How China Built BYD | Hacker News Reader

How China Built BYD

nytimes.com

155 pointsthelastgallon424 comments

What baffles me is Tesla's paralysis compared to BYD. Wasn't Tesla's goal to do rapid expansion to stay on top of everybody else volume wise? Nowadays Giga Berlin produces way less vehicles than anticipated and the only new factory being planned is Giga Mexico, which also seems to proceed slower than expected. In addition while the next vehicle from Tesla will probably be a smaller and cheaper car, it's still at least a year before they'll be able to ship it. All that while Tesla seems to have lots cash at hand, so why don't they expand more aggressively?

They have the most popular car in the world how are they paralyzed?

I couldn't find a single list that had Tesla anywhere near #1; source?

For individual models I've seen Model Y as #1. But seems like growth has stopped, so paralyzed is still appropriate, and they only have 2 models that sell significant numbers

Most other OEMs have (way way) more than four models, so that kind of list doesn't really make much sense to begin with.

The Model Y is the most popular car in the US only if you don't classify pickup trucks as cars. Pickup trucks dominate car sales in the US.

> if you don't classify pickup trucks as cars

Pickup trucks aren't cars so that is perfectly reasonable.

Pickup trucks aren't cars in the same way that tomatoes aren't vegetables. If you say "I bought a car" and then show someone your brand-new Ford F-150, nobody's going to think anything of it. Pickup trucks are cars, and watching Tesla fans try to spin this fact is really pathetic.

I don't know how widely held that viewpoint is. words mean things and cars aren't trucks, and someone's option on Tesla has nothing to do with that. If you call a truck a car, there are people that will look at you funny.

Depends what country/culture you're in. Here in Australia, you'd never not call a truck/ute a car.

> If you call a truck a car, there are people that will look at you funny.

Damn right, and SUV's, Cyber"Truck"'s, Pickup's, Toorak Tractors, etc. aren't trucks save for north america.

George Miller famously made a serious of documentaries about car drivers that chase trucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt7trqrPYX4

The Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling vehicle in 2023. Hard to imagine you looked seriously and were unable to find that out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_Y

He may have been confused because it’s a dumb statistic.

In good faith he probably assumed that the above post implied that Tesla was in some way leading other manufacturers, rather than Tesla having the single best selling model while massively underperforming in sales compared to other manufacturers that have had the bright idea of offering many different models of car.

"most popular car in the world" not most popular last year; specificty matters if you want to make big claims. The title goes to the Corolla with over 50 million sold. And apparently 1.6mil 2023 according to finalized numbers.

Anyway, Tesla's numbers do not separate Model 3/Y, and they ballpaked $1.2

Quick search suggests BYD made 3.02 million cars in 2023. Tesla: 1.8M

Yes, but half of BYD's cars are hybrid. Only ~1.6M are EV. They've also been around making batteries since 1995 and ICE cars since 2003.

It's not like Tesla's subsidies have been small, but BYD's have been enormous.

Sounds like a Tesla killing recipe for the existing automotive industry.

As they should have been in both cases. For most uses EV is superior, and this is the only way for Chinese manufacturers to meaningfully tackle the broader markets worldwide. You can’t compete with ICEs and hundreds of billions of dollars invested into that manufacturing capacity, supply chains, and know how. But you can entirely sidestep the whole thing. Which is what the Chinese are doing.

How much of a subsidy does Tesla receive by selling its green credits?

Individual model sales don't make much sense as a metric when makers are diversifying. The model Y has 1.2M sales for a total of 1.8M Tesla cars in 2023, where Toyota alone is at 11.2M.

Perhaps they know something we don’t. The news outlets won’t shut up about EV demand “slipping”. That could be because they don’t like Musk, but it could also be real. In a post-truth society there’s no way to know.

You can always read financial reports like 10-Ks and see what the company says and what their number say. Numbers like that don't really lie.

The media has never been a "source of truth" at the best they act as watchdogs, at the worst they are propaganda. You can still find answers for yourself but good information has a time cost.

Demand is a lagging indicator, and worse, they have to plan well ahead for how it changes. Building multiple billion dollars worth of production capacity ahead of a severe recession would be a potentially fatal decision.

You can always use leading indicators (unemployment, inflation) to estimate future car sales, then extrapolate the EV market share based on current growth numbers. It's not perfect but it's not like large institutions somehow have a crystal ball. They are likely doing the same, just with better models.

The only leading indicators you need in the car market are days of inventory and recent price actions.

Tesla's have deep discounts, suggesting a decline in demand. The end. Inventory is harder because they lack dealerships, but it doesn't seem difficult to find a Model3/ModelY right now at all.

-------

For other EVs like Ford Mustang MachE, days of inventory are rising and prices are declining as well as incentives.

It's not just Tesla, it's a wide group of EVs that were overproduced.

https://caredge.com/guides/fastest-and-slowest-selling-cars-...

Go browse some stats yourself.

You’re considering those metrics as though they’re independent from APR on loans, which could easily double from where they are now in case we enter a recession and rate hikes prove ineffective. Try to sell an expensive car on a loan with an eye watering APR of, say 10-12%. This did actually happen in the past, and could very well happen again.

> recession

You've got it backwards. Recessions cause rate-drops.

> Try to sell an expensive car on a loan with eye watering APR of, say 10-12%. This did actually happen in the past, and could very well happen again.

Rate-hikes cause us to lose demand. Yes. But we can see that Toyota demand remains strong with less than 30-days-of-inventory on the average.

So the rate-hikes from the current Fed plan are causing expensive cars (like EVs) to lose demand, while cheaper, more-reliable ICE / Hybrid cars from Toyota are selling like hotcakes.

Yes, I'm watching interest rates and am trying to understand how our economy shifts because of them. But at this base level, EVs are doing worse (and the stats prove it), while cheaper cars (namely ICE/Hybrids) are doing far better right now than anyone expected.

Don’t look at recent recessions which happened under almost zero rate regime. Look at the Carter era recession. Consider as well the cost of “printing money” if the rate reaches double digits, and the cost of refinancing the existing debt load.

You've got my wording reversed.

I said: recessions cause rate-drops. Which has always been true. Rate-drops don't always cure recessions, but its one of the first moves a central bank will make to try to fix a recession.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

That's 2020, 2007, 2000, 1990, 1981, 1979 where a recession immediately caused a rate-drop.

We have to go all the way back to 1974 before we had inflation so high that the central bank kept rates high even during a recession. (Dropping rates causes inflation, so its a balancing act). Even then, interest rates dropped to bring us out of the recession of 1974.

After that, we have 1969, 1959, and 1957 recessions, all three of which caused interest rates to drop.

So 9/10 times, a recession caused an immediate drop in interest rates. And the last 1 time (1974), the recession _eventually_ caused the bankers to drop rates.

> Consider as well the cost of “printing money” if the rate reaches double digits, and the cost of refinancing the existing debt load.

You've got it backwards. Increases rates destroy money. Lower-rates print money.

That's why the central bank lowers rates during recessions, its an indirect way to print money (or perhaps more accurately, expand M2).

Raising rates, like what we're doing today, destroys money (or more accurately, contracts M2). We're destroying money today with 5%+ interest rates because we've seemingly made too much in the 2020 recession / COVID19.

Discounts seem to be $2K for a $47K Model Y long range picked from inventory—-is that actually deep or can I find better deals?

https://www.kbb.com/tesla/model-y/2022/

> Price: The 2022 Tesla Model Y starts at $64,990. A Model Y Performance model starts at $67,990. Fully loaded, a Performance model can exceed $80,000.

Is there any other car, EV or otherwise, that is seeing a 33%+ decline in price over the last two years?

Other EVs are seeing deep shadow-discounts. I'm seeing 0% or 1.9% APY financing, which comes out to a few $x,000 savings over the term of the loans. Its an interesting trick to reduce prices without changing the MSRP, but I'm perfectly aware of these games.

Still, no one is doing the depth of discounts like Tesla is doing right now. Granted, all EV makers (Ford F150 Lightning, Subaru Solterra, etc. etc.) have discounts of some kind, or at least financing-1.9% or other "shadow discounts". But nothing on the level of wtf 30%+ declines like Tesla.

Tesla sell more EVs in USA than everyone else combined, partially because they can cut prices. Is any other company even making a profit selling EVs in USA?

The comparison is a little weird because Tesla changes their pricing a lot.

The Model 3 price is down ~25% year over year:

https://www.kbb.com/tesla/model-3/2023/ (Long Range MSRP $45,990)

https://www.kbb.com/tesla/model-3/2022/ (Long Range MSRP $57,190)

But that's still higher than its release price in 2017:

https://www.kbb.com/tesla/model-3/2017/ (Long Range MSRP $45,200)

And the "target price" for this thing was supposed to be $30,000.

It's hard to do the same comparison for the Model Y because it was originally released in the middle of the COVID supply chain problems, but notice that the year you're using was the high water mark. The Model Y Performance was $69,190 in 2022 but $61,190 in 2021:

https://www.kbb.com/tesla/model-y/2021/

2022 - 2023 was -32% but 2021 - 2023 was only -16.5%, which itself presumably had some of the supply chain issues priced into it.

There is also an explanation for why Tesla's pricing is like this: They don't use dealerships. For most carmakers, if they temporarily can't supply enough cars, they don't change the MSRP but the dealers mark them up. Since Tesla doesn't have dealers, to change the price they change the MSRP.

According to Tesla.com the model Y starts at $42,990 and goes up to $52,490.

https://www.tesla.com/modely/design#overview

Both unemployment and inflation numbers are known to be fake though. They’re specifically designed to make the government look good. One would be a fool to rely on them exclusively.

Then I guess nothing is truly measureable and we should never attempt to make predictions.

If unemployment and inflation rates are politically gamed nothing is truly measurement?

Many things can be measured. And unemployment is measuring something but not what it's titled suggests. It's measuring some group of people who qualify as looking for work within a specific timeframe. Someone looking for work for a few years is deemed to employed by this calculation some might question it.

Changing the definition of a recession is political.

That doesn't mean measurements are incorrect and prediction is impossible.

My comment was sarcasm. OP is being a defeatist to anyone trying to explain that, yes, actually, you can measure these things. You don't need the media to spoonfeed you fake information.

By the time a number is getting printed in the newspaper, Goodhart's Law has already taken effect. Anyone who has a good metric is keeping it quiet, the only way to know anything is to get deeper into the details than the average voter.

They are not totally fake, but engineered to show only the good parts. Like when fuel prices drop, and this appears in the data as huge inflation reduction, when in fact food and shelter prices are growing faster than anyone wants to admit.

There are many numbers and government numbers are not fake. They're cherry picked, there's a difference.

I don't like the "post truth" trends in politics either, but I don't think there was ever a time when treating "news outlets" as "truth" was actually a good strategy. They've always had biases, blind spots, and agendas - just like they do now.

Or maybe they are just fucking up since their CEO is occupied with other things. Or they face an uphill battle against an opponent that is essentially state-backed. Or it's just very hard to scale up a car manufacturer, even if you want to very hard.

History shows that no company ever was as superior to its competition as it may seem at their height. Shit's hard yo.

Tesla is the only US EV manufacturer able to meaningfully compete at all. It absolutely dominates its market segment. If that’s “fucking up”, I don’t know what to tell you. Are you sure you’re being rational about this?

There are almost daily reports of demand falling despite sales still going up (just not as fast). The general public are being conditioned by these articles to believe sales are going down. Obviously someone benefits from this narrative as it’s being pushed pretty hard.

If I had to gander a guess, most of people who were going to buy an EV have already bought one, and a certain percentage of the market will always be impenetrable so long as charging a car battery is more inconvenient than filling up a gas tank.

Far from the truth. I have been building PEVs since I was in my teens (ebikes, scooters, a boat). When it came to buy a new car for the first time in my life in 2020, there were no EV options that would do what I needed (large cargo capacity, 6+ seats, not extremely expensive, decent range for road trips).

Sorry, I'm not spending 100k on a vehicle.

So I ended up getting a Palisade for around 32k, and my wife and I share that, at least until until better (and cheaper) EV options appear.

Luckily I can use my ebike for most of my around town travel, and that is way less of a carbon footprint than adding an extra vehicle to the roads.

That would be a very game guess, given up until last year EV sales look to be rising quadratically or better. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/electric-car-...

It's more likely EV sales are driven by cost. They have always been more expensive than ICE cars, so they only eaten into the luxury market up until now so the rises you see are increasingly bigger bites out of the luxury market. But the primary cost is batteries, and a blip during COVID aside the cost of batteries has dropped every year. EV are approaching the cost of ICE cars now, if you include a bit of hand waving about maintenance costs.

Once they cross cost threshold and drop below the cost of ICE cars, that quadratic curve will go exponential for a while. Chargers will spring up like weeds, because you can make money out of them and they cost far, far less to build and run than a gas station.

I keep hearing this argument but as someone who has been shopping for a EV for months now I don't see it. EV proponents need to understand one important thing: People like their gas cars because they are actually pretty good these days. The EV needs to overcome that.

The car I am benchmarking against is the Mazda CX-5. The natural equivalent is the Model Y.

The CX-5 is a fully mature platform and is an excellent example of a solid ICE vehicle.

Mazda CX-5 Cost: $29,300 (possible out the door price ~35K)

Model Y cost: Demo vehicle out the door price is ~41K

My upper bound price is 35K and im seriously exploring used given Mazdas reliability so I can save myself ~10K for a recent model year.

I cant do the same on the Model Y because of Tesla's poor quality reputation. Either I am stuck taking a massive risk on a used Model Y or I am priced out of the market. Repair costs on the Model Y are insane.

This is not including the fact that the Insurance cost on a Model Y is almost double that of a CX-5 for me. (970$/yr vs 1700$/year)

Now I have also considered other EVs but none provide an equivalent to what the CX-5 offers.

Theres the used Mach-E market but I have concerns about reliability and given the whole issue with the contactors and how Ford handled it, I don't think this car will last long term. OK, lets ignore that issue, you still get a bad looking car that gives poor value for the price you have to pay (I can only buy used and it is still on the upper bound of what my budget is)

There is the Chevy Bolt EUV. Good insurance, easily within my price range but I am giving up everything else. Terrible charging speeds (made worse because I dont have supercharger access), not really a crossover, terrible looks, not as comfortable as CX-5.

This is just my anecdote but there has got to be many others who have made the same conclusion as me about EVs. You have to compromise in at least one of the following areas with every EV: Price, looks, comfort, value

What's the "massive risk" on a used model Y?

Becoming underwater on repair costs.

What “repair costs”? I’ve owned a Model Y for 3 years now. My repair or maintenance costs were $0.

Good for you. The number of complaints I see on the Teslamotors subreddit, TMC forums, youtube, and Truedelta make me unlikely to take you at your word. With something so important and expensive on the line why would I make the decision based on your anecdote?

why would you your decision on anecodoes of disgruntled users instead though? people who aren't having problems aren't going to storm over to TMC forums and yell THINGS ARE FINE! how many model Y's have been sold, and how many people are posting? my thoughts here aren't about Tesla, but about the broader online complaints system. people who aren't even thinking about it (food from a restaurant, service from a auto shop, whatever) just aren't motivated to go online and say things are fine because they're busy having lives outside of yelling how fine their experience is, so we get this distorted view of the situation because of that.

https://youtu.be/sKcrsdvlBzE is where I'm coming from.

Well I find consumer reports was spot on with my last car in terms of what failed. Since the Model Y is only in my budget used, and they rank model years 20,22,23 as 2/5 in reliability with 21 getting a surprising 3/5 I am inclined to think all those numerous people complaining about quality issues isn't just selection bias.....plus there is the fact that the car insurance is almost double that of the Mazda...im sure part of that is repair costs.

When you are risking so much money on the line, it becomes difficult to ignore all these signals.

