BYD Sells 4.6M Vehicles in 2025, Meets Revised Sales Goal

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-01/byd-sells-4-6-million-vehicles-in-2025-meets-revised-sales-goal

by toomuchtodo • 7 months ago

361 659 7 months ago

toomuchtodo8• 7 months ago

Selling that many cars despite intense competition at home and trade barriers abroad seems the more natural way to express that story.

They instead focused on how in evil communist China you need to continue to make better cars than rivals in order for your business to succeed and grow.

What a strange system they have over there. If only they were capitalist like the US and being an incumbent connected to the regime was all you needed to keep extracting money from the population despite product stagnation.

djohnston• 7 months ago

Two things can be true at once:

1. BYD has rapidly surpassed many western companies in terms of product quality / desirability

2. Chinese automotive industry is a strategic threat to Western military capabilities. If they are successful in usurping European / American auto manufacturers, it will be a death blow to an already hollowed-out industrial base that is critical to any sustained military engagement.

So, yes, western companies have stagnated, and yes, the West needs to keep these dinosaurs around through subsidies (which Chinese manufacturers also receieve from their regime).

blackjack_• 7 months ago

If the US had a competent government they would react by pulling the same playbook as China to compete. Heavily subsidize and incentivize production of EVs by new companies to replace the rotten core of existing US automakers to produce price competitive and quality competitive vehicles, then let the old guard burn down.

Subsidizing the rotten core of corrupt US automakers will not produce a new or functional industrial base. It will simply maintain the illusion of an industrial base until anything of importance needs done. But that’s basically the MO of any “mature” industry in the US.

spaceman_2020• 7 months ago

So the free hand of the market isn’t quite as free after all

If the 20th century was a repudiation of soviet communism vs capitalism, the 21st century seems to put capitalism on the backfoot

seydor3• 7 months ago

we keep saying these things while industry-after-industry gets disrupted by the chinese

Next industry to be disrupted is housing, because seemingly the entire western world has is not even trying to provide housing (a necessity) to everyone.

Subsidies are dangerous in the long term

runako7• 7 months ago

Re #2 -- locking Chinese vehicles out of the market will also lead to the downfall of our industrial base over time. In general, Americans (including those who work in US manufacturing) do not understand that Chinese vehicles are very competitive. At some point, those vehicles are likely to surpass domestic capabilities (they are already there viewed through a price/performance lens).

All of this is down to the simple fact that essentially no American has ever driven a Chinese vehicle and does not know anybody who has. They are not even getting secondhand reports. This is worse than the '80s when the Japanese makers arrived in the sense that in the '80s everybody could see the quality of the Toyotas and assess quality/performance for themselves. It's much worse to not even know how good the competition is.

From a business standpoint, it's especially bad for the domestic industry because the majors actually do need to be competitive in fast-growing regions like Latin America, Asia, and Africa. It's not a viable strategy to depend on protectionism at home while ceding countries where most people live.

alecco• 7 months ago

Source: company statements

Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars in public parking lots: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/byd-australia-accused-...

And BYD sits on a pile of debt they use to pay suppliers expecting ever-increasing sales (Evergrande business model). https://medium.com/@davidsehyeonbaek/a-deep-dive-into-byds-s...

AnotherGoodName5• 7 months ago

It seems that BYD are storing cars improperly but there’s nothing in the first link about financial engineering.

bryanlarsen4• 7 months ago

A car transport holds thousands of ships. Therefore requiring temporary storage for thousands of cars is normal.

Even if you count the massive "hidden debt", BYD's debt load is still a small fraction of the big car makers, many of whom hold over $200 billion in debt.

honeycrispy• 7 months ago

Which car makers? Ford, GMC, Chevrolet are all closer to $100 billion. Tesla holds $13b.

baxtr2• 7 months ago

A friend of mine works in the chemical industry in Europe. One reason European producers are currently facing challenges is that Chinese producers are dumping chemicals into the global market at heavy discounts.

The underlying cause of this is that the Chinese housing market, which previously absorbed almost all chemicals, has effectively stalled (Evergrande, et al.).

I wonder whether we're observing a similar effect in the automobile industry as well.

smallmancontrov2• 7 months ago

Yes, but causality is backwards: the Chinese housing market stalled because China took the debt punch-bowl away from housing and gave it to the industrial sector.

It's also worth mentioning that loan subsidies play a bigger role in Chinese capital markets: Chinese industry is largely capitalized with state debt rather than private debt/equity or public markets. Zooming out, as a response to Trump's 1st term tariffs China went on a big autarky push by redirecting its citizens' and companies' deposits into a loan bazooka for the industrial sector. We are now seeing the fruits of that. The big questions have to do with (true) profitability and (true) balance sheets: can the new industries service their debts well enough for the government to hold face?

tokioyoyo• 7 months ago

Are they actually dumping, or extraction/refinement of materials is actually much cheaper in China, so it feels like dumping?

Frankly, I don’t mind it, because western companies should also engage in this behaviour, if they can. Sell physical items for cheaper than it takes to produce them! They’re doing it with services and etc. anyways, might as well do it with physical products too.

toomuchtodo8• 7 months ago

BYD owns their own fleet of car carriers for export, with the capacity to have ~30k vehicles shipping to other markets at any one time on their vessels. From this piece:

BYD Deliveries outside of China hit 1.05 million in 2025. The company has set a goal to expand overseas sales to between 1.5 million to 1.6 million units in 2026, according to a Citigroup Inc. report in November that cited a meeting with BYD management.

Edit: The debt is irrelevant, China isn’t America. They’ll nationalize and inflate away any institutional debt or wipe it out, but still have a third of the world’s manufacturing capacity. Tesla exists on vibes, Chinese EV makers build, for example. jmyeet’s comment mostly nails this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46456020

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424124 (citations)

(global light vehicle TAM is ~90M units/year, and Chinese EV automakers are going to soak the market with their production capacity)

faitswulff2• 7 months ago

They’ll nationalize and inflate away any institutional debt or wipe it out

This is just the reverse, actually, China isn’t afraid to go so far as to jail CEOs. There is no such thing as too big to fail in China, and all the Chinese domestic companies know it. The bailout playbook is a western thing.

specialp• 7 months ago

China has a huge deflation problem that they export to the world via cheap products. They have a lot of capacity and not enough consumers. So in China, an unstated mild Keynesian approach makes sense. They can sweep debt under the rug and take in inflation from net debtor countries

SapporoChris2• 7 months ago

regarding: "Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars in public parking lots" Sure you can post a speculative article, but this link is far more informative. https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/byd-car-park-mystery-s...

It doesn't really appear to be anything of grand significance.

thesmtsolver24• 7 months ago

Also their abysmal human rights record

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...

bigfatkitten2• 7 months ago

Dumping notwithstanding, they're still selling cars into the Australian market in enormous numbers. Four of the top ten EVs sold this year are BYD, as are the top two PHEVs.

https://www.drive.com.au/news/australias-best-selling-cars-b...

bigfatkitten2• 7 months ago

Dumping notwithstanding, BYD is still selling cars into the Australian market in enormous numbers. Four of the top ten EVs sold this year are BYD, as are the top two PHEVs.

If you account for the fact that Australian market Teslas are built in China, then China is producing 8 of the top 10 EVs.

https://www.drive.com.au/news/australias-best-selling-cars-b...

dalyons17• 7 months ago

Which is direct evidence for what would happen if they were allowed to sell fairly into the US and Europe. The future of cars is Chinese, the US automakers can’t survive on protectionism forever

nl• 7 months ago

They have $5.6B in debt, around the same as Mazda and Polestar and roughly half Tesla's $13B.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/automakers-with-th...

And vast parking lots full of cars isn't dumping, it where they put them before sending them to dealers:

its parking areas are still brimming with new BYDs fresh from arriving at nearby Port Kembla ahead of their delivery to BYD dealers.

ulfw7• 7 months ago

You write and I quote: "Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars" Your own link to proof your quote says: "Hundreds of cars alleged to be illegally stored at a NSW fun park"

AnotherGoodName5• 7 months ago

I think EU/NA residents are a little naive on how much Chinese cars are dominating the market. Chinese cars don't sell just in China. They utterly dominate globally outside of EU/NA where they face extreme tariffs. To the point where certain cars that you'd say were American (eg. Tesla) actually make most of their cars in China.

Right now around the world in non EU/NA countries Tesla's a bit on the nose. All Tesla's in Australia are Chinese made regardless but it's then a choice of Chinese made Tesla vs Chinese made BYD and the BYDs are by all reports excellent cars.

PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same car, even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made cars in and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened you.

embedding-shape8• 7 months ago

They utterly dominate globally outside of EU/NA where they face extreme tariffs.

Even inside of EU, seemingly BYD have reasonable prices, especially compared to their EU competitors. I'm an current Audi owner in Spain, who is currently very close of getting a BYD DM-i Touring, and compared to what I would get from Audi for the same price, BYD still offers a lot more in everything except "nice steering feeling", at least from what I've gathered from my test drives.

eisa01• 7 months ago

That's because the car lobby only cared about electric vehicle tariffs, the petrol cars from China are tax free

(There's also anti-dumping tariffs on electric bikes from China, I wonder if it's the same lobby...)

t0mas882• 7 months ago

As a long term BMW driver instead of Audi I have the same. I'm swapping one of my two BMWs for a Model Y Premium. Also tried the BYD 7 but the Model Y felt nicer to drive and with more space.

The BMW iX1 is disappointing in range, interior luxury and power. It's below an older 6 series (that I'm switching from), and much less powerful than a Model Y AWD. No idea why BMW thinks they can price it like they do. The other option was the BMW i5 Touring but it's more expensive and feels "old" already.

andsoitis• 7 months ago

offers a lot more in everything except "nice steering feeling"

Isn’t it wise to prefer a nice steering feeling? Your body is, after all, going to be feeling it every time you drive.

sowbug• 7 months ago

Even inside of EU, seemingly BYD have reasonable prices, especially compared to their EU competitors.

