Comment by torginus

5 hours ago

Can they? I can get a lot of car for that money if I buy something used that's just a few years old, and I'll have a fairly good idea how to get my car serviced and how much it will cost, and how much I'll be able to sell it for.

Even if we don't consider these things, here in the EU, very few Chinese models look like a steal.

Tariffs or not (PHEVs and ICE cars are not tariffed like EVs afaik), the consensus seems to be that Chinese cars at a given category, are built better, cost like 10-20% less, are well equipped, but generally drive worse and often have annoying usability issues

All things considered, they're certainly competitive depending on what you're looking for, but don't look likely to oust the existing competition.

And I don't get the West's obsession with BYD - imo they look weird, they either get the interior or exterior styling wrong (with the notable exception of the Seal U), and aren't really selling that well compared to other Chinese brands.

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torginus

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twoodfin  4 hours ago

The obsession seems mostly based around the naive assumption that you can take a Shenzhen sticker price, convert to USD, and that’s what the car would sell for at a US dealer, were it not for tariffs.

This is the wrong mental model for a few reasons, not least that breaking into the US market would require massive marketing and infrastructure investment that would have to be paid for. And that’s before you worry about reengineering for US regulations.

Also: The current Chinese EV market is not in a sustainable place. It’s the product of massive government investment and (over) incentive to produce. Most Chinese EV makers are headed to bankruptcy if current trends continue, so they won’t.

In the steady state, Chinese EVs with German-class tariffs would be competitive in the US but they wouldn’t blow the doors off the market any more than, say, Hyundai/Kia have.