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Comment by pugz | Hacker News Reader

€25,000 is still pricey. The BYD Atto 1 recently dropped to AU$19,990 in Australia, which is €12,412. I think it will be hugely popular at this price point.

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Personal vehicles are atypical as a market in that a huge percentage of people buy used rather than new. So when you look at new vehicle price, you have to factor in that the top 20% (not sure about actual percentage) of people are buying new, then corporate entities are financing a huge segment, like maybe 40%, and the rest of us buy used vehicles downstream from them. €25k is barely above entry level in Europe, but it can only be afforded by most people because of this system.

https://www.bydauto.be/en/

The BYD Dolphin Surf is 20K Euros in Belguim. This is the same care as the Atto 1.

Presumably it's European duties designed to drive up the price of cheap Chinese electric vehicles that is the difference.

Apparently the EU has tariffs of up to 36% on Chinese electric vehicles.

My Seal had these duties (presumably) but then a 10k EUR subsidy, which sounds odd to me, but must be some policy legacy code.

Cars are just more expensive in Europe than in Australia. In Europe, cars are still a bit of a luxury, whereas in Australia, they’re an absolute necessity.

There also higher tariffs and transport cost. Shipping cars from China to the EU can cost up to a few thousand per car. Local production seems less competitive. But the bottom line is that there are now a lot of relatively affordable EVs in the market. The cheapest cars in most markets now include EVs.

For example the Dacia Spring that is selling for around 17K Euros in Germany. And then there are tax rebates, discounts, etc. that are causing some of these cars to be available for a lot less occasionally in some markets.

Markets where EVs have been available in larger numbers for a while now have a sizable EV market. Australia is relatively early with its adoption, so the second hand market is a lot smaller there. The EU as a relatively early adopter has a lot of EVs from 2020 or earlier that are still under warranty and being traded in quite large numbers now. In the last few months these been a very hot commodity as lots of people are feeling the pain of high fuel prices.

All these new small cars will become a large part of the second hand car market in a few years. There will many be millions of them on the roads in a few years. And they last quite long.

Isn't it just different levels of import duty and/or proximity to China?

(normally something being essential drives the price up)

Jeez, cars are absolute necessity in US, and yet still ave cost new runs $50,000 US or about 44,000 euros.

I can assure you that a $50k car in the US is nowhere near 44k€ in Europe. You're lucky if it's below 54k€.

Interesting in which part of Europe are you living to make such a statement for the bit of luxury. The only country I could think of is the Netherlands and probably Belgium.

European cities are wastly more accessible as a pedestrian than australian or north american cities. And I count northern, southern, central, western and easterneuropenan cities in that.Thre other continents have some examples where the inner cities are also okayish from a pedestrian or cyclist POV, but a lot and especially suburbia is so much worse in pretty much all regions. A mining town in northern Sweden is better than suburbia on Long Island!

Outside France people don't live in big clusters. Take a look at the night satellite view. All those small/continuous towns do not have (functional) public transport. In my 12k-people town we don't have buses other than school buses and long-distance ones. And unfortunately people don't really walk other than for leisure.

As far as I know the closest city with public transport counts 100k residents, but there are 60 smaller towns in my province alone.

Yes - car is a bit of a luxury in Europe if you don't do any of those things - live in the rural parts of the country, leave the urban core, have kids, visit parents, friends and grandparents, go to your rural property, go the mountains, the beach, buy bulky things, buy things in bulk, go to any other city just for exploration and fun, go outside the city to watch the milky way, do anything spontaneous, have job in the trades or have girlfriend.

You may not need car daily, but you definitely need it at least weekly.

I do ¾ of those things, including two children and a wife, without a car.

Yeah. I was recently without a car for three weeks (bangernomics finally stopped winning) and decided that I'd learned the wrong lesson about car dependency: despite living in a city with a decent bus service, I really did benefit a lot from having a car and needed to buy a secondhand one as soon as possible, even though I am waiting for my leased EV to arrive in a few months.

