BYD to offer Tesla-like self-driving tech in all models for free
asiafinancial.com
asiafinancial.com
I was ready to hate on it, but for the price and quality inside at least, wild. It also drove like any other car in the low/mid range that I’ve owned, wheel felt confident and had some heft to it (my preference).
In China maybe where it's 100k RMB (~roughly $14k). Everywhere else it's the double or at least $25k. It's £26k ($32k) in the UK. It's €32k ($33k) in Germany
Even in Mexico it's $26k (535k pesos) not $14k https://www.autocosmos.com.mx/catalogo/vigente/byd/dolphin
https://www.motorist.sg/coe-results https://bydcars.sg/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/BYD-Pricelist-...
>In Singapore, most people typically purchase new vehicles through dealers. Dealers will collect orders from customers and participate in the COE bidding on behalf of their customers.
>Supply and demand set the price for COE, which regulates demand. When COE prices are high, vehicle prices, as quoted by dealers, will have to increase, reducing demand. When COE prices are lower, dealers can afford to reduce prices if they want to, which will increase demand.
https://dollarsandsense.sg/guide-understanding-coe-bidding-s...
It looks like dealers handle getting the COE (which makes sense, since you couldn't drive the vehicle off the lot without one).
Subtract the $85,000 (SD) CAT A COE cost from the car price and it comes out to $80,000 (SD), or ~$60,000 USD.
While still higher, I believe these are all very reasonable prices — perhaps just not as mind blowing. I’m optimistic for the future.
Sure, as reasonable as offers from Western manufacturers. You can get plenty of EVs for 30k USD.
Yes. Dacia Sprint. Plenty of it.
Still not US$14k, but not quite the $25k it is in other markets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull
https://mexico.as.com/motor/byd-dolphin-mini-que-tiene-de-es...
Protectionism only
Demand is also relative to price and US EVs are very expensive.
From the largest maker of BEVs.
A+ goalpost moving!
The CEO is worried about how hostile the U.S. market might be for Chinese companies, not about low demand.
That's a lot more than the US, but that's not the point. 8% is plenty large enough to be sizable market.
EV credits going away will dampen that, but that will also be partly or even fully offset just by how fast that segment is growing.
Now, the US is a big market, but even so, particularly with the US’s tariff barriers and unique consumer preferences (the average car in the US is a lot _bigger_ than elsewhere, and cars made for other markets do not sell well; for instance see the leaf), you can see why car makers would prefer to focus on the EU and China.
Additionally, a level 2 charger is just a high amperage wall socket plus some safety equipment.
That said, the Australia price seems particularly cheap; is that before grants and things? In Ireland, say, it’s typically 1.5-2eur/W before grant (grant is .7eur/W up to 2kW, .2eur/W up to 4kW, capped at 1800).
My typical charging regime is: charge to 80%. Drive until the car has done 100km (down to ~50% capacity), then charge back up to 80%. If we go over 100km in a day the car drops below 50%. That can't be topped up in a single night, but it just means the charging accumulates over the next few nights until it's back to 80%. It works as long as the average is less than 100km per day and the peak is less than 300km per day.
Whilst it wouldn't do for a taxi, it's perfectly okay for the driving we do.
Your 100km limit is also less than my wife's round trip commute to work, nevermind adding in running errands after or any of the regular travel we do to visit family, though at least some of that would be easy with upgraded charging.
Edit: to be more specific, most US outlets top out at 1.5kw to be safe, though they can usually be temporarily pushed to 1.8 for things like an electric kettle.
In most countries standard mains outlets are 220-240V, usually 10-15amp depending on country.
> Your 100km limit is also less than my wife's round trip commute to work, nevermind adding in running errands after or any of the regular travel we do to visit family
Even by US standards, that is somewhat unusually high.
With that said, ignoring 600 million people, including the single most car-centric cultures, seems a bit silly when talking about EV adoption challenges, no?
In countries with most outlets at 220v it’s probably easier, plus usually less long distance driving than the US.
Obviously if you put a 240v, 50amp outlet in a garage you can ignore everything I just wrote.
