BYD Co. met its full-year sales target and likely surpassed Tesla Inc. to become the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker in 2025 — milestones overshadowed by a challenging outlook for the Chinese…
BYD Co. met its full-year sales target and likely surpassed Tesla Inc. to become the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker in 2025 — milestones overshadowed by a challenging outlook for the Chinese auto market in the year ahead.
The Chinese EV giant’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose on the first day of trading in the new year, gaining as much as 2.3%.
We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere. The Chinese EV automakers are crushing it.
This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking. Rent seeking in the long run is brittle. You get a little security now for loss of competitiveness in the future - once the rent seeking goes away, you’re screwed. You haven’t had to compete, so you haven’t adapted. Consumers flee because they’ve just tolerated you - they actively dislike being forced into fewer choices
Rent seeking is industry suicide. It feels like it helps, but it’s not solving the real problem.
At a certain level it can lead otherwise competitive companies to rest on their laurels.
On another level, it would be game over without them. For example, US shipyards would simply stop existing without protection. There is no management strategy or measure they could implement that could compete with Asian shipyards.
The theory is that in both cases (ie. with and without tariffs) shipyards are going to die sooner or later. It is better for the society to let them die as soon as possible and direct efforts to things we are better at while taking advantage of cheaper ships produced elsewhere.
Some industries are of national security or other strategic value, so protecting them even if that means some stagnation is desirable over the offshoring of said industry.
The question is: how do you define "national security" and "other strategic value"? At the end of the day both really mean economic interest. Especially in case of US.
So if someone says "national security" is above economic interest of US, I would say these people mean _their_ economic interest is above economic interest of US and use both terms as a cover.
Insofar as the country being conquered and Americans being slaughtered wholesale would be against our economic interests lol
There are clear national security reasons for the government to prop up shipbuilding and semiconductors.
> Insofar as the country being conquered and Americans being slaughtered wholesale would be against our economic interests lol > There are clear national security reasons for the government to prop up shipbuilding and semiconductors.
Are you saying countries without shipbuilding facilities or not producing semicondutors are being conquered and their citizens being slaughtered?
I'd say that is fear mongering done by the people doing business on "national security".
> Are you saying countries without shipbuilding facilities or not producing semicondutors are being conquered and their citizens being slaughtered?
Yes that is a clear risk. For most of human history, powerful leaders have unleashed violence on their neighbors to increase their wealth and prestige. For about 70 years, the cold war balance prevented very catastrophic wars between powerful nations but we now seem to be having an atavistic throw back of powerful nations being led by expansionist leaders. You either need to create your own manufacturing capacity or be at the mercy of others.
You can call it fearmongering but I can point to the whole of human history and tell you that not only has it happened, at a certain point it is inevitable. I can point at Ukraine, right now, as an example of what happens when one country appears much weaker than an aggressive neighbor.
The United States is the greatest power the world has ever seen. While the oceans protect us, the truth is that even the White House was once burned down in a war.
There's not much economic interest in losing 100 billion dollars trying to keep shipyards going.
There are no customers who want an oil tanker built in the US. Or Europe.
The economic interest is the US ability to as rapidly as possible convert those shipyards to military shipyards during a large scale prolonged war. The US did not make (relatively) many ships before WW2 and then during WW2 was briefly the largest ship builder in the world.
> The economic interest is the US ability to as rapidly as possible convert those shipyards to military shipyards during a large scale prolonged war.
Nah, that doesn't add up. US needs _ships_ and SOTA military equipment to make sure that any military conflict is as short as possible (ie. US wins). Losing money on unused production capability does not make sense because in case of prolonged conflict there is time to build the capability (as it happened during WWII).
In reality, what you call "prolonged military conflict", is nothing more than normal international competition. One could even argue US is in prolonged military conflict since WWII. In which case making rational decisions based on hard economic criteria (ie. not losing money) is the key to success.
With current military technology it is not really possible, is it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdppYYfQJgg describes it really well.
So the question is more about what part of means of defense you outsource. And what parts of means of defense are outsourced by your enemies.
You don't want to base your defense on inferior shipbuilding capabilities, do you?
Sure I can see the argument for national security. And to balance out Chinese companies own rent seeking.
OTOH still strategically it’s not great. As the Asian companies have an actual market, this will lead Asian manufacturers to have better ships than comparable US ones.
So then why has china had tariffs on American cars? 15 percent before trumps 2nd term where it skyrocketed to over 125%.
If tariffs are so bad for America why do other countries have tariffs on American cars?
The way China approached their internal market for EVs is very different.
They didn't just put tariffs on foreign EVs, they poured a lot of money into their own industry to produce a lot of different companies that became fiercely competitive in their own local market.
Once they got a few big players they stop a lot of the subsidies which led to a lot of companies falling under but at the same time the process produced some really good, competitive and profitable companies like BYD which then were ready to take on the international market.
