm in Canada and have a Tesla, if I was going to buy another car I'd be definitely looking at the Chinese versions for this exact reason. Anyone openly buying a new Tesla in Canada these days is saying they are a sociopath and/or a predator.
When this person openly meddles into politics of your country by supporting openly fascist and racist parties and spreading lies, it might not be that extreme to not want to support him.
That is an evil way to think, my friend. It is not okay to write someone off because they don't view a transaction with the same moral gravity you do. I encourage you to reconsider your perspective, because this kind of thinking is unfortunately commonplace and it is corrosive to our society.
I see this (and similar statements) often repeated on the Internet, but it’s not what I saw during my two week trip to London and vicinity back in July. This was followed by a week in Paris.
In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.
What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.
So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.
The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.
Jaecoo have had the best selling model in the UK for two or three months running now. I have no idea how you managed to lose your bet. My experience is closer to the parent post - pull into any car park in the UK and you'll count more Chinese EVs than Teslas, often you can count more Jaecoo or BYD than Tesla.
I can tell you from a - fairly prosperous town in the North of England where Range Rovers, Teslas and Porsches are very common - that BYDs and Jaecoos are everywhere.
You can pick other counties, manufacturers and views etc.
My own anecdata from Nordics is that Musk was out of the news for a while but has put himself back in the bad light again last week with the Ukraine horrible behavior and there’s a bit of coverage of his funding midterms too.
Even the dramatic price deals Tesla have been offering won’t really tempt back the educated disposable income environmentally conscious early adopters who used to champion him when Tesla swept into the market with the first viable EVs.
Where I am it is Kia that has taken Tesla’s place as the go-to EV brand.
I can't find the interactive website, but ACEA have statistics. (I'm disappointed in HN that you have 6 replies without anyone linking the official statistics.)
Year to date in the EU + EFTA + UK, Tesla is 2.5%, BYD 2.7%, Chery 2.5%, of all new cars registered.
The interactive website allowed filtering for e.g. UK + electric cars, but maybe it's no longer available.
Kind of like how the free models from China were supposed to have utterly collapsed the value propositions of all American frontier labs by now because only a fool would pay those sorts of token prices.
I suspect some of these sentiments are real, but also suspect there's a not-insignificant amount of astroturfing going on.
There are Tesla's everywhere around my way in London. They are very very common. Maybe people have stopped buying them since Elon went crazy, but there are still a lot on the roads.
Mexico is more broadly a showroom for all sorts of vehicles you can't buy in the US, namely those that don't meet US safety or emissions requirements. The Hilux being the notable example, though not covered in the below link.
it is deeply ironic that a toyota hilux pickup truck - an actually practical pickup truck - does not meet US "standards" but the pedestrian killing, inefficient, wasteful, and expensive "pickups" from US auto companies somehow do.
The Hilux issue is a bit more complicated as a result of the "chicken tax" of 25% on imported light-duty trucks. Toyota made the Tacoma for the US market and built it here to avoid that tax, and now the economics of the Hilux don't make sense for them to import even if it met safety/emissions standards. It would certainly kill the market for the Tacoma.
My beloved 4Runner was made in Japan, as is the rest of them (from what I understand). One of the few models still to be made exclusively in Tahara, Aichi, that you can get in the US.
Emissions? These are EVs mostly. And these cars are safe enough for the EU.
Any vehicles with GPS or cellular modules made in Russia or China are explicitly banned. There's also a pending law to ban any automakers that have 15% or greater ownership by people from China, Russia, or Iran.
They are just outright banned. Has nothing to do with safety or emissions.
I don't disagree, I only mention it to clarify that "available in Mexico but not the US" isn't limited to Chinese EVs. The article's tone in my opinion implies some kind of conspiracy to deprive the US of cool EVs, when in fact there is a much broader conspiracy to deprive us of Hiluxes (Hiluxi?)!
One big reason the Hilux is not imported to the US, and instead we have a separate domestically built Tacoma, is due to the longstanding Chicken Tax tariff on imported light trucks.
Definitely, and a lot still do. But buying a Tesla is like buying a BYD since they're the dominant brand they're likely to have better support. A lot of lessons were learned on the Nissan Leaf, Ford Lightning, and even to this day buying a Rivian is like buying a BMW in that you know maintenance/repairability will be painful.
