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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

Chinese companies iterate, learn, and adapt very quickly.

If their goal is to be world-class automakers then they will quickly learn from local markets and adapt accordingly.

For instance, I used to have a Huawei phone and the quality was on par with Apple and better than Samsung (taking Apple on was their goal and they executed accordingly).

Tesla has been quite successful despite a few hickups along the way, including regarding quality. My guess is that Chinese brands can follow at least the same trajectory, if not better.

Consider also that BYD supplies batteries to Tesla, at least in Europe. So at least on that front they seem to be world-class if not leaders.

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Still, it's their turn to prove themselves - buying a car with no service network, no spare parts infrastructure, and no proven track record, and no knowledge on resale value is errand I'd let others go through before me, Chinese car or not.

Especially since EVs are not cheap and I'm planning to keep them for a while.

Sure, but as I mentioned it was exactly the same with buying a Tesla... that didn't stop them despite the high price.

China has a history of fine manufacturing and they make the iPhone there. Sure there are the factories that turn out junk appliances that are sold under famous brands but some Chinese brands want very much to win customers over with quality and innovation. In photography many of the most interesting products today come from companies like QoCam (stereo, pano, and “bullet time” cameras) or 7Artisans (affordable manual focus lenses with unusual focal length/aperture combinations…. A $200 lens from 7Artisan might compete with a $7000 lens from a Japanese brand, the $7000 lens is better but I can take pictures with the $200 lens that look like nothing you’ve seen.)

> Tesla has been quite successful despite a few hickups along the way, including regarding quality.

Are you implying that Tesla is good quality? They are successful yes, but the hardware quality is just awful. Leaking roofs and stuff like that is not hard to get right.

I rode in a BYD and it was considerably more uncomfortable than my Land Rover Defender Td5, imagine that! My truck was more comfortable as a taller person than the BYD.

I don't know, I think that's still a very one-sided view. China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA. It's just a different culture around quality in my limited experience. Japan and Germany still lead imho.

No, I am saying that they are successful despite being expensice and not so good quality.

> China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA

That's borderline offensive, IMO, and proved wrong by many examples.

Why aren't there more Chinese automakers of gasoline cars?

There are, but they were working mostly for internal market. Their brand recognition is not good with the western audience. But now with the electric cars - it is a brand new thing, so the chinese brands can try to push in the western markets.

There are, mostly within China. But obviously the strategy has been to leapfrog the competition and to go all in on battery tech and EVs rather than trying to play catch-up on soon-to-be obsolete tech.

The article has a nice graph where you can see Chinese had a 20 - 25% market share and the Western/Japanese has the remainder in the ICE era. Suddenly in the last years the Western/Japanse traditional manufacturers are squeezed to 40% and the trend looks, well, devastating.

So yeah, the made ICEs but also in the home market that was not a convincing product.

Isn't red tape to sell cars in Europe and the USA infamously difficult?

I was always under the impression it was less about red tape and more about safety standards. Most foreign cars do not meet the safety standards required in the US/EU. My favorite example is in Mexico, Toyota had a model that was more or less the same style of an early 90s Toyota. You could still buy them new in ~2016, they had no upgrades to safety etc, you would never be able to sell them in the US.

I remember vaguely on one Chinese car in Eastern Europe cca 1 year ago, which was cheapish, but made from cheap plastics, squeaking, infotainment was booting 30 seconds and ICE engine, despite its relatively small volume was taking 10 liters per 100km. I don't think that they have sold many of them.

I did not think the other replies were very adequate so adding my thoughts.

There are a lot of chinese ICE manufacturers. Even before that, there were a number of Euro/American brands that were manufacturering in China for the domestic market. In the beginning these brands were not seen as high quality or reliable. You would pay a premium for a vehicle that was not manufactured domestically, regardless if it was a domestic or foreign brand. Things have changes significantly over the last 10 years. Quality has greatly improved and there is a significant sense of national pride for these brands, which I think only helps if further the desire for these brands to build better products.

The timing of quality improvements and the new global market demand for EV makes it a great time to expand. If they were to expand into the US market with an ICE platform, they would have had to fight the long uphill battle like Hyundai did to make a name for themselves.

They have no competitive advantage on engine, while they have huge competitive advantage on battery

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