Hyundai just launched its cheapest EV in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Hyundai just launched its cheapest EV in Japan

electrek.co

74 pointszfg95 comments

China has dozens of even cheaper EVs. The best selling electric car in China - the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV [0] is just over $4,000 USD. There are now also convertible and 5-door versions too. And a version being produced in the EU (Vilnius) that is just under 10,000EUR.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV

"Early models did not include a driver airbag, but later models such as the Mini EV Macaron include the feature as standard."

You don't get what you don't pay for. Scary that's even an option.

When the median vehicle in the US is the size of a small commercial freight vehicle, absolutely. It's a vicious cycle driven entirely by gaps in CAFE standards and overcompensation for perceived personal flaws.

> When the median vehicle in the US is the size of a small commercial freight vehicle, absolutely.

It's the mass that matters. Even smaller cars, and in particular EVs, are getting heavier even though they're not getting larger. The major contributor to this weight gain is, yep, safety systems.

> It's a vicious cycle driven entirely by gaps in CAFE standards and overcompensation for perceived personal flaws.

I don't think you're being entirely objective. 1/6 of all vehicle fatalities are actually pedestrians. 1/6 are motorcycles. 1/2 involve drugs or alcohol. 1/2 are single car accidents.

There's a lot of contributors to roadway fatalities, like people who get flung out of the vehicle. That still happens more than it should.

China is not a particularly safe country, going by road deaths. It would be foolish to think small cars make airbags unnecessary.

What does this has to do with missing airbags? Airbags should have never been optional, car size not relevant.

Depends of it's usage. To drive around a city at 30km/h do you need an airbag ? In this context safety for the passerby probably become more important.

Looking at statistics for road death in Paris for part of 2024: - 9 on foot - 1 on bike - 8 on motorbike - 1 in a car

Edit: only dead driver I could find for Paris was fleing the police and end-up in a tree.

That's the speed at which airbags are most effective. Or do you believe your airbag is going to do you much good at 120 km/h?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16210197/

Who drives at 18 mph around the city? I am yet to see a city like that.

And even if you did, there are other drivers that can crash into you at much higher speeds.

The Wuling Mini is essentially a golf cart. The true comparison is to cars like the $12,000 BYD Seagull, which is fully safety rated and tested for sale in Europe.

Most of these EV companies in China are going bankrupt, selling each car at a loss. Recently, Ji Yum Auto, founded by Baidu and Neely, shut down last December. A live streamer was live streaming selling the car. Upon hearing the news, she was bawling and told the listener to not to check out the car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYdm2K81bW0.

As Chinese EV makers close, drivers of “smartphones on wheels” say software updates and maintenance are in jeopardy. https://restofworld.org/2024/ev-company-shutdowns-china/

To put this in perspective, the number of car manufacturers in China has dropped from 300 to 150 in the past few years. Further consolidation is expected.

So it's probably a good idea to buy from an EV company that is profitable. For example BYD has a gross profit margin of over 20%. That's approximately double the profitability of Western firms.

yugo was also very profitable when it hit the US market with higher than 20% margins :)

There are a LOT of ev fires in China that get scrubbed from the internet and media in China. If you had Weibo you can see them almost daily.

You get what you pay for. Cheap junk.

The average new car price in the USA is $50,000 which is about as much as a house costs in japan.

Which part of Japan? I found this in Osaka, somewhat far from the city center, for roughly 336k usd https://realestate.japantoday.com/en/forsale/view/1127651

This is no doubt true. But this could either be an inevitable result of corner-cutting, or simply mistakes caused by inexperience, design errors, and poorly dialed-in process parameters.

It matters is because in the former case, the unit cost advantage disappears as the problem gets solved. In the latter case, it does not.

There's something like 170,000 car fires per year in the US. It's just one of those things that's bad and too common to really make the news except maybe locally.

Safety is also an issue

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2024/10/30/byd-atto-3-rec...

> Mercedes’ i5 received the best score from Euro NCAP for driver-assistance functions, and BYD’s ATTO 3 receiving the worst score

That safety of the occupant. In the context of a city car I'm more interested in safety for passerby.

Why? You can do both, if you want to. If a car can’t have good occupant safety, I would find it very difficult to believe its pedestrian safety would be good instead.

Occupant safety in a car/pedestrian collision is basically a solved problem, especially at relatively low speed.

Then why doesn’t every car score top ranking on the safety tests? It’s not a “solved problem” if you don’t spend the money/effort to solve it. And it absolutely costs money to solve the problem, which a cheaper car may not wish to spend.