Just to pile on, beating the value of a one year old cx5 with low mileage is basically impossible even with other ICE cars.

Drive an EV. You’ll understand why people buy them. Then also consider that you’ll almost always charge it at home, and the price of a “full tank” is $8 where I live. Not a typo. And you don’t have to go to a gas station, and potentially stand in line there. All of this saves time and money, and you get a much better driving car which requires zero maintenance other that changing tires every 40k miles or so.

I have driven an EV. Despite the smooth riding nature of them, I'm looking for a car that will last me 10+ years. My last car(Mazda 3) was perfection in my eyes. I really would like an EV. I don't have time or money for a headache. I am also planning on moving with my car a couple times in the next few years to different cities so there is that problem with charging infrastructure. I was just looking at the situation in LA (Silver Lake area) and for non tesla chargers it is surprisingly worse than I thought given that this is California.

Well, not everywhere in the world is electricity cheap. In Germany (Munich) I pay around 70 cents for kWh. That's close to what a full tank of gas would cost.

Plenty of people have driven electric cars in 2024, are well aware of the pros and cons. And they still decide, rationally, that it's not for them.

To me, there is just a class of people who are simply out of touch with reality.

While I could afford the monthly payment on a $41k car, I would never do that when I would be starting my comparison with a $16k Nissan Versa.

Then on top of that, there are many who would be starting with a Nissan Versa because they simply can't afford an EV even if they wanted to.

EV discussion always ends up being what the best espresso maker is when a huge % of the population is just going to buy the cheapest coffee maker they can because they are too broke to buy much else.

This exactly! A large part of the market is actually shopping below the price of a new car because thats all they can do. Its getting worse since those buyers are being priced out more and more everyday. We have reached peak auto in America as well.

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2wHh6sduVw

The last car I owned (Mazda3) lasted me 10 years and cost me 6k (I bought it at 60K miles)

The CX-5 is what I consider a stretch purchase. I can easily afford it but after working 15 years I feel like I wanted to get something I consider upscale.

Really wish more EVs were in this price range but if you include the nonsense that Tesla does with repair costs, the fact that even in 2024 it is still up in the air whether or not they can consistently build a reliable car, and all the other OEMs just messing around with bad designs, the state of EVs is pretty poor. :/

Like I mentioned in my previous post: This isn't a situation where ICE cars are so horridly bad that most people's day to day lives are made worse. You could maybe say that for some EVs though. People are quite happy with their ICE cars, and EV makers need to not only overcome all the issues that they have, they also need to overcome this friction to switching.

The market is only impenetrable because of the price.

If we had used subsidies to undercut gas powered cars we would be much further along than subsidizing expensive status symbols for people who have to always have the latest iphone.

Of course, demand was going to slow from that market from saturation.

The same reason I use an android and so do a 130 million other Americans. I am cost conscious and I will never pay more for an EV if I can pay less for a gas powered car.

The main problem IMO is the groups making these decisions all have the latest iphone at the margin. "No one wants an android" besides for nearly half the population that shop based on price.

I recently bought an EV and it's obvious that they still have some significant downsides: expensive up front and poor public charging situation, mostly.

The ID4 we got is very comfortable to drive around in, but doing a road trip in Winter feels out of the question. Not that it'd be completely impossible, mind, but I'm pretty confident it'd be a pain in the ass. We'd need to stop more frequently than in our CRV, for a longer period of time each time, and the whole situation with electric car chargers are that sometimes they're broken or working worse than expected, or they're all taken (and it takes way long for a spot to be freed up than at a gas station), or there's problems with the software running the charger, etc.

It'd also be nice if it charged faster and had more range too; it's not terrible on those metrics, but I wouldn't say it's great. Certainly not comparable at all to gas cars.

Most people don't do roadtrip. They just charge at home.

If you drive a tesla, a supercharger stall is usually available. No other kind of chargers I found either work, or are compatible with my tesla.

Yes, this is exactly what we do.

But it would be nice to be able to road trip more easily, and 100% this is an important factor in a lot of people's decisions, even if road tripping is something they do only infrequently.

> Most people don't do roadtrip. They just charge at home.

It’s very common for Americans to drive long distances to visit family for holidays.

The median American lives within 18 miles of their mom and 80% within "a couple hours."[0] 55% are within an hour's drive of their extended family.[1] The majority of Americans do not drive long distances for holidays. It's common, but like, most people aren't doing it, which is congruent with GP's statement that "most people don't roadtrip."

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f...

[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/05/18/more-than...

So a couple of hours. Say 140 miles. In winter, that's about your max range in a Model 3/Y. So you arrive with so little juice, and at a house that has no charger. So you have to charge forever on 110v. Then limp your car to a Supercharger and wait forever to get to 80%. Then make a stop halfway home to charge again.

Winter does NOT like EVs...

this is the type of thing i would say before i actually got an EV.

now that i have an EV and no place at home to charge it (like tens of millions of other Americans) and have to use public infrastructure...

its crap. its just utter crap. yes 90% of trips are not road trips but people do not want to buy a car that can do 90% of what they want any more than they would buy shoes or clothes that only work 90 percent of the time. (and imagine if you could only buy one pair of shoes or one shirt).

Yeah, I agree that buying an EV without charging at home doesn't make much sense. And if you do need to drive many hours, even occasionally, that would be a great reason not to get an EV. To be clear: I don't own an EV, nor am I planning to buy an EV next time I need a car.

Midwest especially; growing up a one day drive across the entire width of Illinois and Indiana to see relatives was a common occurrence for the holidays and our summer family trip.

Should have bought a Tesla - they had the foresight to actually build their supercharger network which makes longer trips feasible, if not necessarily as convenient. But I go on long roadtrips (by which I mean longer than 200-250 miles) maybe once a year, if that. What you’ve described is not an issue to the vast majority of Tesla owners.

My wife really disliked the Model Y we took for a test drive, especially the road visualization that you can't turn off for some reason. Can't fully blame her, the thing looked unstable/distracting, and making it impossible to turn off is a bizarre UX decision.

But yes, I'm aware that Tesla has the charger situation handled much better.

Does anyone know what that visualisation is about? It doesn’t bother me, but it also doesn’t help me or give me any useful information.

If it showed me the road behind me, for example, that would be super useful for lane changing. But it doesn’t.

I have never once been able to work out what it does, and would love to see the map take up the whole screen, or maybe a list of route instructions could go there.

I also noticed that the “full self driving preview” option seems to have disappeared (it never worked anyway, guessing it’s because we drive on the left)

My assumption was that it was to help build confidence in their self-driving by always showing you what it sees no matter if it is control or not. It does have some effect in that you start to get a feeling of what situations the car has a good idea about the surroundings and when it struggles.

There is probably a "it looks cool" factor that doesn't hurt.

As far as UX options. Providing customization is old-school thinking these days :/

In my car it doesn't even look particularly cool. The visualisation from FSD that I've seen people post on the internet does look nice, but that's not what I see - I get a very low detail representation of the lines on the road, and occasionally the vehicles ahead of me. I think that's what it used to look like before FSD, but it seems like the FSD preview hasn't arrived in Australia yet.

It does show some indicators form proximity sensors.

Pretty much though what the other commentor said - to give a visualization into the self driving for the user.

When traffic cones and street signs were added to Autopilot - you can bet that visualization was updated to show it off.

Same when they added stop light detection.

It makes sense to me. For some, that visualization literally _is_ the AI, for all they know.

I (almost) never use that. I expected it to be more distracting than it is though.

I have the screen dimmed right down. You can also choose dark mode.

I think Tesla needs better salespeople, there's a lot of things that I found out after purchase that makes me like it more.

Dark mode was on. She hated that more than light mode actually, said it looked like a horror thing (she's not wrong).

It might sound minor, but that visualization is on the part of the screen close to the steering wheel 100% of the time you're driving. If it's distracting to you, it'll be distracting any time you're driving, and you can't turn it off.

It's like a running shoe that comes with a pebble permanently stuck inside.

Agree. I did an 6-hour/500km drive last week in my model 3, we had to charge once. Found a supercharger in the car park of the local golf course.

The anxious feeling about “will the charger work/will there be a space” is real, but the more EVs are out there, the less this is going to be a problem.

My petrol car could have done the trip without refuelling, but it would also have cost, literally, 5x the cost of charging in fuel.

Isn’t the supercharger network now open to everyone? Or is that an EU only thing?

I checked and no. It seems to only be some a relative few stations.

Most OEMs have signed deals with Tesla to use their network in the US, but I don’t believe these have yet to go into effect.

Tesla built the US superchargers first, so they used a proprietary plug that only just got standardized as NACS / SAE J3400, whereas non-Tesla US EVs were selling with standard CCS (or J1772) ports.

Different from the EU Superchargers, which I believe do offer standard CCS?

There are two parts to this:

1) Tesla needs to open up superchargers to other cars. They're doing this at scale now, but generally only the less popular ones, or if they're required to do so by government grants. So many key sites are still off limits to others.

2) In the US only, other car manufacturers need to adopt Tesla's NACS charging standard, so they can physically connect to superchargers. (In the rest of world, everybody including Tesla is already standardized on CCS2.)

Road trips in the winter suck in a Tesla, despite the Supercharger network. Batteries perform worse, you have to charge frequently, and you have to drive slower than during normal weather. That pretty much writes off the entire Midwest where people travel a lot during the holidays. My FIL used to live one state away, roughly a 4.5 hour drive in an ICE. The same drive in a Model 3 would require 3 stops, and then we'd arrive at his house with less than 20% charge. And since he doesn't have a charger, we'd be stuck using 110v, which would add basically nothing. So the return trip would require a long long stop just to get on the Interstate.

The truth is that EVs work very well in China and parts of Europe because they have good public transportation, so the EV is used only for minor or infrequent trips. For anything longer they will use trains. In the US the situation is different, you need to use cars for major trips, which is not the best option if you have an EV.

> longer they will use trains

There isn't really any data backing up this claim.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/e...

Planes are much popular and this data seems to include commuters so the proportion of people travelling medium to long distances by train is much lower (and most medium/intercity travel is obviously usually done by car and not trains..)

Amongst other significant issues (e.g. cross border travel) high-speed trains tend to be quite expensive, so unless you're travelling alone a car is usually cheaper.

This is what I still can't comprehend about Amtrak. I priced out a bus trip to a few states away and it was <$40. Amtrak cost more than a plane ticket. Is it astonishingly overpriced because nobody uses it and then nobody uses it because it's astonishingly overpriced?

Train systems require heavy government investment until they can (maybe) produce any profit. But the same is true for other transportation systems: the auto industry is also heavily subsidized at all levels in the US, you just don't hear the numbers.

Amtrak is heavily subsidized: the federal government pays for its capital expenses (tracks, tunnels, etc); Amtrak is expected to cover its operating expenses (employees, etc). Very common arrangement all over the world.

you can fly several states over for $40? damn, if i were to fly from, say melbourne to sydney, capital cities of neighboring states, it'd be at minimum $150 AUD (~$100 USD) round trip. interstate travel is way more accessible there huh?

I think you misread him. He was said that the bus (ground transport) was $40, and that the train (Amtrak) was more than a plane. He didn't say how much the plane cost. Your $100 USD for a short flight is probably the low end of a reasonable estimate here in the US too.

ah, yes i see that now, my bad :)

It's not really that different though. Google is showing me a round trip flight between New York and Miami for $55. Amtrak wants more than four times that, and it's 27 hours each way instead of 3.

I feel like the premise of a train is that it costs less than a plane and uses less fuel per passenger, so it should be slower but have the countervailing advantage of being less expensive. That is not what I'm observing.

In Europe, yes.

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/promotion/getaways

That page shows me flights to Bulgaria, France and Italy for around €25.

It is more like €50 if you aren't flexible, and more again if you need business-friendly times.

fascinating! i would assume then that has an impact on the culture in europe as to how far is considered a "long" drive then, it never occurred to me that it could be that flights are so cheap, i always assumed the main reason for the difference in attitude was just because the countries were so much smaller and therefore local cultural differences became apparent much sooner!

Note that most airports that Ryanair flies to are in the middle of nowhere, so nobody I'm aware of uses them for business travel (except maybe in Ireland). Also Ryanair is famous for all sorts of add-on costs, i.e. they will weigh your carry-on, 30s too late at checkin, pay with credit card ... all cost significant extra.

I think that's only the case for a few major, western European cities.

Ryanair fly to the primary airport in eastern and southern Europe. I'll take a direct Copenhagen to Sofia flight rather than enjoy changing with Lufthansa.

At least in the US, Auto demand has slipped a little bit with the changes to financing, some manufacturers are still being hesitant to offer incentives, and some dealers seem insistent on acting like we are still in full-on covid whiplash shortage mode with slimy upcharges.

Sprinkle in the various reliability issues that have come up recently (regardless of whether they are better or worse than what happens to ICE vehicles)...

Oh, Also, Kinda wondering what's happened to Kia/Hyundai's EV sales due to public perception, I still see probably as many of their EV's as I do GM[0]

[0] It's around this order, not counting plug-in hybrids and M-Plates[1]: Tesla, Ford, Hyundai/GM, Rivian, Polestar, BMW/VW

[1] M-Plate is a "Manufacturer's" License plate. Not all states have them, but mine does and due to where I run into a lot of them. Since they range between prototypes and 'company car' they don't count in the ranking.

I take Elon at face value when he recently said “We kind of dug our own grave with the Cybertruck”

It does not sound as ominous if you also include the next line he said.

"We kind of dug our own grave with the Cybertruck. It is going to require immense work to reach volume production and be cash flow positive at a price that people can afford. It will take a year to 18 months before it is a significant cash flow contributor."

They should have just put everything on Tesla model 2. In Belgium everyone is excited for a 5000 EUR tax cut for EV vehicles below 40000 EUR. Lots of people interested in buying Model 3 and Model Y now. But 35000 EUR is still too much for the general public. If they could’ve released a model 2 for 25000-30000 EUR instead of the Cybertruck, it would have dominated the EV market.

Tesla's are absolutely everywhere in my corner of Europe, which is by all metrics poorer than Belgium. Tesla is already dominating.

Isn't it at least because it is not possible to purchase BYD in your country yet ?

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/best-selling-car...

It’s very much possible to buy a BYD in Norway, yet they don’t sell well. I don’t know why BYD doesn’t try harder. Maybe too small market to bother investing a lot, so they rather import a few cars at too high prices to check the Norway box.

https://elbilstatistikk.no/

Norway is (I believe?) the flagship country for Tesla, so it may be more difficult to pierce.

I remember EV's penetration is super high there.

Very cool link to see the imports!

I was questioning availability of the cars, because I think this is the key issue for BYD.

I wouldn't want to buy a car where you cannot get support.

In Estonia for example, Tesla's are not very popular for that reason, because for a long time, you couldn't even buy them from the official website (so you had to go through gray imports and drive to Finland for the routine maintenance), it's somewhat better now.

But BYD is simply unreasonably difficult to purchase, and if you do, then just doing a routine maintenance (or if you have an accident) sounds much more difficult than Tesla.

Once they solve that distribution problem (and don't get under political sanctions), I think they can be really great cars.

> Once they solve that distribution problem (and don't get under political sanctions

That's the problem, I believe BYD will be sanctioned to hell in Europe (not to mention USA). They will, however, easily dominate on BRICS and other places outside rich western countries.

When we were looking for our next EV last summer, the BYDs all had some weird design elements that killed the vibe for us one way or another.

We ended up with a Renault Megane e-Tech[1], very pleased with it so far. Our garage was built for 1970s cars and can't fit the new monsters, so choice was limited.

[1]: https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/megane-electric....

Never grokked real market for it - all the toyota hilux owners? These type of cars are basically not used in Europe, you can sometimes see it on farms but almost never on the roads and general population simply doesn't buy them, they are not the best choice since they drive poorly and have high running costs, and also way too big for our roads and parkings.

