Once China introduces the EV equivalent of the Chevy Spark (which was one of the cheapest ICE cars ever, with an MSRP of $13K just last year) in the USA, that has a range of around 100 to 150 miles it's game over for many of these American manufacturers on the econobox type vehicles.
American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Assuming that range is cut in half during the winter in the coldest scenarios and the average American commute, one way is 25 miles, 150 miles will be more than enough to replace most ICE cars. That being said, destination on a car from China probably costs $2K alone, so reaching a 13K price point anytime soon will be very, very difficult.
Supposedly the BYD Seagull can go 200KM and costs $9K in China, so we'll see. Exciting times ahead. (For reference Jiangnan used to sell ICE cars in China several years ago for less than $2K, so even though EV is cheap absolutely compared to USA, it's still much more expensive than what China could make if they continued to make ICE cars. That being said 2030 will result in banning of ICE in many regions)
> Once China introduces the EV equivalent of the Chevy Spark (which was one of the cheapest ICE cars ever, with an MSRP of $13K just last year), that has a range of around 100 to 150 miles it's game over for many of these American manufacturers.
> American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Just like how cheap Android phones in Asia resulted game over for Apple, Samsung etc. in the past 12 years?
The Domestic brands purposely ceded the small car market years ago. They got out of that segment completely. They focus on Crossovers, SUV, and Trucks and do quite well there. If anything the Japanese and Koreans will have trouble since they are still in that segment and sell a lot of small cars in the US. Are you even American? This has been common on the ground knowledge for years. The Chevy Spark was a flop in the US and for good reason. It is an absolutely abysmal car. I could see 100-150 mi small EVs have reasonable sales in some city markets but other than that? Its just not what Americans want. They want something that stands a chance competing with all the other big cars on the road.
They ceded the small car market because they were getting stomped on by foreign companies. Are you even American? The Toyota Camry, which is a relatively cheap car, is still #5 in top selling vehicles. If you remove trucks, it's #2.
When was the last time an American car (not truck), with an MSRP less than 30K has been in the top 5 selling vehicles? Americans can't compete on price, and so they stopped trying.
Supposedly the BYD Seagull can go 200KM and costs $9K in China
At least in Europe, BYD is trying hard to not to appear as a 'cheap' brand. The cheapest car they sell here (Sweden) costs more than the VW ID3, and their flagship SUV is close to the starting price of the BMW iX.
The average American drives 40 miles per day. A car with 150 mile range gives the average American 3 days of driving while keep 10% <= battery charge <= 90%. That's not bad!
The average EV consumes 34.6 kWh per 100 miles, so a 52 kWh battery is sufficient, on average. The average home charger provides 7.2 kWh so it'll take under six hours to recharge the car at home. You can do it at night when favorable rates are available. It'll add an extra 72 kWh hours to your utility bill for the month. Even in the most expensive part of the country (USA), the Northeast, you're only going to pay $1 per day. And I could get it for under $20K? Sign me up!
If BYD/Toyota could bring such a car to the American market then it's game over for the compact and subcompact market.
The winner of Chinese car export might be the one with the most ships.
These days car shipping is in really high demand, and cost has been rising in recent years, but shipping cost could be lower given that BYD is build their own shipping fleet.
Though cheap, the Chevy Spark had a notoriously bad transmission. This is a similar problem the Nissan Versa has, which is similarly cheap. An EV doesn't have a transmission, fortunately, so that class of problem isn't a thing.
The problem with cheap cars is that cheap ICE components result in the car failing unnecessarily early. EVs can also fail, obviously, but it's less likely to happen due to design differences.
What a weird article. Tesla rates 9 mentions, Toyota rates 17 against 20 for BYD, the subject of the article. It's laced with references to Toyota but doesn't really say much about the BYD vehicles themselves besides that they are not yet sold in the United States.
I haven't seen a single one of these and with the Chinese market as large as it is I'm sure that they could stay away from other markets for a long time without exporting their BEVs to countries where they will have to face competition from established Western brands.
Toyota itself is way behind the curve on BEVs, their JV with BYD is mostly Toyota hedging their bets that their Hydrogen path ends up being a dead end.
If you want to know more about BYD the wikipedia page is a lot more informative than this article:
> I haven't seen a single one of these and with the Chinese market as large as it is I'm sure that they could stay away from other markets for a long time without exporting their BEVs to countries where they will have to face competition from established Western brands.
Sure, but they aren’t. These Chinese EV manufacturers are coming for the world market.
