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.
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).
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.
If the 20th century was a repudiation of soviet communism vs capitalism, the 21st century seems to put capitalism on the backfoot
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
It wouldn't surprise me if our industry is also labor constrained? I know my brother had a machine shop to make aftermarket titanium parts for (motor)bikes, some cars, etc. He had a policy of nonstop looking for new machinists, even if he was fully staffed, because a machinist could just wander off at any time. With only 4 employees, he could find himself at at 25–50% loss of ship time in just a few days, at any time. It's not even like the machinists were getting more money. They'd just leave, because the new shop was 5m closer than his.
Fixing the labor pool issue is a decades long issue. More money in that pool won't fix things. I don't even know what's going on. Maybe I can just blame modern financialization for the issue? That seems easy, if wrong.
But, for sure, the complete lack of social safety net for labor can't be helping. Maybe if we guaranteed child care, 100% round-the-year safe spaces (we could use the fantastically expensive schools which are empty 75% of the time?), 3-free-meals-per-child, and free education through an associates degree? None of those are particularly expensive, even at the national scale.
And things get confused more when people only look at the top inflated wages for trade workers in the most expensive cities in the world, completely ignoring that most trade workers can't afford to live in those places and commute into the cities for their work and they almost never actually get offered the kind of wages that are advertised.
If we want to build housing, we'll need a stabilizing force for that. I don't see a way to make that happen outside of govt intervention.
If you hit us with sucking funds from the housing market you will gut our economy even more, and there is zero support in the US to protect homebuilders right now when the two younger generations can't afford their product. If you offered a bad ass modular housing system that could quickly/cheaply build decent homes (current US Spec grade or higher) that might get really interesting.
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.
In the late 1970s early 1980s if you tried to buy a compact american car it was like buying the burger at a fish restaurant or the vegetarian option at a steakhouse. It was there to check a box. It wasn't well thought out or a core product they gave a shit about and they were almost always last to get any innovations. You want power widows AND an automatic, sorry we'll have to special order that, we don't stock those on the lot.
In contrast, the Japanese gave a shit about those product lines. So someone making "In better times I'd be buying a bigger car from Chevy" money could go to them and get something configured how they wanted without being told no a bunch of times and the sales guy trying to get them into something bigger car didn't want like would happen at the Chevy dealer. Toyota or Honda or whoever literally didn't have those products to upsell you into. Yeah I guess they could sell you a landcruiser but people didn't buy SUVs then. That would be like trying to sell an Econoline to some rich woman who's shopping for a 3row Landrover.
At the end of the 1980s the domestics were basically back with their own new "modern" FWD platforms (e.g. Taurus) and new larger stuff (minivans, midsize SUVs) which made money hand over fist for 10yr or so. The Japanese were basically on the sidelines for all of this. Like yeah they had the 4Runner and Pathfinnder and Passport and stuff but no amount of 2020s fanboyism is gonna make those sales numbers any less of a joke. What the Japanese did do very well though was give a crap about their smaller cheaper offerings, Rav4s and CRVs and small and midsize sedans which the domestics neglected. So when the SUV craze came to an end with the high gas prices and bad economy of the mid-late 2000s they were there ready to be bought. And it's this great success from the mid 2000s that every idiot on the internet seems to want to project back into the 1980s when the 1980s were far different.
Nope, I was there.
You're generally agreeing with me? You're making an argument that American makers improved by exposure to Japanese makers, and yes I am suggesting they also need exposure to Chinese makers for the same reasons.
> Japan was making the king of low quality cars that people wanted
This is China today, except by all accounts they are simply inexpensive and not low quality. Your bit about buying a compact car in the 80s has echoes in American automakers largely exiting the market for cars. (IIRC it's only Tesla, Lucid, the Mustang, and a couple Caddy models remaining.)
The main point is that in the 80s we could all see for ourselves Japanese cars. We could talk to people about how they liked them. People working at Ford could drive a Honda and figure out how to compete against it. That laid the ground for the resurgence of the American makers. Protectionism is depriving the automakers of this opportunity to retool to compete with the Chinese.
Partially. I agree on the economic lines. But disagreeing on the oft circle jerked quality bit.
These were not "high quality" cars even in their day nor were they "higher than the competing product" on any non-subjective axis (the Japanese and europeans did make very different decisions than the americans on some preference based things though). By "low quality" I do not mea low value. I mean low end. These were not designed to be "nice" cars. They were built to a price. These were not cars you got into and said "man, everything I touch feels solid" and "this is a pleasurable driving experience". They got called tin cans for a reason. They were inexpensive compacts and midsize vehicles but what they got right was they nailed the contribution of attributes everyone wanted and so they sold very well.
I absolutely agree that exposure let the other OEMs get better.
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...
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.
TLDR: Toyota can afford it
1. The BYD debt is alleged to be undercounted due to treating suppliers as lenders.
2. The Toyota debt includes a large chunk of lease financing. Which sort of doesn't count.
But even if you adjust Toyota's down and BYD's up, Toyota's is still significantly larger.
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.
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?
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.
I have been told they are reaching wage parity with the west, so not labor cost.
Reuters agrees with op: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-goods-dumping-st...
> 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)
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.
[1] Why China Is Hoping $1.6 Trillion Can Fix Its Hidden Debt Problem - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-16/china-eco... | https://archive.today/HsaHV - April 16th, 2025
It’s why China’s real estate company debt is dragging down the economy as a whole. It’s all connected.
China very much is held to the same rules as the US, especially as it engages with the global financial system.
Which is why they are in so much trouble. The economy is anemic. The last stimulus package barely made a difference. Debt overhang remains.
It doesn’t matter how much you think China is in trouble financially, at the end of the day they still manufacture a third of everything in the world.
False.
It may not be the same as debt owed to other parties, but not paying it still has consequences for things like money supply.
Otherwise, why would the government not just lend endless amounts of money? Even the Chinese government knows they can't do that.
> It doesn’t matter how much you think China is in trouble financially, at the end of the day they still manufacture a third of everything in the world.
Their output doesn't really matter when it comes to their financial situation. You can produce a lot and still be in trouble. And it's not me that is calling out China's problems, China is talking about it as well.
The constraint is on real resources, which China has plenty of, regardless of how much debt they have.
The financial situation is an accounting detail. China could decide to write off all debt it owes to itself tomorrow, and literally nothing would change.
You did say...
> There actually literally is a free lunch. Debt owed to the government by itself isn’t real
Which I think is reasonable to interpret as lending infinite money.
> The constraint is on real resources, which China has plenty of, regardless of how much debt they have.
I'm not even sure what you're saying here. Constraint on what? Money? Economic growth?
Assuming you mean money, it doesn't make much sense. Ok, China has lots of real resources. In order to pay down debt, they need to turn those resources into money. They can certainly create the supply, but they also need demand.
It's like Canada saying they have infinite resources in their timber. "We'll just cut down the wood and sell it". Well there isn't infinite demand for timber, so in fact, having a lot of resources doesn't mean you have endless money.
> China could decide to write off all debt it owes to itself tomorrow, and literally nothing would change
Absolutely not true. Look at the real estate developers. China is working hard to get them out from under the crushing debt they have. If, as you claim, they could "write off all debt, and literally nothing would change", why didn't they.
The answer is that China is mostly a market economy. Writing off debt has massive consequences bothing domestically and internationally.
This is the trade off China made when relying on the free market for growth. If they want to leverage the free market, then they are held to the free market's rules (which they are currently dealing with).
Can you imagine a world where a government could spend infinite money without any problems? If you can’t, then why would someone else think that? If you thought my understanding of macroeconomics was different from yours and you were genuinely curious, it would have been a good idea to start by asking questions. Or if you thought I was an idiot you could have just ignored me. But you chose to assume an obviously ridiculous premise to my comment and reply based on that. That’s the definition of a straw man argument.
If you still care to know, the constraint on government spending is real resources (and whether they can be usefully utilized of course).
I don’t know about the real estate situation in China, and I don’t know if it was financed by private debt or public debt, so I can’t comment on it.
> There actually literally is a free lunch
In response to you saying that there is no free lunch since debt is always owed to someone.
This sentence doesn't make sense. "Debt issued to it's government"?
I presume you mean government debt issued to the central bank, whereby the central bank prints new money as a part of the loan?
It absolutely can be inflationary (see US inflation during Covid) if the money eventually makes it into the economy (e.g. by paying workers).
And yes, debt is always owed to someone. Whether that someone is the central bank doesn't mean it's a free lunch - not paying back the loan has consequences to the economy.
That said, it's very difficult to be sure if what I see from the outside is propaganda. Or rather, it is always propaganda even when it's true, and I can't tell how much of it is China's own self-promotion vs. other people giving negative propaganda.
Example of cheating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officials_implicated_by_the_an...
And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal#Arre...
Nevertheless, it would be interesting if someone could, you know, prove, and not merely allege, that Xi Jinping's family or friends cheated.
Even with the sub-heading "It's legal, and that's the problem."*, and even though this kind of cheating is broader than this reply chain from "There is no such thing as too big to fail in China", this is absolutely within bounds for what I asked for :)
* and the not-proof-read AI generated image, that never helps…
There's ways to invest in stocks that are not cheating, for example.
Or, you know, they might have done what I myself am doing right now and be landlords. That's not cheating. Or at least, I don't think it is, I don't know what the Chinese government considers it to be, what with communism and all.