I know China has a few great products nowadays but its reputation for low quality trash will take decades to change in the US, especially given geopolitical challenges. You can take risks with Temu gadgets but not cars where your loved ones will be riding. No amount of statistics will do given China's manufacturing history. I simply won't consider a Chinese car in the next 10 years irrespective of testimonials, articles, charts or price.

If we want more EVs in the US, we need more competitive offerings from Korea, Europe, Japan and US itself.

Both Japan and Korea had similar reputations and over came them quickly. Western consumers have noticed the pattern and will be much quicker to trust Chinese cars than they were to trust Japanese and Korean ones, assuming rightly or wrongly that the pattern applies.

It helps that the initial product quality of Chinese cars from the big makers is better than American cars. Perhaps their long term quality is worse, but that's unknowable. People will judge by reports of the quality in the first year of ownership.

Chinese cars will also be helped by the use of purchased Western brands like MG and Volvo.

My Tesla made in Shanghai is pretty well made.

Compared to the same vehicle manufactured in the US, the general finishing and fitment is superior (based on people with access to vehicles made in both countries).

I have no complaints, was in better shape on delivery day than my previous Audi, which had been through “detailing” (a.k.a swirled to hell by an unskilled operator).

It depends on the brand. No name Chinese brand - quality probably terrible, Apple iPhone made in China quality good. Brands like BYD are probably quite good also. I used to ride a Chinese imitation "Yamaha" and something went wrong weekly but my Apple stuff is good.

If they do the same thing as Hyundai and offer 10 year warranties they can easily capture the sub prime market. If they can show reliability they can move up the value ladder

Not really. You know Hyundai is not going anywhere because they build nuclear power plants, ships, housing, trains, banking, tanks, cranes, ... they make everything and are the second biggest zaiba^^^chaebol in Korea.

Outside of a few Chinese car companies are mostly small startups, here today gone tomorrow.

Chinese battery warranties from CATL (who have 40% of the market) were 10 years a couple of years ago. With more data and experience they've upped them to 12 and now 15 years warranty.

150 wh/kg sodium ion batteries enable a cheap 200 mile city car that ice complexity can't hope to touch.

It's a car that several billion people in urban cores will buy. Yeah it may be a glorified golf cart.

I also think a sodium ion 50 mile all electric phev has a ten year platform cycle in the US market while charging infrastructure and solid state / sulfur techs get developed.

The Chinese and other companies will probably partner with us market companies to get the cars in somehow, even with trump in office.

Korean car companies are making lots of headway by trying everything. Honda makes a big deal about the Clarity of LPG converted civic. Almost everybody I know in Korea has some combination of different fuel types and transmissions. It's sort of a wild "east" and the Korean companies are throwing everything at the wall.

Among people I know off the top of my head:

- VW diesel SUV (manual)

- domestic diesel Kia SUV (automatic)

- Tesla (auto?)

- domestic petrol ancient Daewoo (manual)

- domestic Hyundai LPG (auto)

- domestic Hyundai Hydrogen (auto)

- Honda petrol CRV (auto/CVT)

- petrol domestic Bongotype (pickup analog) (manual)

- diesel domestic Bongotype (pickup analog) (manual)

- domestic petrol Hyundai small car (auto)

- domestic petrol Kia SUV (auto)

- petrol Jaguar (auto)

it's wild. My friends and family are spread across everything from hair dressers to architects, so this kind of diversity is unusual to me.

My friends in Japan are much more focused, and the it seems to me that the brands are overcommitted to very few sets of fuels, transmissions, and technologies -- even if the form factor and packaging appear different.

With the possibility of Honda and Nissan merging among other consolidation in Japanese autos, I feel like this will only continue (saying this as a (slightly dismayed life long Honda owner).

The elephant in the room is of course the massive diversity and cost effectiveness of Chinese cars...which are completely unknown and mocked in the U.S., but turn out to be surprisingly decent these days, and are increasingly electrified and are in the process of refinement. A recent trip to Spain and Portugal reminded me that "hey these exist" and a few rides around in Ubers let me see them up close. They'd sell like hot cakes in the U.S. if they were allowed to.

fyi: Honda is Japanese and has no relationships with Hyundai(actually pronounced hyoon-deh in Korean, meaning "modern era"), which weaponized spelling for US recognition long time ago and haven't fixed it.

