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Comment by GenerWork | Hacker News Reader

Would BYD even be able to sell it here for $10k? Pretty sure Trump slapped a bunch of tariffs on Chinese vehicles, and Biden may have hiked those tariffs. To me, the logical step is for Chinese vehicles to build factories in Mexico and then ship vehicles into the country so they qualify as NAFTA vehicles. No way will it be $10k, but it certainly won't be $40k like other electric vehicles.

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> To me, the logical step is for Chinese vehicles to build factories in Mexico and then ship vehicles into the country so they qualify as NAFTA vehicles. No way will it be $10k, but it certainly won't be $40k like other electric vehicles.

I wouldn't be so sure it won't be $10k. The cost of labor in China has been going up for a while now. China's strength in the EV market comes from their near monopoly on the supply chain. What a lot of Chinese companies have been doing is to do most of the manufacturing in China and ship the major components off for final assembly in other countries like Vietnam and Philippines. I don't see why the same thing can't happen in Mexico. In fact, a lot of manufacturing in Mexico is precisely of the final assembly sort to take advantage of NAFTA.

They also have abnormal access to financing as well, although that remains to be seen long term.

I believe that Chinese car companies are real, because the underlying battery manufacturers (BYD again, CATL, etc) are all leading in the mass market chemistries of LFP and Sodium Ion.

WHich by the way are the key enablers of the cheap car.

What should be REALLY concerning to car manufacturers isn't that this car is 10,000$. Sodium Ion is poised to be 25-40% the cost of lithium ion (cobalt/nickel), and LFP may be dropping from the 70% to 50% or less, for an equivalent pack. Both of those chemistries are improving on the roadmaps to being currently at 150 wh/kg (sodium ion) and 200+ wh/kg (lfp) to 200 wh/kg sodium and 250 lfp.

Anyway, what that means is that EVs aren't just going to reach ICE parity soon (probably already is in China and Tesla with their high car margin), they are going to shoot past in quickly.

So that $10,000 car might be $9,000 in two years, then $8,000 in four years, etc.

"Big ICE" is in trouble if it doesn't get its platform development and battery supply ducks in a row, Tesla won't eat their lunch, the Chinese will.

You know, assuming financial armageddon + autocratic dysfunction + demographics + Taiwan invasion sanctions don't crater the Chinese. As you stated, I can see Chinese companies diversifying their production internationally to hedge against their own government.

These are interesting times.

They're already looking to enter the Mexican market. Publicly they say this is to supply the Mexican market, and not export to the USA. It will be interesting to see if/when that changes.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chines...

They'd probably need to do some design work to US/European standards. The current price is highly competitive even after tariffs and taxes though. The highest import tariffs I'm aware of anywhere in the world hover around 100% in places like Singapore. $20k plus an additional $5k in pure margin is still over $1k below the MSRP of the cheapest American EV (Chevy bolt). If we assume much more reasonable 25-50% tariffs, nobody else even comes close.

Yes totally, but it's still scary knowing that the only thing standing between you and destruction is a political policy.

Also: if you consider climate change to be an end-of-the-world catastrophe, then it's pretty easy to make an argument to consider changing the tariffs at some point.

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