For this context: cheating is in the sense of "large bets where the cost of failure will be paid by the state and yet they get to keep the profits in the event of success": I think that if any of them have made such bets, those bets have paid off. I think that if any such bet had been made and failed, it would have been noticed by people outside China.
As I said:
From the outside, it appears that "upset the regime" includes "cheating your way into profits".
In the event they make a bet and it fails and we spot it, that specific chain is what would make it cease to "appear" to be so "from the outside".
At the same time production capacity outside of China has to compete with this "rigged" system, which is near impossible to do.
It doesn't really appear to be anything of grand significance.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
https://www.drive.com.au/news/australias-best-selling-cars-b...
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...
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.
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.
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.
(There's also anti-dumping tariffs on electric bikes from China, I wonder if it's the same lobby...)
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.
Isn’t it wise to prefer a nice steering feeling? Your body is, after all, going to be feeling it every time you drive.
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.
> 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...
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.
China had a mandate to contribute to climate action goals years ago. Their government sponsored that growth. Now their companies need to make a profit and selling overseas. It's simple free market forces.
I thought the last few decades of the US losing key industries to China was a lesson everyone learned?
The chinese are not entering a saturated market here, they are building it and apparently dominating it by creating the best value
They did the same with PV panels, their plan was to make PV cheap for china, and in the process they became supercheap for the rest of the world too.
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.)
To compete with China in the ”open market” now, Canada will need:
- 25 years of investments in infrastructure and education in STEM and manufacturing
- Targeted state subsidies of chosen branches, which will require
- transition to at least partially planned economy, which will require
- at least partially transitioning to some form of dictatorial governance
- increase population at least twofold (you need multiple multi-million metro areas to support large high-tech clusters)
- devaluate CAD about 2x and accept about the same drop in local purchasing power (which likely will happen anyway, but could be not that harsh and fast).
China at the moment has like 10x advantage in industry ober Canada, it’s impossible to compete. It’s like saying that your immune system must be able to handle bubonic plague, so let’s just inject the body with the pathogen and let it adapt without any external support. A noble idea, but you’ll likely die in the process.
- Also a much larger population to create the labor pool necessary.
I was speaking mostly about the Western bloc of countries (EU + USA & Canada) that have their heads in the sand. As a semi-unit, they already have most of the pieces necessary to be competitive.
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?
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.
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...
China just carried out its second reusable launch attempt in three weeks - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/china-just-carried-out... - December 23rd, 2025
(Long March 12A)
extra fun - China is also spending lots of $$$ on electromagnetic rocket launch.
China does bet on any particular technical path, it invests on all possible paths.
Uncaught TypeError: this._shaderModuleClass.inputs.findLast is not a functionSo 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.
> Across EU+EFTA+UK in October 2025, BYD’s registrations (~17 470) were ~2.5× Tesla’s (~6 964), and YTD BYD’s total (~138 390) was closing the gap on Tesla’s (~180 688).
Still not as strong as in other markets. In Finland, BYD is not even in top10:
- 1. Skoda Enyaq (~1614 units)
– 2. VW ID.4 (~1582)
– 3. Tesla Model Y (~1516)
- Other brands include VW ID.7, Kia EV3, Volvo, Audi, Polestar.
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).
The pricing page shows none available in the USA:
So basically you either compare current NA/EU Teslas to a hypothetical untariffed BYD (I don’t think this is fair) or you compare Chinese made Teslas to BYDs (which of course leads to similar prive perf ratios).
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.
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.
> 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.
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!
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...
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.
You claim Tesla is created by government subsidies yet ignore the $230B in subsidies for the Chinese market?
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.
- 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.
the Bronco could make a killing in Africa but is it sold there NO. I understand here in the states the 4runner has no competition - yet ford wants to kill it using the Bronco. Why not use the Bronco to kill the land cruiser in markets where people default to a Land Cruiser / Fortuner and force Toyota to play defense.
E.g in Africa certain markets Ford started selling the Ford Ranger Raptor and they're making a killing - and actually starting to cause Toyota to compete and not bring their usual stale cars.
However Chinese have brought their A-game too - Tank 300, BYD Shark etc
It's true, the Ranger is immensely popular. But Ranger owners and LC owners do not see eye to eye and you'll have a tough time convincing the LC owner to change allegiance.
For South Africa specifically, the Ranger is about as large as you can go in terms of personal vehicle, before it becomes a serious hassle. Our infrastructure does not really support bigger cars. How does the bronco compare with the Ranger size wise?
Lastly, the Ranger is built in South Africa, I think Ford knows and understands the Southern African market very well.
Interesting question. Maybe this is the niche where existing auto makers can thrive though if China automakers have a blind spot to outdoors enthusiasts where range is more important.
The problem is that no one really needs or wants this outside of NA, Australia, maybe Russia and Africa? But there is a market.
Range anxiety and towing is a niche problem and companies will get rich selling the next Toyota Camry/VW Golf for the median consumer.
EREV is niche on niche and that's sort of where I expect the NA market to be going under the NA auto makers. We're going to have this protectionist wall where we have these bizarre (increasingly ICE dominated) market while the rest of the world moves on.
The whole EREV trend actually came from China (and if you look at reporting from Chinese car shows, outdoorsy/cross country stuff is all the rage right now). But the EREV sales seem to be falling off, maybe because the masses have overcome range anxiety (and the charging networks have been built out).
> EREV sales in China increased 218% year-over-year in 2021, 130% in 2022 and 70.9% in 2023. In other words, growth has been tapering off for the last few years.[1]
[1]: https://insideevs.com/news/782978/range-extender-popularity-...
Sure, that microscopic territory no one cares about
I'm not sure about BYD, but other car makers have FSD that works like Tesla's FSD, and in some cases it even outperforms it. Here is a test from a few months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuDSz06BT2g
> - The Chevy Corvette Stingray? Say what you want, but the high end ICE sports cars have an appeal of their own…
The world is moving to EVs, ICE will mostly be collectors cars in 20 years in developed countries. As to Chinese sports cars Xiaomi SU7 Ultra: "June 2025, an unmodified SU7 Ultra (with a maximum 1,139 kW (1,527 hp; 1,549 PS) power) lapped the Nürburgring in a hair under 7 minutes, 5 seconds. It is not only faster than the fastest Tesla Model S Plaid and Porsche Taycan versions, but also faster than a Rimac Nevera, one of the most high-end and expensive electric sportscars."
U9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangwang_U9 is a supercar produced by BYD, fastest in the world.
"It achieved a maximum speed of 496.22 km/h (308.33 mph) at Germany’s ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg, making it the fastest car in the world and breaking the record previously held by the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ at 490.484 km/h (304.773 mph)"
This one is imo better comparison https://www.dongchedi.com/video/7530078571931435566 https://carnewschina.com/2025/07/24/chinas-massive-adas-test... Tesla won every category despite this being a test performed in China by Chinese outfit.
Setting aside the performances of similar systems, the more fundamental question is why is this even important to Chinese carmakers?
1. They are shutout of the U.S. market with tariffs from both parties, that doesn't seem likely to change.
2. Self driving systems are far more difficult to work well on the roads of Europe, Asia or Africa. The kind of wide roads and planned development only exists in U.S, Canada or Australia. On top of it the issues with weather handling are still on-going problems.
3. Labor is not near as expensive as in the U.S. in the rest of the world (dollar is expensive) so automation ROI is not as attractive given the costs.
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.
honestly it really does seem that way. the impression I'm getting is farley just wants to make as much money as he can off of whatever's left of ford and leave. I mean, what kind of leader goes "wow I drove my competitor's car and it's freaking great, I give up!"?
compare this with toyota's CEO. they easily could've just coasted on corollas, camrys and RAV4s forever. nope, here's a new beastly supercar on the way!
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.
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.
Software explains a lot, dumping explains some of it but it might not be all of it
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.
You had some politicians like Justin Trudeau that tried to create a frame work that would guide and advantage capital toward investing in innovative green technology and future jobs, but then politicians saw the advantage in politicizing and opposing everything and they tore this all down.
Now China has continued to move ahead meanwhile NA remains at square one with increasingly backward technology, with no incentive to change.
It's going to get really bad!
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.
Beefing it up to the US/EU safety standards and even accounting for higher labor cost, it would be around $20k. I'm pretty sure consumers would be quite interested in something like this.
That's USD 17,750.
https://evdealergroup-byd.com.au/configurator/byd-atto-1?pos...
For sparsely populated areas or city to city driving plug-in hybrids should bridge the gap and allow people do most driving on electric and get the benefits of EV performance.
> An EV is better than no car at all, but they're a downgrade from an ICE in most cases.
Totally disagree. ~70% of americans live in single family homes. If you can charge at home which they can, and you dont have some edge case super distance driving needs, EV is better in every way.
Boulder is not a great EV town because everyone road trips all the time. 70% of Americans live east of the Mississippi where road trips are less common.
I also road trip around Colorado in my EV and it works great.
I bet the lower and middle class could afford a $10k BYD car though.
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").
ie, killing people and polluting the planet, mostly.
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...
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.
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.
That's the sort of thing that sounds great to a legacy incumbent (yay think of the reuse!), but inevitably leads to building bad EVs compared to the new companies who are building reimagined EV-only platforms from the ground up. Handling, suspension, range, battery integration, software are always going to be better in an EV-first design. The incumbents are trying to have their cake and eat it too - building EVs, but not cannibalizing their main ICE profits.
So, they will lose. Its their kodak moment.