There are also 30A circuits, usually for a dryer or stove. An electrician can set it up for a car, but it's not as easy as running an extension cord to a regular outlet.
It actually worked pretty well for me. There were a couple of times I ended up "fast" (the Bolt is slow at DC charging) charging but very few in more than a year. The garage didn't have 240V power and we knew we were moving.
At the new house, I have a 240V 60A hardwired circuit for the EV charger so I can charge much faster, probably 25 miles of range per hour, maybe more. I haven't used a fast charger in probably six months.
It is a shock seeing what cold temperatures do to range in the Bolt. We have an Equinox EV and it seems to do better plus it has a longer range to start with.
Things tend to be much closer than they are in the U.S.
Throw in the tariffs and what not, and you lose out to other low end EV models.
I was floored by what they are producing in China. It is a shame that these cars are not reaching more of the world and raising the competitive bar. I get the government subsidy and lower labor costs issues, but the tariffs are retarding competition, propping up prices, and hurting consumers.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chines...
When states started offering incentives like big tax breaks to get auto makers to build factories outside of they often made those breaks contingent on the plants not being unionized. Those states also often had laws designed to make it much harder for unions to organize.
shameless UAW vote buying
>Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.
https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-inve...
Not just whataboutism.
Also the workers in that article are supposedly being paid very close to $7/hr, which is close to Brazil's median income.
They could probably build cars in one of those places that would be economically viable in the US if not for the tariffs, and would satisfy US labor sensibilities.
uyghur workers are same as other chinese workers, smart, hardworking, diligent, reliable, and they don't bring drugs to factory
btw, we are all forced labor in the 'world factory', forced to work overtime and earn little, to serve the empire and its golden 1b people
Without all the trade restrictions, you could buy a BYD EV for 10k. It's not the greatest car ever, but it would be a cool city car. Naw, better go and pay 40k for a worse American version.
Temu is getting basically banned. It's not enough I pay around 40% of my income on in taxes and healthcare insurance, I now much pay higher prices for the same stuff on Amazon.
If before firing thousands upon thousands of government workers, they say eliminated all income taxes on your first 100k, it would do something for the middle class.
I really feel like US taxes are the worst of both worlds. They aren't much lower than in Europe where most(all?) countries have much cheaper if not free healthcare.
A system where getting fired usually cuts off your health insurance sounds like a dystopian novel. Serious health issues have a tendency to stop you from working.
No matter where in the world you go as a US citizen you still owe US taxes.
No, you couldn’t. In Switzerland there are no EV trade restrictions and no, we do not have 10k BYDs. They cost roughly same as any other Western manufacturer.
Hell, Obama didn’t let the auto industry die back in 2008. Can you imagine Trump, who said there would be a "bloodbath" in the auto industry without him—allowing a $10K Chinese car into the U.S. market?
I'm curious which one lost more money, openai or byd
American cars are expensive because Americans have been convinced buying big SUVs is AMERICAN and patriotic, and even the Americans who aren’t dumb enough to fall for that nonsense have to buy bigger cars because we’re in a car size arms race and it’s outright scary driving a normal hatchback around these massive Trucks masquerading as cars.
This has lowered demand for smaller and cheaper cars, giving auto manufacturers the perfect excuse to stop selling small cars in the U.S. especially since SUVs are just not profitable because they’re unsophisticated and yet super expensive.
These are the arguments in favor of tariffs on Chinese autos, I understand they cause a disparity, and yes, IMO they are disproportionate.
Typing the three letters in “IMO” is most certainly easier than doing/documenting complex financial analysis.
It was a pretty bad and uncomfortable pattern to watch unfold online, and many people unfollowed their work because of how awful his (and honestly a few of the others who contribute) attitude(s) are.
It seems like if there was a $15-$20k EV in the US market, it would be a no-brainer "around town" second car.
Instead we get $30k Model 3/Y's or $80k EV SUV/Vans.
However as we witnessed during the pandemic, manufacturers of goods tend to increase the cost of the goods despite minimal increase in supply chain, cost of materials or labor. It’s all for maximizing profit and they were “testing” the market to reap massive profits.
