Xiaomi releases electric car $4K cheaper than Tesla's Model 3 | Hacker News Reader

Xiaomi releases electric car $4K cheaper than Tesla's Model 3

cnbc.com

38 pointslxm57 comments

I'd like to see a bare bones EV with minimal sheet metal curving and an overall minimalist approach. No need for massive torque and the battery should be upgradeable.

Oddly cars in the US have become absurdly over-designed to the point where people pay thousands for a "trim level" upgrade to get nonsense like heated steering wheels and better floor mats.

Sooner or later people will have enough of this overpaying. Car prices are inflated beyond what is reasonable. How could a reasonable, high quality EV cost more than $20K?

> metal curving

Never going to happen on the simple basis of pedestrian protection regulations, everything else is an afterthought.

Sheet metal curving is probably cheaper than flat panels. A flat panel is wobbly, adding 3D curves to it can stiffen it significantly. A flat panel in any non-matte finish will also display any imperfections like mad (ever looked at the reflections on windows and noticed how uneven they are?), a curved surface is more forgiving. And using a matte finish isn’t a solution, that introduces a ton of other issues.

> No need for massive torque and the batter should be upgradable

Massive torque is just sort of the way these motors are. It’s not necessarily a big cost driver. And upgradable batteries sounds expensive to me.

I do agree that people spend ridiculous amounts of money on cars though. But on the flip side… I’ve designed some larger (not quite car size, but pretty large) products, and boy do the costs add up quickly. I suspect that once you’re talking something as niche as a US road-legal minimalist electric vehicle you’ve killed your volumes, so 20K is probably way out of reach as a price target.

Closest to that is currently the Dacia Spring:

https://www.dacia.co.uk/hybrid-and-electric-range/spring-cit...

From £15k

Do you want fast charging? 90% of the cost of massive torque is high voltages and currents. And high voltages and currents are necessary for fast charging.

"Lei claimed the standard version of the SU7 beat the Model 3 on more than 90% of its specifications, except on two aspects that he said it might take Xiaomi at least three to five years to catch up with Tesla on."

The article doesn't seem mention either of the aspects. Does anyone know what they are?

Faux self driving and K-Pop army level fan base?

This is Xiaomi we're talking about. They've got #2 covered. The faux self driving has gotten pretty good lately. I tried routing to random places in downtown SF yesterday for an hour while on a call and for the first time there were no issues.

The driver will find out what these 2 aspects that was omitted for some reason lol

I'm getting information all over the place on the quality of these Chinese EVs. I've seen BYD breakdowns which pointed at their manufacturing process heavily relying on conventional ICE architecture. For example, instead of using air suspension a lot of these vehicles are using conventional MacPherson setup. Similarly, the electric motor and all wiring is protected by a plastic dust cover underneath the body like the ICE cars. At the same time, I just finished listening to a few interviews with Sandy Munro from 3 years ago where he said that Nio and Xpeng were actually better-built vehicles than Tesla outside of a few minor issues.

China’s car industry is huge. Outside of the US and Europe they are in so many places. I was shocked to see that almost every other car in S. America was a Chinese make. I’d been living in a bubble.

Lu told CNBC that the SU7 will first be sold to consumers in China, and that it would take at least two to three years for any overseas launch.

Xiaomi’s car factory, for which all “key” steps are fully automated, can produce an SU7 every 76 seconds.

Tesla’s Model 3 is the best-selling new energy sedan in China [...] and costs less than 500,000 yuan, according to data from industry website Autohome.

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Looks like it's just China market fight at the end, with mobile strategy to sell enough before the others in hope to have a dominant position.

I don't believe in the 76seconds assembly. But for curious people, it would mean they need only 44 days to produce the 50,000 pre ordered EV from a single production line.

Also unlikely to see US "tiktok-like" reaction since Tesla is big in China?

I’m assuming it’ll go like BYD — make the logistics and manufacturing good for internal market. Then start taking over countries that don’t have established car manufacturers (like Australia, South American countries and etc.) as they won’t be putting tariffs. That’ll start eating into lunches of our car manufacturer’s potential incomes, since they won’t be able to compete in prices. I’m skeptical that we’ll ever get cheap EV alternatives, since auto-manufacturing is a heavily protected industry in all western countries.

I hope Xiaomi sells this car in Europe and manages to do so without attracting the punitive tariffs that could be put in place to protect uncompetitive EU offerings like the much more expensive VW, BMW and Audi cars.

EU consumers deserve to drive good EVs at a reasonable price.

