I went to Mexico to test-drive the cars Americans can’t buy | Hacker News Reader

I went to Mexico to test-drive the cars Americans can’t buy

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329 pointsbookofjoe403 comments

I live in Europe: My only “concern” about chinese cars (and I don’t mean chinese as in Volvo) that I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years. More than 500 unique models were released in the first 6 months of 2026 alone [0]. It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago. Brands you never heared about, never updated Android versions etc

0, https://www.carscoops.com/2026/08/chinese-automakers-lauchin...

Given how often parts are unavailable for new and late model "western" brands this is more like a generic worry that comes with car ownership than anything brand-specific. If anything the proliferation of brands demonstrates robust use of off-the-shelf components, which in turn suggests replacement parts should be ubiquitous.

TBH the market demand will ensure a Toyota Camry/Honda Civic 'invincible' style runabout will emerge that basically anyone can run into the ground and still depend on. The real issue to me is the morality of the production of the parts, particularly things involving rare-earth metals.

As opposed to the ethical oil industry?

The best option when it comes to cars is to not own one.

(Not that i judge or anything, i have a 10yo corolla but i drive it maybe once a month, between my ebike and public transit i have very little use for it)

That's mostly a Tesla thing, isn't it? The traditional western car manufacturers figured this out many decades ago.

Ish. Traditional car manufacturers had this figured out but intentionally dropped the plot over the last couple decades because make number go up. Net result: my wife had a mouse die in a vent duct in her 2 year old SUV. We drove a dealership loaner for 8 months waiting for parts. They ended up replacing the entire dash assembly (including gauge clusters, and infotainment unit). Many (most?) modern car transmissions aren't field-serviceable because no parts are available. Any issue with the transmission means the entire unit gets replaced.

(Which car brand?)

But where did that replacement dash assembly come from? They just intentionally made it less granular because make number go up.

I see your point, but it's a slightly different one.

This is pretty horrible news that I hadn't really heard about, especially since American cars are so expensive now.

Why was this not a problem in the past? I know covid and tariffs have changed the supply picture a lot but I was vaguely under the impression there was some kind of parts availability requirement for manufacturers.

Lot of European car parts come from Ukraine and that definitely affected the parts availability for euro cars. There definitely has been an adjustment period and I recall in 2021/2022 where European cars would come in to the US without basic features like seat warmers/vents, electronic seat rails, etc etc

Erm. No.

I don't follow the car industry but I've worked on a project circa 2018 for all European manufacturers to help provide parts 15 years after the car was sold (I provided the Hadoop clusters and some of the predictive algorithms to try to predict which car parts will fail and how many will be needed over the car Lifetime.) BOOST4.0 or something. I don't know where it ended up going.

It's definitely an issue but typically not until you pass the ~20 year mark. I recently sold a very low volume car that is now 26 years old and there's definitely a secondary market now in hoarded parts as the originals become less and less available from the manufacturer.

You might want to take a closer look into the current state of play on new and late model vehicle parts availability and general serviceability, because your take here appears to be a couple decades out of date. Parts are frequently difficult or impossible to source for cars that are less than 5 years old.

That would be against the law in the EU, provided the manufacturer is still in business of course. It's I think 15 years after they stop making the model they have to have the parts still available.

Makes sense too as the average age of cars is going up.

We can’t get parts for my wife’s 7 year old Buick convertible anymore so that’s not really true. We took it to the dealer to get a service done and they broke her fob then messed around for two weeks before declaring that they couldn’t source a replacement. So it depends greatly on the vehicle. If it isn’t an American truck then good luck getting documentation or parts for it. Luckily our regular mechanic actually knows what he’s doing so he’s able to come up with alternatives for things like turbo solenoids. But the OEM parts are always on backorder and are 10x as expensive.

I've heard of year+ backorders on parts for ~5 year old models recently. High volume slightly older cars like a 2015 corolla sometimes even have backorders despite how many are still driving

Jokes on you. In the Northeast cars rust in less than 10 years. We don't need parts

True 40 years ago, not so much any more.

https://totallossgap.co.uk/blog/post/why-do-modern-cars-not-...

The linked article is hardly an exposé of advanced materials research...

I can send you a picture of the undercarriage of my 2014 car

You get that treated with new car like any other owner in such environment. Or is your whole car rusted through?

Does that matter if there literally aren't any spare parts to buy? That was kinda his point I feel like

What's wrong with your 2014 car? I live in northern europe, we get shitload of road salt in the winter and my 2014 car is fine. Winter is also the time when I use my car the most for commuting.

Not everyone drives an Sd.Kfz.251.

That is from the UK. The UK has no idea what rust is or what salted roads are.

I've rusted through multiple cars (also in the North East) in the last 20 years while a friend still has his 2006 model year car in pristine condition with regards to that and is debating whether to buy a new one coz he finally wants to take advantage of some of the advances since then but he can't justify it coz it's still fine and costs him just a few hundred bucks in normal maintenance.

Just because the plastic door panels don't rust doesn't mean the metal frame underneath isn't.

Same where I live. I love finding high-mileage cars that are way cheaper than everything else. People seem allergic to these vehicles, but I’ve yet to have any major issues with them.

But, like clockwork, that 10 year marks and everything just starts rusting out. While I could be religious about washing, that’s a huge pain.

No they don't rust if during winter you take 5 minutes to wash the undercarriage every other week at a self-service car wash.

I mean the core feature here is a vastly simplified drivetrain and often modular parts borrowed or 'appropriated' from the best of existing marques. There's a lot less to go wrong versus any existing ICE platform, and the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the the high-end BYD stuff.

In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.

The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.

Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.

Slight nitpick - "the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the high-end BYD stuff" - what makes you say this? I follow the Chinese car market a fair bit and the high end marques are generally making it to western markets, even Voyah.

High tariffs make shipping certain high-value Chinese EVs economically unviable or politically restricted for one.

Since Q2 the Chinese domestic market has also moved away from European brand prestige toward advanced technology and user experience tailored to that demographic.

Many of the self-assist or park features are simply illegal for use in export markets - e.g. Huawei ADS Level 3 autonomous driving is not legally approved for public consumer use in either the European Union or the United States.

Similarly, the 800v charging architecture is more frequently skipping onboard converters and cannot charge at stations below 800v, ruling out 97% of public chargepoints in the EU.

Subsequently, the top-end stuff like the Maextro S800 is not officially sold by Huawei or JAC through a factory-backed dealer network in Europe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/business/chinese-luxury-b...

Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features even car play. I know a few people that bought Chinese brands that only existed for 3 years.

I live in the United States: My only "concern" about cars made here is that the parts are and will be exorbitantly high due to protectionism by our government and will be a lot more for a lot fewer features, efficiency and innovation and we'll have to win a class action lawsuit to even open the hoods of cars we "own" so we can repair them ourselves.

That’s exactly what I fear may happen in Europe.

I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.

European cars are expensive not just because the manufacturers are greedy, but also because we want them to pay their employees a proper living wage, human working hours, sick leave, a few weeks of vacation every year, healthcare... Those don't come for free.

Also you have to add that cars sold in Europe (regardless of manufacturer) require by law much more expensive extras compared to other countries.

But the labor costs of manufacturing are still tiny compared to material costs. If labor was free for European manufacturing that would only drop the price a token amount, not the £10,000+ that Chinese autos have over current cars.

So-called materials are manufactured, too, and usually not in China. Might be Poland or Hungary or Portugal though.

I don't quite follow that. Can you give an example? I buy car parts all the time and install them myself as well.

You stated your comment in the future tense. What are you anticipating?

We csnlt buy BYD cars because our government tariffed them to hell and back. There's literally no reason to not expect the same would apply to parts.

We tariffed them (Europe will too) because China subsidizes them and is building excess industrial capacity to run our companies out of business where we have higher wages and such. China also artificially keeps its currency low to boost exports toward the same goals.

It's more important that we protect domestic industry and good union jobs than it is for us to import EVs at lower prices.

Here's a great article I shared elsewhere: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/china-cars-domestic-sale-...

  "The number of Chinese EV brands selling at least one product rose to a record 143 at the end of 2025, according to a tally by management consultant AlixPartners.”

(In one noted instance from the article a company built (through local government subsidies and tax breaks and other schemes) capacity to build around 100,000 cars/year and have only built 600 to date.

  "Now, in a country with a shrinking population, reliable big-city mass transit and a growing robotaxi industry, sales of passenger cars to regular Chinese families are unlikely to ever again record a sustained surge, analysts said. But cities and their private-sector partners are reluctant to admit that their lofty ambitions won’t be fulfilled, which would result in factory closures and lost jobs.” 

  "In recent months, Germany’s once-towering trade surplus with China in automotive products has turned into a deficit. Germany—the country widely credited with inventing the automobile—is embracing Chinese brands, while German automakers are struggling in China.” 

  "In the U.K., BYD is selling its flagship Seal hybrid sedan for the equivalent of around $44,000, more than $10,000 less than a similarly equipped Volkswagen Passat. These vehicles are sold at Chinese price points we cannot match with European cost structures,” said Volkswagen Chief Executive Oliver Blume in an August memo to staff."