With no competition, they (collectively as an industry) felt no need to decrease prices or offer cheaper vehicle options.
I also suspect abuse of CAFE exceptions (ie, “light duty trucks”) is the second leading cause of the death of affordable vehicles.
1) it's not as expensive as a model 3 in mexico
2) it's not as much lower end, when it comes to what drivers want, noting FSD is not actually on anyones radar, or "free" with the low end models
3) it's cheaper by a margin most people on rational incomes close to average would say is a LOT of money.
2) Agreed, that it is a car for much cheaper. However, it will likely not last as long. Excluding FSD, Autopilot is free and a better comparison.
3) Again, simply pointing out the discrepancy in claimed cost vs actual.
https://electrek.co/2025/02/06/first-look-new-chevy-bolt-ev-...
Kinda missing the point that you get 50% more range in the Dolphin, plus a lot of additional niceties / tech stuff that is just not available in the Leaf.
Nissan leaf: 240 km (149 miles) for the 40 kWh version and 341 km (212 miles) for the 62 kWh version.
BYD Dolphin: 340 km (211 mi) for the 45 Kwh version, 427 km (265 mi) for the 60kWh version. The cheapest 30 KwH version doesn't have a WLTP range that I can find (I don't think it is being exported outside of China anyways according to wiki).
Leaf is less, but it isn't 50% of the range.
I assume that the 25k EUR id.2 (replacement for the VW eUp, out early next year) will launch in the US, tho, and should be competitive with the Dolphin.
Probably from Tesla.com. It lists the long range RWD cash price as $29920 (in my state) unless you notice the checked checkbox that says "Include est. incentives of $7,500 and 5-year gas savings of $<whatever> for <your_state>" and uncheck it.
$whatever is $5000 for my state.
This will be interesting to unpack, seeing what happens to Tesla in a marketing theory sense.
I predict that Chinese and us manufacturers will partner or rebadge Mexican or Canadian made Chinese EVs within a decade
Also, I believe the sodium ion battery has yet to impact the EV market. In theory a 200-300 mile car of sodium ion batteries should be 1/2 that of NCM drivetrain or less. That should enable a sub 10k car even in the us
You can easily get a used EV in good working order for under $15K though: https://insideevs.com/features/715984/best-used-evs-on-a-bud...
Every few months Electrek publishes a list of EVs that can be leased in the United States for under $200/month. Sometimes they're as cheap as $99 or even $0/month, depending on your state's incentives.
They’re not including the downpayment.
Aluminium and steel costs significantly less in China than the rest of the world, but they now face significant problems because of overcapacity. There are so much factories built and so small demand companies can not survive without help from the Government. They were build thanks to cheap loans from the Government.
So the Government made an investment that is not making money, so basically is a transfer of wealth from bank savers account to industry.
This is also applied in the US and EU, let's remember interest rates below inflation, "Quantitative Easing" and other transfers of wealth the central banks do in the West.
Tesla was also subsidised.
It feels like this is true for any older Western country like Germany or the UK too. Why exactly have China been successful in reducing costs?
Reducing price != reducing cost
Besides that, EVs in the US are targeting a different market segment. It's for people who would be buying a $40K SUV, not those buying a $20K Corolla.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942405
China boasts a complete industrial chain and the best logistics infrastructure. If you want to engage in industrial production, you can find the most suppliers here, who can provide you with the parts you need at the fastest speed and lowest logistics cost.
Not to mention the largest number of educated workers, who won't leave marijuana in the products you send to customers.
These are all factors that can actually reduce costs, which cannot be achieved solely by subsidies.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?auto_make_model=niss...
I thought the republicans were in favor of a free market, but it seems more like those with power don’t mind putting some weight on their side of the scale, since they own the scale and the bank.
> I think Elon wants to compete in that kind of market, not bog it down with regulation
Be careful about any phrase that starts with “I think {person} wants to…” especially if person is rich/powerful. Judge people based on their actions, not the facade they put on.
We know this will happen because it is what always happens when countries impose punitive tariffs on foreign goods. Later, the domestic industry collapses and the tariffs are lifted.