America, on the other hand, hasn't done much to increase the competitiveness of their own internal market for EVs. Hence, the protectionist measures will have the consequences the poster above described.
Tariffs are not "good" or "bad" they're an economic tool countries can use. It's how you use the tool and in conjunction with which other tools that can have negative or positive consequences for the industry they're applying it to.
It's like "america uses a scalpel to peel oranges" versus "China uses a scalpel in open heart surgeries". The scalpel can cut, but context matters to say if it was used properly or not.
Ok but this thread is about “all tariffs being rent seeking”. Now tariffs are sometimes ok - gotcha.
What has china actually don’t different than America? Was a 10-15 percent subsidy not enough? Were the carbon credits not enough? We’re the limitations on gas cars dependent on ev sales not enough?
As far as I’m aware both china and the us have heavily subsidized ev sales. What’s different?
It's an easy way to make money. There will always be people with too much money who for some reason want a Dodge Ram. Does that mean that US made cars are a serious competition? No. But they are like luxury Swiss watches- nobody minds if the government taxes it.
> This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking.
tarriffs are visible protective regulation, China protects its domestic markets through different type of regulations for decades.
And now Chinese people can buy higher quality products for cheaper than Americans can.
there are many unclear assumptions before we come to such conclusion:
- does product have higher quality?
- is it cheaper, given there is no proven reliability track record for Chinese automakers, meaning maintenance cost could be very high
- if production is subsidized by government incentives or cheap labor, Chinese consumer pay high price, its just money flows on other channels
The failure to compete will also make US care makers irrelevant outside of US. They are pretty well out on the way already.
I'm trying really hard to think of a US car maker that's actually super relevant outside of the US.
Ford in Europe is Ford Germany, a fully owned but separate entity (which is probably why Ford sales in Europe are decent). I think they have presence in other markets but most of their money comes from the US.
GM used to have Opel/Vauxhall, but it sold it to Stellantis.
Chrysler is now owned by Stellantis, which is a mostly European car maker.
Tesla is the obvious new kid on the block but unless they're the only ones with self driving cars globally, I don't really see them hanging on to their global market share 20 years from now in front of Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and European car makers.
TL;DR: I agree with you.
>> This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers.
still don't understand why this is going to hurt US car manufacturers. Have the Japanese auto imports improved the US auto industry past 40+ years? Is Ford or GM more competitive? The US automakers are highly competitive in large vehicle/truck segments, protected under the Chicken Tax past 60+ years, but they barely have any presence left in small, cheaper segments dominated by the Japanese and Koreans. Farley recently said Ford has shifted its focus from affordable, mass-market cars because it couldn't compete against the Japanese/Koreans.
Just not convinced that allowing autos from another auto industry built on forced joint venture/tech transfer, illegal (export/local content) subsidies, or otherwise benefited tremendously from the very same rent-seeking policies themselves past 15 years is solving the real problem.
Japanese competition has absolutely improved US car manufacturers.
They have leaner assembly lines. More sophisticated supply chain. They now make a product that it turns out people want (reliable/economy)
One big one to consumers is the focus on long term reliability. This was a complete joke in the 1980s-1990s for US cars. Everyone knew Toyota and Honda would last 300k miles and an American car would crap out at 80k miles. We are in a completely new world of more consistent reliability with cars. Even if Ford is 90% Toyota - that’s a much better place to be.
Everyone wanted trade barriers in the 80s and 90s but without the pain of competition our cars would feel like the modern equivalent of a bad Eastern European shitbox - only optimized for power and not economy.
>> They now make a product that it turns out people want (reliable/economy)
Sure, Ford has always made cars that their customers want, F-150 for instance, the best selling vehicle in the US for an unbroken streak of nearly 50 years, during which it continued to improve and maintain its popularity. The Chicken law has done wonders for the American automakers.
>> ... the focus on long term reliability.
Sure, I don't question the Japanese automakers' reliability, but, in the cheap, small vehicle segments they compete with the Japanese import, the American automakers are now more or less wiped out. Most small, affordable vehicles from GM and Ford are now made in either Mexico or South Korea. So where is their "competitiveness" that otherwise wouldn't exist without the Japanese imports? In other word, the Japanese imports clearly did not prevent the "loss of competitiveness in the future."
>> Rent seeking is industry suicide.
If it's as bad as you say it is, why turn a blind to China's rent seeking past 15 years and promote their industry, which again benefited tremendously from forced JV, forced tech transfer, restrictive market access/licensing, local content/sourcing/production, high-tariffs, shadow-banning foreign competitors, arbitrary regulatory/safety barriers, etc?
I think we can glean a lot of lesson from the Chicken Tax past 60+ years and China's rent-seeking policies in the EV business past 15 years. We know what works and what doesn't -- and BYD is not it.
