For an article that size, it’s surprisingly light on actual numbers and facts. A lot of auto-show impressions, lots of “ooh look at that” and “ooh that feels nice”, even more he-said-she-saids, but no proper comparisons. It’s also pretty incoherent and it features A LOT of chinese praise, including whole paragraphs of praising tiktok ( in a friggin car article ). Yeah, I’m not gonna hold my breath that “western car makers are cooked” just based on what this guy wrote.
They aren’t cooked. But they aren’t in a great position either. The government is going to need to subsidize them a bit. China just went all in on EVs as a national project before anyone else and now it’s paying dividends. Western car manufacturers can and will catch up.
It’s full of comparisons, some examples:
I’d later learn that the auto show had more than 100 new model debuts and concepts. That’s a far cry from the Detroit Auto Show last September, which only featured one fully new model. Two other models were refreshed versions of current cars already on sale. None were electric.
Western automakers aren’t entangled deeply with tech companies in ways that would serve the end user, Chinese or otherwise. They didn’t get way ahead of the curve to establish a battery supply chain in the ways China did. And they don’t seem to want to cater to the Chinese market (or any market, rather) through continuous updates and agility with their product line.
Even Tesla in China can’t be bothered to update one of its most important products, the Model Y, in this hyper-competitive market. Instead, it relies on margin-hurting gimmicks to move units, like constant price cuts, subsidized trade-in incentives, and 0% financing to get customers to buy a car that is aged and now uncompetitive.
Tesla didn’t even have a presence at the Beijing Auto Show. Elon Musk came and went to Beijing during the show, only to make a case for his robotaxi pivot with government officials. It’s like he’s already given up on cars here.
GM blew it here too. Up until the Beijing Auto Show’s debut of a PHEV version, the GL8 was one of the few vans in the segment without any plug-in capabilities. Green-plated New Energy vehicles are an important market in China, as are luxury vans. Why weren’t Western automakers paying attention? Why didn’t GM get an electrified vehicle on sale faster?
If anyone thinks lemmy doesn’t have bots: so far 4 of my downvoters are from accounts created during the reddit exodus, and have zero comments or posts.
Why the hell didn’t we subsidize our EV-building and clean energy industries like China did?
Big oil?
Sure, but in a more general sense, capitalists. The bourgeois Founding Fathers created a government for themselves, and the bourgeoisie have kept it. “Bourgeois Democracy”: What Do Marxists Mean by That Term?
Yep. Capitalists in the US stand above its political system, and the oil and US auto industries oppose green energy.
It’s not just at the national level, but at the local one too. Petro-profits even dictate how US cities are laid out.
What the fuck is “insideevs.whatever” and why is their take relevant to anything?
That’s not purely a complaint about source, I sure as hell can’t keep track of every valid and useful site on every subject. Is there a reason their opinion matters?
It’s a site that reviews EVs, and they’ve been around for a while.
Much appreciated :)
Chinese brands are on a whole different level. BYD just announced a hybrid sedan with 2k range that goes for like $14k. There’s nothing comparable available from western automakers.
https://www.asiafinancial.com/byd-promises-driving-range-of-over-2000km-with-new-hybrid-tech
That’s crazy far, like almost halfway across the entire US.
Indeed, and hybrid approach makes a lot of sense for places where charging infrastructure is spotty.
Pfffffft. The range isn’t enough so I’ll buy a diesel monster truck and roll coal.
/s
Nobody should go that long driving without a break. When people talk about only being able to drive for 2-3 hours on a charge I’m glad to finally get out of the car and walk around.
The journalists who tried to test the range of the new byd car did take multiple breaks on the ways though. The point is that the car could do that whole trip without recharge or refuel, not that you should do that all in one sitting.
I know. You missed my point.
The important point is about capacity. You wouldn’t use your smartphone for 24 hours straight without sleeping either, but it’d be nice for the battery to last as long as possible.
I agree but there’s a huge problem with this and cars. A phone battery is inconsequential but having double the battery you need in a car is hundreds of kilos you didn’t need and this just makes the car use the battery capacity faster. The Hummer EV for instance is nearly 200kwh of potential storage and 9,000lbs.
As charging networks improve, you ideally want just enough range to make it to chargers when you’d normally want to get out of the car anyway.
I’ve been to china many times and sorta agree with the title. They are disrupting the industry in the way iPhone unseated Nokia.
What do people in China drive?