  "About the only major market where Chinese automakers aren’t causing upheaval is the U.S., where tariffs and restrictions on Chinese vehicle technology have all but locked out the country’s automakers. General Motors and Ford are among the few automakers still pumping out relatively healthy profits.”

From TFA:

  Government subsidies in China — while 5 to 10 percent of Chinese automakers’ capital spending, estimated O’Donovan, compared to about 1.5 percent in Europe — are no longer the Chinese auto sector’s primary advantage. Chinese carmakers now enjoy deeper structural advantages from their enormous scale, dense supply chains, high factory utilization and automated production.

Several companies in China now tout their “dark factories” where they make or assemble many parts of their cars with no human labour at all. It’s likely that the larger Chinese companies are capable of undercutting European makers even without government subsidies or wage parity.

I'm not sure what TFA but taking the quote here at face value I think there's a little more to it than that. Not all of these Chinese automakers have these so-called deeper structural advantages. As I mentioned before and the WSJ reported, one of them (and I'm sure there are others) built a factory where (even if there was no human labor) they expected to push out 100,000 cars/annually yet have orders for less than 1,000. So no amount of structural advantage matters for them, nor do those advantages matter when the chief export markets say "no thanks we'll just keep our industry even if it's less efficient".

There are a few other things to note here. First is time - so even if the subsidies which still exist and are rather significant (Imagine at like Google's scale if they're making $100bn/year and the government was paying them or subsidizing $10bn of that - that's a lot of $$$) matter less so now, they still were used to spring up the industry and many of these automakers which has downstream effects on viability of the company and in what has been widely reported as over-building of industrial capacity. Coupled with a declining Chinese market, no access to the American market, and soon to be little to no access to the European market China could build cars for $5 but if there are no buyers and they're not making a profit it doesn't matter. Plus China of course artificially devalues its currency to boost exports.

My point here isn't that China is bad or that Chinese automakers aren't or can't be great, but that there's a good reason we have protected our domestic markets and even if Chinese companies were eventually just the best, fastest, cheapest, most advanced in the world we would just protect our markets until we catch up because having a domestic industry and those jobs and the capability to produce wheeled vehicles is more important than having the cheapest possible EVs. Ergo that's why we have tariffs. Disagreeing with that direction is a failure of understanding. The policy is a must-have.

Other countries may not care or their people may not understand why we do what we do, but those countries aren't relevant players on the global stage and their industrial capacity if it ever existed doesn't matter. American industrial capacity, Chinese industrial capacity, and probably German, Japanese, Korea, and maybe a few other select countries are the only ones that matter in this regard.

The Atlantic ran a story a week or so ago which over-indexes a bit but I think is directionally accurate and is relevant here[1].

  "According to the London-based research firm Capital Economics, the share of Chinese industrial firms that are losing money has doubled since 2018 to 30 percent this year."

  “But as the economy has slumped in recent years, the strain on Chinese companies has increased and their finances have deteriorated. Total net profit at 5,400 Chinese companies listed on local stock exchanges fell for the third consecutive year in 2025, according to data from Nikkei Asia, a Japanese business news outlet. Excess factory capacity and weak domestic demand have created a brutal competition for shoppers, and the resulting price wars have narrowed profit margins.”

  "Facing an unstable job market and slumping property prices, Chinese consumers are reluctant to shop—car sales, for instance, in China have plunged by more than 20 percent so far this year."

There are other interesting tidbits from the article, but you get the picture....

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/10/chinese-co...

Using subsidies to spring up an industry is a good thing. Over in the US we had plenty of big car makers that didn't need it, and their being lazy because they know they'll be protected is the worst of all worlds.

Domestic production is good but sometimes big companies need to taste failure. We should lower the level of protection they're getting, at least for a while.

Sure but that means the US should do things like subsidize American companies (leftists are against this of course) while keeping Chinese ones out until we have competitors who are sufficiently advanced, and then…… China just open its market to American companies that we subsidized?

The key piece I think is missing here is reciprocity.

We can’t have “China subsidies its industries until they are super competitive and then they get to sell in our market but we don’t get to sell in theirs”. Europe does a little of the same with regulatory lawfare.

The problem with lowering the level of protectionism is that it doesn’t really serve anyone’s best interest besides Chinese automakers. American companies lose out, American workers lose out, and we wind up in a worse position than before.

We could subsidize smaller companies, perhaps.

The big US car companies don't need subsidies. They can afford plenty of development costs but they don't want to advance into the cheaper electric space, they want to extract as much value as they can by pushing car prices as high as possible.

The problem with keeping this level of protectionism is that it encourages them to keep doing the same thing. The companies don't lose out but everyone in the US that needs to buy a car loses out. We need something to motivate them, and dropping their protection from "infinite" to "medium" or "medium-high" might do the trick.

I'm in favor of solutions which give American automakers advantages and also motivation to build better cars, but it has to be done in a way that keeps China out of our market, and protects union jobs.

I think it's fine that cars are expensive and getting more expensive. More people should be walking or using alternative means anyway because we spend way too much money and are dealing with a number of negative externalities from our car-only infrastructure. Having competition in terms of method of transportation itself can solve many of our problems, no artificially cheap Chinese cars required.

I drive an EV and generally prefer that to ICE vehicles but we have to acknowledge that there are still emissions that go in to EV manufacturing and mining rare earths, which China created a strong monopoly on the processing of so we'll have to do more ICE to compensate, sucks. There seems to be a desire to push cheaper EVs on to the American market, but it's even cheaper to build sidewalks and live closer to your place of employment or where you do the majority of your daily activities. It's better for the environment too.

So if we can't build EVs in a way that is advantageous to us and on our terms, we should avoid it and just walk and build transit and keep the ICE going.

Making cars expensive is probably the worst way to accomplish those goals though. Better zoning, funding transit, taxing emissions get more directly at the problems with less collateral damage.

I think we’ve tried that and people generally just go with the small, externalized cost. Having to pay more of the costs directly and shortening the feedback loop so people can make more informed decisions I think tends to work well. It’s like climate change - gas should probably be $20/gallon if we were accounting for the costs to the environment and such.

Either way artificially cheaper cars from China doesn’t solve our problems in the long term. Obviously once your country loses its ability to build cars they just raise the prices and you’re back to where you started except now you have lost union jobs and manufacturing ability and know how.

> China subsidizes them

Maybe we should subsidize some industries ourselves, probably a better investment than more war.

We do. Oil for your old fashioned car and farmers for votes.

> We tariffed them (Europe will too) because China subsidizes them

EU has been tariffing Chinese cars since 2024. They determined the unfair government subsidy to be between 17%-35% depending on the manufacturer. Starting this year they added an option for a price floor instead.

You don't want BYD cars. Those unreliable POSs have a useful life shorter than a cellphone.

At one point, BYD was the top choice of EV buses in the U.S. They were blacklisted by every transit agency in America even before Trump's order because their vehicles were less reliable than the 40+ year old buses they were replacing.

Yes and I believe both Democrat and Republican administrations. Strange how voters tolerate this but not tariffs in general.

A lot of cars companies restrict who can buy parts and what parts. For example if you want to buy the rear quarter panel for a Rivian you must be an approved repair shop and they will only allow so many in a given area. This is not specific to rivian. Lots of car companies do this with newer models. I have a friend who runs a high end repair shop and another who does restoration and the one who does Mercedes restoration won’t work on cars newer than x because he can’t get parts

Sounds like the smart move is to continue to ignore EV only and Luxury brands and continue buying from OEM's of the past that happen to have EV models and better supply chains for parts.

I'm not gonna buy a car that doesn't have a dealer network. Being able to go in person and complain when shit hits the fan is a requirement.

Diagnostic software is beginning to require more and more authentication.

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2026/05/14/autoauth-certi...

You now need to be a "certified AutoAuth technician" using a "certified AutoAuth tool" (sure, like a $3000 SnapOn).

Or - some manufacturers ALSO require you to have NASTF Vehicle Security Professional access, which is another whole can of worms with insurance and business requirements.

https://support.nastf.org/support/solutions/articles/4300076...

Hyundai now requires you to have this stupid security professional certification if you dare try to service a modern Hyundai with a (lower cost) J2534 passthru tool instead of the official Hyundai service tool.

All of this still doesn't stop someone from sending packets direct on the CANbus to make a new key to someone's car, but it just makes it more miserable for the rest of us trying to work on the diagnostics of it all.

Once upon a time American-made televisions were a thing, back in the days of tubes. Television repair was a legitimate trade. Then Japanese electronics companies entered the market. Because of supply chain distances, and politics, they knew that servicing TVs in the US would be difficult. So the Japanese manufacturers decided to make TVs that would not need repair. And American TVs basically disappeared.

I'm not saying that will happen with cars, but it is something to think about.

> So the Japanese manufacturers decided to make TVs that would not need repair

Not being able to repair something isn't the same as not needing repair. Had lots of CRT Sony TVs over the yeasr and they definitely had issues.

The analog has its limit though, because I've never reversed a television into a gate post.

that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar, Zeekr) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part

> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago

lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands

Are ByD cars that interesting? Specs look good but I had a few rides in that sedan model most Ubers drive these days and it is conceptually flawed. They put batteries where you are supposed to put your feets as a rear passenger which mean that any regular adult sized person end up with their knees in the face as if they were seating on a kids chair. So uncomfortable.

