China’s BYD is overtaking Tesla as the carmaker extraordinaire
economist.com
economist.com
American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Assuming that range is cut in half during the winter in the coldest scenarios and the average American commute, one way is 25 miles, 150 miles will be more than enough to replace most ICE cars. That being said, destination on a car from China probably costs $2K alone, so reaching a 13K price point anytime soon will be very, very difficult.
Supposedly the BYD Seagull can go 200KM and costs $9K in China, so we'll see. Exciting times ahead. (For reference Jiangnan used to sell ICE cars in China several years ago for less than $2K, so even though EV is cheap absolutely compared to USA, it's still much more expensive than what China could make if they continued to make ICE cars. That being said 2030 will result in banning of ICE in many regions)
> American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Just like how cheap Android phones in Asia resulted game over for Apple, Samsung etc. in the past 12 years?
Then why aren't the streets full of Chevy Sparks?
The problem with cheap cars is that cheap ICE components result in the car failing unnecessarily early. EVs can also fail, obviously, but it's less likely to happen due to design differences.
[1]:https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-car...
This is calculated by looking at the median car sale price for new cars and taking the beginning of the 2nd quartile. Or to put it another way, cheap is when about 75% of cars are more expensive.
The Versa, Mirage and Spark would be firmly in the "cheapest" category, where 95% of cars are more expensive. Of course, they are also in the "cheap" category, but a car doesn't need to cost that little to be considered cheap (for a brand new car).
When was the last time an American car (not truck), with an MSRP less than 30K has been in the top 5 selling vehicles? Americans can't compete on price, and so they stopped trying.
I think Americans could probably but most American companies are just finance companies with some product attached to it. Trucks, for example, have been pushed by American car companies because they can skirt emissions laws through more lax regulations, instead of trying to build a proper less polluting car under these regulations these companies prefer to skirt them, convince consumers through deceptive marketing that "trucks are safer for your family"-type of shenanigans to make a quick buck rather than compete.
It's sad to see it happening, instead of "innovation" American companies prefer to use deception on a market because it's cheaper. It's just being cheap under the auspices of bean counters...
https://qz.com/chinese-car-makers-are-becoming-shipping-comp... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-04/china-car...
At least in Europe, BYD is trying hard to not to appear as a 'cheap' brand. The cheapest car they sell here (Sweden) costs more than the VW ID3, and their flagship SUV is close to the starting price of the BMW iX.
The average EV consumes 34.6 kWh per 100 miles, so a 52 kWh battery is sufficient, on average. The average home charger provides 7.2 kWh so it'll take under six hours to recharge the car at home. You can do it at night when favorable rates are available. It'll add an extra 72 kWh hours to your utility bill for the month. Even in the most expensive part of the country (USA), the Northeast, you're only going to pay $1 per day. And I could get it for under $20K? Sign me up!
If BYD/Toyota could bring such a car to the American market then it's game over for the compact and subcompact market.
I haven't seen a single one of these and with the Chinese market as large as it is I'm sure that they could stay away from other markets for a long time without exporting their BEVs to countries where they will have to face competition from established Western brands.
Toyota itself is way behind the curve on BEVs, their JV with BYD is mostly Toyota hedging their bets that their Hydrogen path ends up being a dead end.
If you want to know more about BYD the wikipedia page is a lot more informative than this article:
On the whole BYD don't seem to be wanting to compete at the bottom end of the market and are pricing their cars around the same level of their 'competitors'. They don't want to offer the cheapest electric SUV or even best the 'cheap' SUV, they want to offer best $80k electric SUV.
Polestar presents very well here, right now they have a better rep than Tesla which I find quite impressive, given that they are manufactured in China and sold by a relatively new sales organization. What is interesting is that somehow they've managed to sidestep the Chinese reputation issue completely and people perceive them as European, which they really are not.
I believe it's because Polestar attached itself to the Volvo brand, which is owned by Geely but is still run mostly independently in Sweden. The confusion is probably on purpose, and Polestar cars seem to be pretty good (from the reports of the few I know that own one).
I have no doubt about that. They play it very smart, but that's kind of logical, Geely, the parent company has extensive experience in marketing vehicles of all kinds in the West and they have already learned a couple of good and practical lessons in not leaning too much on their Chinese parentage but instead to play local as much as possible.
