Comment by ben_w
13 hours ago
When people actually compare prices, they note that Chinese cars also have autopilot and cost less than half of a Tesla, new.
What's keeping Chinese brands out of the USA, isn't keeping them out of Europe or much of anywhere else.
Yeah and it’s going to bankrupt VW/Stellantis. Surprised Europeans just don’t seem to give a damn about that.
Quite a few do care about the potential for job losses. On the other hand, a lot of people want cheap cars.
This dichotomy has always been in place for a huge range of specifics, both for imports and technology that makes workers less relevant. The "we want cheap stuff" argument is the one that has done best historically, though the track record of handling this badly also led to the invention of actual literal communism.
BYD sales in January 2026 are down 30% YoY. Not looking great for them in 2026.
When I search for this, I find about equal numbers of stories with two opposing narratives.
One matching what you say; the other saying they're up significantly, e.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/byd-overtakes-tesla-world-lar...
I do not know what to make of this.
However, it is unimportant, as the main concern for your argument should be all Chinese brands combined rather than any specific brand. Unfortunately, given I'm seeing two narratives that seem to be mutually exclusive for BYD, I don't think I can trust web searches to tell me about all brands combined either.
However, even that is unimportant, as my point was more focused on the price and value for money, how Chinese models compete on AI for less cost; even to do badly in this regard (which they might or might not be given the mutually incompatible news stories I've seen) is less a narrative about Chinese market failure and more of a demonstration that hardly anyone really cares about the AI in the first place.
Tesla remains competitive in China, which can't be said of European EVs. Chinese ADAS are much better than European ones but still far behind FSD.
To bring the discussion back on topic: $50k/year or ~$250k over the course of the vehicle's lifetime, instead of $5k for a singular sale event, is why the path for the company is crystal clear. Cybercab is the same kind of step for Tesla as the Model 3 was back in 2017.
> $50k/year or ~$250k over the course of the vehicle's lifetime, instead of $5k for a singular sale event
Who will be paying Tesla $50k/year, and why?
Considering what Uber drivers take home after costs, I think this is unrealistic.
> Chinese ADAS are much better than European ones but still far behind FSD.
Not so, on both "much" and "far". Some tests put FSD ahead of various Chinese options, other tests put them behind. Tesla's FSD is still considered a level-2 system due to the failure modes it has, whereas (Europe's) Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot and (Japan's) Honda Sensing Elite are level 3. Allegedly others exist, but I'm mentally categorising those as vapourware until they ship, this is demonstrably a domain in which it's easy to fool oneself into thinking the destination is closer than it is.
More likely that it's going to be the same kind of step for Tesla as the Oculus was for Facebook.
I’ll grant you that it could be, and I’m betting it won’t while you are betting it will. The future is now obvious to fsd14 and robotaxi users. Failure is no longer likely.