People make a fuss about China unfairly subsidizing its auto industry but this is exactly how subsidies should work.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its own auto companies over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that is considered rugged capitalism at work.
This is right and it's wrong. Every inexpensive car in America utterly fails to sell. Dodge tried with the Dodge Dart 2 in 2013 and it lasted 3 years before they ended the model for lack of sales. Mitsubishi has tried for years to sell to the lower end market, and has ended up cutting every model from their lineup except the SUVs and larger vehicles. The big 3 completely stopped making sedans. The best selling car in America right now? The Ford F-150. Starting at $40k, 20mpg combined.
yes, the american automaker doubled down on expensive cars, and it's because the american consumer demanded it and outright refused to buy anything else.
Submarine. China desperate to find a market for these dubious vehicles because domestic economy and market in very bad shape right now and getting worse.
I noticed the same in India not long ago. Unlike in the US, there is broad cultural aspiration toward electric vehicles.
Even tuk-tuk/rickshaw drivers (who are largely lower income) have EV choices, while in the US lower income workers - like rideshare drivers - don't have many cheaper electric options, since EVs are mostly priced for upper income people.
It doesn't hurt that India has to import the vast majority of the petroleum it uses, and has unlimited solar resources.
Most countries in the world have to import their oil and gas. Which generally means EVs are very attractive as they can run on locally produced electricity. This is happening all over the world at this point. Including quite a few developing nations across Africa, Asia, South America, etc. Ethiopia banned imports of ICE vehicles a few years ago. They are going all in on EVs. Same for Kenya I believe. They aren't doing this to save the planet but because oil imports are expensive, especially if you have to pay for it in dollars and don't have a lot of exported goods to earn those dollars with like is true for a lot of developing nations.
The only countries trying to slow this down currently are those with a lot of vested interest in oil and gas. Or a lot of legacy car production. Everyone else is cutting their dependence on importing either of those things.
Does anyone know if you can buy one in Mexico and drive it across the border?
I imagine it is very complicated to own it long term in the US. But if it were legally registered in Mexico, could you drive it in the US for a period of time?
Mexican residents can bring a non us legal car to the us for up to a year. If you’re a US citizen living in Mexico it is more complicated but I think you should still be able to bring it for a year.
It's an interesting arbitrage question. When I do a search to see what they cost, they aren't that cheap: approximately $20k USD for a starter (Dolphin Mini). And, then about $50k USD for a minivan (M9). I was wondering if there was a weird lease model which could work for independent Mexican residents or expats, but I don't think there is.
I'd be somewhat concerned about getting caught up in ALPR surveillance driving a vehicle with Mexican tags in the US, given that locals are getting pulled over for nothing more than "suspicious driving patterns" nowadays[0].
BYD cars were my biggest tourist attraction on my last trip to Mexico, it was what I was looking forward to seeing the most, as soon as I got out the airport and saw taxis using them
I just wish that I could buy something akin to a modern EV version of a Honda Fit, Honda Element, or Toyota Matrix. Something that's affordable, not huge, and is a great town car but also brings utility and versatility highly disproportionate to its size and cost. I don't even care if it looks dorky.
This is the exact type of vehicle that manufacturers selling in the US seem to have an extreme allergy to. If it can't be badged as an SUV, isn't saddled with a needlessly space-inefficient interior, and can't carry an exorbitant price tag it won't be sold.
> This sort of protectionism can work temporarily but isn’t really sustainable.
This policy isn't about trade. It's not even about automobiles, really. It's about hard power.
A nation's hard power in peacetime can be estimated (in part) by the number of tanks / planes / ships it has available, but in the event of a hot war with a great power, that static figure is matters less and less over time. In a protracted war, the far more important factor is the rate at which new tanks / planes / ships that can be manufactured going forward. Thus, in the context of America's strategic competition with China, our heavy industry is just as important a component of our hard power as are our existing stockpile of armaments.
If someone proposed that we send a sizable portion of our tanks/planes/ships over to China, we would easily identify that as an absurd strategic blunder. Why would you reduce your armaments stockpile while increasing that of your main strategic adversary?! Well, opening our automobile market to the Chinese would undoubtedly result in the equivalent outcome for armament manufacturing capacity. It would mean less domestic armament manufacturing capacity and more Chinese armament manufacturing capacity (subsidized by Americans!). To allow such a thing would also be an absurd strategic blunder!
