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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

When I grew up in Germany it always made me proud that 100% of taxis were Mercedes Benz. If a car can withstand the rough demands of taxi service, it has to be good. And even in South America back then German cares were ubiquitous, especially Volkswagen.

When I was in Brazil this spring[*] I rode a lot of Uber and they were 100% BYD - 100%, no exception. It's not that my head hadn't known that German auto was dead but seeing it playing out like this hit hard.

[*] northern hemisphere

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BYD recently went live with a highly automated, large scale manufacturing facility in Brazil. The BYD Dolphin Mini sells for ~$22,500, and the manufacturer already has 200 showrooms open across the country.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/22/cop-brazil...

https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/First-BYD-Electric-Vehicle-...

I'm surprised Mercedes was ever price competitive for taxis even in Germany, I mean the average VW would do the job just as well at half the cost.

These days they're both priced like they're selling Ferraris anyway so yeah. The ID Buzz starting at 70k EUR is such a joke.

I remember all taxis in Portugal being beige Mercedes in the 80s,when Portugal wasn't well off. I guess their durability is what made them worthwhile.

Mercedes taxis in Europe are not appointed like the cars they sell in North America. They are just normal cars there.

I remember being in a Mercedes in France in the 80's and noticing it had manual crank windows. My dad in the US (even then!) hated added electronics in cars so he went to a Mercedes dealer and they explained that in the US we could only get fully loaded models.

I can't wait for BYD to enter the European market with a true minibus like VW's ID Buzz. There is a rumor that the M9 is coming in 2026.

They used to make them with quality construction. Now it's all engineered with plastic bits that will only last for the first 5 years the rich owner will be using it before tossing it out.

Mercedes and BMW serves a wider band of value than they do in the USA, where they have purposefully cultivated themselves as a pure luxury brand. For example, the 1 and 2 series from BMW or Mercedes A class will never go the USA, even though I’m sure there is a market for them.

They are everywhere. The only limit to adoption is that many people live in buildings where chargers can't easily be installed.

The limit to adoption is non existent or slow public charging infrastructure.

Both limit adoption. Public charging infrastructure would solve the problem of nit being able to charge at home.

You have to consider that South America is the most dangerous continent.

You can't just leave your car charging unattended in a public space. It has to be done at home or somewhere closed (which would make it expensive) or you would have to watch over your car (which would take a lot of your time).

How do parking lots even work in South America then?

At supermarkets and malls they usually have guards.

Lots where people park overnight are gated.

There you go then.

Not having public charging means you can't travel more than << 50% range away from home.

Tesla has no moat

1. Batteries - BYD has them beat 2. Self Driving tech - other players are better 3. Luxury brands already provide the luxury aspect & even better built cars 4. in the US they're being saved by US protectionism. in Europe etc - we already see the chinese brands making inroads for EV sales

I mostly agree on all points, but what self driving tech is better? I've periodically looked at the options, and nothing really seems to compare in North America. Maybe BYD and others have great tech, but stuff like Blue Cruise works hardly anywhere in Canada, and to me, that makes it virtually useless.

Certainly waymo is better, but you can't buy it. Yet, anyway.

He’s probably thinking of robo taxi self driving. So that would be e.g. Waymo.

I don’t think anyone has better self driving for consumers out atm, but you could argue that’s because other companies are not using their customers as beta testers. I’ve seen demos that may indicate Mobileye has tech that’s just as good if not better. But they don’t release it to end users until it’s fully ready.

I don’t think Tesla has any special sauce, and that when the tech is actually ready for unattended full self driving in a consumer car, other car makers will come out with solutions around the same Tesla. One difference is maaaybe Tesla will be able to update old cars (probably with a hardware update). While I think others will only support it on new cars.

Yeah this.

The argument for years has been something like:

> Tesla will solve self-driving and everyone will be left unable to compete. Also, AI is advancing rapidly and will solve all kinds of problems for society.

But apparently it will not solve self-driving for anyone else but Tesla.

