German and American cars who aren't getting subsidized by the government, in fact they actually have to pay taxes. In addition to the fact that China is letting companies destroy it's environment.
Nowadays I doubt that the US government is any better than China's in letting companies destroy the environment.
Moreover, I always wonder how Americans accuse China of subsidizing its industries, while I never hear about any serious investment done by any big US company that is not conditioned by huge tax reductions.
All the kinds of fiscal facilities that the big US companies receive from the state or federal governments would be strictly forbidden in most places of Europe, as being a form of state help that distorts competition.
Directly from the repeated declarations of people in high positions of the US government, including the POTUS himself, who have bragged about their efforts for removing all the environmental regulations that supposedly make the US companies lose money and make them less competitive.
I am too lazy to search now for quotations, but already the POTUS has referred to this subject so frequently that it should not be difficult to find such examples yourself.
Attempting nonetheless a search, one of the first entries is a New York Times article that says:
"The Trump administration has dismantled nearly 100 policies focused on clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals"
The following is not a joke, but it is an official statement published on the White House site:
"The Administration approved 76 coal-related permits to reinvigorate America’s beautiful, clean coal industry."
I am pretty certain that on paper today China has environmental regulations at least as strict as those of USA.
Nonetheless, it is very likely that in many places they are not enforced, except perhaps when they might be used to punish someone who fell in disgrace for other reasons.
No, retarded territorial accounting practices assign PRC made goods as PRC emissions but US fossil extraction as foreign consumer emissions. US emissions substantially up factoring in all the net oil export from fracking and NG fugitive leaks from shit gas infra. On paper US shed 1 mbt co2e/year from paper peak, but factor in oil/ng exports and leaks, US napkin math up 1.5 bmt co2e/year (-1 mbt reductions + 2 mbt from export + 0.5 mbt from fugitive emissions/leaks), i.e. 20% over US paper peak.
Meanwhile PRC annual renewable production wipes about 100m barrel of oil energy equivalent per day over their life time, i.e. comparable to global oil consumption - they are functionally preventing oil use from doubling. Every year, PRC solar is averting equivalent of 100m barrels of future oil consumption. Literally the greatest emission aversion machine in human history - PRC functionally preventing so much emissions its carbon foot print is negative if you use sensible attributions.
Nope. Trade corrected CO2 is also going down. And the scheme you're talking about is just double counting CO2 for producers. Why not just go all in on that and zero out any country that doesnt extract carbon sources!
Garbage in stats creates garbage out. Hence pointing out NONE biased garbage accounting that attributes emissions directly to extractor/producer like we do goods. AKA still single counts but shifts attribution - every barrel PRC imports? Discount emissions from PRC. Every barrel US exports, include as US emissions.
> Why not just go all in on that and zero out any country that doesnt extract carbon sources!
We should in fact, totally do that, aka on going GHG Protocol Scope3 Cat11 battleground, among others. Precisely to address statistically context illiterate claims like muh Murican emissions went down and muh trade corrected co2 went down because legacy accounting standards specifically masks / offloads emissions extracted from US onto their customers. Shifting emissions to extractor responsibility (Scope 3), is in fact heavily politicized / lobbied against by US fossil industry to make US #s look better. But that's all it is, fabricated numbers for lame aktually arguments that somehow export oil cleaner than domestic coal... Maybe on a spreadsheet, using biased formulas, for useful idiots to quote.
What kind of vehicles are people replacing with BYDs? I always assumed Brazilians drove mostly "legacy" VW or Nissans, but I looked at VW's Brazilian website and you all seem to have most of the same vehicles that are available in Europe and North America, including the ID.4!
> How are they being received generally in Brazil?
Very well. Not only BYD but also other brands like GWM and Geely.
> What kind of vehicles are people replacing with BYDs?
Combustion cars with the same price, they are not replacing other electrical vehicles because the Chinese brands are way cheaper yet they are good cars.
> I always assumed Brazilians drove mostly "legacy" VW or Nissans
Nowadays we have many models from different brands.
