Nah the real move is to steal IP, manipulate your currency to decrease the cost of exports and to brutally mine the resources from poorer countries
Chinese manufactures are subsidized and they have a regulated home market to their advantage to build from. It is a well thought out cooperation between companies & government, which the USA and the EU are lacking.
American companies are subsidized with bailouts and tax write offs, it just goes to the owners instead of making the products cheaper.
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ban'I’m surprised “make our pickups and SUVs even bigger” wasn’t suggested.
This child-murder truck is not child-murdery enough!
“It’s bigger because of safety innovations.”
For the driver, of course. We need more data on dead kids to continue to innovate. And cyclists or anyone else who dares to use a mode of transporation that isn’t a box on four wheels.
Child-animal-wheelchair users-short people-etc.-murder truck*
If you can’t fuck em kill em right? /s
BYD is picking on GM because GM is the only legacy US automaker making a full range of decent EVs.
They’re just shooting fish in a barrel at this point.
Seriously Western EVs are not bad. They are just too expensive.
Western EVs are not bad.
(Except Tesla.)
Is this the pinnacle of safety features Tesla or…
Volvo, probably. If I had to pick one manufacturer who’s always been on the leading edge of safety.
As for Tesla, I wouldn’t consider “lock all the doors when the car catches on fire” to be a very good safety feature.
Volvo Cars is majority owned by Chinese company Geely. Perhaps not ‘Western’ anymore
Irony? yes,. safety, no.
I mean… They kind of are. I had my old cars leading period end and I went to drive many cars. I tried everything from Audi to XPeng and for all of the western brands, save Tesla the level of system integration is just… Very limited. The Chinese cars have mostly copied Tesla, but XPeng for example had a feature to build little automations in their app.
The UX on most weatern brands is lagging behind by almost 10 years. The trunks are small and mostly no frunks. The base versions have very few goodies and a similar level of features brings the cost to about 1.5x. The price aspect is there, but it’s not just that.
Still, I don’t want to drive a nazimobile and I feel like I don’t want a Chinese car either.
I am curious what these advancements in infotainment are.
I heard that the cars run a digital assistant (like Siri or Alexa) and give it access to vehicle sensors, so you can ask questions like “Does that restaurant on the right have good reviews?” It sounds like a cool feature, but I just hate digital assistants in general, so I would never use it.
it’s amazing how you claim western stuff is bad because small trunk and no front storage. but your claims for why the other stuff is good is because of some stupid application for you phone… which has NOTHING to do with the car itself.
The point is that the European automakers can barely get their computer systems to work, while others are so far ahead they can think about this kind of stuff. Every car available has four wheels, two of which turn. You differentiate on something else.
because of some stupid application for you phone… which has NOTHING to do with the car itself.
I can say after driving 5 different brands over the last few years… The software on legacy autovehicles is dogshit. You just don’t notice it until you experience something better. Just the entire user experience is terrible from legacy automakers compared to new companies. Tesla, Polestar, and Lucid gave overall great experiences even if there were individual issues. Kia, Honda, GM, and Mercedes all sucked ass for various reasons. Android Auto and Apple Carplay only do so much, they really only handle navigation and media, everything else is still dependent on the manufacturer.
You may not care about the phone app, or consider it part of the car, but it is part of the driving and ownership experience. And I will tell you that being able to simply walk out to the car, get in, and drive away without having to press anything on a key fob, take out a card, press a start button, or anything is an extremely nice user experience. Likewise being able to start the climate control remotely from inside the house or a store, or having it precondition so it’s ready at a time you usually leave, or based on your calendar, is a very nice feature… Especially if you live in an extremely hot or cold area
Again, you may not find these features important, I didn’t when I first switched to an EV in 2018, but they are basic necessary functions in any vehicle I look at now. If they are missing, or inconsistent, the user experience sucks in comparison. And because they are software, they cost very little to implement compared to hardware things. They are a very easy way for the manufacturer to add value to the vehicle experience for very little cost, yet they still don’t.
Nearly all of those QoL features are just sugar coated privacy invasion. I’d prefer physical knobs, fobs and buttons with a bare minimum interface to set charging periods and preconditioning. My life isn’t ruined by turning a key and I can be sure that a future fascist OTA update won’t brick the car for undesirables.
The worst thing is GM has a decent competitor (a little bit pricier, but not terrible) in the Bolt, but they are not producing many of them with their new release, and are instead refocusing on larger, worse EVs.
I’d settle for cheaper.
If they stopped adding features nobody asked for it would be a lot cheaper. Look at how Slate is doing.
Battery production is still the bottleneck, so they want to squeeze out as much value per kwh as they can.
Selling one expensive luxury SUV with a 90kwh battery is a lot more profitable to them than selling two barebones econoboxes with a 45wkh battery pack.
And just to clarify, since this is Lemmy: This is not meant to justify or condone their behavior, just explain it.
