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Comment by wood_spirit | Hacker News Reader

This story doesn’t really gel with my understanding as an EV owner in Europe.

The post says that Tesla hold their value better than Chinese newcomers but that absolutely isn’t the prices I’m seeing in Europe.

In Europe Tesla resale value has plummeted due to brand destruction. Tesla was super popular when they launched as the first realistic EV to hit the main time. But they quickly got a poor reputation for build quality and never delivering on self-driving, and that was before the political damage the owner did which seems never recoverable in at least a generation.

Meanwhile comparable Chinese entrants are so new they aren’t yet at the 3 year mark where fleets sell off to second hand market.

Another interesting thing about non-Tesla EVs is that there aren’t a lot being resold; if you got one, you likely hang onto it. Personally I’ve just not yet let go of my Kia EV6 even though it sailed past the normal trade in point recently.

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Tesla mostly focused on the American market anyway. In my understanding there are a lot of facilities for Tesla's that we don't have in Europe like the program where you can buy a refurbished Tesla from Tesla.

Additionally there is a political drive to not trust Chinese manufactured products so those EV's are probably harder to maintain, get support for and in general it is socially considered less status to have a Chinese EV instead of a Tesla. Where in Europe this cultural drive is not as present in Tesla vs Chinese . In my experience in the EU the drive is more about is it EV and the Chinese EV's often offer more features/value for less money.

>Tesla mostly focused on the American market anyway.

There a lot of them in the UK (although I haven't seen so many newly registered ones lately).

I keep a vague eye on the market share of the railway station car parks around London

it's a good representative sample of affluent london commuters (mostly leasing via salary sacrifice)

I've seen close to zero new teslas in the past year

BYD seem to have entirely replaced them

> Tesla mostly focused on the American market anyway.

Not true at all. In 2023, before the brand became toxic, they sold more cars outside the US than internally. They were a huge percentage of the market in parts of Europe, especially Scandinavia. There was a lot of noise about the manufacturing centres in Germany as Tesla fought around labour laws and traditions, too.

They also bet big on China where they almost got to the point where they were selling as many cars as in the USA. Elon fell hook, line, and sinker for the classic Chinese government move to invite them into the market and then steal the tech and flood the market with domestic brands (this is not to say that they haven't improved on it, though).

The Chinese government didn't steal the tech, CATL/BYD are more advanced than Panasonic/Tesla.

China learned how to make cars from European and US companies producing ICE vehicles, but the battery tech is more home grown.

They also invested heavily in robotics and manufacturing supply chains.

Korea has also invested into EV on top of their already big ICE vehicle manufacturing base.

Not all the tech is the same, but I wasn't specifically referring to the batteries (I did say the Chinese have innovated themselves).

But it's an open secret that there was a lot of "turnover" at the Chinese Tesla plants, both shortly after building and operating them, as the Chinese took a lot of the manufacturing processes, tech, etc. And yeah, it also wasn't just Tesla - but it did allow the Chinese to catch up (and eventually surpass) them. The fact that there was so much direct and indirect supports from the government was a huge benefit. This has happened multiple times (French fell for it with high speed rail, Germans and to a lesser extent Americans with cars, Apple/Koreans with mobile phones, everybody with microelectronics, etc).

To be fair, every developing industrial nation has done this, including the US in the late 19th century, the Asian "tigers" during the 80s/90s and others.

Personally, I don't find anything particularly immoral or unethical about the Chinese actions. Respect for intellectual property regimes only applies with nations that have IP to protect.

Note that China has become more protective of IP rights as they advance to be a major player in the initial development of technology rather than "just" the manufacturing hub.

Focusing on one market, by for instance releasing new programs in that market first does not mean you can't outsell in another market (Europe or Asia). It just means that those markets will follow your main market. USA is the home country of Tesla after all.

Also didn't Elon famously open up the Tesla patents for other companies to use? I assume the Chinese EV manufactures where not looking the other way as other manufacturer probably also shouldn't have.

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