I still remember when ford was _super_ proud of their ability to push OTAs to their mach-e mustang and lightning. This was in 2020, not 2010 when it would actually have been considered innovative and cutting-edge.
> So, they will lose. Its their kodak moment.
Agree. It's only a question of how many years the decline is stretched out over. We'll learn a lot about the long term viability of US auto over the next 36 months as slate/teleo/scout start to ship.
Only from 2019 or 2020 I believe they stopped making ICE.
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.
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 $7500 credit expired, they simply dropped the MSRP by that much if not more. BMW and others are pursuing the same strategy in the states. The car was never worth near that much to begin with. They were and are jacking up prices and pocketing the change.
BYD is dumping.
But as another comment pointed out, they have tons of debt, and TFA states that their "revised" target was revised downward, meaning earlier stock valuations were priced for higher sales.
From the NA vehicle POV it doesn't look healthy. Stocks of the major auto makers have done well this year, while product gets more and more expensive and limited. Barely seems possible to buy anything but a F150like anymore.
https://gfmag.com/data/economic-freedom-by-country/
If the broader market is rigged, investors don’t rush in for just one segment.
> Twelve are the factors related to four key aspects of the economic environment that are graded from 0 to 100 and averaged to determine a country’s score: rule of law (and related sub-categories: property rights, government integrity, judicial effectiveness); government size (government spending, tax burden, fiscal health); regulatory efficiency (business, labor and monetary freedom); open markets (trade, investment and financial freedom).
Quite the definition they made up.
why bother to read past that? save yourself some time.
The US allows much more tax dodging than Singapore, for example. Try not paying your taxes or violating any other law in Singapore any time, if you want to find out.
The US also heavily subsidizes EVs but the subsidies mostly only go to one company. Just take a look at the mind-boggling amount of subsidies we've given to Tesla both federally and on a state-by-state basis. Nevada's almost 2$ billion being the most blatant https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc
China and Chinese companies still want to shake off the "China means bad quality" image, so they actually want to make a great product at a good price for the consumer. To-the-moon share price growth doesn't happen by giving your customers a good deal.
Also the CCP doesn't want corporations forgetting who calls the shots, so there is some internal pressure keeping things less "frothy" than Western markets (where most governments are running scared of the big global corps).
Maybe that's why they behave differently?
There's been a lot written about China's "Fiscal Federalism"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01475...
> How they do financial bailouts by printing their own debt-free money [...]
What do you mean by that?
> [...] and having fine-grained control of the banking system is also something that the west doesn't do.
Giving bureaucrats even more levers to pick winners badly isn't a good idea. There's a reason China isn't as rich as the west.
[1] https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2024/apr/chinas... [2] https://newbagehot.yale.edu/docs/china-1999-asset-management...
I have no doubt the same will happen with EVs. But that's another reason to hold off on investing in any specific Chinese company rn.
In the US you usually have 2-3 giant companies who are pets of the federal government and get tax breaks and subsidies if they make 'jobs' in particular states, particularly where useful congressmen live. It's a far more centralized market even though it has little direct government capital investment.
Old legacy companies being propped up in the name of national interests while they slowly become more and more detached from the global market.
On top of that China allowed heavy investment in infrastructure and real estate instead of interfering in it, so everything from property to energy costs are cheaper. Making cost of doing business cheaper.
A competitive market destroys revenue potential, essentially forcing companies to constantly reduce margins or innovate. Both of which are very good for the consumer, but these companies need to run harder to stay in the same place.
I've heard that for example, NIO is facing fiscal troubles, since their business model was that they sell somewhat nicer cars for more money, however everything they come out with tends to be quickly incorporated by the competition at a lower price point.
Wrong orifice.
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
> 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.
If the market originally expected and priced in an even bigger decline, the stock would logically go up. Because of all the possible anticipations stock price movements are hard to understand, even in retrospect.
I think its because Elon would continue to be CEO of tesla , Elon is a brand at this point
its well known "brand", Yes there is a lot to hate but you cant ignore his huge follower
I mean Elon can come to Saudi and Saudi can invest in his company because they like him, that is just the way it works
Surely this can't be a serious nor a logical statement so I'll have to assume it's a joke or engagement bait. Here are 3 that I can think off the top of my head.
1. Robotaxi TAM: Tesla's already running unsupervised Robotaxis (no safety driver) in Austin tests as of late 2025, with plans to expand cities in 2026 — that's not vaporware, it's early scaling of high-margin autonomy.
2. Cross-country FSD milestone? Legit: A Tesla owner just nailed 10,000+ intervention-free miles on FSD v14.2 coast-to-coast in Dec 2025, including parking and Supercharging — verified via telemetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnLswbNB0SU
3. Model Y #1 for 3rd year? Tesla proudly claimed it in their 2025 recap as of the latest DEC 2025 data.
Stock still up ~11-25% in 2025 despite EV headwinds and ending of EV credits because the market prices in future upside: autonomy software margins, energy storage boom, Optimus, and robotaxi fleets. That's logical valuation, not "no reason."
Dismissing all that while cherry picking doubts is at best nothing but drivel.
stocks and the whole money-as-a-business is US thing - making actual product is the China thing
There is less hype and they are also not affected as much as US if stock goes down or stays flat.
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.
What does that mean?
Insider trading is good for the function of the market: it makes sure information is reflected in prices sooner, benefiting the general public.
> 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 are a clueless retail investor, buy a low cost index fund. Why would you be picking stocks?
Current insider trading laws are about _preventing_ it (but it still happens). This makes it so that insiders who do trade and get away with it make bank, but this does little to benefit the over all market information equilibrium.
What needs to make insider trading "good" (instead of bad), is to make the insider's trades 100% transparent and instant (instead of the months of SEC filing currently needed before it becomes public info). Doing this will ensure that insider's trades immediately gets reflected and copied/arbitraged against, and will allow the price of a stock to reflect information not yet released but is acted upon by insiders.
In any case, I'm not making some innovative new argument or hot take. This is pretty standard, orthodox academic stuff. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_...
What's an Epstein? Is that some other company you don't like?
When Warren Buffett decides that he wants to buy stock in a company, he knows that if this became public, the target company's stock would go up. Nevertheless, he's allowed to trade on this insider information (about himself!) without informing the general public first.
> You need to take your insider trading again (every bigcorp makes you do it) and learn what insider trading actually is, and why it is illegal, and why you’ll probably get caught. I’ve heard too many sad stories where immigrants from a country with looser laws came to the USA for very high paying tech jobs, and throw them away for just $100k of insider trading gains.
That's true but also entirely irrelevant to my point: in these cases the company does not consent to the employee using the information. And, yes, that's illegal.
Insider trading law in the US is about breaching fiduciary duty. If the company consents, there's no fiduciary duty that was broken. (But the conditions are more complicated. So let's go with the simpler example of a company trading on its own secret, insider information.
It's a fun little legal Gedankenexperiment to craft the conditions that make what would otherwise be insider trading legal in the US. But as you suggest, it's not very relevant in practice, because they all require the company's consent, which you normally don't get. Matt Levine sometimes likes to write about these sorts of things in his 'Money Stuff' newsletter.)
Don't know how you got this from Matt Levine. Isn't his catchphrase "Everything is securities fraud"?
No, no, you can still construct scenarios where it's legal. But yes, buybacks are especially heavily regulated. And yes, you have a fiduciary duty to shareholders. (But not to the 'integrity of the market'. There might be some duties and vague laws there, but it's not a fiduciary duty.)
In any case, what specifically are you referring to that's "clearly not true" in my comment? I constructed some examples that deliberately avoid a company (or an employee of said company) buying their own stock.
> Don't know how you got this from Matt Levine. Isn't his catchphrase "Everything is securities fraud"?
He has more than one catch phrase. The relevant one here is that insider trading in American law is about misappropriating information and fiduciary duty. Which he contrasts to French law amongst others, which is about fairness and a level playing field.
However, regulators in the US often want to spin the rules to be about fairness, but courts so far mostly disagree.
One example he brought up was: suppose you work for Bank X and you take the train in the morning to work. You overhear an employee of Bank Y talking about some deal on the phone (and that other guy doesn't notice you). You have no fiduciary duty to Bank Y.
By French law, you couldn't trade on the information you gained.
But by American (and UK law, where the example was from) your fiduciary duty to your employer, Bank X, might even compel you to use the information to their advantage. Especially if you were on company time when you overheard the conversation.
The company ultimately being the shareholders. Hard to imagine a scenario where allowing an employee to trade on insider information would benefit the shareholders.
Paying people in secrets isn't different in principle, only in degree.
However I agree that the scenarios where this would be useful to shareholders would be a bit weird, but it's just a Gedankenexperiment where we assume that for some reason the shareholders already think this is a good idea.
> When Warren Buffett decides that he wants to buy stock in a company, he knows that if this became public, the target company's stock would go up.
Warren Buffett is not a publicly traded company, and in this hypothetical he is buying stock in another company, which (by assumption) he has no insider information about.
> Insider trading law in the US is about breaching fiduciary duty.
This is false. It's about protecting traders. This is why it applies specifically to publicly traded companies. If it was about protecting shareholders (from what?) then it would apply to all companies.
No, that's not true in US law. It doesn't have to be the stock of the company you work for to get you into insider trading trouble.
> Warren Buffett is not a publicly traded company, and in this hypothetical he is buying stock in another company, which (by assumption) he has no insider information about.
Well, that's why your definition is wrong.
