My Eufy (by Anker) robovac is such a piece of shit that it sullied the Anker brand for me.
I used to expect anything they made to be good by default. Now, it's the opposite.
I used to expect anything they made to be good by default. Now, it's the opposite.
We've seen this mentioned with smartphones, laptops, various electronics accessories, household stuff, and most recently cars.
Interestingly, this stuff never seemed to catch on, the best they usually managed is they became mid-tier market players.
The jury's still out on cars, but my suspicion is they're going to be far less dominant than the doomsayers predict.
The only 2 exceptions to this are dji, and Bambulab, their products are without peer.
A little confused. In the US, Volvo EVs are pretty popular (80% owned by Geely). Tencent owns most of Riot Games and a large stake in Epic Games. The GE appliances division is I think fully owned by Haier. Hisense and TCL TVs sell pretty well.
There's roborock (vacuums), Insta360 (that and DJI crushed GoPro?), Hikvision cameras, Segway-Ninebot mobility and other odd ones, TP-Link networking, TerraMaster for storage, BeeLink computers seem to be taking off.
Nothing is wiping out local markets here, but to think it isn't catching on seems too strong a statement.
It's not weird _because_ all the 2018 sentiment eventually led a bunch of export controls by US and Meng Wangzhou arrest in 2020... PRC companies don't want to fuck with getting popular in key western, especially NA markets like US because getting popular is ticket to sanction which makes operating RoW more annoying. See all the tariffs on EVs / renewables. see DJI now. See PRC doing obscene markups abroad to not look like dumping to locals but domestically the same goods sell for less. Everyone in PRC knows US will make up some retarded national security excuse to hobble successful multinational brans in high tech. So they keep all the good stuff, or price the good stuff cheap at home / in other markets. Where good is 80-90% of functionality for 50% the price, i.e. stuff that wipe markets. The really "good" stuff, as in market leaders that wouldn't simply stomp competitors, risk selling/becoming popular in west higher than ever. There was study in 20s that show incumbents (usually western) basically lose 50-100% of their operating profits once affordable PRC alternatives enter market... so now barriers are setup to scare those companies from selling products, or at least sell them at market wiping prices.
I don't know if it's just anecdotal, but I see a LOT of Chinese EVs in the England lately. Obviously nobody is buying them based on brand recognition or any sort of quality belief, brands nobody has heard of until now can only be on our streets in the numbers I'm seeing because they're significantly cheaper than buying something from a known auto manufacturer.
The one exception I'd say in the UK are MG EVs, which for some unknown reason some of my fellow Brits have some sort of affinity to as a brand.
I wouldn't dream of buying a JAECOO or BYD and everything I've seen online about their EVs absolutely suggest some at least morally dubious tactics, not to say the likely of VW haven't also had their hands slapped, but let's see how their fair mid term.
Side note: Recently got a DJI drone, have had some of their other camera related non-drone stuff, the thing is absolutely nuts for the price, DJI really are unrivalled.
Both lists have single MG vehicle, so they aren't doing terribly, but based on this, it's hard to conclude they're going to conquer the market. And this is with the UK, which has no tariffs on Chinese EVs.
My prediction is that MG is going to fall off the next couple years, considering their reliability has been terrible, according to stats. Even if they fix the issues, they're going to get a reputation and it's a long way back from that.
If the pace of EV sales picks up (and I'm not convinced it will soon), it's hard to see Chinese EVs at the prices they are, not becoming extremely popular.
What could turn it around, is, as you say, terrible reliability records, but even then, that didn't seem to stop people buying ICE cars, so I'm not sure how much of an effect it'll have here either. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I didn't mention Polestar until now, as they don't sell in volume, although I do see some of their vehicles on the roads.
But they do fit this bracket of "(mostly) Chinese EVs, in the luxury vehicle territory".
Arguably also Volvo. Or even top models from Zeekr and Xiaomi.
If you're talking impractically high-end cars, look out for MG Cyberster, BYD Yangwang U9.
I've not seen any of those higher end models myself, I'd be curious to know what kind of numbers they're selling in here versus, let's say, European high-end EVs.
I didn't mention Polestar myself either as I'm undecided whether they fit into the "Chinese brands" category; they are Chinese now but I wonder what if any influence Volvo still has on them and if so, what effect that might have on their quality and reliability; perhaps it's "none", but I see Polestar as a brand that would be a more likely purchase because of its Volvo heritage.
I've never seen a Zeekr or Xiaomi vehicle here in the UK, not sure if they're on sale here (yet).
I don't think Zeekr or Xiaomi are on sale in the UK. Yet.
