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Comment by khannn | Hacker News Reader

I wish I could get a BYD Dolphin hatch for ~10k USD. Somehow my 12 year old Prius is worth 9k on KBB and that's insane.

Dolphins don't sell for $10k outside of China. Dolphins in South/Central America are ~$22k. Even if there weren't tariffs on them I wouldn't expect to see them out the door for less than $25k in the US.

Why the 120% price difference between China and South America?

Different government subsidies, different manufacturing costs, different regulatory requirements, and different markets have different market competition.

Think about this concept. It costs you $1 to make a widget. It costs your competitors $1.25 to make a similar widget. They sell theirs for $5. Do you sell yours for $1.50 or $4.75? Obviously, other things could be in play for the market for widgets, but if you could sell all your widgets for $4.75 wouldn't you do that?

If the cheapest car in the US is about $20k and is a complete POS, why would you sell your better car for $10k when you could still sell it for $22k and still sell just about all the ones you build?

Your post is so muddled. The cheapest new EV on the US market is a Nissan Leaf at ~30k MSRP new, but I found a used 2025 model with 1341 miles for $17,899 in a cursory search. Nissan has a dealership in my city so I know it can be serviced here or at worst the next largest city near here while a Chinese brand would be a crapshoot until it spreads to my medium-small city. I can only imagine the stink people will put on Chinese cars, even hybrids and American made EVs get poo-poo'd.

I imagine that a Chinese automaker such as BYD would price itself low, something like an EV at ICE prices, to get a foothold in the American market. I really wish BYD was around here so I could drive one and look at the build quality myself, it's almost like the domestic Automakers and the CIA are putting out hit pieces about the brand.

> The cheapest new EV on the US market is a Nissan Leaf

I said the cheapest car not the cheapest EV. And of that I meant new car. That would be the Nissan Versa, which has an MSRP of $18,385. After TTL, depending on your market you're probably looking at something around $20k out the door.

A lot of this makes sense. But why would South America's consumer market be less competitive than China? If China's low prices are caused by, say, 3 Chinese brands competing with each other, why can't those 3 Chinese brands also compete with each other in South America?

Chinese brands are in a horrible price war ATM in China, with many cars being sold at losses (and tricks to get around government imposed price controls, like selling a new car as used!). In a less competitive market where they have more pricing power, they simply aren’t going to do that. And even if 3 brands have enough resources to go abroad, they left 10+ brands behind that couldn’t (every 3rd or greater tier city has their own brand, so even saying 10 is probably an underestimate, heck you have cities like Liuzhou that aren’t even 3rd tier!).

They will also sell higher end configurations abroad to make it worth their time. They won’t sell the absolute bare bones option that comes with almost no profit (if not a loss).

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