There is some China bashing but it's an informative article and it was hard to know what to quote.
Based in Shenzhen, the hub of China’s electronics industry, BYD has shown how Chinese carmakers can tap the country’s dominance of electrical products. No company has benefited as much from China’s embrace of battery-electric cars and plug-in gasoline-electric cars. These vehicles together make up 40 percent of China’s car market, the world’s largest, and are expected to be more than half next year.
Like most Chinese automakers, BYD doesn’t sell its cars in America because Trump-era tariffs remain in place, but BYD does sell buses in the United States. BYD is leading China’s export push in electric cars, and is rapidly building the world’s largest car carrier ships to transport them. The first of the ships, the BYD Explorer No. 1, is on its maiden voyage from Shenzhen with 5,000 electric cars on board, and is expected to arrive in the Netherlands by Feb. 21.
[...]
China has built enough factories to make more than twice as many cars as its market can buy. That has led to a price war in China, particularly between BYD and Tesla, with discounting that has inflicted heavy losses. One of BYD’s newest models, the subcompact Seagull, starts at less than $11,000.
[...]
BYD has a lingering advantage over Tesla: Mr. Wang’s decision by 2011 to develop plug-in hybrid cars, which account for nearly half of BYD’s sales.
There is an interesting book about how the Chinese Silicon Valley works called AI superpower, China, Silicon Valley and the New world order by Kai-Fu Lee
In the book, it explains how new start up would usually make a product that is “good enough” in order to gain traction and as there are a lot of people using them to cultivate a product ecosystem. the firms gets feedback from customers and create more “niche” lines for specific customers, etc.
Which compliments well with the episode on Tech Won’t Save Us where they talk about how asian car manufacturers works in reverse compare to Tesla that produces for a high-end car and mostly to make a statement and pushes for a life-style.
I have a friend who told me once how Tesla are very Californians in their design because they are not adapt for regions with lower temperatures
I have a friend who told me once how Tesla are very Californians in their design because they are not adapt for regions with lower temperatures
Their chargers work fine in California but they froze up in Chicago last month because they are apparently identical all over the US. It was an insane design choice.
I was referring more specifically the handles that need to pop off to open the door. There were stories about how they weren't able to pop them after an ice storm.
But yes the charging issue is pretty obvious lmao
We've gotten very occasional spurts of Chinese car imports in Colombia so I've had a chance to sit in a few different models across a decade+ of model years. Like Kia/Hyundai, the early ones were real real rough, and each subsequent generation I've seen has been more impressive.
I really, really want to see China's low cost electric subcompacts take off here, especially in Bogotá. Colombia has terminal carbrain, and replacing all the cars with electrics wouldn't solve the nightmarish traffic problems, but at least things would be quieter and the air would be cleaner.
When I was in Bogota a couple years ago I saw very little ebike adoption but a ton of gas-powered bikes. Have ebikes gotten any more penetration lately?
I haven't been back to Bogotá in a minute (live in a different part of the country now) but I doubt it. A lot of the people on powered bikes are delivery drivers for exploitative apps (if you've got "real" job you can afford a motorcycle or a scooter) and are probably working a longer day than a battery can be relied on for. Gas is expensive but not that expensive when you're only buying a half gallon at a time. There hasn't been much/any progress on public charging infrastructure.