Also, legendary hilux has solid reliability in brutal conditions (thats why every isis in desert has them, ideally with some gun or rockets mounted in the back). No way some early 1st generation of much more expensive electric car will match that. You want to have that safety of lugging around additional fuel tank or two in jerrycans and refuel in a minute, instead of doing additional mental gymnastic re chargers.

So a bad civilian car, and farmers are very price sensitive so not a great choice for them (now).

Tesla has a history of making low volume prototypes that they sell to weird early adopters and then making high volume cars. The prototypes validate the designs without as much potential for a crushing warranty bill if a technology bet isn't great.

For instance, tesla went through several varieties of battery chemistry in the early days of the S before landing on the setup they ended up sticking with for the model 100 and later models.

The CT is a similar low volume prototype of the maxwell technology dry cell battery stuff, 48 volt and "drive by wire" architecture that is 100% novel. They're really better off just selling it to a smaller number of people until they get the bugs worked out. The stainless steel stuff is cute but not the hard part of the CT.

I think it was an attenpt at the luxury SUV market. A lot of rich people drive huge SUV's, the cybertruck can kinda be a quirkie suv. The hilux type workhorse trucks will never be replaced by anything electric (atleast on the global scale, america might have a chance with the f150 lightning)

given the reviews its getting, it may not ever reach that goal.

having said that, the lessons they learnt and technology they developed while building that white whale are massively valuable.

The gigapress alone is damned impressive.

What technology specifically? The gigapresses are bought from Idra.

yes but it was invented for this project.

Its kind of funny how people digging Tesla grave when BYD rise is a way bigger problem for all other car companies. Tesla is still producing a huge amount of EV compared to everybody.

Tesla strategy is to have huge factories, not many factories. They are not only building Giga Mexica. There is currently expansion of Berlin and Texas.

In addition to that they have many other things and locations. Such as their own lithium refinement. Battery materials factory in Austin and stuff like that.

> All that while Tesla seems to have lots cash at hand, so why don't they expand more aggressively?

As Musk has pointed out, the real limit isn't money but the ability to hire experts and to manage all these complex projects.

BYD's battery division is an absolute gold mine like AWS is for Amazon.

BYD is the primary battery supplier for most consumer electronics (you're iPhone or Macbook is using a BYD battery for example).

Tesla doesn't have an "AWS" equivalent to subsidize it's automotive division, as the Solar+Grid Battery+Battery Management Systems divisions have much lower margins and higher upfront cost.

> BYD is the primary battery supplier for most consumer electronics (you're iPhone or Macbook is using a BYD battery for example)

Hey, do you have a source for this? I am trying to find this information online but I am failing to find, but it sounds super plausible. In their own website there's not much information other than their batteries are used in other things besides cars - link to the site below

https://www.bydglobal.com/cn/en/BYD_ENProductAndSolutions/Ne...

Apple's Supplier list from FY22 - https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp...

Amazing! Thank you! Pretty cool information!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Company

Somehow it wasn't in theit Wikipedia either - it mentions briefly something about batteries for common electronics but doesn't details or mentioned Apple. Anyway, thanks for the source!!!

Np.

Most Chinese corporate information isn't going to be found on English Wikipedia tbh.

It's an insular industry and most OEMs and VARs are Taiwanese, Chinese, Singaporean, Thai, or Malaysian so Mandarin is the preferred language as they're all owned by the SEA Chinese diaspora

what’s the best data source?

Idk.

I've grown up reading business news/trade news in the tech industry since I was a kid, my dad was in the industry, and I am as well, so all these names are common to me.

All I can say is any long read business news you see in NYT or WSJ is 3-5 year behind trends.

If it made it to either, it's already at the 4th-5th part of the Gartner Hype Cycle (which itself deserves a hype cycle)

What information sources would you recommend for the industry?

Same. I thought that I was avoiding bubble as much possible. It seems that I am living in a special bubble.

> any long read business news you see in NYT or WSJ is 3-5 year behind trends

That bad?

Sounds like a business opportunity ...

Already solved by trade papers, Reuters, Axios, etc

Ah, ok, thought you meant other sources.

Yep, right, mainstream press is always behind. Then the TV guys bring up the rear ...

> Mandarin is the preferred language as they're all owned by the SEA Chinese diaspora

Wouldn't the SEA Chinese diaspora be more likely to speak Hokkien? Or maybe Cantonese?

No, there are so many dialects (Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hokchew, Hakka, Hainanese, ...) that are so unevenly distributed that Mandarin is the lingua franca. Eg. Singapore was mostly Hokkien back in the day, but decades of government policy has taught Mandarin to basically all Chinese there and younger folks know dialect poorly if at all.

They speak many different languages at home, but they all do business in Mandarin.

Wait. The list is only for listing supplier of Apple products. Why do you know "BYD is the primary battery supplier for most consumer electronics (you're iPhone or Macbook is using a BYD battery for example)."?

The Apple's supply chain is very complex, and we don't know the exact number of supply percentage, do we?

I can't remember where but I have read that "one in six mobile phone batteries around the world are manufactured by BYD"

I feel like you mixed up BYD and CATL.

Nope.

Apple and BYD had a contract dispute around 2015-17 [0] though it ended up getting dismissed by the USDCNDC, but CATL was always targeting the Power Electronics space like Siemens and Hitachi while BYD cornered the rechargeable battery market by 2010 when Berkshire Hathaway and Samsung took a minority stake in them

[0] - https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-cand-3_15-cv-04...

Profile checks out ;)

Do you have a blog?

Maybe. Maybe not.

A boy can dream, can’t he

I heard on the grapevine that 60% of a US "Tesla gigafactory" is actually a Panasonic battery factory. The battery vertical is definitely a critical part of this story.

I've heard a similar story as well. I think the US factories is partially owned by Panasonic and the Shanghai one is partially owned by CATL.

I don't think Tesla really hired any battery engineers or R&D either come to think of it.

If they did, they would have had an R&D office in Japan or SK who are leaders in Battery Chemistry but I don't think they have a presence there at all.

Most likely Tesla and Panasonic are co-sharing IP with Tesla taking a lead on Battery Management Software (a very hard problem) and Panasonic on Battery Manufacturing and Efficiency (an equally hard problem)

Tesla acquired Hibar Systems in 2019, and Siilion in 2021

That's no secret. Here's the Panasonic press release from 2014. "According to the agreement, Tesla will prepare, provide and manage the land, buildings and utilities. Panasonic will manufacture and supply cylindrical lithium-ion cells and invest in the associated equipment, machinery, and other manufacturing tools based on their mutual approval. ... Tesla will take the cells and other components to assemble battery modules and packs."[1]

Panasonic now has another cell factory in North America, in DeSoto, Kansas. This time, Tesla is not the landlord.

A "cell" is a single unit device, and a "battery" is a group of connected cells. Panasonic makes cylindrical cells in standard dimensions. Others assemble the cells into into battery packs. Much of the rechargable battery industry works like that. Plants that make cells are mostly chemical plants, and some of the chemicals are corrosive, toxic, and flammable. Once the chemicals have been canned into a neat little metal can, assembly into packs is a routine manufacturing operation.

It's possible to make integrated batteries. Classic 12 volt lead-acid auto batteries have six cells, producing 2 volts each. BYD is heavily into integrated batteries, with their "blade" technology. There are lots of things that can go wrong in integrated battery manufacturing, but if the process can be debugged, the density is higher and the cost is probably lower.

[1] https://news.panasonic.com/global/press/en140731-3

BYD is big in the lithium ion cell and pack space for consumer electronics, but ATL (not CATL) has higher market share in most categories.

I mean is it just like, interest rates? Even if they have cash on hand, I'm assuming any big moves they would make are still really capital intensive because it's the auto industry.

By stuff Tesla and Musk have said, they are expecting slowing sales growth, but part of that is also because they said they are developing a new car. But other comments have just been standard demand and competition.

So is it just they don't think it's a good idea to keep expanding at past pace into uncertainty while hurdle rates got much higher?

A couple of main issues. In the US. Company EVs are currently not possible because they would be too expensive. The 7.5k IRA discount only applies if car and battery are manufactured in the USA. Tesla/panasonic is the only large scale battery manufacturer in the US and capacity is tapped out for existing models. Tesla would need to 4x this capacity to sell compact in the US with sufficient volume/margin. Tesla’s Mexico plant will achieve volume production at start of 2026. Second issue Elon messed up. Elon assumed that he would be able to either scale 4680 battery production a lot faster OR FSD would have achieved L4 autonomy by now which would unlock 3x utility of existing fleet via owners lending their car to rideshare when not in personal use. If this happened the need for a compact vehicle would be in theory greatly lessened. Neither happened and Elon has no backup plan. Hence why he is 2-3 years behind BYD in developing a compact EV.

I remember the time when the Nevada Gigafactory was really hyped up. It was supposed to dwarf even the largest Amazon Distribution Center and the plans were expand it to where you could see its octagonal shape from outer space. It was to be in the size of hundreds of football fields. Planes and drones flown by fanboys hovered over the site and posted weekly updates on how magnificent the progress was, like we were watching a modern-day pyramid endeavor. Of course, it was just another Musk distortion field. Today it’s only at 30% of the fantastical plans. The stock went up though.

According to this list, even its current state, the Nevada Gigafactory has the most floorspace of any warehouse in the world (5.3 million ft², followed by Boeing with 4.3 million ft²). Not entirely unimpressive.

https://www.avantauk.com/top-14-largest-warehouses-in-the-wo...

Tesla does impressive things but are the very definition of hype:

Full Self Driving but really lane keeping assist L2

Mother of all factories but really 30% of mother

Vacuum-sealed underground tubes capable of moving people en mass at high speed but really a 15mph underground paved road for Tesla cars

Linear growth of battery density but stuck on same chemistry

Used to have radar but now disabled on cars that have it because vision is like the human eye don’t need anything else

aka we don't want to maintain the vision and radar code bases / theyve drifted apart so lets just work on the one everyone has

There is no drifting apart. If so then there will be full regression to the minimum viable product, the low end Tesla. It was a conscious choice in order to save margin during the chip shortage post-Covid but under the pretext of vision is best. Radar-equipped cars used to be able to see through fog and heavy rain now nerfed.

I meant they would have had two maintain the logic for vision and radar and new features could be developed for one over the other. Calling it the same thing and trying to support the same settings with both was increasing workload so they decided to just implement the lowest common denominator.

You also forgot stomping on all of his engineers and designers and demanding an untenable design for the cyber truck. All of that wasted time and effort could’ve been spent on a smaller EV vs a truck that’s going to struggle to gain any market share outside of Tesla loyalists.

Can't make a cheap EV until you can make enough cheap batteries

No, that's not it. I refuse to buy a new Tesla because of some of the less user friendly (and IMO should be illegal) cost cutting measures:

- Horrible QA (https://www.equinoxevforum.com/threads/cracks-developing-in-...) - Extremely customer-hostile support strategies (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/angry-tesla-cust...) - Absurd cost-cutting measures/temporary bouts of insanity that cripple the UX of their cars: - Why does the Model 3/Y not have steering wheel stalks!? - Why did they try to offer the Model S with only a (bad) yoke!? - Why is there no HUD/gauge cluster on the Model 3/Y!?

I won't even get into just how ugly I (and anecdotally, many of my friends) find the Cybertruck; have you SEEN videos of people trying to actually use it as a truck and it completely failing to function offroad?

All of this stuff is directly attributable to Elon Musk. He's demanding a 25% stake in the company from his board - the same board that was found to be so absurdly stacked in his favor that his last pay package was thrown out.

Shareholders, at this point, should kick this guy out of Tesla and leave him to his true passions: shitposting on Twitter and SpaceX.

I agree, not only have they stopped making new sane cars, but they're actively making their existing cars worse!

* no indicator stalks

* no forward/reverse control

* apparently the automatic rain sensor doesn't work/exist (I think that's always been true; I just learned about it)

It very much reminds me of Apple's backwards steps with magsafe, touchbar and the keyboard. Maybe they'll come to their senses but I dunno...

>* apparently the automatic rain sensor doesn't work/exist (I think that's always been true; I just learned about it)

My Dec 2016 Model S has a "working" automatic rain sensor, it's just not as good as others I've seen. My '04 Audi A8 had a sensor so good that the first time it turned on I didn't know why, but then as I drove under some street lights I realized it had detected some really fine mist.

On the other hand, part of the reason I switched from the Audi to the Tesla was that I had $10k in broken "toys" on the Audi (1 of 2 bluetooth radios, 2 doorhandle auto unlockers, leak in the air suspension, steering wheel adjustment motor, etc), and part of what I wanted in the Tesla was something less expensive maintenance wise. So making more do less (using the cameras for auto wipers) makes sense.

Likelihood of air suspension failure approaches 100% regardless of brand.

I'd suspect the number of traditional rain sensor failures can probably be counted on one hand.

Tesla replace robust almost zero failure rate parts for cost only.

Sure, the rain sensor might have near zero failures. I would think the rain sensor probably has failure rates on the order of bluetooth radio failure rates, but I had one of those fail. But what has truly 0 failures is to eliminate the rain sensor entirely. More importantly though, the rain sensor is just one of many, many toys the Audi had. Failure rates are multiplicative, so if you can remove 50% of your parts, you eliminate a lot of points of failure, plus a ton of extra wiring and electrical problems, plus the whole problem of integration.

> But what has truly 0 failures is to eliminate the rain sensor entirely.

Only if you define "failure" as stops working. If you define it as not working, then it gives you a 100% failure rate.

My '13 Audi has significant problems with the rain sensor. It turns on when it shouldn't, doesn't turn off when it should, and when I first start the car and it's already raining I have to turn the wipers off and on.

The best rain sensor I had was in my old Ford Mondeo '04.

Pretty sure it has forward/reverse control

It's all about cost cutting to make EVs cheaper to buy

It doesn't. You have to use the touch screen. Yeah, really.

So it has a method to control forward and reverse? And a second method using AI, and a third using the capacitive buttons?

> the same board that was found to be so absurdly stacked in his favor that his last pay package was thrown out.

It was thrown out purely on the grounds that the judge didn't like it. The pay package was approved by Tesla's non-Musk general shareholders.

Thrown out by a judge in the most corpo state on the country. It was so embarrassingly badly handled they couldn't even rubber stamp it.

It was handled fine. If it had been badly handled, it would have been thrown out on those grounds. Instead, the grounds were "there is no reason for Elon Musk to be paid this much".

No it really wasn’t. Delaware goes out of its way to trust corporate boards to make business decisions, especially around compensation.

In this case Tesla screwed up at least 3 different standards that are generally biased towards the company against shareholders. Only the last of those 3 standards has anything to do with relative compensation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-31/elon-m...

> was thrown out purely on the grounds that the judge didn't like it

It was thrown out for technical but super legal reasons stemming from the Board’s lack of independence. Delaware judges don’t get to review pay packages approved by competently-run Boards.

The pay package wasn't determined by the Board. It was approved by them, sure. But they didn't set it. Why would it matter whether they had any independence?

If lack of independence is grounds for annulling the pay package, it's also grounds for annulling every other decision the Board ever approved. (It's the same Board!) That wasn't suggested; the grounds for annulling the pay package are different.

They set the upper limit, same thing

The batteries could be imported from China.

Or maybe the whole car could be imported.

You could have a cheap EV in America with a stroke of a pen. Thats kind of the point of the article. I mean maybe not on purpose.

It would have to be significantly cheaper than the credit. That might be very hard to come by.

You also have to accept that many people will go out of their way for tax credits, even if they are literally losing money to get it.

I’m not one to be bullish on Tesla under Elon Musk but I don’t see how the Cybertruck was a waste considering that it’s squarely placed in the most popular and profitable segment of the automobile market in North America.

It’s almost dimensionally identical to the F-150 and the masculine “look at me” cyberpunk appearance is 100% in line with basically everything about the big three automakers’ trucks’ demographics.