Registration rates are of the value including VAT[0]:
25% of DKK 65,800
85% of DKK 65,800-204,600
150% of the rest.
There are some deductions for electric vehicles that are complex (and decreasing) that are best read about on the linked page.
With some smooth curves and red paint I can make a car look like a Ferrari, but that's a lot cheaper than actually making a Ferrari.
And maybe this is the real reason why American consumers are so easily price gouged? Because they look at a car and go "it's pretty, so it must be a $100k car". (Same for paying $1000 for a phone btw)
Making things pretty is cheap.
Calling them the leading EV maker is disingenuous, they are not even close to Tesla (1.3M vehicles, all of them BEVs) and VW (570K BEVs for 2022) is very close to BYD in total number of BEV vehicles sold, the bulk of which are for the domestic market. And both Tesla and VW are not exactly sitting still.
I've been following the vehicle industry closely for many years and I would rate Geely/Polestar way ahead of BYD in getting traction in Europe as a Chinese company making inroads here (though I missed them apparently already selling in Denmark). Polestars I see pretty much daily, BYD, for all their size I've yet to come across in the wild.
If you compare by the fraction of BEVs sold in Europe then they are currently not even a bit player, though that of course can change.
One thing BYD did wrong in my opinion is that they chose to use the same brand for their big utility vehicles (buses, for instance) and their personal cars. Their large vehicles, while cheaper than the competition have a pretty bad reputation here.
https://pvmagazine.nl/helft-van-de-236-elektrische-byd-busse...
And many other articles besides.
BYD is the leading maker of evs and their business is much larger in scope than other manufacturers. They also supply batteries, chipsets to other makers.
Sure, but they aren’t. These Chinese EV manufacturers are coming for the world market.
Volvo is now owned by a Chinese company, Geely, and they’re manufacturing EVs in China based on a Geely platform for global export[0]. Polestar, also owned by Geely, is a Western market EV brand exported from China[1]. BYD is already planning to build factories and sell cars in Europe[2].
[0] https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Volvo-to-ex... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/26/polesta... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/byd-build...
BYD's numbers often contain plugin hybrids (PHEV). So if you're trying to compare apples/apples, be sure to look at pure-battery EVs between the two.
Note 'electrified' from a different article from Barrons: "BYD delivered 206,089 electrified passenger vehicles in March [2023], up about 98% from the 104,338 delivered in March 2022. The March 2023 figures include 102,670 all battery electric vehicles and 103,419 plug-in hybrid models."
The 2030 timetable is not going to be met by any single manufacturer, if it is going to be met to begin with. I suspect that it is going to be pushed backwards bit by bit as reality sets in: that it always was too ambitious a target to realistically achieve. And if they stick to it, which I would find very brave it will simply mean that the price of personal transportation will skyrocket and that older non BEVs will have to hang around a little longer.
There is so much that has to work for an all electric transition for every new vehicle sold in the next 7 years to be successful that I wouldn't bet on it. I think of it more as a goal to strive for than something that is realistically achievable, but of course I hope that I'll be wrong on this. Time will tell.
Also keep in mind that whatever goals have been set that Europe at a minimum (but probably also other territories) are going to want to have a very large slice of the labor/manufacturing pie. If that isn't on offer then the tariffs will likely kill the market to protect local competitors, of which there are plenty.
Apple was a well known brand name before Nokia was, and that is in part why it succeeded.
The car industry, specifically the American market, already went through the "nobody can do tha-- wait what" phase once upon a time: California was poised to enact then-considered-ridiculous emissions regulations, American car makers all complained it was impossible to satisfy and California was on the verge of shelving them when Japanese car makers (read: Honda) came in to show it can be done.
The rest is history: Japan proceeded to murder and dominate the American car market, and soon the world.
The moral to take away from that is that so long as even one manufacturer can demonstrate the feasibility of the timetable, they can and will become the new king and kingmaker of the car industry.
I'm in fact in complete agreement with you that the 2030 timetable is ridiculous and it'll probably be pushed back and back with excuses, but history has proven itself to be amusing at times.
Ford & Tesla customers the world over beg to differ, and GM is sold in many countries under different brands as well. The top 20 has a number of Chinese players and they are definitely moving up year-by-year but the top 5 has been unchanged for years: VW; Toyota; Stellantis; MB; Ford. Tesla is a bit player and BYD isn't on the market so it is impossible to rate them other than as a successful domestic player.