With such a basic design error, I wonder how many frustrating flaws an actual owner has to put up with. I've driven chinese rental cars in Mexico (an MG SUV and a chevrolet small sized sedan) and both had electronic issues. For instance the rear window heating of the MG would startup on its own once every other time their was a significant bump on the road (which happens frequently in MX) and the actual touch sensitive non mechanical button buttons weren't very sensitive so it was a pain in the ass to turn it off. Both android systems were absolute crap with annoying bugs. Overall not a very pleasant experience.

I dunno, spent previous summer in China riding ride shares (Didi mostly I think) almost daily and it was nice change when the car for once eat not BYD, they are absolutely dominating the market in China, majority of ride share cars were BYD, can't complain about rear seats, everywhere hey generous, same thing can't be said about front seat though as tall passenger.

I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.

Many of them are not constructed for repair and have a lot of integrated components. It's an era of disposable cars so to speak.

We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.

[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...

They also had a 22% decrease in sales domestically YoY this past year. The only thing keeping a bunch of those brands around is state sponsorship.

Indeed. It's a smart strategy by the CCP, a brand battle royale until only the strongest survive. Given the way things have happened in the past though, I suspect what we'll see is Geely and Chery buying out the ones that fail until there's just those two giants and a few niche players who'll likely be domestic market only.

It makes sense if they let them fail, but note the system is not that the ccp broadly backs them. Each state backs their own set, and if they fail that state loses the jobs/favtories/etc. so there is a lot of friction for letting them fail.

Ah interesting, thanks for the extra context.

Parts?

You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.

I don't say this happily.

Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.

[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...

More companies need to be doing this.

Though they won't, because I imagine recycling/refurbishing is not nearly as profitable as selling new models that lose 25% of their value the moment they're driven off the lot.

And no exec wants to explain to shareholders why their revenue from new model year sales are down 20% because they've cannibalized it with a new but lower-margin revenue stream.

Hence why capitalism needs pollution regulations or we live in Wall-e world.

Cars have long had a full industry that scraps them. There are enough valuable parts to make money doing it.

There is a giantic industry that does exactly that. Copart, IAR etc

> I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years

Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.

wut, after market parts in PRC is incredibly robust, they hammer out generics for western auto, of course they keep domestic stocked for ever with original tooling. There's no giant dumps for "dicarded" EVs that can't get parts or service, there's lots for retired fleet cars, i.e cars that were serviced for so long that they've been driven to death and retired (600000km / 8 years service life) or in some cases potemkin cars to steal subsidies, but even the latter shows PRC can basically conjure components on a whim if there's any profit. They can literally conjure up EVs as disposable financial instruments.

Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).

While I've occasionally had an engine part fail most of the major repairs I've needed to do to cars over the years has been suspension related, it's consistently abused and closest to the road / debris.

That said... many of the different EVs sit on the same base, so maybe it won't actually be as hard to get parts as it seems.

Chinese EVs are more eclectic than western EVs. But ya, suspension parts....are those things that automakers innovate on? Though I guess BYD is an exception, since they own their own parts maker.

Innovation is rare among the broad consumer car market but modify to fit new bodies and motor layouts, yes, for sure. For most mainstream cars however you'll often find that a few models per generation for any given manufacturer either share parts or are interchangeable.

It's not just repairs, maintenance too

Oil changes, timing belts, spark plugs etc. It really helps if you have no metal touching metal

Sure, but EVs also often have cooling loops that need service, your same cabin air filters, and more frequent tire and brake service due to heavier weights.

Maybe frequent tire service, but they actually need less brake service because you are relying on regen instead of braking most of the time. I still can't believe the anti-EV crowd still doesn't get that one simple thing, it makes them look very non-credible.

> Sure, but EVs also often have cooling loops that need service,

If you're talking about ac, sure. The rest, no? I've been driving an electric car for over a decade and have been replacing tires, and nothing else.

Sure it is anecdata with n of 1 but in over a decade I've probably spent ~4k on maintenance while driving 120k miles electrically? The bulk of that on tires and fixing that ac I mentioned.

That's absolute nonsense. So what if it's an EV? It still requires replacement door hinges, fenders, panels, suspension parts, wiring harnesses, software updates, etc. Repairing a car is a great deal more complex than simply changing oil or replacing brake pads. All mechanical objects experience wear and tear and require maintenance.

The parts that wear out the fastest and are the hardest/costliest to replace are not all of those though. EVs still have parts wear for sure, BUT it is just in a different league when compared to ICE repairs.

The average ICE will be working with a full range at ten years old. The same will not be true of EVs without a major investment in battery replacement.

The statistics aren't backing you up on this.

No chance an ICE vehicle can go 10 years without an oil change. Spark plugs, coils, fuel injectors, and filters will all degrade in that time, diminishing range.

"full range" is a nonsense metric though. Different cars have different tank and battery sizes, and what matters is whether the range fits your needs.

All else equal, a range that degrades from 300 to 230 miles is better than a range that starts at 210 miles and stays there forever.

If you don't do an overhaul and replace your rings, a high milage ICE car will not have the same range as new.

First major thing to wear out in my EV was the Air Conditioning Evaporator core after less than 3 years.

Never change Ford, never change.

I have a 20 year old civic that I have done nothing to other than oil change/air filter and brakes on (its my kid's car now). Sure the interior is falling apart, but it probably has at least another 100k left mechanically.

Same for a 20 year old Corolla. I'm embarrassed to admit I've never flushed the coolant or brake/steering fluids. Rear drums are OEM with under 50% wear. Did the pads. Rotors may have been replaced once.

Prophylacticly changed the spark plugs... but I think they were fine.

Had to change the wheel bearings which was a pain to diag and even more of a struggle to remove in the rust belt... which an EV won't get around.

EV might have saved me from a couple welder repairs on the exhaust and Macgyvering heat shields. And that $10 intake manifold gasket that always fails (2h shadetree job). Transmission ran dry a few times after a metal line rusted out. Bypassed with rubber hose and runs again like a champ.

I love it but will crumble like a cracker in a collision because rust (but still drive because 1zz-fe).

My similarly aged German car is way ahead on factory corrosion protection. Maybe the Japanese manufacturers have caught up but I won't know if/how far behind the Chinese manufacturers are for a decade or two.

The parts that wear out the fastest are designed to be easily replaceable. Just in a different league sounds like hogwash. I've seen the costs associated with Teslas caught in a collision. What would be a quick panel replacement on a typical ICE suddenly costs 15K plus.

How are people still spouting this nonsense? EVs are more reliable than ICE vehicles. We know this from experience.

The discussion was availability of spare parts, not reliability. And has already been brought up, reliability won't save you from needing parts when someone plows into your rear bumper. Or when suspension parts fail, which they do on every car.

It's the EV folks that are spouting nonsense due to lack of experience. TCO is more than just oil changes.

> TCO is more than just oil changes.

Yeah, duh. EVs still have fewer maintenance items than ICE vehicles. How is this even a talking point anymore?

Fender benders? Suspension wear? Brakes (yes, EVs still have them)? Rust/corrosion? Dead pixels? Torn/worn/faded interiors?

Heck, I just dumped an 8 year old BMW because the interior stitching was coming apart. Nothing mechanically wrong, just yellow fluff poking out of the seams. Easier to sell it than try to get it fixed.

They might not need them as often but if they produce them even less than it's still an issue. Insurance costs on Teslas is high and the rental company Tesla apocalypse happened because of the difficulties maintaining fleet repairs.

Truly. Brand names in Europe for .cn EVs sound like iPhone accessory listings from Amazon

100s of models share a few standard platforms with like 80% parts commonality in the broader ecosystem. A subbrand from one of the giants with staying power is going to be fine, someone in PRC going to keep after market parts flowing forever, like they do for western brands. Of course whether this convenient/ubiquitous in reign like Europe depends on geopolitics, if EU going to make it hard for PRC producers then PRC producers going to have hard time with EU consumers, which arguably is the point. Really have to see what PRC plants in EU starts delivering, ultimately there's no reason for rest of EU to be dependant on German or French cars if they have Chinese cars at home.

Chinese brands are all relatively young and even healthy looking major companies have a habit of spectacular sudden failure due to less good bookkeeping and auditing practices.

SOEs are 50+ years old, legacy titans like BYD ~30+, older than Tesla. Tesla tier tech upstarts nio, xpeng, li ~10. But ultimately who cares, the big / influential players are arguably too big to fail by local gov standards whose going to keep going forever, or consolidate under players that can keep them going. The brands too small to survive aren't seriously exporting to the west anyway (like yes there's brand/marketting plays like hiphi which is basically vinfast tier). Car makers, especially ones with tech stack are not Luckin Coffee, if state/province wants to keep a strategic brand going forever, they will. Just like western auto pork barrel due to "excellent" financiered bookkeeping and auditing.

Local gov can only prop up so long as they have money; and their balance sheets are strained due to ballooning debt funded by a deflated property bubble.