Exactly what market is that? Where Tesla has 0 responsibility for any issues / defects / deaths-from-FSD? Sure, that market he wants to play in - it has only upside for him.
The one where he has to compete on price/features/whatever, and he can't make rude comments or cut people off who he doesn't like? Please pass the bong..
What’s to stop manufacturers of goods from shipping it from a country that is not China, laundering it through a different country. Paper work for container says, “imported from {non tariff restricted country}” at the ship yard.
Cheap Chinese goods still flood the market. Orange man gets to say he has been hard on China via tariff war.
> The new tariff rates – which range from 100% on electric vehicles, to 50% for solar components, to 25% for all other sectors – will take place over the next two years.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/politics/biden-tariffs-chines... May 14, 2024
> Electric vehicles imported from China will see their tariffs more than quadrupled from 27.5% to 100%
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq55zd2xjreo
>Musk opposes US tariffs on Chinese electric cars. "In fact, I was surprised when they were announced. Things that inhibit freedom of exchange or distort the market are not good," Mr Musk said on Thursday. “Tesla competes quite well in the market in China with no tariffs and no deferential support. I’m in favour of no tariffs," he added.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-joins-legal-battle-agai...
>Tesla TSLA has joined BMW and several Chinese manufacturers in challenging EU tariffs on China-made electric vehicles at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), per a court filing.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas...
and it's changing
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/tesla-car-sales-in-china-fal...
And I was eating it up until she turned on self-driving and we crashed into a parked car.
Still a really great EV car at a great price. But I'm not ready for any car's self-driving after that...
I mean, I don't see your problem; she was simply demonstrating that it had the same capability to randomly crash into things as Tesla's solution! That's what people _like_ about the Tesla one; keeps things interesting.
Like the article says, Many Tesla owners are also looking to offload or sell them to avoid any appearance of endorsing Musk or his views or being linked to them in any way.
Many awkward conversations are being had with Tesla owners around Musk and alot of them don't feel comfortable owning the cars anymore.
This BYD feature, while BYD is not a perfect company themselves, will cause further issues for Tesla.
I love FSD. I use it daily. It's replaced a lot of driving for me. This should 100% be available to everyone for free. It will significantly improve safety once edge cases are worked out.
i can't speak for snow tho.
>Two higher-end versions will be installed on more expensive BYD-branded cars and its premium Denza and Yangwang brands. These will enable a car to drive autonomously — though also under human supervision — in more complex urban traffic.
The base version is self driving as in lane assist. It will not change lanes for you or 'self drive' to your destination.
I agree with BYD that these are great safety features and give them props for not gating safety behind a paywall.
This possibility paints a frightening picture of the power of government in the global marketplace. The government of any large country can selectively choose to monopolize any specific industry and wipe out all competitors in other countries via subsidies.
It's not a fair playing field for market participants. It makes the whole environment completely unpredictable and dominated by the whims of hundreds of different governments. It promotes government scheming over raw productive capabilities of workers and entrepreneurs; it throws decentralized economic efficiency under the bus in favor of monopolistic, centralized government-oriented strategies.
In such environment, I can understand why tariffs are essential. You can't have a market where participants are playing by different rules of different countries. Also, you can't expect market participants to familiarize themselves with the (possibly secret) policies of hundreds of different governments or be forced to abandon their entire industry in their own country because they happen to be skilled in an industry which is not propped up in their own country as it is in some other foreign country.
Our system is so incredibly asymmetric, right down to the monetary layer. People ought to refuse to participate at all.
BTW, it's not only China which plays these games; you could also say this about US tech/software industry.
If you look at it from a big picture, one of the major winners of the Ukraine war has been the USA oil and gas industry, as Europe now imports almost 3x the amount of LNG it did before the war from USA [0].
The USA military complex is also doing pretty well, as governments in Europe are allocating more towards defense as Russia seems like a much riskier neighbour than it was 5 years ago.
[0] https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/european-natural-gas-imports
Tesla like? Doesn't Tesla require that you keep your hands on the wheel ?