This will usually be the case, because domestic manufacturers raise prices once tariffs (import taxes) on foreign manufacturers are imposed.

This is also why import taxes are so hard to eliminate once they're introduced: domestic manufacturers get used to the gratuitous revenue cushion, and the government gets used to the gratuitous tax cushion. Meanwhile consumers wonder why everything has gotten so expensive.

greggoB• 7 months ago

Your entire comment reads a bit like an ad for Chinese cars, conveniently omitting the damage these automakers are doing to the global car industry by dumping cheap supply wherever they can to secure market share, all enabled by heavy state subsidies. [0]

PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same car, even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made cars in and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened you.

Because given the chance, China 100% would never do the same (or worse).

[0] https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dil...

interactivecode• 7 months ago

Are the big capitalist car companies scared of some strong competition? Maybe they should innovate instead of lobby against international competition

swarnie• 7 months ago

Lets assume all this is true, why should i be concerned about it?

If the Chinese tax payer is going to help me buy a new car then thanks, my own government isn't going to do that.

seydor3• 7 months ago

it's not like cars are necessities like food. and i doubt these companies are unprofitable - the chinese govt has no incentive to provide the world with free cars.

runako7• 7 months ago

dumping cheap supply wherever they can to secure market share, all enabled by heavy state subsidies

Assuming for a moment this is more true for China than for other countries. Why would the average Canadian prefer to pay more for their next car versus having a similar car subsidized by the Chinese taxpayer? Most Canadians do not work in the auto industry. Further, the protectionism practiced in the EU/US/Canada is not likely to be successful long-term, meaning those auto industries are doomed.

Best path forward is to let in competition, make the domestics stronger, and let consumers get cheaper cars in the meanwhile. Provide some additional temporary support if necessary. (This is more or less how the US absorbed Japanese and then Korean cars.)

shimman• 7 months ago

I'm not really seeing the issue with this. Capitalists will tell you this is a good thing because consumers will benefit, or is that only capitalism if it benefits the American elites?

Why should I care that the CEO of Ford is struggling when he pays his workers so terrible? If they want another government bail it, we should just nationalize the industry and implement workplace democracy for the staff so they can be accountable to the workers + people in some fashion.

But yeah, it's sad seeing the demise of US liberalism but what do you expect when the last 50 years was naked imperialism for corporations while denying any social responsibility for the country?

didibus• 7 months ago

I feel like closing off access is a bad long term strategy. Instead of being forced to compete and match or outmatch competition Canadian manufacturing can get complacent and lean on restrictions. But the whole thing feels like a ticking bomb.

DustinEchoes• 7 months ago

PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same car, even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made cars in and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened you.

The sheer irony of an Australian saying this! I mean you’re in danger, dude!

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/world/china-live-fire-drills-...

The naivety of the comments here is just astonishing.

Guid_NewGuid• 7 months ago

Correct, in every thread about BYD or other car manufacturers people seem to forget about the other 7.5 billion people in the world outside of the US and Europe. Sure the US' broken dealership laws and red-scare tantrums will stop these cars selling there, and in their economic satraps, but for the global majority countries there's no such barrier.

dhx• 7 months ago

Compare at the same scale:

Vantor Legion-2 image of the BYD plant in Zhengzhou as captured on 18 January 2025: https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=113.9361%2...

Vantor WorldView-3 image of the Tesla plant in Austin as captured on 31 January 2024: https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=-97.6189%2...

toomuchtodo8• 7 months ago

The size of BYD's factory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228138 - November 2024 (615 comments)

aeonfox4• 7 months ago

No two ways to look at it. Electrification is the inevitable next step for mobility, and BYD are going to be top dog. It's pretty obvious why Tesla is 'diversifying'/divesting into robotics, but Asia has plenty of movers in that space too, not least BYD. SpaceX is the only moat Elon has left.

pengaru• 7 months ago

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padjo• 7 months ago

I’ve been hearing about the rise of the Chinese car industry for 20 years, judging by the number of BYDs I’m now seeing it has finally happened.

melling• 7 months ago

China is the largest car market in the world. Almost twice as large as the United States.

culi6• 7 months ago

China is also over 70% of the world's EV production

the_arun• 7 months ago

Xiaomi is another maker. I saw a good review on Xiaomi SU7 - https://youtu.be/Mb6H7trzMfI by Marques Brownlee

justinhj• 7 months ago

They also migrated 100s of millions of mopeds to electric bikes and shipped new ebikes over the last 10 years. That enormous scale no doubt fed directly to battery technology and assembly techniques that help with cars. Many Chinese don't own cars. (That's changing fast).

renewiltord• 7 months ago

If you only travel to North America and Europe you’d never know but I went to South America and India and the former mostly had Chinese cars and the latter had big ads for a BYD MPV everywhere in Bangalore.

So the Chinese car makers are popular outside the West. I drove a couple of Changan cars and they weren’t even as nice as my Subaru in terms of handling but they functioned well as cars.

phatfish2• 7 months ago

BYD is very much present in the UK (Telsa still seem the most common, but BYD are getting close), it must be the same in mainland Europe unless the EU is blocking them more aggressively. The Ford dealer down the road from me turned into a BYD service centre in the last couple of months.

aunty_helen2• 7 months ago

Can confirm. Colombia based, a year ago I had my first Uber trip in a BYD, now I would guess about 10% of my journeys are Chinese EVs. It's impressive how fast they've caught up and mostly surpased their competition. If the Japanese took 20 years, the Koreans 10, then the Chinese have done it in 5.

stephen_g2• 7 months ago

They've suddenly all appeared in Australia too - we had BYD for quite a while and brands like Volvo and Polestar (owned by China's Geeley), but suddenly we have Leapmotor, Deepal, Omoda Jaecoo and Geeley themselves (just the ones I can think of, probably others) having all appeared on our market in literally something like six months...

vbezhenar2• 7 months ago

In my country over last 5 years the majority of new cars now from China, it happened so swift. I still think that Japan cars are the best, but it's hard to justify paying 2x and getting inferior (in terms on features) product, while reviews of new chinese cars are largely positive.

dalyons17• 7 months ago

Which country?

cdmckay• 7 months ago

In Lima I would say half the cars I see on the road are Chinese, many I’ve never heard of. It’s crazy.

object-a2• 7 months ago

For anyone who has tried cars from both automakers, how does BYD compare to Tesla on similar trim vehicles?

AnotherGoodName5• 7 months ago

If you had to pay US/EU prices for a Tesla vs BYD you'd go with BYD no question. But the majority of Teslas are made in China and when put a Chinese made Tesla alongside a Chinese made BYD it's a coin flip.

So as an Australian I'd roughly rate them the same with BYD high end matching Tesla's high end and BYD having a low end that Tesla doesn't compete with (the Atto which is ~USD $15000 for a small electric hatchback has no Tesla equivalent).

mvdtnz• 7 months ago

BYD doesn't sell in USA.

zipy124• 7 months ago

Isn't the seagull the cheapest model at like $8k?

t0mas882• 7 months ago

BYD Sealion 7 is better than a 2025 Model Y Standard and worse than a Model Y Premium in terms of ride quality/suspension and driving dynamics.

The interior is more taste dependent, but the Model Y Standard is clearly a low budget version (with fabric seats) that's below the BYD. The Model Y Premium interior and seats felt higher quality to me, but it has a more minimalist design while the BYD has a more traditional setup with a screen behind the wheel.

The Tesla screen/app seem more responsive and premium. Also above for example VW where things are often sluggish and don't feel as well designed from a UX perspective.

object-a2• 7 months ago

Thank you for answering the question

faizmokh• 7 months ago

In my opinion, BYD car looks more premium than Tesla. Reasonably priced too.

jmyeet2• 7 months ago

We are seeing the culmination of the 50+ China industrialization project at the samme time as the West's 50+ year financialization and deindustrialization project, all to concentrate even more wealth in the hands of the 0.01%.

China is really the only country capable and willing to build infrastructure. The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring. The chip ban in particular has created a captive market for Chinese chips. In 1945, American exceptionalists believed the USSR would take 20+ yars to copy the atomic bomb, if they could do it at all. It took 4 years. China will do the same thing with EUV in the coming years.

Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs and import bans on BYD in the US and much of Europe.

Additionally, Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.

As an example of how China uses state power, a famine in the 20th century caused China to decide that food security was a national security interest. The availability of cheap, quality food is viewed as essential and the state intervenes to ensure that continues. Likewise for housing.

Western companies seem increasingly focused on the top 10% because the bottom 90% have nothing left to eextract.

modeless2• 7 months ago

I've never seen a comment simultaneously be so right on some things and so wrong on others.

The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring

Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them down a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab juggernaut later is folly.

Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs

Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than any other car company and less than many including BYD obviously. They also compete directly with BYD without tariff protection worldwide and in China and do well. They are worth a trillion dollars because of the potential of their self-driving software which is far ahead of any other car company's including those in China.

Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.

Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent need for them right now but they can switch if necessary.

Recurecur2• 7 months ago

Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them down a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab juggernaut later is folly.

I’m quite sure advanced semiconductor fabs are considered a strategic necessity by China regardless of restrictions. Further, China is now getting the H200 chip…

Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent need for them right now but they can switch if necessary.

There are also plenty of rare earth extraction projects coming online outside of China!

jmyeet2• 7 months ago

Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than any other car company

Tesla was saved by a DOE loan [1]. Tesla was kept afloat with carbon tax credits. Yes, the Big Three got bailouts in 2008. And now, most importantly, import barriers are the only thing keeping Tesla afloat.