And just like the west, local gov they'll cut teachers wages before strategic industries. Debt crisis = local gov forced to deleverage because central gov chose to kneecap land finance, central gov can via many instruments find arrangement to prop up a player. Nvm these companies from tier1 GZ, SH, JS manufacture hubs with GDP the size of g20 economies, if someone wants nio and xpeng around and give them local robotaxi / fleet contracts to grift in perpetuity, or keep their self driving stack and consolidate manufacture and pawn off after market to someone else, they can. Keep in mind current auto involution = large players bleeding at rates where they still have ~10+ years of operational runway, these are too big to fail but cheap enough to bail size companies. Hence what is unlikely to happen, just like how other sovereigns fighting to keep their surviving legacy auto alive, is to let strategic auto die off in ether like mom and pop coffee shop. Except sovereign balance sheets (>100% debt to GDP) are in general much worse than tier1 PRC (<100% debt to GDP) even with squeezed land finance, aka western countries propping up western auto is a much harder lift than PRC local gov propping up local auto.

so, in America, these vehicles are like 3x cheaper. So, just buy 3.

I thought for sure you meant Chinese as in Volvo. Damn, I sure was wrong.

Have you tried owning a landrover? No use in parts availability but they make it completely unaffordable to maintain them.. (as a business model imo)

We’ll see how this plays out, but the industry definitely needs a calibration

Land rover’s customer base probably doesn’t care much about maintainability.

most are leased.

Most people own a car for 3 years or less... who cares about 15 years from now?

That doesn't seem true. I'm seeing 6 to 8 years, with the average car age being 12 years old. Resale value is important.

You're not factoring in leases.

Resale value is critical for leases. If nobody wants to buy the car after the lease is over then the lease company needs to scrap the car. Lease companies pay close attention to expected resale value because they are betting a lot of money on it.

> Most people own a car for 3 years or less

This seems absurd on the face of it.

What, you don't burn your car and drive it off a cliff on its three-year anniversary?

Every 3 years since 2015 and my corolla just keeps running ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Average is over 12 years [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/americ...

No reason a car can't still be on the road 100 years after manufacture

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LAh8HryVaeY&pp=ygUOVHJpZ2dlciB...

At what point is it no longer the same car if you’ve replaced all the parts ;)

I never bought a car newer than 15 years

Cars are often sold. If everyone knows that nobody will buy it in 15 years, the person buying it in 12 years will pay less, which means the person buying in 9 years pays less, etc, so the person buying new doesn't recoup as much and has less to spend on a replacement.

More like 5-10

we live in different worlds.. I have only bought 10 year old wagons and kept them for at least 10 years

You are living in a bubble

Your link has a concerning quote in it:

> "many households already own one vehicle," so the "automotive market must shift from the traditional era of increasing volume to one that considers growth based on the premise of existing vehicle ownership."

This sounds like companies trying to add subscriptions or other costs to get access to car features.

There already is a subscription. Salt, pot holes and other wear mean the car won't last forever so in 3-10 years I buy a new one.

Somewhat paradoxiacally, the battery might be the highest quality and maintaibable component of the car, but everything else is a concern.

I'm not sure, for example a lot of people talk about Ford as being a known brand, but see what they did with the powershift fiasco.

A few weeks ago I was in a dealership and they had 5 cars that were basically abandoned by their owner because of problem with the transmission.

Not saying Chinese will behave differently, but big brands aren't as reliable as you think

Long term ownership risks of EVs

https://youtu.be/Nim61oVLdwk?t=700

If there is enough demand, someone will build and supply it. So enough buyers have to buy the model and keep it running that long.

I am currently considering buying a Leapmotor B05 here in Australia. My main concern is the cars are distributed here by Stellantis (which have a 20% stake in Leapmotor). Huge international conglomerate, but I have no confidence in their warranty support or parts supply.

I wouldn’t have the same concerns over buying a BYD or an MG Chinese electric car.

https://www.accc.gov.au/public-registers/undertakings-regist...

I visited China 5 years ago. All the fancy cars of the upper middle class were German. Audis, vw, bmws and Mercedes everywhere.

I visited this year again. Almost none of the new cars were German. I did not see most of their latest models on the streets. And I definitely did not see a single German electric car.

They now have a dozen of brands some of them under the tech umbrella of Huawei that provides the info-entertainment and auto pilot and they are everywhere! And btw the assembly quality was now reaally nice.

No idea about their safety or longevity, but it was nice being driven in them

had the same experience this past summer, though I did have a Didi that was a fairly new Mercedes S class and it was hugely disappointing compared to the Chinese EVs.

In which way? I'm having trouble imagining how an S class might be hugely disappointing, except maybe the smartphone on wheels part.

The Chinese have certainly taken over far more than just the Mexican market. You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these days, and while Toyotas were selling like hot cakes in Pakistan the dealerships have gotten huge waitlists for the Chinese ones now. As others have mentioned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity. I can confidently assume a Toyota from 1993 is still just being broken in at 150K miles, no clue if the same can be said about these with all the varieties and electronic components.

If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.

Suits me. US manufacturers willingly chose to double and triple down on luxury pricing models and chose to include enough software and sensors for a moderately capable aircraft, cutting every corner they could find in terms of reliability and serviceability in the process. I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.

> I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.

I wouldn't hold your breath. US manufacturers and their unions are very well taken care of in Washington, DC. Been that way for decades and will likely be that way for several more, unless something entirely unforeseen happens.

At the end of the day, it's the labor cost difference- both for assembly and other parts of the supply chain. Tesla at least is trying very hard to get prices as low as possible, but the things still have to sell. We'll see if Slate ever delivers what they've been promising as a no-frills cheap car.

And the Ford Fathom

Given it's already happening I shouldn't have to hold my breath for long. Have a look at Ford's sales numbers in their bread-and-butter truck market. Volkswagen's getting replaced by Nokia on major indices in Europe. Toyota seems to see the writing on the wall and have been flirting with bringing the Hilux to North America. Across all domestic manufacturers dealer lot retention figures are through the damn roof and have been for some time now. They can't keep this shit up much longer.

Isn’t Tesla very anti-union and none of its US workers are allowed to be in one?

>You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these day

>hardly see a Tesla in London

Is that through competition, or because people don't want to be openly associated with Nazis?

Jaecoo and BYD are well-known brands now in UK, however.

I see this (and similar statements) often repeated on the Internet, but it’s not what I saw during my two week trip to London and vicinity back in July. This was followed by a week in Paris.

In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.

What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.

So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.

The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.

Jaecoo have had the best selling model in the UK for two or three months running now. I have no idea how you managed to lose your bet. My experience is closer to the parent post - pull into any car park in the UK and you'll count more Chinese EVs than Teslas, often you can count more Jaecoo or BYD than Tesla.

I tested this theory on a short drive to the bakery yesterday by counting the Teslas and Chinese brands coming in the opposite direction. Even I was surprised that the result was 3 Teslas to 23 Chinese brands (not including the western brands now Chinese owned like Volvo, Polestar, Jaguar Landrover etc., though I did include MG as they basically just bought the badge in that case).

I can tell you from a - fairly prosperous town in the North of England where Range Rovers, Teslas and Porsches are very common - that BYDs and Jaecoos are everywhere.

Harrogate by any chance?

More Haa-land than Har-rogate ;-)

I see a lot of BYDs in London (even the busses are BYDs). MGs Jaecoos some GWMs. Not as many as Teslas or EV BMW Merc VWs but quite a lot.

Could be depending where you were in each city. I saw dozens of BYDs in Kensington this past summer.

>The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.

And indeed, Tesla is gaining share in Europe. <https://www.kansas.com/news/business/article317450876.html>

That only says they are improving relative to last year, not their heyday.

I searched around and found this site:

https://www.eu-evs.com/brandCharts/TESLA/GB/Volumes-Yearly

You can pick other counties, manufacturers and views etc.

My own anecdata from Nordics is that Musk was out of the news for a while but has put himself back in the bad light again last week with the Ukraine horrible behavior and there’s a bit of coverage of his funding midterms too.

Even the dramatic price deals Tesla have been offering won’t really tempt back the educated disposable income environmentally conscious early adopters who used to champion him when Tesla swept into the market with the first viable EVs.

Where I am it is Kia that has taken Tesla’s place as the go-to EV brand.

>That only says they are improving relative to last year, not their heyday.

Yes, but the Chinese EVs are a very recent thing in Europe, so Tesla is (re)gaining share versus both existing domestic and new foreign competition.

Tesla still does quite well in China.

>Where I am it is Kia that has taken Tesla’s place as the go-to EV brand.

Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling car in 2025, <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market-2025/> and has gained share in 2026 YTD. <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/>

Tesla dropped their prices significantly to turn the trend from previous year.

only car I saw consistently in paris was mini coopers, but then again I might be biased since I have a mini myself

I can't find the interactive website, but ACEA have statistics. (I'm disappointed in HN that you have 6 replies without anyone linking the official statistics.)

Year to date in the EU + EFTA + UK, Tesla is 2.5%, BYD 2.7%, Chery 2.5%, of all new cars registered.

The interactive website allowed filtering for e.g. UK + electric cars, but maybe it's no longer available.

https://www.acea.auto/files/Press_release_car_registrations_...

Kind of like how the free models from China were supposed to have utterly collapsed the value propositions of all American frontier labs by now because only a fool would pay those sorts of token prices.

I suspect some of these sentiments are real, but also suspect there's a not-insignificant amount of astroturfing going on.

Tesla Model 3s in the UK (and other Right hand drive countries) are made in china so you may want to revisit that bet.