I agree, and it's also worth pointing out the EV market has been artificially buoyed by the use of state-funded incentives to buy electric cars, and we know this because now that those incentives are ending, EV sales are cratering.
In a vacuum, I don't hate the idea of paying people to switch to EV's who can do it, but the problem is especially in America, those benefits are going not to working class people who really need new cars (and who's cars are the most environmentally problematic) but to solidly upper-middle class buyers of incredibly large and impractical EV's which are either sports cars or suburban panzers, that rip through tires and consume vast amounts of lithium for their enormous battery packs, and beat the shit out of our already deteriorating roads.
Additionally we're finding that EV's have a major, probably unsolvable issue: they age much, much faster than ICE vehicles in one particular area: the battery. EV's have the same problem as cellphones effectively; their cells deteriorate with use, and unlike used ICE vehicles for which parts are widely available and usually cheap, it's not even remotely economically feasible to repair this issue. Replacing a battery costs so much you might as well just replace the entire car.
you're just repeating a list of tired anti-ev propoganda points, that have been debunked over and over.
- they're not much that much heavier, class-for-class. Substantially lighter than the ridiculous ly oversized trucks that people buy for suburban use.
- Theres nearly infinite lithium in the world, depending on economics of extraction. new battery chemistries dont even use lithium.
- battery degradation hasnt turned out to be a big issue. Real world tesla data shows ~80% capacity at ~300k miles, which is approaching EOL for a car.
working class people cant buy cheap EVs because the US keeps cheap EVs out of the market with import restrictions, tarriffs and legacy manufacturers that refuse to adapt and offer a product people want. EV sales "cratered" for the same reason. Meanwhile, EV sales in the rest of the world are accelerating fast.
Bezos has a cheap EV company that looks promising.
You're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying "EVs are bad, stick with ICE." I'm saying EVs are not solving the broader issues of why car dependency is a bad idea for transporting people at scale, which is what they were proposed to do. Having everyone own their own car and drive themselves everywhere does not nor has it ever scaled properly, which is why we continue struggling with urban sprawl, lack of parking, smog and particulates, and all the rest.
EV's just shift the energy burden from the fossil fuel industry to the power grid. It's not a fix, it barely qualifies as a band-aid.
oh. im not really sure how i was supposed to get that point from a post that was seemingly just criticizing EVs vs ICE. But sure yeah, EVs wont make the world less car centric. I dont think thats ever going to happen, sadly.
> EV's just shift the energy burden from the fossil fuel industry to the power grid
Thats actually great! even if the electricity comes from 100% fossil fuels we would still reduce vehicle emissions by ~60% (ICE are only 20-30% efficient). And then of course grids are getting clean fast with the scaleout of renewables, which is accelerating rapidly worldwide. We will see 100% emission free personal car transit in my lifetime (somewhere, in whichever country gets to a net zero grid first). Thats exciting!
The broad push of EV's was to make consumer cars "green." It's classic greenwashing nonsense. They are broadly better...? than ICE, with so many caveats and variables that even that statement feels like it's giving too much credit, but yes, for standard consumer use, they are an improvement.
> even if the electricity comes from 100% fossil fuels we would still reduce vehicle emissions by ~60%
That emissions number is only looking at what comes out of the tailpipe, which isn't the full story. You have dust coming off the brake rotors, plus and much worse, the particulate from the tires as they wear down, and on that front, EV's are actually notably worse because a dead battery weighs as much as a full battery, a condition not shared by an ICE vehicle, and EVs do trend heavier on curb weight which means they go through tires faster and roads too for that matter.
Additionally, in cold climate areas, EVs end up spending a decent portion of their stored energy heating both the passenger cabin and the battery itself, and by constrast, heat is basically free from an ICE thanks to how it operates.
Like, if you live in an area with charging infrastructure, and the limitations/challenges of an EV aren't an issue for you (which to be clear, a LOT of people fit that description!) then by all means, get an EV. They are better, broadly. However if you have an ICE vehicle that is largely doing fine, is reasonably modern and well maintained... then it's arguably much greener to not buy a new car at all and just keep running the one you've already got. Better for the wallet, too.
> We will see 100% emission free personal car transit in my lifetime (somewhere, in whichever country gets to a net zero grid first). Thats exciting!
I have a lot of doubts, but hey, that will be some delicious crow to eat if it turns out true. I love cars, both electric and ICE, all their issues aside.
On a clean grid they are ~100% better on tailpipe emissions. They create less brake dust, not more, due to regen. Yes, more tire particles due to being 10-20% heavier, but way less particulate overall because of no PM2.5 from combustion.
Massive massive improvement, that’s not greenwashing imho.
(Something that is greenwashing is PHEVs, they have proven to be mostly a lie in practice)
> heat is basically free from an ICE thanks to how it operates.