> If it was about protecting shareholders (from what?) then it would apply to all companies.
Huh, what? You don't have a fiduciary duty to people you don't work for.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Misappropriati...
Well, there you go. Any more questions?
Trading while having more information than someone else is perfectly legal.
> "11 out of 17 listed Chinese automakers were profitable."
> "93 of 169 automakers operating in China have market shares below 0.1%."
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?
> 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
BYD is at heart an automobile manufacturer and so maybe he felt more confident evaluating it using his normal tools.
Buffett didn't love automobile stocks either, but Berkshire Hathaway held General Motors from 2012 to 2023.
I think he said something about equivalent of selling shovels to miners in a boom, that PV was going to need storage etc.
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?
They have precedence for cutting down their tech giants and their tuition industry recently.
> tuition industry
Domestic trade doesn't really factor in here.
If your hypothetical happens, yes. China has been working hard to turn domestic investment away from housing. A trustworthy domestic stock market is key.
* The Shanghai and Hong Kong stock market seems to have improved regulatory enforcement. I have no way of measuring this...just stories from others.
* Over the past 10 years the China gov pressed on with building more housing in part to dilute value. Each year they have warned that houses are for living, not speculation. Last year, they dumped a huge amount of cheap lending into the market to provide movement...warning this is the last step...a month ago the 2026 gov priorities list removed protecting the housing market...first time in modern history. Expectation is the next two years will see realized losses in property. It would be a huge mistake if the gov hasn't ensured regulatory enforcement of other segments have not reached maturity for the retail investor. We'll see...
* As for civil courts, over the past 20 years I've run into quite a few stories from friends and business colleagues that needed to go to China court. The stories are similar to what you may hear in the US. No one suggested the court/process itself was dodgy/unfair.
for civil disputes, i am sure they are.
For disputes between the gov't and you, i highly doubt it. Is there a single instance of the gov't being sued for a policy that was meant to be political in nature affecting the supplicant?
Even someone like jack ma is unable to use the courts to obtain any justice - his Ant Financials IPO was shut down for political reasons, and he was reeducated. There's no such thing as due process in china.
Name me a single country where a rich person goes against the government and wins? You just don’t see it happen much in the US because the government is run by rich capitalists, but pretty much every country is the same.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/06/isds-fea...
China is just big enough to be able to ignore these global orgs.
"Law and order" is not equal to "the rule of law". Both China and the US ascribe to the idea of "might makes right", which is in essence an organized form of lawless state. It is conceptually the same as in criminal gangs, only with vastly better optics. That is why anyone not in power should strive for a rules-based order, for their own best interest at least.
Neither place the rights of their citizens in much regard, though money definitely helps in both places.
The possible outcomes for individuals in China though are Orwellian.
https://www.nzz.ch/english/why-george-orwells-1984-is-so-pop...
China has been disappearing people for dissent for decades. Whether Trump is the start of a similar regime, I guess we'll have to wait and see...
Like that I'm American, or not Chinese. Or that you giving your 50 cents isn't transparent.
It is a matter of degrees. The harder it is for a poor individual to be done justice against the government, the weaker the rule of law. On a tangent, parties that play the horn about "law and order" usually mean "rules for thee but not for me".
It just so happens that most western “democracies” are run by rich people, so they can avoid all that unpleasant business by just running the government in the first place.
E.g.
Broniowski v. Poland (ECtHR, 2004)
Doğan and Others v. Turkey (ECtHR, 2004)
Hirst v. United Kingdom (No. 2) (ECtHR, 2005)
Scoppola v. Italy (No. 3) (ECtHR, 2012)
KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland (ECtHR, 2024)
These judgments show that individuals and civil society groups can hold European states accountable for violations involving property, voting, asylum, climate, and broader rule‑of‑law issues.
They often lead to legislative change, financial compensation, or policy reversal, and many are used as precedent by lawyers and activists in new cases across Europe.
I will admit that my original statement lacks nuance, which makes it easy to nitpick.
Having read some of your cases though, a pattern emerged: it’s usually supra national organizations adjudicating these cases, and the nations are not bound by the rulings.
For example, in Hirst vs UK it was ruled that it’s a violation of human rights to deny prisoners the vote, and yet the UK government deliberately ignored that ruling and as a result prisoners still can’t vote in the UK. Not to mention that when this case was brought up in a UK court it was dismissed.
There are numerous examples of citizens winning court cases against the government.
Take the just the uk, three examples:
Anti‑protest regulations (Liberty v Home Secretary)
Air pollution litigation (ClientEarth v UK Government)
Rwanda asylum plan (AAA & Others v Secretary of State
Windrush - Members of the Windrush have repeatedly challenged the Home Office over wrongful detention, removal, and denial of rights, leading to government admissions of unlawfulness and an official apology in 2018.
Your claim is false. The world is not the same the world over, civil liberties are better in some places than in others.
Prisoners still can’t vote, people are getting arrested for peacefully protesting holding signs, and the Rwanda ruling was overruled by parliament and the only reason the plan was stopped is because the PM changed.
People have been arrested for peacefully holding signs, but they haven't just permanently disappeared.
I'm bored. The grey has shades, only children see in black and white.
Perhaps one of a few genuinely positive policies which only China can do. Meanwhile western countries will rather stab their economies to death than accept even just stagnating real estate prices.
Not sure where this is coming from. The EU recently just won a WTO dispute[1] against China that prohibited patent holders (often EU companies) from pursuing or enforcing patent infringement cases in non-Chinese courts -- it violated several provisions of the WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), including Articles 1.1, 28.1, and 28.2.
Foreigners generally view the Chinese court system with significant skepticism, primarily due to a perceived lack of judicial independence from the ruling Communist Party (CCP), opacity, and the use of the judiciary to serve political goals.
1. DS611: China – Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights
Nonsense.
Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods went up 4.6% in the first 11 months of 2025. That is the number with spending on automobiles excluded. A total of 24 million cars were sold in China in 2025 with vast majority being Chinese brands. If 24 million car purchases a year is "aren't buying their own products", then car industry doesn't exist in the US.
See TikTok as an example.
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.
You bought BYD after it had been hyped to the moon. Of course the price doesn’t move when it meets sales expectations.
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.
https://nypost.com/2025/12/31/tech/tesla-owner-completes-fir...
https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1pmnilm/se...
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
It's partially about fully automated cars, but that's barely started. IMO, it's more about them as ADAS now.
And it's not just about whether anyone else will catch up in terms of automation/ADAS, it's about whether anyone else will catch up in terms of manufacturing+automation/ADAS.
Edit- And yes, Elon acting like that doesn't help, but Tesla isn't Elon.
And there has never been a person like Elon, interfering in german election, USA election etc. and being the posterchild for companies.
In what timeframe did V3 and V4 improved for you? At least for me, even FSD 2023 videos were quite impressive.
Nvidia has its own platform with ML based training. Im pretty sure car companies can and will just use them if necessary. Besides that, left and right other companies are working on it, i saw an xpeng driving autonoms through the city and it worked very well.
Teslas first mover advantage is gone
I think his decisions have been helpful in the past, especially compared to half-hearted attempts at EVs by most of most other large manufacturers, but only time will tell if his current positions will pay off. At least the new compensation is performance based. If he can't deliver, he doesn't get paid.
V3/V4 have significantly improved in the past few months. I use one, the other, or both, daily, more V3 than V4. They are well ahead of where they were in 2023.
I'm sure Nvidia and others will eventually catch up, but they have to catch up in terms of auto manufacturing/use, inference/training/sensor hardware manufacturing/use, fleet training data, etc... simulataneously.
Xpeng driving autonomously is great, and shows they are catching up at least in a specific situation. They may be catching up in the aggregate, they may not be. I agree that a Chinese manufacturer has the best chance to catch up overall.
In general, I think it's about whether a distributed, lower-compute/sensor with higher-data/training approach like Tesla/etc have will beat a more singular, higher-compute/sensor with lower-data/training like Waymo/etc have.
Distributed has been able to offer better ADAS at a lower cost, but singular is winning at fully autonomous driving. If distributed can catch up in terms of autonomous diving while continuing to improve ADAS, distributed is done. I have a hunch that's a part of why there's so much demand for DRAM/etc...
you take Elon out of Tesla and you will end up with Ford, $13-16/share
> At least the new compensation is performance based. If he can't deliver, he doesn't get paid.
Unfortunately, with Elon and TSLA, this is not the case. He just has to promise he will deliver in some imaginary future (as he’s been doing for more than a decade) and he’ll be handsomely rewarded
And Tesla has to hit market cap and operation goals before any stock is awarded to Elon.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-what-elon-musk-needs-to...
If the Market cap isn't there, no stock. If the operational goal isn't there, no stock. They both have to be satisfied for the award.
He might have been able to push prices up to +/-10+% when Tesla was smaller, but I doubt he could even move it 5% these days.
Have they faked their current sales? How are they going to fake future sales?
It's clear you're not a fan of Elon or Tesla, but they'll have plenty of opportunities to mess things up themselves like any other company. There's no need to speculate about trillions in fraud and millions of fake sales.
If they hit the targets, he gets equity, if they don't, he doesn't.
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.
- 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.
The way this will change is Chinese companies opening factories in the EU. BYD is opening one in Szeged, Hungary soon.
https://www.investasian.com/stock-market/hong-kong-brokerage...
> 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.
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.
You must be trolling. 'Having seen them up close' isn't a serious basis for an opinion on an any vehicle. Take a proper 24-hour test drive and then talk about build quality.
