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Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

While I love hearing TSLA getting undercut and ripped apart by competition. I’m honestly curious as to how this company is able to do so - are they cutting quality of materials elsewhere? Safety concerns? Or just plain ole use of ~~slave~~ cheap labor? Or have the EU and US car manufacturers been ripping us off all along?

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.

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China has better manufacturing prowess than the USA. Their scale is astonishing and they have an incredible ecosystem of components, logistics and labor to make manufacturing hyperefficient. I'm sure the government helps them out too, but one shouldn't discount just how good they are at manufacturing.

Ultra-optimized manufacturing and supply chains, lower labour costs, lower material and transportation costs as everything is available next door; add twenty years of building up an auto industry with strong government support.

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.

Besides the US vs. China wage differences, it is easier to source things locally and iterate quickly. At least that is what I read as one of the advantages Chinese car manufacturers have.

I went to an EV drive day here in Australia and drove around 25 models round a track for the day. The BYD Seal came out on top for me and many others. Interior styling is so much better than Tesla as is fit & finish. The driving dynamics were neck & neck with Tesla and a few other high end cars. BYD also make great batteries and use CATL I think in some models. I can see BYD being the dominant player in the not too distant future.

Chinese people are paid much less than Americans.

Government subsidies. It isn't a fair playing field. You're essentially celebrating that the Chinese government is choosing for their car company to crush rather than the rest of the world's car companies. This isn't an example of being "ripped apart by competition". It's being ripped apart by a government.

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