BYD challenges Tesla with more than 300k electric cars sold in a month | Hacker News Reader

BYD challenges Tesla with more than 300k electric cars sold in a month

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31 pointsPaulHoule29 comments

300k electric* cars sold in one month

*number includes hybrids

Hello apples, meet oranges, your new point of comparison.

Tesla is on course to be like Solyndra. You have to live in Eastern Asia and see how incredible China is on EVs. Just on their battery front for mobile phones really make EVERY western mobile phone battery look primitive (Samsung and Apple are nowhere what China Xiaomi and Oppo alike do with their phone battery). Samsung battery even go exploding or pregnant if not charging. China battery industry already stop subsidizing because of the oncredible competitiveness there. Meanwhile we all just started critisizing cybertruck releases. Tesla has 2 front for growth: as automobile manufacturer and as battery energy factory. Both front are severely hampered by China established developments. I am not surprise, Tesla will do cyberbus next or cybertrain next. Meanwhile Chinese has been riding their cyberbus and cybertrain for a decade. And in case you're wondering, China bullet train industry now out compete Japan and Germany. Just look at Indonesia newest bullet train by Chinese. It just make Japanase and Germans look medieval tech. Of course, USA look even worse with near cavemen tech in that area.

Is this normalised? It seems quite misleading to use the "electric cars" to describe actual electric cars (Electric Vehicles) and ICE cars that happen to have an electricity-powered system in them...

It depends on who's presenting the numbers. Over the last year or so, EV's and HEV's have been increasingly grouped together into "PEV's".

Basically, it's an easy way to add another 30% to a number on a chart. The intent behind doing so could vary from simple negligence, to outright misinformation, and like many things, the truth likely resides somewhere in-between.

Personally, hybrid electric vehicles seem to be the most viable current option for almost everyone, and it gives us some time to get the power grids upgraded enough to move to all electric later. That in my eyes is an ideal situation, as it gives battery tech, and generation tech, time to mature further. Sure 300-some miles in a nice Tesla is an achievement, but, 1000 miles, half the weight, twice the generation efficiency, and half the charge time is better overall, and from what I'm seeing, all of the above is doable within 10 years or so.

> half the weight, twice the generation efficiency, and half the charge time is better overall

The Prius Prime is approximately the same weight as the Model 3, more expensive than the Model 3 after the rebate, and only gets 2.9 miles/kWh vs 4.1 miles/kWh for the Model 3. So it takes at least 33% longer to charge for the same distance of travel while slow charging and of course doesn't support fast charging.

You missed the part where I was talking about that being in the future, as the tech matures.

The future will be even worse for hybrids, as the price of batteries goes down and the relative complexity of having over ten times as many moving parts becomes more significant.

I mean new standard is any car "power" steering is electric car. Just like I learned nowadays Javascript desktop apps are also called native apps.

So anything can be anything.

I liked this.

I mean, kind of? I went searching for a new car two years ago, and wanted something that could do my daily driving on electric.

I found the RAV4 Prime, which is a plug-in hybrid which will do 40 miles on the battery without touching gas.

All of my daily driving is now electric, but it is a plug-in hybrid and I do use the gas engine on road trips.

So, yes, it's not a pure comparison of electric cars to electric cars, but when people are buying a new car, they're in the market for a _car that meets their requirements_, not _electric cars only_.

Correct, it's not a pure comparison, which is precisely what I'm pointing out. They didn't sell 300k electric cars, they sold 300k cars, some of which were electric, some of which were hybrid drivetrains, and then compared that to actual electric car numbers, which so far is tesla and everyone else.

An uncareful reader would take that to mean BYD is catching up to Tesla in the electric car market, which would be remarkable, but ultimately that isn't a true statement.

That isn't to say BYD isn't remarkable on their own, they outsold VW group's EV's 2:1 in Q2, which are the most up-to-date numbers available. That's still fewer than Tesla, and a smaller gain Q1-Q2 than Tesla, but for a manufacturer completely locked out of the US market, it's really impressive.