[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/573148-dept-o...

kasey_junk• 7 months ago

China is a food importer and Chinese housing, especially in the tier 1 cities, is as expensive as anywhere in the world.

jjcc• 7 months ago

As you mentioned EUV machine, I happened to read an article from a former Executive of ZhongXin, a domestic competitor of the famouse Huawei and also sanctioned by US. He said that China had no insentive to develop lithography technology including EUV until Trump blocked the sales of EUV machine in his first term. [1]

There are tons of other cases, like EDA software, etc. It used to be a bilateral business. Now China become more and more independent of the rest of the world due to external pressure.

BTW, I've been working and living in the West (more specifically , in Canada) for almost 30 years but also have access to Chinese language media. I've been watching a lot of misunderstanding or misinformation. It's less in recentl years. I have to stay way from some of the topics to avoid being downvote because misinformation believers strongly believe I'm wrong for those topics.

[1]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/VCEbmtljCS6jRCLaGxCa1A

refurb10• 7 months ago

I’ve never seen a comment so misinformed.

You claim Tesla is created by government subsidies yet ignore the $230B in subsidies for the Chinese market?

prism56• 7 months ago

I think where I live I see more BYD than teslas these days. They look better too.

asa4003• 7 months ago

It's like the 1970s all over again with how the US Big 3 makers are facing an existential threat held at bay only by protectionism. They're going to have to learn to compete yet again.

pm902• 7 months ago

Did they ever learn to compete then? The only thing that protected them then was that Japan was a US “ally” and could be “persuaded” to go along with protectionism. China has no such need.

I would argue that the 70s were a trial run for whats happening today but instead of becoming more competitive the automakers focused on lobbying for Government help; a playbook that won’t help them today.

And even more stupidly, traditional American carmarkers are discontinuing EV models and shutting down factories JUST when they finally had an edge over their japanese competitors.

Recurecur2• 7 months ago

Outside the purely electric vehicles (where I believe Tesla competes very well, where is BYD at with FSD?), is there a Chinese equivalent to:

- The upcoming EREV (mostly electric extended range hybrid) F-150 truck? This is expected to have ~700 mile range, and of course no charging hassles. It’s main advantage over the now defunct Lightning will be towing range.

- The Chevy Corvette Stingray? Say what you want, but the high end ICE sports cars have an appeal of their own…

I believe the USA still has an edge in some areas of the market.

asa4003• 7 months ago

Did they ever learn to compete then? The only thing that protected them then was that Japan was a US “ally” and could be “persuaded” to go along with protectionism. China has no such need.

Oh, indeed. I was attempting to be generous, but it's arguable whether they deserve that generosity.

I would argue that the 70s were a trial run for whats happening today but instead of becoming more competitive the automakers focused on lobbying for Government help; a playbook that won’t help them today.

We're still paying for this today with the so-called "Chicken Tax" (and all of the other crash and emissions regulations) that has deprived us so many good Japanese trucks over the years.

englishspot2• 7 months ago

ford in particular seems to only ever give up on everything. they couldn't compete on compacts, so they killed the focus and fiesta. they couldn't compete on EVs, so they killed those too. next thing you know toyota will start carving away at the F-150's market share and they'll kill that, too.

KeplerBoy• 7 months ago

what makes you think that playbook won't work this time? There are no BYDs on US streets anytime soon.

Really there are no US made cars anywhere but the US, it's a totally isolated market with some minor imports from european luxury brands.

energy1233• 7 months ago

You can't compete if you have minimum wage and immigration restrictions. The labor market is far too costly compared to what Chinese companies have access to.

Mountain_Skies• 7 months ago

Where is China importing labor from?

asa4003• 7 months ago

Germany would have something to say about that.

jillesvangurp• 7 months ago

Like BYD, there's nothing stopping GM, Ford, and other manufacturers from opening factories anywhere in the world and employing the locals at a discount. They certainly did that in the past. But that's not leveling the playing field because their products are simply lacking. Too expensive to make, too inefficient. That's fixable but it would require investment and right now the US car manufacturers seem to want to invest less instead of more. It's hard to see how they would catch up. Ford is currently doing the pragmatic thing which is partnering with other companies to produce cars for the international market. VW and Renault in the EU, various Chinese manufacturers in China. US models are a non starter for those markets.

The Chinese are actually investing heavily in robotics and automation. They rely a lot less on cheap labor than you seem to assume. And their production is going global as well they are building manufacturing plants on most continents. They are opening plants in Europe and South America. BYD factories are state of the art.

gtirloni• 7 months ago

I see electric/hybrid BYD cars more and more every day. Meanwhile, US/EU automakers are still struggling to offer anything barely competitive.

TulliusCicero• 7 months ago

I know that "laziness" is kind of a generic/useless criticism to throw at a company or sector, but there really is that vibe for EVs in the West.

raverbashing2• 7 months ago

I really wonder what are the parts where BYD gets its competitiveness from vs where it might be behind

Software explains a lot, dumping explains some of it but it might not be all of it

ZeroGravitas2• 7 months ago

Not angering the oligarchs who profit from oil appears to be the root cause.

This then flows downstream to inconsistent and patchwork government support for the transition to EVs.

The short term incentives aren't all properly aligned for car makers to fully commit to build EVs and support the supply chain to do that.

smallmancontrov2• 7 months ago

Triffin Dilemma, not laziness. This is a macroeconomic problem.

jlarocco2• 7 months ago

The problem is that few people in "the west" wants EVs.

It's basic supply and demand - the sales are tanking, and without subsidies nobody will buy them, and the car companies are realizing that.

A few models (Teslas, for example) do okay with the upper class, but the lower and middle class can't afford them, don't have anywhere to charge them, and have to drive too much to depend on them.

Even in a trendy, wealthy city like Boulder, CO which is all about saving the environment and going green there isn't nearly enough charging capacity for everybody to use EVs.

An EV is better than no car at all, but they're a downgrade from an ICE in most cases.

rapsey• 7 months ago

EU car makers need to confirm to insane EU laws regarding every little thing.

raverbashing2• 7 months ago

BYD selling to Europe would also need to conform to these

runako7• 7 months ago

Don't Chinese makers need to conform to the same EU laws when selling cars in the EU? That's how it works in the US.

monooso• 7 months ago

Every car maker selling cars in the EU needs to comply with EU laws.

That's why Europe is mercifully free of Cybertrucks: they can't legally operate on roads within the EU, because they don't meet the safety requirements (one of your "little things").

victorbjorklund4• 7 months ago

Exactly the same rules for BYD, Tesla etc (maybe with the exception of second hand private import)

nutjob24• 7 months ago

every little thing

ie, killing people and polluting the planet, mostly.

Alconicon3• 7 months ago

I don't believe the West can sustain its lead. The US became rich by being the worlds manufacturing powerhouse in 1900. Over time, they grew comfortable, developed a massive upper class, and pivoted toward service and 'knowledge' jobs. They outsourced production to China or simply allowed China to take it over.

Germany and the EU followed a similar path. We know how to build machines and industrial products; precision and detail are our stereotypes and trademark. However, we also grew comfortable, focusing on services and high-level strategy while we did not invest to fix energy prices, raw resource dependencies and labor/automatisation.

How long is China looking fo resources in Afrika? Despite China being huge and having plenty of?

China overtook Germany as the leader in industrial exports in 2018, and now in 2026, the gap is already to broad. China has mastered machine building, controls the entire supply chain, and possesses modern technology; all while maintaining lower labor costs and a massive workforce.

Even if the USA and Germany try to avoid Chinese products, the rest of the world will not. We are entering a new era: the mass production of affordable, precise machinery globally, powered by China. If regions like Africa buy their solar, wind, and batteries from China, their entire energy grid and the machines running on it will be Chinese. They will look to China, not the West.

For example, a German company making weaving machines recently noted their price must be €60k to stay profitable, while a Chinese machine of the same quality costs only €20k. Once technology reaches its peak, differentiation is no longer possible to justify higher prices. The car industry is next; cars are becoming a commodity with shrinking profit margins. This shift will make China incredibly wealthy over the next 20 years.

And it wasn't even out of the blue. The shit was written on the wall and despite that what happens? We in germany discuss bureaucracy, if we should change our energy grid, IF investments in cheaper energy is reasonable etc.

We can’t even build our own infrastructure anymore. Look at the SuedOstLink disaster: while China builds massive 'Super Grids' in record time, Germany has spent over a decade and billions of Euros just arguing about a single power cable. Because we are stuck in bureaucracy and 'Not In My Backyard' protests, our energy costs are skyrocketing, while China doesn't care but still beats us in renewables.

It’s the perfect example of a society that has become so comfortable it has forgotten how to actually build the physical foundations of its own wealth.

And adding on top of all of that: AI and Robotic progress is fast, so crazy fast than when its here, we might have solved the other issues i mentioned...

dalyons17• 7 months ago

Legacy automakers EVs are just ICE cars with the engine swapped out. Whereas BYDs, teslas etc are a ground up rethink, vertically integrated with battery manufacturing and software.

Classic innovators dilemma - it seems to be almost impossible to align incentives inside legacy auto to do the necessary revolutionary change. Every individual and sub group are internally invested and short term focused on their legacy frames, drivetrains, layouts, electronics, software and supply chains. That’s why you keep getting offered the same car, but now as a sub par EV. So they will lose, because they can’t adapt.

stephen_g2• 7 months ago

They are getting a lot better in the drivetrain at least, watching videos of teardowns (like Munroe Live) - a couple of years ago a lot of the legacy car brands were using OEM motors and inverters etc. from companies like Bosch, but the newer models are getting a lot more advanced. Probably Lucid had the nicest motor and electronics package and everyone seems to have converged on motor windings a lot like theirs (including Tesla and the legacy brands).

But there is still a lot to be desired in legacy EVs, but generally at least some of the brands are slowly moving in the right direction.

eunos4• 7 months ago

BYD at least also started as ICE car makers from acquiring some bankrupt state owned car makers.

Only from 2019 or 2020 I believe they stopped making ICE.

tw19844• 7 months ago

US/EU automakers are still struggling to offer anything barely competitive.