Since they are selling the car at a loss, I really wonder when they will raise the price or stop selling it. Perhaps quite soon.

We could look to Tesla [0] to make some guesses about that. If Tesla were founded in 2003, were selling at a loss per unit in 2020 and profitable by, then this might be sustainable for about a 20 years.

[0] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-loses-money-on-every-sing...

I'm sure CCP is funding these efforts. They can remain unprofitable long as the money printer is running.

This.

Really doesn't matter how long these guys are unprofitable. The Chinese government has its strategic priorities.

If you look at Chinese car companies, many don't even really make much of an effort to sell in other markets. The goal is to own the Chinese market. One, because employment and knock on effect employment. And two, because that's where they're betting the money will be.

They may even be right. But the future may not be all about money. We're entering an era that has the potential to be different than eras that came before.

50,000 units sold in 24 hours. Xiaomi fans buying into the Lei Jun's vision

Of price dumping. Nice vision.

Maybe but battery prices have been falling geometrically and that’s the most expensive part of an EV.

A tidal wave of cheap EVs are coming, and not just from China. Ford apparently has a secretive cheap EV platform project in development. I’m sure there are others.

BTW I have a hypothesis that Elon is now working to get Trump elected because Trump will erect tariffs not just against cheap EVs but cheap batteries that domestic competitors to Tesla could use. If companies like Ford can buy cheap CATL batteries then that’s just as bad for Tesla as China selling EVs here.

Tariffs will only delay though. The hyper deflationary effect of tech is coming for cars. A car is just another tech gadget that is about to get cheap. Car companies that don’t optimize for this will die or collapse down to niche.

Edit: I will make a wild prediction. In five years you will get a 250 mile range small EV with adaptive cruise and other nice features for under $15k new.

If Trump erect tarrifs against cheap EV from China, China can do the same in return hurting Tesla. A trade war isn't at all a good idea for Tesla.

Hmm… if that’s the case then Elon is just voting against his economic interests like most of Trump’s other voters. They really have lost it over culture war nonsense.

Tesla is building the cars in China that they sell in China, and selling them for a profit. That’s perfectly fine, China is not worried about protecting their EV industry from Chinese workers building Chinese Teslas.

If China was building the cars in the USA that they wanted to sell in the USA, and selling them at a profit, they wouldn’t be looking at 50% tariff either.

The issue is only if/when EVs made in Mexico by Chinese workers living in Mexico are being dumped into the US market below cost in an attempt to destabilize the US auto market, and China thinks they can hide behind the USMCA free trade agreement to do it all tariff free.

Chinese Teslas are made in China, using Chinese batteries. BYD/Xiaomi can always do the same in the US (or just setup in Mexico and take advantage of Nafta or whatever the successor that does the same thing is called).

I doubt Elon really thinks this, however.

tariffs are already in place for China EV's, Biden / Trump will inevitably raise them further to protect US auto manufacturers, even going as far as putting tariffs on 3rd country exports (i.e Mexico) to ensure these vehicles don't get in. The US consumer will have to make do with Tesla, and hope that Elon can produce a people's car for the mass market

Trump won't protect Elon. BYD is going to build cars in Mexico to take advantage of the USMCA. Stopping that would require Trump admitting one of his greatest accomplishments was flawed.

Every company sells their first electric car at a loss.

The first Roadsters sold for $110K and the BOM alone was $145K per car. No one accused Tesla of price dumping.

Strong "we lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume" vibes. I don't think acquiring a vehicle below costs counts as buying into the manufacturers vision.

Would like to see if the interior looks better than the "giant LCD screen stuck awkwardly to the console" look of Tesla. Probably doesn't have real buttons and knobs, either, though.

You have to understand that the design of the Model 3 is forwarding looking to the inevitable time when the car will not have a steering wheel.

They can’t have physical buttons because there are literally hundreds of features that the passengers need buttons to control that haven’t even been conceived of, let alone developed yet, but will be pushed to the entire fleet in future software updates.

The list of features a 2018 Model 3 has today that didn’t exist back in 2018 when the car was first manufactured is staggeringly large.

There’s an Excel sheet I saw last year on Reddit that some Tesla fan had created to track every new feature in every software release since v1 - it had over 1,000 rows.

"They can’t have physical buttons because there are literally hundreds of features that the passengers need buttons to control that haven’t even been conceived of"

Ha! I actually thought you were serious. Well played, sir, you got me.

They copied the Porsche design, like 90%. It's even silly to look at it.

Which oh well, Tesla also kinda copied as well, and made it a bit uglier so it gets harder to identify for the average person.