Does it not bother you that over 60% of the energy in gasoline is wasted as heat into the atmosphere? Of which a small amount is captured to heat the cabin in cold weather?
> buoyed by the use of state-funded incentives to buy electric cars, and we know this because now that those incentives are ending, EV sales are cratering.
Oil subsidies are so interwoven with the way the US works that this is easy to miss in these discussions, but if not for these subsidies ICE vehicles would be much more expensive:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...
They are huge in Australia too. And the advice basically everyone gives is "if you're going electric, you'd be crazy not to consider BYD first".
A couple of years ago the only notable EVs you'd see were Teslas, now you'd see at least 2-3x as many BYDs.
BYD, Geely, ZeekR, Kia, Hyundai, Mini, MG see them all around, more than Teslas (inner city Melbourne).
Also noticing that a lot of the rideshare/taxis are going EV quickly. I'm guessing the much lower maintenance and service requirements are outweighing any "range" issues, plus the trade-in value is irrelevant with warranties covering the batteries etc.
I do like that BYD cars are opinionated which is a feature that is somewhat lacking in modern cars.
Opinionated in this context usually means “doing their own thing” or “trying again from basics” instead of following the herd and being like everyone else.
The standard new house isn’t opinionated - a custom build with features not normally seen could be.
Opinionated usually results in love it or hate it style design - unless they happen on something that just becomes standard.
The original Jobs iPhone was opinionated - an all touchscreen design went against the common “knowledge” that a physical keyboard was the way to go.
I was always stuck by how different all the cars in the BYD line are. There are some pretty bold styling and fitout choices between the models.
I have mostly driven BMW and Toyota sedan and fwd's. And as you progress in car price and size its a matter of getting more features, and a better version over the cheaper model.
The BYD's all seem really different,
Isn't that the opposite of being opinionated? In software I've heard "opinionated" about programs that limit configurability in favor of one fits all default. I believe it was Ruby on Rails which popularized the term.
For cars, I guess Henry Ford's anecdotal comment that "you can have any color you like as long as it's black" was a form of opinionated design. If BYDs cars are all different, surely they're less opinionated?
Instead of having a bland, don’t-take-any-strong-decision, please-every-one design ("un opinionated"), each car has its own very distinct design ("opinionated").
You could say that at a brand level, they are equally "opinionated" because the average car of each brand is average, but the OP argues that BYD does it by sampling N very distinct points from the car distribution, and other by sampling N times the same average point.
> In software I've heard "opinionated" about programs that limit configurability in favor of one fits all default
While this is one form of opinionated, it really just means that they are doing their own thing different from the other established players. This could mean MORE configurability in some cases. Another poster also said it, but opinionated just means that they have taken a stand in product design (features, looks, usability, etc) that they think it correct and it does not bow to 'the herd'. IMO, an opinionated design is neither good nor bad, but it is respected by me.
> We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere
But getting hit by 50% tariffs in Mexico as of today:
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-tariffs-go-into-effe...
I wonder how long that will last. Mexican consumers are very price sensitive.
BYD is also very popular in Singapore. Single most bought car brand at the moment, I think.
Their flagship show room has great beer and good food, too.
When I first moved to Spain, I was surprised beer was available in McDonalds, and that people commonly had beer with lunch. But not even here do we have beer available in car show rooms, that seems like the slightly wrong place for that, especially considering how strict Singapore seems from the outside.
25 years ago I was on a project that was based out of offices next to a BMW factory, so we got canteen privileges, and the food was awesome, and beer was available as one of the beverages.
This was at a car plant for people working in manufacturing.
At the university canteens/cafeterias in Italy they had wine and beer on tap next to the soda. It wasn't very good, but I was amazed the first time I just saw the tap there in the middle of the cafeteria where anyone could just go refill when they wanted.
Car show rooms are about catering to clients, selling them both a vehicle and a lifestyle, plus people are much more likely to make deals when they're offered food and drink.
Makes sense anywhere :)
> Makes sense anywhere :)
Well, almost anywhere. There are places where if you have a beer with lunch and they saw you arrive in a car, they'll ask you for your car keys otherwise they'll call the police on you. Daily life works differently around the world :)
> There are places where if you have a beer with lunch and they saw you arrive in a car, they'll ask you for your car keys otherwise they'll call the police on you.
In Singapore you wouldn't necessarily arrive in a car (yet alone your own car) when you go to a car showroom. I'm not even sure they'd have enough parking around there.
See https://earth.google.com/web/search/BYD+Zhongshan+Park+1826/... for the location.
And many people bring a companion when they do a test drive. Filling up the companion is perfectly legal and fine.
I'm glad I don't live in a place where one beer would cause that. Several, yes, that's certainly an issue. But so much of the world seems to have lost the ability to be reasonable in favor of black-and-white thinking.