Imagine yourself being one of the top management guys in one of those legacy car makers, you've spent your entire life building what you "earned" in that company...Suddenly the company tells you that you will be sidelined so more resources that once thought to be under your control can be allocated to an EV project so you can be further marginalize in the near future. what will be your reactions? You offer to help in the project (by building junks with your legacy understanding on cars) or you do anything possible to sink that project.

The result is the same - your legacy carmaker company is fxxked.

It is not like just US/EU legacy automakers struggling to offer anything competitive - Chinese legacy automakers that have been in the exact same market for decades with direct access to the exact same supply chain and government subsidies are suffering from the exact same problem. It is not about regulations, market access or subsidies. It is just human nature.

stasomatic2• 7 months ago

US dealers and manufacturers have no financial incentive in promoting and selling EVs. They can’t survive on fixing window chips, rotating tires and occasional bodywork alone. It’s a huge industry with long tentacles.

And when they do or did have incentives, they were not passed on to the consumers. My 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 had a $57K sticker. That’s not what I paid for it and cheapish leases are aplenty- but - when the federal $7500 credit expired, they simply dropped the MSRP by that much if not more. BMW and others are pursuing the same strategy in the states. The car was never worth near that much to begin with. They were and are jacking up prices and pocketing the change.

BYD is dumping.

malshe• 7 months ago

I bought BYD stock in 2025 before split in the hope that their market dominance will translate to great returns. The stock has pretty consistently traded down since then. Meanwhile Tesla stock soared purely on the air coming out of Elon’s mouth.

hn_throwaway_99• 7 months ago

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

But as another comment pointed out, they have tons of debt, and TFA states that their "revised" target was revised downward, meaning earlier stock valuations were priced for higher sales.

dzhiurgis• 7 months ago

Chinese stocks don’t seem to follow any reality either. BYD is basically flat over 5 years.

Tiktaalik3• 7 months ago

The explanation that I'm finding more and more compelling is that this is because there's actual competition in China, whereas in the west conglomerates have been able to carve up the market into fiefdoms and feast, with increasing amounts of cash that they can funnel into dividends and buybacks.

From the NA vehicle POV it doesn't look healthy. Stocks of the major auto makers have done well this year, while product gets more and more expensive and limited. Barely seems possible to buy anything but a F150like anymore.

bparsons3• 7 months ago

Chinese companies are optimized to grow and build stuff. US companies are optimized to deliver returns to shareholders.

bobthepanda2• 7 months ago

You could say that about the Chinese stock market in general. Neither the SSE Composite nor the Hang Seng correlate all that well with Chinese GDP growth.

DecoPerson• 7 months ago

I know little about stocks, but I've heard China doesn't allow shorting stocks and many other "advanced" stock products/instruments. You can buy, sell and trade stocks, and nothing else. They also audit to ensure stocks are not oversold/traded (e.g.: selling stock you don’t own in the hopes you’ll obtain some in time to fulfil an order).

Maybe that's why they behave differently?

Etheryte• 7 months ago

This is the story of nearly every Chinese stock ever. Their market is very different and even simple intuitions don't carry over.

culi6• 7 months ago

Anytime China targets an industry we get a situation where basically every major city has their own brand that they're backing. There's a lot more competition in China compared to western markets that tend to be dominated by a few major players. There's over 100 EV brands in China today, e.g. BYD (Shenzhen), NIO (Hefei), GAC Aion (Guangzhou), and SAIC (Shanghai)

There's been a lot written about China's "Fiscal Federalism"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01475...

nutjob24• 7 months ago

Meanwhile Tesla stock soared purely on the air coming out of Elon’s mouth.

Wrong orifice.

newyankee2• 7 months ago

No AI, self driving hype in BYD

culi6• 7 months ago

BYD's self-driving is free and much more widely available. Not to mention it uses LiDAR. I'm not gonna get into whether or not their God's Eye is better or worse than Tesla's FSD but it's at least widely acknowledged that they are at least comparable.

Tesla is also not very transparent so it's hard to cite statistics but a recent study found that Tesla had the highest rate of fatal accidents of any brand in the US

https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study

thegreatpeter• 7 months ago

Purely on the air coming out of Elon’s mouth as well as the 1 million cars sold world wide, 165 successful Falcon 9 launches and 9 million Starlink subscriptions

sgerenser2• 7 months ago

SpaceX’s success have no bearing on Tesla. And Tesla’s sales for the year are down for the second year in a row. Hardly a logical reason for the stock to go up.

csto12• 7 months ago

Nice. Now take the car sales out of the vacuum and let’s see how great sales look year over across the world. Now let’s factor in how Elon’s government ended subsidies for electric cars. Should I go on?

NooneAtAll3• 7 months ago

your very mistake was trading stocks at all

stocks and the whole money-as-a-business is US thing - making actual product is the China thing

lossolo3• 7 months ago

Chinese stock market is very different than US. In US you have like 62% of Americans reporting owning stock (including via mutual funds/retirement accounts) and in China, it's single digits participation. And China's market is famously retail heavy one, there were some studies showing that Shanghai Stock Exchange retail trading is 80%+ of volume vs ~10% in the US.

There is less hype and they are also not affected as much as US if stock goes down or stays flat.

seanmcdirmid6• 7 months ago

The Shanghai stock exchange is still too heavy on insider trading, and consumer investors feel it is more like gambling than investing. Like, you could wager some money on a mahjong game, or you could blindly pick a stock and hope you can get some money by riding in the wake of a connected insider trader.

If you just want to invest money, there is real estate or investing in a family member’s business. Pensions and other institutions in need of safe (in aggregate) investments won’t go near the SSE yet.

China is doing more things right but still has a long way to go on other things.

paxys• 7 months ago

The Chinese economy isn't set up to endlessly create value for the capital-owning class, so you are never going to profit off of Chinese companies and stocks in the way we are used to in the west.

mullingitover• 7 months ago

In the combination Keynesian Beauty Contest[1] and casino that passes for an equity market in the US, everyone knows that Tesla is ugly as hell, but everyone also knows that everyone knows that it will get votes, so the show goes on.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

eru29• 7 months ago

What do you mean by 'everyone'? Tesla usually has quite a bit of short interest.

idiotsecant2• 7 months ago

Only works until it doesn't.

viktorcode2• 7 months ago

For the major part BYD sales performance is dependent on government subsidies in the country where they sell three quarters of all the cars they produce. That is a high risk factor investors don't like.

dworks6• 7 months ago

Can you provide a source for the government subsidies you say BYD is dependent on?

ralph84• 7 months ago

Auto manufacturing is low margin and capital intensive. BYD is valued as an auto manufacturer. Tesla is not.

Even all of that aside, the idea that foreign investors will be allowed to meaningfully participate in the upside of Chinese companies is questionable. Every Chinese company is one recapitalization away from zeroing out the common stock owned by foreigners. What are they gonna do, sue in Chinese court?

toomuchtodo8• 7 months ago

For quite some time, Warren Buffett was a BYD investor via Berkshire Hathaway. If you tried to get into EV stocks after the Tesla exuberance started, you were already mostly too late.

The filing by Berkshire’s energy subsidiary recorded the value of its BYD investment as zero as of the end of March, down from $415 million at the end of 2024.
Buffett’s company began investing in Shenzhen-based BYD in 2008, when it paid $230 million for about 225 million shares, equivalent to a 10% stake at the time.
It began selling those shares in 2022 after BYD’s share price had risen more than twentyfold.

Warren Buffett’s fund exits BYD after a 17-year investment that grew over 20-fold in value - https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/investing/warren-buffet-berks... - September 22nd, 2025

aeonfox4• 7 months ago

Every Chinese company is one recapitalization away from zeroing out the common stock owned by foreigners.

But in practice, wouldn't such an event on X large Chinese company have a cascade effect on stock values of all other Chinese companies?

jhancock2• 7 months ago

What are they gonna do, sue in Chinese court?

If your hypothetical happens, yes. China has been working hard to turn domestic investment away from housing. A trustworthy domestic stock market is key.

nonethewiser2• 7 months ago

Isn't BYD a VIE? Most "internet" (ie tech) companies in China cannot legally be owned by foreigners. And what you get is some proxy based in the Cayman Islands that is circumventing Chinese law. Not something I'd touch with a ten foot pole.

dworks6• 7 months ago

The future of the Chinese economy depends on being able to access the global capital markets, which means that by extension, its future depends on foreign investors being demonstrably "allowed to meaningfully participate in the upside of Chinese companies".

blitzar• 7 months ago

Every Chinese company is one recapitalization away from zeroing out the common stock owned by foreigners

See TikTok as an example.

tensor• 7 months ago

BYD is valued as an auto manufacturer. Tesla is not.

This in no way addresses the accusation that Teslas valuation is built on nothing. BYD also has self driving software. So what exactly does Tesla have that is not cars and batteries?

The ludicrous humanoid robots with dubious use cases? That’s not it either because the stock was absurdly high before that was a thing.

I have never seen a better example of how arbitrary and irrational markets are than Teslas valuation.

dd36• 7 months ago

It’s stock manipulation.

refurb10• 7 months ago

Stock prices are forward looking.

You bought BYD after it had been hyped to the moon. Of course the price doesn’t move when it meets sales expectations.

chmod775• 7 months ago

Yeah, and if you have decent eyesight you can look forward even further to see the bubble popping.

maxdo• 7 months ago

it make sense with geo politics, governments started slowly using same playbook, banning chinese cars anywere possible because of real risks of espionage etc.

stouset• 7 months ago

“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

Also, their market position has already been factored in by market participants with multiple orders of magnitude greater capital and access to information about the company than you do. Thats not to say the market valuation is accurate, but it does mean that you guessing which way the market has mis-valued the stock is a coin flip.

