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BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

electrek.co

81–90 of 467 posts

Re: BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

#81
post #12

Would be great if we could buy/drive these in the US. Funny how we have a "free market" only when it is convenient for certain interests...

Just buy a Textron golf cart and you have 90% of the Chinese EV experience.

https://electrek.co/2026/04/27/byd-seal-08-blade-battery-2-1...

Re: BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are also surprised how rural much of China is.

https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/origin.png Posting the map in case anyone hasn’t seen it.

To be fair, six percent is still 84 million people.

Re: BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are BYD cars specifically banned or do they just not comply with all the US regulations?

100% tariff and political threats -- implying that they'd find a way to mark them as "unsafe", despite the fact that Canada and Europe tend to have higher safety standards than the US and already have BYD presence. You can see the political groundwork being laid here. https://homeland.house.gov/2025/05/21/homeland-republicans-p... If these concerns are so pressing, why do we allow any electronics at all from China? I…

Some level of protectionism is in the best interest of national security. How is the local electronics industry that you referenced in the US doing? What is the ramification of eliminating the job market for engineers or discarding all of the US manufacturing know how? The CCP knows the answer to that question

Re: BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

#84
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was glued to the window while flying over southern China recently. There is so much infrastructure you can see from the air, even in fairly rural provinces. So many bridges. So many wind turbines. It is visibly a country on the move, a country that believes in itself and its ability to do things. The Chinese Century is increasingly palpable, for better or worse.

I have two chinese-born coworkers (who spent 20-30 years here in the us) in the same room. When we talk about china's expansion, I am always jealous of the public projects, infrastructure, housing, etc. They always point out the huge unemployment of young people, declining birth rate, and other social ills. They say they're worried when the building stops. Even more people will be out of jobs. And when the nation age…

I always take these views with a grain of salt, many immigrant's view of their home country is ossified at the time of emigration.

Re: BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

#85

BYD has to me become an icon of US decline vs Chinese expansion. It’s just one example among many of China charting the way forward and innovating while the US recedes further into backward-looking, protectionist policy. See: US politicians on both sides trying to ban BYD imports rather than incentivizing stiffer competition from US automakers. Another example: massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens…

It seems like BYD is a much bigger threat to Europe (specifically Germany) and Japan. The auto industry is big in the US but an insignificant amount of total exports. Germany and Japan could both lose their cash cows if the Chinese auto industry dominates international sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle_e...

Re: BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

#89

Would be great if we could buy/drive these in the US. Funny how we have a "free market" only when it is convenient for certain interests...

They're all over the place in Mexico City. It'll be interesting as these EVs start to show up along the northern and southern borders traveling within the US.

The sad reality is how politically influential it will be for Americans to take a Chinese EV from the airport to a hotel in Cancun and say, "Why don't we have this in the US?"

Re: BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets

#90

BYD has to me become an icon of US decline vs Chinese expansion. It’s just one example among many of China charting the way forward and innovating while the US recedes further into backward-looking, protectionist policy. See: US politicians on both sides trying to ban BYD imports rather than incentivizing stiffer competition from US automakers. Another example: massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens…

In what world is China less "protectionist" than the US?

There are two types of protectionism:

1. Protecting your interests by building a dynamic strategy. You protect your interests by enhancing your strengths and building on them.

2. Protecting your interests by playing “defense” against your decline.

We all know which country chose which path.

Chinese party leadership is stacked with literal engineers. They’ve prioritized development of industries crucial to their success. For example, they know they’re never going to be a big oil producer and that fighting wars over oil is expensive and futile, so they have developed their path to energy independence with their solar and wind industry along with electrified transit of all types.

Meanwhile, in America, our leadership is stacked with grifters who only have experience in shifting money around. We are all stuck with oil and car dependence that nobody’s willing to address with long-term infrastructure development reforms.

We are trapped fighting wars over oil because $6-7/gallon gasoline in middle America would trigger a major recession. Our government actively incentivizes wasting oil via automotive regulations written by industry lobbyists. That big F-150 parked at the Old Navy that doesn’t need to follow CAFE regulations is totally a “work truck.”

We don’t strive to build the most competitive industries, instead we use sanctions and tariffs to prevent foreign competition from reaching our shores.

And before you talk about China disallowing foreign competition, I’ll note that Chinese citizens can go to the mall in China and buy a Tesla, an iPhone, an Audi, Levi’s jeans, Coach bags, do a web search on Bing, deploy applications on AWS servers in Beijing, etc.

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