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Comment by rajman187 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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

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_...

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).

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.

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

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

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.

>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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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