Would you buy an affordable EV made in China?
Would you buy an affordable EV made in China?
Sure. If it were well made, had a good safety record, affordable replacement parts and didn’t phone home.
Same considerations I give to any other car.
Are there any new cars that don't phone home?
By don’t phone home you mean don’t phone YOUR home, right? 😂 I got plenty of their calls last week.
100% I'd consider it. For me, "Chinese EVs are dangerous" is in the same category as "immigrants are causing affordability issues." Red herrings peddled by the North American uber-wealth class
Totally agree.
It sucks, but Chinese manufacturing has an uphill battle in a market where people got addicted to cheap, and cheaply made Chinese products.
Doesn't mean chinese factories can't make a good new thing.
According to statistical data from China’s National Fire and Rescue Administration, the rate of spontaneous fires in NEVs increased by 32 percent in the first quarter of 2024. This means that currently, an average of eight NEVs catch fire in China every day — nearly 3,000 a year.
In late 2023, news that four BYD dealerships were stricken by fire in a single month made waves on social media.
One owner of a BYD car described how, when charging their vehicle, the car suddenly began emitting smoke and soon thereafter spontaneously burst into flames.
Buy a BYD, make a battery warranty claim and then tell me again how good it is. Its Burn Your Driveway good. They have already been caught out breaking Australian consumer warranty law. Early adopters who advocated for them, now paying the price and advocating against them when their 1 year 30,000km warranty claim from a dead battery was rejected.
Isn't BYD the world's #1 or #2 battery company?
They ought to respect consumer protections and warranty laws but I don't think dismissal of their batteries outright makes sense.
I don't really have a problem with a certain amount of protectionism as a concept, but Canada has a long history of granting special privileges to specific companies in key industries, then sitting back while those powers are used to mercilessly abuse consumers. I'm not super confident this is going to be any different.
No such thing.
The $10k Chinese EV is only $10k in China. When localized for other markets, it's much closer to the same price as all other EVs. Some of this is tariffs, but there's a bunch of changes they need to make to meet safety requirements. Even the $15k Seagull they talk about in the article is expected to be the cheapest offering in Europe, eventually, and they're aiming for 20k Euros, which is 30k CAD.
They should build a factory in Canada like the rest of the autos. Then labor practices and safety will follow Canadian standards, and more of the significant purchase price will remain in our local economy. That will also level the playing field with other Canadian made cars instead of decimating the future of the industry, since lower cost EVs are far from profitable yet. Yes #FuckCars and all that, but there always will be a need for cars even if we drive fewer of them. It's good to be able to build EVs in Canada. The neoliberal dream that we can offshore and buy things made anywhere in the world while having people in our economy flourish has failed. Doing more of it won't make it work.
Lots of BYD in Europe, you can watch them on YT or others, people love them
As long as they meet or exceed safety regulations here and all customer data is stored in North America with any software updates being managed and delivered through a non-china entity then I’m fine with it.
Even better, all software should be required to be open source for security.
Do people just love them because of the low price though? If they cost the same as a Tesla would people still love them?
Why when I can buy reliable and well-made cars from the North America and Japan?
Ideally to drive the price of competing cars down or at the very least make the current models more feature rich/compelling than their cheaper Chinese counterparts to justify the price gap.
As it stands, Chinese built EV's have feature parity for the most part with locally built or otherwise imported EV's. All at a relatively great price for the product.
But they are not held to the same labor standards, environmental standards, intellectual property laws, or fair financial support.
So of course they're cheaper and of course they have parody because they're using forced labor stolen intellectual property and being funded by an authoritarian regime.
If China's willing to play on the big stage and a somewhat fair way then maybe I would consider buying a vehicle from them.
If it didn't have survalance sensors and had no internet connectivity, yes
That's EVERY car now. Even if it is not enabled for the owner the hardware and software is present.
Thats why I'm saying that if they provided it, I'd buy it. Because its impossible to find a privacy friendly car. There's a market for it.
What's to gains:
BYD, a Chinese car manufacturing giant, debuted its Seagull EV last year at a starting price of about $14,600 Cdn for a 305-kilometre-range version. The cheapest options available in Canada, by contrast, start at roughly $38,000.