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.
What other EV manufacturers are you even referring here? Do you even know the top 5 EV manufacturers in terms of global sales?
The data you're referring to is from Oct 2025 we're talking about the entire 2025 CY here.
> 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.
That's your uninformed biased opinion. If it were even remotely true, the Model Y will not be the world's best selling car for 3 years in a row. Math and sales numbers don't lie.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
Buying anything from China is supporting that regime.
Firstly it's not relevant to a discussion about China's behavior.
Yes the US under Trump has become increasingly authoritarian, but besides being not as oppressive as China, the US remains a democracy and there is a chance to vote bad people out of the White House and more importantly reverse the direction of the country.
While it definitely attacks threats and has perpetrated plenty of unjust deeds, it also is responsible for the food security of much of the world. It has lifted more people out of poverty than any other party. It has brought poor nations to the point of industrialization.
The US has been a far greater force for good in the world than evil.
The leadership changes frequently, so it's hard to point to any single responsible party. It's democratic, so its institutions are subject to scrutiny. The free press sheds light on corruption and rule breaking.
Despite changing immigration narratives, the US has been an early and strong proponent of multiculturalism and welcoming people.
With declining US hegemony, the world is likely to become a much more dangerous place. We'll see more economic strife, more war, higher costs, greater tensions.
Food (eg. protein, fisheries, etc.), water (eg. dams), materials (eg. rare earths), land, strategic geography, trade, labor, security, political upheaval, power struggles, sectarian violence, terrorism, religion, historical claims, climate, etc. etc. etc.
Under a single global order, disagreements were normally put aside to participate in global trade. As we begin to move to distributed trading blocs and factions, many of these disagreements will boil over. Parties won't step up to stop them.
The Chinese government does this a lot.
really doesn't seem to be as stark a difference as there once was.
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.
You really owe it to yourself to visit (or if possible live in) China for a while to see this other perspective.
Also it's worth noting throughout history, the incumbent world power will have clashes with the up and coming power to the throne. A lot of propaganda will be dispensed from both sides. Be critical of such information lest you become a useful idiot.
The only thing left standing is this iron curtain through which we are allowed to perceive china, which let's us fantasize about how repressed they are and oh how free we are. We have nothing but lies left to hold on to.
Hello Greenland. Hello tariffs. Hello humongous incarceration rate of millions of people, particularly of one ethnicity.
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.
I am curious when will other countries would actually start of defend their industries properly.
I mean, so does Germany.
Technically, the USA only has the massive subsidies part since the IRA came to be but they also have tariffs so, not doing too bad distortion-wise.
At this point in time, pretty much everyone is already defending their industries. China is just playing its cards better than the others and with a head start when it comes to EV.
In the case of the US with respect to China they are mostly a retaliation to the above anti-competitive practices.
But I hear you on who is playing their cards better. I don’t think China is playing theirs very well. They pissed off both the US and EU, and even Mexico is enacting tariffs on Chinese products. American and European countries are taking action to stop Chinese anti-competitive practices. Nice factories you have there, too bad there’s nobody to sell those products to.
I also don’t know what you mean when you say for example the US and Germany are suppressing wages. I’m interested in what you mean by that specifically.
> 1. Run other companies outside of China out of business
Why?
> 2. Keep people employed even if what they produce is worth less than their labor and energy/materials input.
Why don't they have them do something with positive utility, like sweeping streets or providing elder care, or a myriad of other jobs?
> Why?
Are you asking why they’re doing it?
> Why don't they have them do something with positive utility, like sweeping streets or providing elder care, or a myriad of other jobs?
They do, but they need people to be working in manufacturing facilities too, otherwise the gig is up. You can’t have millions or tens of millions of people sweeping streets all day - better to give them the illusion that the future is better by having them build and ship products.
If people are buying it voluntarily, who are we to judge?
Ice cream also only lasts a single use and is gone afterwards, and no one complains.
> Are you asking why they’re doing it?
Sorry, I should have quoted more.
> because they need to 1. Run other companies outside of China out of business,
Why do they 'need to' run other companies out of business? What need do they have?
> They do, but they need people to be working in manufacturing facilities too, otherwise the gig is up. You can’t have millions or tens of millions of people sweeping streets all day - better to give them the illusion that the future is better by having them build and ship products.
Maybe. Sweeping streets was but one example. There's lots of other positive utility things to do, even in manufacturing.
I'm sure they are in shamble knowing they made their main rival mad.
Apart from some moderate posturing to appease the US and a bit of moderate protectionism, the EU is still very much a trade partner however. A casual look at all the new Chinese brand factories in Hungary probably tell you everything you need to know.
Meanwhile they dominate the South American, African and South-East Asian markets.
> American and European countries are taking action to stop Chinese anti-competitive practices.
Personally, as a European, I would really appreciate if American started by stopping their own anti-competitive practices. It's objectively worse than what China is doing.
> I also don’t know what you mean when you say for example the US and Germany are suppressing wages.
Germany is suppressing wages. They have been doing so since the 2000s. It's indolore for them because their money can't appreciate as it's anchored by the rest of the union. It's terrible for the other members however especially considering Germany doesn't reinvest their surplus in the union.
The US is still a trade partner too, but this will change to a varying degree (as it will with the EU) over the next 5-10 years as both blocs move away from Chinese imports. You really nailed it though with your comment - China has to build the factory and staff local Hungarians precisely because the EU will continue to mandate that to continue to sell products in the market factories and jobs will have to be created in the EU.
The EU is extremely protectionist. As is China. Much more so than the United States. A lot of folks look at tariffs and then think the US is protectionist but that’s not the case, more so it has been very friendly toward the exact anti-competitive tactics that the EU and China have engaged in until only recently. To be clear the US of course has its own protectionist policies like the Jones Act, but it has been a much more easy country to do business in and much more tolerable to losing factories and such.
> Personally, as a European, I would really appreciate if American started by stopping their own anti-competitive practices. It's objectively worse than what China is doing.
It’s not. But these comments are boring. aS ‘MurICAN EuRope SHOuld PAY 4 defEncE. That’s what these comments sound like. It feels good to say, and it makes you feel like you know the real deal, but it’s such a banal thing to say that it’s barely worth saying.
“America shouldn’t pay for Europeans defenses”
But but here is all these ways it benefits you too, and of course we should pay more to meet it obligations but.. and… we all agree on this… and we help you with your international endeavors and we stand by you on trade, and you can count on us and… … yes but..
“America is the same thing as China’
But but no we’re not, we have a shared history, and… but despite the current admin we also uphold international law… and yes… but… look… we have your factories making your cars here in the US and we sell you software… and … but..
When you shoot off one line sentences that feel good, you miss out on actually interesting and productive conversations.
> Germany is suppressing wages.
How exactly?
Well tried but no, not even close. Presenting tariffs as a tit-for-tat is Trump government propaganda. It's baseless however and as connected to facts as looking at the trade balance for goods while ignoring services.
> It’s not. But these comments are boring. aS ‘MurICAN EuRope SHOuld PAY 4 defEncE.
It is. Nice stawman with the irrelevant parallel by the way.
America has an aggressive subsidies program targeting European industry (IRA) and high tariff on key part of the export chain notably steel. And I'm not even talking about the political meddling and threat of invasion by your government.
China is honestly a significantly more reliable trade partner at this point.
> How exactly?
The Hartz reforms.
How does German gov't subsidize their automakers' overcapacity? Their EV subsidies aren't/weren't exclusive to domestic EVs or EVs using certain domestic part. No issue with subsidies that are equally available to all eligible producers, domestic or foreign.
This is unlike in China where market access and EV subsidies were conditioned on forced tech transfer since 2011 -- for which China was litigated before the WTO (see WT/DS549 China - Certain Measures on the Transfer of Technology). Or worse, conditioned on using local batteries made by local battery "champions," CATL/BYD/etc only to funnel all NEV subsidies back to the local battery industry and undermine foreign competitors. In other word, no NEV subsidies to any EV with foreign batteries to protect local "champions." This practice is also illegal under Article 3(b) "Prohibition" of the WTO's Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) Agreement.
>> Technically, the USA only has the massive subsidies part since the ...
Biden's IRA subsidy ended in September. And let's realistic, the IRA was a weak and short counter measure against China's illegal practices past 15 yeras.
The government could for example impose a tariff that covers half the difference thus maintaining an unfair advantage for Chinese companies. Thus profiting from the manipulation without placing excessive burden on domestic companies.
However, they don’t have to be high enough to change who wins, even small ones adjust how much foreign subsidies manipulate the market. Foreign governments should consider how much US corn syrup impacts domestic consumption for example as a separate issue from how it impacts domestic sugar production.
China’s currency manipulation has second order effects that benefits Americans. We don’t necessarily want China to stop, instead the goal should be to minimize the harm while extracting maximum benefits. A small tariff that caused them to double down on currency manipulation would be a massive win.
In general, can the EV industry survive without government subsidies? Maybe now it can in the US.
Also not convinced EVs (as they are currently) are vastly superior to ICE cars. Not accounting for the potential for ICE cars to vastly improve if there wasn't so much vested interest. So the whole EV industry seems a bit unsustainable...
ICE cars can’t get vastly better they are simply too close to fundamental limits. It’s quickly becoming a competition between hybrids and EV’s.
ICE itself is close to fundamental limits. But iiuc other parts like frames and chasis are not, like they could be lighter and stronger.