Those Model 3's _are_ Chinese EVs, I'm guessing this is more of an issue of you not recognising Chinese cars.

In Australia the vast majority (80%) of EVs are Chinese manufactured, with Chinese brands now accounting for 50+% of EV sales.

> If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.

And the rise of the AfD.

There are Tesla's everywhere around my way in London. They are very very common. Maybe people have stopped buying them since Elon went crazy, but there are still a lot on the roads.

Worldwide, gasoline-only powered cars are now less than half of worldwide sales.[1]

[1] https://electrek.co/2026/10/05/gas-cars-fall-below-50-percen...

Good!

The US/Europe are being absolutely moronic when it comes to EV vehicles.

Their core technology (batteries, inverters, electric motors, drive trains, thermal management, software etc.) are all pretty similar (not too much essential variation) across brands and hence the main differentiator becomes price and cosmetics.

In the developing world cost is king, you don't need too much power, smaller size, maneuverability and comfort are the key parameters. Their EV market is for the taking and China is doing it easily with US/Europe not even in the race.

Mexico is more broadly a showroom for all sorts of vehicles you can't buy in the US, namely those that don't meet US safety or emissions requirements. The Hilux being the notable example, though not covered in the below link.

https://www.jalopnik.com/the-coolest-non-us-cars-americans-c...

it is deeply ironic that a toyota hilux pickup truck - an actually practical pickup truck - does not meet US "standards" but the pedestrian killing, inefficient, wasteful, and expensive "pickups" from US auto companies somehow do.

The Hilux issue is a bit more complicated as a result of the "chicken tax" of 25% on imported light-duty trucks. Toyota made the Tacoma for the US market and built it here to avoid that tax, and now the economics of the Hilux don't make sense for them to import even if it met safety/emissions standards. It would certainly kill the market for the Tacoma.

Edit: My poor phrasing certainly did read that way though, I should have been more clear.

Toyota has not attempted to certify the Hilux in USA because they already sell the Tacoma, which occupies the similar market.

Nobody has said the Hilux can't be sold in USA. Toyota simply hasn't tried.

My beloved 4Runner was made in Japan, as is the rest of them (from what I understand). One of the few models still to be made exclusively in Tahara, Aichi, that you can get in the US.

And to echo others...blame the chicken tax.

Yeah safety, that's what it's all about

Emissions? These are EVs mostly. And these cars are safe enough for the EU.

Any vehicles with GPS or cellular modules made in Russia or China are explicitly banned. There's also a pending law to ban any automakers that have 15% or greater ownership by people from China, Russia, or Iran.

They are just outright banned. Has nothing to do with safety or emissions.

I don't disagree, I only mention it to clarify that "available in Mexico but not the US" isn't limited to Chinese EVs. The article's tone in my opinion implies some kind of conspiracy to deprive the US of cool EVs, when in fact there is a much broader conspiracy to deprive us of Hiluxes (Hiluxi?)!

One big reason the Hilux is not imported to the US, and instead we have a separate domestically built Tacoma, is due to the longstanding Chicken Tax tariff on imported light trucks.

Just to add a different perspective. As a mexican, I often wonder how the future will look like for those cars in terms of repairability. I don't think lots of people are really pondering wether the car company will be here long enough to provide a reasonable amount of support for the niche technical issues that will arise.

Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.

The amount of battery waste in 10/15 years will be crazy.

I bought a Kicks e-power [here in Mexico] a d one of my worries is what will happen when the battery life runs out...

We [Mexico] dont have the logistics, technology or know-how to recycle or dispose these correctly.

A car battery with reduced range is still perfectly useable as a storage battery for a PV system. I got a high-voltage hybrid inverter when I built our PV (solar) system specifically for that reason: high-voltage EV batteries will appear on the market which I can use to create energy storage. Commercial storage systems are still too expensive for what they offer but used EV batteries are starting to appear at far more reasonable price levels. If a pack which used to store 90 kWh now only stores 70 kWh but costs 1/10 of a similarly-sized commercial storage system when combined with a suitable controller then I'd just get a bunch of them.

The Chinese already have mature battery recycling systems and they'll happily take them back to be repurposed or reused.

Not sure how anyone can have a Mature battery recycling system when car batteries at any scale in general are less then 5 years old.

I would suspect the companies doing battery recycling are less then 3 years old, not mature by any measurement.

BYD was founded in 1995 as a battery manufacturing company. If you have doubts about their scalability then I suggest you look at their vehicles sales year by year. Scaling does not seem to be a problem they have.

It would be extraordinarily simple to remedy this: Require by law the technical ability to physically disable all remote communication to and from a vehicle, and prohibit any remote communication requirement from the core functions of a vehicle.

An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.

From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.

---

Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.

I noticed that when I was there. I was pleasantly surprised to see as many BYD as I did.

That infact made me consider BYD even more seriously. Being able to see the car in person is far more impressive the a YouTube video.

I was really impressed with the BYD’s I rode in for uber while in Mexico

I went there recently for a friends wedding, and about half the Uber's we took were driving Chinese EV's

Here in South Africa I’m seeing more and more BYDs all the time, the high fuel prices due to the Iran war is making their entry level EV pay for itself for people with any kind of commute.

I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.

I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.

You're well over the 90 day mark where E10 is well into its degradation and standard unleaded is starting to sour. A nice problem to have in many respects, but just to be aware!

I drive a Mitsubishi PHEV. And it enforces this by not letting you drive on battery until you fill at least 20L of new fuel. So you're forced to use a portion of the tank at least every 90 days.

I appreciate the warning, will certainly do some homework here.

Apparently petrol here is almost never mixed with ethanol so at least I don’t have that to worry about.

I’ve already topped out the tank with 95 (as it apparently has a better shelf life than 93) and will be driving in HEV mode until it’s nearly empty, thereafter I plan on generally only filling up with 10l at a time unless I’m going to be doing a long distance trip.

Chery brands have 24% market share car sales in S.A - it was ironic seeing the BMW dealership closing in my town and being replaced by a BYD one.

It will be interesting to see how VW responds next year with the locally manufactured small SUV Tengo targeting the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro 4 - why bother with an old Polo Vivo when you get something WAY better and modern.

It needs to retail at R269,000.00 or cheaper.

VWs are decent cars, but they've been somewhat "premiumly" priced since at least 2000, in my view the brand is irrationally overvalued by South Africans.

When I looked at a Polo around 2018, the finishes were a bit nicer, but compared to the Honda Jazz I went with (with CVT, cruise control, climate control) it was considerably more expensive.

BMWs and Mercedes are apparently having a really hard time here right now. Chinese cars are really comparable in terms of features and finish but for like half the price, the only other reason to buy a luxury German car is as a status symbol, but for the genuinely affluent here, a Mercedes or BMW isn't exclusive enough.

They're not dead yet as there are still quite a few South Africans who deem it essential to their social status to have the nicest possible car at the absolute limit of what they can afford. My theory on why they do this is because others can see the car they pitch up in, but don't see that each night it's parked outdoors of a rented apartment worth barely more (possibly less) than the car.

> the high fuel prices due to the Iran war is making their entry level EV pay for itself

Is this that 4D chess thing people keep talking about?

sounds like you shoulda just gone full EV then, if you basically never use the gas?

It only has 13kW/h of batteries and an advertised electric only range of 50km making it considerably cheaper than a full electric SUV, and I can still use the same vehicle for the occasional long-distance trips with zero stress or concerns about charging infrastructure, e.g. 600km drive to holiday destination which I've done once already and have already planned to do again soon.

I work from home and my wife is hybrid, special school for my daughter is 8km away which is 22km from where my wife works. In practice we manage to cover about 98% of our day-to-day driving using electricity.

A while back I had a job which was 40km from where I lived, if I still had a work commute like that, I would have purchased (from BYD) either a Dolphin Surf (I think ZAR 340K for 300km range) or their Sealion 6 (I have a 5) with advertised electric range of 100km.

People should purchase the vehicle which makes sense for their circumstances.

Price is a fair argument. After going full EV I personally couldn’t imagine going going back to the hassle of a PHEV

BYD is taking over the world, one country at a time, Tesla is done worldwide just a matter of time.

Maybe that's why they've decided to stop producing cars and are switching their factories to robotics

If I was afraid of competition from China, I don't think robotics is a field I'd enter to try to escape it.

Maybe Tesla should expand into Mexican restaurants or something.

Fair point. But musk has a good sense for the next government boondoggle to heavily profit from before abandoning

Tesla is gaining share in Europe despite Chinese EVs, <https://www.kansas.com/news/business/article317450876.html> and benefited from Canada cutting import duty on Chinese EVs. <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-19/tesla-vol...>

That is not what the first article says.

It says Tesla registrations increase and I believe this may be a trend accross all EV brands with the influence of the Iran/US conflict on the price of gas.

> It says Tesla registrations increase

You and I both know that registrations are a proxy for car purchases. (The article even says so.)

>and I believe this may be a trend accross all EV brands with the influence of the Iran/US conflict on the price of gas.

Again from the article:

>According to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, Tesla registrations across the European Union, Britain and the European Free Trade Association leaped 43.3% between January and August, outpacing the broader battery-electric vehicle market's 38.8% growth over the same period.