For those without religious objections or addictions, one glass of beer or wine with a meal is a complete nothingburger. Yes, it technically impairs your reaction times, but not enough to be a crime.
Yeah, Sweden is one hell of a place, few places have so many sticklers for rules collected in one place, for better or worse. And it's a very secular place in general, but very "zero tolerance" when it comes to drinking and driving, but completely opposite when it comes to "drinking too much only on weekends".
I just looked it up, and the limits in Singapore would probably let you get away with one or two beers before a drive (assuming an adult male).
Though I suspect the BYD folks would want to avoid any hint of impropriety, so they probably will only let you drink there _after_ your test drive.
But I've only ever ate and drank at their showroom, I never went to the car side of the business.
Yeah, unless it is a subtle message to convey that their autopilot is top notch haha
Why? Just make sure the customer who's test driving has the beer and wine after the ride. And their companions you can fill up before to put them in a good mood.
Right, but in countries where they're very strict about drinking and driving, you won't see even salespeople trying to get people drunk while selling a car.
It’s a fancy showroom, not a car lot. You can’t drive off in one of the products unless you want to make a grand exit through the plate glass windows. Singapore car registration costs as much as the car itself and all they’d do is get you started on the paperwork.
I think they can do the paperwork pretty quickly. And I'm reasonably sure they let you do test drives.
Just need to make sure that the driving customer has the beer after their test drive. You can fill up the companions before, however.
But to strengthen your point: I don't know for sure, but from what I can tell by looking at the place there's barely enough inventory at that showroom to allow some test drives. It's definitely not a car lot.
Aha, I'm not entirely sure what a "car lot" is, but the showrooms from BYD and other car makers here in Spain definitively let you test drive cars there, although you won't buy a car and drive away from it there. Apparently it works differently in Singapore :)
"Drinking alcohol" does not necessarily equate to "getting drunk." At least if you're a grown adult and not in undergrad anymore.
Are undergrads supposed to get drunk more easily than older adults? How would that work? Unless you actually meant children and not young adults
Drinking is a skill. It takes time to develop. Teens and the likes - their main goal is to get wasted and fast.
Absolutely not. Just that in Europe we start heavy drinking from 12, so by the time we are 16 we know how to properly imbibe.
The only reason to get a car in Singapore is to give the tired father an air-conditioned place outside the crammed apartment to go and have a nap :).
Well, it's also quite useful when you have to ferry multiple kids and their crap around.
And jokes aside, many people also need a car for work. Eg if you are a real estate agent, and always flitting around between different showings.
Here in Dubai too. Always rather the Careem driver turns up in a BYD than a Tesla.
It’s not just tariffs. They’re not homologated to the US market, so even if you were will to pay multiples more than people in Australia do, you can’t register one in the US.
Tariffs are exactly the reason that situation is as it is.
BYD can outwait the adjustments of the US car industry to a new reality, in the same way that the Japanese did back in the 80s.
Last time, the US did it by screwing the union workers of the rust belt, while also giving up on passenger cars and moving to SUV/trucks, but this time it's a complete change in technology and the US (and Japan to an extent) is having trouble reorienting its manufacturing and supply chains to support the change.
If Ford can't sell an EV version of an F-150, then it has a real problem, because the rest of the world is not staying on ICE technology.
Artificial trade barriers don't last.
The Ford thing is bizarre. My brother has an F-150 Lightning. It’s an amazing vehicle that they just couldn’t market in this gonzo social landscape.
He is literally the walking version of the stereotype of a rural cowboy type. He runs a small hobby farm, leases pasture to local farms. He works in financial management for a regional company and his wife is a procurement officer for a state government.
They produce most of their electricity with solar. Replaced some tractor use cases with oxen. They literally don’t pay to operate their daily drivers. (A lightning and a Volt now Bolt)
The lightning replaced their emergent generator when that reached its end of life.
He got into this stuff after doing the numbers for the company. It’s cheaper and better to operate. Last year they bought a dozen Silverado EV pickups for their field people. They work fine where they deployed them. The workers love them and the opex is better.
The self described rednecks hate it because the internet told them to. He almost removed the branding because he gets approached by people warning him about all of the terrible things that will happen.
Isn't part of it the dealer network as well? They've existed so long on service money, they were actively pushing people away from the Lightning because the service needs were so low and they wouldn't be making money off them.
Yeah, Ford realized that early on and had once raised the idea of building their EV division as a direct-to-consumer more directly competitive as a Tesla-rival, but as soon as that news floated the dealers had a fit and one of Ford's ancient problems is that the dealers are also often its largest shareholders. That's been a recipe for Ford's many little disasters since 1919 (where the Dodge Brothers were dealers and shareholders and convinced US courts to force Ford to pay more profits to shareholder dividends than reinvest in R&D, those dividends then helping to finance the Dodge Brothers' next business, the Ford rival Dodge; the terribly broken concept of "fiduciary duty to shareholders" comes almost directly from that 1919 lawsuit, if you've ever wondered how American businesses became the quarterly-focused way that they are instead of longer horizon focused).