Lerc• 7 months ago

One of the things that got him in trouble with the authorities was publicly stating that he thought Tesla stock is overvalued.

njarboe• 7 months ago

BYD does not make most of its revenue on BEVs. It is mostly batteries and more plugin hybrids than BEVs and they lose money selling BEVs (less than almost all other electric car makers though). Tesla make only BEVs and make a profit doing so (the only? large maker to consistently do so).

dworks6• 7 months ago

I believe Tesla's profits are from carbon credits, not vehicle sales.

thg• 7 months ago

Tesla was only profitable the last few quarters due to selling their carbon credits to other companies. They'd have lost money otherwise. And since Trump basically did away with that, Tesla is no longer a profitable company now.

omgwtfbyobbq6• 7 months ago

My guess is that Tesla is doing better because FSD has improved significantly over the past few months. Even with that, most of the recent increase has been them regaining the valuation they lost earlier this year.

toxic72• 7 months ago

Source?

Alconicon3• 7 months ago

Talking about FSD has increased, nothing more.

There is still the law suite about FSD and the old hardware.

There is still Elon the hitler Musk Oligarch who wielded a chainsaw.

There were plenty of FSD videos last year and the year before showing that FSD is working. The question is still, is it working good enough, and what will be the business of a robotaxi.

The Taxi market overall is not that big, competition is hard and the most critical thing is peak demand.

In parallel random people believe tesla will wipe out the whole taxi industry + private cars tomorrow. Ignoring competition and everything else.

Aaand as an edit: When it finally works, people will tell you "told you so look at it, FSD works" yeah really? Of course it works but it was promised from Musk that 2020 all these Teslas will drive autonomsly. Its 2026

chvid• 7 months ago

I am a China perma bull and a panda hugger but most of my money is in the US.

US capital is the completely dominant center of global capital and it will be so for decades to come. Ultimately this will flip too as China becomes the global economic center but I am not quite sure what it will look like and I don't assume the process of capital allocation will be exactly the same as it is today in the US-system (there may be more state directed investment, more bank lending, perhaps less public speculation, or even novel financial structures).

That said - Chinese stocks had a good year in 2025 and are currently on a run - and there is certainly a lot of value there.

bytesandbits• 7 months ago

I could give you many reasons. I see where you went wrong, here are some to think about:

- next time don't just look at stock value and volume. Look at cashflow

- Consider that most investment volume comes from institutional investors in Wall Street, not in China. Even Chinese investment is routed through NY, Singapore, UK, etc, with the slight exception of Hong Kong.

- Consider geopolitics before investing too. Trump really went all-in in tariffs that basically geofence EV business to american brands.

- The hope for BYD is in EU and UK markets. EU has also been extremely harsh to welcoming BYD and protectionist of their (German) auto makers. This hasn't avoided BYD entering the market, but also has stopped them from shipping en masse. Might change.

- BYD is not a competitor to Tesla. BYD market is the low end market mostly. For example, what today in EU is Dacia (1st or 2nd best seller by number of units). Tesla on the other hand is purposely set up as a mid-high seller. It is too expensive for the cheap segment of the market (10-20k) and is well below luxury vehicles. Different market segment, also better margins in that segment.

- Auto industry is cyclical not defensive. In times of economic uncertainty like today, if you want a solid investment you should look at defensive not cyclical.

- Generally it is a bad idea for retailers to invest in Chinese HQed companies due to the complex geopolitics that surrounding the stock. For example, you have severe limitations in stock market products and they have tight regulation, unlike the US where you have a free-market.

- Consider the market of derivatives. Very different market of futures in China vs the US.

- Tesla is also a self-driving company and robotics company. It would be better compared to XPENG than to BYD.

- Tesla owns the EV market in North America. Period. This is the reality today.

- On top of all that yes the stock is hyped up. But you should know that and invest with that in mind. Being full blown rational in an irrational market will not work.

tpm• 7 months ago

- The hope for BYD is in EU and UK markets. EU has also been extremely harsh to welcoming BYD and protectionist of their (German) auto makers. This hasn't avoided BYD entering the market, but also has stopped them from shipping en masse. Might change.

The way this will change is Chinese companies opening factories in the EU. BYD is opening one in Szeged, Hungary soon.

torginus4• 7 months ago

Can you even own Chinese stock as a foreigner? I thought Chinese 'stock' was essentially 'IOU's held by a foreign third party who holds it on your behalf. I would not trust a significant amount of money to such a scheme.

lurking_swe• 7 months ago

it’s not very hard to trade directly on the hong kong stock exchange.

https://www.investasian.com/stock-market/hong-kong-brokerage...

cowsandmilk• 7 months ago

I like this quote from Dan Wang's 2025 letter:

Part of the reason that China’s stock market trends sideways is that everyone’s profits are competed away. Big Tech might enjoy the monopolistic success smiled upon by Peter Thiel, coming almost to genteel agreements not to tread too hard upon each other’s business lines. Chinese firms have to fight it out in a rough-and-tumble environment, expanding all the time into each other’s core businesses, taking Jeff “your margin is my opportunity” Bezos with seriousness.

https://danwang.co/2025-letter/

piyuv• 7 months ago

Is that a fancy way of saying “communist” China has real, authentic capitalism and “capitalist” US has monopolies all over?

xedeon6• 7 months ago

I bought BYD stock in 2025 before split in the hope that their market dominance will translate to great returns. The stock has pretty consistently traded down since then. Meanwhile Tesla stock soared purely on the air coming out of Elon’s mouth.

Interesting take there. Tesla Model Y is the #1 best-selling car globally in 2025 for the third year.

Meanwhile, your BYD is bleeding from real price wars and demand slumps. Tesla's valuation? Still baked in autonomy, energy, and AI upside not just car volume. Calling it "air" while hyping your own wishful dominance is nothing but peak projection.

checker659• 7 months ago

I can't tell if this is satire or serious.

dubcanada• 7 months ago

You cannot deny that Tesla has not been selling as well as other EV manufacturers. You also cannot deny that Tesla has took a heavy beating internationally.

Tesla valuation is not baked in anything, it's entirely hype about potential, and has absolutely nothing to do with automation, robotics, AI, energy. It is largely betting that Elon Musk will do well, not that Tesla will do well. It might as well just be called EM.

boudin• 7 months ago

Toyota RAV4 seems to be the best selling car globally in 2025, not model y. Overall tesla models looks dated, quality is not great, ongoing safety issue with underwhelming responses, competition on the ev segment is just better on many points now.

thesmtsolver24• 7 months ago

BYD ranks at the bottom for human rights. But interestingly, BYD’s proponents seem to brush it away.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...

nutjob24• 7 months ago

Why focus on BYD, China as a whole is effectively a totalitarian state that locks up millions because of their ethnicity and disappears or executes people who disagree with the government. They are also territoriality aggressive and routinely use trade as a weapon to pushing states that stand up to it.

Buying anything from China is supporting that regime.

CapitalistCartr• 7 months ago

I could make a good case for the United States fitting that description, especially the bits about trade and agression.

kakacik• 7 months ago

Change BYD with Tesla, China with US and say for an European or anybody all above is still perfectly true.

lm28469• 7 months ago

You missed the part where we chose to move all of our industries to China to save money, exploitation was always part of the plan, it's just that people who came up with that genius plan didn't account for the fact that China would develop and want a part of the cake too

threethirtytwo2• 7 months ago

Your description of China as authoritarian and repressive is largely accurate, but the conclusion you draw from it is far too binary and ignores major parts of reality on both sides.

China’s system has produced outcomes the US cannot come close to matching. In a few decades it lifted hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. It built nationwide high speed rail, dense urban transit, modern housing, and large scale infrastructure at a speed the US has not achieved since the mid 20th century. Many Chinese cities are cleaner, more connected, and more functional than American ones. Long term planning, industrial policy, and state coordination have delivered tangible improvements in daily life for a huge share of the population. Those are not propaganda achievements. They are measurable.

China’s downsides are also real. Political dissent is not protected. Surveillance is pervasive. Ethnic repression, especially in Xinjiang, is severe. There is no internal mechanism to safely challenge the regime when it abuses power. Prosperity is conditional on alignment. When the state decides someone or some group is a problem, there is no lawful way to resist.

Now look honestly at the US. The US has political freedoms China does not. Speech, courts, elections, civil society, and the ability to oppose the state without being erased are real advantages. That matters enormously. But the US also has a long record of extreme violence and moral failure. It slaughtered millions abroad in wars like Vietnam and Iraq, often based on lies. It overthrew governments, backed death squads, enforced sanctions that killed civilians, and built a mass incarceration system that destroyed entire communities. At home, it tolerates deep inequality, decaying infrastructure, and political paralysis. It cannot build basic transit or housing at scale, and millions live worse materially than citizens of far poorer countries.

So if the standard is “this regime has blood on its hands,” then the US fails that test as well. If the standard is “this regime produces good outcomes for its people,” China clearly succeeds in ways the US does not. If the standard is “this regime allows its citizens to challenge power and correct abuse,” the US is better.

That is the real comparison. Different systems optimize for different things and fail in different ways. One is not a moral fairy tale and the other is not a cartoon villain.

That’s why “buying anything from China is supporting evil” is not a serious ethical framework. Global trade does not map cleanly onto endorsement, and the same logic would implicate participation in much of the modern world, including the US led order that produced enormous suffering of its own. A coherent position is to argue for strategic decoupling or limits on state coupled firms. A black and white call for regime destruction or moral purity ignores both China’s real achievements and the US’s very real crimes.

Once you include the full ledger, the issue is not good versus evil. It’s tradeoffs between flawed systems, not a simple moral referendum.

ulfw7• 7 months ago

No wonder you are called nutjob as every single thing you wrote can be said about today's USA.

Hello Greenland. Hello tariffs. Hello humongous incarceration rate of millions of people, particularly of one ethnicity.

g947o• 7 months ago

You can pretty much replace BYD with any Chinese company (and to some extent, almost any company in the world) and the sentence would still make sense.