So tell me, again, what about my statement "Tesla is gaining share in Europe despite Chinese EVs" do you disagree with?

> what about my statement "Tesla is gaining share in Europe despite Chinese EVs" do you disagree with?

It's just missing the context that Tesla hemorrhaged European market share for 8 consecutive quarters.

From their current position, it would be genuinely difficult to find ways to piss off more of their customers.

>From their current position, it would be genuinely difficult to find ways to piss off more of their customers.

Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling car in 2024 <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market-2024/> and 2025 <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market-2025/>, and has gained share in 2026 YTD. <https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/>

Yes, but that doesn't contradict my statement or support your original claim. Tesla would be challenged to polarize European customers any further than they have already.

BYD went from unheard of to number 2 in Australia in about 4 years. Chinese made Tesla are still holding onto 10th spot here but they have MG and Geely coming up behind them. BYD and GWM are now supported by local dealerships that have been in my town for decades and I see the cars in the local community unlike Tesla. I don't know where the Tesla sales are but they aren't around here.

I am still driving an ancient Nissan and although Electric is looking very compelling at the moment I distrust all the brands and products currently on the market regardless of nation of origin. I guess if they are all privacy nightmares then you might as well go for the cheapest.

https://archive.ph/sGqBh

Thanks! That worked fine.

I'd love to be able to buy an affordable electric car in a free and open market. Unfortunately I live in the USA.

Having said that, if the only choice is cars with screens and touch controls...no thanks.

Don't forget that cars and nationalism go hand in hand. The CEO of Ford or BMW have their country's leaders on speed dial. Cars are a part of the national identity.

I live in a country who's indigenous auto industry was already killed off in the 1970s. So people here have no real loyalty and will happily buy any newcomers. Toyota, Kia, BYD- if it's good people will buy it.

Here’s to hoping the slate truck is a success.

I do wonder what the US game plan is here long term. This sort of protectionism can work temporarily but isn’t really sustainable.

And it’s not like GM and friends are catching up. If anything the gap is widening rapidly.

> This sort of protectionism can work temporarily but isn’t really sustainable.

This policy isn't about trade. It's not even about automobiles, really. It's about hard power.

A nation's hard power in peacetime can be estimated (in part) by the number of tanks / planes / ships it has available, but in the event of a hot war with a great power, that static figure is matters less and less over time. In a protracted war, the far more important factor is the rate at which new tanks / planes / ships that can be manufactured going forward. Thus, in the context of America's strategic competition with China, our heavy industry is just as important a component of our hard power as are our existing stockpile of armaments.

If someone proposed that we send a sizable portion of our tanks/planes/ships over to China, we would easily identify that as an absurd strategic blunder. Why would you reduce your armaments stockpile while increasing that of your main strategic adversary?! Well, opening our automobile market to the Chinese would undoubtedly result in the equivalent outcome for armament manufacturing capacity. It would mean less domestic armament manufacturing capacity and more Chinese armament manufacturing capacity (subsidized by Americans!). To allow such a thing would also be an absurd strategic blunder!

We can all wish that the world was a peaceful place, and that the era of great power wars is behind us for good, but to mistake our wishes for reality would be very dangerous. Strength is the only source of security. This policy is a means of preserving what strength we have left.

Fair point. Not entirely convinced a modern car plant could be retrofitted for tanks/military but I guess even 4x4s have value

This argument doesn't make sense, America has already offloaded most of its manufacturing capacity and is already failing to keep munitions assembly lines at pace with a far smaller adversary.

If this were about domestic armaments production then why did they spend 50 years offshoring all of the steel and machine production? And directly subsidizing the Chinese capacity while they were at it?

>I do wonder what the US game plan is here long term.

Our government is run by 80 year olds and their 80 year old rich as fuck friends.

The long term plan is "Be Dead, don't care about anything"

This is a huge reason why you need diversity in any system, here we need diversity of ages, so that young people who have a high investment in a far future can counterbalance old people who have high investment in the now.

If you want long term visions, you have to reward eschewing quick wins, and we openly declared that to not be policy as of the 80s and Reagan.

We're headed to a sort of inverse Cold War where one side is driving BMWs and the other is terrible Ladas. This time, the USA is the one with the walls up protecting the lousy ICE product.

There’s a lot of focus on the price of Chinese cars but they’re also beating US cars on specs too. Many have fast charging in less than 10 mins - provided the charger is powerful enough. And China is building the charging infrastructure to support that too, with 480KW, 600KW and even 1MW chargers.

I would like to see Chinese EVs allowed into the US market to compete if not on price, at least on specs.

You mean 2.25MW chargers: https://electrek.co/2026/09/30/chinas-2250kw-chargers-are-al...

Is there any reasonable cost-effective way to import these into the USA? Or is that path blocked due to regulatory safety things?

No, between safety and emissions, a normal person effectively have to wait out the 25 year as spelled out in the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988. Once you hit that, it's relatively straightforward to import the car (straightforward if you know how to do it, there are importers who specialize in this market).

There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.

Even if you do wait the mandatory period or it was otherwise ok, if the government catches wind that you're trying to do something less stupid than buying the trash the current manufacturers are pedalling, they will clamp down. Kei trucks and the Mahindra Roxor are just more examples of why you can't run something more efficient down any road for various poor reasons likely because they cut into someone else's profits.

Yeah, that's the other problem... Kei cars/trucks, despite being 25 years old, have been banned in a few states because "safety" (even though you can buy a new motorcycle, or a US-spec 1950 whatever, etc).

You're probably, maybe ok for something like a 25 year old full-size car that doesn't look too wild (ie, could pass a a US-spec). Like a Japanese-market Lancer Evo, or Mitsubishi Pajero.

1. Buy a BYD in Mexico.

2. Buy a scrapped Tesla in the US.

3. Rebadge the BYD with the Tesla's logos.

4. Bury the Tesla in your yard.

5. Register the rebadged BYD with the Tesla's VIN, slap some plates on it, and drive.

FBI open up

You still have to deal with people thinking you drive a tesla.

Could probably do the same with a Nissan Leaf, would be cheaper too.

If you live in the other 95% of the US where there aren't insufferable people who judge you for driving a Tesla it's not a big deal.

It's funny I don't live in the USA and my own neighbour sold his Tesla after the Nazi salute. The brand worldwide is suffering and sales are dropping everywhere, not just in the USA.

Tesla is pretty much non existent anymore in Switzerland, where it was really really huge no 5 years ago.

Step 6. Fines and maybe a night in jail.

I'd skip the Tesla part and just have it be a car you made. I think it'd be easier to get that approved and it's more legal.

That gets done with stolen vehicles and some rebuilds occasionally, but a VIN swap like that is a fast path to federal pound me in the ass prison.

there are limitations, a non resident can get a car in for a year, and if it’s plated in Mexico a resident might get a similar permit.

My understanding is that it’s close to impossible for a US resident to bring one of the Chinese EVs into the states. You have to live in Mexico

People make a fuss about China unfairly subsidizing its auto industry but this is exactly how subsidies should work.

USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its own auto companies over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that is considered rugged capitalism at work.

Disagree. The US manufacturers doubled down on over priced cars that nobody can afford, that's what the money went towards.

This is right and it's wrong. Every inexpensive car in America utterly fails to sell. Dodge tried with the Dodge Dart 2 in 2013 and it lasted 3 years before they ended the model for lack of sales. Mitsubishi has tried for years to sell to the lower end market, and has ended up cutting every model from their lineup except the SUVs and larger vehicles. The big 3 completely stopped making sedans. The best selling car in America right now? The Ford F-150. Starting at $40k, 20mpg combined.

yes, the american automaker doubled down on expensive cars, and it's because the american consumer demanded it and outright refused to buy anything else.

They didn't try in earnest. The Dodge Dart was a very low quality car at an uncompetitive price. You could get a Corolla for the same money. I bought a Nissan Versa around that time for like $10k out the door.

Ok but even then, Nissan officially discontinued U.S. production of the Nissan Versa. These things don't sell. American's by-and-large don't want them.

A combination of low interest rates and declining Nissan quality to price. You couldn't get a Versa for under $20k post-2020, so there was absolutely no reason to buy one.

Don't forget about all the High-Seniority union members who got paid very well to stall progress so the next generation has no ability to compete.

Could you provide evidence of senior union members making anything close to what executives make?

Probably not, can you? I never asserted that so why would you ask for evidence of it?

You compared them to the 'very rich executives' in the parent comment.

Subsidies to keep a failing industry alive are, reasonably, seen as a different phenomenon than subsidies to help a successful industry beat its international competitors. If Americans want to toss a bunch of money into a hole to ensure people can keep buying F-150s as commuter cars, that's just not a big problem for anyone else.

USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.

For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.

Are there actual national security concerns though? Or is that just an excuse for protectionism? I suspect the latter, and in europe politicians may make the calculation that cheap cars > car manufaturing jobs.

Ask Europe if they think there are "actual national security concerns" about them being so heavily reliant on USA tech companies and services.

China isn't threatening to invade European countries.

Europe and Germany invested heavily in the Nordstream pipelines despite USA repeatedly warning them that Russia would weaponize energy dependence against them [1]. Germany even continued shuttering their nuclear plants after Crimea because they loved the cheap gas.