ICE cars have bigger mileage than equivalent EVs? Meaning you fill gas once every few weeks in 5 mins.
> EV’s are a substantial win even without subsidies
Why are they subsidized then? It is somehow better than no subsidies from the company's viewpoint.
Home charging supplies more energy with less cost and effort. It’s physically impossible for ICE cars to win here as I will park at home and stay at home for a while, I don’t need to go to a gas station and then stand around for a few minutes.
> Why are they subsidized then?
Initially it was all about helping the technology become competitive, which it has.
As to why it’s a good idea, ICE cars have negative externalities due to tailpipe emissions. Much like cigarettes burning stuff = public health hazard. Mandatory catalytic converters help, but as I benefit when you buy an EV instead of a ICE car I don’t mind chipping in for some of the cost of an EV.
The alternative of simply taxing ICE engines or gas etc would be equally effective tool, just harder to pass politically.
Tesla might be responsible but almost all other EVs are likely externalizing a lot in their supply chain.
Anyway according to Gemini: ``` In the U.S., a typical EV becomes "cleaner" than a gas car after about 15,000 to 20,000 miles (roughly 1.5 to 2 years of driving).
If your primary concern is climate change, the EV is the clear winner after about 1.5 years. If your concern is local land/human rights impact, the EV has a heavier "upfront" cost that requires better regulation to solve. ```
EV is the way to go but is it going to scale sustainably to say 25% or more of all cars? Apparently yes, with the new battery tech in the pipeline.
Extracting, manufacturing, and transporting gas more than offsets those differences. Oil refineries are nasty not to mention mid to large scale oil spills.
> EV is the way to go but is it going to scale sustainably to say 25% or more of all cars?
EV’s are already 20% of global sales, will it scale isn’t some deep question 5x current production would be completely replacing ICE cars.
If you can charge at home it’s like 1/4 the price of driving on gasoline per mile. That’s not counting the fact that it takes basically zero maintenance other than tire rotation. I think there’s some fluids you want to refresh at 100k miles, but that’s it.
Compared to a gas car it’s like a free to drive car.
It also drives better. You get used to instant full torque fast. Even an economy EV like the Leaf feels like driving an ICE sports car. In some ways it’s better since the response has no latency. When I drive an ICE car it feels laggy and mushy. Also seems loud and smelly and “steampunk”.
Recharge time and range are still better for ICE, but that’s literally the only advantage. EVs are superior in every other way: cost to operate, lack of maintenance, efficiency, acceleration, torque, quiet operation, and so on.
I’ve read a few analyses that claim that driving an EV is still better in terms of emissions than an average gas car even if you get 100% of your power from coal (very few do). This is because small heat engines suck and because gas takes tons of energy just to go from oil well to pump. A big supercritical turbine in a coal plant has much better thermal efficiency than any car engine, and oil has to be shipped and refined (very energy intensive) then post-processed then shipped again and all that counts against the overall efficiency.
EVs are just better. If the charge and range gap can close, ICE is obsolete for all but niche uses.
I agree that Chinese workers and tax payers are hurt. But why do we need to 'defend' anything from their generosity?
I'd write a BIG thank you note to the Chinese taxpayers if they could send a direct cash payment instead, so I can use it towards my next EV purchase (of my own choosing).
Otherwise, I prefer not to participate in China's predatory pricing tactic enabled by illegal export subsidies to undermine foreign competitors and distort global market.
In any case, feel free not to buy goods you don't like. No one is forcing you to buy, or are they?
Sure, China's NEV subsidies are illegal and that's why Chinese EVs should stay in China. Too many folks still don't understand why Chinese EVs are countervailed not only in the US, the EU, Turkiye, Canada, but also why China's ally countries such as Russia and Brazil are imposing restriction on Chinese EVs (or the legal basis).
>> In any case, feel free not to buy goods you don't like. No one is forcing you to buy, or are they?
Sure, but no point in marching around virtual-signaling as if Chinese EVs and illegal subsidies are pro-consumer.
> Sure, but no point in marching around virtual-signaling as if Chinese EVs and illegal subsidies are pro-consumer.
Huh? Where's the virtue? And how can cheap stuff not be good for the consumer?
The subsidies are bad for the Chinese economy and the Chinese tax payer. But they are excellent for the overseas customers who benefit from them.
This is weak sauce.
wow, seems like US must pull from the NATO fast
that's why we have russo-ukrainian war right now, if EU is strong enough to counter russian, that wouldn't happen
US was involved in Bosnia and Kuwait. If they pleased they would be involved in Ukraine. But US got the fascist mind virus.
It WAS US policy to play the protector role for EU and other West Aligned nations. Such that they traded with US and bought weapons from the US. If US pulls out, they will be replaced by other players in the game.
The publicly released sections of the latest US National Security Strategy and sourced comments indicate that the US is looking to interfere in EU solidarity and its actions around Greenland are specifically anti-NATO, which is an alliance based on security of internationally recognized boundaries and resolution of disputes by peaceful means.
Members of NATO can't rely on the US commitment to the alliance, and members of the EU can't rely on the US commitment to their own political arrangements as democracies.
The trade war that the US has with its immediate neighbors also shows that even agreements made by the previous Trump administration (USMCA) are not binding on the US.
Why should anyone trust anything that the US says?
The trade “war” is pressuring without kinetic force, yes. And our populations need the help, because our governments are spineless.
This feels like a rather lazy strawman to debate against. Not sure there's anything interesting about it.
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.
Does anyone feel otherwise? Is the net carbon and environmental footprint really lower over the entire lifecycle per car for an EV? Not today
> 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
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.
This discussion will proceed as follows: you will present a laundry list of examples, and if I answer NO to any of them, you win. It will play out as the illustration of the fallacy of all or nothing: if I am not 100% pure, then I am 100% wrong.
What you will fail to understand, is that in the real world "doing the best one can" still has an impact. So I might not answer 100% all of your questions, but it doesn't mean my decisions don't have any impact. The absurdity can be illustrated by rewording: "if we can't prevent all crime, we should stop enforcing it", or "if you can't feed all the hungry children, we shouldn't bother feeding any".
Unfortunately for you, I will not play your purity test game so that you can feel smug, but I will say that I do my best and I pay attention, and whenever feasible I vote with my wallet to buy from or invest in companies with stated goals that align with human rights, and I will feel disappointment over not making the "best possible choice" at every opportunity, but that will position me to do better next time. Because perfection is the enemy of progress.
Had OP said something like "How can you make an informed decision congruent with your ethics when so many ubiquitous companies violate human rights?" that would have been a genuine question. Instead OP said "Tell me why you don't do X" and behind that is "because I win." That's arguing from bad faith (a polite way to describe OP).
Though let me approach this from a more good faith angle, what are the steps you are trying to do to make better purchasing and consumption decisions?
I understand your point, it isn't all or nothing. I do try to make better decisions in regards to products created with blood, though I often falter, I use a Google phone, no idea how many children had to extract rare minerals for it to be created, and I buy cheap hardware from China and that's a whole other deal. However I avoid Temu and Shien, I don't eat meat due to the industry and carbon impact, I almost never use single-use and disposable plastic items to lower consumption in general, I avoid cars, almost always taking public transport, and regarding Fairphone, I am definitely eying them for a future phone, though right now there were some downsides that I couldn't take (for now, phone progress is slowing down, making it easier for them to catch up, hopefully soon). I don't do enough, and a lot of my decisions are based on climate impact and not human rights, I know, so, it'd be great to hear your thoughts!
But I will say that I ask specifically about the Fairphone because I've met many ethical, anti-capitalist, humanitarians, vegan, etc etc people who still don't apply any of their morals to the purchase of their cellphone and won't own up to it. I always found it an interesting piece of consistent dissonance.
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
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.
Either way I phrased my original comment as a question as I'm not sure whether to consider 17% or 34% as "high". It depends on perspective. Both are painful, but neither are high enough to completely kill trade, like 100%+ tariffs do.
Uh..
If that's the case, then someone needs to tell that to all the people buying Chinese cars man.
https://open.substack.com/pub/crosscurrents28/p/chinas-broke...
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.
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.
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.
BYD vehicles are sold in Europe where they have to meet safety requirements that are arguably more stringent than in the US.
If you could have Chinese workers on Chinese wages in American factories none of this would have happened. But that's not allowed.
Let alone that to provide same quality of living to average chinese worker as they have in China their salary in US will have to grow 5-6 times.
That's Baumol's Cost Disease, a symptom of not allowing massive amounts of workers in. The solution is to let them in, something like how UAE or Hong Kong does it but even more.
Most people don't want to do that. That's a choice they made, but they must live with the consequences and stop complaining.
> To build things you also need a lot of people with education, know how and experience.
Let those people in too as guest workers. There's millions of people that know how to build housing, do surgery, and so on, but they're not allowed to do it.
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.
Basically the same manufacruting line cant be even used to build cars on different platform than intended.
Example: a lot of car manufacturers have left Russia in 2022 and most of capacity used for cars is just stay rotting. Even used facilities are only utilized for semi-knocked down assembly.
That means standard components, flexible robots (3d printing are some, but there are many kinds), low retooling time. And yes, nothing at all like a car factory.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Their flagship show room has great beer and good food, too.
This was at a car plant for people working in manufacturing.
