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Comment by dghlsakjg | Hacker News Reader

> Commodity cars are a dying breed.

Not in Asia, the worlds biggest car market, and where the worlds biggest car making country is. More than anything, low end electric cars are MASSIVELY popular in China.

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You read about the sub like $20K EVs in China and you think "maybe we're due to get belt and roaded here."

I think they are like $15k rather than sub $20k

Though I wonder if EVs are really all that good without the infrastructure.. With state of the potholes and electric infrastructure in most countries, can EVs hold up?

Why would potholes matter?

I still wouldn't want a Nissan commodity car. My family has owned a few and even Infinitis and it didn't turn out well compared to all the Toyotas that are still in the family. The G35 was a great car, but those days are gone.

Was surprised how popular there are, also self driving taxis in Wuhan and other places.

there's a lot of incentives pushing people into EVs. For example, to limit pollution and congestion it often takes winning a lottery to get a car registration for ICE, but that's generally much laxer if not completely gone for EVs.

In Shanghai at one point the cost of a ICE vehicle registration cost more than a low end EV.

Beijing has a lottery for plates instead, except the allocation for EVs is separate from ICEs, so it is much easily to get an EV. Back in 2016, you started seeing Model S’s driving around Beijing, and those were definitely imported with something like a 20-30% tax (at least), but the only alternative was no luxury car (like the famous black Audi that used to be super common), so they just started showing up.

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