In the past the fleet was basically VW, Ford, Chevrolet and Fiat. In the late 90s and early 2000s the Japanesne (Honda, Toyota and Nissan) and French (Renault, Citroën, Peugeot) became popular, and then Hyundai also became a success here. Recently, the Chinese brands are becoming more popular, especially Chery and the ones that I mentioned before.
> including the ID.4
But I never saw it here, even though VW is a very popular brand here.
some models also charge much faster, and go further than Western alternatives
cheap, fast, good, its a rare moment to pick all three and the market is
most reservations about EVs are based on range anxiety, charging time and cost. only people with a certain level of advantage will pay to experience inconvenience, and that issue disintegrates at a certain threshold for a much broader population
To be clear, that's CLTC range, so closer to ~400'ish miles EPA. Still, very good. I think there are a variety of reasons why US manufacturers are sticking closer to 300mi (e.g. availability of battery materials), but it's improving and hopefully that'll continue.
I'm kind of torn myself. Although I'd like more range, 300 does get me where I'm going, and performance vehicles want less weight, not more.
Funny because I live in Hungary, the country with the highest VAT in EU (27%), and BYD is not the cheapest at all. Neither in the EV and ICE (hybrid) category
Surprisingly I have seen imported BYD Atto at 100% tariffs or so and Olectra buses which are actually BYD buses , probably CKU imported into India. Auto sector employment in India is seriously important as is the need for capturing a fair value even of EVs locally while on the other hand Oil & Gas imports have always been the biggest import bill and Forex drain so there are good incentives to move. It is just they do it slowly and in their own ways and the handful of capital intensive companies who tried getting LFP manufacturing into India failed as China scale cannot be replicated in India due to differing political systems and cultures, even today
India’s approach has been to allow the competition but at a tariffed rate that makes the imports slightly more expensive than the domestic products. This ensures local industry doesn’t get decimated but also doesn’t get complacent without competition. The consumers get the option to buy BYD, but it won’t be cheap.
Assuming the blue wave continues for 2 more years, I've been wondering if the Democrats are going to open up America to Chinese EVs as a way to punish Elon for his engagement with the GOP
American auto unions largely aren't competing in the EV space. 80%+ of EVs sold in America aren't built using American union labor - Tesla at 60% sales is non-union, Rivian at 10%, Toyota imports EVs, Ford and Chevrolet build the Mach E and Equinox EV in Mexico
It doesn't refute GPs point. If foreign EVs are better than ICE vehicles manufactured by union labor, the unions are going to have a problem letting the foreign EVs in.
US car makers can be cheaper too if they put workers in slave-like conditions, even aside the Chinese govt subsidies and investment.
One example from Brazil since that's the topic:
> Brazilian prosecutors have filed a lawsuit accusing electric carmaker BYD of human trafficking and keeping its workers in “slavery-like conditions” in its biggest market outside China.
> The investigation found the Chinese workers were brought to Brazil under false pretences and their visas did not match their jobs.
> Prosecutors said the workers were found working in “slavery-live conditions” and with "minimum comfort and hygiene”, calling them victims of international human trafficking
> The workers were forced to sleep on beds that did not have mattresses and as many as 30 people shared a bathroom, MPT alleged.
BYD in China shows off their factory towns for how wonderful the workers live. Its a modern day Hershey. It might be more of a Brazil issue than a BYD issue.
BYD cars are cheaper because China just has the most expertise at building things at scale and because they're making many formerly discrete car parts entire modules, which are cheaper to manufacture.
There's also been plenty of reporting of 'slave like conditions' at Tesla, GM etc.
What you linked to is of contractors building the plant, not assembly line workers. It's a blurry line and certainly affiliated with BYD, but car assembly itself is moving toward 'dark' factories, populated by robots that are indeed kept in slave-like conditions, unpaid and worked beyond humane shifts.
As a side note, BYD indeed has a lot more workers per car vs a lot of their competitors, but because of the vertical integration, most are assembling upstream parts.
Cheaper but not cheap. US can pay literally 0 and still be substantially more expensive than PRC, labour simply rounding error ($500-$1000) per chassis.
