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Comment by Pfhortune | Hacker News Reader

Would be great if we could buy/drive these in the US. Funny how we have a "free market" only when it is convenient for certain interests...

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For anyone that doesn't know, then president Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law in 1988 that banned all car imports into the US unless the car is at least 25 yaers old.

Why? Because US Mercedez-Benz dealers were selling their cars at too high a price and a lot of Americans were importing them directly from Germany. So the dealers associations lobbied Congress for a ban.

Country of free markets, by the way.

This is entirely misleading and misinformation -- only those not meeting all applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).

They're all over the place in Mexico City. It'll be interesting as these EVs start to show up along the northern and southern borders traveling within the US.

WSJ had a piece on just this recently.

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/chinese-cars-byd-geely-u-...

The sad reality is how politically influential it will be for Americans to take a Chinese EV from the airport to a hotel in Cancun and say, "Why don't we have this in the US?"

Saw some in southern Arizona, had to do a double-take.

That was me with Polestar like 4 years ago but really don't see many of them anymore in the PNW

I agree that that would be great as a consumer, but given how protectionist China is, you can hardly blame countries for responding in kind. Trade should be a two way street.

Doesn't Tesla have a factory in China?

They do. The Chinese government gave them a special exemption, presumably because they wanted to build EV manufacturing expertise. Other foreign auto companies are not allowed to open their own factories in China; they have to do a joint venture with a local manufacturer.

>presumably because they wanted to build EV manufacturing expertise

Worked with Apple!

They do. Because Elon is proving himself to be quite an idiot.

China was more than happy to welcome him in, and have him teach them how to build an EV. They simply copied what they could and improved on it.

"The communists will happily sell the capitalists the rope the capitalists hang themselves with"

It’s other capitalists that stole the tech. China is a country of capitalists living under a communist regime.

capitalists the communists put up with because it's better for communism in the long run

> it's better for communism in the long run

"Communism" is a theoretical concept. The CCP is what they are protecting, an authoritarian power structure.

the CCP exists to build communism

I mean, that's the marketing material. Once Xi declared himself emperor for life, that marketing material fell apart a bit, didn't it?

How is modern China even close to theoretical "communism?" It's certainly not Marxist, right?

it follows marxist principles and is building towards communism, which isn't overnight. It's currently in a socialist stage. Also, Xi is closer to the captain of a ship rather than an absolute monarch. He has a lot of power, yes, but that's because the party trusts him, not because he demands it

In the age of Mao, wasn't it closer to Marxism? There are more billionaires in China now, then there were back then. By that I mean, the wealth disparity in China is at an all-time high now, is it not? Xi removed the 2-term limit from his own position, and has been doing an excellent job at consolidating his power base, through all means necessary.

Disclaimer: I believe that pure "capitalism" and pure "communism" are marketing terms which both lead to authoritarianism, aka the "Horseshoe Theory of politics." To me, the natural end-state, if we survive the extremists is Social Democracy. However, it's boring and everyone appears to find the extremes far more exciting.

>In the age of Mao, wasn't it closer to Marxism?

Not really, marxism is a way of looking at the world, not an economic system in itself

>There are more billionaires in China now, then there were back then

They hadn't even built capitalism fully, so it makes sense that there was less capital

>By that I mean, the wealth disparity in China is at an all-time high now, is it not?

it is, and they're currently working on how to deal with that

>Xi keeps remove the 2 term limits from just position, and has been doing an excellent job at consolidating his power base, through all means necessary.

Sure, but that's just politics. Ultimately if the majority of the party had a problem with him he wouldn't be in power for long before a coup or a request for him to step down happened

China was completely mucked up economically under Mao, especially around the cultural revolution. I went there in 1983 when GDP per capita was like $300 and it was a bit prison camp like. It's changed a lot.

I was not there, but I believe that history shows that you are correct. I am not trying to sell Mao at all. If anything, he is a yet another ideological-extremist cautionary tale. (yet again, killed millions of his own people through poorly thought out absolutism)

Until Xi, China appeared to be moving in a good direction.

Yeah it's a shame Xi has reverted a bit - less economic freedom and more warlike. Still it's much better than it used to be.

> It's currently in a socialist stage.

No it's not. It's in a state capitalist stage.

That's the biggest joke.

It's not. China has literally _thousands_ of years of bureaucratic institutional memory. And it just keeps perpetuating itself.

Before the 20-th century, the Chinese officials had to study the classic Chinese literature and pass exams based on that knowledge. These works were completely abstract and literally useless in day-to-day work. And you had to follow all the rituals to demonstrate your allegiance and being-in-the-group.

Now they just swapped the Classical Chinese works with Marxist writings. Nobody cares about their content, but you have to know them and you have to follow the rituals.

I fail to see how both can't be true. It demonstrates your allegiance to the parties main goal (communism) and filters out those who oppose it

BYD has been making batteries since '95, cars since '05, plug-in hybrids since '08 and EVs since '09. I don't doubt that China may have made use of Musk, but I severely doubt he's the one who "taught them how to build an EV".

If you think China can only make stuff by copying what other does, you're gonna under-estimate them.

The timing doesn't line up. BYD has already been selling EVs by the time Tesla opened a factory in China. Heck, they were selling EVs even before _Tesla_ existed.

And they clearly have their own expertise. There are videos of BYD and Tesla car teardowns, and you can see that they quite differ in design philosophies.

I think China was more interested in creating more competition internally, rather than just ripping off the technology.

Free market does not exist

Or rather, it exists briefly until it is naturally captured by the biggest players.

There is always some industry thats favored by gov due to good reasons.

Military, food, energy, etc.

Which is sensible; the problem is favouring some players so much they capture an entire industry. Free market is a perfect ideal, it can't exist in the real world.

Just buy a Textron golf cart and you have 90% of the Chinese EV experience.

Are you saying all cars that are manufactured in China are rubbish? Because that is just plain wrong.

It's the same propaganda that was used against Japan and Korean cars. Asia = bad, America = good.

https://ezgo.txtsv.com/

is there even a screen?

https://electrek.co/2026/04/27/byd-seal-08-blade-battery-2-1...

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