I would assume that they'd quickly overtake Tesla if the US lifted their de facto embargo on non-domestic cars, given that their unit costs are substantially lower.

BYD have conflated their hybrid and pure EV sales for several years now to try and make their EV sales volume look more impressive. It's disappointing they still do it. Here's the same misleading press release from Jan 2022:

https://en.byd.com/news/byd-starts-strong-in-2022-with-sales...

"New Energy Vehicles". Every time they do it, large sections of the media report them as a "Tesla challenger". I do agree though that they are making increasingly good EVs.

I don't see that as them being intentionally misleading inasmuch as they're trying to promote their NEV trademark.

It's more a fault of the media failing to report this accurately, especially being that in their press release linked above, they have broken out how many hybrids and how many EV's they've sold.

Gotta say I like BYD design a lot whereas I find Tesla very uninspired and interiors very low quality (but I come from Mercedes cars so maybe I'm pickier).

I have a personal preference for the car pictured in TFA (vs a Tesla) but I wouldn't say they really look better. I think most modern cars look like dumb, electric or otherwise.

Really? Not even the Seal?

Tesla interiors are minimalistic, which I like. They are also low quality, which is really disappointing.

I assume you speak interior. I’ve checked out Atto3 and while it’s ok made it still screams Chinese kitsch. It’s a polar opposite of Tesla’s minimalism.

I've never been in a BYD so I can't say but from the picture it seems quite minimal as well, not fond of the color schemes though. Can't say I find the Atto3 interior appealing.

Notably, Charlie Munger made a big investment in BYD instead of Tesla in 2008.

And A123 [1], later acquired by SAIC to form the foundation of China’s present leadership in batteries.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A123_Systems

that's an early bet

Never seen these cool Chinese EVs in the US. Is the US market closed to Chinese EV?

As other comment mentions, the tax credit system makes it harder for them to compete with a China-built product. BYD have had some successes selling electric buses in the US though (the tax credit applies to consumer vehicles):

https://en.byd.com/news/byd-receives-largest-battery-electri...

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/30/byd-cars-arent-in-the-u...

That said, I also think politics in the US will make it much more unlikely we see significant inroads into consumer vehicles here.

With cars like the BYD Seal and especially the MG 4, European car makers are getting very concerned about competing against them in their domestic markets. The MG 4 is already the 2nd best selling EV in the UK etc, and is extremely price competitive vs a Tesla Model 3 or a VW ID 3, as one example. In many cases they are likely just one model refresh away from offering a product as good as a typical European manufacturer for less cash, the speed at which Europe has gone from no Chinese car sales at all to them starting to be a threat is pretty incredible by historical standards of the industry.

I still think the designs aren't always to European tastes, but the gap gets narrower all the time and one can't ignore the prices. Many of them now have Europe based design studios to fix this. A lot of Chinese comeptitors also don't have the baggage of having to wind down a huge ICE business and can just focus on making good EVs, much like the advantage Tesla has had over legacy US automakers in the EV space.

https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/mgs-european-sales-do...

Personally, I think it's just a matter of time before China built EVs dominate significant segments of the European car market, as strange as it may seem now.

Especially if you consider the Chinese-owned Volvo brand as Chinese. The new EX30 looks like it will sell gangbusters.

The Volvo EX30 is right now only manufactured in China, and is built on a Chinese car platform (Gheely SEA). It is a Chinese car. I also think that this is likely to sell incredibly well in Europe.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Experience_Archite...

Thanks, this clarifies it a lot.

China is closed to us! Not super surprising from that lens. They make nice EVs, though.

It's political suicide to entertain making things easy for China, particularly in auto manufacturing, where there are several big union voting blocs that will look very dimly on allowing their products entry.

Not closed, but the tax credits system is designed to heavily incentivize buying American made and was in part designed to prevent Chinese cars taking over America.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/business/electric-vehicle...

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