Makes sense anywhere :)
Well, almost anywhere. There are places where if you have a beer with lunch and they saw you arrive in a car, they'll ask you for your car keys otherwise they'll call the police on you. Daily life works differently around the world :)
For those without religious objections or addictions, one glass of beer or wine with a meal is a complete nothingburger. Yes, it technically impairs your reaction times, but not enough to be a crime.
Though I suspect the BYD folks would want to avoid any hint of impropriety, so they probably will only let you drink there _after_ your test drive.
But I've only ever ate and drank at their showroom, I never went to the car side of the business.
In Singapore you wouldn't necessarily arrive in a car (yet alone your own car) when you go to a car showroom. I'm not even sure they'd have enough parking around there.
See https://earth.google.com/web/search/BYD+Zhongshan+Park+1826/... for the location.
And many people bring a companion when they do a test drive. Filling up the companion is perfectly legal and fine.
Just need to make sure that the driving customer has the beer after their test drive. You can fill up the companions before, however.
But to strengthen your point: I don't know for sure, but from what I can tell by looking at the place there's barely enough inventory at that showroom to allow some test drives. It's definitely not a car lot.
And jokes aside, many people also need a car for work. Eg if you are a real estate agent, and always flitting around between different showings.
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.
I'm intrigued. What do you mean?
I have mostly driven BMW and Toyota sedan and fwd's. And as you progress in car price and size its a matter of getting more features, and a better version over the cheaper model.
The BYD's all seem really different,
For cars, I guess Henry Ford's anecdotal comment that "you can have any color you like as long as it's black" was a form of opinionated design. If BYDs cars are all different, surely they're less opinionated?
You could say that at a brand level, they are equally "opinionated" because the average car of each brand is average, but the OP argues that BYD does it by sampling N very distinct points from the car distribution, and other by sampling N times the same average point.
While this is one form of opinionated, it really just means that they are doing their own thing different from the other established players. This could mean MORE configurability in some cases. Another poster also said it, but opinionated just means that they have taken a stand in product design (features, looks, usability, etc) that they think it correct and it does not bow to 'the herd'. IMO, an opinionated design is neither good nor bad, but it is respected by me.
The standard new house isn’t opinionated - a custom build with features not normally seen could be.
Opinionated usually results in love it or hate it style design - unless they happen on something that just becomes standard.
The original Jobs iPhone was opinionated - an all touchscreen design went against the common “knowledge” that a physical keyboard was the way to go.
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.
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.
He is literally the walking version of the stereotype of a rural cowboy type. He runs a small hobby farm, leases pasture to local farms. He works in financial management for a regional company and his wife is a procurement officer for a state government.
They produce most of their electricity with solar. Replaced some tractor use cases with oxen. They literally don’t pay to operate their daily drivers. (A lightning and a Volt now Bolt)
The lightning replaced their emergent generator when that reached its end of life.
He got into this stuff after doing the numbers for the company. It’s cheaper and better to operate. Last year they bought a dozen Silverado EV pickups for their field people. They work fine where they deployed them. The workers love them and the opex is better.
The self described rednecks hate it because the internet told them to. He almost removed the branding because he gets approached by people warning him about all of the terrible things that will happen.
It reduces the range, just as it reduces how far an ICE truck can go on one tank. But that's only an issue if you tow long distance and cannot find a place to charge on the way. You could choose to rent an ICE truck for such (increasingly) rare occasions. People for whom that's not so rare should stick with ICE or hybrid, or in future with an EREV.
The people with serious towing needs are buying F-250s anyway. The people towing their toys to the lake are mostly fine. If not, it’s not the right vehicle choice.
Is that a problem for Ford though? Basically nowhere outside of North America buys trucks like the F-150.
You see a few Ford Transit chassis cabs with a flatbed on the back in Europe but mostly enclosed Transit vans.
(Of course the related news was that in Europe Ford also moved to an agreement to rebadge Renault EVs instead of manufacture their own. Has Ford given up on Europe, too?)
The argument that tariffs could protect Ford to do the hard work at building more EV models seems proven wrong when Ford makes the short-term decision that it can kick the can down the road on supporting EV models until after the tariffs expire.
No, because American truck buyers seem to prefer non-EV trucks while commercial EV buyers seem to prefer Ford's more practical E-Transit vans.
> The argument that tariffs could protect Ford to do the hard work at building more EV models seems proven wrong when Ford makes the short-term decision that it can kick the can down the road on supporting EV models until after the tariffs expire.
Ford's truck sales are not protected by the newly introduced tariffs but by the 25% Chicken Tax tariffs imposed in 1964. Seems unlikely that will change.
(There's been a lot of consolidation in the car industry over the past few decades which Ford hasn't much participated in. I guess the platform sharing agreement is a consequence of that as it wants to reduce development costs.)
For now. In a market with very few EV trucks (and very few EVs in general, and very few cheap ones).
If Rivian found a way to mass-produce an R1T at half the price, does Ford compete?
If BYD builds a North American truck in Mexico, does Ford compete?
GM's Silverado EV is growing at a decent clip, including commercial fleet sales, and looks possibly set up already to eat the market that Ford is leaving behind. If GM sales continue and maybe extend to another, cheaper pickup truck EV model, does Ford compete?
If Hyundai or Honda figure out how to get EV truck sales going in the US, does Ford compete?
Ford's pitching an EREV pivot as a "best of both worlds" situation. GM back in 2019 said EREV was a "worst of both worlds" situation that complicated drive trains for not enough benefit, especially to the consumer. Is Ford signalling competitiveness by ignoring warnings from their actual competitors?
If people in Nairobi are buying BYDs the American government can be smug about tariffs China still wins. The battle is over the emerging markets.
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.
Chinese automakers can give you a lot of car for 30k.
That destruction has been ongoing since the 90s. We've hollowed out our ability to make things.
We basically focused on the exact wrong things which has put us in a pretty vulnerable geopolitical position. Rather than trying to bring resources into the US to aid manufacturing, we tried to bring finished goods into the US at a lower price.
China has done basically the opposite. They've focused on bring raw resources into china while centralizing manufacturing. That's what has turned them into the global powerhouse they are when it comes to producing everything.
For the US to turn this around, tariffs would have been in order, but they needed to be pretty focused and with internal plans on building out the industries we wanted to grow.
Doing tariffs first without building manufacturing was just dumb.
How much would you like to pay for that 80k new truck? Sure, we can give you that monthly payment, lets just structure it as a 10-year loan where you end up paying twice that on a rapidly depreciating asset. Boom, we've just sold two cars and only had to manufacture one.
Basically only Tesla offers any car that is even similar to the extremely popular Toyota Camry. No US maker offers a compact car anymore.
Honestly, I don't think the immediate impact of dropping tariffs on Chinese vehicles would be as dire for the US automakers because the Chinese vehicles largely sell into noncompetitive segments. I don't doubt that the F-150s and Silverados can coexist with BYD sedans.
Fine, so let BYD come in with compacts, sedans, electrics.
It'll be interesting to see if US auto manufacturers were right that Americans only want trucks and SUVs.
> Doing tariffs first without building manufacturing was just dumb.
What you are looking at is unbound and shameless grifting. Not the first insurrection by the oligarchy in US history. Monopolies and wealth concentration come with a price. A very steep price.
Even if we don't consider these things, here in the EU, very few Chinese models look like a steal.
Tariffs or not (PHEVs and ICE cars are not tariffed like EVs afaik), the consensus seems to be that Chinese cars at a given category, are built better, cost like 10-20% less, are well equipped, but generally drive worse and often have annoying usability issues
All things considered, they're certainly competitive depending on what you're looking for, but don't look likely to oust the existing competition.
And I don't get the West's obsession with BYD - imo they look weird, they either get the interior or exterior styling wrong (with the notable exception of the Seal U), and aren't really selling that well compared to other Chinese brands.
This is the wrong mental model for a few reasons, not least that breaking into the US market would require massive marketing and infrastructure investment that would have to be paid for. And that’s before you worry about reengineering for US regulations.
Also: The current Chinese EV market is not in a sustainable place. It’s the product of massive government investment and (over) incentive to produce. Most Chinese EV makers are headed to bankruptcy if current trends continue, so they won’t.
In the steady state, Chinese EVs with German-class tariffs would be competitive in the US but they wouldn’t blow the doors off the market any more than, say, Hyundai/Kia have.
The high end Sea Lion 7 from BYD apparently tops out at around 205k yuan in China. $29k USD.
https://carnewschina.com/2025/05/08/byds-sealion-07-dm-i-lau...
Found it in Australia for $64k AUD, that’s $43k USD.
https://evdealergroup-byd.com.au/configurator/byd-sealion-7?...
That’s a lot more than a 15% markup. A Tesla Model Y Premium would be competitive at a minimum.
Australian sticker price for the atto 3 is under $45,000 AUD, a smidgen over $30K usd.
With a wife with a mobility scooter and working 30-90 mins away from the office depending on traffic, I picked on up (salary sacrificing) as the lease costs less than what I was paying for fuel on the Kia carnival (Sedona in the us) each week.
Tesla model 3 entry level was another $10K AUD for a car with less features.
A big issue is education. In my region the state government is pushing hard to support semiconductor manufacturing. In addition to incentives for building facilities they funded education in community colleges to train up the workforce, did some similar stuff at the high school level and implemented incentives for supporting industry.
But… you get the army you have, not what you want. POTUS has the strategic insight of a cab driver and is surrounded by a wack pack of sycophantic C-team players. We’re hurting manufacturing because without a strategy you’re just driving margin enhancement for a few industries, and the grinding down of the economy will hurt most others.