If a Chinese manufacturer would succeed in the West my money would be on a JV between VW and FAW, BYD vehicles under the Toyota brand is another option. A Chinese manufacturer going it alone is likely not going to succeed due to the way previous Chinese brands have been received by these markets. Geely played it smart, they have acquired Volvo and with their Polestar brand they are now moderately successful in the EV only market, with 80,000 vehicles scheduled for delivery this year.
https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/ford-gl...
Tesla is doing “well” but it’s starting from a very small base and its absolute numbers are still very low. It still hasn’t faced real competition which is only now ramping up. Let’s see how it responds.
I see no reason for a decent quality and affordable EV not to achieve at least relative success.
But we've seen before that any successful Chinese company is liable to be hit by Western governments' campaigns against it. So if we start to see article linking BYD to whatever awful deed you can think of towards the end of the year or next year I guess it'll mean there are doing well in the West.
That's a bit of a weird turn in your comment.
At least here in Sweden, BYD isn't really positioning itself by being more "affordable". The cheapest car they sell here is around the same price as an entry level Tesla Model 3 and quite a bit more than an entry level VW ID.3. Their SUV, that they seem to be basing most of their sales campaign around, costs a lot more than for example the Ioniq 5 and is pushing close to BMW iX prices.
They were impressive back then, will be interesting to see what BYD can do with an affordable EV.
1/3rd of the world's cars are sold in China, and the EV market share went from 16% in 2021 to 30% to in 2022. IOW, production capacity increased by 4 million cars. Now China is slumping. Last year it was easy to sell an EV in China, now it's hard. So millions of Chinese EV's are going to start flooding Europe soon. Chinese already makes over half of Australia's EV's.
Yes, Geely bought Volvo, but Volvo is still a Swedish company run from Sweden.
China is very good a manufacturing products for other companies at their specs (ie Foxconn for Apple). It performs poorly when it comes to their own brands.
Several years after Geely bought Volvo, Geely/Volvo bought Polestar Performance and the Polestar brand and decided to make them an EV brand for cars built on the new Geely platform and spun them off as a separate company.
So yes, they're technically a Swedish brand originally and technically they're spun off from Volvo. And, yes the Polestar company headquarters is in Sweden. But the Swedish Polestar company never actually made cars, they only became part of Volvo long after Volvo was part of Geely, and was almost certainly Geely's decision to spin them off as a separate EV company.
The original, 'real', Polestar still exists as Cyan Racing.
correct; but the present Polestar brand is a spin-off from Volvo's in-house performance team, and the design and brand is managed from Sweden, not China (even though the money is Chinese), which is the main point I was trying to make
Only in terms of manufacturing. The design, production, international branding, etc. is all done in Sweden (with teams elsewhere), which is where it is based (along with Volvo).
Take a look at their job vacancies https://about.polestar.com/careers/jobs/?category=&location=...
Saying that Polestar is a Chinese brand is like saying Dodge is an Italian (or Franco-Italian) brand.
Not really. Dodge has its roots in America and it employs a large number of people in the United States. Polestar does not produce in Sweden, all vehicles are produced in China.
Huawei arguably designed/produced the best flagship Android smartphones a few years ago, before it got hit by sanctions. Huawei did extremely well in Europe, becoming the largest smartphone brand for a brief time, until US sanctions crippled them (by removing access to Google services, and thus the entire Android ecosystem people use in the West).
> Much of the media commentary surrounding Mr Toyoda’s move casts it as a response to Tesla. That is too Western-centric. Tesla may be the world’s biggest ev producer and, according to Elon Musk, its boss, so far ahead of the competition that he cannot see the number two with a telescope. Yet it ignores a Chinese newcomer that,
I mean, the CEO spends his time getting into spats on the social network he bought, so I don't think he's paying very close attention to the EV space.
How come these guys always get it right? In China the story is never as single "buy good businesses cheap", as we know that in China if you don't play politics you'll get kneecapped.
We have them in Australia and they’re utter junk. I read all the hype and was interested in an affordable electric runaround car for school/shopping runs etc.. but a 15 minute test drive is enough to tell you that Toyota/Tesla/any-major-manufacturer isn’t worried about BYD as a serious competitor.
Of course they sell well in China. It’s a Chinese brand. American cars sell well in America. More news at 7.