Volvo is now owned by a Chinese company, Geely, and they’re manufacturing EVs in China based on a Geely platform for global export[0]. Polestar, also owned by Geely, is a Western market EV brand exported from China[1]. BYD is already planning to build factories and sell cars in Europe[2].
What a weird comment. You know nothing about BYD (you just read their Wikipedia and that's all you know) yet you're sure the article is wrong. But factually, BYD is the leading ev maker.
Calling them the leading EV maker is disingenuous, they are not even close to Tesla (1.3M vehicles, all of them BEVs) and VW (570K BEVs for 2022) is very close to BYD in total number of BEV vehicles sold, the bulk of which are for the domestic market. And both Tesla and VW are not exactly sitting still.
I've been following the vehicle industry closely for many years and I would rate Geely/Polestar way ahead of BYD in getting traction in Europe as a Chinese company making inroads here (though I missed them apparently already selling in Denmark). Polestars I see pretty much daily, BYD, for all their size I've yet to come across in the wild.
If you compare by the fraction of BEVs sold in Europe then they are currently not even a bit player, though that of course can change.
One thing BYD did wrong in my opinion is that they chose to use the same brand for their big utility vehicles (buses, for instance) and their personal cars. Their large vehicles, while cheaper than the competition have a pretty bad reputation here.
After visiting the BVD website, what’s remarkable to me is that they’re priced from $32-40k. From the photos at least, it looks like a $100k+ car, much more luxurious than a Tesla Model S. But then again, I’m probably just used to price gouging in the US.
not only competition but compliance. The legal obligations a car manufacturer has to satisfy in the EU nowadays is wild, IUPR, OBFCM, WLTP are just the programs regarding emission checks. There are many many more.
The big Chinese car companies are managing to build compliant vehicles now. BYD, SAIC, Great Wall and Geely all sell vehicles into the EU market. It's hard, but it's not like the barrier to entry is so high these companies can't meet it.
No doubt, they are growing fast! And naturally they would make more than Tesla, since BYD makes more than just BEVs.
BYD's numbers often contain plugin hybrids (PHEV). So if you're trying to compare apples/apples, be sure to look at pure-battery EVs between the two.
Note 'electrified' from a different article from Barrons: "BYD delivered 206,089 electrified passenger vehicles in March [2023], up about 98% from the 104,338 delivered in March 2022. The March 2023 figures include 102,670 all battery electric vehicles and 103,419 plug-in hybrid models."
It would be interesting to see a Chinese manufacturer taking the lead in the automobile segment. Wonder how it will affect politically.
It was all Korean or Japanese dominance till now with KIAs/Hyudai and Toyotas.
American cars brands mostly fail outside the US.
It won't happen, ideologically, globalization is over, and the west have no more qualms about using protectionist measures. Chinese cars will be severely tariffed in countries under west influence or subject to other trade controls.
There's no "would" about it, it is happening if the 2030 all-EV timetable is kept to. Other than Tesla, western (that includes Japan and South Korea) car makers stand to lose everything vice versa China who stand to gain everything with the current politics.
Indeed, companies like VW, BMW, Mercedes, Ford, GM, Hyundai/KIA, Nissan, Honda etc are going to lose everything compared to a new entrant which doesn't have a single vehicle on sale in the markets where those brands have long been established players. They must be quaking in their boots. /s
The 2030 timetable is not going to be met by any single manufacturer, if it is going to be met to begin with. I suspect that it is going to be pushed backwards bit by bit as reality sets in: that it always was too ambitious a target to realistically achieve. And if they stick to it, which I would find very brave it will simply mean that the price of personal transportation will skyrocket and that older non BEVs will have to hang around a little longer.
There is so much that has to work for an all electric transition for every new vehicle sold in the next 7 years to be successful that I wouldn't bet on it. I think of it more as a goal to strive for than something that is realistically achievable, but of course I hope that I'll be wrong on this. Time will tell.
Ford & Tesla customers the world over beg to differ, and GM is sold in many countries under different brands as well. The top 20 has a number of Chinese players and they are definitely moving up year-by-year but the top 5 has been unchanged for years: VW; Toyota; Stellantis; MB; Ford. Tesla is a bit player and BYD isn't on the market so it is impossible to rate them other than as a successful domestic player.
If a Chinese manufacturer would succeed in the West my money would be on a JV between VW and FAW, BYD vehicles under the Toyota brand is another option. A Chinese manufacturer going it alone is likely not going to succeed due to the way previous Chinese brands have been received by these markets. Geely played it smart, they have acquired Volvo and with their Polestar brand they are now moderately successful in the EV only market, with 80,000 vehicles scheduled for delivery this year.
