The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles around the world, and Chinese car makers are making the most of the opportunity.
Trump is training the world in how to live without us. Congrats!
-1 soft power -1 soft power -1 soft power
Cheeto Benito inadvertently doing more to drive renewables and electric cars than any previous incentives definitely isn’t something i had on my bingo card.
Yes. But as an American I want to thrive with byd here!
They’re just better electric cars than what we can get…
We can’t even get those small Japanese trucks
The whole world is starting to find out that they can thrive without the usa, now that they have to (unless they kiss the ring). Fuck, it’s just like Stephen King’s novel “The Stand”.
Canadian here who wouldn’t mind trying a BYD.
You guys either already have them or will very soon. I haven’t checked the progress lately, but it’s certainly moving forward.
I haven’t gotten to the point of actually finding where to get them, but my research so far has told me that the number of cars being imported is limited at least to start, so I’m expecting them to be somewhat hard to get. Makes me wonder if allowing them was more about leverage for deals with the US rather than truly trying to distance ourselves from US reliance.
Yeah, could just be a political move to try and show the US you can do shit without them. Still, good move. I hope you can get one. My wife and I have BYDs, have had them for 3 years, no complaints whatsoever.
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Thankfully I never saw a tesla in person, but I see a byd every day around here.
Pretty sure they’ve been doing fine without the US market for years.
(It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when BYD sets up dealerships just north of the border, since Canada has given them the okay to import a certain number of vehicles per year.)
(It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when BYD sets up dealerships just north of the border, since Canada has given them the okay to import a certain number of vehicles per year.)
Better to look at Australia. Low tariffs only apply to 50,000 cars made in China, which include Volvo and Teslerrr. This means the cars they import will be expensive.
But Canada tried an experiment with BYD buses, they set up an assembly plant near Toronto in 2019 and the buses were so bad, no one ordered them because they broke in testing. Toronto ordered 25 and sued to get their money back, and by 2023, BYD Bus Canada was shut down after building a whopping 10 buses.
Buying a new model from established car makers is a bad idea. The reality is there is no long term data on these Chinese EVs.
London (UK) has been successfully running BYD EV buses for years with no major issues. They’re cheaper than the diesels to run and quieter. Not sure why Canada had so much trouble.
I was curious about that so tried googling ….
Canadian buses were
- earlier models - I see years like 2018
- at least some were built in a new plant in Canada
- part of the blame was lack of spare parts
- part of the blame was limited range, especially in winter
London buses
- newer. I see years like 2024
- no real winter
- I see articles about a new larger battery to fix range issues
- appeared to have similar problems, including a major recall for fire risk
Maybe London benefitted from newer models and doesn’t get as cold as canada
Seems a fair conclusion, certainly it is warmer in London UK than London Ontario !
Wasn’t just Canada, US cities all had problems in testing.
As can we all.
Tesla had pioneer advantage
The Chinese will make better vehicles more efficiently and cheaper
That should make everyone happy
They have taken over technological lead with EVs a good while ago. Regarding batteries themselves they always have been in the lead anyway.
I’m certainly very happy with my Huawei watch. Obviously a totally different product by a different manufacturer, but China can clearly make quality stuff that’s affordable.
Indeed I’ve been using Xiaomi phones exclusively for well over a decade
Not the best feature set maybe but cheap as chips and highly functional
A huge domestic market is a strong advantage for Chinese manufacturers.
Even if every single country stops buying Chinese cars, they’ll still have a base of 1.5 billion potential customers.
With more countries actively partnering with China, this number goes up considerably.
This is the reality of the situation. They are an absolute juggernaut with a tremendous amount of inertia. It seems like it would be a good long term strategy to partner with them, or emulate them at least.
They did do quite a bit of damage to Mercedes, Porsche and BMW in Germany over the last 2 or 3 years.
Competition: the final boss of capitalism.
Good. Those names have been during way too smugly for the quality of their vehicles.
Tho, maybe it’s because the Chinese don’t deal with these huge margins they have on cars now. A new car now costs tenfold what a new car would cost a few decades ago
A new car now costs tenfold what a new car would cost a few decades ago
Average car price 20 years ago in Canada, $32,700. That $52,000 corrected to inflation.