I gave up trying to argue with Tesla fans years ago. They are immune to logic which invalidates their priors.

http://comma.ai isn't self-driving, just really good cruise control (better than Blue cruise, imo), but most importantly, you can get it today. (And for less than $8k.)

That’s just Tesla auto pilot and smart cruise control on most new models. It’s definitely nice, but not full self driving.

TBF all I really want is highway driving. I probably even prefer signalling lane changes manually. Comma looks pretty neat.

"I've tried all the options I have here in the country that banned the major players and I don't think any are better."

“I like to be snarky and mean to people on the internet who aren’t as lucky as me to have diverse consumer choices.”

Protectionism on inputs kills manufacturing. Imagine having to pay 15% more for all inputs and trying to compete with someone who doesn't have pay that.

Well, at least domestically you don’t have to compete with someone who doesn’t have to pay that because their product is probably tariffed directly.

Internationally, yes if you manufacture the international product in the home country, but AFAIK in auto at least there are usually satellite factories and have been for some time, and those wouldn’t be subject to home country tariffs would they?

Precisely, you need to set up plants overseas to dodge the input tariffs instead of onshoring manufacturing for export. That causes reductions in manufacturing investment compared to the alternative.

Compared to the alternative where the domestic plants don’t exist at all because they are competing domestically with low cost foreign products?

In that hypothetical they can't compete because of labour protectionism and immigration restrictions, not because there's some intrinsic reason it's too expensive to manufacture in one country versus another.

Tesla also has a big Elon problem in that the blue cities where self-driving Taxis will be most profitable may opt for Waymo or boycott Tesla over politics.

I’m not going to allow “Nazi salutes” to be downgraded to “politics”. It’s still too soon to be a Nazi. Hopefully it will always be.

I just value my life enough that Waymo seems to be the better route. Tesla hasn’t shown that they’ve solved the problem while waymo definitely has.

I live in the US and I would happily buy a Chinese EV if the price was right. However, there is no price for which I will buy a Tesla, ever.

Not only that, Teslas nowadays look like they belong in a museum - so fucking old and outdated. I own 2014 Tesla S, my neighbour has 2025 Tesla S, same fucking car - literally. My car was THE shit back in the day, lots of broken necks looking at it … now, 12 years later, someone (fewer and fewer) is paying $90k for exactly the same car. Tesla X was great looking - circa 2016… Tesla 3 is like a Kia and Model Y is just 3 that is blown up a bit.

> My car was THE shit back in the day, lots of broken necks looking at it … now, 12 years later, someone (fewer and fewer) is paying $90k for exactly the same car

That's what Porsche also discovered, the hard way.

I think the issue is to create an ICE is a very complicated process requiring lots of specialist knowledge, skills and technologies. An EV is just much simpler, comes down to who has the cheapest batteries. Europe and Japan are great at the former, the latter no chance.

Europe and Japan are great at the former, the latter no chance.

Europe and Japan should be totally capable of producing super inexpensive batteries. They just don't, at the moment.

How? By building entirely automated factories, they way they do for medicine production?

Im sure some of it is personal bias from experience with them but I don't think ICE are as complicated as some people think. 90% of the extra shit on them are unnecessary for it to work but what those things are and what they do and why it broke or failed or how important they are is essentially obfuscated from the general public so they seem like overly complicated magic. The vast majority of cars I see do not fail or get trashed due to engine failure from design flaws or anything, most get trashed because people stop caring about them and treat them like trash and don't replace that $15 sensor, others think they can't afford the maintenance because car manufacturers don't give a fuck about having to take 3 hours disassembling other unnecessary shit to replace a 30 cent sensor that they know will eventually need replaced, but the only number the customer seems to look at is the total cost of the mechanic quote. They think because something is a $1,000+ repair that something seriously is worn or old and that the car is on its last legs, instead of the reality of that one part being a huge pain in the ass to replace but it is otherwise a good reliable motor for another 100,000+ miles. And of the cars that do get trashed because they have actual major mechanical problems, the vast majority of the problems have to do with the body work rusting out and/or suspension components needing replaced after being used for 3x their expected lifetime, which an EV is not going to improve in any way.