So I have mostly lost interest in the argument. Not that it is an incorrect or irrelevant argument, but none of that has really mattered.

gloryjulio• 7 months ago

This. Most of the Chinese products met the definition of dumping. They over produce with suppressed wages, currency exchange rate, and government subsidies. The current generations of Chinese workers do not benefit from this. To clarify, they have top products, some are well paid. But the general trend is dumping.

I am curious when will other countries would actually start of defend their industries properly.

bawolff3• 7 months ago

Presumably you can't make the statement that almost all companies are below average on human rights. Mathematically at least half have to be above average.

thesmtsolver24• 7 months ago

This is the standard “nothing can be done and everyone does it” argument when shown that BYD is literally at the bottom of the pile.

jgalt2122• 7 months ago

and to some extent, almost any company in the world

This is weak sauce.

simianparrot4• 7 months ago

"But Tesla bad so BYD is a necessary evil" seems to be a common sentiment.

liotier• 7 months ago

The European Union can't fight everyone at once - we need partners, hence trying to mend fences with MERCOSUR, toning down the struggle for human rights in China and tolerating India's authoritarian drift. For now the utmost priorities are defeating Russia and achieving actual strategic autonomy by decoupling from the traitorous USA. So yes, better BYD than Tesla.

monerozcash• 7 months ago

But interestingly, BYD’s proponents seem to brush it away.

This feels like a rather lazy strawman to debate against. Not sure there's anything interesting about it.

blell2• 7 months ago

Are BYD proponents allowed to say that this doesn’t matter much to them, or are they expected to measure themselves by your political views because they are the only correct ones?

newsclues• 7 months ago

Shouldn’t human rights factor into consumers choices?

skinnymuch3• 7 months ago

That report is basically made up. Why would non western companies be “transparent” with western organizations? A lot of it is self reports. This is like looking at the freedom indexes and concluding that in the US women have the freedom to walk safely at night in cities because it ranks high on western freedom orgs but not in actually safe places like China.

rapidfl5• 7 months ago

Like many sibling comments, many companies are on a range that is on the bad side. There is a part of EV supply chain that is particularly bad and that is for all companies.

But what about the environmental costs that are being externalized? EV car production is likely worse or equal to ICE car production at each step. And the only arg seems to be that some day all EVs will be powered by solar/clean energy somehow.

rapidfl5• 7 months ago

EV car production is likely worse or equal to ICE car production at each step

Does anyone feel otherwise? Is the net carbon and environmental footprint really lower over the entire lifecycle per car for an EV? Not today

culi6• 7 months ago

BYD's 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility Report initially lacked a human rights policy. However, the company later published a 2024 Human Rights Policy Statement.[67] This new policy also shows enhanced commitment to supply chain due diligence, including recognition of OECD Guidelines. Despite these improvements, the policy lacks details on battery material sourcing.
BYD’s policies do not address gender-responsive due diligence. BYD states that it engages with stakeholders. However, it does not provide policies for engaging with communities affected by the battery supply chain or incorporating their views into decision-making processes. There is no reference to Indigenous Peoples or their rights in BYD’s reports.[68]

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ACT30/8544/2024/en/

I don't at all disagree with the importance of these topics and I'm glad to see them addressed but this entire metric seems to be based on specific language/terminology in a company's public commitments. And this terminology seems to be biased towards a western audience. For example, the United States (a settler-colonial nation) is ofc going to have more discourse around the rights of indigenous people. Whereas the term "indigenous" isn't used very much at all in China.

I also feel like you've buried the lead here. Yes BYD ranks the lowest of the 13 brands they looked at but not by much and they also explicitly state that ALL of the brands they looked at failed to meet their minimum baselines. The report is more of a critique of the industry as a whole than any individual actor

JumpCrisscross• 7 months ago

BYD’s proponents seem to brush it away

At the end of the day, you aren’t going to convince consumers in Southeast Asia, South America or Africa to buy more-expensive American or European cars on account of human rights. Not while they’re middle-income economies.

eunos4• 7 months ago

Never ever I saw people in real life making purchasing decision based on "human rights"

why-o-why4• 7 months ago

Hello. I'm one. AMA.

cryptoegorophy• 7 months ago

Anything that is not Elon Musk is considered to be good

WhereIsTheTruth• 7 months ago

Actually, credible ESG ratings like thee ones from Sustainalytics or MSCI show BYD scoring above average for human rights governance in the automotive sector, not at the bottom

More importantly, this highlights a pattern of selective scrutiny:

- When Western companies (like Tesla) source batteries from the same regions (or use batteries from BYD or CATL), human rights concerns rarely drive mainstream criticism or policy actions

- When industries dominated by Western monopolies (eg: Big Tech's app stores or cloud services) face human rights allegations (like labor abuses in global supply chains or censorship complicity)= the backlash is often muted or just silenced

- But when a non Western competitor like BYD gains traction, human rights rhetoric suddenly intensifies, even without evidence matching the severity of claims against established Western companies

It's geopolitically convenient criticism, FUD against what threatens a western monopolistic ecosystem

whatever13• 7 months ago

China has all this manufacturing capacity, and no market to sell.

Really the only option they have is to swap the products to military ones so that they can create the global markets they need.

It’s gonna be a bumpy decade.

dalyons17• 7 months ago

Hrm? They can and are selling to the rest of the world (except NA and Europe)

stavros2• 7 months ago

They're selling in Europe, plenty of BYD cars in Greece.

fooker• 7 months ago

Just because you don't see these in the US doesn't mean they aren't elsewhere in the first world countries.

a_victorp• 7 months ago

Yeah, there are some theories that state that WWI and WWII started because of over production and the search for new markets (I saw a video recently mentioning some books, including one from Lenin), so you might be in to something

bilbo0s• 7 months ago

and no market to sell

Uh..

If that's the case, then someone needs to tell that to all the people buying Chinese cars man.

whatever13• 7 months ago

The capacity they have far exceeds the sales. A lot of Chinese car companies will have to go bankrupt to balance supply and demand.

misiti3780• 7 months ago

read this article, it explains the situation well:

https://open.substack.com/pub/crosscurrents28/p/chinas-broke...

rswail11• 7 months ago

They have their own internal market, which now has a middle class equal in size to the entire US population.

They have all of Asia, with a market of another ~2B, and a completely undeveloped market in Africa of another 1B people.

That's part of what the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is, an industrial policy to establish trade links and infrastructure dependencies across the world that uses Chinese direct FDI and industrial policy to establish new markets for their own industries.

Which is exactly the same policy that the US adopted as part of the Marshall Plan and its use (up until 2025) of soft power to promote US FDI across the world.

It's the US that is dependent on a defense industry and foreign sales for its industrial capacity.

That's why the US defense budget is 50% of the total and over USD1T/year and is why the US is demanding that NATO nations buy US defense equipment.

whatever13• 7 months ago

`They have all of Asia, with a market of another ~2B, and a completely undeveloped market in Africa of another 1B people.`

This is not the market size. Maybe 1% of it. India median income is $300/month. African income is less than $100/month.

You cannot sell EVs, drones and foldable phones there. But you could convince their govs to buy your fancy defense drones.

haxtormoogle• 7 months ago

The number of BYD on fire videos, and examples where the tires simply fall off because they don't use enough metal in the suspension. Makes me scared to be anywhere near one of their vehicles. please keep them out of the USA for safety sake. That's 4.6M state sponsored vehicles that should not be on the road. Don't forget the chinese gov'ts ability to lock you out from driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWzbq-Q_oTc

SkyeCA• 7 months ago

and examples where the tires simply fall off because they don't use enough metal in the suspension

As opposed to using too much metal in the airbags of our cars ;)

Don't forget the chinese gov'ts ability to lock you out from driving.

I remain less scared of a foreign government than I do of my government that has effectively total control over my life.

martinpw2• 7 months ago

please keep them out of the USA for safety sake. That's 4.6M state sponsored vehicles that should not be on the road.

BYD vehicles are sold in Europe where they have to meet safety requirements that are arguably more stringent than in the US.

amelius• 7 months ago

I'm not choosing sides here but if telecom equipment from e.g. HuaWei is not allowed on US/EU markets because of national security concerns, then should we allow cars?

syntaxing• 7 months ago

We allow everything else from iPhone to your microwave. National security seems awfully like a veil for regulatory capture

sleepyguy• 7 months ago

This is a national security concern but in a different way. It's about the de-industrialization of America. Palmer Lucky talks about this and how China's goal is to make sure America can't build anything. Once that happens we can never win a war against them.

energy1233• 7 months ago

The combination of minimum wage and immigration restrictions is the main driver of that.

If you could have Chinese workers on Chinese wages in American factories none of this would have happened. But that's not allowed.

maximus-decimus2• 7 months ago

If that's really the goal, would it make sense for the government to subsidize cars with military money? Because otherwise, car buyers are basically subsidizing national defense by buying overpriced cars.

AngryData3• 7 months ago

Why not? We allow pretty much everything else. Appliances, consumer electronics, car parts, batteries, etc.

The one and only reason to not allow Chinese cars is to try and protect domestic auto industry, but considering how expensive and mismanaged domestic auto production is I don't see that as a good excuse. They won't die because they can't possibly compete, they will die for refusing to compete because they want higher profit margins now rather than bulk sales and good public perception 10 years down the line. They would rather fuck their future and bet on a bail-out than dare try making bulk cheap cars again with a bit lower margin.

Hell GM paid Toyota to come teach them how to make cars cheaper and better and build matrix platform cars in their factory. And what did they do when that happened and cars started rolling off the line? They complained that Toyota didn't produce them them in the same manner they would have, and then closed the plant down. Meanwhile Matrix platform cars like the Vibe are highly sought after on the used car market because they were known for reliability and ease of maintenance.

If we were actually worried about security, we would be doing FAR more than merely disallowing HuaWei products. Its like living next to an active volcano in a forest fire prone areas inside a log cabin and then screaming about how dangerous it would be to allow matches be sold in stores due to arsonists.

bluGill2• 7 months ago

You don't allow chinese cars because those assembly lines can be converted to make tanks or other war vehicles if needed. Substitute industry and product as needed

woodpanel2• 7 months ago

We shouldn’t.