BYD is cheaper because BYD engineers are smarter, have higher IQ and able to vertically integrate components to cut overheads.
in the US auto OEMs are mainly putting parts together, made by different suppliers like ZF, Bosch, Lemforder etc etc. Its assembly work and it split across hundreds of legacy car component suppliers
> BYD is cheaper because BYD engineers are smarter, have higher IQ and able to vertically integrate components to cut overheads.
Lol, I wonder why. It really is a mystery. Why did we once rule the world pre-1970's and have been waning and decaying ever since? Gee, maybe these Chinese geniuses can figure out the reason for us.
No it's what happens when smart state intelligently subsidizes to bring down structural costs, while retarded state foolishly subsidizes to keep pork barrel jobs program going as legacy processes fall into uncompetitiveness. We had 30 years of PRC shock evidence now - everything PRC made cheap, remains cheap long after subsidies, because they structurally lower floor vs western competition doesn't.
BYD is available in both South Korea and Japan and making inroads. The biggest barrier is a deep distrust of Chinese brands, not tariffs, plus in Japan's case favorable tax treatment of "kei" (light) cars, a Japan-only segment that BYD has just entered.
With the Republicans thrown out enmass last night maybe we can go back to the full switch over to becoming an electro state again, and leave this oil and gas bullshit in the past. I’m still not OK with opening our doors to BYD, but I want our own manufacturers to come up to speed and to build out massive charging infrastructure.
The irony of course is that Trump had a mandate to inflict some tariff pain in the name of rebuilding American manufacturing, and managed to completely spaff that up the wall with non-strategic and idiotic tariffs on friends and neighbours.
Not to get too political but I think we’re going to find out that Trump was/is a Manchurian candidate in the truest sense of the term at some point. He did everything in his power to decrease American hegemony and soft power.
This would happen everywhere where they shout "free market " from the rooftops would stop import tariffs.looking at Germany and the usa, specifically.
In Spain, they dont do that and adaption and dealerships for Chinese EVs is taking off nicely, I ask every single owner I can if they're happy with the service and the cars and all of them have never been happier. Subjective, yes, but I welcome the Chinese cars and free markets:-)
That’s cool until the EU decides that they’ve had enough of poor people driving their own cars and introduce tariffs or outright ban them. Then, how are you going to have them repaired? Maybe they even make it so that you can’t pass inspection with a Chinese car.
> EU decides that they’ve had enough of poor people driving their own cars
This about PRC localization, EU can't do shit. Think about insinuation if they tried? EU incumbent carmakers from economic giants, Germany, France, wants to prevent rest of EU from access to cheap cars to protect their industry and maintain economic hierarchy. What happens once PRC plants opens up in Spain, Hungary for whom DE, FR auto dying is now opportunity? Reality is EU is not so unified that smaller countries want to live in shadow of DE and FR forever. Once localized PRC plants take root, they become daggers vs incumbent EU producers instead of shields vs EU protectionism - they will be supported locally and the geopolitics of banning would break EU.
In the UK there's been a large increase as well as they're rock solid for a lower price. Am I odd for not considering one due to security concerns? I just can't wrap my head around buying what is essentially these days a smartphone on wheels from a hostile state that is probably sending data back to China. Car privacy these days is already bad enough.
I own a BYD, in another minor western aligned country..
I assume that all players are spying on me. Americans, Chinese, they are effectively the same. I just comfort myself by telling myself that if they both have my data then there is less leverage over me overall.
For the average person in the US or UK, this is probably an improvement over having a domestic car brand doing the surveillance and funneling the data to agencies and politicians that actually have incentives to infringe on your rights or crack down on you for political activism that goes against the current regime in power.
> from a hostile state that is probably sending data back to China.
In terms of data privacy which state isn't hostile? I'd like an EV which is not connected, but out of available choices, I don't care if it's China or the US or someone else.
