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Comment by mulderc | Hacker News Reader

BYD is basically the only car company that has showed off cars I would like to buy.

Have you seen the Xiaomi SU7 yet? It's a very nice piece of kit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdSusCDZcDg

I would never spend $40k on a car, way too much.

That's pretty close to the median car price. Would you never spend that much or that little? It's hard to tell what you mean.

That is WAY more than I would ever spend for a car.

If that's true, you'll probably just never buy a new car, so it's nothing particular about BYD.

Not sure why you're throwing so much shade at people as though only poors would look at cars below forty thousand dollars. The 2027 Camry and the 2027 Escape both start at under $30,000. Tesla 3 is under $39,000.

Not everyone likes to blow 50-100 grand on an asset which loses 50% of its value in 3 years. Especially considering how much they're trending toward being so expensive to repair and unreliable that keeping it on the road after the warranty runs out is also expensive.

It's a thread about new cars. The price of a BYD car is a thing about cars, not about BYD cars. In fact, BYD is cheap compared to most comparable cars.

If a party was talking about running shoes, I wouldn't pipe in to say "I would never buy running shoes because I'm an amputee", because it's just completely outside the scope of the subject.

Cars are expensive and it's crazy, sure. But like, that's kind of just beside the point for the subject at hand.

The BYD car I am interested in is ~$15k in China.

Your median price new price is over double the cheapest new price, so no. EVs are now available out of the luxury car bracket in most markets. The cheapest car available on the Australian market was briefly a BYD EV. Not everyone wants to pay for heated seats or celebrity endorsements.

Nobody uses that expression to mean they would prefer to spend more, unless it's in the context where the number is so low that it implies a safety or fraud issue. e.g. "I would never buy a 5 cent burrito"

There's little point in spending more than $ 40,000 - especially for the crap currently being peddled in the U.S. I bought a 3-year-old electric luxury SUV with significantly under 20,000 miles for well under that.

I mean, if you're rolling in money, and don't need it for savings or more important purposes, you do you. But I'm with GP. 40,000 is excessive. Even in our devalued 2026 money.

Nobody cares what you would personally spend on a vehicle. The point is that it's a very good value, relatively speaking, for a new vehicle of its class.

The person was asking me if I had seen a specific car and I gave them my reaction to that car. BYD has cars I want that they sell for ~$15k in China which look like a much better value to me.

i would love to spend >$100k on a great electric car, idk if they're quite there yet and the rocket boosters aren't doing it for me in the tesla line up lol

Still needs a step change upgrade on the battery tech

I was in Montevideo this weekend and all car service cars I rode were Chinese EVs. They all seemed great and when I had Claude look up pricing they were all very well-priced. While I myself would loe a BYD Seagull or Dolphin, the more expensive ones like the Greely EX5 looked much cooler than much more expensive cars I see on roads in the US.

I live in Punta del Este, we just bought a Geely and a BYD (both) coming from a VW ID.3.

For BYD, a Dolphin 2027 for 21K + VAT. Insane value, by extreme far the best price-perf vehicle in the country’s history. Has every single little thing you might want. For that size and price, at least.

Notably, Tesla is attempting to destabilize the local market, coming in at 30K+VAT for the Premium Model Y which is cheaper than the US, Europe and pretty much anywhere.

I still prefer BYD by far, and not supporting the “controversial fellow”.

At a 20x electricity to gas price ratio (depending on factors, but yes), EVs are key here.

Same. The only brand I know that even comes close is Kia but even then they don't have many EV's and the cost is still pretty high compared to BYD.

there is a reason.

Is there a reputable summary that explains the cheaper sales price? I'm having a hard time believing it all boils down to politics, but there's way too much noise in the way.

What most folks in the USA don't understand, BYD manufactures two types of vehicles. One type is for the domestic market (cheaper and dangerous), the other is for export (meets some semblance of safety). I have heard that the export models are built to higher standards and are more dependable, hence the higher price than domestic models.

This is business as normal for most large automakers -- segmenting different parts of their product lineup for different regulatory markets.

For example, the original VW Beetle from 1938 was sold in Mexico up until 2003.

And even models that are sold in different regions may lack some safety features in other regions: e.g. https://www.latinncap.com/en/result/44/chevrolet-spark-no-ai...

Why BYD is cheap? They're heavily vertically integrated, they're ruthless about cutting production costs, they operate in an environment with more manufacturing talent than anywhere else, and they're a young company without many legacy costs.

for example: https://x.com/maxiaoalex/status/2062910018840854722 ( https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741394 )

An interesting explanation I heard is that China had this massive housing crisis that they never allowed to go Boom and clear the system in a few hard years. Instead the problems are lingering with an abysmal local credit market. This is why the local population can't/won't buy much and China either has to produce less or export more. For now they decided to export more to keep the machine going.