My bet is that the vast majority of the cost of the vehicle comes from making the basics, and then they add the features “no one wanted” in order to look good in the showroom, because they are a cheap way to sway dumb people to buy their car over a competitors
They haven’t delivered anything yet. They have pre-orders for now that will fill a year of production, but how much of that is people who buy anything new but won’t buy again, vs sustainable people like this and so customers will keep coming.
Only time will tell.
Sure, they have simply demonstrated that there is demand.
Just like all the deposits on the cybertruck……oh wait.
There was lots of demand for Cybertruck… mostly from fanboys and bootlickers though.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable that an established EV maker got 10x the reservations than a brand new manufacturer did, even on a product clearly designed for edgelords.
majority of CT drivers here are asians in my area, and the ugly decorated ones that are promoting thier company are trumpers.
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Someone in our household smoked our Model 3 mirror backing into the garage and it cost $1k CAD and they came to our house to do it. Didn’t even charge me labour for some reason. It looked very easy to do, but the number of antennas in there was something else.
Well no cameras nor sensors in there though. Antennas? I would only expect cables for tilt adjustments and heating.
Good point on the cameras - those are in the body. It’s where the car houses the GPS, cellular, and Bluetooth antennas (the latter for lock/unlock)
Didn’t know that! Interesting
Ha! I got my car clipped like that. It’s an old car, so I just duck taped it back on. Lol. I’m not paying, claiming, or making someone else pay that kinda money for something so stupid.
The company that can make an EV that gets you 100 miles range for $10,000 and can fit at least three people will become one of the dominant players.
This isn’t really a factor. Average cost of a new car is 50k and they’re flying off the shelves. There are many EVs lower than 50k, main barrier to adoption is chargers for apartments and FUD.
My cargo e-bike could do that, assuming you can carry an extra battery and the passengers are kids. And for a lot less than $10K, too.
Sure, but your cargo ebike cannot safely or efficiently travel on the highway, which is a requirement for many/most people looking to buy a car.
It’s annoying how the world, especially North America, is designed around vehicles that “can fit at lest three people” but are most frequently driven by a single person.
I love my ebike, and don’t own a car, but even for short trips things would be more convenient with a car. The roads are designed for cars. Parking is designed for cars. Laws protect cars far more than bikes.
Maybe that will change. What happened in the Netherlands since the 1970s gives me hope. But, right now it’s sad how the switch away from the gas-powered car seems to be toward electric cars rather than bikes, ebikes and mass transit.
Car brain really is a thing. Here in the UK it seems to be considered a thing that if you can afford one, you have one.
I sold my car (my wife has and needs one to be fair) 4-5 yrs back. Tried to make an ebike work but it didn’t fit my lifestyle so I bought an electric moped and it’s handled everything I’ve thrown at it.
Traffic is no longer a thing so it saves me so much time not having to allow time for it, it’s generally quicker/as quick as a car on all the trips I do, parking is easy and it’s dirt cheap to run.
Not sure I’ll ever buy a car again
How often is your wife’s car used for household errands? I don’t own a car but occasionally I’ve borrowed one for certain things.
It’s cheaper to buy bulky packages of say rice or toilet paper, but they’re inconvenient to move without a car. Furniture is nearly impossible to move with the bike I have. I could get a cargo bike, but where I live that would be impractical without a garage or a big shed to store it, whereas a car can just sit in a driveway.
I think I’ll be able to get by without a car for the foreseeable future, but I’ll probably end up using cars occasionally. If I can’t borrow one, I’ll maybe start using a car sharing service.
I’d use public transit, but honestly where I live and where I want to go it’s only slightly faster than walking, and so it’s almost never a worthwhile option.
Additionally, Americans are typically fat and need even more radial maneuvering room. That’s why they find European cars cramped. The comments on cupholders in American car forums are very funny.
I live in Atlanta, which ain’t exactly the poster-child for bike-friendliness. But even here, at least in my part of town, it actually is getting to the point where short trips are genuinely more convenient on a bike. Dropping the kids off at school definitely is because I don’t have to wait in line, and any destination downtown is best reached on a bike because I don’t have to pay for parking. Going to the grocery store isn’t quite better by bike, but the margin is close enough that I bike anyway.
Parking is one of those things that could be improved for biking. I really hate most of the bike racks that most places use, and if you get a bad one it can take a significant amount of time to lock up your bike. And, a big reason why locking up a bike takes a while is that bike theft isn’t really treated seriously. IMO if bike theft were taken more seriously you wouldn’t need to make sure you had an excellent lock and had your front wheel secured, etc. Thieves would be much less willing to take the risk of stealing one, so a simple chain would be enough to discourage most thieves.
I feel like excessive parking for cars is a much worse problem than inadequate parking for bikes. But yes, parking for bikes could be better (and very easily, too).