We should look to the Chinese as a place to learn from rather than a faceless enemy. They achieved amazing results and made some mistakes and sought out to do some things that are kinda gross as well. But… they aligned policy, governance and incentives to move their country out of the sorry state it was in. DJI has like 20k PhDs working on drones. I doubt we have that many in the US.
I'm not saying that Tariffs are necessarily bad or wrong. But they are a shape blade that is really easy to cut yourself with. Blanket tariffs are effectively putting a sword on a rope and wildly swinging it around in a crowd.
What you need is a surgeon to handle the tariffs.
But getting hit by 50% tariffs in Mexico as of today:
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-tariffs-go-into-effe...
Rent seeking is industry suicide. It feels like it helps, but it’s not solving the real problem.
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.
So the question is more about what part of means of defense you outsource. And what parts of means of defense are outsourced by your enemies.
You don't want to base your defense on inferior shipbuilding capabilities, do you?
So if someone says "national security" is above economic interest of US, I would say these people mean _their_ economic interest is above economic interest of US and use both terms as a cover.
There are clear national security reasons for the government to prop up shipbuilding and semiconductors.
Are you saying countries without shipbuilding facilities or not producing semicondutors are being conquered and their citizens being slaughtered?
I'd say that is fear mongering done by the people doing business on "national security".
Yes that is a clear risk. For most of human history, powerful leaders have unleashed violence on their neighbors to increase their wealth and prestige. For about 70 years, the cold war balance prevented very catastrophic wars between powerful nations but we now seem to be having an atavistic throw back of powerful nations being led by expansionist leaders. You either need to create your own manufacturing capacity or be at the mercy of others.
The United States is the greatest power the world has ever seen. While the oceans protect us, the truth is that even the White House was once burned down in a war.
There are no customers who want an oil tanker built in the US. Or Europe.
Nah, that doesn't add up. US needs _ships_ and SOTA military equipment to make sure that any military conflict is as short as possible (ie. US wins). Losing money on unused production capability does not make sense because in case of prolonged conflict there is time to build the capability (as it happened during WWII).
In reality, what you call "prolonged military conflict", is nothing more than normal international competition. One could even argue US is in prolonged military conflict since WWII. In which case making rational decisions based on hard economic criteria (ie. not losing money) is the key to success.
OTOH still strategically it’s not great. As the Asian companies have an actual market, this will lead Asian manufacturers to have better ships than comparable US ones.
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.
- they're not much that much heavier, class-for-class. Substantially lighter than the ridiculous ly oversized trucks that people buy for suburban use.
- Theres nearly infinite lithium in the world, depending on economics of extraction. new battery chemistries dont even use lithium.
- battery degradation hasnt turned out to be a big issue. Real world tesla data shows ~80% capacity at ~300k miles, which is approaching EOL for a car.
working class people cant buy cheap EVs because the US keeps cheap EVs out of the market with import restrictions, tarriffs and legacy manufacturers that refuse to adapt and offer a product people want. EV sales "cratered" for the same reason. Meanwhile, EV sales in the rest of the world are accelerating fast.
EV's just shift the energy burden from the fossil fuel industry to the power grid. It's not a fix, it barely qualifies as a band-aid.
> EV's just shift the energy burden from the fossil fuel industry to the power grid
Thats actually great! even if the electricity comes from 100% fossil fuels we would still reduce vehicle emissions by ~60% (ICE are only 20-30% efficient). And then of course grids are getting clean fast with the scaleout of renewables, which is accelerating rapidly worldwide. We will see 100% emission free personal car transit in my lifetime (somewhere, in whichever country gets to a net zero grid first). Thats exciting!
> even if the electricity comes from 100% fossil fuels we would still reduce vehicle emissions by ~60%
That emissions number is only looking at what comes out of the tailpipe, which isn't the full story. You have dust coming off the brake rotors, plus and much worse, the particulate from the tires as they wear down, and on that front, EV's are actually notably worse because a dead battery weighs as much as a full battery, a condition not shared by an ICE vehicle, and EVs do trend heavier on curb weight which means they go through tires faster and roads too for that matter.
Additionally, in cold climate areas, EVs end up spending a decent portion of their stored energy heating both the passenger cabin and the battery itself, and by constrast, heat is basically free from an ICE thanks to how it operates.
Like, if you live in an area with charging infrastructure, and the limitations/challenges of an EV aren't an issue for you (which to be clear, a LOT of people fit that description!) then by all means, get an EV. They are better, broadly. However if you have an ICE vehicle that is largely doing fine, is reasonably modern and well maintained... then it's arguably much greener to not buy a new car at all and just keep running the one you've already got. Better for the wallet, too.
> We will see 100% emission free personal car transit in my lifetime (somewhere, in whichever country gets to a net zero grid first). Thats exciting!
I have a lot of doubts, but hey, that will be some delicious crow to eat if it turns out true. I love cars, both electric and ICE, all their issues aside.
Does it not bother you that over 60% of the energy in gasoline is wasted as heat into the atmosphere? Of which a small amount is captured to heat the cabin in cold weather?
Massive massive improvement, that’s not greenwashing imho.
(Something that is greenwashing is PHEVs, they have proven to be mostly a lie in practice)
Oil subsidies are so interwoven with the way the US works that this is easy to miss in these discussions, but if not for these subsidies ICE vehicles would be much more expensive:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...
tarriffs are visible protective regulation, China protects its domestic markets through different type of regulations for decades.
- does product have higher quality?
- is it cheaper, given there is no proven reliability track record for Chinese automakers, meaning maintenance cost could be very high
- if production is subsidized by government incentives or cheap labor, Chinese consumer pay high price, its just money flows on other channels
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.
They have leaner assembly lines. More sophisticated supply chain. They now make a product that it turns out people want (reliable/economy)
One big one to consumers is the focus on long term reliability. This was a complete joke in the 1980s-1990s for US cars. Everyone knew Toyota and Honda would last 300k miles and an American car would crap out at 80k miles. We are in a completely new world of more consistent reliability with cars. Even if Ford is 90% Toyota - that’s a much better place to be.
Everyone wanted trade barriers in the 80s and 90s but without the pain of competition our cars would feel like the modern equivalent of a bad Eastern European shitbox - only optimized for power and not economy.
Sure, Ford has always made cars that their customers want, F-150 for instance, the best selling vehicle in the US for an unbroken streak of nearly 50 years, during which it continued to improve and maintain its popularity. The Chicken law has done wonders for the American automakers.
>> ... the focus on long term reliability.
Sure, I don't question the Japanese automakers' reliability, but, in the cheap, small vehicle segments they compete with the Japanese import, the American automakers are now more or less wiped out. Most small, affordable vehicles from GM and Ford are now made in either Mexico or South Korea. So where is their "competitiveness" that otherwise wouldn't exist without the Japanese imports? In other word, the Japanese imports clearly did not prevent the "loss of competitiveness in the future."
>> Rent seeking is industry suicide.
If it's as bad as you say it is, why turn a blind to China's rent seeking past 15 years and promote their industry, which again benefited tremendously from forced JV, forced tech transfer, restrictive market access/licensing, local content/sourcing/production, high-tariffs, shadow-banning foreign competitors, arbitrary regulatory/safety barriers, etc?
I think we can glean a lot of lesson from the Chicken Tax past 60+ years and China's rent-seeking policies in the EV business past 15 years. We know what works and what doesn't -- and BYD is not it.
If tariffs are so bad for America why do other countries have tariffs on American cars?
They didn't just put tariffs on foreign EVs, they poured a lot of money into their own industry to produce a lot of different companies that became fiercely competitive in their own local market.
Once they got a few big players they stop a lot of the subsidies which led to a lot of companies falling under but at the same time the process produced some really good, competitive and profitable companies like BYD which then were ready to take on the international market.
America, on the other hand, hasn't done much to increase the competitiveness of their own internal market for EVs. Hence, the protectionist measures will have the consequences the poster above described.
Tariffs are not "good" or "bad" they're an economic tool countries can use. It's how you use the tool and in conjunction with which other tools that can have negative or positive consequences for the industry they're applying it to.
It's like "america uses a scalpel to peel oranges" versus "China uses a scalpel in open heart surgeries". The scalpel can cut, but context matters to say if it was used properly or not.
What has china actually don’t different than America? Was a 10-15 percent subsidy not enough? Were the carbon credits not enough? We’re the limitations on gas cars dependent on ev sales not enough?
As far as I’m aware both china and the us have heavily subsidized ev sales. What’s different?
Ford in Europe is Ford Germany, a fully owned but separate entity (which is probably why Ford sales in Europe are decent). I think they have presence in other markets but most of their money comes from the US.
GM used to have Opel/Vauxhall, but it sold it to Stellantis.
Chrysler is now owned by Stellantis, which is a mostly European car maker.
Tesla is the obvious new kid on the block but unless they're the only ones with self driving cars globally, I don't really see them hanging on to their global market share 20 years from now in front of Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and European car makers.
TL;DR: I agree with you.
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.
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..
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?
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.
Physical buttons for needed "eyes-free" use, the HUD looked great.
Going to be an interesting decade, also interesting that its logical competitor is Apple as a hardware manufacturer.
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.
They also have them on display on shopping malls, for example on Huawei and Xiaomi stores.
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.
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.
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.
> 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...
That's more severe than "some functionality".
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...
The American Way is to monetize this data with insurance companies as the buyers.
toomuchtodo•1mo ago