Cars in America are still relatively cheap to buy and operate by world standards. They aren't much cheaper in China (and can become very expensive for non-econo luxury models), and you can face a lot of restrictions on when you can use them.
I didn't know that, good point! You would already want to get an EV in Beijing since the license lottery has a separate allotment for them, but even then you might not win a license (not sure what the odds are right now, it depends on what they are selling). I assume SH is the same.
there're only certain stages of economy had advantages in foreign trade so they claim themself as 'free market' and try to force others accept this 'free market'
Also, when a religion refuses to gain approval, the party quite literally hard forks it. Catholic? No, you have the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association; which was only recently tentatively reconciled after about 60 years of schism (though it’s still a very uneasy peace).
Among atheists one would think it would no more troubling than referencing Legolas in a name. [1]
In China I suspect they'd object to "Mao's Eyes" as a name for this.
[1] Many atheists may register an objection on the grounds of upsetting others in the community.
What gave you this idea?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/23/10-things...
Especially point #8, "The ruling Chinese Communist Party promotes atheism and discourages citizens from practicing religion"
as for your question
> "The ruling Chinese Communist Party promotes atheism and discourages citizens from practicing religion"
communisim is a materialism ideology, so communists should not practice religion, CPC members could be discharge if they do so
there's no limits for non-CPC citizens abt this, "religion freedom should be respected" is written in the constitution
this is not a question for anyone in China or have traveled in China, because if you were there you'll see how many people in temples there at weekends
a funny part, empire's propaganda sometimes against each other: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/22/temple-visits-...
Plus, like in English, there are a ton of words people use more for the poetic impressiveness than because they're specifically asserting a supernatural power.
I mean for one that religion isn't frowned upon and that it's just a marketing slogan, but also if you want to actually look at it, the Chinese phrase used by BYD is: 天神之眼, what they've in English translated to "God" is, in Chinese "Tian" (Heaven) a very common concept you have in Taoism or Confucianism or pretty much any Chinese mythology. You might have come across the phrase Tianxia (天下) "under heaven". But for an Anglophone audience "God" is probably catchier.
I think it literally means god in Chinese. There are various ways to get god out sky (like laotian, tianna, etc...).
If anything, I would consider using the word "god" in a commercial tech product to be disrespectful to an actual believer.
tariff concerns should be discussed via WTO, not unilateral sanctions.
otherwise all this "rules based order" is not worth paper it is written on
why would anyone trust usa's word if any agreement/word/promise can be torn unilaterally?
I suspect we're going to see the answer to that question play out over the next several years.
In general, the US would introduce retaliatory tariffs in that scenario; the game theory of the situation basically requires that.
Despite popular belief, the CCP is also not actually completely immune to public discontent (it often seems to be really quite scared of it), and would likely be willing to kick off a major trade war, as it would cause price increases.
You can see the effects of the free market in many industries which have been decimated by globalization.
We used to be able to get a manufacturing job which would provide for a family, but decided it was okay to allow big corps to use slave labor on the other side of the planet and just ship everything across the world (not great for carbon emissions). Just look at the rust belt.
It’s not a bad idea to say that we should have the free market stop at our border. Other countries don’t play by the same rules that we do and can even have entire industries propped up by a foreign government in order to take up market share.
Removing industry from an area brings nothing but misery to the people who live there. Are you suggesting that some sort of communism should have been implemented in the rust belt where we give these people free money or something?
The Chinese market is way larger than the US one, they have everything they need to lift themselves out of poverty by building things for themselves. The US became the richest country in the world by building everything here and reaping the rewards with greatly increased prosperity.
There is no reason to send all our good paying jobs to the other side of the world, and ship all goods across literally the entire planet, the process of which emits and insane amount of C02, just so that the owners of mega corporations can make a few extra dollars per unit.
Let capitalism dictate where the cars get made. It is the American way.
This attitude is why Trump won. A statement like that sounds like you've stopped trying to make anything better, or to articulate a competing plan and convince voters to support it.
So, in this way, the self-loathing defeatism is partly responsible for people like Trump gaining more power.
