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Comment by potato3732842 | Hacker News Reader

Impound/tow/lien -> title has always been the easy button for getting legit title to a vehicle that was never supposed to be sold (UPS vans, Uhaul trailers, etc), so long as it was never reported stolen.

Absolutely hilarious that he managed to work the "doesn't work it if pops up as stolen" angle in the opposite direction to make the car impossible to really do anything with (i.e. no junkyard can take it whole, no subsequent changes of title can happen) and live in various sorts of limbo for 20yr.

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Something similar happened to one of the Dominos delivery vehicles (a DXP [0]). The purchaser got sued for trademark violations [1]. In this case, the car was totaled in an accident and the insurance company sold it.

[0] - https://ir.dominos.com/news-releases/news-release-details/do...

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN-yLTDkAS4

"The Domino's DXP is the first purpose-built vehicle aimed at revolutionizing pizza delivery,"

I was hoping for a Deliverator. Alas, it was nowhere near as cool.

Yoo-Hoo

Could you do anything like that to trick the DMV into letting you register a BYD vehicle in California?

No, having a title of ownership is not the same as registering as a street legal vehicle. BYD cars don’t meet DOT Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards which is a deal breaker, regardless of which state you’re in. Even if you could get it registered, insurance would be impossible.

Are they actually unsafe or they just haven't gone through the certification?

They're on sale in Europe where the car safety standards are slightly different to the US, but generally considered more rigorous.

And Chinese cars rate higher on the European safety metrics than Western cars. https://insideevs.com/news/779537/euro-ncap-safety-rating-ch...

For whatever reason, the industry term for the certification is "Homologation" (1)

But yes, the vehicles which aren't on sale typically haven't been homologated. Why invest the time and money in that when it's not needed?

Actually deemed unsafe and not meeting the rules is much rarer, e.g. Tesla CyberTruck in Europe. (2)

In either case, you may get away with owning it, but not driving it on public roads.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homologation https://www.productipedia.com/kb/productipedia/compliance-re...

2) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/tesla-cyb...

The difference in vehicle regulations between the EU and US are not along a linear scale of rigor. They have different requirements for different things. They are different opinions of what “safe” even means.

Creating massive blindspots by making the outside mirrors magnifying is one of them.

They probably just haven't done it yet since it's a self certification where the manufacturer themselves runs tests following NHTSA test procedures. Importers won't import (and probably can't sell in many jurisdictions) without that self-certification and it's likely just not worth it for BYD right now with the 100% tariff.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've already designed the core components of their cars (like the chassis) that they sell in Europe to meet American standards anyway. Stuff like the height and orientation of headlights can be modified more cheaply later when they want to enter the US market.

My state lets you register hand built and other oddball vehicles - basically, if you can get it past customs, you can register it. The out of state inspection for a title transfer is to check the VIN.

Insurance would need to be from a specialty provider who do insure oddball vehicles. Someone I know (in CA no less) insured his homemade electric motorcycle this way. (It’s titled as the chassis of the BMW regular motorcycle it was built from.)

If you’re pulled over, you would need to show things like seat belts or turn signals and so on. I got nailed for not having a shoulder belt in a homemade vehicle made after 1960. Seat belt ticket was my punishment, although the cop remarked that adding a shoulder belt would be a good idea.

You have to show you built it though. A stock BYD would probably not count, I'm not sure how much change you would need though to get it to count as homemade.

I think a chassis is the deciding factor, since you can shove modern components in 50+ year old chassis and build street legal hotrods. You register it as that old chassis model from whatever manufacturer built it.

As I understand BYD use less components than the other traditional car manufacturers (more brains/integration in axle vs having lots of CAN connected shit around the car) so in theory I could see builders installing a BYD drivetrain into an old chassis the same way people can do LS swaps into Miatas.

A mechanic/storage lien is simply a way to get title without the cooperation of whoever the last guy in the database as having title is. It doesn't solve stupid government rules.

What's legal per the law is a tiny fraction of what you can put on a DMV form and have the form get past the clerk and process properly which itself is a tiny fraction of what the cops will go after.

This is what we do when buying a property that has ancient junk vehicles on it - sometimes without even a VIN intact. The purpose of a title is so that you can scrap them and get them off your property.

Going through the hassle of getting a title for stuff you'll scrap is, ugh, an ill advised use of time unless your goal is to tell everyone at the cocktail party how law abiding you are or the vehicles are interesting enough for the title to have baseline value or something like that.

Scrapyards will take fractions of cars without asking questions. People who part out cars or deal in scrap metal know this and will take anything off your hands for free as long as the work vs what they're getting pencils out.

Scrapyards are also places the police investigate as money laundering for crime. They will take untitled things, but only if they think it wasn't stolen. Start bringing in too much scrap vehicle parts and they will start demanding paperwork - one or two parts "everyone" has so no not worth it but if it gets to be a bunch they start suspecting crime and then demand paperwork.

Just saw it up so it's not obviously one complete car. Nobody cares as long as their ass is covered. You can get away with more if you're a regular and they know you and know you not to be sketchy.

Even if they know you they'll never take a full car body in one piece without a title or any of the other "open and shut case" violations of law because they don't wanna risk getting Randy Weaver'd because a good customer had government problems and became an "informant".

In California? Probably not. In other states? Well there are lots of military vehicles sold as explicitly non-road legal with a requirement of sale being that you can't title them. I see those with license plates and titles for sale in Texas all the time. I just don't happen to have much need for a Humvee or similar vehicle.

That's not quite how it works. If you legally purchase a military surplus vehicle then you'll generally get a title, the same as any other vehicle. But you might not be able to register it for use on public roads.

Buying a HMMWV (Humvee) is no problem and they can generally be registered in most states. Thousands of them were also sold new directly to civilians as the Hummer H1.

Not even close. A hummer is not an M998. It's a vehicle that share parts with an M998.

Yes, and it's been done in the past. Will likely still get caught at some point. I had a friend that owned a Motorex skyline where the importer did the testing but then fudged the papers to say it was something else and federal gov revoked its status but people that had cars imported before that got to keep them.

This article has some info about it and other things: https://www.jalopnik.com/here-s-how-people-illegally-import-...

Thanks for sharing, that's a wild ride!

>This article has some info about it and other things:

Even by sketchers and jorts standards that's still, wow. The way that article is just dripping with post-boot saliva is a great illustration of the gulf between high class "porche or miata + Land<cruiser/rover>" type car enthusiasts and "buys whole cars for parts" type enthusiasts. Hopefully Doug's opinions have, uh, refined, over the last decade. Can't see how they wouldn't have.

A kludge would be to move to Tijuana in Mexico and buy and register a BYD there. You can drive it in the US when you visit from Mexico. There are various common US retailers not far from the border, and San Diego is only about 20 miles away.

The border crossing there is very busy so that could be a annoying.

What's the time limit for driving a foreign vehicle in the USA without registering it? I think it was 6 months in the UK -- I imported an RX-7 and drove it around with the original plates on it that whole time.

I live somewhere with BYD vehicles everywhere. You aren't missing anything.

Some states have rules that enable junkyards to bypass any sort of checks if a vehicle is above a certain age.

Meant to expedite purging jalopies, this, of course, is horribly ripe for abuse by predatory tow companies.

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