The only thing BYD can do differently is eat up unprofitable markets like the $20,000 econobox EV.

BYD will have dominated the world before Tesla does anything at this rate.

Here in Brazil, EVs basically didn't exist. Only very few Prius were seen around, and I mean very few.

Now, BYD showed up and everywhere you go you see one. Had Tesla been there, the same would have happened. But they chose to not even try (or weren't competent enough to do it).

BYD is doing the same in many other countries. Pretty soon I can see BYD being the main provider of EVs in multiple countries. Tesla had years of advantage and totally missed the opportunity to expand into those markets craving EVs.

I agree with most of this, but it's worth noting BYD is only 35% of China's auto market. Tesla is #2 at 8%. All the rest are other Chinese companies.

People in this thread are focusing a lot of ire at Tesla, but why do none of the other US, European, Japanese or South Korean auto makers make a showing? Why are they all behind not just BYD and Tesla but a bunch of other Chinese companies most people have never heard of? It's easy to blame Elon and his dumb tweets, but China is eating everyone's lunch in EVs, Tesla is notable solely for being in the game and losing while effectively no other auto makers are even in the game.

Literally most of the top 10 EV companies in China are doing more EV sales solely in China than the global EV sales of basically any other company on earth except Tesla (VW gets a big asterisk). A truly incredible failure across "the west".

It's because Tesla had the lead, had many opportunities to keep the lead, but lost it.

Definitely agree that it's not just Tesla that failed, but I think the focus on them is because they kind of kick-started most of it. When you're 10 laps ahead and you still manage to lose the lead, you're gonna be the main story.

The other auto makers don't want to switch to EVs (despite the typical PR showing around it). They were not ready for it and are many years behind. They are doing this mostly out of panic because after Tesla, it's clear that there is a market and people actually want them. Now governments are also starting to force transitions (although force is doing a lot of work here given the time frames).

What surprised me the most is BYD being sold here in Brazil, and other developing countries, when there is basically no charging network. Goes to show how the profile of consumers is different. People in the US still complain about range like they will actually travel from NY to LA, meanwhile people here are buying BYD for the luxury/status/aesthetic of it without even giving a second though about range.

My previous prediction was that it would be similar to the US where we'd only have adoption after there was progress in the charging front, but I was thoroughly wrong. People in these countries are more than happy to "sacrifice" in that front for a very expensive good looking car. It's more about the status than anything else since we don't have EV subsidies or anything similar to make it advantageous financially (at least to my knowledge).

I was going to reply by saying something similar: BYD sells 90% of their cars in China.

I don’t think their success in China is a guarantee anywhere else, even if they are doing well in Brazil (which is not a very important automotive market, representing 1/10th the sales volume of the USA while having less than half of its population).

It’s also important to remember that BYD sells hybrid vehicles. Granted, they ship more pure EVs than Tesla.

I think it’s easy to see why EVs suit China well. There’s no range anxiety when you have more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined. There’s also no long-existing petrol car culture or infrastructure, China is starting from scratch. Many of their EV buyers could be first-time car buyers. Probably close to 100% of car buyers in the West have owned other cars.

From a policy level, oil is an import product for China, and components for EVs are domestic products, so they have an obvious incentive to electrify.

This goes back to my feelings on why the CyberTruck wasn’t a waste of effort: again, it’s competing with the most popular vehicle in the USA in the most profitable vehicle segment on the planet that is entirely protected by the US government from imports (the chicken tax). Financially think the CyberTruck is almost guaranteed success.

> It’s almost dimensionally identical to the F-150 and the masculine “look at me” cyberpunk appearance is 100% in line with basically everything about the big three automakers’ trucks’ demographics.

You clearly are not around any of the big three automakers trucks demos if you really believe this shit was ever going to succeed in it.

The Cybertruck is a waste because it's an awful truck. The extreme aesthetics are a hard "you must have it" -or- "you wouldn't buy it a million years," with very little middle ground. The carrying capacity is shit. It's off-road and even trail capabilities are also pretty limited. Like I get that it's a trope at this point that most Americans do not buy a truck to use for truck things, but that's quite a different ball game to selling a truck to them that is functionally useless as a truck even in the rare instances you might want one. It's frankly so limited in terms of what Tesla generously calls it's "bed" that it'd be better characterized as an SUV with an open-air cargo area.

As bad a truck as a 2024 F-150 is in terms of truck-ness, it is still a truck and will perform a baseline number of truck things more or less competently, even if it would get roundhouse kicked by an 2004 F-150 in terms of doing actual work. Or hell, get yourself a Rivian truck if you want. It has a striking design which doesn't utterly ruin it as a truck and is similarly priced to boot.

And, it's worth noting, in the extremely long ramp up for the Cybertruck we're already seeing things like the F-150 Lightning, which incorporates all the benefits of an electric truck, and is sold by an OEM that actually does QA and sells via standard dealerships, and just looks like a normal ass truck while inheriting all the pluses of that fact (the ability to hold a bicycle, for example). Like, unless you are just 100% irrevocably sold on the looks of the Cybertruck, I cannot fathom why you would spend ballpark 30% more on a less-capable vehicle.

And if you just want a status symbol, the electric Hummer IMO absolutely demolishes the Cybertruck in terms of aesthetics while also being a vastly superior vehicle and is ALSO coming from a reputable, well established brand.

TL;DR: The Cybertruck took so goddamn long to actually become available that it's disappointing launch version is already getting lapped by competitors who are selling comparative machines for lower prices that are more capable and look better, and don't come with the baggage, political and otherwise, that the Tesla brand increasingly brings.

Your opinions are totally valid here and I even agree with many of them but some facts that need highlighting:

The Cybertruck bed is a full 6 foot bed. It’s got a liner, it’s got tie-downs, it is a real truck bed. It is practically an F-150 clone in packaging and sizing.

The Cybertruck took almost exactly 4 years between concept reveal and shipping which is totally reasonable for the auto industry. Just ignore the Peter Molyneux-like promises of Elon Musk and it’s a totally normal car launch timeline.

Off-road deficiencies are all over the place with EVs because they’re heavy. No other brand is going to defy physics.

Cybertruck competitors in the same price range you can order are the F-150 and the Rivian R1T. The Rivian base model is $10k more and the F-150 base model is stripped down, you get things like manual adjusted seats. But hey, it is cheaper at the same range.

The mid-tier Rivian is basically the same price as the Cybertruck mid range. The one deficiency with is at the high end where Rivian offers more range, but that’s also a getting to be a very expensive truck.

The Hummer is not even in the same class of vehicle. It’s a 5 foot bed truck. If you’re going to point fingers at electric trucks that aren’t usable work trucks, that’s the one. It’s also starting at $100k. Not in the same price class at all.

Putting the feelings about Elon aside I’m just calling it like I see it here: Tesla is competing in a market which is highly lucrative, is very high volume, and they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match. Heck, they’ve even got a reliability advantage over Rivian (Consumer Reports).

> they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match.

Ford and GM gaining access to their charging network this year. I always hear how their software is an advantage, but how? At point I feel like people just say Tesla software is “better” without having actually compared it to anything else because I’ve yet to run into a situation where it seems better to me.

> The Cybertruck bed is a full 6 foot bed. It’s got a liner, it’s got tie-downs, it is a real truck bed. It is practically an F-150 clone in packaging and sizing.

The length and width aren't the only concern: the tapered-off roof bit that goes to either side of the bed means you can't put anything in the bed that's wider than the bed on either side, and if you've used a truck before for, for example, landscaping: a common way to use it is to park it near your work area where you're, I dunno, tearing some brush down or something, and chuck shit into the bed as you work. With my F-150, I raise my bed cover up which keeps my rear-cab glass safe, and I can now load this easily from all three directions to the rear: this can't be done with a Cybertruck, without risking damage to the bodywork that's (stupidly) over the edge of the bed.

It's basically the same issue the 04 Silverado had with those stupid plastic bits they put behind the cab, except on the Cybertruck, it isn't shitty plastic you can break off and be done with it: it's part of the paneling.

> The Cybertruck took almost exactly 4 years between concept reveal and shipping which is totally reasonable for the auto industry. Just ignore the Peter Molyneux-like promises of Elon Musk and it’s a totally normal car launch timeline.

Yes, and quite smartly, GM shut up about the Hummer until it was ready.

> Off-road deficiencies are all over the place with EVs because they’re heavy. No other brand is going to defy physics.

The electric F-150 is a much, much more capable off road vehicle. I think the trick is designing a vehicle to do a thing and then make it look nice, versus designing it to look neat and then trying to figure out how to make it do things.

> The mid-tier Rivian is basically the same price as the Cybertruck mid range. The one deficiency with is at the high end where Rivian offers more range, but that’s also a getting to be a very expensive truck.

Yes, and again, the F-150 and Rivian are suitable for use as a truck where the Cybertruck isn't. That's my point. And again, if you don't actually want a truck, just an expensive SUV, that's where I think the Hummer is actually superior to the Cybertruck. Haven't heard about a Hummer rusting 5 days after delivery yet.

> The Hummer is not even in the same class of vehicle. It’s a 5 foot bed truck. If you’re going to point fingers at electric trucks that aren’t usable work trucks, that’s the one. It’s also starting at $100k. Not in the same price class at all.

Which is why I brought it up as an option, because I genuinely cannot fathom someone who wants a work truck buying one of these stupid cybertrucks. They're even worse than modern trucks are on every axis and are also expensive as shit.

> Tesla is competing in a market which is highly lucrative, is very high volume, and they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match.

Worth noting that a ton of the market for trucks is in fleet vehicles, which Tesla just... cannot do. They can't move the volume enough for, for example, a telecom company that needs a fleet of trucks for servicing their network. And no sane teleco is dropping $65k per truck for service fleet business.

And again, they're shit trucks.

I think Tesla is playing up moving into the truck space but what it really is, if we're being honest, is a luxury SUV. A weekend toy for wealthier families, that's just what it is, not judging. My F-150 is largely a toy itself, I use it for light yard work but it also has 22" rims and SUV tires because I don't do anything harder than grass with it. I'm just honest with myself when I say mine is a toy, and that's fine.

And that's what the Cybertruck is, and it's not going to do volume for that exact reason, and I think it's also going to struggle as a luxury SUV too because, frankly, it's hideous and the Tesla brand doesn't swing like it used to in the minds of consumers.

>I’m not one to be bullish on Tesla under Elon Musk but I don’t see how the Cybertruck was a waste considering that it’s squarely placed in the most popular and profitable segment of the automobile market in North America.

If you think any current truck owner is at all interested in a cybertruck's design, you are definitely one being bullish on Tesla.

I've owned trucks nearly my entire life and wouldn't touch the thing with a 30-foot pole. Across the various auto enthusiast forums I participate in, it's universally mocked. Among the folks I know that own pickups, everyone else feels the same about its design as I do.

The only people I have heard say that it's not outright ugly are people that are Tesla fanboys and even among those it's generally "it's not that bad".

It is not a "masculine look" - it looks like something someone who can't form sheet metal put together in their garage.

There is nothing masculine about the cybertruck look. It looks like a nerd idiot thing from California.

After having seen them on the road, I don't think the look is amazing or terrible. It's just something new that is somewhere between truck-ish and car-ish.

There are innovative things to admire about it - interesting steering, non-trucklike-ride, squat to load, covered bed, AC power taps, self-driv^H^H^H^Hsteering/cruise.

There are awful things to endure - lack of dedicated controls for critical stuff, everything on touchscreen in center of car.

I think it's just going to exist and at some point lose its novelty.

I'm about 50% convinced the cyber truck was a billionaire joke to see who would buy it. musk got bored with making cars and decided to amuse himself with a prank.

The other 50 is that the CEO has surrounded themselves with yes-men to the point of liability. Nobody dared point out the emperor's lack of clothes.

BYD now has a traditional pickup truck they've been working on for a year or so ready to launch (they were recently test driving it in Australia) so I guess we'll see whether the standard pickup truck shape with low price due to better batteries will win over crazy cyberpunk looks.

> which would unlock 3x utility of existing fleet via owners lending their car to rideshare

I still don't understand why anyone ever thought that was going to happen. Even if the autonomy were there, who was really going to use their car for rideshare when they didn't need it themselves? I know some people thought it would bring them a lot of value, because that's what Elon promised. But the reality would have been a classic race-to-the-bottom, and they'd have been lucky to break even after accounting for wear and tear.

It's not so much most regular people would do rideshare that much. It's more that every new Tesla sold after L4 was achieved would be bought by small biz folks, Uber, etc. specifically to use for rideshare and would pay a premium for both the car and for FSD software.

It will be awesome when your own car pulls up at 8am to take you to work and there's vomit and trash everywhere, spilled drinks, dirty shoes, stale vape smoke lingering in the air.

Sure there might be rules and fines but people already do all this when there is real human driving the taxi!

Plus, do you really expect everyone to treat your items with the same respect and care you do? Even little things like slamming the doors or scratching up the seats with metal belts or jean studs.

Yeah maybe Tesla will make it right. But at how much effort? How correct will it be fixed?

And used condoms lol. Maybe a company like Uber would do that and then hose the insides after each day

Hose the insides? Lmao.

I wonder at what price point you would have to offer the average Tesla owner to let someone puke in their car.

That's the Musk new car smell you're thinking of.

Ha. What a fitting username also!

Does this currently happen with Airbnb? No.

You mean this Airbnb; https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-using-ai-to-help-clampdown-on...

Or this Airbnb; https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-family-home-emptied-tras...

Or maybe it's one of these; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=airbnb+trashed+house&t=fpas&ia=web

I acknowledge the above comment re vomit in car is an edge case, and so are the links I attached. But to suggest this doesn't occur in Airbnb, and wouldn't occur with a car share service is naive.

The IRA discount only applies to the US market, where AFAIK BYD is not even present, right? So it doesn't really explain why Tesla is trailing behind BYD globally.

Or maybe your point is "Tesla is not helped by its government as much as BYD is"? Which could be a fair point.

BYD's volume comes from selling tons of the lower end. My explanation above is why Tesla (Elon) didn't think he needed a compact car. So BYD is killing with compact cars because Tesla does not have one and won't for at least two years.

Makes sense, thanks for explaining.

Model 3 is a compact car by American standards. What Tesla lacks is a sub-compact (think Accord vs Civic).

Model 3 is size of Civic.

Between;

Model 3: 186″ L x 73″ W x 57″ H

Accord: 196″ L x 73″ W x 57″ H

Civic: 179-184″ L x 71″ W x 56″ H

BMW 4 series: 188-189″ L x 73″ W x 55-57″ H

BMW 3 series: 186” 72” 57”

I have a garage where that extra inch or two of width is really important.

It looks like the same as how older American car brands played in worldwide market

Level 4 needs a driver outside of the small existing tests involving geofencing. I don't see how anyone would be loaning out their Tesla's for rideshare anytime soon.

I’m not actually convinced Elon ever thought they’d achieve L4/L5 autonomy in the timelines he originally proposed. I think it was all a ploy to pump the stock and sell more cars. And it worked.

> I think it was all a ploy to pump the stock and sell more cars.

I wonder why a CEO lying to pump his stock is not yet illegal. Otherwise what's topping Sundar to come out and say "Google will have AGI in 6 months, buy Alphabet stonks wink-wink".

> And it worked.

I know, because a couple of my friends put all their saving in TSLA stocks during the pandemic. And all it cost Elon was his credibility and being exposed as a clueless liar to the point if he'd say the sky is blue, I'd double check.

I thought their goal was to stay on top of everyone margin wise. Margin is better than volume in every dimension.

Not always - volume is often better than margin if you are in a competitive market and have enough access to capital (other things being equal).

Particularly if you are taking market share from your (higher margin) competitor. If you can sell two cars at half the margin, that can be better than one car at double the margin if your competitor got the other sale, assuming your strategy is to take the market (i.e. wipe out your competitor).

