BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

My view.

I was looking at a new car. Went into several car shops, VW, Skoda, Toyota and BYD.

And all of them were basically empty and BYD was FULL! Like really really full.

And the sales guy confirmed it, they are selling cars like crazy.

The good thing about China is that apart from Taiwan they have little territoral ambitions, I don't foresee huge conflicts incoming, but I am a not entirely sure the US will manage to lost its position as gracefully as the British Empire.

It could be bad news for US citizens if their currency precipitiously lose its power, and they'll look for people to blame.

The U.S. record on human rights is horrific, if you see it from a global perspective (which you should). China is a saint in comparison.

The idea that we should allow cheap vehicles to flood the domestic market because that will "cause the US auto manufacturers compete" ignores the wholly uneven playing field at work here, and the government backed goal of one side. Just the cost of labor alone makes that not an approachable thing to do.

On the reverse "bad" US side, we have more and more international auto manufacturers building and investing in factories in the US every year. Strangely, this decision involves billions of dollars and years of work to make happen. It's not based on internet vibes.

And the "renewable" growth is really kind of misleading. They're also building more coal power plants than the rest of the earth, combined, each year. They represent ~50% of the worldwide coal power in use today and produce roughly one third of the total CO2 in the world now, almost 3x that of the US.

But I guess the future is government funded undercutting of international competitors, using technology stolen by the government from those competitors, in order to destroy those competitors, while using very dirty and cheap energy to do so? Is that the lesson we're supposed to learn from them?

In 2008 China had 1,300km of high speed rail. In 2025 they had over 45,000km.

Meanwhile America has zero…. But is bringing back the V8! Ye-haw!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle_e...

But countries either need to be protectionist or you need to lower production costs to a Chinese level. That means workers only earn the same as a Chinese worker.

You could also collect import taxes, but I think people simply cannot or don't want to afford a car that is much more expensive.

Some decry Chinese government subsidies for cars, but the truth is that these exist in western nations as well. They are sometimes indirect, but the end result is the same. The secret to cheap prices is simple labor costs.

Commonly refereed to as race to the bottom and not a new topic/problem. Car makers in countries with high labor costs could maybe pivot to luxury cars... otherwise the result of the competition is already determined.

In 50 years China will have the same problem with other countries that produce even cheaper. That is already happening and for quite a few years already.

Taxes would probably be the best solution, but they have become politicised and weaponised.

The problem is, China isn't competing fairly!

As a Western manufacturer, bound to well-paying union labor and environmental protection laws, and restricted by the mechanisms of the free markets, you cannot compete with a country that employs all sorts of labor abuses (from complete ignorance about OSHA and its national equivalents over 996 work model to outright forced labor and slavery), completely wrecks its own environment and provides virtually unlimited financial funds to its companies in its quest to achieve dominance.

China is inarguably the biggest threat the entire rest of the world faces and barely anyone is even seeing the dangers.

Just curious-- if you did say something about this, what would it be?

That said, it is indeed disappointing that we can't get their affordable EVs over here. Western legacy automakers really need a kick in the ass (especially since Tesla seems to just be phoning it in now).

Coal is still the majority of generation capacity [1] in China and China continues to build a lot more coal [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China

[2]: https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-solar-climate-carbon-e...

> BYD has to me become an icon of US decline vs Chinese expansion

Is this supposed to help virality or something? "US decline"?

No US born child in the last 30 years aspired to working a factory job. The US is an advanced economy with advanced jobs. We get degrees, we sit at desks, maybe even sit at home, work on computers, and generate an order of magnitude more wealth than our screw turning counterpart overseas.

I can tell you with first hand experience, that this problem is much deeper than "the US needs to catch up" because in reality what is happening is that China is the one playing catch up. The US is already 30 years into the endgame of economic development. China is where the US was 75 years ago, and on paper, the US has only progressed from that point.

> This is to say nothing of the CCP and their record on human rights and free expression.

To be very practical here… the lack of rights and freedoms as they exist in China typically has no consequence to the lives of individual people. For example you have no right to protest. But how many of us have exercised that right in the US? Personally I never did. And honestly those protests end up being just parties and parades

It's not quite nationalism or maybe the term is being used as a disguise for something else, if those in power believe 50% or even the majority of their own population is not worth worrying about, should be "thrown away", or "removed". Out of control elitism and corruption, combined with lack of empathy and narcissism, can very easily undermine human rights, freedom, and national progress.