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Comment by throwaway63467 | Hacker News Reader

Good. I haven’t owned a car in more than 10 years but I’m in the market for one, and European / US electric vehicles seem like scams to me. Very poor range and luxury pricing for middle class cars. VW Buzz is a good example, almost 60T€ base price, 400 km range (much less on the highway) and things that should be standard in 2024 need to be purchased as expensive extras for several thousands of euros.

Even most new gasoline cars seem to be rip offs, the new Skoda Superb is almost 6T € more expensive than the previous model in the base configuration. It’s just rent seeking at this point, and these companies already bring the lobbyists into position to delay the transition to electric vehicles and keep foreign competitors out of the market.

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Same here, I'm doing everything by bike since I was a kid, I'll move to a more rural area soon and it'll either be a 5k euros diesel shitbox or a <15k new ev. My house will be fully build for less than what mid tier tesla costs so there is absolutely no way I would spend that much for a cage on wheels

Poor range is subjective. My EV does all the journeys I need it to do in one charge.

As for the price, a base level Ford Focus costs £28K in the UK: https://www.ford.co.uk/content/dam/guxeu/uk/documents/price-...

A Tesla Model 3 is £12K more: https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/model3/design#overview

Perhaps cars actually cost closer to what American and European manufacturers sell them for, and the communist state-backed BYD is the rent-seeking scam that’s dumping vehicles below cost in order to achieve not-quite-commercial objectives.

It’s a bit funny though that after the subsidies were reduced all car manufacturers reduced prices of electric vehicles accordingly, hints at the fact that they’re still turning a nice profit with them. Volkswagen quadrupled their earnings in one year, many other car brands had similar increases. It’s not a cost issue.

I don't think so. Most government purchase subsidies are or were phased out in China in 2022.

BYD received massive grants during it's scale-up period, mostly in the form of capital expenditures being fully subsidized or land grants. Very rarely were subsidies/grants awarded for operational expenses though it did happen.

Given the fiscal situation in China it's unlikely BYD will receive as much support in the future but you never know. Green transition is still a massively important political goal in China.

Worth mentioning the scale of support it received is not dissimilar to Tesla which also benefited from very healthy subsidies and tax arrangements with the US jurisdictions it setup in. In fact if you include their $1.3B deal with Nevada (over 20 years though) I think you will find Tesla is in the lead in government money.

Disclaimer: I'm both a BYD and TSLA shareholder

BYD is for sure a legitimately remarkable company and to some degree I’m thankful for the competition. But I am highly, highly skeptical (and you should be too) of pretty much any number coming out of China. You should be especially skeptical of a company that can make such valuable contributions to the CCP’s hybrid warfare doctrine.

BYD can degrade the US manufacturing base; degrade consumer sentiment (as seen above); put millions of mobile sensors on US/EU roads; etc. It is absolute naivety to think that’s a company that will ever need to truly stand on its own two feet.

Or perhaps it's less expensive to make cars in China than in America, just like it's less expensive to make T-shirts and microwave ovens there. As Chinese manufacturing has moved up the value chain I've been hearing for 20 years that "Chinese $PRODUCT is just cheaper because of subsidies/dumping, and they'll hike prices once they dominate the market." But I've never seen the Chinese manufacturers actually raise prices above the old European/American prices even after they come to dominate different market segments. They can make a sustained profit even at low prices.

I read something recently along the lines of EVs currently cost 40% more than the equivalent ICE cars to produce.

The only way BYD is getting them significantly cheaper is cutting range and safety.

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