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Discussion (96 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own, since they will only be viable in the US market and will only be built in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
At worst, the US is setting itself for horrendous energy policy issues moving forward. Sure, the US produces a lot of gas and oil and will for a long time, but any sort of price shock will be leaving the US and its car-dependent economy destabilized while Europe and Asia power forward with an ever-decreasing dependence on oil and gas. The US’ endless energy wars will continue to serve as incredibly expensive endeavors that other countries don’t even need to engage in.
Just look at the number of nuclear power plant projects in progress in China. Comparatively few people in China depend on oil to get to work and travel long distances, and the amount that do is plummeting.
It already charges in 20-30 min at Tesla chargers and has a practical range of around 600 kms, so super fast charging is a bit of a straw man.
Their big downfall is they lack an advertising department willing to spend $1B on pro-electric propaganda to debunk all the Trump/big oil propaganda. IMO EVs have addressed all the main product concerns, and the last ones are buyer stupidity.
The products aren’t “done.” They’re stagnant.
Where is their proper 3 row SUV, not a hacked together half-effort like the YL?
Where is their passenger premium van product for China?
Remember that this is a company with a huge factory and presence in China, and they were the first mover in that market, but they’re getting eaten alive by competitors.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
And I haven’t even brought up the Cybertruck selling a couple hundred thousand units below company expectations, that is kind of a low blow cherry on top.
If Telsa were still innovating, they'd have rounded out their offerings to fill in the gaps that are now getting filled with other brands in the world outside the USA.
That's where we are now. Here's BYD's main model lineup.[1] Ford's CEO brought a few into the US, paying the insane tariffs, and has his executives driving them to see what the rest of the world is doing.
[1] https://www.byd.international/models
Protectionism makes industries weak and uncompetitive, ultimately hurting the economy of the nation doing the protectionism. The proper strategy to become competitive is to provide a small amount of protectionism so that the industry does not die, but to ruthlessly cull underperforming companies so that only the strongest survive. The continual bailouts of companies, keeping old and incompetent executives at the helm, has destroyed the US car industry.
Capitalism requires killing the underperforming companies. Until we let that happen, or at a minimum cull leadership and boards, nothing will get better. The rot is at the top.
BYD are taking over.
1. Tesla Model Y: 27 621
2. Volkswagen ID.4: 8 802
3. Toyota bZ4X: 7 274
4. Volkswagen ID.7: 6 976
5. Tesla Model 3: 6 608
6. Volkswagen ID.3: 5 572
7. Volvo EX40: 5 270
8. Volvo EX30(xc): 5 206
9. Skoda Enyaq: 4 836
10. Nissan Ariya: 4 565
(P)HEV - (plugin) hybrid electric vehicle
ICEV - internal combustion engine vehicle
I'm drowning in theoretical options and I'm left with the feeling that everything seems to be possible in theory, but I won't find a solution that works in practice. There are just too many protocols and regulations at play.
Would have loved to wait another year until the dust around these topics have settled a bit, but the old car broke too early :( (sorry for the rant)
Now considering that Yaris is one of the most popular cars (if not the most popular), the increase in sales is not surprising
Not saying any particular number is wrong, just wishing it was a clearer way of writing.
I looked at other posts by this author and they're all sales by month charts, which are totally devoid of context as they lack historic trend data. So you have to read words to find that out, and its a slog.
I have firsthand experience starting a news company and dealing with this...
What is the solution for this, from the management POV?
Maybe having a data-vis person as part of the editorial process?
If gas were 2 to 4 times as expensive, as it is in much of Europe, there would be a lot more demand for electric cars.
It doesn't help that we exclude all of the new BEVs from China, which are considerably less expensive.
The only way to make our auto makers change is to "make" them change by competition. Consumers want this change, why else do we buy so many Japanese cars? (Beside the fact they are superior.)
Note: I do not want this to be true. Other companies please copy what Tesla has done with both of these. You’ve had years to do this and failed.
This isn't accurate - they charge slower and Plug & Charge is common in many vehicles now, including with the Tesla network - whereas Teslas cannot Plug & Charge on other networks.
And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla), and people often like having _some_ physical controls, which goes against Musk's aggressive cost-cutting.
If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
For anybody who lives outside of the USA, the Chinese EVs are the obvious answer -- they've surpassed Tesla on essentially every dimension.
For people who live inside the USA the math is different, since the government is actively interfering with the free market to protect a critical donor.
FSD is unmatched. Auto lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control don't provide the reactivity that FSD does even for straight highway driving.
Most objective reviews comparing a Model Y and Chinese EVs are far less conclusive than you propose.
They have a very reliable charging network with excellent coverage. You just plug your car in and it charges. No fiddling with the charger or apps.
> And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla)
The infotainment is good enough where you don't need AA/CP but that's a very subjective detail. The software also extends outside of your car because you can do a lot from the Tesla phone app. It's your car key, control/schedule/monitor charging, lets you control climate remotely, use GPS to find your car, dashcam, etc... all are standard with a Tesla but unavailable or locked behind a subscription elsewhere.
> If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
Agree but FSD (Supervised) is actually getting better over time. You 100% need the latest model/hardware car to see those improvements though. Still needs supervision but far less than you may have seen before.
That said while I appreciate their design focus their software still feels not quite as polished as Tesla’s.
Also, while FSD has limitations, I have found it provides enormous utility for older people, and Rivian doesn’t yet have a competing product for FSD.
“Best software” is subjective as well. Many car owners really don’t care for their software and just want to bypass the infotainment system for CarPlay and Android Auto.
10% to 70%: 5 minutes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Flash_Charging
As far as charging, I think that was the case even as recently as ~2 years ago. But today, the charging game is pretty decent for CCS cars. You can even charge at Tesla stations using an adapter.
Did I actually buy a Tesla? No. But this has entered as part of my "which EV" conundrum.
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EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.
Chinese EVs did flood the EU not because people did want to buy chinese EVs: people in the EU were totally fine buying ICE cars (german, french, italian, spanish, ...) but the EU pushed for both legislation and incentives greatly favoring EVs over ICE cars.
It's IMO a good thing to push people to buy EVs. But the EU being the EU, of course they did it incredibly stupidly and managed to inflict great harm to EU car manufacturers and basically hand the keys of the kingdom to both US and chinese EVs (because in the EU we're led by treacherous dumbasses).
People can nitpick as much as they want as to what makes a great car: I do personally have a car from 1988 (38 and a half years old now) that, unlike chinese EVs, doesn't spy on me and that I could still use as a daily (I regularly use it to go, say, pick my kid at school). It's a gas-guzzler and it's not as safe as a modern car, but we definitely could have a talk about the actual CO2 of that car over its lifetime (which is far from done yet) compared to the CO2 over the lifetime of a brand new EV (and if we talk about chinese EVs brought by boat to the EU, we can have a talk too about coal usage in China).
The article could be summed as: "Yay, the EU caused great harm to its car industry and is now buying chinese EVs by the cargo load!".
I take we should... Applaud that great success!?