Like ive seen people junkyard perfectly working and good cars because it is over 150,000 miles and some service guy who is looking for work/money told them they need to do scheduled maintenance some time soon and they thought the car was too old and was junk. And yet very few cars ive seen would not make it over 300,000 miles if they spent even 1/10th the money of their new car for maintenance on their old.

Ok fine, take that as a baseline for "not very complicated". EVs are less complicated, and take less maintenance.

EVs are very complicated cars anyway. They need maintenance in service as well as ICE cars. Yes, not so often you need to change liquids, but service is required. Also good luck with water/rodent damage to 400v parts.

Optimizing costs while producing a safe, reliable, durable vehicle isn't exactly simple and requires an entire supply chain to be in place, not just a single company. Look at how many auto mfgs there are in the world that turn out terrible cars. EVs dramatically lower the parts count which helps but you still a lot of expertise to make a safe, reliable car.

My grandfather was a mechanic and told me how replacing a dashboard light in some models required removing large portions of the engine to access the socket.

Thought the comment was somewhat helpful. Sparked considering the various anti-patterns in automobile design and searches came back with several others that have been vaguely thought about, just never really identified very clearly for me.

  - Inaccessible Components (Poor Physical Layout): One of the main ones you're talking about.  Take out the engine to repair a light on the dashboard.

  - Integrated, Non-Modular Systems: Minor damage or failure ruins an entire assembly.  You dinged the bumper, replace the entire front.

  - Lack of Standardization: Even from year-to-year, designs change and mechanics have to learn yet another system.

  - Forced Replacement over Repair: Object is "black box", thou shalt replace, not repair.

  - Dead/Onion/Boat Anchor Components: No longer used, maybe need it, build stuff on top of it, layer after layer, "can we even remove it"?

  - Spaghetti Wiring/Code and System Coupling: Single modules that route all over the car, another "can we even remove it"?

  - Proprietary Diagnostics and Restricted Data Access: Don't have the special tools, you can't repair, or even find out what's wrong.

To be fair taxis have unique requirements. Taxis in the UK were like 80% Prius for a long time because they drive very long distances and hybrids are very cost effective for city driving where you're doing a lot of low speed driving and don't have convenient recharging opportunities. But most people aren't in that situation.

Still, I think BYD are kind of killing it.

> But most people aren't in that situation.

Those who commute from the suburbs actually save even more as hybrids achieve their lowest consumption going a steady 50-70km/h.

Of course the same people could just get an EV and charge at home, but in terms of cost-effectiveness hybrids still win in this use case.

Unless you have a really cheap electricity at home (not like in EU) the best price per km has old Prius with LNG fuel. Also reliable, there are tons of them with 500k+ km on the clock.

Over here LPG is the gas of choice and indeed taxi drivers regularly have that installed in their hybrids.

I've been riding a German electric motorbike for a couple of years, and before that, German electric mopeds.

I think there is a lot of innovation in the German electric vehicle industry. I am quite excited for BTM, my bikes manufacturer, to design and release new versions of their platform. This model is distinctly German.

Note the Mercedes as taxis in Germany are not the high end luxury car imports we are accustomed to seeing in the US. Mercedes makes a lot of more affordable cars for their domestic market we never see here!

Sadly the German car industry has lost its way in the EV transition and is now vainly trying to get the EU to rollback the sun setting of ICE car sales in 3035.

Meanwhile the Chinese are eating their lunch.

3035? :)

Even 1010 years isn't enough time.

In the UK, for a very long time they were Skoda Octavias.

I know of two ex-taxis that were scrapped at about five or six years old - one was taken off the road because of a deep paint scratch down to bare metal from about half way along the front wing to the rear door, rendering it beyond economic repair - with over half a million miles on the clock each.

Neither had been outside the Greater Glasgow area since they were dropped off on the transporter.

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