The point is, Europe's judgement cannot be trusted. They have allowed themselves to become dependent on very risky globalized sources despite decades of warnings.

[1] https://2021-2025.state.gov/nord-stream-2-and-potential-sanc...

This. There are no words to describe how asinine Europe's (and in particular Germany's) energy policy is. And it's all self inflicted for largely ideological reasons.

Nordics do have a decent energy policy, mostly covered by nuclear, wind and hydro. To us German fear of nuclear has always seen highly irrational.

and yet Russia didn't weaponize nordstream, meanwhile our "ally" Ukraine destroyed it for us and people still continue pumping there dozens of billions EUR on prolonging endless war

Russia would happily supply cheap gas, it is self imposed EU resrictions together with green deal shooting themselves in their own foot, same thing with EU airlines taking detour to avoid russian airspace while Chinese airlines happily save kerosene flying through RU airspace

your downvotes won't change a reality, but enjoy it if it makes you happy LOL

This is ridiculous comment. Europe invested in a partnership with Russia because they didn't want the US to continue to dominate them economically, especially when it comes to energy. Now they've been cut off from both Russian oil and West Asian oil and the result is a Europe that is powerless to stand up against the US.

The EU is stuck choosing which of their two masters they're stuck with until they switch to renewables

Obama and Merkel held a joint press conference in 2014 where Obama publicly warned about Germany's energy dependence on Russia and Merkel assured everyone that Germany had a "10 to 15 year plan" [1] and then proceeded to continue shutting down its nuclear plants anyway.

Three years later US Energy Secretary Rick Perry went to Poland and gave another speech imploring Germany not to shutter their nuclear plants.

Then Germany celebrated the closing of the last plant with festivities at the Brandenberg Gate and the very next year Russia invaded Ukraine.

I know it's easy to blame everything on some external factor, but sometimes Europe's problems really are simply because they make very bad decisions entirely on their own.

[1] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/0...

You're not listening. The US wants Germany to be its puppy. If Germany is able to get energy from Russia and the Middle East, then that can't happen.

OF COURSE the United States is gonna "warn" them. They have a massive geopolitical interest in making them dependent.

Germany is right to diversify its dependencies while it switches to renewables. All of EU should've done the same. Depending on the US is a massive threat to their sovereignty

How does encouraging Germany to be self sufficient and maintain their own energy generation capabilities with nuclear power result in them being the USA’s puppy?

I understand diversification to avoid over reliance, but isn’t that exactly what happened with over reliance on Russian energy sources? To Ukraine and Europe as a whole’s detriment?

Did you read the statement you posted? It's not asking Germany to increase nuclear. It starts off talking about all the economic benefits that US corporations have had for Germany and then goes to suggest utilizing future U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to "enhance European energy security"

(finishing off with an apology for the NSA spying on the German chancellor)

I'd highly recommend you read it. It makes it abundantly clear that the US wants Germany to rely more on the US for energy security than anything else.

I'd love to see the math on whether the EU basically funded the Russian's war on Ukraine via Nordstream.

They're just providing Russia with all the components they need to build as many drones and rockets as they need to keep striking striking Europe.

Whilst USA provides the funding for Russia to buy weapons in dollars.

Can you source your statement that China is supplying drone components to Russia?

Let me Google that for you

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/09/06/china-secr...

It is common knowledge, just google it and whichever new site you trust to skip the "Omg you trust news site X?" step

True, they're actually doing it.

At this point US is a bigger security concern than China.

Who do you think is building weapons, parts, and sharing tech with Russia to use on Ukraine?

US, China, Israel? I am sure many companies will happily earn money supplying both sides while those idiots are figthting each other in endless war, there is only one winner in this war - military industrial complex.

Is America buying Russian diesel? How’s that working out?

... while Europe did not allow the Ukraine War to interrupt its longstanding massive purchase contracts for gas from Russia.

The United States is, contrary to what many subreddits' denizens seem to believe, not actually at war with Russia. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Anything the US does, or does not, regarding sanctions on Russia is up to the US to decide.

How much gas and oil has Europe purchased from Russia since the start of the war?

Chinese parts have been found in equal parts on both the Russian and the Ukrainian side.

That still makes them complicit in arming Russia. There is no "it's ok to be neutral and arm both sides" here.

Well officially they are not neutral. They explicitly ban trading with Russia. They don't sell any actual military products and have strict controls on dual-use products.

Ukraine actually uses Chinese parts much more heavily because its easier for them to get it through the EU. Also, US microchips are routinely found in Russian weaponry. 75% of all its jamming devices come from the US

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-foreign-parts-russia...

It's not easy to paint China on one side or another. It's the same in West Asia. People often try to associate China with Iran but historically they have certainly not been allies. Many of the Saudi Arabian drones China has downed have been Chinese drones and the vast majority of Iran's assets that are locked up due to sanctions are actually currently held in China. China is holding them in compliance with sanctions.

At the same time, they've (rightfully) denounced Trump's illegal retreat from the JCPOA and the additional (illegal) sanctions those have triggered against Iran.

I think there are legitimate safety and national security concerns. I also think restrictions are imposed for protectionism / political / monetary reasons. We are living in a world where the people making the decisions wait until there is enough personal gain to act in one direction or another.

> people making the decisions wait until there is enough personal gain to act in one direction or another.

Or just Yojimbo it.

I would like to do without the violence.

Yes, there are huge national security concerns when everybody's cars are always on the network and all fly-by-wire. It would be trivial for anyone who writes the software for these things to include logic or network bombs in them that would enable a catastrophic strike on a country or the rest of the world. Cars being on the network all the time is really a terrifically stupid idea.

Careful readers may note the complete lack of the word "China" in the previous paragraph. But, yes, technically it is even that much more dangerous to have a whole bunch of potentially-hackable robots roaming up and down all your transportation corridors that were also created by your major economic and military rival.

But I don't even like it when it isn't created by your rival, though, because there's no guarantee that your rival can't hack anybody's software. I fear the day when some significant fraction of cars on the road are given instructions to floor the pedal and then do a hard turn to the left 10 seconds later. (Or the right for countries where that is the "turn into oncoming traffic" direction.)

So apparently Charlize Theron hacking self-driving cars for the "make it rain" one great scene in an installment of the Fast and The Furious franchise was not enough incentive for our short term gains corporate overlords to do anything about it. So apparently it takes your catastrophic strike(tm) to get the job done much like it took 9/11 to justify the price of reinforcing cockpit doors.

I do not like this. But it seems to be how it works here.

As they say, safety regulations are written in blood.

They could open-source all of the car software/firmware and eliminate this regulation issue entirelty

I think this just means we should stop putting smart features on cars.

Just like with the data center 'debate', it's best to assume both sides are just churning out propaganda.

There are ways it could be handled. Waymo imports Chinese made Zeekr vans, but Waymo probably replaces all onboard software and hardware.

Yes! This seems like such a patently obvious thing that it’s amazing it needs to be said. Yes! There are national security concerns with China having detailed transportation data from other countries! Good god I feel like I’m taking crazy pills that I have to type this.

If you are conspiracy minded, their real concern might be that they don't have the ability to easily compromise the car's security with a back door. Most all US cars made in the last 20 years can be disabled remotely, every car that hasn't been hacked up in the past 10 years can not only be disabled remotely but critical functions can be changed while in operation because everything is fly-by-wire and the entire system is interconnected with the infotainment system which has GPS, cellphone, bluetooth connections, and very shortly interior cameras.

Europe doesn't ban American on-board software so why would they ban Chinese ones?

Europe "bans" tons of American software, though for now they just use it as their main revenue source.

https://www.xtb.com/int/market-analysis/news-and-research/eu...

Fines are not bans. American software companies are welcome to respect the law any time now. For a US reference, see the recent Meta fines in New Mexico.

That's why ban was in quotes. They say it's not allowed, but they would rather take money than disallow the software. It's just how they choose to enforce their laws.

USA doesn't want the software present in Chinese cars (or things like TikTok and networking infra) and "bans"/makes it illegal. Instead of fining the Chinese companies repeatedly, they block it. Perhaps because there are viable alternatives within the country.

So why did the US not ban Meta after Cambridge Analytica scandal or Alphabet after the Google Adx and DV360 preferential treatment scandal?

Also most IoT in the US runs Chinese software and I'm not seeing ban for those.

There are limits in place and about to be tightened, but I assume the bigger worry are the european car manufacturers.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/12/eu-deal-...

And personally I trust a Tesla as much as chinese car. But a VW one only slightly more.

For everything that actually matters about owning a car, things like service network, whether the brand will exist in 20-30 years, parts availability, crash safety, driving characteristics and comfort, manufacturing quality, I would trust VW about 5x more than Tesla or any Chinese brand.

VW is nowhere near the top of my trustworthy brands list but they’re still in the “massive sales volume legacy automotive group” category where they generally know what they’re doing and have the fundamentals of their business in order.

If you want to really get me going about legacy automakers that are a safe buy we can talk about Toyota.

"He who loves the profit of the tyrant must hate the Commonwealth, and he who loves the Commonwealth must hate the profit of tyranny, for what profits the sovereign does not always profit the Commonwealth." - paraphrased from the anti-Machiavel.

That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.

> USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.