High margins tend to be hard to defend in the long run (without building a moat).

The problem is that, in Germany and the US, Tesla costs are going through the roof. They can expand in China, but probably don't want it. They can also do it in Mexico, but won't be fast either.

The truth is that China has, through government decision, created a full supply chain for EV production, mirroring their success in other areas. The US is several years behind them. Tesla can invest the money in the US to catch up, but it will be very costly, so probably they won't be able to do what you wish.

Bottom line is that private companies can’t compete with governments. China heavily subsidizes its industries, far more than the US or Germany, and makes it easy for them to operate.

Very simplistic view. US has also given billions in subsidies to US ev makers and protectionism. One reason Tesla is so big on US is China is not allowed to enter.

BYD is nominally a private company. What you're really getting at is that governments can subsidize industries to give their domestic companies an unfair advantage, and China does that aggressively.

Other countries could do the same thing or punish China for it via tariffs etc., but doing nothing seems like a bad idea.

We've had subsidies for EVs in the US for over a decade now. US governments have bailed out automakers in the past. Every election year, politicians parade over car making states with promises to win votes.

US government has done as much as it can to protect ICE cars, ICE workers, ICE unions, oil companies (US is #1 oil producing country).

I think what you're trying to say is that Chin has done a better job subsidizing its EV industry than the US has and China has more incentives to move towards an EV future.

> We've had subsidies for EVs in the US for over a decade now.

For EVs generally regardless of where the carmaker is headquartered.

> US governments have bailed out automakers in the past.

And were justly criticized for it even domestically.

> US government has done as much as it can to protect ICE cars, ICE workers, ICE unions, oil companies (US is #1 oil producing country).

Whataboutism. Two wrongs don't make a right.

> I think what you're trying to say is that Chin has done a better job subsidizing its EV industry than the US has and China has more incentives to move towards an EV future.

EV incentives work similar to what the US has. You buy an EV and you get a tax credit, regardless of whether it's from GM or Hyundai. Cheating is when the subsidies are only available to domestic companies.

You’re just bringing up random stuff now.

The US also heavily subsidizes its industries. It is just not done in a smart way. US money goes mainly into increasing profits of already rich companies, so they have less incentive to innovate and create new products. China spreads its money across the whole industry, so new companies will benefit and create a complete supply chain.

A lot of Chinese money just goes to zombie SOEs, but are really funding some official’s villa and foreign education for their kid. Chinese money can be just as dumb as American money. There were a ton of scammy EV companies selling basically golf carts when China first started subsidizing EV development and sales. It took around half a decade to get rid of those.

Nothing is perfect, but Chinese strategy is smarter overall. They achieve a lot with less money.

I disagree. The Chinese are just able to leverage a lot of what would have been disposable income for normal working people. In fact, this why their demographic decline is going to be especially painful.

China had cleaner way to allow corporate barnstorming as well, due to it's general state/status.

Vehicles in china there don't have to be nearly as safe (for better or worse) and range anxiety is less of an issue for many of the residents, thus the tiny Electric vehicles we see that sometimes can't go over 25-35MPH (I think one or two may have even used lead batteies, practically adult sized power-wheels...)

Additionally, BYD had the advantage of being in the LiFePO and mass manufacturing game very early. I remember seeing their booth at the Detroit Auto Show back in... 2008-2010ish? and they had a couple of vehicles out for display. However it became seemed clear they were more interested in showing off battery tech to others and the vehicles in a way felt presented like 'Reference Boards'.

But why expand if no one buys their cars? There are so many more players selling EVs now both from China and Europe. It's harder to sell when you have competition.

Musk has many goals. He also does drugs and gets involved into politics. There's only 24 hours in a day.

I'm not sure about this specific case, but the general case is usually that China is using some technique that is illegal in the US. Or sometimes energy policy is the problem.

You mention Giga Berlin for example. Germany is suffering from the EU energy crisis (which really has been an ongoing thing since around 2008 when the per capita downtrend in energy took hold), so it wouldn't be weird if cars being produced there aren't competitive with Chinese-manufactured goods.

Similarly, US manufacturing doesn't seem to have the same vibrancy as Chinese work and the root causes seem to be environmental and labour law. It is also possible that the US just doesn't have the expertise; as far as I'm aware the US doesn't have an answer to Shenzhen (I'm happy to be told this is just ignorance, the US is a big place, but so far no dice).

FWIW, Tesla's market cap is almost 10x BYD's. So the market does not necessarily agree with this assessment. One reason is that Tesla competes exceptionally well in the international luxury car market. BYD pushes a lot of metal at low margins.

That's because Tesla's stock is overvalued. Tesla's revenue is only 60% higher than that of BYD Automotive.

It's very humorous, though not unexpected, to see a reply about revenue numbers to a post that was mainly speaking about Tesla's superior margins.

Tesla has a P/E ratio of 45, vs. 17 for BYD. A lot of Tesla's value is based on hype and expectations, not on its current business.

Tesla need to lower costs.

I been following the Tesla IR presentations. The slowdown was intentional. The key issues are Tesla doesn't have diversified model lines, price wars and the misstep with 4680 batteries. Currently Tesla Shanghai has more than enough capacity for global Model 3 and Y demand. The rate of growth for these models have also slowed down from 2yrs ago. Hence why Tesla is doing aggressive price cuts, also when your doing aggressive price cuts you don't want to increase production dramatically in order to keep the margins in line. You can also see that since they have done price cuts the margins are down. At the same time in luxury market, both Model S and X sales have fallen dramatically. Which btw is made in US and exported internationally. Going to Europe, from what I understand the battery production productivity isn't anywhere near China and lastly Tesla gets federal govt credit for making batteries in US and then exported to Europe. Last part is 4680 misstep, first of all 4680 isn't anywhere close to what Tesla said at the their battery day. The production is still expensive, hence why they cancelled the sub 39k$ CT. Which btw has been the biggest mistake. Tesla could have easily sold 250k units once fully scaled up, but now they have moved to timelines to maybe in 2026.

If you look at the production targets for F150 lightning, the total sales this year will be higher than CT. If you look at the sales/price bell curve of light trucks (note this is inclusive of SUVs, but Trucks make up at least half the dataset), you see a massive amount of area in the $40 -50K range, the over $70K range makes up less than 5%. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_artic...

In other words, Cybertruck sales numbers are going to hurt until the price is closer to announcement - A $39K Cyber Truck could (theoretically) sell millions based on category alone. a $100K truck could sell tens of thousands.

If anyone believes that there will ever be a $39K CyberTruck, I have a Hyperloop I'd love to sell you.

While I'm sure China has helped probably a lot comes down to the founder. I've taken an interest since Charlie Munger started praising him

>“This guy,” Munger tells Fortune, “is a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch – something like Edison in solving technical problems, and something like Welch in getting done what he needs to do. I have never seen anything like it.” (2009)

And more recently

>“He can do things you can’t do,” Munger said on a Sunday episode of the podcast Acquired. “He’s a fanatic that knows how to actually make things with his hands. He’s closer to ground zero in other words. The guy at BYD is better at actually making things than Elon is.” (2023)

And Munger wasn't one to praise many people like that. Also Wang is focused on cars rather than faffing with Twitter.

Wang Chuanfu, the driving force behind BYD’s rise. https://www.ft.com/content/22527628-733e-4188-9678-ab3210fdb...

Excerpt:

The story of the professor in nonferrous metals research turned hard-headed executive with a fastidious focus on technology, supply chains and cost- cutting has become gospel in Chinese science and business schools.

To his employees, Wang is simply known as “The Chairman”. Both revered and feared, the 57-year-old billionaire’s unassuming demeanour belies a micromanager with a Stakhanovite work ethic.

“The work-life balance concept is just not in his lexicon,”

Experts attribute BYD’s success largely to a ruthless culture of cost-cutting. The entrepreneur had instituted “absolutely aggressive cost control”

BYD has developed its own in-house capabilities. Contracting other companies for hardware or services is a last resort, so much so that an executive once told car reviewers the company made everything on the vehicle “except the tyres and the windscreen”.

By splitting manufacturing into “finer and finer steps”, Weber said, individual workers only carry out very narrow tasks. This means there is greater propensity to replace staff with cheap workers. “They basically treat people like robots,”

> […] belies a micromanager with a Stakhanovite work ethic.

Not a term I am familiar with:

> The Stakhanovites (стаха́новцы) modeled themselves after Alexei Stakhanov, a coal miner, and took pride in their ability to produce more than was required by working harder and more efficiently, thus contributing to the common good and strengthening the socialist state. The movement began in the coal industry but later spread to many other industries in the Soviet Union.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement

Is it commonly used in the UK?

It looks to me like BYD is to Tesla like what Samsung+Android is to the iPhone?

I mean, the guy behind BYD must be brilliant and I wish the best to him and his endeavor.

But let's not forget that Tesla has been and is still the one pushing the frontier here. And pushing frontiers is a lot more inspiring and moving.

BYD is surfing a wave created by Tesla, and I think Elon still seems to be better at moving waves than BYD's founder? Just like Jobs was for consumer electronics?

Part of pushing the envelope is not making the best product, but making the best product per dollar.

Any idiot can make something amazing if money is of no concern, but you have to be smart to make something both cheap and amazing.

From that perspective, BYD with their far lower cost, yet still decently performing, batteries and motors (and whole cars) is arguably ahead.

> It looks to me like BYD is to Tesla like what Samsung+Android is to the iPhone?

Yeah because Tesla is known for the high quality of their cars /s

Maybe the parallel is more in driving the hype train?

Let's compare our Kool-Aids flavors (I can't stand Musk): what frontiers is Musk pushing at Tesla, other than cartoonish designs and how flawed a product the paying customer is willing to tolerate? (E.g. broken suspension arms, auto-suicide-pilot)?

I think this is giving short shrift to BYD's role in advancing battery technology, which is key to electric vehicles. In that sense, BYD is more innovative than Tesla.

Ultimately, the EV push is to create affordable EVs that are also practical so we can sunset oil sooner. In that sense, BYD is ahead.

Tesla is basically against a whole country which has the world's second largest economy. The cheapest model of BYD is around $8,000 and the BYD will get much much more subsidies from the government. Big China companies like BYD, Huawei can literally get infinite funds and other resources from the government.

More so the fact that BYD's battery division is an absolute gold mine like AWS is for Amazon.

BYD is the primary battery supplier for most consumer electronics (you're iPhone is using a BYD battery for example)

Yes, with infinite resources, cheapest price, no one can beat them.

Or mostly the fact that Apple decided to make BYD their primary battery supplier in the early 2000s over dozens of other companies.

Batteries are a low margin high skill industry. Battery makers in SK/JP/US/TW decided to go upmarket where margins are much higher and competitive moats stronger (due to R&D, IP, and/or procurement requirements)

Meanwhile the US government bipartisanly hates Tesla.

Sounds like a problem the CEO of Tesla should work on. Or is he too busy Tweeting?

He's too busy schmoozing his hand-picked board to give him billions in bonuses for dutifully doing the job of--let me check my notes here--abusing ketamine all day while pretending to be CEO of multiple companies.

A contractual agreement (that Elon met) is 'schmoozing'?

A contract written by yourself (aka: Largest shareholder) given to a board you picked (aka: Chairman of the Board of Directors), giving yourself a payraise (aka: about the CEO's bonus pay) is obviously null and void.

You can't just give yourself a pay-raise. Even if you're the largest shareholder, the controlling member of the board of directors, and CEO of a company.

If you accept the public's money, then the _other_ shareholders, even small minority stakes, have a say in the matter.

If you don't like the fact that Delaware looks out for smaller shareholders, you can I guess move out to other states or something. But for the most part, people accept the fact that public companies have rules that go above-and-beyond normal. Wanton acts of corporate corruption aren't tolerated in Delaware.

--------------

The rule in play here is shareholder fiduciary duty. The Board of Directors failed to represent the needs of all of its shareholders like they are legally obligated to do. A large pay-bonus to a CEO who already controls a large stake in Tesla (who'd benefit from Tesla improving anyway) is obviously a bad move. No other CEO in history had such a large share-increase bonus.

In any case, looking out for the little guy is a deeply American value. We understand the problems associated with Tyranny of the Majority. If you want to fully own a company, then stay a private-business (like the Mars family), don't come begging to the public for public money.

Looking out for the little guy is an American value? Walmart and Amazon warehouse employees would like a word with those mythical Americans.

big enough shareholders get to place their own board members

you seem to have it backwards:

> Typically, the board chooses one of its members to be the chairman (often now called the "chair" or "chairperson")

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

https://people.com/human-interest/elon-musk-steps-down-chair...

Elon Musk, IIRC, was Chairman, Largest Shareholder, and CEO when the deal in question / contract was written.

Elon had a spat with SEC who removed him as chair, but Musk remained largest Shareholders and CEO after that.

This is incorrect. There is no "pay raise" if he doesn't meet his contractual obligations. He almost got 0 dollars. How is that a pay raise?

It’s surprising how quickly the HN sentiment on individuals can change. What was the tipping point for musk?

A couple years ago a comment like this would be [dead] in less than a couple minutes.

When someone says bullshit about rocket science, its hard to argue because we aren't rocket scientists.

When someone says bullshit about mass manufacturing of cars, its hard to argue because we aren't mechanical engineers.

When someone says bullshit about running a website... guess what? Hacker News is full of programmers, venture capitalists, and website owners. Suddenly Elon Musk is speaking our language and what we see from Twitter is... uggghhhh....

Elon Musk hasn't changed much. All that's really happened is that he moved back into a proper technology discussion in a subject people around here are deeply familiar with. The standard levels of bullshit he spouts are insufficient when the audience here has a much deeper understanding of online advertisements, bots, user engagement, UI issues, and the like.

If they have a deeper understanding of these things, then why haven't they produced a real competitor?

probably because of the classic "making twitter is easy, getting twitter to a billion people is hard"

Elon didn't build anything on Twitter. He paid $44 Billion for the website and then collapsed it.

Well Threads is making pretty decent strides given that it was spun up in record time (by ex-Twitter employees that have an ax to grind for some reason)

There were no ex-Twitter employees involved in Threads at the time it launched. AFAICT, it was a frontend over a pared-down Instagram comment-system.

Designing something like Twitter isn't hard, and it used to be a pretty common design question that could be answered in 30 minutes or less. Instagram certainly doesn't need outside help to help scale stuff, let alone people specifically from Twitter.

>There were no ex-Twitter employees involved in Threads at the time it launched.

This is not what I heard. I heard they hired up tons of prominent ex-Twitter.

>AFAICT, it was a frontend over a pared-down Instagram comment-system.

Do you use it? I do and it does not seem to operate that way. It is a more involved than that.

Yes they did rely on IG's infrastructure to help speed up development but this was a deliberate design choice and I don't blame them: They have this large asset of users and built up infrastructure, might as well use this advantage.

The Twitter purchase / entry into the political debate.

You mean increasing the value of the company by 10x?

What's your basis on pretending to be the CEO? Considering the unparalleled success of Tesla/SpaceX vs any other competitor?

Elon Musk increased the stock price of Tesla by repeatedly lying about Tesla's ability to deliver FSD while egging on his cult of personality, a.k.a. Tesla's marketing department, to silence all criticism and produce an echo-chamber of terminally-online yes-men. As far as Elon Musk is concerned, you're a useful idiot.

Both Tesla and SpaceX would be better off with almost anybody else on the planet at the helm.

Its hard to see how Tesla would have survived without these efforts.

Ditto SpaceX. If there was a viable competitor to SpaceX in the US it would have emerged in the last 15-20 years.

If that was the case, almost anyone else would have already built another Tesla and SpaceX.

That's not how it works.

There are limited amounts of money that investors can offer, even in a country as rich as the USA.

