BYD are taking over EVs

[Gavster]

1. They’ve overtaken Tesla and are now the biggest EV manufacturer in the world

2. They’ve built the first of 8 ships so they can move the cars around the world easily



3. Their base model EV only costs £8k in China

4. EU/UK tariffs are gonna need to go up to protect domestic marques

[Mito Man]

They’ll have their EU factory up and running before the tariffs kick in.

[Rich B]

There's always been cheap Chinese cars, is it that EVs are basically more like washing machines that the threat is a little more real this time?

[Mito Man]

Germany bet they could dominate the world when they pushed the new EV legislation in the EU. They didn't consider that China were quietly waiting on the sidelines and had bought up all the required mineral mines required to produce EVs around the world decades ago. Then as the Germans moved their premium car factories to China with half the ownership going to a Chinese entity and no IP protection the Chinese learned how good cars are made.

The Chinese car threat is real now, they can build decent EVs for far cheaper, don't have supply chain shortages, all government subsidised, no shortage of labour etc.

EU then start taking a protectionist stance, but Hungary, being pro Russian and not very happy with its EU colleagues is allowing all these Chinese entities to build factories there with very lax laws. Solves their unemployment problem whilst undermining car manufacturing in the rest of the EU. And the Chinese can then have their cars made in EU with no tariffs.

[IanF]

Mercedes-Benz CEO Källenius and VW Group CEO Blume disagree with tariffs being raised to protect EU vehicles.. in fact Ola wants them reduced.

They want to rely on market economies to bring out better products and technology in Europe so that they remain competitive. Increasing tariffs would likely result in China doing the same for European imports, and China is the biggest market in the world.

ETA: did you know that China sold more cars last year than USA, EU and UK combined!?

[Gavster]

ETA: did you know that China sold more cars last year than USA, EU and UK combined!?

Didn't know that. They've certainly been making space for all of those cars, having built over 100,000km of new highways between 2009 and 2022.

[Mito Man]

It’s not particularly surprising, they have a greater population than the EU, UK and US combined so the domestic demand alone must be huge.

Edit - an interesting statistic is that China has 113 cities with over 1 million inhabitants. That’s crazy.

[dinny_g]

[Tinfoil Hat]But the Chinese government are going to eavesdrop on every conversation, hack every phone that’s connected and disable the car entirely and demand a ransom [/Tinfoil Hat]

[Beany]

[Tinfoil Hat]But the Chinese government are going to eavesdrop on every conversation, hack every phone that’s connected and disable the car entirely and demand a ransom [/Tinfoil Hat]

Yeah, and that's the CIA and GCHQs job, damnit.

[Mito Man]

Maybe once A.I. is good enough

[Beany]

I mean, given the Five Eyes surveillance network was used to put pressure on UN members to vote for levelling Iraq - which led to us (IE five eyes member states) being bombed, shootings, mass stabbings etc - I think it's fair to say we've got more to worry from our own fuckwit governments spying efforts than we do from China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes ... ince_2001)

[dinny_g]

[Tinfoil Hat]But the Chinese government are going to eavesdrop on every conversation, hack every phone that’s connected and disable the car entirely and demand a ransom [/Tinfoil Hat]

[Eco Snack Wrap]Yeah, and that's the CIA and GCHQs job, damnit.[/Eco Snack Wrap]

[Carlos]

I think I've mentioned this before. I worked in a motorcycle shop from the age of 11 until way after I had a proper job and the whole business timeline is repeating itself!

European and US car manufacturers think they have the market sown up and are too big to fail, same as the motorcycle industry in the 70s!

[V8Granite]

After working in China on a few occasions I certainly wouldn’t want a product owned, developed and run solely by a Chinese company.

Not saying other items aren’t using nefarious ways of recording me but I didn’t enjoy being permanently monitored like I was there. It just feels quite off putting.

Dave!

[Mito Man]

Tesla Model 2 scrapped most likely due to competition from China, you can't compete at the bottom end of the market with them
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 024-04-05/
If the biggest non Chinese EV maker who has mastered mass production can't make something competitive at that price point then I can't see any one doing it either. Ok there's shit like that Dacia EV and Citroen Ami but they're not really actual alternatives unless you have a very limited use.

[Simon]

Space Karen called that article 'lies' on Twitter, but he didn't explicitly say that the 'model 2' was still going ahead...

[Mito Man]

Reuters based their article on messages they saw from within Tesla. It may be that all the engineers and directors within Tesla have decided that a Model 2 is not viable but Elon may single handedly throw his toys out the pram and demand they go ahead anyway
Just like with the Cybertruck.
And his 1 second Roadster.

[Beany]

Well, it's not like he has a history of making really bad financial decisions based on rash justifications.

What platform did he claim that the story was bollocks on, again?

[nuttinnew]

Space Karen

[Jobbo]

shit like that Dacia EV and Citroen Ami

The Ami is a curio which is basically a toy but the Dacia is a proper car. Being cheap just resets where people think cars should be priced.