Not just because of the assumed security issues (good point though).

But even w/o these,

- I rather have some European or American conglomerate gathering unnecessary data about me driving, than just hand it over to the Chinese state

- Buying Chinese means destroying our own base, as this market has been actively stealing IP for decades (BYD or Xiamoi just being copycats of Porsche); good luck winning piracy cases in Chinese courts

- unfair financial restrictions for redeeming returns on foreign investments fueled much of China‘s growth - and still persist

- western/asian manufacturers are de-facto not competing with mere manufacturers but the Chinese state itself since (almost?) all Chinese manufacturers are State-Owned-Companies

Now that is not to say that China‘s rise is not commendable and deserved, it is indeed. I‘m rather arguing for playing the same game as they are.

mitthrowaway2• 7 months ago

The part I don't get is, why shouldn't Western companies be able to out-compete the Chinese state at mass-producing cars?

My whole life, I only heard about how much better private companies are than governments at making products. How could we be suddenly behind?

OK, Xiaomi and BYD are state-backed private companies. But what advantage does the state-backing get them, exactly? How is it better than the familiar state-backed advantages western companies have (like regulatory capture, tax breaks, tariffs, or TBTF bailouts)?

The Chinese government can subsidize them. But that's just moving zero-sum money around; it might give them a boost in cars, but it must come at a cost to semiconductors, robotics, solar energy, raw materials, defense, or other things like that.... in theory at least? So why does it feel like they're somehow subsidizing every sector at the same time?

rswail11• 7 months ago

I thought private business competing in a free market would always out do a centrally planned economy with state owned enterprises.

We've been told that in the West since Reagan, when we decided to forget all the advantages of a Keynesian economy.

So the actual concept of having an industrial strategy was and is considered against all economic orthodoxy in the West.

BYD is not a "copy" of Porsche, they hired European designers, Xioamoi made mobile phones before they started making cars.

The problem of China appropriating intellectual property has been known for decades, but access to the market was considered more important. The governments and industries could have decided that the market was less important and stopped transferring technology, but they didn't.

Chinese IP has been developing on its own at an accelerated pace now.

Most of the technology in Western vehicles is using chips built in Chinese or Taiwanese fabs and if China wanted to subvert the vehicle supply chains in EU or US, I'm sure they could.

tzs• 7 months ago

I rather have some European or American conglomerate gathering unnecessary data about me driving, than just hand it over to the Chinese state.

Why? Conglomerates in my own country are in a much better position to use any data they have about me in a way that harms me than China is.

LastTrain• 7 months ago

Because that is a short sighted and ineffective way to deal with the problem.

ttul2• 7 months ago

We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere. The Chinese EV automakers are crushing it.

eru29• 7 months ago

BYD is also very popular in Singapore. Single most bought car brand at the moment, I think.

Their flagship show room has great beer and good food, too.

embedding-shape8• 7 months ago

When I first moved to Spain, I was surprised beer was available in McDonalds, and that people commonly had beer with lunch. But not even here do we have beer available in car show rooms, that seems like the slightly wrong place for that, especially considering how strict Singapore seems from the outside.

fifilura• 7 months ago

The only reason to get a car in Singapore is to give the tired father an air-conditioned place outside the crammed apartment to go and have a nap :).

petesergeant• 7 months ago

Here in Dubai too. Always rather the Careem driver turns up in a BYD than a Tesla.

batiudrami• 7 months ago

They are huge in Australia too. And the advice basically everyone gives is "if you're going electric, you'd be crazy not to consider BYD first".

A couple of years ago the only notable EVs you'd see were Teslas, now you'd see at least 2-3x as many BYDs.

gonzo412• 7 months ago

I do like that BYD cars are opinionated which is a feature that is somewhat lacking in modern cars.

rswail11• 7 months ago

BYD, Geely, ZeekR, Kia, Hyundai, Mini, MG see them all around, more than Teslas (inner city Melbourne).

Also noticing that a lot of the rideshare/taxis are going EV quickly. I'm guessing the much lower maintenance and service requirements are outweighing any "range" issues, plus the trade-in value is irrelevant with warranties covering the batteries etc.

testing223212• 7 months ago

It’s not just tariffs. They’re not homologated to the US market, so even if you were will to pay multiples more than people in Australia do, you can’t register one in the US.

HDThoreaun3• 7 months ago

BYD isn’t developing an American model for multiple reasons, but the biggest one is likely tariffs.

ulfw7• 7 months ago

It's 100% tariffs. So yes, it's of course tariffs. They’re not homologated because there's no point of selling something when half the price goes to import taxation

rswail11• 7 months ago

Tariffs are exactly the reason that situation is as it is.

BYD can outwait the adjustments of the US car industry to a new reality, in the same way that the Japanese did back in the 80s.

Last time, the US did it by screwing the union workers of the rust belt, while also giving up on passenger cars and moving to SUV/trucks, but this time it's a complete change in technology and the US (and Japan to an extent) is having trouble reorienting its manufacturing and supply chains to support the change.

If Ford can't sell an EV version of an F-150, then it has a real problem, because the rest of the world is not staying on ICE technology.

Artificial trade barriers don't last.

cogman103• 7 months ago

It is just tariffs.

The reason BYD is killing it is because they can offer their cars at a price point unavailable to the US. The reason for that price point is because China is producing some of the cheapest batteries in the world.

BYD cannot build their cars in the US because the core part they need to make them cheap is the batteries. CATL makes the batteries that BYD uses and they aren't going to setup shop in the US. A lot of what makes CATLs batteries cheap is because China has a raw materials trade pipeline that's now superior than what's available in the US.

All of this goes back to tariffs.

By putting insane tariffs on all imports the US has effectively isolated itself from the rest of the world. Manufacturing will defacto be more expensive in the US because a significant portion of any incoming raw resources will get an automatic 25% tax.

The US does have it's own raw resources, but they aren't fully developed. Prior to 2024, we were heavily reliant on imports for a lot of our manufacturing. Shaking up the entire market for stupid reasons has destroyed manufacturing in the US. It'll take decades to repair and rebuild.

The steep tariffs against china that Trump did in his first term against solar, steel, and batteries were maintained by Biden. In term 2 Trump ramped those up to 11.

martinpw2• 7 months ago

We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere

But getting hit by 50% tariffs in Mexico as of today:

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-tariffs-go-into-effe...

ttul2• 7 months ago

I wonder how long that will last. Mexican consumers are very price sensitive.

softwaredoug4• 7 months ago

This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking. Rent seeking in the long run is brittle. You get a little security now for loss of competitiveness in the future - once the rent seeking goes away, you’re screwed. You haven’t had to compete, so you haven’t adapted. Consumers flee because they’ve just tolerated you - they actively dislike being forced into fewer choices

Rent seeking is industry suicide. It feels like it helps, but it’s not solving the real problem.

missedthecue• 7 months ago

At a certain level it can lead otherwise competitive companies to rest on their laurels.

On another level, it would be game over without them. For example, US shipyards would simply stop existing without protection. There is no management strategy or measure they could implement that could compete with Asian shipyards.

ToucanLoucan3• 7 months ago

I agree, and it's also worth pointing out the EV market has been artificially buoyed by the use of state-funded incentives to buy electric cars, and we know this because now that those incentives are ending, EV sales are cratering.

In a vacuum, I don't hate the idea of paying people to switch to EV's who can do it, but the problem is especially in America, those benefits are going not to working class people who really need new cars (and who's cars are the most environmentally problematic) but to solidly upper-middle class buyers of incredibly large and impractical EV's which are either sports cars or suburban panzers, that rip through tires and consume vast amounts of lithium for their enormous battery packs, and beat the shit out of our already deteriorating roads.

Additionally we're finding that EV's have a major, probably unsolvable issue: they age much, much faster than ICE vehicles in one particular area: the battery. EV's have the same problem as cellphones effectively; their cells deteriorate with use, and unlike used ICE vehicles for which parts are widely available and usually cheap, it's not even remotely economically feasible to repair this issue. Replacing a battery costs so much you might as well just replace the entire car.

riku_iki2• 7 months ago

This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking.

tarriffs are visible protective regulation, China protects its domestic markets through different type of regulations for decades.

tooltalk6• 7 months ago

> This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers.

still don't understand why this is going to hurt US car manufacturers. Have the Japanese auto imports improved the US auto industry past 40+ years? Is Ford or GM more competitive? The US automakers are highly competitive in large vehicle/truck segments, protected under the Chicken Tax past 60+ years, but they barely have any presence left in small, cheaper segments dominated by the Japanese and Koreans. Farley recently said Ford has shifted its focus from affordable, mass-market cars because it couldn't compete against the Japanese/Koreans.

Just not convinced that allowing autos from another auto industry built on forced joint venture/tech transfer, illegal (export/local content) subsidies, or otherwise benefited tremendously from the very same rent-seeking policies themselves past 15 years is solving the real problem.

whatwhaaaaat2• 7 months ago

So then why has china had tariffs on American cars? 15 percent before trumps 2nd term where it skyrocketed to over 125%.

If tariffs are so bad for America why do other countries have tariffs on American cars?

rishav_sharan• 7 months ago

The failure to compete will also make US care makers irrelevant outside of US. They are pretty well out on the way already.

libertine• 7 months ago

Hmm, but aren't they dumping cars in the market and still not selling? They're stuck with massive amounts of unsold stock, and the market isn't taking it - something doesn't add up.

newswangerd• 7 months ago

Western auto makers are getting slaughtered by Chinese competition outside of the US (and maybe the EU? I don't know what the EU tariff situation is). I have a Chinese EV. It was half the price of an equivalent Tesla and better in every single way. Build quality and reliability have been excellent. I've driven 60,000 km with zero battery degradation.