We can all wish that the world was a peaceful place, and that the era of great power wars is behind us for good, but to mistake our wishes for reality would be very dangerous. Strength is the only source of security. This policy is a means of preserving what strength we have left.
>I do wonder what the US game plan is here long term.
Our government is run by 80 year olds and their 80 year old rich as fuck friends.
The long term plan is "Be Dead, don't care about anything"
This is a huge reason why you need diversity in any system, here we need diversity of ages, so that young people who have a high investment in a far future can counterbalance old people who have high investment in the now.
If you want long term visions, you have to reward eschewing quick wins, and we openly declared that to not be policy as of the 80s and Reagan.
We're headed to a sort of inverse Cold War where one side is driving BMWs and the other is terrible Ladas. This time, the USA is the one with the walls up protecting the lousy ICE product.
I visited China 5 years ago. All the fancy cars of the upper middle class were German. Audis, vw, bmws and Mercedes everywhere.
I visited this year again. Almost none of the new cars were German. I did not see most of their latest models on the streets. And I definitely did not see a single German electric car.
They now have a dozen of brands some of them under the tech umbrella of Huawei that provides the info-entertainment and auto pilot and they are everywhere! And btw the assembly quality was now reaally nice.
No idea about their safety or longevity, but it was nice being driven in them
had the same experience this past summer, though I did have a Didi that was a fairly new Mercedes S class and it was hugely disappointing compared to the Chinese EVs.
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Temp is always visible in bottom left of screen, no sub menu needed
And you can use voice commands for anything, you should test drive a new one
It's weird that for petrol cars, most people are really concerned with miles-per-gallon (maybe not so much in the US, until recently), yet for EVs all anyone seems to care about is range. I guess electricity is cheap enough that efficiency doesn't really matter, except when it gives you more range?
If Chinese cars were available here for cheaper, drove themselves just as well, and were similarly safe, I'd consider them.
If you can't be bothered to operate in even a little bit of good faith, please stop littering forums.
That infact made me consider BYD even more seriously. Being able to see the car in person is far more impressive the a YouTube video.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
It will be interesting to see how VW responds next year with the locally manufactured small SUV Tengo targeting the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro 4 - why bother with an old Polo Vivo when you get something WAY better and modern.
It needs to retail at R269,000.00 or cheaper.
When I looked at a Polo around 2018, the finishes were a bit nicer, but compared to the Honda Jazz I went with (with CVT, cruise control, climate control) it was considerably more expensive.
BMWs and Mercedes are apparently having a really hard time here right now. Chinese cars are really comparable in terms of features and finish but for like half the price, the only other reason to buy a luxury German car is as a status symbol, but for the genuinely affluent here, a Mercedes or BMW isn't exclusive enough.
They're not dead yet as there are still quite a few South Africans who deem it essential to their social status to have the nicest possible car at the absolute limit of what they can afford. My theory on why they do this is because others can see the car they pitch up in, but don't see that each night it's parked outdoors of a rented apartment worth barely more (possibly less) than the car.
Maybe Tesla should expand into Mexican restaurants or something.
It says Tesla registrations increase and I believe this may be a trend accross all EV brands with the influence of the Iran/US conflict on the price of gas.
You and I both know that registrations are a proxy for car purchases. (The article even says so.)
>and I believe this may be a trend accross all EV brands with the influence of the Iran/US conflict on the price of gas.
Again from the article:
>According to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, Tesla registrations across the European Union, Britain and the European Free Trade Association leaped 43.3% between January and August, outpacing the broader battery-electric vehicle market's 38.8% growth over the same period.
So tell me, again, what about my statement "Tesla is gaining share in Europe despite Chinese EVs" do you disagree with?
It's just missing the context that Tesla hemorrhaged European market share for 8 consecutive quarters.
From their current position, it would be genuinely difficult to find ways to piss off more of their customers.
Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling car in 2024 <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market-2024/> and 2025 <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market-2025/>, and has gained share in 2026 YTD. <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/>
I am still driving an ancient Nissan and although Electric is looking very compelling at the moment I distrust all the brands and products currently on the market regardless of nation of origin. I guess if they are all privacy nightmares then you might as well go for the cheapest.