There is no point classifying an EV as Gavin an automatic transmission, you mostly don’t use gears (maybe to go reverse? But you could run the motor backwards). I would be surprised if hydrogen fuel cell cars had transmissions as well.

Most EVs are single speed. Some EVs have a two speed automatic transmission. The Porsche Taycan does:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a28903274/porsche-taycan-t...

None of these vehicles seem very diverse or out of the ordinary to me.

This is a pretty standard fuel and transmission distribution here in Ireland and South Africa where I"m originally from.

Out of the ordinary would be diesel/LPG hybrids, hydrogen fueled, hydrogen hybrids etc.

> Buyers in Japan can choose from three trims with prices ranging from 2,849,000 yen ($18,000) to 3,575,000 yen ($22,700).

It might be $18k normalized in USD, but locally still "$35k" product.

This is key. The yen is still weak, so framing it in terms of today's value in USD is going to make it seem much more affordable than it actually is for the average Japanese person.

That definitely matters for the marketing landscape in Japan. But as far as Hyundai's ability to make a profit at that price, it's still a big challenge to US automakers like Tesla, isn't it?

I think it's a nontrivial problem for automakers, and then it squares for Tesla.

Need to equate it to a number of McDs cheeseburgers that amount of money can buy.

How many football fields can it buy?

Is that an imperial or metric football field?

It's still a lot of money. For instance Mitsubishi Space Star starts at around 13k with a gas engine. Why are EVs so expensive? We were told technology is comparatively less complex, so it should be cheaper, right? Is it only economy of scale?

Isn't it just the raw materials cost of battery? I mean, gold bullions are technologically not that complicated to make, right?

extrapolating from that page https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-how-much-do-ev-b... the battery cost should be around $8000. Also this https://bookmygarage.com/electric-vehicles/how-much-does-an-...

Although the price of lithium has "skyrocketed" it is now previous levels.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium

Do we see this reflected in battery or EV car prices?

What's the kind of delta to be reasonably expected relative to ICE?

The cost for the entire ICE drivetrain is estimated to be between somewhere between 1.5k to 10k depending on cars and analysts, so 8k in bare cells before factoring in engineering and manufacturing costs that aren't subsidized by a century long inertia of ICE industry is already significant extra.

Really the ones tooting "EV should be cheap to make" horn are Tesla guys. They're not doing engines unless gigacasts is a weird foreshadowing. I doubt it make sense to take it too seriously beyond as a conceptual hand-wavy panel discussion quote when the opposite had been the case for nearly 15 years.

How do you figure $8000? $8000 is the cost of a 62kWh NMC battery in 2023 in your link. A 45kWh NMC battery in 2025 is probably about half that cost.

You are right. Maybe around $5000 (2025 has just started :)

It is not economy of scale. They need to "re-factor" their factories/models/cars/marketing for little gain. why do it? Tesla was kinda the only player in town and thus commanded high prices and high margins. It's only when the Chinese showed up that the technology is clearly cheaper; and everyone else was caught by it.

It's mostly the battery cost.

Originally the battery cost roughly the same as the rest of the car, and for a battery that would be considered small by today's standards.

And since then the battery costs are coming down due to mass production.

This has been predicted in theory for about a decade with 100 dollars per KWh at the cell level being the crossover point where up front costs of EV are lower than ICE.

This has already occured in China.

EVs are expensive because of their batteries. EV Battery Cells are also right now an almost exclusively Chinese made product.

It’s about 75% China. Far from almost exclusively.

I would absolutely love a low tech electric car - like an Elantra hatchback EV. I hate how every EV has to be all touchscreen-based with fancy software that needs to be updated frrquently just to drive.

Are there any simple vehicles left in the US, EV or otherwise? The lowest frills cars I can think of are the Mirage and Versa, both on their last legs. Similar to the vocal minorities who want compact hatchbacks, wagons, small trucks, or manual transmissions, it feels like so few people want simple, non-smartphoney cars that the market segment will never be catered to.

Plenty of old cars out there. Otherwise, it's hard to know what people really want in the car market, because most buyers are settling for something that's at a dealer and not ordering specifics, some makes don't allow orders, and even if you can order it's still trims and packages.

For the most part, every car made gets sold, too. If a car is undesirable, it gets a lot of incentives to get it off the lot. If the car maker misunderstood demand, a dud can still have large sales numbers, because some people will buy it when it's cheap enough.

Those cars are illegal to make. Any new car needs complex electronics to satisfy legal requirements, adding in an infotainment system is a negligible cost.