This has been my experience when trying to buy any EV in the US. They technically exist, but finding one at a dealership is hard. Harder still is finding one that they actually have charged. Finding one without massive dealer fees is impossible. They use the forced scarcity as an excuse. Chevy dealership told me I was better off buying a Tesla. Hyundai told me “this isn’t really an EV kind of city”
It's the towing issue that compromised the Lightning too. Attach something to an EV to tow and you kill the range. A lot of people in this country buy a pickup to tow something with it occasionally.
> Attach something to an EV to tow and you kill the range
It reduces the range, just as it reduces how far an ICE truck can go on one tank. But that's only an issue if you tow long distance and cannot find a place to charge on the way. You could choose to rent an ICE truck for such (increasingly) rare occasions. People for whom that's not so rare should stick with ICE or hybrid, or in future with an EREV.
Once they can reset their range quickly like an ICE vehicle can then this becomes a non-issue. EV torque would be great for towing. But it's not quite there yet, outside of some BYD fast-chargers AFAIK. But losing (even theoretical) tow range is something I think would bother the typical F150 buyer. Even changing from a V8 to a V6 in the F150 was a problem for such folks. They don't like change, and they don't like their truck's "stats" to reduce, even if it gives better overall performance.
My company owns like 10k work trucks. Zero tow.
The people with serious towing needs are buying F-250s anyway. The people towing their toys to the lake are mostly fine. If not, it’s not the right vehicle choice.
> If Ford can't sell an EV version of an F-150, then it has a real problem, because the rest of the world is not staying on ICE technology.
Is that a problem for Ford though? Basically nowhere outside of North America buys trucks like the F-150.
You see a few Ford Transit chassis cabs with a flatbed on the back in Europe but mostly enclosed Transit vans.
If North America is mostly only buying trucks from Ford and Ford can't sell an EV only truck, then has Ford given up on North America if EV is the present competitiveness need?
(Of course the related news was that in Europe Ford also moved to an agreement to rebadge Renault EVs instead of manufacture their own. Has Ford given up on Europe, too?)
The argument that tariffs could protect Ford to do the hard work at building more EV models seems proven wrong when Ford makes the short-term decision that it can kick the can down the road on supporting EV models until after the tariffs expire.
> If North America is mostly only buying trucks from Ford and Ford can't sell an EV only truck, then has Ford given up on North America if EV is the present competitiveness need?
No, because American truck buyers seem to prefer non-EV trucks while commercial EV buyers seem to prefer Ford's more practical E-Transit vans.
> The argument that tariffs could protect Ford to do the hard work at building more EV models seems proven wrong when Ford makes the short-term decision that it can kick the can down the road on supporting EV models until after the tariffs expire.
Ford's truck sales are not protected by the newly introduced tariffs but by the 25% Chicken Tax tariffs imposed in 1964. Seems unlikely that will change.
(There's been a lot of consolidation in the car industry over the past few decades which Ford hasn't much participated in. I guess the platform sharing agreement is a consequence of that as it wants to reduce development costs.)
> No, because American truck buyers seem to prefer non-EV trucks
For now. In a market with very few EV trucks (and very few EVs in general, and very few cheap ones).
If Rivian found a way to mass-produce an R1T at half the price, does Ford compete?
If BYD builds a North American truck in Mexico, does Ford compete?
GM's Silverado EV is growing at a decent clip, including commercial fleet sales, and looks possibly set up already to eat the market that Ford is leaving behind. If GM sales continue and maybe extend to another, cheaper pickup truck EV model, does Ford compete?
If Hyundai or Honda figure out how to get EV truck sales going in the US, does Ford compete?
Ford's pitching an EREV pivot as a "best of both worlds" situation. GM back in 2019 said EREV was a "worst of both worlds" situation that complicated drive trains for not enough benefit, especially to the consumer. Is Ford signalling competitiveness by ignoring warnings from their actual competitors?
This is interesting to me because it seems that the US is walling itself off from the rest of the world.
If people in Nairobi are buying BYDs the American government can be smug about tariffs China still wins. The battle is over the emerging markets.
Which is also why the US administrations of the Marshall Plan era thought they made it clear that tariffs were a bad way to stay competitive in a global economy. Tariffs were absolutely the wrong move. Ford's actions seem to be proving that.
It's 100% tariffs. So yes, it's of course tariffs. They’re not homologated because there's no point of selling something when half the price goes to import taxation
It is just tariffs.
