Comment by iwanttocomment | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iwanttocomment | Hacker News Reader

It's really bizarre, the American animus towards Asian EVs.

We can all complain about Trump's chest-pounding on tariffs, but Biden's largely unexplained 2024 100% (!) tariffs on Chinese EVs were even more restrictive and barely covered in the media. I'm genuinely curious about the quality and price of these BYDs and am concerned that we're functionally restricted from buying a normal consumer good from another country.

Meanwhile, Kei-car enthusiasts looking for a practical and safe pickup unencumbered by the massive bloat of modern US trucks are limited to 25-year-old imports.

(I personally own cars manufactured from primarily American parts both in Canada and Mexico, as well as an EV primarily from Belgium. I'm largely agnostic on global manufacturing, and I just legitimately don't get what is going on with US car tariffs and import policies, which seem restrictive and arbitrary regardless of left or right-wing US politics.)

Edit: Man, you people hate this comment and honestly I think it's straightforward and accurate.

Edit 2: This main post, which I didn't make, has been flagged despite being a reasonable post from a typical news outlet about manufacturing, technology and consumer products. Huh. What is up?

"It's really bizarre, the American animus towards Asian cars."

Based on the evidence, there is no American animus towards Asian cars.

Toyota, Honda, Kia, Hyundai--heck, even Nissan--all sell well in the USA and have for decades.

It is not animus that drives American policy on any foreign car, it is fear. Toyota broke the American Big 3 back in the '70s, and BYD would destroy whatever hope there was for an American EV industry.

Toyota, Honda, Kia, Hyundai and even Nissan have North American manufacturing facilities.

The animus about those brands all lessened greatly once many of their cars were produced in North America.

There never, to the best of my knowledge, was any animus.

The only people who hated Datsun worked in Detroit

I've had a BYD for a month or so now, and the build quality is fantastic. It really feels very premium, and there are some design/UX choices that really surprised me (things like the car refusing to set the parking brake if you aren't wearing a seatbelt).

Overall, I am extremely happy about my purchase, especially at only $40k after subsidies.

> things like the car refusing to set the parking brake if you aren't wearing a seatbelt

This is confusing to me. Does the car prevent a safety feature (setting the parking brake) from working when one doesn’t wear the seatbelt? Or was that a typo intended to mean that it prevents releasing the parking brake (and allowing the car to move) when one doesn’t wear the seatbelt?

Yes, it prevents you from setting the parking brake if your seatbelt is off, as you shouldn't exit the car while it's still on. I'll double-check, as I might be mistaken, but it has lots of nice little behaviours that show that the manufacturer really thought about the edge cases.

> Yes, it prevents you from setting the parking brake if your seatbelt is off, as you shouldn't exit the car while it's still on.

This sentence is confusing but doesn't seem to make sense either way it can be read. What is the antecedent of "it's" in "while it's still on"? The parking brake or the seat belt?

Why should you not exit the car when the parking brake is set? Alternatively, how could you exit the car while your seat belt is still on?

The car, sorry. You're meant to turn it off before exiting. That said, I just tried it, and I was wrong, so it was some other thoughtful thing that I noticed. I remember thinking "that's really smart, it's so you can't exit the car while it's still on", but don't remember exactly what it was.

Not sure how exiting the car without turning it off can be prevented. Everything the car might do to prevent it seems like a serious safety problem.

Not letting you set the parking brake? That's also known as the emergency brake, you don't want to disable it while the car is moving.

Not letting you remove your seat belt? Obvious serious safety problem.

Not letting you open the door? Super obvious super serious safety problem.

The Biden 100% tariffs were precisely because the Asian cars are good. Without that they'd probably drive GM etc out of business. Biden was also very pro auto union and took a lot of money from them. He didn't invite Tesla to US ev meetings in spite of them being the largest US ev maker because they are non union.

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