If one lying company lies about their benchmarks, it prevents other companies from forming as one company sucks up the money. While the companies making realistic estimates fail to attract money.

---------

EDIT consider this: we got to the point where investors were spending on MoviePass, GameStop and such companies. Talking about realistic or useful models wasn't really in the works anymore.

If there were no other companies in the auto/space launch industries, and Tesla/SpaceX acquired most of they competitors, then maybe.

That's not the case though. There are large, well funded incumbents that could have taken the approaches Tesla/SpaceX did, and they choose not to.

Their competition also hasn't been bought out. Both companies have made IP, tech, logistics, etc acquisitions, but iirc those have all been compliments, not competitors.

Edit - They've also sold parts of their acquisitions they didn't want, like selling Maxwell while keeping the DBE stuff.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/07/30/tesla-sells-maxwell-t...

There were plenty of other companies.

SpaceX just lied about building the "Artemis" project and getting to the moon by....*checks notes*... 2025.

The problem is overpromising and underdelivering. There's no full-self-driving, there's no Artemis by 2025, etc. etc. Such lofty, unlikely goals not only attract money (government money, investor money, etc. etc.), they also suck out the oxygen for more legitimate technologies.

Please don't mention Artemis. That's a Donald Trump farce.

Everyone in the Industry knows no ones getting to the moon before 2028.

No other lander was suitable. You can see the modifications Blue Origin made post lobbying. And Dynetics.... If you truly believe that counted your entire comment is null and void

SpaceX would still be ahead. Artemis or not. You can go to Southern Florida and see for yourself

If you're so confident that Tesla stock price is inflated, feel free to short it. Specially if you feel like FSD is a complete lie.

Market cap is one of the better ways to objectively classify companies, and Tesla has been continously doing extremely well. It has for years. Maybe you are smarter than the entire market.

> Both Tesla and SpaceX would be better off with almost anybody else on the planet at the helm.

Must be why all those other space companies not lead by Elon Musk are doing a lot better. Oh wait...

Perhaps the government should stop hating, and pushing others to hate?

Defense likes him that is enough I think. They understand Musk's value. I also think that he is having a parallel with Tony Stark persona as a visionary businessman who goes against establishment to achieve his goals.

Well the current Premier was a strong backer for Giga Shanghai as well

I hate that we could have $8000[0] EVs in the EU, but Volkswagen+Germany will push the EU to add so many tariffs because they can’t match the price-quality ratio. Generally I love the EU, but occasionally.. sigh.

[0] Probably $12500 with transportation, purchase tax etc

Did EU not learn from funding Russia. It is not a good idea to empower dictatorships.

I sure hope you didn’t type this on a mobile device, or any PC made after the 2000s.

You're making his point.

His point is overly dogmatic.

With the Russian gas dependence, shutting down supply meant industries would shut down and (with a freak winter) people might be unable to heat their homes.

If Chinese EVs become common in the EU market, it diminishes EU car manufacturing and then China does a rug pull and stops exporting to the EU.. American, Korean and Japanese EV manufacturers will fill the gap in marketshare, perhaps at a slight premium but still well below current EV prices. What horror.

And it isn’t like Volkswagen will roll over and die. They’ll just face market pressure to innovate and become more efficient.

Meanwhile, you completely ignore China using EU money to build its offensive capabilities against Taiwan.

China must have some magical coffers that they are simultaneously losing $50 billion+ a year on subsidizing Chinese EV makers.. but somehow also earning money on it and spending it on national defense?

I don’t like the direction China is headed either, but anyone with even an ounce of pragmaticness realizes that we still live in a world of global trade.

Also, the US is trading with China to the tune of $750 000+ billion a year. So, I guess they should cut off all that trade to stop funding their future adversary.. or perhaps it is not so simple?

Huh? China has something like $4 trillion in reserves plug ongoing taxation, it can and has subsidised EVs and other industries more than that.

The point is that we've made a mistake and we're in a pickle. We're dependent on our adversary and we should be looking to get out of that situation in a way that doesn't disadvantage ourselves further.

Are you just saying there's nothing that can be done? Just looking to change direction is a useful step.

> Huh? China has something like $4 trillion in reserves plug ongoing taxation, it can and has subsidised EVs and other industries more than that.

That is not the thing I was giving a counterpoint to though. That was "EU trade is funding aggression against Taiwan" (with the implication that importing cheap EVs would increase the net inflow of capital).

> The point is that we've made a mistake and we're in a pickle. We're dependent on our adversary and we should be looking to get out of that situation in a way that doesn't disadvantage ourselves further.

> Are you just saying there's nothing that can be done? Just looking to change direction is a useful step.

But at least here, we aren't in a pickle. China has little leverage here, and they can't easily increase that leverage either.

Let me simplify my point: if China wants to massively subsidize the electrification of the EU's car population, why not let them? They won't reach global market dominance, and it both speeds up our electrification and saves our citizens' money. The only one's getting pinched are the shareholders of EU car companies.

I feel similarly about solar panels, even though China has achieved market dominance there. They cannot leverage their position there, because solar panels are not a prohibitively difficult product to set up a supply chain for, and the demand for them is somewhat elastic. It would slow down the closure of fossil power plants and maybe force a few old one's to reopen, but that's it. With EVs, buyers would just switch over to other brands and part of the global supply would get redirected as EU prices go up.

I worry much more about China's grip on rare metal processing and mid tier chip production. The rare metals go into "everything" hot right now, and everyone is so focused on high-end chip production that they're forgetting how many everyday products run on "low" density chips.

> saves our citizens' money

Yikes, there it is. All comes down to €. Why should current day greed be more important than the future?

> They won't reach global market dominance

Hmm, just like they didn't reach dominance in manufacturing? Sigh.

Subsidies don't mean zero profit. It can even more profit if volume increases and others are driven out of the market.

> Oh yeah, the US is trading with China to the tune of $750 000+ billion a year. So, I guess they should cut off all that trade to stop funding their future adversary.. or perhaps it is not so simple.

Again literally just

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

Right right, improving society by not electrifying and instead staying with ICE cars. Get real.

[flagged]

If subsidies are profitable, EU should do that for "Made in EU" cars. The customer won't have to bear the burn and economy/politics will be happy. US is already doing that, though without getting the benefit.

How is it at all relevant that most of OPs phone is (presumably) made in China?

https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:750/format:webp/0*R013...

These days, smartphones and PCs are pretty much critical to function in society.

We accept that those are for-the-most part made in China, despite “funding a dictatorship”, because we realize that we can’t expect someone on median income to pay $3000 for a phone or $5000 for a laptop.

Much as I’d like it to be different, cars are also still critical to function in much of society. We want everyone in EVs ASAP.

Where would one get these good quality cheap EVs, even at some geopolitical cost..

The way to do that is by funding local companies and increasing density and public transport.

You also made an error. Cars are essential. EVs are not the only type of car.

> The way to do that is by funding local companies..

You do not understand the car industry. Giving them less competitive pressure will not increase car quality or lower sales price.

> ..and increasing density..

Increasing density during an already extreme housing crunch? Genius.

> ..and public transport.

I would love to see better public transport, but most voters are not ready to pony up the taxes for a public transit network that has enough fidelity to sufficiently replace cars.

> You also made an error. Cars are essential. EVs are not the only type of car.

Hydrogen is not happening, and staying with ICEs means screwing over the planet.

> Giving them less competitive pressure will not increase car quality or lower sales price.

Subsidies and protectionism don't work the same way. Protectionism allows them to produce overpriced junk because the domestic market is required to buy it. Subsidies allow them to spend on R&D and build economies of scale which can result in sustainable competitiveness even after the subsidies are gone.

> Increasing density during an already extreme housing crunch? Genius.

How do you imagine housing supply is increased when substantially all of the existing lots already contain existing (mostly low density) housing?

> I would love to see better public transport, but most voters are not ready to pony up the taxes for a public transit network that has enough fidelity to sufficiently replace cars.

Higher density is a prerequisite for functioning public transport. Sending a mostly empty bus to the suburbs is basically useless.

> Hydrogen is not happening, and staying with ICEs means screwing over the planet.

The chances of converting 100% of new car sales to EVs overnight are zero. Meanwhile selling two 50MPG hybrids is about as good as selling one EV and one 25MPG SUV.

> Subsidies allow them to spend on R&D and build economies of scale which can result in sustainable competitiveness even after the subsidies are gone.

True, but so far most EV subsidies have been on the sales side, presumably for equality. Any manufacturer producing a vehicle ticking all the boxes will qualify that vehicle for a purchase subsidy.

> How do you imagine housing supply is increased when substantially all of the existing lots already contain existing (mostly low density) housing?

I am not saying we shouldn't increase density. I am saying that in the current housing crises we are already building as fast as we can given bureaucracy and construction capacity. This housing crisis has been one in the making for decades, it won't be sim-sala-bimmed away in a year or two. There is no "increase density" magic wand.

> The chances of converting 100% of new car sales to EVs overnight are zero. Meanwhile selling two 50MPG hybrids is about as good as selling one EV and one 25MPG SUV.

There are neither enough BEVs or PEVs to do that. But it is fairly certain we'll get to "full electric" a whole lot slower if we stifle the influx of cheap, high quality EVs.

> True, but so far most EV subsidies have been on the sales side, presumably for equality. Any manufacturer producing a vehicle ticking all the boxes will qualify that vehicle for a purchase subsidy.

Which is the fair way to do it. And then you have a sensible solution: Impose a tariff on products from countries that subsidize their domestic industries, then use the tariff revenue to create a tax credit for all products in that industry. Then you level the playing field while the other country pays for it.

> I am saying that in the current housing crises we are already building as fast as we can given bureaucracy and construction capacity. This housing crisis has been one in the making for decades, it won't be sim-sala-bimmed away in a year or two. There is no "increase density" magic wand.

There is no way to increase the housing stock by 200% over five days. There are many ways to make it happen faster or with lower costs, and get a significant increase over the course of e.g. five years. You do this by, for example, making it less time consuming to obtain professional licensing. Allow licensing through a written exam, like the engineers who design the stuff, instead of requiring long apprenticeships under now-scarce incumbents. Lower the licensing fees so more aspirants who don't currently have lucrative employment can get in. Publish free written study materials. You would have more tradespeople in a year or two and they'd start building more housing immediately thereafter.

Building more is also the only real solution and the only question is how long it takes. Taking longer is bad and speeding it up is not an impossible problem whose only solutions would violate the laws of physics.

> it is fairly certain we'll get to "full electric" a whole lot slower if we stifle the influx of cheap, high quality EVs.

You can thwart someone else's domestic subsidization attempt while still creating separate industry-wide incentives to make the transition happen faster.

Another good solution is a carbon tax which is 100% refunded to the population. Then it's revenue neutral but people who drive the most have the incentive to put their credit towards an EV and avoid the tax.

Literally https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

Yes let's hope Trump doesn't win.

Didn't German diplomats laugh at Trump when he warned them of Russia. Now they live off US tay payers money.

Imagine what this would do for the climate too if people who were looking at lower end gas powered models could save $5k with buying a $12,500 EV.

The decision would be made for them.

What we have done with subsiding expensive status symbols is so dumb but not shocking in the least.

no they don't. For end product sales, China's EV subsidies is the same for all NEVs, Tesla enjoys that too. Chinese provincial governments may provide lumps sum cash/grants/preferential loans/cheaper land for specific projects, factories built in there, and Tesla got that too when it built gigafactory in Shanghai. BWM got preferential land prices and taxes when it build more factories in Liaoning. And these kinds of governmental assistances exist in many countries, including Germany, SK, USA. Another way Chinese government "help" a company is by equity investments. But that is not a blank check and endless funnel of cash. And btw, Chinese government money is also taxpayer money, it's not endless, government is looking for return on whatever benefits in increased revenue in the future, it has to be effective investment. And look at all the uproar when Chinese batteries makers trying to build factories and provide employment in the USA.

So, yes, Chinese government give the same subsidies for Tesla. What does Chinese companies get in the USA? The most discriminatory and certainly illegal rule that is IRA under WTO. IRA subsides are barred legally from giving to companies, not just headquartered in China, but also any Chinese origin entity or any entity in the world that holds 25% more shares, and regardless where the product is made. And not just for end product, any materials, components made by Chinese entities or any entities in the world where Chinese entity holds 25% share regardless where it's made. Does your South Korean anode company board have a Chinese national and Chinese entity invested in your company? You are dead. For that Chinese board member, he/she is forced to resign, for the Chinese investment, is forced to be sold. It's the most discriminatory trade rule ever made. Then there is all the fearmongering, consistent witch hunt against Chinese origin companies and entrepreneurs by the government and congress. It's not even against a company anymore, it's against the entrepreneurs, the founders who got a Chinese name. Anything that has Chinese name in it, you get roasted, shamed, defamed, treated like cockroaches by people in congress. Right now, if you are Chinese person, want work on semiconductors, telecom, batteries, AI, mobile phone apps, internet, biotech, regardless where you are based, US government will defame you, wants everyone in the world to shun you off, to treat you like cockroaches. See what happened to tusimple, Zoom, G42.ai, or so many companies that I can't list here? On a tangent, Shou Chew was in congress and members of congress continued to shame his Singaporean nationality, not even aware Singaporean and Chinese are different. In China, Tesla and Elon Muskc got big publicity and essentially "encourage you to buy" message from the government. What does Chinese entrepreneurs get in the USA? I am using strong language, but this is the truth. No need to suger coat this.

And for Huawei, funny before the USA's witch hunt against Huawei, Chinese telecoms were buying from Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco en mass. And now god forbid we support our own companies when USA, and it coerces other countries to trying to just blatantly kill off Huawei, chop off its head. Huawei may sound like same name to you, but for us its 100K workers and families, who have kids to feed, grandparents to take care of. Then millions of people dependent on Huawei's supply chain, sales networks, service centers. It's one thing if a company doesn't innovate and got out competed in the market. It's totally another when a foreign government attacks the company with the goal of completely chopping its head off. Fair competition is fine, but only when the environment is fair. I am gladly buy an iphone if is better than huawei if they are on level playing field. But right now, I will gladly buy a mate 60 pro even if its weaker than iphone. Western media play up all Chinese people are super nationalistic blah blah. It's foreign governments that is attacking our people and families that is making people more nationalistic. US government has sanctioned more than 1000 Chinese entities, trade war, tech war, 10s of millions of people are directly or indirectly affected by US government. There is a joke on Chinese internet now that when US sanctions a Chinese company it's a stamp of approval. By the way, no one has accelerated Chinese domestic semiconductor supply chain faster than US sanctions. No one has promoted Chinese people to buy Chinese products better than foreign governments. Huawei essentially got a martyred brand image after the USA's treatment, the struggle to survive against all odds, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, the Independence Day story.

Tesla gets tax subsidies in China, too.

Tesla is one of the largest car producers in China. It's partnered with them as much as against them.

I'm going to guess the argument is "this may not remain true over the next 5-10 years as BYD/others take over and Tesla loses marketshare"

But that's likely only because Tesla got outcompeted.

It's really hard to find any constructive discussion around Chinese companies here.

Anybody willing to share facts about subsidies, state control or anything that would justify believing that BYD success here is not justified?

For me the whole story of vertical integration of a battery manufacturer company that decided to make EV cars makes a lot of sense.

We have always been at war with Oceania.

Another narrative that’s missing is ‘Discretionary government intervention can be good for the market actually’, and if the Chinese administration is making big bets on an emerging high value market (batteries and EVs), maybe the traditionally laissez-faire US should take note. That does rely on the notion that China is actively subsidizing and enabling BYD more than the US is for Tesla, and leaving aside their efforts on battery R&D, vertical integration, leveraging lower labor costs etc. as you say

> Discretionary government intervention can be good for the market actually

This is more like "government intervention can give domestic companies an unfair advantage in global markets", which isn't actually a good thing, but also isn't something you can just ignore without a response.