You have to be quite central in quite a big city to not need a car. But that does cover quite a lot of people - I would say much of the population of London and the most central bits of Manchester and Birmingham, which is easily 10-20m people.

It varies greatly by region. I grew up in a German village - most people got a car when they turned 18, usually a cheap used one. Now I live in Berlin, where I didn't have a car for years, and now I have one (a cheap used one) that I use about once a month.

about to say the same.

Because i don't live in a big city (and i would dread to) the 10km commute to work is either

1) 15-25 min by car

2) 25-30 min by bike

3) 40-60 min by public transport, with at least one change

And i'm lucky as we recently moved the office to be a good 4km nearer from my home. That was further out requiring 25min by car, and aobut 1h30min by public transport with at least two changes.

Also if i want to do anything beside going in my backyard on my free time, car is a necessity.

But you can walk to your neighbor 200m down the road. That feels (and actually may be) illegal on other continents.

BYD pricing don't make material sense. Atto 1 appears to be sold at IDR199m in Indonesia, AUD19,990 in Australia, EUR19,990 in EU, and GBP18,500. Normalized in USD, it's 11k, 14k, 22k, 25k respectively. It's clearly set to 19k-25k worth of workers' income, and there is no way that their prices are representative of costs.

If I heard correctly, it costs about $6000 to ship a car from China to Europe. Add another 27% in tariffs and EUR19,990 seems fairly priced.

I can't imagine a car selling for that price in the US. :(

Yeah, these are insane prices considering BYD Seagull (aka Dolphin Surf) cost in China around 9000EUR. It's not great car, but reasonable cheap small basic car, but when it gets to Europe for instance here in Czechia it cost 20000EUR, I fail to see how can anyone justify double price of that car and still think it's cheap.

https://www.byd.com/cz/konfigurovat/dolphin-surf.html

Sounds like saving EU car companies at all cost paid by EU customers who are not interested in saving them.

Rather, China is dumping EVs at a national level. EVs don't generate profits, and entering this market now would only result in huge losses. so under normal business judgment, companies wouldn't enter the EV car market. They can only be produced when subsidies and tariffs are guaranteed to protect them.

Nah. Dumping means unprofitably sold with subsidies making up the difference.

China cancelled subsidies to BYD this year, and last year, those subsidies were 1/3 of BYD profits. Subsidies helped get them off the ground but they were unit-profitable by the time they got to exporting.

Xiaomi never had subsidies at all, their cars were profitable from launch, with 6 month waitlists to buy. Their export plan is to start with Germany first because they're cocky as hell and the cars are really nice.

Volkswagen Golf starts at 32 706 € here. BYD Dolphin Surf, the cheapest car BYD offers, starts at 24 590 €.

You know the old joke - I don't have to outrun the bear, need to outrun you. China's companies goal is to keep their cars 10% cheaper than the locals.

BYD still has some work left to do then since the Volkswagen ID.Polo is 26 390 €. The ID.Polo is also considerably prettier than the Dolphin Surf, so it probably needs a bigger price cut to get customers.

And further down the rung, the electric Twingo, Panda and such go toe for toe with the cheaper Chinese EVs.

Insane to think those are reasonable prices.

10 years ago, a new Renault Clio had a starting price under 14 000 €.

You just have to wait 2 years to get an ID.Polo :P

oh I didn't know about the ID.Polo, i was looking into the ID.3 neo life

The Dolphin sells for about €6700-€8900 ($7500-$10.000) in China.

They see how the EU allows EU car companies to gouge their citizens and figured "eh, might as well join in on it. Pure profit."

Cars sold in China have 13% VAT. Cars sold in Germany have 19% VAT. Cars sold in the Nordics have ≥25% VAT. Even ignoring shipping, tariffs, local salaries, non-VAT car taxes, etc., there’s no way to price a car the same in China as in EU.

Meh, there is already a flood of used Tesla Model 3s that are cheaper with not that many miles and you are getting a Tesla.

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