The reason BYD is killing it is because they can offer their cars at a price point unavailable to the US. The reason for that price point is because China is producing some of the cheapest batteries in the world.
BYD cannot build their cars in the US because the core part they need to make them cheap is the batteries. CATL makes the batteries that BYD uses and they aren't going to setup shop in the US. A lot of what makes CATLs batteries cheap is because China has a raw materials trade pipeline that's now superior than what's available in the US.
All of this goes back to tariffs.
By putting insane tariffs on all imports the US has effectively isolated itself from the rest of the world. Manufacturing will defacto be more expensive in the US because a significant portion of any incoming raw resources will get an automatic 25% tax.
The US does have it's own raw resources, but they aren't fully developed. Prior to 2024, we were heavily reliant on imports for a lot of our manufacturing. Shaking up the entire market for stupid reasons has destroyed manufacturing in the US. It'll take decades to repair and rebuild.
The steep tariffs against china that Trump did in his first term against solar, steel, and batteries were maintained by Biden. In term 2 Trump ramped those up to 11.
I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. Tariffs could be an important tool as part of a strategy to kickstart US manufacturing.
A big issue is education. In my region the state government is pushing hard to support semiconductor manufacturing. In addition to incentives for building facilities they funded education in community colleges to train up the workforce, did some similar stuff at the high school level and implemented incentives for supporting industry.
But… you get the army you have, not what you want. POTUS has the strategic insight of a cab driver and is surrounded by a wack pack of sycophantic C-team players. We’re hurting manufacturing because without a strategy you’re just driving margin enhancement for a few industries, and the grinding down of the economy will hurt most others.
We should look to the Chinese as a place to learn from rather than a faceless enemy. They achieved amazing results and made some mistakes and sought out to do some things that are kinda gross as well. But… they aligned policy, governance and incentives to move their country out of the sorry state it was in. DJI has like 20k PhDs working on drones. I doubt we have that many in the US.
I pretty much completely agree with you.
I'm not saying that Tariffs are necessarily bad or wrong. But they are a shape blade that is really easy to cut yourself with. Blanket tariffs are effectively putting a sword on a rope and wildly swinging it around in a crowd.
What you need is a surgeon to handle the tariffs.
This is the hard truth. Consumers choose on price. With a squeezed middle class nobody can afford to give a shit about patriotism or geopolitics.
Chinese automakers can give you a lot of car for 30k.
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.
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.
Chinese EVs are 15% more expensive in Australia over China. The same could be in the US if not for tariffs.
I’m going to guess that a true competitive push into the US market would have marginal costs that exceed getting into Oz. But anyway your comment inspired me to do some digging:
The high end Sea Lion 7 from BYD apparently tops out at around 205k yuan in China. $29k USD.
https://carnewschina.com/2025/05/08/byds-sealion-07-dm-i-lau...
Found it in Australia for $64k AUD, that’s $43k USD.
https://evdealergroup-byd.com.au/configurator/byd-sealion-7?...
That’s a lot more than a 15% markup. A Tesla Model Y Premium would be competitive at a minimum.
I would think the comparison would be the BYD ATTO 3 premium vs Tesla Y premium.
Australian sticker price for the atto 3 is under $45,000 AUD, a smidgen over $30K usd.
With a wife with a mobility scooter and working 30-90 mins away from the office depending on traffic, I picked on up (salary sacrificing) as the lease costs less than what I was paying for fuel on the Kia carnival (Sedona in the us) each week.
Tesla model 3 entry level was another $10K AUD for a car with less features.
Why do you say the ATTO 3 is comparable to the Tesla? Seems like a completely different class of EV from a power and range perspective.
The US could have had a competitive manufacturing industry, but we traded it for cheap offshore labor.
That destruction has been ongoing since the 90s. We've hollowed out our ability to make things.
We basically focused on the exact wrong things which has put us in a pretty vulnerable geopolitical position. Rather than trying to bring resources into the US to aid manufacturing, we tried to bring finished goods into the US at a lower price.
China has done basically the opposite. They've focused on bring raw resources into china while centralizing manufacturing. That's what has turned them into the global powerhouse they are when it comes to producing everything.
For the US to turn this around, tariffs would have been in order, but they needed to be pretty focused and with internal plans on building out the industries we wanted to grow.
Doing tariffs first without building manufacturing was just dumb.
US car companies became banks that happen to make cars.
How much would you like to pay for that 80k new truck? Sure, we can give you that monthly payment, lets just structure it as a 10-year loan where you end up paying twice that on a rapidly depreciating asset. Boom, we've just sold two cars and only had to manufacture one.
We have manufacturing capacity here! Some of this is simply down to US automakers choosing high-margin SUVs and trucks over cars (most US auto brands do not offer a single car).
Basically only Tesla offers any car that is even similar to the extremely popular Toyota Camry. No US maker offers a compact car anymore.