This looks like they just slapped a battery and motor on what they sell in India as the Exter. So, doesn't look like a dedicated EV platform that it's built on. But still, decent VFM.

I think they might not be that much successful in breaking into the Japanese EV market because the Japanese don't buy products based on just price alone, but rather based on the company's nationality as well. And Koreans and Japanese are always competitors and Japanese people are quite patriotic. It will be interesting to watch, nevertheless.

Looks like Hyundai and BYD sold high three digits and low four digits in Japan during 2024, surprising but growth is definitely not exponential. Tesla's interestingly in high four too and not growing.

I wonder what are differentiations for these cars in context of Japan against local cars with local factories. I can see that Teslas would be substantially different from Leafs, but what pain points of Japanese cars do IONIQ 5 or Seal solve?

Nissan has launched its very cheap EV called Sakura around 2 or 3 years ago? Should hover around the same price point and can be ordered with ProPilot 2 as a option I think

https://www.businessinsider.com/japans-best-selling-ev-nissa....

The Sakura is briefly mentioned at the end of the article, a bit less expensive at $16,500 (2.6 million yen)

I don't see any information about whether they will bring these into the US. They'd sell well here. It will be hard to make a profit on these, because you can't have much overhead.

But clearly, a less than $20k ev with ~200-220 miles, a city car, would sell very well in the us. It would open up EV ownership to more groups. Imagine what a 2 or 3 year old one would sell for? Those used ones would again open up EVs to new groups.

US car industry and government are too in bed together to allow competition.

The longest drive I ever do is 350 miles (most days I drive less than 10 miles) so a cheap EV with slightly more than 200 mile range would be perfect. I already own a steam deck and have books on my phone so stopping to charge once or twice is the opposite of a problem. Less than 20k would be crazy, that's the price I paid for my Fit 8 years ago

astonishing how different the needs are. Driving to a holiday destination in Germany I often double that or even travel over 1000km.

Why do you say even? 350 miles is 563 km, doubling that is a good bit more than 1000 km.

This is basically the Nissan Leaf's lane, albeit at like, 26k. It hasn't done that well after the initial rush, I think?

Americans have long commutes.

A 200 mile range would cover 99% of American commutes. The real issue is that Americans buy their cars for road trips. Even if it’s only once every year or two and it would be way cheaper to buy a cheaper car and rent a more capable one for the road trips, people generally won’t do it.

Given how shoddy rental car companies can be, that’s not really that irrational.

> They'd sell well here.

I'd love to agree because I like kei cars and small cars in general, but I don't think they would. These cars on US roads would be dwarfed by SUVs and pickups, and Americans have voted with their wallets that they don't want small cars, which is why manufacturers have almost uniformly stopped making them (most don't even make regular mid-size sedans anymore).

I think cars are now so expensive that a small car, van, or truck that was like half as expensive but high utility would sell well.

I too have long assumed that EVs would appeal more to city dwellers but apparently it's the opposite.

City drivers can pull over anytime they like for gas topups and only when they've driven the car, so setting up charging infrastructure and having to plug in every day without failure just to remove gas stops makes little sense to them. OTOH, gas stations for rural house owners are travel destinations of its own, and they welcome offgrid home charging and everyday full tanks.

Short range grocery getter EV exists in the middle ground of those extremes, only in locations where it's rural enough that finding gas is annoying enough, while at the same time daily driving range is short enough that the car's range covers it.

Only reason urban citizens would prefer EVs is if they have specific opinions about personally owning ICE device, but those people aren't the biggest majority.

An EV would start to get pretty irritating if your only option is street parking. I have a garage I could charge one in right now, but most of the people on my block don’t. And if I wanted to move I may not end up with one.

Actually owning an EV in Vienna for a bit more than a year that has turned out to be a non issue. We charge all our city driving range during curb parking around the city. Parking at a charger is actually easier since non charging vehicles are banned and fairly cheap since regular parking would also incur a cost.

Well that works for you since there is curb charging, that isn't built out here at all. I agree if it was then it would be a non-issue.

I’ve seen this in-person. It’s pretty nice. I just find the price point too high, because for the price of it you can get a max spec kona which is a few years old.

I don't think this goes well. $18,000 is not cheap at all. People will just buy Spacia for $10,000 and can't be happier.

I bought my first new car in 1999 only two years out of college for about $20k.

In 1999.

$18k today for an electric car is far from “not cheap at all”.