Average price of new car in Canada 2026 is $63000, but average is a stupid measure, the median is much lower.
I can’t find the actual median price but it is estimated by one site at $45K.
The big difference between today and a few decades ago is people leasing cars they cannot afford, which drives up prices.
I can confirm the price of new cars in France, it seems to be everywhere. Also, “thanks to” leasing, you would think most people can afford BMWs and brand new big cars at a very high price. It’s really irresponsible when you know that they don’t earn enough for those cars, and they will lose thousands of dollars in the process.
Not entirely disagreeing with you. The way you worded it was always going to be the case if all you do is compare window sticker prices from across the decades though. Inflation cuts your money in half roughly every 20 years. A 20K car in 2006 is a ~40k car today even if everything else stayed equal. The average price for cars after inflation is going up though. The US’s trend towards SUVs and trucks is certainly pulling prices up but other things do as well like the government mandated features(small relatively but not nothing).
Some examples(these are when they became mandatory, not available)
- front airbags - 1998
- tire pressure monitoring (tpms) - 2007
- ABS - 2011
- stability control - 2012
- backup cameras - 2018
Average new car price has gone up a lot because the average new car has been purchased by rich people who demand high performance and luxury features. And rich people have been doing great the last 50 years, so the top of the market has totally run away with high prices.
If you actually dig into specific models and what they go for, you see that the most basic cars have only gone up slightly in price, but are also much higher performing (0-60 times, quarter mile times, braking distance), more efficient (better highway/city gas mileage), more reliable (more miles/years to failure), and have a lot more standard features that used to be expensive add-ons (automatic transmissions, power windows/locks, power steering), and are generally better constructed (smaller panel gaps, better sound proofing/vibrations), and much, much safer by pretty much every measure.
Today’s cars, even the cheapest ones, are much better than the cars from the 90’s, much less the cars from the 70’s (5-digit odometers because getting past 100,000 miles wasn’t necessarily expected, bodies that rusted within a decade of normal use).
So if a first generation Honda Civic in 1974 cost $3000 in 1974 dollars (inflation adjusted to $21,000 today), we should compare what that car was, compared to what a Honda Civic is today (starting at around $25,000 for the barebones model, $30,000 for a few nicer features). Compare torque/horsepower specs, actual performance at 0-60/quarter mile, gas mileage, all of that. I’m not entirely convinced that the people of 1974 were getting a better bargain on their cars than today’s new economy car buyer.
I hate that cars have gotten so big, and that the SUV is basically the American default at this point. But I don’t think that car prices have actually gone up that high in the 30 years I’ve been driving. And cars from before I was driving just…sucked.
Are you sure on the TPMS date? I’ve got a vehicle that’s much newer than 2007 that doesn’t have it
For the US it’s September 2007, for the EU it started November 2012 but seems like a phased rollout until 2014. Don’t really follow EU regs.
Canada, and still not mandatory here apparently. Which is weird because a lot of our automotive requirements do tend to follow the US due to common production lines and other such factors
They sell a lot of EVs because of laws. China did not make EVs voluntary in large cities.
Indeed, environmental regulations have played a pivotal role in the development of Chinese EV market, no doubt here.
In some cities, ICE cars are borderline unusable since you can’t even drive them at will any day you want - assuming you can even get a license plate in the first place.
What I meant was that international pressure on the demand side is not as scary for Chinese companies as it is for many other places.
Interesting, because I heard recent reports of huge amounts of inventory and large upfront manufacturing costs painting a picture of a company with extremely large amounts of debt to service. Some likening it to the Evergrande property company.
I doubt it’s on that scale, but I could easily believe BYD is another hyper accelerated company with shaky fundamentals.
Its amazing what a boon the trump cartel is for China and green energy
He should be awarded the Nobel prize for advancing environmental causes.
Sure wish rich dicks weren’t holding back innovation in my country!
“free market”… oops, cept for those things.
they want you to buy thier overpriced evs in the us.
BREAKING NEWS: Thing that is happening can in fact happen!
By doubling down on ICE and ultra expensive penis replacement “trucks” the Auto Industry and it’s paid up politicians there are basically committing suicide, so sooner or later there will be plenty of room in that market for auto makers with friendly priced electric cars.