And that is perfectly reasonable. I go further and disable the cellular modem even in a domestically made car.

It's not for national security. It's to protect Detroit.

Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.

Of course, the obvious best way to protect Detroit was to continue the EV rebate program.

Ford, GM, and Stellantis were dumping money into EV development. Now they’re not.

The rebates directly favored domestically produced batteries (although the leasing loophole was unfortunate).

I’m really not sure why the US government didn’t continue that same policy, and beyond that I’m really not sure why they didn’t follow the Japanese car playbook with China and go harder on domestic employment/value capture carrots and sticks.

The result of Japanese cars coming to America is that Japanese cars are designed and built in America. The thing that foreign competitors can never change is that Americans often buy vastly different cars than other regions of the globe.

Let China into Europe, let China into the USA…but make them play on your playing field. Make them hire engineers and build factories in your region. Make them deploy the automotive connected services software servers in domestic data centers.

The US already has dealer franchise laws that keep a huge chunk of the profits from car sales and service away from the manufacturers. Let China sell their cars in the US, AutoNation is going to take all the money from the sale anyway.

The US could provide a means for importing cars with electronic risks - have the electronic "brain" be made in the US and have it plug into a "dumb" (or well-defined interface) body.

IIRC, the US administration is claiming that building a ballroom and an arch are needed for national security.

If only we took data privacy laws seriously here then we wouldn't be in such a predicament, just more consequences of our protectionist economy.

Does anyone know if you can buy one in Mexico and drive it across the border?

I imagine it is very complicated to own it long term in the US. But if it were legally registered in Mexico, could you drive it in the US for a period of time?

I believe the CEO of Ford something along those lines

Mexican residents can bring a non us legal car to the us for up to a year. If you’re a US citizen living in Mexico it is more complicated but I think you should still be able to bring it for a year.

It's an interesting arbitrage question. When I do a search to see what they cost, they aren't that cheap: approximately $20k USD for a starter (Dolphin Mini). And, then about $50k USD for a minivan (M9). I was wondering if there was a weird lease model which could work for independent Mexican residents or expats, but I don't think there is.

Yes, foreign registered vehicles can stay in the us for a year.

I'd be somewhat concerned about getting caught up in ALPR surveillance driving a vehicle with Mexican tags in the US, given that locals are getting pulled over for nothing more than "suspicious driving patterns" nowadays[0].

0: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ai-driven-polic...

This is a vexing issue. I don't want to prop up dinosaur domestic automakers, but a significant chunk of the economy is tied to that. If they are quickly destroyed by Chinese competition the ripple effects will be huge.

They need their asses kicked and should not be allowed to coast on protections by the government. Maybe it's not possible but it would be valuable to try and force them to save themselves. Under the current administration that is likely impossible.

I noticed the same in India not long ago. Unlike in the US, there is broad cultural aspiration toward electric vehicles.

Even tuk-tuk/rickshaw drivers (who are largely lower income) have EV choices, while in the US lower income workers - like rideshare drivers - don't have many cheaper electric options, since EVs are mostly priced for upper income people.

It doesn't hurt that India has to import the vast majority of the petroleum it uses, and has unlimited solar resources.

Most countries in the world have to import their oil and gas. Which generally means EVs are very attractive as they can run on locally produced electricity. This is happening all over the world at this point. Including quite a few developing nations across Africa, Asia, South America, etc. Ethiopia banned imports of ICE vehicles a few years ago. They are going all in on EVs. Same for Kenya I believe. They aren't doing this to save the planet but because oil imports are expensive, especially if you have to pay for it in dollars and don't have a lot of exported goods to earn those dollars with like is true for a lot of developing nations.

The only countries trying to slow this down currently are those with a lot of vested interest in oil and gas. Or a lot of legacy car production. Everyone else is cutting their dependence on importing either of those things.

The main reason is the insane levels of pollution in Indian urban centers which is literally in your face everywhere. Hence everybody is very much conscious of EV adoption (a necessity) and are transitioning to them as soon as they are available and affordable.

If the Chinese and Indian govts. sort out their differences allowing their EV companies to better share technologies and production, thus bringing prices down drastically, the entire planet's environment will be changed!.

I see these comments a about future repairability and I wonder if Americans had the same general wary feeling when adopting Tesla cars.

Definitely, and a lot still do. But buying a Tesla is like buying a BYD since they're the dominant brand they're likely to have better support. A lot of lessons were learned on the Nissan Leaf, Ford Lightning, and even to this day buying a Rivian is like buying a BMW in that you know maintenance/repairability will be painful.

What's even good these days? Toyota, VW, Audi, what else?

Tesla

There are now lots of Chinese cars in Russia for obvious reasons, and the problem with them is that in the harsh climate (+40 degress in July, -20 degrees in January, lots of chemicals to clean the streets) they rot in 2-3 years. This was completely not a problem with Kias/Hyundais earlier.

BYD cars were my biggest tourist attraction on my last trip to Mexico, it was what I was looking forward to seeing the most, as soon as I got out the airport and saw taxis using them

It's fine - no need for American car industry to be decimated like the German one is at the moment thanks to a flood of Chinese government subsidized EVs.

> no need for American car industry to be decimated

You are about 4 decades too late for that to matter.

It's hard to imagine some times, but a lot of places in their own ways outside of North America are in the future.

https://archive.ph/sGqBh

https://wapo.st/4dZMFUo

This link still runs into a subscription paywall, as do most of your recent posts.

Searching for the article title usually finds some non-paywalled alternate sources, eg:

https://duckduckgo.com/&q=i+went+to+mexico+to+test+drive+the...

Can you buy a car in Mexico and drive it to US and register properly?

It's a good article about an important subject. Also thanks for the link around the paywall (We dropped the W. Post when Bezos brought in that Brit to run it).

My theory is that the chicken tax makes big pickups etc. the most profitable thing US car companies can make. So they focus on that and relegate everything else to the margins. I suspect that worldwide there will be many more electric sedans than pickups and that, as the article suggests, the US auto industry will end up like the UK auto industry.

I just want a motor vehicle which does not have a telematics unit or online communications unit! I want a radio-silent motor vehicle! I don't want Bluetooth or Wifi! I don't want radio-based TPMS! I don't want surveillance! I don't even want the stupid seatbelt chime! Or at least give me a motor vehicle with the customize-ability of VW's MQB platform + VCDS (and the ability to interact with the immobilizer system to add/remove my own standardized fully encrypted rolling code keys)! Enough with the lockdowns, the surveillance, and the enshittification!!!

I used to live in Belarus (Eastern Europe) where you can see a similar trend in the automotive market. I drove many Chinese EVs. Frankly speaking, some of them are very good. Unfortunately, some are very bad. My observation is that the difference coincides with the type of ownership. Hongqi (FAW -- a state-owned enterprise) is ugly, the dashboard and the central screen provides bad user experience. On the contrary, BYD, Zeekr, Lynk & Co (brands owned by private companies) -- an example of good design, user research for interior.

Xiaomi YU7? Yes, please. I would love to have one.

https://wallhop.io/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-en... (for connoisseurs who prefer their paywall circumvention without malware)

Europe preaches about human rights but no problem doing business with China

Are you sure you wanna hang your hat on that????

Show me where on the doll China touched you XD

No mention of the GR Yaris, huh?

...yet.

"EVs you can't buy in the US yet." Give it a couple of years.

usa is just showing us how pathtic capitalism can be.

I just wish that I could buy something akin to a modern EV version of a Honda Fit, Honda Element, or Toyota Matrix. Something that's affordable, not huge, and is a great town car but also brings utility and versatility highly disproportionate to its size and cost. I don't even care if it looks dorky.

This is the exact type of vehicle that manufacturers selling in the US seem to have an extreme allergy to. If it can't be badged as an SUV, isn't saddled with a needlessly space-inefficient interior, and can't carry an exorbitant price tag it won't be sold.

I was curious, so I looked it up: 75% of electricity generation in Mexico comes from fossil fuels, mostly methane/etc gas.

https://www.iea.org/countries/mexico/electricity

Meaning electric cars at minimum 25% cleaner than an internal combustion vehicle.

Not necessarily, if you include the supply chain of the BEV? (I assume.)

Even the worst ev driven off coal nets out to less emissions in its lifetime than gas cars. this has been known and well studied for like a decade. Keep up!

Also their LFP batteries are extremely simple and recyclable forever.

Okay then, with that confidence you simply must be correct.

Then you have to include the supply chain of the ICE vehicle too.

Still significantly lower over vehicle lifetime

https://theicct.org/publication/electric-cars-life-cycle-ana...

There is path loss to consider. I would imagine that large scale electricity generation is more efficient than small scale ICE engines, and EVs have regeneration, so probably the EVs still come out ahead.

And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.

It's much better that than: ICE are way more inefficient and therefore polluting than burning fossils in power plants.

It is well proven that even with electricity made 100% from coal an EV is still better than an ICE.

lumping those all together is missing half the point, ng in at least in the us where its a by product of oil extraction is a huge step up from coal/oil and will be with us for a very long time

Submarine. China desperate to find a market for these dubious vehicles because domestic economy and market in very bad shape right now and getting worse.

OT but I'm in the market for a hybrid compact SUV.. anything good? Kia?

mazda or toyota, same tech

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