BYD is starting to sell in Europe right now and reviews are actually quite good so we need to wait and see a bit.
I see no reason for a decent quality and affordable EV not to achieve at least relative success.
But we've seen before that any successful Chinese company is liable to be hit by Western governments' campaigns against it. So if we start to see article linking BYD to whatever awful deed you can think of towards the end of the year or next year I guess it'll mean there are doing well in the West.
Ford’s market share continues to decline outside the U.S., dropping to below 6% in Europe and 2% in China. It’s reached a point where afore no longer provides quarterly market share numbers in Europe.
Tesla is doing “well” but it’s starting from a very small base and its absolute numbers are still very low. It still hasn’t faced real competition which is only now ramping up. Let’s see how it responds.
Ford and Tesla? Ford exited India after failing multiple times in one of Asia's biggest markets, followed closely by Chevrolet, GM. In fact if not for Chevrolet, GM never even had a presence here. Tesla has not even entered here.
Selling in some handful countries != Success. What are their numbers in those countries, and how many countries are they leading in Vs Toyota, Hyundai.
The difference in taxis in shenzhen a few years ago astonished me. Either filthy, ragged, diesel VW passats, or incredibly high tech BYD electric SUVs.
They were impressive back then, will be interesting to see what BYD can do with an affordable EV.
Let’s be real, you think China allowed Tesla to be the first private owned company for shit and giggles? It’s always been the strategy. Let Tesla hire a bunch of local people and work for a year or two. “Entice” them to leave and work for companies like BYD. It’s a win win strategy for China, you get foreign investment and they fund your local expertise to replace the same product. Especially now that Tesla uses mainly Chinese batteries, it’s pretty trivial to roll the same technology into Chinese product with a bit of political and economical incentives.
For the government, direct technology transfer is much less of an incentive than building a domestic supply chain, which helps every other player in the industry, plus Tesla and other automakers are big taxpayers.
I'm convinced that the spate of Tesla price cuts this year are mostly to get ahead of BYD and Chinese competition as much as any other reason.
1/3rd of the world's cars are sold in China, and the EV market share went from 16% in 2021 to 30% to in 2022. IOW, production capacity increased by 4 million cars. Now China is slumping. Last year it was easy to sell an EV in China, now it's hard. So millions of Chinese EV's are going to start flooding Europe soon. Chinese already makes over half of Australia's EV's.
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American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Assuming that range is cut in half during the winter in the coldest scenarios and the average American commute, one way is 25 miles, 150 miles will be more than enough to replace most ICE cars. That being said, destination on a car from China probably costs $2K alone, so reaching a 13K price point anytime soon will be very, very difficult.
Supposedly the BYD Seagull can go 200KM and costs $9K in China, so we'll see. Exciting times ahead. (For reference Jiangnan used to sell ICE cars in China several years ago for less than $2K, so even though EV is cheap absolutely compared to USA, it's still much more expensive than what China could make if they continued to make ICE cars. That being said 2030 will result in banning of ICE in many regions)
> American and European price gouging will come to an end soon enough.
Just like how cheap Android phones in Asia resulted game over for Apple, Samsung etc. in the past 12 years?
When was the last time an American car (not truck), with an MSRP less than 30K has been in the top 5 selling vehicles? Americans can't compete on price, and so they stopped trying.
At least in Europe, BYD is trying hard to not to appear as a 'cheap' brand. The cheapest car they sell here (Sweden) costs more than the VW ID3, and their flagship SUV is close to the starting price of the BMW iX.
The average EV consumes 34.6 kWh per 100 miles, so a 52 kWh battery is sufficient, on average. The average home charger provides 7.2 kWh so it'll take under six hours to recharge the car at home. You can do it at night when favorable rates are available. It'll add an extra 72 kWh hours to your utility bill for the month. Even in the most expensive part of the country (USA), the Northeast, you're only going to pay $1 per day. And I could get it for under $20K? Sign me up!
If BYD/Toyota could bring such a car to the American market then it's game over for the compact and subcompact market.
https://qz.com/chinese-car-makers-are-becoming-shipping-comp...https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-04/china-car...
Then why aren't the streets full of Chevy Sparks?
The problem with cheap cars is that cheap ICE components result in the car failing unnecessarily early. EVs can also fail, obviously, but it's less likely to happen due to design differences.