Bunch of Chinese brands like BYD, but also Tesla is really popular. Some of the models of electric cars cost just a few thousand dollars. For those who can’t afford or don’t needs cars, the motorcycles and scooters are all electric. The buses are electric. Delivery trucks are mostly still gas powered. Charging stations are ubiquitous.
So their supply chains, manufacturers, city planners, and infrastructure are all way ahead, and they are gaining experience and getting cheaper/better by the day.
Removed by mod
If we could actually get them…
What i understand is that the rdw (they do safety and quality checks for new cars to be sold in europe etc) is that the safety rules to get new cars to europe is very strict and the chinese either dont want to or dont know how to meet these requirements. And if a chinese electric car is allowed in to be sold to the masses they meet the absolute minimum requirements to do so. So not a mm (or inch which is more btw) extra effort for safety just so it can be sold.
That’s the point of safety standards though. If you meet the standard you are safe enough. If you want higher standards bring it up with your government. I regularly complain to my legislators about it because American safety standards are laughable.
Yup you keep on with the self sabotage and that will happen. We were at the top of EV in the 90s good job oil companies.
10 BVD EV dealerships burned to a crisp? No thanks!
Genuine question - what does that mean? The cars are burning down the dealerships? o.O
And it’s overblown and exaggerated.
There’s a narrative being pushed that EVs = fires.
It’s used as a fear tactic, and every time I’ve done a basic search, the facts show it to be proven false. Be sceptical, and use your critical thinking skills when you see these claims/stories.
See my post above relating to this specific claim.
deleted by creator
EVs certainly don’t mean fires, so you can stop putting words in my mouth, thankya much
And 10 dealerships were not burned to a crisp, as I already proved with a trivial search in my other post
That’s precisely what it means
LOL! Gotta love that ‘EVs = FIRE!!!’ narrative.
‘Fire at 10 dealerships’ doesn’t sound nearly as clickbaity as ‘10 dealerships burned to a crisp’.
And if you see a picture of that 10th dealership, only the showroom burned down. ‘a total of seven vehicles were destroyed in this latest fire, and several privately-owned vehicles (at the location for repairs) were also damaged in the incident’. There were dozens of cars in the dealership lot that were untouched. I won’t even go into BYD’s claim that ‘the source of the fire did not come from their car on display. But from a room on the second floor of the building’
But I guess we have different sources, and live in different bubbles.
I’m not sure how many showrooms I am comfortable with catching on fire in 3 years, lol.
BYD also benefits heavily from investigating these themselves and downplaying them.
Lmao. Then you’ll be very uncomfortable about a bunch of other brands too
Simplest search: fires at car dealerships usa
Fires happen all the time, everywhere.
You were extolling the virtues of skepticism and critical thinking in another post, so the bar is set a little higher - did you do a count of fires at dealerships per brand, so we’re not comparing the number of fires of a specific brand in China to the number of fires of all brands across the US?
It would also be helpful to primarily look at the most common car brands sold in the us first.
Great idea!
Go for it!
So you haven’t actually done the research, and you were trying to convince me that byd cars are a safe brand by sharing arbitrary news articles for dealership fires across all brands of cars in the USA? That’s not very convincing, lol.
I did a preliminary search of Buick, Volkswagen, etc. and there were less fires in the same time span for those brands.
That’s not what I was on about. I’m not pro any brand in particular.
It was a simple search to show fires happen at dealerships of other brands too. And as you’ve now found there is no reliable independent data on fires at dealerships by brand.
So, nobody can really state whether BYD has more or less dealership fires than any other brand.
So, to review- you say I’m wrong when I say some EV dealerships burned up, but then you provide more examples of EV dealerships burning up. Do you think they do or don’t burn? Mixed messages
The point is that it’s not EVs. Car dealerships catch fire all the time. And it’s more likely due to ICE vehicles. https://electrek.co/2022/01/12/government-data-shows-gasoline-vehicles-are-significantly-more-prone-to-fires-than-evs/
No dealerships burned up. Some cars at dealerships burned up. Exaggeration doesn’t help you
You started by specifying BYD, I easily found multiple fires at other brand dealerships.
I just used them as an example and was being silly when i used “crisp”, feel free to play semantics all you want
You say semantics. I say a false statement.
It’s exactly what you see over and over in media headlines and reporting around EVs and fires. As soon as you look at facts, oh, surprise surprise that’s wrong!