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
You're probably, maybe ok for something like a 25 year old full-size car that doesn't look too wild (ie, could pass a a US-spec). Like a Japanese-market Lancer Evo, or Mitsubishi Pajero.
2. Buy a scrapped Tesla in the US.
3. Rebadge the BYD with the Tesla's logos.
4. Bury the Tesla in your yard.
5. Register the rebadged BYD with the Tesla's VIN, slap some plates on it, and drive.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
And that is perfectly reasonable. I go further and disable the cellular modem even in a domestically made car.
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
https://www.iea.org/countries/mexico/electricity
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
0, https://www.carscoops.com/2026/08/chinese-automakers-lauchin...
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
With such a basic design error, I wonder how many frustrating flaws an actual owner has to put up with. I've driven chinese rental cars in Mexico (an MG SUV and a chevrolet small sized sedan) and both had electronic issues. For instance the rear window heating of the MG would startup on its own once every other time their was a significant bump on the road (which happens frequently in MX) and the actual touch sensitive non mechanical button buttons weren't very sensitive so it was a pain in the ass to turn it off. Both android systems were absolute crap with annoying bugs. Overall not a very pleasant experience.
[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...
You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.
I don't say this happily.
[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...
Though they won't, because I imagine recycling/refurbishing is not nearly as profitable as selling new models that lose 25% of their value the moment they're driven off the lot.
And no exec wants to explain to shareholders why their revenue from new model year sales are down 20% because they've cannibalized it with a new but lower-margin revenue stream.
That said... many of the different EVs sit on the same base, so maybe it won't actually be as hard to get parts as it seems.
Oil changes, timing belts, spark plugs etc. It really helps if you have no metal touching metal
Heck, I just dumped an 8 year old BMW because the interior stitching was coming apart. Nothing mechanically wrong, just yellow fluff poking out of the seams. Easier to sell it than try to get it fixed.
We’ll see how this plays out, but the industry definitely needs a calibration
most are leased.
This seems absurd on the face of it.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/americ...
At what point is it no longer the same car if you’ve replaced all the parts ;)
> "many households already own one vehicle," so the "automotive market must shift from the traditional era of increasing volume to one that considers growth based on the premise of existing vehicle ownership."
This sounds like companies trying to add subscriptions or other costs to get access to car features.
A few weeks ago I was in a dealership and they had 5 cars that were basically abandoned by their owner because of problem with the transmission.
Not saying Chinese will behave differently, but big brands aren't as reliable as you think
https://youtu.be/Nim61oVLdwk?t=700
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
---
Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
I bought a Kicks e-power [here in Mexico] a d one of my worries is what will happen when the battery life runs out...
We [Mexico] dont have the logistics, technology or know-how to recycle or dispose these correctly.
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
>hardly see a Tesla in London
Is that through competition, or because people don't want to be openly associated with Nazis?
Jaecoo and BYD are well-known brands now in UK, however.
Elon helped Trump get elected, who has been hostile towards Canada and its economy.
If you drove a Volkswagen and wore Hugo Boss in the 1940s, people would rightly wonder if you were literally a Nazi.
If I see you driving a new Tesla, especially a Cybertruck, I just assume you are fine with pedophilia and fascism.
In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.
What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.
So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.
The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.
Tesla is gaining share in Europe. <https://www.kansas.com/news/business/article317450876.html>
I searched around and found this site:
https://www.eu-evs.com/brandCharts/TESLA/GB/Volumes-Yearly
You can pick other counties, manufacturers and views etc.
My own anecdata from Nordics is that Musk was out of the news for a while but has put himself back in the bad light again last week with the Ukraine horrible behavior and there’s a bit of coverage of his funding midterms too.
Even the dramatic price deals Tesla have been offering won’t really tempt back the educated disposable income environmentally conscious early adopters who used to champion him when Tesla swept into the market with the first viable EVs.
Where I am it is Kia that has taken Tesla’s place as the go-to EV brand.
Yes, but the Chinese EVs are a very recent thing in Europe, so Tesla is (re)gaining share versus both existing domestic and new foreign competition.
Tesla still does quite well in China.