Obviously you don't understand the Japanese market. College graduates earn ¥2,160,000 in average in their first year. So yeah, $18,000 is not cheap at all. As I said you can buy a brand new Suzuki Spacia for ¥1,500,000, and it's not a random car from a random brand. Suzuki is much popular than Nissan or Subaru in Japan. Yes, it's an ICE car but if you think Japanese will pay extra money just because it's EV that is the huge mistake.

Yeah, fair point, I’m completely just talking US market here.

I’m assuming this would go for the same price ($18k) in the US, where that would be a very good price for an EV.

I would love to see an EV in the US for sub-$20k.

Cheapest car with 4 wheels in Japan is like $6300. That price range is something like $23k in US. Average wages in Japan has literally flatlined since like 1995.

It's not like this car is equivalent of 4x18k in local currency, but not that far from it.

This is a very stark contrast to SonyHonda's upcoming Afeela 1 starting at an eyewatering $90,000 USD.

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24336375/sony-honda-afeela...

Afeela they wont sell many of those when there is so many EV options in that price envelope.

BYD's current line is generally considered OK by reviewers. The comparable BYD product is the Dolphin, at $13,700. It's much better looking, too.

Good. I've been a bit disappointed by car prices. Most manufactured good get cheaper in real terms and manufacturing advances, like computers, TVs, cameras and the like but they seem to have jacked up car prices in recent years.

EVs are not the future. Change my mind.

-- spoiler alert --

Hydrogen fuel cell powered are

(green) hydrogen fuel cells have much worse energy efficiency than batteries.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydrogen-ladder-version-50-mi...

Why do we have to change your mind? What's special about you? Hydrogen is a pita for infrastructure and car manufacturers have talked about it far longer than the modern EV period yet it still hasn't gone anywhere. It would need a huge push from government and industry. Electricity infrastructure is already there, even if it needs upgrades and extra capacity, it's far easier to add to. EVs are here now and growing, hydrogen is still as limited as ever in most places.

The future is here and I am already driving an EV. The car park at work is around 15% EVs (and growing) and 0% hydrogen.

It is convenient for me to charge at home, moving to hydrogen would require me to visit a refuelling station again - something that costs me time so there would have to be some other benefit. The possible benefit is faster refuelling, but on long journeys my EV can drive for 2-3 hours on a 20 minute charge while I eat which is 0 minutes extra.

The amount of resources required to create an EV's battery, battery degradation, politics behind the mining, and importing of such resources, locations of factories whichbuild them, etc. is against it. 15% is because it was subsided and People we being scared by govt that they will disallow their cars from cities. And you're IT professional I guess so you're not the poorest person driving such.

Those cars will become unrepairable in a few years.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/mapped-ev-battery-manufa...

> Hydrogen fuel cell powered are

been there, done that

next!

PS. it _might_ work for trucks

Electric is already good enough. Any improvements will make overtaking it very hard. Energy cost advantage is just huge

A hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle is an electric vehicle. The fuel cell outputs electricity that powers an electric motor.

And needs a battery to provide responsive power while the electrolizer tops it up at a steady rate.

Fuel cell cars were a great idea in a world where battery costs/weights were high. We no longer live in that world.

Hydrogen and BEV received the same support and benefits in Norway, for many, many years now. BEVs have reached 90%+ market share. Hydrogen cars are all but dead here.

Norway is just about a worst case scenario for EVs. People love driving hours and hours to their cabins high up in the mountain in winter (though the pre-heating of EVs is a significant benefit in winter). The winter is brutal on the range. Others drive across Europe all the way down to Croatia in summer (Norway is in Schengen so Norwegians routinely drive to other countries). Charging infrastructure in Europe is improving every year, so every year it’s easier and easier for BEVs to drive all over Europe.

How are you going to convince me that Hydrogen can ever hope to catch up then? There may be some hypothetical hydrogen break through that could help. But then there are a dozen vastly improved EV batteries already in early/trial production.

For hydrogen to catch up, BEV development needs to stop completely in its tracks right now, and stay there forever. We also need a giant leap in electrolysis and fuel cell efficiency for hydrogen, otherwise the operating costs are just too high compared to BEV. Hydrogen needs a miracle in other words.

BTW, a hydrogen fuel station exploded near where I live. I heard it even several kilometers away. It smashed the windows of cars driving by. Luckily nobody was filling hydrogen. So yeah.. I’m certainly never buying a hydrogen car. Who the hell wants to go to some station to keep their car running? My car starts with a full tank every day. Do you go to a station to “fill” your phone?

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