I haven't seen a single one of these and with the Chinese market as large as it is I'm sure that they could stay away from other markets for a long time without exporting their BEVs to countries where they will have to face competition from established Western brands.
Toyota itself is way behind the curve on BEVs, their JV with BYD is mostly Toyota hedging their bets that their Hydrogen path ends up being a dead end.
If you want to know more about BYD the wikipedia page is a lot more informative than this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto
Sure, but they aren’t. These Chinese EV manufacturers are coming for the world market.
Volvo is now owned by a Chinese company, Geely, and they’re manufacturing EVs in China based on a Geely platform for global export[0]. Polestar, also owned by Geely, is a Western market EV brand exported from China[1]. BYD is already planning to build factories and sell cars in Europe[2].
[0] https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Volvo-to-ex... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/26/polesta... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/byd-build...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35554394
Calling them the leading EV maker is disingenuous, they are not even close to Tesla (1.3M vehicles, all of them BEVs) and VW (570K BEVs for 2022) is very close to BYD in total number of BEV vehicles sold, the bulk of which are for the domestic market. And both Tesla and VW are not exactly sitting still.
I've been following the vehicle industry closely for many years and I would rate Geely/Polestar way ahead of BYD in getting traction in Europe as a Chinese company making inroads here (though I missed them apparently already selling in Denmark). Polestars I see pretty much daily, BYD, for all their size I've yet to come across in the wild.
If you compare by the fraction of BEVs sold in Europe then they are currently not even a bit player, though that of course can change.
One thing BYD did wrong in my opinion is that they chose to use the same brand for their big utility vehicles (buses, for instance) and their personal cars. Their large vehicles, while cheaper than the competition have a pretty bad reputation here.
https://pvmagazine.nl/helft-van-de-236-elektrische-byd-busse...
And many other articles besides.
Deleted Comment
BYD's numbers often contain plugin hybrids (PHEV). So if you're trying to compare apples/apples, be sure to look at pure-battery EVs between the two.
Note 'electrified' from a different article from Barrons: "BYD delivered 206,089 electrified passenger vehicles in March [2023], up about 98% from the 104,338 delivered in March 2022. The March 2023 figures include 102,670 all battery electric vehicles and 103,419 plug-in hybrid models."
Deleted Comment
The 2030 timetable is not going to be met by any single manufacturer, if it is going to be met to begin with. I suspect that it is going to be pushed backwards bit by bit as reality sets in: that it always was too ambitious a target to realistically achieve. And if they stick to it, which I would find very brave it will simply mean that the price of personal transportation will skyrocket and that older non BEVs will have to hang around a little longer.
There is so much that has to work for an all electric transition for every new vehicle sold in the next 7 years to be successful that I wouldn't bet on it. I think of it more as a goal to strive for than something that is realistically achievable, but of course I hope that I'll be wrong on this. Time will tell.
Ford & Tesla customers the world over beg to differ, and GM is sold in many countries under different brands as well. The top 20 has a number of Chinese players and they are definitely moving up year-by-year but the top 5 has been unchanged for years: VW; Toyota; Stellantis; MB; Ford. Tesla is a bit player and BYD isn't on the market so it is impossible to rate them other than as a successful domestic player.
If a Chinese manufacturer would succeed in the West my money would be on a JV between VW and FAW, BYD vehicles under the Toyota brand is another option. A Chinese manufacturer going it alone is likely not going to succeed due to the way previous Chinese brands have been received by these markets. Geely played it smart, they have acquired Volvo and with their Polestar brand they are now moderately successful in the EV only market, with 80,000 vehicles scheduled for delivery this year.
I see no reason for a decent quality and affordable EV not to achieve at least relative success.
But we've seen before that any successful Chinese company is liable to be hit by Western governments' campaigns against it. So if we start to see article linking BYD to whatever awful deed you can think of towards the end of the year or next year I guess it'll mean there are doing well in the West.
https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/ford-gl...
Tesla is doing “well” but it’s starting from a very small base and its absolute numbers are still very low. It still hasn’t faced real competition which is only now ramping up. Let’s see how it responds.
They were impressive back then, will be interesting to see what BYD can do with an affordable EV.
1/3rd of the world's cars are sold in China, and the EV market share went from 16% in 2021 to 30% to in 2022. IOW, production capacity increased by 4 million cars. Now China is slumping. Last year it was easy to sell an EV in China, now it's hard. So millions of Chinese EV's are going to start flooding Europe soon. Chinese already makes over half of Australia's EV's.