In this case you might like it because what they're subsidizing helps with climate change, but this is mainly because we don't price carbon (pricing major externalities is one of the things governments actually have to do), not because having governments subsidize businesses is a net positive in general.

Just curious why it’s not a ‘good thing’?

The only thing I can think of is it would be bad in the situation of a monopoly, but that’s not the current situation. Otherwise, it seems like an emergent market is being accelerated, and I, the consumer, can benefit from cheaper and better products and the attendant competition spurred by government finance of sorts. Historically it’s been seen as governments are uniformly terrible at allocating capital, but if subsidies really are the dominant factor here—still not sure that’s true—then BYD seems to be in contradiction to that theory.

> Otherwise, it seems like an emergent market is being accelerated

TANSTAAFL. The money from the subsidy came from something else, which you had to pay for. Often it comes from some industry where that country already has a dominant position and therefore can charge you higher prices without you having a choice to switch to something else. Which is, moreover, the problem with this:

> I, the consumer, can benefit from cheaper and better products and the attendant competition spurred by government finance of sorts.

The country doing the subsidizing thereby destroys their competitors in other countries who don't receive it, and then once they have a large enough lead they can raise prices and you have no alternative.

> The country doing the subsidizing thereby destroys their competitors in other countries who don't receive it,

Meh. The governments in this case become very powerful investors, and not just to a specific company, but to an entire industry, more like a sector fund. The US government is more than capable of matching China here—once again—if subsidies are what's propelling BYD, but judging by the top comment[0] it's probably just good old-fashioned capitalism favoring the best player

> and then once they have a large enough lead they can raise prices and you have no alternative.

I think the fears of a monopolized automotive industry are alarmist. China isn't the country with the most capital, and rather than being sore loser about it with sanctions, the US can invest in its own market just as hard. (Edit: Worth noting that this is nothing new. Countries around the world have been subsidizing automotive companies for a long time. There's some gestalt benefit here for governments in specialized training, advanced manufacturing, employment etc.)

If anything with so many directions to be taken in battery chemistry and the reduction in complexity of drive train (and supply chain), more companies can enter the fray. There's plenty of room for competition.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39425092

> The US government is more than capable of matching China here

"Capable" only means something if they actually do it, and that hardly makes it good regardless. Why should BYD and Tesla have some artificial advantage over Volkswagen or Nissan or Hyundai?

What the US actually does is subsidize purchases of electric cars regardless of manufacturer, which creates a subsidy for the industry rather than a subsidy for that country's companies in that industry, which is the thing you want if your goal is actually to promote adoption of electric cars rather than to tilt the playing field.

> if subsidies are what's propelling BYD, but judging by the top comment[0] it's probably just good old-fashioned capitalism favoring the best player

It can be both. BYD having that founder explains why it's BYD and not some other company in China, while subsidies explain why it's BYD and not some equally fervent founder in Germany or Japan or Korea -- or Mexico or India or Brazil.

> I think the fears of a monopolized automotive industry are alarmist.

How is it alarmist when we've seen it happen in numerous other industries? There are many products that are now only made in China, or where China represents >90% of global volume in that industry.

> What the US actually does is subsidize purchases of electric cars regardless of manufacturer

From a cursory Google: Of the top 3 auto manufacturers in China, BYD is the only one that isn't a SOE. I keep trying to put emphasis on this, but I'll do it again for a third time: just how much, if it at all, subsidies are factoring into BYD's success is speculation. It's even further speculation to say that BYD is being subsidized exclusively, and certainly something I never imagined, or advocated.

> It can be both.

Goes without saying.

> There are many products that are now only made in China, or where China represents >90% of global volume in that industry.

China built up it's manufacturing capability over decades on the back of low labor costs. Now they have both mid-range labor costs, but exceptional advance manufacturing capabilities and human resources. This is not due to 'subsidies', but investment in, and a culture of, education. In the west people sit and laugh at smart people on sitcoms (looking at you Big Bang Theory), while in China intelligence isn't some social shortcoming. I'll defer to Tim Cook (as per the transcript):

"There's a confusion about China that ..uh.. and let me at least give you my opinion the the popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor costs. I'm not sure uh what part of China they go to but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago, and that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill and the the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is. Like ..um.. the products we do require really Advanced tooling and the the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art, and the tooling skill is very deep here. You know, in in the US you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room in China you could fill multiple football fields it's that vocational expertise is very very deep here and I give the ..uh.. the education system a lot of credit for continuing to push on that even when others were de-emphasizing vocational. Now I think many countries in the world have woke up and said you know this is a key thing and we've got to correct that, but China called that right from the beginning"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6bR8BptIpw

India and Asia Pacific at large are lagging a decade behind China, but you'd see more and more goods coming from there too, and not without perfectly fair, appropriate, sensible, and necessary government investment/subsidies into their own human resources and into emerging industries.

I'm done here. Feel free to have the last word.

> Of the top 3 auto manufacturers in China, BYD is the only one that isn't a SOE.

That isn't surprising. In a country where all domestic companies receive subsidies/advantages, a private company with that kind of leadership is the most successful one.

> just how much, if it at all, subsidies are factoring into BYD's success is speculation.

Everything is speculation. But what are you even disputing, that China subsidizes domestic companies or that receiving subsidies that competitors in other countries don't get is a competitive advantage?

> It's even further speculation to say that BYD is being subsidized exclusively, and certainly something I never imagined, or advocated.

The claim is not that BYD gets subsidies other companies from China don't get, it's that BYD gets subsidies that companies from other countries don't get.

> China built up it's manufacturing capability over decades on the back of low labor costs.

That was the hook, but then in order to get that they had technology transfer requirements and the operation in China had to have majority ownership by China. That puts companies in a bind: Move to China now and lose to a company from China later when they learn how to make your product, or refuse and then lose immediately to a competitor willing to sacrifice their future for cheap labor they can use to under cut you on price today.

> This is not due to 'subsidies', but investment in, and a culture of, education.

It was effectively subsidies for educating domestic industries on how to capture existing markets.

Then it became general subsidies, as they accumulated enough resources to do that. Use surplus in industries that have already been captured to provide support for new entrants in industries that haven't yet etc.

> In the west people sit and laugh at smart people on sitcoms (looking at you Big Bang Theory), while in China intelligence isn't some social shortcoming.

In the west sitcoms make fun of everything. That's what sitcoms are. Meanwhile American kids grow up to design rockets and build the internet and invent medical devices and sequence the human genome.

> I'll defer to Tim Cook

This is describing the consequences of the subsidies. Government tilts the playing field in favor of their own companies and that industry moves to that country. Several decades later, the people who know about that industry are in the country where the industry is.

> necessary government investment/subsidies

It seems like you're trying to argue that the subsidies aren't the reason industries moved there while also arguing that they're necessary in order to get them to move there.

And how are the subsidies supposed to do any good if everyone accepted that they're reasonable and then everybody did it? They would no longer confer any competitive advantage, they would just create inefficiency by over-producing in whatever industry is receiving the subsidies.

> which isn't actually a good thing

Maybe not for competitors but seems like a pretty good thing for the country doing the subsidizing?

Which is why other countries would be wise to provide a disincentive for engaging in that behavior.

Note that China does price carbon, which the USA does not (though some states do).

China is building more new coal-fired power plants than anyone else. Whatever they're doing on paper, they're not doing it in practice.

China is building the more solar capacity than the US[0] and more nuclear capacity[1] than anyone else. Coal as a percentage of their energy mix has been markedly decreasing since 2014 [2]

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-solar?t...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...

And their carbon price has played a role in that:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

> How carbon emission prices accelerate net zero: Evidence from China's coal-fired power plants

This is just trying to write on both sides of the ledger. If you tax carbon but then have other policies that encourage the construction of coal-fired power plants, they might only cancel out and at worst the price is doing less than the counter-incentives. You can try to claim that it would be even worse without it, but the real metric is, are you shutting down the existing coal-fired power plants or are you building more?

No, the real metric is carbon, not the number of coal plants.

"China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal"

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants

Except that makes no sense. You don't build something that expensive if you don't expect to use it, unless you're a fool. Moreover, unless they plan to continue to use all of the the existing coal-fired power plants and the new ones, if they were going to burn less then they could just use the existing ones.

You can come up with some hypothetical like that article does where they're using coal as peaker plants (even though it's not very good at that because they take more time than natural gas to get up to temperature), but both the economics and the CO2 of that are pretty bad. You build and maintain all of these coal power plants and then only use them half the time, doubling their cost per unit electricity, and yet you do use them half the time and emit all of that CO2.

But the alternative where you build them all for some rare emergency load is crazy. That's the one where they wouldn't be producing a catastrophic amount of CO2, but the economics of that are so bad that assuming that's their intent is assuming they're incompetent. They'd have to recover the cost of building and maintaining all of those power plants while only running them 2% of the time. That makes no sense compared to spending not all that much more to build nuclear plants instead which then generate power all of the time and avoid the need to also build something else (presumably intermittent renewables) to generate that power the other 98% of the time.

So either they're incompetent or that theory is wrong and they're building a lot more coal power plants because they intend to burn a lot more coal.

> the real metric is carbon

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/carbon-co2-e...

More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down.

> More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down.

Yeah they shot up for a decade after 2000, while the US/Canada reduced theirs and yet they're still 2x higher per capita. The area under the graph is the real contribution to the problem. China is very far from the obvious target for any objective evalution:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

The area under the graph is a sunk cost. What matters is the decisions being made today, not the things nobody can change anymore.

US CO2 emissions per capita were higher in 1950 than they are in China today -- and in the US today -- because in 1950 there were no nuclear power plants and renewables weren't a viable technology yet.

That isn't true anymore. Which is why the US is replacing coal with renewables and gets three times as high a percentage than China from nuclear and its emissions per capita are trending lower. But that's harder to do than building them to begin with, because to do that you have to be competitive with a fossil fuel power plant that already exists rather than one that needs new capital in order to be built. And yet it's still happening.

There is no excuse for building new coal in the 21st century. They can't say that nuclear and renewables don't exist or aren't viable yet. They can't say that they're existing plants and they need time to transition. They shouldn't be doing it.

> China is building the more solar capacity than the US[0] and more nuclear capacity[1] than anyone else.

That's because they're increasing their overall energy use more than the US, which would be fine if it was entirely solar and nuclear, but the point is rather that it isn't.

> Coal as a percentage of their energy mix has been markedly decreasing since 2014

Again only because the denominator changed -- the absolute amount of coal went up, and it's still at 60% compared to <20% in the US:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427

Meanwhile the solar you're touting for China is still at <5% and so is the nuclear, compared to 18% for the latter in the US.

China generates about the same percentage from solar and wind as the US but significantly less from nuclear and dramatically more from coal. Meanwhile the largest generation source in the US is natural gas, which even combined with US generation from coal, only reaches the same percentage as China generates from coal by itself, and natural gas emits less CO2 per unit electricity than coal.

Coal is a disaster and there is no excuse for building more of it rather than replacing what already exists.

> Again only because the denominator changed

> Meanwhile the solar you're touting for China is still at <5% and so is the nuclear, compared to 18% for the latter in the US.

I'm not sure if it is ignorance here, or deliberate straw-manning, but clearly you're comparing a developed nation with a developing nation with a massive population. To be fair, it's on it's last phase of catch up with developed nations, with some provinces 'medium' on the HDI vs some that are 'very high'[0], but in comparison the US[1] the HDI is uniformly 'very high'[1].

> Coal is a disaster and there is no excuse for building more of it rather than replacing what already exists.

Given my assertion above, this translates into: 'China's people must have a lower quality of life (with the attendant health/educational outcomes etc.), until renewable energy catches up'. If the situation was reversed, how might you feel to be on the receiving end of that argument? Anyway, to counter China could do an Elon Musk and say they is doing more for the environment than any other country by manufacturing so much cheap solar panels (which go to sunny places like North Africa, Australia, US)[2], batteries, and EVs... in spite of burning hydrocarbons en-masse in other endeavors, e.g., "There's no excuse in starting a whole space industry that's increasing emissions via inarguably carbon-positive fuel in this warming climate, even though they kickstarted EV industry" vs "There's no excuse for China making coal fired plants, even though they supply solar panels that generate 100s of GWs (soon TWs) of power in other countries"). And maybe one day, Musk will use carbon capture to make his fuel carbon-neutral, and with China switching to renewables and nuclear at a rapid clip in spite of their large and developing population they will catch up too.

Once again, I'm done here, feel free to have the last word.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisio... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/44y90h/annual_suns...

> you're comparing a developed nation with a developing nation with a massive population.

This makes it easier for them, not harder. Renewable generation is more competitive against an unbuilt coal-fired power plant than an existing one that has already paid off its construction costs and only has to pay for operating expenses.

> China's people must have a lower quality of life (with the attendant health/educational outcomes etc.), until renewable energy catches up

You have two premises here which are both incorrect. The first is that renewable technology has to "catch up", but it's already cost-competitive with coal. The second is that renewable technology is the only alternative to coal, but nuclear is a mature technology when you need to supply base load. It's not like you have to wait for fusion, just don't use coal.

> Anyway, to counter China could do an Elon Musk and say they is doing more for the environment than any other country by manufacturing so much cheap solar panels (which go to sunny places like North Africa, Australia, US)

Which they're subsidizing to assist their domestic industry in controlling the market. Otherwise why are they exporting them rather than using them in place of coal, in a country closer to the equator than the continental US?

> There's no excuse in starting a whole space industry that's increasing emissions via inarguably carbon-positive fuel in this warming climate

The Falcon 9 produces 300 tons of CO2 per launch and there were 60 launches in 2022, totaling 18,000 tons. In the same year China emitted 11.4 billion metric tons of CO2. One of these doesn't even rise to the level of a rounding error, the other is a huge problem.

> subsidies

Given the repeated bail-outs of US carmakers, and the way Tesla have leveraged government carbon trading schemes over the years, plus the 20 year rule on importing cars, the chicken tax and so on, it would certainly be extremely rich for anyone based in the US to cast aspersions on government support for car manufacturers.

Yeah I don't see the issue here. Why should we care if the Chinese government is subsidising the Western middle class to de-carbonised? That's a great outcome!

Same reason why "dumping" product below cost is generally considered bad in markets with a high barrier to entry -- it tends to destroy the competition, and, once the competition is destroyed, the dumper can then jack up all their prices sky-high.

The CCP's national security laws casts a pall over the whole affair. I feel similarly about Russia. Huge countries full of great people and culture that we could learn a great deal from and grow together- if only our governments could trust each other. It makes me sad imagining other timelines.

https://archive.is/pVDKq

As someone who just took delivery of a BYD Song Plus, I can say I’d be very, very worried if I was BMW’s CEO.

And yes, I’ve owned 5 BMWs before this new BYD.

I have to imagine the overlap between markets for people who prefer to:

pay a premium to drive luxury (BMW customers)

those willing to take a chance on a new ultra-cheap $22k Chinese electric car

are near zero currently

How many testimonials like the one you’re replying to would it take to change that, though? If some popular Tik Tok/Youtube people had good experiences, it’s not hard to imagine that a ton of Gen Z buyers would decide they like being able to save large amounts of money they don’t have. “Made in China” has a negative connotation to older people but for anyone under, say, 50 that’s normal for almost everything else.

> that a ton of Gen Z buyers

I thought the narrative was Gen Z can't afford to not live at home. Now they're buying BMWs?

Gen Z as a whole earn less than the millennials did at the same age (as did Gen X) but that doesn’t mean everyone in an entire generation is destitute. Less spending power on average and more precarious employment _does_ mean more people who might be looking for a deal – why make a financial stretch if you don’t have to? – and if BYD is making good products, it’s not hard to imagine a generational shift not unlike what happened when a lot of Boomers decided Japanese cars were better than the Cadillacs, etc. which their parents had considered proof of having made it.