Of course the simple answer is don't be hostile to PRC and PRC won't be hostile back. If security sharing concern (read FVEY circumventing domestic security laws), then bring Huawei back and I'm sure PRC, a surveillance state would be happy to spy on UK citizens on MI5 behalf just like the NSA. Or if you want to be spied on less, get a PRC car who are more likely to limit reporting to your home gov on strict lawful interception requirements... plus they literally won't have as much compute as US to track your everything, and whatever little compute they have, they're wasting tokens on microdrama videos. Like all those future US data centers going to be doing something. This comment 43% satire.
As usual, it's a debate where I'm not interested in either side. I don't want huge, over-sized, over-luxurious, over-priced American cars. I don't want somehow-even-more-luxurious, tracking hell, iPad hell Chinese cars.
When I order a Uber I just want a BYD… They should add the option in the app. Using the "Comfort" option increases the chance to get one, but I still get very bad/old cars occasionally.
Two Chinese EV here in Brazil. One BYD Seal for me and one Geely EX5 for wife and son.
They're amazing super quality cars. Cheap maintenance. There's no other can compete for quality + price. We was explored for decades from ocidental companies. No more.
Out of curiosity - how exactly does BRICS affect the entire situation? I don't know much about how it's structured and what it brings to member countries.
I'm asking just because BYD is building plants and selling cars in Europe too, despite EU's tariffs on Chinese cars.
Do you think Brazil wouldn't be an interesting enough market for Chinese automakers without BRICS?
I read some horror stories chinese ev dealers charging $700 nzd to inspect exhaust system so your warranty stays valid (technically you can do maintenance in independent shops, but it’s rare).
77 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 26.4 ms ] threadMoreover, I always wonder how Americans accuse China of subsidizing its industries, while I never hear about any serious investment done by any big US company that is not conditioned by huge tax reductions.
All the kinds of fiscal facilities that the big US companies receive from the state or federal governments would be strictly forbidden in most places of Europe, as being a form of state help that distorts competition.
Where are you getting that idea?
I am too lazy to search now for quotations, but already the POTUS has referred to this subject so frequently that it should not be difficult to find such examples yourself.
Attempting nonetheless a search, one of the first entries is a New York Times article that says:
"The Trump administration has dismantled nearly 100 policies focused on clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals"
The following is not a joke, but it is an official statement published on the White House site:
"The Administration approved 76 coal-related permits to reinvigorate America’s beautiful, clean coal industry."
Also consider: if California got rid of prop 65 warnings would that be bad? How would that fare on your scorecard?
Nonetheless, it is very likely that in many places they are not enforced, except perhaps when they might be used to punish someone who fell in disgrace for other reasons.
Meanwhile PRC annual renewable production wipes about 100m barrel of oil energy equivalent per day over their life time, i.e. comparable to global oil consumption - they are functionally preventing oil use from doubling. Every year, PRC solar is averting equivalent of 100m barrels of future oil consumption. Literally the greatest emission aversion machine in human history - PRC functionally preventing so much emissions its carbon foot print is negative if you use sensible attributions.
> Why not just go all in on that and zero out any country that doesnt extract carbon sources!
We should in fact, totally do that, aka on going GHG Protocol Scope3 Cat11 battleground, among others. Precisely to address statistically context illiterate claims like muh Murican emissions went down and muh trade corrected co2 went down because legacy accounting standards specifically masks / offloads emissions extracted from US onto their customers. Shifting emissions to extractor responsibility (Scope 3), is in fact heavily politicized / lobbied against by US fossil industry to make US #s look better. But that's all it is, fabricated numbers for lame aktually arguments that somehow export oil cleaner than domestic coal... Maybe on a spreadsheet, using biased formulas, for useful idiots to quote.
What kind of vehicles are people replacing with BYDs? I always assumed Brazilians drove mostly "legacy" VW or Nissans, but I looked at VW's Brazilian website and you all seem to have most of the same vehicles that are available in Europe and North America, including the ID.4!
I'd say around 60% of the Ubers I get are BYDs and I'm glad when it's one because that means it's a newer car and it's very comfortable.
Very well. Not only BYD but also other brands like GWM and Geely.
> What kind of vehicles are people replacing with BYDs?