In my opinion the reason why we're in the dark ages of EVs is that a majority of Americans have range anxiety so our EVs have to weigh a lot and cost a lot to have 250 mile batteries, whereas everywhere else you can buy a car with an 80 mile range for a price poor people can actually afford.
Note - the range anxiety is both because of our car-centric (sub)urban design encouraging lifestyles where you drive 100 miles a day, and because of how a large number of urban dwellers and even suburban non-rich have no garages to do home charging. (And it's objectively far worse to own an EV for anyone who can't charge it at home.) All of this causes people to refuse to buy cars with say, 75-100 miles of range unless they're hybrids.
The same party that happily ran over peaceful protestors with tanks, and never even so much as apologized for it, is still in power almost 40 years later. They openly put their people in prison just for criticizing the Party.
People compare the CCP to Western countries' misdeeds against their citizens when there's not even a comparison. For instance, when the US illegally wiretapped on the AT&T and Verizon networks to slurp up all the call data they wanted, they didn't actually use that data to imprison citizens for their speech, even ones who said things like "Bush is a war criminal." China both does the privacy invasion itself, and quite openly uses anything they can uncover to persecute anyone they deem a threat to their power.
USA does this as well, its just critique of government by a single person is not a credible threat to the US government. Mind you, all these "freedom fighters" ended up being financed by the USAID, so literally were foreign agents.
Whistleblowers get the whole book thrown at them, Snowden and Assange got nearly killed by CIA, Iraq files whistleblowers get book thrown at them.
USA is just as bad empire as China, and probably even worse, because of the millions of murdered innocent people over the decades of forever wars.
China has no such track record
> millions of murdered innocent people [...] China has no such track record
No, China, since becoming Communist, has specialized more in murdering their own citizens.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/help-me-understand-all-the-...
Anyway, thanks for providing a great exhibit of exactly what I was talking about: either CCP propaganda, or hopelessly naïve Westerner bent on believing in these two nations' moral equivalency. This is the same level of honest discourse we'll see heavily promoted on TikTok when China invades Taiwan in a few months or years, saying "China and the US are the same, so who cares if they take over a democracy by force."
Do you also think US civil war was Americans genociding own citizens?
I dont care what China does to chinese, I care more about what America does to other countries like in the middle east or Afghanistan
It is clearly problematic when it is weaponized to destroy a nation-state’s industrial output surreptitiously.
are we talking about the US or China or Canda or Mexico here? i can't keep track of who the "bad guys" are that are supposedly weaponizing and who the victims are.
With statements like yours, it feels like the left is rooting for the most catastrophic outcomes possible for that whole country, just to spite Trump. Even though we'd all lose and Trump wouldn't be affected either way.
I'm not American or a "leftist" for reference. I have no ill will towards the American people, neither the Chinese or any other. Governments on the other hand.... But regardless if I can buy a car for 1/2 the cost from one belligerent major power over another. Yeah - I'll take the half price car.
> With statements like yours, it feels like the left is rooting for the most catastrophic outcomes possible for that whole country, just to spite Trump. Even though we'd all lose and Trump wouldn't be affected either way.
This only makes sense if the poster is American though right? Otherwise, they are just being pragmatic.
If you really think Trump is going to try to literally take territory though, you've really been trolled. He has said all kinds of ridiculous shit in his 'political career.' That's his one signature thing.
the question should be: Should American consumers be allowed to drive green environmentally friendly cars for $10k or should they be forced to shell out $50k (+interest) to billionaire elon musk
Irrespective of what country, and your belief/disbelief in the threat level, you have to see that a highly internet-reliant device that would bring much of the country anywhere (thanks to car-centric infrastructure) would be a perfect target for a hostile nation, no? With one click you cripple the workforce. Again, speaking nothing of which country is or is not hostile.
Verizon, ATT, Tmobile and their APNs are controlled by the FCC, and any regulation can force vehicle traffic to be isolated if there is credible threat.
but, why would BYD or other nation sabotage its own future profits by bricking cars?? it doesn't make sense.
if I sell you gadget, I would never brick it, cause I am going to lose all future profits
> Verizon, ATT, Tmobile and their APNs are controlled by the FCC, and any regulation can force vehicle traffic to be isolated if there is credible threat.