Honestly, I don't think the immediate impact of dropping tariffs on Chinese vehicles would be as dire for the US automakers because the Chinese vehicles largely sell into noncompetitive segments. I don't doubt that the F-150s and Silverados can coexist with BYD sedans.
Yeah, the US auto industry appears to have shoehorned itself into pickup trucks.
Fine, so let BYD come in with compacts, sedans, electrics.
It'll be interesting to see if US auto manufacturers were right that Americans only want trucks and SUVs.
> Doing tariffs first without building manufacturing was just dumb.
What you are looking at is unbound and shameless grifting. Not the first insurrection by the oligarchy in US history. Monopolies and wealth concentration come with a price. A very steep price.
BYD isn’t developing an American model for multiple reasons, but the biggest one is likely tariffs.
Western auto makers are getting slaughtered by Chinese competition outside of the US (and maybe the EU? I don't know what the EU tariff situation is). I have a Chinese EV. It was half the price of an equivalent Tesla and better in every single way. Build quality and reliability have been excellent. I've driven 60,000 km with zero battery degradation.
It's just sort of amazing how badly the west dropped the ball on green tech. We're also working on importing an off grid solar system from china that will easily be a third of the price that we'd get from a US supplier.
One interesting thing that people don't realize with regards to the US tariffs is that a lot of goods flow through the US on their way to international markets. For a long time it has been easiest for us to buy stuff made in china from vendors such as Amazon in the US and have it shipped internationally from the US. Now with all of the tariffs we end up getting double tariffed for doing this (once when the goods enter the US and a second time when they ship to my country). As a result I'm seeing more and more people looking for ways to buy from China directly.
Hmm, but aren't they dumping cars in the market and still not selling? They're stuck with massive amounts of unsold stock, and the market isn't taking it - something doesn't add up.
We are seeing the culmination of the 50+ China industrialization project at the samme time as the West's 50+ year financialization and deindustrialization project, all to concentrate even more wealth in the hands of the 0.01%.
China is really the only country capable and willing to build infrastructure. The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring. The chip ban in particular has created a captive market for Chinese chips. In 1945, American exceptionalists believed the USSR would take 20+ yars to copy the atomic bomb, if they could do it at all. It took 4 years. China will do the same thing with EUV in the coming years.
Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs and import bans on BYD in the US and much of Europe.
Additionally, Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.
As an example of how China uses state power, a famine in the 20th century caused China to decide that food security was a national security interest. The availability of cheap, quality food is viewed as essential and the state intervenes to ensure that continues. Likewise for housing.
Western companies seem increasingly focused on the top 10% because the bottom 90% have nothing left to eextract.
I've never seen a comment simultaneously be so right on some things and so wrong on others.
> The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring
Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them down a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab juggernaut later is folly.
> Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs
Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than any other car company and less than many including BYD obviously. They also compete directly with BYD without tariff protection worldwide and in China and do well. They are worth a trillion dollars because of the potential of their self-driving software which is far ahead of any other car company's including those in China.
> Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.
Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent need for them right now but they can switch if necessary.
> Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them down a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab juggernaut later is folly.
I’m quite sure advanced semiconductor fabs are considered a strategic necessity by China regardless of restrictions. Further, China is now getting the H200 chip…
> Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent need for them right now but they can switch if necessary.
There are also plenty of rare earth extraction projects coming online outside of China!
> Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than any other car company
Tesla was saved by a DOE loan [1]. Tesla was kept afloat with carbon tax credits. Yes, the Big Three got bailouts in 2008. And now, most importantly, import barriers are the only thing keeping Tesla afloat.
[1]: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/573148-dept-o...
"Tesla got some subsidies" does not refute my argument. All carmakers get subsidies. BYD gets tons! And Tesla is selling plenty of cars in places without import barriers protecting them including China itself.
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China is a food importer and Chinese housing, especially in the tier 1 cities, is as expensive as anywhere in the world.
I’ve never seen a comment so misinformed.
You claim Tesla is created by government subsidies yet ignore the $230B in subsidies for the Chinese market?
I think where I live I see more BYD than teslas these days. They look better too.
As you mentioned EUV machine, I happened to read an article from a former Executive of ZhongXin, a domestic competitor of the famouse Huawei and also sanctioned by US. He said that China had no insentive to develop lithography technology including EUV until Trump blocked the sales of EUV machine in his first term. [1]
There are tons of other cases, like EDA software, etc. It used to be a bilateral business. Now China become more and more independent of the rest of the world due to external pressure.
BTW, I've been working and living in the West (more specifically , in Canada) for almost 30 years but also have access to Chinese language media. I've been watching a lot of misunderstanding or misinformation. It's less in recentl years. I have to stay way from some of the topics to avoid being downvote because misinformation believers strongly believe I'm wrong for those topics.