To me, both cars despite being electric tells me the owner has no taste whatsoever.

Also, I wonder what buyers have on their minds, they buy a car that has a high likelihood of being deprecated, so likely they won't get any software updates or even worse, it could get bricked or have any issues and not having anybody that could fix it.

???

The Tesla's predate the Porche - and was initially based on the S, thought the recent new revision has changed that somewhat?

Tesla predates Porsche? The first 911 was created in the 60s.

I read this as Tesla copying the electric Porsche.

As for the 9/11, the Tesla drives way different then a 9/11, looks way different then a 9/11, and has the engine is in the wrong place (and is a motor) versus the 9/11, so I didn't consider this as a option.

Isn't the electric Porsche just a rehash of the sedan/SUV originally designed for the Chinese market (and launched at the 2009 Shanghai car show). Before those, Porsche was originally sports car only, and the only reason VW decided to use the brand in non-sport car luxury vehicles is that rich Chinese wanted to buy Porsches but didn't really want sport cars.

It is a big ripoff of Porsche's design. Look at its front.

It's funny that Tesla's design was done decades after, yet they've got it wrong in almost everything they didn't copy.

Model Y is the best selling car in the world. And one of the safest too.

There’s no accounting for taste, but they clearly didn’t “get it wrong”.

There’s virtually nothing about the Model 3 that was copying some historical ICE car that came before it. The Model 3 Highland is quite stunning IMO.

> To me, both cars despite being electric tells me the owner has no taste whatsoever.

wow, snobbish. Car visuals are subjective. They're all the same basic shape with minor variations. Ending up with another cars look seems inevitable. So each model should be taken with it's pros and cons without brand elitism. Looks nice enough and does the job at 1/3 of the price.

> Also, I wonder what buyers have on their minds, they buy a car that has a high likelihood of being deprecated, so likely they won't get any software updates or even worse, it could get bricked or have any issues and not having anybody that could fix it.

Some countries have regulation around how long parts are available, so hopefully that is a forcing factor for all buyers. Doesn't help if companies go under. I'd be very wary about buying any of these vehicles from niche players.

> Ending up with another cars look seems inevitable.

EVs shouldn't really look like ICE cars, there's no need for a long bonnet / hood. Logically they should converge more on a cab-forward shape like an MPV / minivan, or even forward-control with the steering rack ahead of the front axle.

So when one EV sedan shares its shape with a different ICE-mimicking EV, it's not because of technical reasons.

It might not be the most aerodynamic shape but isn't the balance between that and safety by having a large front crumple zone?

Selling at a loss lol. Chinese products should just be banned period.

You’d have to then also ban every VC-backed startup for the last ~10 years.

Be reasonable guy.

How would we ban Chinese products in China?

The car is for sale in China.

Only in China.

With game consoles, costco hotdogs, uber and chatgpt - companies continue to sell at cost in exchange for market position, opportunity for extra sales, or more.

Perhaps this is the base price and the car comes with 1GB of soldered ssd and you need to pay $4k premium for 4GB.

Only in China? Let us have it in the USA!

For those concerned about "selling the car at a loss" that happens with all new cars. Ford "loses" $36,000 per EV sold.

There are tariffs between the US and China car markets (and between China and most other developed countries with car industries). These were originally in place to protect the Chinese car market, ironically, and now they work the other way the Chinese would like to get rid of them (which makes perfect sense).

Ford is selling EVs at a loss so it can someday not sell EVs at a loss:

> Ford said the Q3 loss is “attributable to continued investment in next-generation EVs and challenging market dynamics.” Regarding the latter, the carmaker noted that “many North American customers interested in buying EVs are unwilling to pay premiums for them over gas or hybrid vehicles.” This puts pressure on EV prices and profitability, according to Ford.

(from https://www.theautopian.com/ford-lost-36000-for-every-electr...)

Tesla makes money on every EV it sells, and opened a factory in Shanghai to get around the tariffs between the two countries (the first allowed to do so without creating a Chinese majority owned joint venture).

"We lose $4k per car but we make up for it in volume!"

More like,

"We lose 4k per car, but the government makes it up for us in volume."

And yes, I know we effectively did the same thing with our subsidies and tax breaks. I'm just stating what's likely going on.

I take "a price he acknowledged would mean the company was selling each car at a loss" to mean that they are losing money after whatever subsidies are available, admittedly with a grain of salt because there is a risk something was lost in (cultural) translation.

The US should adopt the Indian model, punishing tariffs for manufactured goods that don't create local jobs.

This is only talking about a launch in China.

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