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Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

Yep I've been thinking BYD is just some Chinese brand that's only in China, but I saw one on the road in the UK recently and looked it up and they actually have something like 80 showrooms in the UK already. Way more than Tesla.

Maybe making a dumb triangular truck that nobody wanted wasn't such a good idea after all. I imagine the BYD cars have such mod cons as rain sensors that work and indicator stalks too.

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BYD Han is basically what Tesla model 3 promised to be - very nice $25K car.

https://www.gneenev.com/product/electric-cars-ev/484.html

In the US best selling Tesla is Model Y, but even without the brand damage I'm not sure that type of design/price is going to do well in the UK, and Cybertruck is not well suited to UK's narrower roads (esp. in city).

Do anyone know why American brands never seem to agree to slim down cars by ~15% for export sales? IIUC, excessive width universal to every American cars including all Tesla models was always a massive detrimental factor outside US for past ~50 years.

Cars aren't like iPhones, and shipping cars across oceans really only makes sense for luxury vehicles, which is the real reason why Chinese cars aren't available in the U.S. yet.

Most non-luxury foreign cars available for sale in the U.S. are actually assembled in factories in Mexico or the United States.

If Ford wanted to sell cars to the E.U. (competitively), they'd design smaller models and manufacture them in Europe. If BYD wants to sell cars in the U.S., they'll built out a plant in Mexico.

Ford does sell cars in the EU. They're an extremely popular brand in the UK. They just sell normal sized cars, not F150s.

Then the comment I was replying to was incorrect.

It's also kind of interesting, the Euro Ford focus had a a lot of Volvo tech iirc. And the Ka isn't sold in the US at all, but it's a very cool car.

Cybertruck is also not legal in the UK.

Sorry but BYD interior is kinda crap. Depends what you value of course. Features are there but if feels like cheap kitsch.

Disagree here - I recently took delivery of a BYD Shark 6 and was especially impressed with the build quality and interior quality. I'd say on par with the BMW X5 we had, and slightly better than the Polestar 2 that we have.

The software on the other hand... I would love per-key profiles (like the polestar) and buttons doing the thing they're labeled for when using CarPlay - but I _hope_ these things can be updated OTA. The UI and responsiveness is really quick however, especially compared to the P2 which feels woefully underpowered with constant UI lags.

Terrible software seems to be par for the course in cars.

Yep it's not quality per-se as bad materials. It's just overall experience that just a bit like a wut. Note I'm coming from Tesla and only tested Atto3 which is a bit aged already.

So they're definitely taking Tesla's lane then.

Tesla's "build quality" is okay, but software is excellent. So quite opposite really. BYD materials are good, but software is garbage. The inside looks is kitsch. And IDK about you but I use software every day on my car and do not obsess on softness of the air vent material...

Software may have great features but the gimmicks are unsafe. When I rented a Model Y to see if we wanted to buy, my kids wanted to play a game while we were at a very long light - when the light changed, the car prevented me from shifting gear to Drive until we quit the game. Now, it was my fault I let my kids do this - but the design (game had priority over driving) made me question the company's priorities.

Convinced me that car really is a tablet with wheels.

To start a game you need to shift in park to begin with. This is just ridiculous...

And it's not about the features per se. Lots of cars have the features, but no car is able to integrated them in a package thats actually useable.

I mean, sure, but the interior of any $25k car is kinda crap. A Mazda 3 might be the nicest thing you get at that price range.

I saw BYDs on the road in India. There's a 110% tariff on foreign EVs in India - and people are still buying them.

Yep. Chennai here. Saw one the other day.

I've been keeping an eye on BYD and they're just starting to appear in the UK, but there are already quite a few MG EVs - the old British brand MG was bought by a Chinese company. There's a light blue non-metallic colour which seems to be one of their standard colours and is very distinctive.

Also Flexbus running Chinese buses.

I saw one in the US a few weeks ago that had a Mexican license plate. Pretty interesting because I'm aware of the brand but had not seen one in person.

Hmm. Does this mean they are street legal?

I'm baffled by the multiple levels of irony if you could go into Mexico and buy an EV that you can then use in the US. That would make even Elon's head twist off.

Of course they’re street legal? You just can’t buy them in the US. They’re all over Mexico and they’re great.

Why "Of course" ?

If they aren't sold in the US why the automatic assumption that they conform to US automotive legislation?

Yeah, I was wondering about that. Someone in the UK had a Cybertruck confiscated by the police because they're not approved here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz0lldd30xlo

Not sure why its baffling. If you are near the border you will quite often see out of country plates (Canada/Mexico). I am guessing you would still need some kind residency to purchase the vehicle.

Not sure what it's like today but historically crash standards in Mexico did not exist. Toyota for the longest time was selling 20+y/o models as brand new. The crash tests of those were startling. It may have improved in the last few years though.

You can lawfully drive through land borders in most countries, with permits and such. The plates don't change themselves when you do that.

Tons of them on the streets in Guadalajara

In Helsinki all new electric busses are BYD's. Have been for some years already.

Not surprising, BYD is the worlds biggest producer of electric buses! They even have a factory in the US.

The only reason BYD was heavily "censored"/tariffed was because US said EU to do so.

Now that US soft-power is waning (800b from EU + 500b from Germany alone for militech) the floodgates might open and it will way surpass the Tesla. Maybe even some partnership between BMW/VW/Daimler with BYD can come out of it - imagine that.

The official reason EU added tariffs on Chinese cars, was that Chinese EV manufacturers receive unfair government subsidies. This allowed Chinese cars to be priced lower than European cars.

So it was to protect EU car manufacturers (which are still struggling a bit with EVs).

I don't think it was US "soft-power". However, the EU may impose tariffs on US produced cars as part of the coming trade-war, which may hurt Tesla in future (or maybe not as they also produce Tesla cars in Germany).

It is also worth mentioning, that the imposed tarifs are different for different chinese manufacturers - based on received subsidies. BYD is among the least affected. In the end, nothing stops chinese manufacturers to produce cars in EU - it is what they forced european manufacturers to do in china, so fair game.

When we give Tesla owners 7500 USD to buy a tesla, that’s an “unfair government subsidy”.

You are right, but you miss one critical part. EU did not impose those same tariffs on Tesla, which arguably disrupted the EU EV market even heavier, which is in very similar category, especially now that Elon is basically the president.

Correction, just had a look and Tesla has indeed been burdened with a tariff of 7.8% (for vehicles built in China).

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

> EU did not impose those same tariffs on Tesla

Presumably it didn't have evidence Tesla is receiving unfair help from the Chinese state. It had such evidence for other manufacturers. Also, Tesla has a factory in the EU. Soon, the Chinese manufacturers will have factories too.

Didn’t Tesla survive its first 10 years on selling government credits?

Possibly, the important thing though is whether that is classified as an unfair advantage by the EU. The European tariffs on Chinese EV producers were calculated precisely on the amount of unfair advantage received for each one.

Also just had a look and Tesla has indeed been burdened with a tariff of 7.8% (for vehicles built in China), compared to 17% of BYD, 18% Geely and 20% to 35% for other companies.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

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