>Where I am it is Kia that has taken Tesla’s place as the go-to EV brand.
Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling car in 2025, <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market-2025/> and has gained share in 2026 YTD. <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/>
Year to date in the EU + EFTA + UK, Tesla is 2.5%, BYD 2.7%, Chery 2.5%, of all new cars registered.
The interactive website allowed filtering for e.g. UK + electric cars, but maybe it's no longer available.
https://www.acea.auto/files/Press_release_car_registrations_...
I suspect some of these sentiments are real, but also suspect there's a not-insignificant amount of astroturfing going on.
In Australia the vast majority (80%) of EVs are Chinese manufactured, with Chinese brands now accounting for 50+% of EV sales.
And the rise of the AfD.
https://www.jalopnik.com/the-coolest-non-us-cars-americans-c...
Nobody has said the Hilux can't be sold in USA. Toyota simply hasn't tried.
And to echo others...blame the chicken tax.
Any vehicles with GPS or cellular modules made in Russia or China are explicitly banned. There's also a pending law to ban any automakers that have 15% or greater ownership by people from China, Russia, or Iran.
They are just outright banned. Has nothing to do with safety or emissions.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its own auto companies over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that is considered rugged capitalism at work.
yes, the american automaker doubled down on expensive cars, and it's because the american consumer demanded it and outright refused to buy anything else.
Even tuk-tuk/rickshaw drivers (who are largely lower income) have EV choices, while in the US lower income workers - like rideshare drivers - don't have many cheaper electric options, since EVs are mostly priced for upper income people.
It doesn't hurt that India has to import the vast majority of the petroleum it uses, and has unlimited solar resources.
The only countries trying to slow this down currently are those with a lot of vested interest in oil and gas. Or a lot of legacy car production. Everyone else is cutting their dependence on importing either of those things.
I imagine it is very complicated to own it long term in the US. But if it were legally registered in Mexico, could you drive it in the US for a period of time?
0: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ai-driven-polic...
This is the exact type of vehicle that manufacturers selling in the US seem to have an extreme allergy to. If it can't be badged as an SUV, isn't saddled with a needlessly space-inefficient interior, and can't carry an exorbitant price tag it won't be sold.
And it’s not like GM and friends are catching up. If anything the gap is widening rapidly.
This policy isn't about trade. It's not even about automobiles, really. It's about hard power.
A nation's hard power in peacetime can be estimated (in part) by the number of tanks / planes / ships it has available, but in the event of a hot war with a great power, that static figure is matters less and less over time. In a protracted war, the far more important factor is the rate at which new tanks / planes / ships that can be manufactured going forward. Thus, in the context of America's strategic competition with China, our heavy industry is just as important a component of our hard power as are our existing stockpile of armaments.
If someone proposed that we send a sizable portion of our tanks/planes/ships over to China, we would easily identify that as an absurd strategic blunder. Why would you reduce your armaments stockpile while increasing that of your main strategic adversary?! Well, opening our automobile market to the Chinese would undoubtedly result in the equivalent outcome for armament manufacturing capacity. It would mean less domestic armament manufacturing capacity and more Chinese armament manufacturing capacity (subsidized by Americans!). To allow such a thing would also be an absurd strategic blunder!
We can all wish that the world was a peaceful place, and that the era of great power wars is behind us for good, but to mistake our wishes for reality would be very dangerous. Strength is the only source of security. This policy is a means of preserving what strength we have left.
Our government is run by 80 year olds and their 80 year old rich as fuck friends.
The long term plan is "Be Dead, don't care about anything"
This is a huge reason why you need diversity in any system, here we need diversity of ages, so that young people who have a high investment in a far future can counterbalance old people who have high investment in the now.
If you want long term visions, you have to reward eschewing quick wins, and we openly declared that to not be policy as of the 80s and Reagan.
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/10/05/gas-cars-fall-below-50-percen...
I visited this year again. Almost none of the new cars were German. I did not see most of their latest models on the streets. And I definitely did not see a single German electric car.
They now have a dozen of brands some of them under the tech umbrella of Huawei that provides the info-entertainment and auto pilot and they are everywhere! And btw the assembly quality was now reaally nice.
No idea about their safety or longevity, but it was nice being driven in them