Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure that's a factor, but probably not for long - Chinese wages are on the rise along with China's economy, still a long way from US wages but they doubled in the past decade according to [0].

But one thing that's hard to deny is that US and European car manufacturers are still building on top of previous iterations of their vehicles, swapping out a ICE with an electric system but keeping the existing systems, frankensteining the two together. The article itself makes note of it:

> More than five separate CAN buses, ten or more kilograms of low voltage wiring, probably over one hundred electronic modules (most with their own CPU and firmware), etc.

I don't know cars, granted, nor legislation, but surely a car engineered from scratch would be much simpler and thus cheaper to build? How does Tesla do this?

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/china/wages

View on HN

> But one thing that's hard to deny is that US and European car manufacturers are still building on top of previous iterations of their vehicles, swapping out a ICE with an electric system but keeping the existing systems, frankensteining the two together. The article itself makes note of it:

Worth noting that the car in the article isn't from a US or European car manufacturer, though Hyundai is certainly fairly well-established at this point.

But also, a lot of the stuff going on/wiring+subsystem count is not solely a factor of "making a motor assembly from scratch". For instance the steering wheel lock sensors in the article. Or all the safety-related sensors and subsystems, let alone all the infotainment stuff and related "features" in a modern car... Is BYD doing any better at reducing all that sprawl?

Bro, Chinese auto factory workers make like $300 per month: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chinas...

Compare that to US workers making about $30 per hour: https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm

As for the engineering costs: I think reusing existing designs is a way of cutting costs for US companies. Chinese companies and Tesla designed very different stuff from scratch because they had no choice I think. Remember, existing designs are proven over potentially decades, comply with various laws, etc.

And as now Tesla has moved past that early 'greenfielding' stage, their situation has changed to be dramatically more similar to the 'legacy' car makers. And suddenly, Tesla sees that their supposedly superior quirky approaches to carmaking generally are probably going to 'solidify' into systems eerily similar to the legacy ones.

Whoever was dismissive of the legacy car makers was also assuming decades of innovations in maintainability planning and reuse logic in one of the most highly competitive industries. Turns out, Tesla - even though the shook up the legacy contenders early on - is losing a lot of the advantages quicker that they have imagined to stay. Hardly a surprise to anyone who understands that millions of highly skilled engineers in the car industries aren't exactly less competent than the average Tesla engineer.

It seems to me that Tesla still makes the best functioning EV if you overlook their warts like being all proprietary, difficult to repair, and so on. Even the best EV sucks compared to an ICE car, and that is reflected in demand. Furthermore, Tesla is essentially competing with China, which they rely upon for many components and which seeks to cut them out of the domestic market. I don't think any Chinese EV is actually better than a Tesla but it is cheaper for various reasons, and that can cut into their market share. Remember, the Chinese government is investing heavily in EV tech and they basically force their citizens to buy the things regardless of how good they actually are. It would be foolish to think that they will always suck compared to Tesla. The Chinese government is willing to lose money to put every Western manufacturing company out of business. You can't compete with that, their protectionist policies, or even their cheap labor, without serious protectionism of your own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com