This response would *not* be soon enough. One response from a server, and the car could be bricked forever, explode/short circuit causing a fire, self-drive into the nearest government building, etc. A car is a huge weapon, especially when remotely controlled. This software could be pre-installed from the factory, with commands injected via side channels. I could imagine a hundred ways to do this.
> but, why would BYD or other nation sabotage its own future profits by bricking cars?? it doesn't make sense.
I'm precluding this situation with a background level of hostility between nations... they don't care about maximizing profit, but maximizing damage. It would be a government stepping in forcing this.
second, you assume China will resort to bricking civilian cars, when they have better options like actual weapons. Bricked car can easily be towed away, there is no way China can cause damage.
the best way for China is to keep manufacturing cars and selling them to USA for $$$ - this will ensure the relationships are beneficial to China (mutual trade is better than military conflict)
You have the tools to reverse-engineer every single chip in your car to ensure they aren't backdoored?
> second, you assume China will resort to bricking civilian cars, when they have better options like actual weapons.
Again, my argument has nothing to do with China, I'm simply saying cars would be a great thing to weaponize. Much easier than smuggling a weapon into the US, you just sell a car to a consumer and you have functionally a remote-controllable bomb.
> Bricked car can easily be towed away, there is no way China can cause damage.
Not if it's driven away and used in an attack first. did you read my reply? You still haven't actually responded to my point that internet-connected cars would be an excellent weapon by a hostile nation.
Any backdoors would be easily detectable and preventable just by .... not connecting the car to the Internet, or folding connection to isolated VPN not accessible from the outside.
all vehicle traffic can be inspected and sinkholed with IoT firewall, if you really want it
Good point though. My current cars drive just fine without internet - I would hope future cars would continue to do so, even if GPS doesn't work, can't find a charging station, etc. Otherwise, I'll be stuck with gas cars until the day they take my license..
The Mi SU7, a pretty competitive EV with Model 3, starts at around $30k (still a pretty decent price).
There is alot if variety for cars. The US market can't be the only market keeping every European and Asian car manufacturer in business.
On 12/17/24 they hit a 52 week high around $490 per share. Since then, in less than two months, they have lost one third of their value. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/
Musk has single-handedly alienated his core domestic buying demographic in favor of a group that, when polled, says they would not consider an EV at rates of around 70%.
EU markets in which TSLA was viable but contested are even worse.
This while Tesla's strongest international competitor is passing on units sold, executing better, and underpricing them.
As someone who has followed Tesla since the Model S, previously held Musk in some regard, and test drove a Model 3 I find this such an abject travesty of an outcome for what should have been a great US based global car maker and someone who had the potential to accomplish such good for the world with their incredible wealth and privilege.
This is based off what? Couldn’t this be argued for literally any company?
Other US competitors aren't at parity with Tesla or BYD. Nikola went bust. Legacy automakers turned out mediocre EVs. Rivian is the only true competitor, but they are a luxury brand and don't have Tesla's crown jewel (the Supercharger network).
Musk also had zero experience or track record making cars when Musk took over, nor any hardware products of any kind, for that matter, or running a manufacturing org.
Occam's razor would indicate it's very improbably to credit success all to him.
Perhaps this Chinese EV car is loaded up to the tits with surveillance technology and EV company is going to go behind your back and sell it to the highest bidder to make up the loss in sale of vehicle.
A lot of the chinese car brands are using European design expertise. Nio and Zeekr have a full 5-star Euro NCAP lineup, and even the small weird ones like the “Ora Funky Cat” are getting top safety marks.
This is true about Tesla FSD (which costs $$$$) too, but alas.
So no, that wasn't free either.
suddenly some foreign company gains control over traffic in your country
think how it works with various Maps and their pathfinding algorithms, how often you see drivers blindly following Maps instructions? how often do you see drivers who are clueless without Maps?
the self driving / remote control will cause even more problems (+ some car manufacturers simply cannot achieve good quality)