The bigger principal problem I have is that I do not understand how the Chinese economy/trade is supposed to work. China is working extremely hard to be completely self sufficient and not import anything. How is trade supposed to work if you do not want anything from your trading partners? What can they sell you besides sovereignty/land...

It will/is be a hard awakening when all those nations start to default/nationalize those projects. That is the point were usually the gunboats show up in the harbor....

Because China has a surplus of batteries, electric motors, ICs and microcontrollers?

If it isn't, it's certainly an advantage over the trashy EVs we have in America.

The reason is there's fierce competition between automotive companies in China.

Markets elsewhere that consolidated down to the 2 or 3 domestic champions that settled into a comfortable coexistence with their domestic "competition", and are coddled by protectionist government policy will have a hard time remembering how to compete for real.

That sounds quite reminiscent of America's auto industry, as well as the desktop computer, smartphone, web search, AI, fast food and supermarket industries too.

Man, China's been taking notes.

id recommend you look at soldering work, steering, materials used under the body of a chinese car vs a german made one.

Hyundai and Kia are being hit pretty hard by tariffs, and the expiration of the EV tax credit.

https://www.carscoops.com/2026/03/tariffs-kill-kias-hottest-...

The tariff thing is a bit misleading if you're not familiar with the industry. Kia/Hyundai produce some of the "most domestic" vehicles on the market. Hyundai EVs were beating all American brands (incl. Tesla) by domestic content when the tariffs came into effect. Those lines are very well positioned to accommodate them.

The article is talking about a certain specialty model that's only produced in Korea, probably because it's low volume.

Kia (and Hyundai) have a big problem with their ICCUs dying. They extended the warranty but no fix, which means your car could die at any time.

You are repeating years-old news by now. It’s true that the 2022 through 2025 model years had the ICCU problem, but they improved the ICCU design in 2026, with both better hardware (heavier duty power electronics) and better software (slow start for 12V charging).

Of course time will tell whether this brings failure rate down to be negligible. But I feel pretty confident.

It's not years old news, I was looking at used models and it still is an ongoing question. Having no real fix (time will tell if the 2026 revised part is reliable) and leaving owners with a potential brick (and re-servicing it again when the part dies) is completely unacceptable. Many Kia's were lemon'ed based on this issue.

Maybe I'm sensitive as I have a young child, but I will not buy a car with a known potential of stranding me.

It’s simple; if the used model has undergone an ICCU replacement in 2026 it will be better. It has a new part number, 36401-1XAD6.

And if not? Roll the dice on when you might get stranded? Its not an active recall, so you can't just take it in to get the new part.

If not, just don’t buy it. Let the free market sort it out. If the new part is proven to be good, the market will price these cars much higher, and sellers will perform a preemptive replacement to get higher resale value.

It should be noted that is for their E-GMP platform, which is their 800 V system. Their older 400 V platform, used on the Kia Niro and Hyundai Kona, has a completely different ICCU which has not had those problems. The first generation had some coolant leaks in the DC-DC converter housing and sometimes did a bad job keeping the 12 V battery charged but they seem to have got it all worked out for the second generation in 2024.

Kia has ev2,3,4(x2),5,6 and 9, plus the pv5 in our market. They probably just determined they can't sell them in your market.

I tried to buy an EV3 last weekend but every dealership around me is sold out through the year.

Not clear to me why they started it with such low inventory, but I ended up getting a new Leaf since I couldn't wait another bunch of months.

They have some minor problems like axis falling off.

Is it supposed to do that?

No, that is not very typical.

Not since 1945

Is that an issue with their export models?

Supposedly only the straight axis model.

Sounds like they're encroaching on Tesla's expertise, then!

Haven't heard of this in Australia and BYTD sells a lot here

You need to go to China then. There are dozens of manufacturers other than BYD. It's astonishing just how many sexy EVs there are driving around in China.

> BYD is basically the only car company that has showed off cars I would like to buy.

They're not bad when you're in them but they're not amazing either. The thing is: they're incredibly good value compared to other brand new cars.

But the interior of a great many german cars (for example) is still qualitatively not just a bit but way above BYD.

I think the only Chinese EV that interests me is the Xiaomi SU7, and even then I'm extremely unlikely to ever buy one.

The Koenigsegg CCGT1 looks quite nice.

The Jonckheere Rolls-Royce is my #1.

Why?

That's why you myst tariff them to protect America capitalism

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