BYD added a Tesla-worth of production capacity over the past 3 months

> Their shift to electric is far too slow and too far behind already. And it's also too late for another industry disrupting startup like Tesla.

Is it? At this point I’ve driven electric Audis and BMWs, VWs, Kia’s and also BYDs.

While the BYDs are certainly cars and are also relatively affordable compared to other options (of course it’s impossible to compare a BYD car to a BMW), it is not a very nice car in my experience.

Wether or not that is enough of a difference to sway consumer sentiment remains to be seen, but I don’t think it is as over as you make it out to be.

I think you are right. BYD and other companies won't stay in China either. They'll be opening up factories in Turkey, Mexico, etc. This will start creating issues for incumbents in most markets. The US and EU might protect their domestic markets with tariffs for a while. But their exports are going to suffer. And short of imposing tariffs on lots of other countries and suspending related trade agreements, cars will still come into domestic markets via those new factories. And inevitably, some companies will start falling over and might fall in the hands of foreign investors or disappear completely.

It's a repeat of the emergence of Japanese car manufacturers in the eighties. The same dynamics are at play here: the Chinese products are simply better and cheaper. And contrary to the popular believe that's not just subsidies. Those foreign factories in Turkey, Mexico, and elsewhere will be producing low cost vehicles. The cost difference is the competitive advantage Chinese companies now have. They might have gotten there via subsidies but now that they have this cost advantage, it's there to stay. To compete, other companies will have to address their cost issues and their R&D deficit. There's no way around it. Producing more costly vehicles is just going to continue to price them out of the market.

Delay tactics don't work. Tariffs don't work. Delaying investments, doesn't work either. That about sums up the current attitude of a lot of the legacy companies. Dragging their feet, reducing investments, and lobbying for tariffs to protect their businesses. To survive, they would need to reverse their strategy and shift all effort towards producing low cost EVs. There's plenty of demand. But not for overpriced products.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Traditional automakers have tens of billions of R&D sunk in ICE vehicles they were planning to payback in decades. Now they have to spend that again on EVs and they just have no desire.

They’re also extremely slow to react, and can’t fathom that people don’t really want what they’ve been selling the last couple of decades, they just didn’t have an alternative. Now they do.

> major conflicts or crises creating full isolation and destroying all trade with China (e.g. a Taiwan escalation)

The loss of the USA as a market would would be harmful, but is it assumed that all western countries would follow?

Europe is already talking heavy tariffs to protect it's automakers, with Trump winning and his stance on the issue - doubtful they will let this happen.

The biggest hindrance to EV cars in the US is the lack of public charging.

Until every WalMart, Target, 7-11, and government agency have charging stations on 1/3 of their parking lot, public EV vehicles are a pipe dream.

Detroit is, sadly, calling this 100% correctly. There is no point in doing heavy public EV rollouts until there is a demonstrated political will to roll out the charging infrastructure.

Only problem with this statement is that unless BEVs are subsidized they don't sell that well.

Seems plausible that Trump/Elon could make many imports from China effectively illegal.

> Their shift to electric is far too slow and too far behind already.

when a push comes to a shove, the goal of electrification of cars can be merely postponed. climate change is a far-off future problem, where as geopolitical rivalry and such are close-by problems.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-16/electric-... | https://archive.today/uJLa4 ("Bloomberg: BYD Is Winning the Global Race to Make Cheaper EVs")

> Last fall in Malta, BYD began selling the Atto 3, an all-electric compact crossover. Strip away the company’s futuristic logo, and it looks almost indistinguishable from other small, sporty SUVs. But inside it’s full of treats, including heated seats in vegan leather and a 360-degree rotating touchscreen. The 60-kilowatt-hour battery gives it a range of 260 miles, enough to circle Malta’s main island twice. And by European standards, it’s inexpensive, at about $28,000. It’s a novelty in Malta. But the real reason BYD is entering the European Union’s tiniest member state? The company’s happy place is emerging markets and countries with no domestic auto industry to defend: “You can basically describe them as a ‘chicken rib market,’ ” says Yu Zhang, the managing director of consulting firm AutoForesight in Shanghai. “All the chicken ribs added up together, it’s more than 10 million cars.”

> After increasing its annual sales in China 15 times over, to 3 million cars in only three years, BYD is now exporting to roughly 95 markets, including 20 new ones this year. The company is building, has recently opened or has announced plans for assembly plants outside China in 10 countries on three continents. The speed and scope of this expansion have caught the global auto industry off guard and triggered protectionist tariffs in the US and EU, where policymakers fear Chinese players such as BYD will, in the words of Elon Musk, “demolish” their domestic automakers.

So e.g. Danes would buy BMW:s over BYD out of patriotic duty or what? Almost no one cares. There is some 'irrational' support for local brands but many countries have none.

The European and Amrican car manufacturers are full of them self and want to sell premium vehicles to rich people. That is the fundamental problem. Covid gave them hubris.

As European but not German or Czech I couldn't care less about where my car was made. The idea of a 'local' car doesn't really exist, when there is no car industry in your own country.

I simply have fear, that Chinese cars will have horrible problems with the availability of spare parts. I don’t want to wait 2 years for replacement door or hood after small accident. First teslas had horrible drivetrain parts. I don’t want volunteer as a test driver for Chinese brands.

It took them 3 months to bring their new capacity online.

Just limit parking place inside cities. That worked well in the city i live in, they divided the available street parking spot by 3 and added external parkings in the outskirts. Honestly it worked great, the number of restaurants and small convenience store downtown exploded. Only downside, it made commercial leases more expensive and that pushed my music store outside of the city center.

They already have factory in Mexico and no the US government already shut this path off. The only option is to build a plant in the US (they build buses in California but spun it off). The current political climate is rather hostile and highly unlikely.

They started, but then halted to see the election results.

https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=...

Trump is not the most predictable guy on policy and they seems to be waiting to see what will happen in real legislation, not just in campaign speeches.

nafta is effectively dead

The hardware production is the race. I don't like BYD, but they've taken full advantage of Tesla's unwillingness to deliver on a truly economic vehicle. Until Tesla takes that crown, the entire AI discussion isn't really even on the table.

I'm not sure self-driving is that important in most of the markets BYD will expand into: Mexico, Central and South America, Asia, and where allowed in Europe.

I don't think Tesla or any other manufacturers have anything to worry about in the US, Canada, and some EU countries since it will be impossible for BYD to sell cars into those markets profitably.

We don't need self driving cars for the transport revolution but self driving busses, trains and maybe trucks.

If you do not make a lot of money somewhere (Google ads, Tesla high valuation), it is very hard to have enough money to do the self-driving stuff. So production is important, because if you sell a lot of cars, you have cash flow for R&D.