Housing does also enter into the picture: people who don’t see home ownership as plausible might spend more on cars than they strictly need to because that’s an area where you can express yourself and it’s far more affordable than a mortgage. That isn’t the optimal financial choice but people like to have something nice they own and if housing isn’t it, cars are the next most prestigious thing most Americans own.

Good job + sky-high housing prices = nice car, no home

Funny how its always a Tesla killer, rather then a killer of the legacy manufactures. That's the actual story here.

BYD in China more broadly spell doom for GM and friends, far more then Tesla.

It's Tesla that has a substantial Chinese (and European) footprint where BYD is operating though.

GM/Ford/Stellaris aren't making a push for EVs in China like Tesla is. BYD just doesn't compete with USAs automakers outside of their Chinese footprints. (Maybe European competition since Europe is importing a lot of Chinese EVs in practice right now)

> GM/Ford/Stellaris aren't making a push for EVs in China like Tesla is.

China is an incredibly important market for cars, its not about EV or not.

And to just say 'well, see we don't even car about this huge market' isn't really much of a strategy, its just giving up.

My point was not about GM and US companies, it was about legacy EV companies in general. VW has massive problems in China as well. My broad point is that BYD is a problem for everybody.

> BYD just doesn't compete with USAs automakers outside of their Chinese footprints.

But they will. They are currently expanding all over the world. Its a matter of time.

You think the import tariffs on Chinese cars is going to come down any time soon? Or that American politics would change such that USA would accept a large number of such cars?

If not.... then no. USA pretty much doesn't have to worry about it.

USA can afford higher car prices, and it's a political tradeoff that's really easy to make right now. I'm willing to bet on higher such tariffs if Chinese car prices drop any further.

I understand where you are coming from, but it isn't that simple.

American investors are very, very much into overseas expansions. Assuming the cars BYD puts out really are that good (which is a big if), this could seriously damage exports.

The US market is the most valuable, so these companies will survive, but the stock will not thrive.

Some investors are.

Other investors are keen on just preventing this Chinese deflation / possible Chinese recession from destroying our own portfolios.

Tesla is exporting Gigafactory Shanghai Tesla's to Europe right now IIRC.

You know, GM has twp joint ventures in China, and Wuling especially has popular EVs (behind BYD, and Tesla of course). Below commenter also points out GM isn't aggressive in China...

Maybe should have picked Ford as a better example.

I was referring to all legacy manufactures. VW is having lots of issues in China.

GM isn't aggressive in China because they know they can't really win.

GM and co attitude being 'who cares about that large market we don't even want to compete' isn't really all that convincing as a strategy.

I didn't know much about BYD till the end of the last year. Looked around for more information and found this great video[0]. It's a fascinating story actually.

So in west clean energy push is actually a moral obligation for reducing the effects of climate change. Whereas for China it is the main way for future growth, to become less dependent on oil supply chain which it does not control. Also they know that they can't compete in ICE vehicles with the established companies. So they started working on EV long before Elon Musk popularized EV in West.

The subsidized whole EV industry. As a result hundreds of EV companies were created seeing the opportunities. As a result nationwide EV infrastructure was built. Five years ago China did the most unconventional thing. They invited Tesla to build the factories and at a same time removed most subsidies given to local EV companies. So Tesla and local companies were having same equal footing.

It resulted in a pure form of free market competition. It became a bloodbath, a king of the hill type survival game where Tesla sat at top of the hill. As a result of competition innovation, optimization happened. Most of the local EV companies died. Remaining became almost the same level as Tesla and BYD became the new king of the hill (at least in China).

The unconventional decision by China may look foreign to western audience but it actually resonates to us who are raised by Asian families. So if you are a child in an asian households parents most of the time talks about a 'kid next door' who is good at study. The parents frequently tells their child to become as good or better than the 'kid next door',saying that we will give you as good environment within our reach to achieve it. It gives an implicit pressure on the child to become better. Obviously not all become as good as the kid next door but some prevails.

In the Chinese EV market case Tesla was that 'kid next door'.

Edit: Sorry wrong video. Trying to find the video.

Edit2: found the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-NcTawauXA . Skip to the 9 minute.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttu55nEtC6o

FYI you can include timestamps in YouTube URLs. Thanks for the links!

BYD will next buy lithium mines they will manage the whole supply chain. By producing cars in Europe Africa South America they by pass import laws. Ford and GM signed supply deals with BYD technology a day ago. it’s just too late to start to research and develop your own Battery many manufacturers will adapt BYD batters otherwise you will miss out of a huge market share. ESG funds and offset carbon credits just going to keep making BYD stronger and stronger.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240212051015if_/https://www.ny...

BYD's story to me is more about timing and some experiments paying off.

as a battery manufacturer, it probably took some internal management's push to continue developing on this area despite earlier setbacks. note that they tried developing other electronic devices without reaching this level of success.

china itself had a lot of regional electric car manufacturers in the past decade, out of whom a few have emerged as successful. it would not be completely fair to chalk their success down to getting "unlimited money from the government of the second largest economy".

the current declining economy has forced chinese automotive industry to look outside for continued growth, and i find it to have a similar consequence as the solar panel dumping of the early 2010s.

They announced three factories in Brazil. However, cars in Brazil are expensive due to many factors, including taxes and tariffs (see the price of an iPhone in Brazil and try not to be horrified).

The EV push makes so much more sense for China than it does in the US.

The warm climate leads to better battery performance. The availability of HSR means that cars aren't needed for road trips, subverting the need for range. The money saved on gas makes sense as gas is expensive and all the components are (electronics, silicon, battery tech) is available in house.

Tesla was always going to have an uphill battle.

I have a conspiracy theory that because the US is the world's #1 oil producer, it fights as hard as it can to stay on ICE for as long as it can. For example, lobbying, lack of motivation to build out charging infrastructure, etc.

The climate is a non-issue for almost all Americans. I think your point about HSR is more important because it’s really saying that the entire country isn’t designed around individual people driving everywhere all the time, and that’s the problem the United States has in so many forms: housing is spread out and often intentionally bad for transit, transit and bike infrastructure is terrible because most funding was used to subsidize private car travel for most of a century, people have car parking because they’re required to pay for it anyway, etc. Gas prices going up could change that but it’d be hard on many people to the point that elections are lost.

What BYD seems to be doing in spain is the following. cost wise they are no cheaper than the other cars. What they do is front you the government subsidies for evs so the car is cheaper. What happens if you don’t qualify for it in the years it takes to process the subsidy. Who knows? Do they write it off or does the ccp cover it as a defacto state subsidy from China?

The Point-of-sale tax credit (effectively what you are describing) for qualifying new EVs is now live in the US too.

Whether you actually qualify or not is matter that is taken up between you and the IRS. I believe that if at the end of the year you don't qualify after taking the POS tax-credit, you owe that amount to the IRS. (or at least can't use that amount as a write-off)

I imagine it would be the same in Spain, ultimately not the responsibility of the EV manufacturer (assuming they provide all of the relevant tax documentation).

Chinese electric carmakers are taking on Europeans – and succeeding

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/18/1225653773/china-electric-veh...

How does VC work in China? How did he get his money?

Snooping a bit on Wikipedia, it says that he partnered with his cousin who was some kind of banker.

For BYD in the 1990s, Family banking.

Specifically within the Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka diaspora.

Guangdong+Fujian became a major manufacturing hub because most of the business elite in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Phillipines were from the same clans and families in Guangdong and Fujian

Before the 2000s, Manchuria tended to be much richer and industrialized than Guangdong/Fujian because of Russian/Soviet, South Korean, and Japanese FDI along with the fact that it was close to Beijing and was the heartland of the CCP after WW2 so most SOEs were based there.

By the mid-late 2000s, China's financial sector formalized and a IB/PE/VC model similar to that in the US and Israel arose.

Yeah, well

It is, on paper a private company

But you need to understand this is China. BYD is extremely heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. For example, this 2016 article https://www.forbes.com/sites/mclifford/2016/07/26/with-a-lit... mentions

> In the five years ending December 31, 2015, the company reported receiving a total of 2.9 billion yuan ($435 million) in government support.

and that's just the reported support, there are tricks the government can play with for example labor costs, transferring R&D and so forth.

Yeah but that's the same fir any car manufacturer aynwhere. VW is extremely subsidized by Germany, US bailed out their bankrupt manufacturers after 2008, same with France, Japan, Korea. UK didn't do that, or stopped doing that, and their car industry collapsed. Even for countries doing only manufacturing for other nations brands it's so common to heavily subsidize those factories to be able to get local production jobs.

Besides $435 million is practically nothing in government aid terms. Hell, even tiny Hungary have given Audi €113 million in 2016: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/253497/2534...

Looks like $2.4 billion from state/local, $300 million from federal, and a $400 million paid back loan from federal for Tesla.

https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc

Why was so much money poured into BYD and nobody cared about designing a proper logo?

Kinda like Jeep, Dodge, GMC, Kia, etc.? If they make good cars, the logo will be seen positively. If they don’t, the logo won’t matter.

The Dodge Ram logo is cool.

Sure, but this is their primary logo:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dodge_black_logo.svg

> “Frankly, I think if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other companies in the world,” he (Musk) said.

I love this viewpoint. If a country takes a similar approach against the US, same people will go berserk about equality and cry foul. However, when they feel threatened, they can call for the very thing they are against.

What I learned in the last 6 years is that the US is simply not the good guys that everyone makes them out to be and China is not the bad guys. It's all a game for resources and survival. That's it.

The way the US does it is the same way any other government would do it - propaganda.

https://archive.is/pVDKq

They have their own campus monorail that is absolutely wild lol.

Monorail! LA may be getting a BYD monorail.[1]

[1] https://laskyrailexpress.com/

Not sure why they'd name a car after a bird that shits everywhere. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Don't most birds do this? Couldn't you make this comment about any bird?

I live at the beach, seagulls are a special breed. It is thought that they aim for humans too.

My comment still stands.

Soviet luxury cars for big bosses were called that also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ_Chaika

I guess when you don't live near the coast, seagulls have this romantic, sea faring, travel vibe.

I live at the coast too.

I think they're remarkable. I think it's pretty cool how they pick up mollusks and clams and such, drop them from high on the rocks and sidewall to break them open to eat. Clever.

First thing I though when I saw this brand. 'Seal', 'Dolphin', 'Seagull'. They should have perhaps asked a agency to brand these cars a little better.

Looks like electric car manufacturers have poor taste… (BTW, 'Seal', 'Dolphin', 'Seagull' is still much butter than Elon's teenager leet speak joke…)

BYD's cars gave crappy suspension. Compared to a BMW on the highway...

dup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39382472

It's hard to compete against a state backed enterprise, especially when the backing includes a massive industrial espionage operation that keeps tabs on all of your competitors.

I found the comment fueled by propaganda.

Only a Tesla killer if they can beat Tesla in the race to full self-driving.

Talking about self-driving - any ideas what's going on with Tesla's FSD V12?

They published a live stream of Elon Musk driving it, and gave it to exactly one Youtuber, who is now putting up video after video how he drives it.

Both the live stream and the Youtube videos show vastly improved self-driving capabilities.

But if this is real, why don't they push it to customers?

Tesla will not be able to deliver true FSD with its current purely computer vision based stack

Why not? How do humans drive if not by vision?

Using sound as well

Because humans drive using general intelligence - something we can’t replicate anywhere yet, let alone in a power-constrained car.

    something we can’t replicate anywhere yet

yet

That's why it's a race.

You don’t understand. The stack currently deployed in Tesla vehicles _will never be capable_ of anything even remotely resembling AGI. There’s just not enough compute there by several orders of magnitude, even if we knew how to do it, which we don’t.

    not enough compute

Which type? Storage? Compute speed?

How do you know what the lower bound for AGI is?

Regardless of the issue processing the data to the level that humans can very quickly, is the camera hardware they're putting in Tesla comparable with human eyes? Specifically with dynamic range - seeing in shadowy areas on a sunny day, or not being totally blinded by a headlight at night?

We would have to look at the camera footage of crashes and then think about whether a sufficiently intelligent person could have avoided the crash given those visuals.

My feeling is that yes, with enough intelligence, even low res cameras are sufficient.

Self-drive is not about human, is it?

Well, for one, humans have two eyes in front with the same focal length giving us binocular vision. The people at Tesla apparently think humans only have one eye which is why they keep spewing the nonsensical analogy to human perception.

That is just the most glaring error with that analogy. It ignores more subtle issues like how human eyes have higher resolution than 5 megapixels. Human eyes are also much better at contrast, have adaptive focus, are attached to a mobile mount, etc.

The only people who would originate a intentionally deceptive argument that humans can drive with vision therefore Tesla's can drive with their camera setup are undeniably con artists trying to sell a lie. The people who are duped into promulgating that lie can be forgiven for being swindled by those con artists, it is why they are called con artists.

can't we want these things to be better than humans? I can't see at night or through fog. why limit computers to sensors that will be equally bad instead of something better?

We have finite resources.

Tesla thinks that investing in AI is more effective than investing in lidar and radar.

Google thinks that investing in lidar and radar is worth it.

We'll see how it turns out.

My feeling is that Tesla is right.

The problem is the world modeling and decision making, not the perception.

I work in this field and own a Tesla. It routinely sees things in my garage that aren’t there. I would not entrust my life and that of my family to their “FSD”, and I know the science does not exist to fix out of domain errors 100%. It is an outstanding product in all other regards. I just wish they’d stop promising the stuff they obviously can’t deliver

I work in this field too. And I'm not saying the FSD is good. I'm saying cameras are effectively photon counters these days and the leaps forward we've seen in text and image generation from ML, has yet to impact robotics in any meaningful way.

Trains are better than self-driving cars. China's electric cars don't need self-driving because they have developed world train infrastructure, while the US doesn't.

Nobody's taking away trains, relax. You'll be able to take them even if others make other transportation choices.

Making other transportation is one thing. Laws that require places to be ruined to support your transportation choices, like parking minimums and car-first planning, are quite another.

China is developing self driving cars.

Subsidies, mandates, stolen technology, no environmental laws or worker protections

The biggest challenge is the battery which is what byd originally made. Electric motors have been around for a long time. The first cars were electric.

The first cars were steam, although electric cars were an important part of the overall mix when they started becoming more widely sold.

Tesla or BYD?

No environmental laws or worker protections? Is this based on truth or prejudice?

Subsidies and mandates are good when the EU does them but bad when China does them?

Western companies have been basically shut out of the Chinese market since the beginning-even more is now. A huge trade imbalance should have naturally balanced itself out in a true free market. The fact it’s been so distorted for decades shows how bad it is. A rebalancing must occur and will be good for everyone in the long run

Chinese policy making has been hugely protectionist and interventions lost for decades.

Chicken tax.

So...? Tariffs are just like subsidies or taxes, a transfer of money between one sector and another sector in the economy

Not sure that’s entirely true, especially if we’re talking cars. Volkswagen China is around 50% of VW sales, and Mercedes sells 40+% in China for example. If we’re talking US cars, they’re typically too focused on US market desires for other countries.

With mandatory transfers of all technology and giving up 51% ownership of the forced joint ventures?

Don't move the goal post.

Again, it’s not Mercedes selling cars in China. It’s some joint venture that’s majority owned by the Chinese that has forcibly taken Mercedes tech and has made millions of cars using it. You can’t compare a Mercedes in the USA and China and say they are equivalent

  Western companies have been basically shut out of the Chinese market since the beginning-even more is now.

Sometimes I wonder what people actually read to write something like that.

China is Mercedes' biggest market. Audi sells more cars in China than in all of Europe. Tesla is one of the top EV sellers in China.

It's actually the US who has shut off China's access to the US car market.

You mean “ Beijing Benz” which is owned 51% by china and makes their own cars too using the tech taken from Mercedes?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com