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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

What a weird article. Tesla rates 9 mentions, Toyota rates 17 against 20 for BYD, the subject of the article. It's laced with references to Toyota but doesn't really say much about the BYD vehicles themselves besides that they are not yet sold in the United States.

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto

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> 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.

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...

Well, thank you for informing me that I should never ever buy a Volvo

Just because a Chinese company owns the brand? Because the company still operates mostly independently in Sweden, design is still in-house coming from Sweden...

Yes. Money to China is money to China. Unless Sweden wants to force a sale, the brand is compromised.

Yes, I'm aware of Polestar, see my other comments in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35554394

What a weird comment. You know nothing about BYD (you just read their Wikipedia and that's all you know) yet you're sure the article is wrong. But factually, BYD is the leading ev maker.

After visiting the BVD website, what’s remarkable to me is that they’re priced from $32-40k. From the photos at least, it looks like a $100k+ car, much more luxurious than a Tesla Model S. But then again, I’m probably just used to price gouging in the US.

OR making a car pretty isn't that costly?

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.

> But factually, BYD is the leading ev maker.

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's EV 2023 sales target matches Tesla's sales 2023 sales target - and that's with BYD having no plans to enter the North American market in 2023. Since BYD makes more vehicles than just EVs, their total unit sales for 2023 will be over double that of Tesla's.

You rating Polestar ahead of BYD is.. Extremely uninteresting. Hacker News isn't about your opinion.

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.

not only competition but compliance. The legal obligations a car manufacturer has to satisfy in the EU nowadays is wild, IUPR, OBFCM, WLTP are just the programs regarding emission checks. There are many many more.

Good point. This may in fact be the thing that BYD expects to get out of the Toyota relationship.

From what I understand many BYD vehicles already have Euro safety specs. Including, incredibly, the $9,000 Seagull.

Apparently they'll start selling here in NL in Q4/23, I will definitely go and have a look at them to see what they've made.

BYD is already sold in the EU, so all legal obligations has been done. See byd.dk

Indeed! Thank you for that link. The pricing is off the scale though is this a Danish thing or is it just that Byd is that expensive?

While their entry level car (Atto) is the same price as the cheapest spec Tesla model 3. Their Tesla model S and X equivalents (Han and Tang, respectively) start at almost half the price of the respective Teslas.

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.

That suggests they aren't really competitors though, so either Tesla will have to drop to the point where they won't be profitable any more or there are substantial quality differences. BYD's vertical integration may become the differentiating factor if they can get the public to trust the brand.

Based on their marketing and pricing it seems their base pitch is "get a $100+k 'worth' of electric SUV for $80k". So they're competitors in the sense that they're targeting people who just about have Teslas Model X or BMW iX money, but would still like a bargain.

Interesting, ok time will tell how that will play out. Around me people are mostly rooting for MB/VW/BMW rather than American or Chinese. This is mostly a matter of perception and the dealer network and service organizations. Tesla has a very bad rep in that sense (though I do know people that have Tesla's too and they appear to be happy enough with their cars), it's all good as long as there are no problems and after that is a huge problem.

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.

> 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).

> The confusion is probably on purpose

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.

Danish pricing is off the scale due to the very high registration tax, on top of the 25% VAT.

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.

This is actually a bit cheaper than it was a few years ago when the top tax amount was 180%.

There are some deductions for electric vehicles that are complex (and decreasing) that are best read about on the linked page.

[0] https://skat.dk/data.aspx?oid=2244599

I thought it was still 180%. I haven't noticed that prices on new cars has become cheaper.

Emission checks for EVs?

The big Chinese car companies are managing to build compliant vehicles now. BYD, SAIC, Great Wall and Geely all sell vehicles into the EU market. It's hard, but it's not like the barrier to entry is so high these companies can't meet it.

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