Any vehicle I have must fit at least 3 people, because at any time I must be able to move myself + the 2 kids. I could get a little 2-seater runabout for 90% of my driving (or maybe a motorcycle or something similar), but then I would have to have another vehicle, at additional license costs, interest costs, storage costs, and then have to guess which one I will need by the end of the day at the start, consistently every time. Because of this, every vehicle I own must be able to do every thing I can conceivably need to do in a given day.
From what I can tell, this condition exists for a plurality of drivers in the driving-centric parts of the US, and so became the standard because it’s the minimum for those people.
I think you vastly underestimate the number of people that believe they need 400+ mole range on their vehicle despite never leaving their city.
Here in the UK you can pick up a secondhand Tesla with 60% depleted battery with a guranteed 100 miles range for £8,000. Less than 10 years old and with less than 40k miles.
Obviously everyone will call you a cunt but it’s possible.
100 miles when it is -25 or colder. Otherwise there are too many variables. Most days 100 miles is more than most people drive however most people I know often have a day where they do that much.
Ditch cars, build/use rail.
What about places far away from rail?
Buses.
ugh, if only
The actual thing they need to do in order to compete is in-source parts manufacturing in order to take advantage of economies of scale… Like the Chinese EV manufacturers do.
Basically, toss out the Chicago school of economics thinking and go back to their roots as an all-things manufacturer. Ideally, they’d innovate as part of that by adopting new technologies like 3D printing to bring costs down and accelerate improvements.
I don’t mean “3D printing for prototyping.” They already do that. I mean, 3D print the final part. If it works for fucking rockets going into space, it can work for cars too. Especially electric vehicles which are much simpler to make.
I mean, 3D print the final part. If it works for fucking rockets going into space, it can work for cars too.
3D printing doesn’t “work” for rockets in general. 3D printing works for specific rocket components (engine cooling channels) which are difficult to manufacture using traditional techniques like machining or casting. I can’t think of any components like this on cars.
Relativity Space did try to 3D print an entire rocket (including the tanks, LOL), but cancelled it after the first launch, switching to a design where only specific components will be 3D printed.
In the US at least, auto manufacturers have actually been on-shoring manufacturing for years. It is just that it is mostly automated factories.
Chinese manufacturers have a cost advantage because:
- Chinese labor is cheap.
- China’s large population and large institutions combined with their recent history as a labor intensive manufacturing hub means that they have some of the most dynamic manufacturing capabilities in the world. Essentially, they are incredibly rich in the soft skill of creating manufacturing processes.
- The chinese government gambled on EVs early and it appears their gamble is paying off.
If you think 3D printing is advantageous for economies of scale, I have a bridge to sell you.
Rockets are the complete opposite of mass manufacturing.
Yeah, 3d printing only makes economic sense if you’re not doing mass production. It involves a lot of compromises.
Also, OP argues that it’s better to be an “all-things manufacturer”. Most of the time that isn’t the most efficient way unless you have government assistance in some form. That might just be having patents or copyrights. BYD started as a battery company and has battery-related IP. Now they’re China’s leading company in patent filings, with over 13,000 of them.
Most of the time it’s more efficient to specialize in something and buy parts from other specialists.
idk shit about manufacturing, but can you do that at scale? I know my 3d printer is slow as fuck if I want it to make a good print.
The actual thing they need to do in order to compete is in-source parts manufacturing in order to take advantage of economies of scale… Like the Chinese EV manufacturers do.
That’s called vertical integration. Ford was the original pioneer of vertical integration in auto, but they lost their way.
You mean the original Nazi car?
Yep, that’s the one.
Also when you pay pennies on the dollar for labor it cuts costs for EVs.
Ideally, they’d innovate as part of that by adopting new technologies like 3D printing to bring costs down
Generally, 3D printing is cheaper for very small product runs, but ends up being much more expensive than traditional manufacturing at scale.
Setting up an injection molding machine, for example, is very expensive and takes more time than setting up a 3D printer … but once set up, it can crank out several parts per minute, while the 3D printer is taking hours for each print.
Reality is something did you see the byd graveyard 💀
Looks like no, we haven’t.
Is this the country that bans anyone saying anything negative about the federal government?
America?
They’re not quite at China’s levels yet but Trump is doing his best to get there.
What do you mean China “bans” anyone who talks negatively about the federal gov’t?
America just gave someone 30 years for handing out pamphlets.
Are you confused?
I wonder if we tariff Chinese EVs on the difference between labor rates, what would that look like? And how much of the difference is something like socialized medicine? Most foreign labor doesn’t have to spend a significant portion of their paycheck for health insurance.
According to this I found from a quick search: https://www.motor.com/2025/05/new-analysis-examines-labor-cost-per-vehicle-amidst-changing-automotive-landscape/
If you put a flat $1000 tariff on Chinese EVs it would more than cover the difference in labour costs.
And it stands to reason, car manufacturing is very automated. Of course you could attempt to factor in the labour costs to build the machines and make the materials used to build the cars too, but you’d need detailed information of what goes into a car, which I don’t know.