Combustion cars with the same price, they are not replacing other electrical vehicles because the Chinese brands are way cheaper yet they are good cars.
> I always assumed Brazilians drove mostly "legacy" VW or Nissans
Nowadays we have many models from different brands.
In the past the fleet was basically VW, Ford, Chevrolet and Fiat. In the late 90s and early 2000s the Japanesne (Honda, Toyota and Nissan) and French (Renault, Citroën, Peugeot) became popular, and then Hyundai also became a success here. Recently, the Chinese brands are becoming more popular, especially Chery and the ones that I mentioned before.
> including the ID.4
But I never saw it here, even though VW is a very popular brand here.
cheap, fast, good, its a rare moment to pick all three and the market is
most reservations about EVs are based on range anxiety, charging time and cost. only people with a certain level of advantage will pay to experience inconvenience, and that issue disintegrates at a certain threshold for a much broader population
I'm kind of torn myself. Although I'd like more range, 300 does get me where I'm going, and performance vehicles want less weight, not more.
The thing all these countries have in common is their own Automobile sector which is a huge part of the economy that they need to protect.
BYD had to open factories here
One example from Brazil since that's the topic:
> Brazilian prosecutors have filed a lawsuit accusing electric carmaker BYD of human trafficking and keeping its workers in “slavery-like conditions” in its biggest market outside China.
> The investigation found the Chinese workers were brought to Brazil under false pretences and their visas did not match their jobs.
> Prosecutors said the workers were found working in “slavery-live conditions” and with "minimum comfort and hygiene”, calling them victims of international human trafficking
> The workers were forced to sleep on beds that did not have mattresses and as many as 30 people shared a bathroom, MPT alleged.
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/byd-china-ev-sued-b...
There's also been plenty of reporting of 'slave like conditions' at Tesla, GM etc.
As a side note, BYD indeed has a lot more workers per car vs a lot of their competitors, but because of the vertical integration, most are assembling upstream parts.
in the US auto OEMs are mainly putting parts together, made by different suppliers like ZF, Bosch, Lemforder etc etc. Its assembly work and it split across hundreds of legacy car component suppliers
Lol, I wonder why. It really is a mystery. Why did we once rule the world pre-1970's and have been waning and decaying ever since? Gee, maybe these Chinese geniuses can figure out the reason for us.
the real argument is efficiency, US cannot match efficiency and scale. Thats the root cause.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-evs-win-o...
In Spain, they dont do that and adaption and dealerships for Chinese EVs is taking off nicely, I ask every single owner I can if they're happy with the service and the cars and all of them have never been happier. Subjective, yes, but I welcome the Chinese cars and free markets:-)
This about PRC localization, EU can't do shit. Think about insinuation if they tried? EU incumbent carmakers from economic giants, Germany, France, wants to prevent rest of EU from access to cheap cars to protect their industry and maintain economic hierarchy. What happens once PRC plants opens up in Spain, Hungary for whom DE, FR auto dying is now opportunity? Reality is EU is not so unified that smaller countries want to live in shadow of DE and FR forever. Once localized PRC plants take root, they become daggers vs incumbent EU producers instead of shields vs EU protectionism - they will be supported locally and the geopolitics of banning would break EU.
In terms of data privacy which state isn't hostile? I'd like an EV which is not connected, but out of available choices, I don't care if it's China or the US or someone else.
They're amazing super quality cars. Cheap maintenance. There's no other can compete for quality + price. We was explored for decades from ocidental companies. No more.
Thanks GOD for BRICS.
I'm asking just because BYD is building plants and selling cars in Europe too, despite EU's tariffs on Chinese cars.
Do you think Brazil wouldn't be an interesting enough market for Chinese automakers without BRICS?
I read some horror stories chinese ev dealers charging $700 nzd to inspect exhaust system so your warranty stays valid (technically you can do maintenance in independent shops, but it’s rare).
been to brazil about half a dozen times and never heard that phrase before, in English or Portuguese
article that says and is titled like that :)
https://electrek.co/2026/11/04/germany-electric-car-sales-re...