BYD is kicking off a price war with gas-powered cars as new lower-priced electric vehicles begin rolling out. After launching the new Qin Plus EV Honor Edition on Monday, BYD said it’s “officially opening a new era of electricity is lower than oil.”
We’re just not getting any of the chinese EVs. Many of them are only so cheap because of how much their government is subsidizing them so they can build market share.
The car only has 75 miles of range which just won’t fly at all in the US. Anything sub 200 is considered unusable here. nvm thats the phev model. That’s not bad for a phev. but 260 miles of range and 15k has to be heavily subsidized. And I doubt Americans would be willing to buy a Chinese car.
There was a lot of talk about how nobody would buy chinese cars in Australia too… they are everywhere.
People can get a chinese diesel dual cab 4x4 pickup for $37k Australian, the CHEAPEST Ford Raptor starts at $87k.
The raptor is the top end performance version of the ranger. Some quick googling says an Australian ranger starts around $37k as well.
I was gonna say, in the past people bitched about Korean cars, now Hyundai and Kia are everywhere. Even further back they bitched about Japanese cars.
This same thing happens every couple of decades. In the 70s and into the 80s, no one wanted to buy a Japanese car - or virtually any Japanese products. They were considered inferior to their American-made counterparts (cars, but also electronics like radios and TVs). The inferiority of Japanese products was regular material for stand up comics and late night TV. The only reason, we were told, that anyone was buying their products was that they were dumping them on us at a loss. Now, Toyota isn’t synonymous with “cheap piece of crap import” but is considered a quality product that rivals American automakers. If you can tolerate a large dose of regular old establishment racism and want to flash back to how America saw the Japanese in the 80s, check out Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun. Or really about 70% of what was produced in the 80s, I guess, but that one is a keeper.
Fast forward a decade or two and they were saying the exact same thing about Korean cars. Same with Korean electronics in general - why buy Korean when you can buy Japanese?
Now it’s Chinese cars. I’m sure in the next decade or two it will be Vietnamese or Indian cars.
We still don’t like Korean cars that much in the US. Kyundai were making some really good progress at establishing themselves as a real brand. Then the sand issues came out, followed up by the stealing, sprinkle in some bad choices all around and I’d say they’ve set themselves back a good 5-10 years.
The Japanese really stuck around by making quality cars. Mitsubishi barely exists in the US, Isuzu couldn’t make it (outside of trucks), and I can’t believe Suzuki made it until 2012. They rode on the coat tails of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan (who’s currently having a bit of a crisis). These cheap Chinese cars are not quality. I’ve been in a number of them in Costa Rica and they all start out nice, but rapidly fall apart. Some of them are even rusting away, in Costa fucking Rica. You’ll still see 1950s land cruisers casually driving around down there. But I don’t think any of these Chinese cars will make it that long.
Maybe with their luxury brands they’ll make something lasting. But from my limited experience with them, I can’t imagine Americans buying them, let alone not laughing at them.
Yeah, unless they can buy a car for 15k. Principled boycotts of blood diamonds and child labor cocoa are more likely than someone making working wages willingly paying a 40% premium for a legacy GM shitcan.
Not that BYD is going to be selling a model 3 competitor at that price, but no one is selling a new Camry near that either. The 1st Gen civic was a basket case too, now it’s a spaceship and that’s without government-led IP raids…
While there are tensions with China, people still voted with their wallets in previous such “invasions”.
- Back in the 70s-80s, there was a lot of tension with Japan, arguing similar things, but the smaller, efficient, cheaper vehicles were compelling enough to practically destroy American car companies who were unable to produce similar. Actually, UAW reaction where Japanese branded vehicles at UAW plants were destroyed, w may have been the root of my former hatred of unions.
- when Korean manufacturers broke into the US market, the tensions weren’t as high but there was a lot of attacks against “inferior” products and plenty of bigotry. While Hyundai/Kia have had recent missteps, they’ve come on strong, grown like crazy, and now have a much better reputation for quality and support, while still holding a price advantage and compelling features