But they will be.
BYD are on the roads now, and Omoda, soon to be followed by Zeekr, XPeng, Nio and Xiaomi. How well MG does specifically is irrelevant to all that, but your suggestion seems wishful - they have several new models out this year.
Tesla's brand reputation is in a ditch, and the big EU brands are struggling to keep up.
I have no idea if I should have listed it separately or not.
I've really not looked too much into Chinese EVs beyond some YouTube channels talking about some of their sketchy tactics to incentivise "influencers" and presumably subsidies to get to the kinds of prices they're selling at in the UK.
I wouldn't consider buying any of them so all I really know is what I see on the streets.
I have news for you about MG, it's been a Chinese company for almost 20 years now.
Electric Vehicles? Chinese firms are crushing that market. They're well positioned to own the medium-term future of cars and similar vehicles.
They already had all of the composites experience from making bikes and wheels in carbon for the western brands, and now they are producing their own designs and offering highly competitive price to performance.
I've since upgraded to a Dreame with lidar and mopping that actually maps my place. It also has a Home Assistant integration so it can be automated and scheduled. But my original Eufy kept my old apartment floor in great shape.
Just curious, what issues have you had?
I think you really need to separate the brands because the power banks are still the best.
People think that China is USA 2.0. It's not. It's a communist state with a single ruling party with unilateral control over every aspect of the country. They have capitalistic facets because communism doesn't work on it's own, but trust that the authority system is totalitarian, and if they want spyware in your product while you lie about it, there will be spyware in your product and you will lie about it.
It's interesting to see the non-response from governments over it so far; though there was recently rumours of an MoD ban on Chinese EVs but that seems to have been shot down[2] so far.
[0]https://londondaily.com/u-s-concerns-mount-over-chinese-kill... [1]https://www.itpro.com/security/cyber-attacks/all-us-forces-m... [2]https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/uk-confirms-no-mod-ban-on-ch...
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwal...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-...
With the kind of infrastructure that holds Chinese technology in the west, they could shut down entire power grids, bring roads to a stand still, shut down entire countries worth of networking, cellular networks and worse. This is leaving out the surveillance and data collection potential as it's not the topic at hand.
To be clear, my issue isn't with China specifically, but as a westerner, they're not a friendly nation (to mine).
The same of course applies the other way around, and I can imagine a scenario of other citizens sitting in their respective nation having this same conversation about western technology.
China seems very much like a more straightforward and predictable trading partner.
Whether or not that's likely is another story, but it's possibly a non-zero chance and handing over control of critical infrastructure should be a concern.
We bought a mid-tier Roborock and it's been, meh.
* The "mop" function is pretty much useless. It's very good at creating a thin layer of grime across our entire house. It basically just pushes grime from the high traffic areas of the high into the lower areas. Even with an aggressive setting for "mop cleaning", it just doesn't get clean.
* The vacuum function is okay-ish. It does pretty well at keeping our dog's hair at bay, but it misses a lot of fine dirt and sand.
I've had robot vacuums for about a decade now. Originally a Botvac, now a Shark. They're not a complete vacuum replacement, I've never had one always able to get every corner perfectly and get all the deeper dust and what not. What they do well is control all the animal hair in my home. There's a lot of shedding in my house, I'd have to spend time vacuuming every other day or there would be hair everywhere.
Plus two kids, lots of random crumbs and what not. Nice to be able to just open the app and say "clean this room" and then go back to spending time with the kids instead of taking the time to vacuum myself.
Having the robot run every other day means I can just do a deeper vacuum clean once a month or so but still have generally very clean floors day to day. Not a complete replacement in the end though.
I’ve only needed to replace consumables like the little side brush and roller brush and the cheap Amazon knockoff brands work fine for me.
They're GREAT if you really drink the koolaid and start fengshuing your interior around it, i.e. as I upgrade I'm getting robovac friendlier furniture, more stuff on legs with right clearance, chairs with wider spacing or arms that can hang off table to keep legs off ground. Have one of those small portable blowers and a feather duster. Routine is to blow crumbs onto floor, feather dust some surface, shake the dust corner and let the robotvac handle it every few days. It's nice to always come home to a reasonably clean house.
Robot mops, i.e the dedicated kind, especially with self cleaning + tank actually getting pretty competent now. The drag a light microfibre towel across floor like tiny Japanese maid has always been mid... they work pretty well on laminate surfaces though. Problem with mops is IMO harder user experience problems... need better maps or algo to avoid carpets.
Robovacs still suck when constantly worried if it's going to accidentally drag cat vomit across the house because you forgot to check and sometimes cats just vomit.