What's at risk:
The stakes are high. Since 2020, Canada has attracted more than $46 billion in investments for 13 electric vehicle, battery and battery component manufacturing projects, according to a June 18 report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The same report says that Ottawa and the provinces have jointly promised up to $53 billion in return, including tax credits, production subsidies and capital investments. Industry groups, such as the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, warn all of that could be at risk if the industry isn't protected.
Your second quote sounds a lot like typical complaining from american manufacturers about how cheap imports "ruin the free market" unless they are heavily taxed or banned. This isnt about the consumer or about corporate subsidies. North american manufacturers have no interest in making affordable cars because their profits on more luxurious models are higher. They will beg governments to ban their competitors so they can keep their share of the market without actually providing what the market wants.
As long as it can pass Canadian safety regulations (so I won't try to buy one through a back-channel import), I'd be fine with it.
Honestly I'd trust Chinese manufacturers more to just give me the basics of just driving and less of the unnecessary frills that make it a data hogging iPad on wheels.
Yes.
Probably not, since their routers and other devices have shown what appears like purposeful security openings and data harvesting, I would not trust an EV from China to not log all my info. Or worse a remote kill to disable all vehicles when China doesn't get what it wants and throws a tantrum
I don't even want cars made in America.
New cars have an internet connection and GPS now, even if it is not exposed to the driver it is there.
New cars have one of those fucking touch screens in the dash leaving many of the features of your car held hostage by the lowest-bidder firmware that will never get an update and can not be replaced. That lowest-bidder firmware is also insecure, exposing your movement and vehicle features (engine control, transmission control, body control, climate control, locks, steering, braking, and the radio) to whoever happens to take the time to break it. When Dodge got owned a few year ago the problem was so big that they only way to prevent bad actors from owning cars was to block all traffic to the vehicles externally, the cars could not be made secure on their own.
New cars have horrible physical security as well, using the same CAN bus to operate exterior lights and unlock the fucking doors. They are vulnerable to replay/relay attacks which are possible with $50 off the shelf hardware. A lot of cars even let you program a band new fob with bluetooth, so for under 100 bucks someone can just drive away with your $60k phone on wheels.
Before we start deciding which country has the best cars how about we set some strong standards for the quality of all vehicles on Canadian roads?
Without missing a heartbeat. Cars made in China tend to have extremely cool gadgets you never see in European cars. Be it front, back, lateral facing cameras or any other type of sensors. They've got so many cool stuff we're just missing out on, man.
Absolutely not! I can't afford an affordable EV.
Of course I would, I did it 6 months ago.
Which one?
No, I wouldn't buy any EV, ever.
Any reason why? I'm more than willing to buy an ev if it is reliable. Though I would prefer if it was just like a standard car but with an electric motor in it vs a smart car.
Because once or twice a year I take a road trip and the last thing I want to do is to drive for 3 or 4 hours and then stop for 45 minutes to recharge.
It's actually something that is important to me. And I know there's an argument for getting a rental internal combustion engine vehicle for my road trips but that's an extra expense and extra mental overhead I don't want to deal with.
I could be persuaded to purchase an electric car if it was reasonable, with a reliable 200 and some odd miles plus between charges and it was very cheap, but I would be talking 12 to $15,000 with those limitations.
If it had a reliable 500 miles between charge, plus minus 50 mi depending on drive, I would be fine with it. My primary complaint with EVs is that right now they don't have the distance to make me happy with them.
I want to be able to get into a vehicle and drive for 6 hours straight without a charge reliably for the life of the vehicle.
I won't do that very often, but it's still something that is a make or break option for me.
No, I prefer being alive
If they sold cars that killed the owners, then they wouldn't be able to sell more cars.
Sure you can have pessimism, totally understandable, but you should temper that pessimism with a modicum of pragmatism.
You do know that companies sell products that kill their consumers every single day right?
Chinese is almost synonymous with "cheap, low quality products" and when you make a cheap low quality car, people die. They're going to come up with the next Pinto, I'm sure of it.