It's just sort of amazing how badly the west dropped the ball on green tech. We're also working on importing an off grid solar system from china that will easily be a third of the price that we'd get from a US supplier.

One interesting thing that people don't realize with regards to the US tariffs is that a lot of goods flow through the US on their way to international markets. For a long time it has been easiest for us to buy stuff made in china from vendors such as Amazon in the US and have it shipped internationally from the US. Now with all of the tariffs we end up getting double tariffed for doing this (once when the goods enter the US and a second time when they ship to my country). As a result I'm seeing more and more people looking for ways to buy from China directly.

srameshc• 7 months ago

This is certainly alarming for US auto manufacturers. Tesla is the only successful EV car company which is able to somewhat compete with BYD, but for many it is hardly an option because of it's leadership.

ethagnawl• 7 months ago

That's to say nothing of the cost. Assuming there were no extraordinary tarrifs on China/BYD, the entry-level offering would be in the $10K range which is about 1/4 the cost of a base Tesla Model 3.

yanhangyhy• 7 months ago

meanwhile my BYD stock didn't go up... Hope 2026 this will change.

For China, this is ultimately a good thing. BYD employs a large number of workers and has factories in many developing countries such as Brazil and Central Asia..., creating numerous job opportunities. Many of BYD's factories in China are located around non-first-tier cities, where workers may earn only around 5,000 to 6,000 yuan. However, considering China's extremely low cost of living and deflation, this salary is sufficient to support a family and drive more consumption in the market.

The factory in zhengzhou: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyCTwhdqOhs

zhengzhou is also famous for produce iphone before..

meindnoch• 7 months ago

Implessive!

maximus-decimus2• 7 months ago

The stock market is forward looking. If people already expected that BYD would sell 4.6M vehicles in 2025, it was already accounted for in the stock valuation. For the stock to go up in price, they need to do even better than people expect.

MrVitaliy• 7 months ago

What's facinating to me is the lack of software comparison in comments. Lots of comments where people compare driving noise, material quality, price to Tesla and other brands. Sure it's important to some, but its like comparing apple vs android watch by how the leather strap feels on each device.

Anyone has experience with BYD over-the-air-updates? Do they release updates often? Are there any serious bugs like with Lucid air? How does the software compare to Tesla?

timeon• 7 months ago

It is hard to compare since I've never been in Tesla vehicle - because they are not making buses.

ehnto2• 7 months ago

Although I agree that software is an important aspect, a car mostly exists in the real and physical experience of the vehicle to me. The software situation is going to be the least of your average persons concerns I would have thought.

Interesting point of view to consider however, I hadn't really thought of there being people who look at their car as mostly the software.

Thlom3• 7 months ago

They are behind on software. At least my Tang EV isn't at the level of Tesla. Among the Chinese EV makers that sells significantly outside of China I think NIO and XPENG are the more software oriented ones.

pzmarzly• 7 months ago

Xiaomi is preparing to enter global EV market, and their software looks absolutely amazing. You can see it in MKBHD's video around 5 minutes mark https://youtu.be/Mb6H7trzMfI

nopakos• 7 months ago

Yes! I’d really appreciate a comparison of Android Auto/CarPlay support, overall responsiveness, and especially the user-experience side, like whether you can permanently turn off beeps and warnings, and how usable (or annoying) the smart features and alerts are.

technick• 7 months ago

I would buy a BYD if the communist US government didn't ban them for being overly competitive. I rented one of these in Mexico last year and it was nice and affordable at 35k with the performance of a model S.

https://www.byd.com/eu/electric-cars/seal

epolanski4• 7 months ago

I don't think many here realize how many Chinese EVs are sold globally.

In Europe Volkswagen group dominates EV sales by far, but Chinese competitors are taking lots of the other spots. Jaecoo is one that recently has been spreading everywhere.

It should worry plenty that Europeans are gonna buy Chinese cars with their huge amount of tariffs even when they end up priced similar to European or US offerings.

I was recently surprised by an Italian YouTuber doing the "stans" tour of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and these countries were ultra filled with Chinese EVs. There's no chance anything sells in any similar way.

Not gonna lie, I was very jealous at the fact they could get such great cars in the $ 10/20 k range.

I hate these nationalistic socialist tariffs.

They only make local producers less competitive (as they are protected from competition) and at the same time erode your own exports.

ErneX2• 7 months ago

I visited China recently for 3 weeks. They have really nice EVs, got to ride on a bunch of different brands/models just by using DiDi (equivalent to Uber there).

They also have them on display on shopping malls, for example on Huawei and Xiaomi stores.

adrr• 7 months ago

Why could Chinese consumer electronics companies successfully launch cars and Apple which spent billions on R&D on a car couldn’t?

seanmcdirmid6• 7 months ago

Xiaomi makes HVACs and washing machines as well, so we aren't really comparing apples to apples here. I think chinese companies trend toward the conglomerate model of South Korea and Japan (e.g. Samsung used to make cars), which isn't really a thing in the US.

ErneX2• 7 months ago

Honestly no idea but it’s impressive.

guid42• 7 months ago

This will likely be downvoted, but my opinion is that the "success" of BYD (and other chinese EVs) in the West is a massive failure of policy. We don't allow Huwawei (etc), so why are we permitting Chinese cars?

Money spent on BYD is money flowing out, eventually, to china, and not flowing into the local or near-local economy. Local garages are shutting due to lack of demand, forecourts are closing, sales jobs are closing, far less money is spent on maintenance (which supports local jobs and local supply chains), less consumables are replaced, factories are shutting, and the entire supply chain for these cars is outside the west.

And all of this is being celebrated as "green" or low carbon - it is not, whatsoever, anything of the sort.

And yet people seem to be buying these things in their droves, and then also complaining that economic times are tough.

The painful truth is the west has the ability to replace these cars, but has looked on by as China came in and cleaned up, and didn't do anything about it.

These cars should be subject to 1000% import tax, and eventually banned outright.

corwinxpro• 7 months ago

Local garages are shutting due to lack of demand

I cannot book an MOT or regular appointment in "local garages" because all are booked for weeks ahead. I don't think your statemenet is anywhere near being true.

guid42• 7 months ago

Uh, why do you think that is? there's less garages, and they tend to employ MOT testers part-time nowadays.

h1fra• 7 months ago

Might be right; however, why stop at cars? Almost everything you buy and consume is produced in China or elsewhere

elzbardico• 7 months ago

The average believer in orthodox economics tends to forget that for all practical purposes customers and workers are the same entity.

China understands that and they prioritize employment over consumption (of course, not having the printing press for the world’s reserve currency kinds of force their hands into it).

America’s deindustrialization and financialization went too far. Consumption levels and waste are well out of any sustainable level. An adjustment would have to happen and Trump’s tariffs are just a desperate attempt to restore American Industry (with scarce chances of success).

It is not like China is an enthusiastic adopter of free trade. They notoriously never played by the same rules in terms of market access, exchange rates, subsidies and trade barriers. It is utterly stupid to open your market to china without reciprocity, and this is what the west has been doing for decades making baking and investors richer while completely decimating what was once a thriving middle class.

Even the racial issues in the current times are heavily linked to this. The fall of Detroit was felt disproportionately heavier by the blacks, Wall Street basically took the ladder from the feet of a rising blue collar middle class of blacks.

I sincerely don’t give a fuck if we can’t buy cheap BYD cars.

drnick1• 7 months ago

What do we know about onboard telematics for these cars? It's safe to assume that like all modern cars, extensive telemetry is stored and sent to the mothership (in China) and third parties. There is probably a way to mod the car to take it off the grid but I wouldn't even consider buying one before knowing it can be done reasonably painlessly.

epolanski4• 7 months ago

I don't think you can completely turn off telemetry, same for a Tesla or any other car with advanced features.

m01• 7 months ago

Tesla's privacy policy [1] suggests you can (by disabling connectivity all together), although it does break some features:

Opting out of vehicle data: Connectivity and performance is a core part of all Tesla vehicles and why some customers choose Tesla, allowing for advanced features and an enhanced driving experience. By default, Tesla provides this seamless experience while protecting your privacy. However, if you no longer wish for us to collect vehicle data or any other data from your Tesla vehicle, please contact us to deactivate connectivity. Please note, certain advanced features such as over-the-air updates, remote services, and interactivity with mobile applications and in-car features such as location search, Internet radio, voice commands, and web browser functionality rely on such connectivity. If you choose to opt out of vehicle data collection (with the exception of in-car Data Sharing preferences), we will not be able to know or notify you of issues applicable to your vehicle in real time. This may result in your vehicle suffering from reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability.

I don't know if anyone has tried this.

There are other EVs where it's easier, but it's not something typically featured in the main marketing material.

Regarding eCall (emergency) functionality, "Under EU rules you have the right to use a third party service (TPS) eCall system in addition to the standard 112-based one" and "Any TPS eCall system must: [...] allow the owner of the vehicle to choose between the 112-based eCall and the TPS service" - which also means manufacturers can't force you to use "their" TPS that probably has different privacy trade-offs.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/legal/privacy

[2] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...

floatrock2• 7 months ago

I mean, so does at least GM, Kia, Subaru, and Mitsubishi.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

The American Way is to monetize this data with insurance companies as the buyers.

aunty_helen2• 7 months ago

It would be unlikely that Chinese EVs send anything less than western car manf. back to base. So you can safely assume that minute by minute data is sent back and sold to companies like Inrix.

axus• 7 months ago

Does this number include gasoline vehicles, too? To me the real story would be if carbon input/output goes down in the countries buying these cars.

i_love_retros• 7 months ago

Great news. Hopefully more people will come to their senses and stop buying teslas.

innagadadavida• 7 months ago

Do these Chinese cars last over 5 years? I remember that it was a long hard path for Kia and other Korean car companies to catch up to the Japanese car quality.

BYD Sells 4.6M Vehicles in 2025, Meets Revised Sales Goal

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