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

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

#291

Post by dzhiurgis » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

dzonga wrote: post #192

Tesla has no moat. BYD makes better EVs & is leading in battery tech. FSD has been promised forever & not delivered. Now Musky says - for cars to have real FSD they need to be newer hardware tech. Robotaxis - Waymo is better.

LOL, have you driven one?

Other than nice alcantara interior the drive is just a mush and software is awful (BYD Sealion 7). Older ones (i.e. Atto 3) were obsolete from the factory.

I got to sit in Zeekr 7x yesterday (top 3 in NZ by sales in April), hopefully I can get a test drive soon. It actually has every feature Tesla has (and more). Will be interesting to see how they actually execute.

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

#292

Post by mghackerlady » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

EA-3167 wrote: post #277

tartoran wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the same sense the US or Russia. The Sino-Vietnamese war was brief, about a month. Compare that to US or Russian wars. Now, Im not saying that China won't start wars since they've become a lot stronger. Just looking at it through a historic perspective.

I'm sure that the people of Tibet at the very least would feel strongly about the notion of a peaceful, non-expansionist China. You could ask the people of the Philippines as well, or for an admittedly more complicated answer the people of Japan and the RoK. China is also happily supporting Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, which makes the "not waging war" distinction a bit academic.

I never said they were peaceful and non-expansionist, just that it's unlikely they'd turn to war for those gains.

They also have fought wars, and my wording was admittedly bad. They haven't fought a serious war in a long time, and their military activity in general has been limited to a few border standoffs which I certainly wouldn't take as an indication of its willingness to fight for something like expansion

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

#293

Post by decimalenough » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #145

Why has BYD stock been trundling along? They seem like they are so far ahead: incredible blade batteries with ridiculous power density (fast charging)/efficiency/cooling, while being structurally useful (mad cool). And mad popular. I feel like I'm missing something that this company is doing such amazing good work but the stock isn't really moving.

BYD is ahead in the export game, but they're struggling in their home market, where the competition is furious and margins low.

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

#294

Post by xiphias2 » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

dzonga wrote: post #192

Tesla has no moat. BYD makes better EVs & is leading in battery tech. FSD has been promised forever & not delivered. Now Musky says - for cars to have real FSD they need to be newer hardware tech. Robotaxis - Waymo is better.

It has nothing to be about moat. It's about its older car brands and oil so much that it doesn't stay competitive.

Jensen Huang says that the same thing can happen to NVIDIA. Tinygrad is stopping exporting Blackwell based cards to most countries except the 10 Tier 1 countries, as all others need a few months of paperwork. Huawei GPUs don't have these export restrictions.

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

#295

Post by dzhiurgis » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

decimalenough wrote: post #284

dzonga wrote: post #192

Tesla has no moat. BYD makes better EVs & is leading in battery tech. FSD has been promised forever & not delivered. Now Musky says - for cars to have real FSD they need to be newer hardware tech. Robotaxis - Waymo is better.

BYD has its own "God's Eye" self-driving tech, and unlike Musk's pigheaded insistence on cameras only, BYD is incorporating LIDAR into their cars across the range: https://thedriven.io/2026/01/11/byds-cheapest-electric-cars-...

> LIDAR

You still believe that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukLgCJUeBuI

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

#296

Post by notahacker » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #107

whatever1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No to me it just shows 2 different capital allocation strategies. China picked manufacturing. US picked datacenters.

If 90% of the data centers in the world were hit by a nuclear bomb tomorrow, communication would be a shit show for a month or two, and then go on, as we'd fall back to simpler, less compute-expensive solutions. We'd also probably be net better off without all the adtech crap. If 90% of the factories in the world were hit by a nuclear bomb, you'd find that your standard of living would immediately, and quite observab…

Whilst manufacturing has more practical value than much of what's in datacentres[1] it doesn't necessarily follow that it's the more valuable strategic play or route to long term economic growth (bubble or no bubble)

Food is more critical to us than Alibaba crap or even top notch smartphones and would be missed rather more if we had a nuclear exchange, but Chinese entrepreneurs would rather own factories exporting manufactured goods than rice paddies, and for good reason. The Chinese government would like to be self sufficient with food production, but unlike many less technologically developed countries it isn't. Most of those countries stay poor though. Food doesn't change or scale as much as manufacturing, which possibly doesn't change as fast or scale as big as compute. Plus in theory at least, some of the compute is being devoted to automating away dependency on offshore labour for manufacturing, although I suspect China is generally ahead in the manufacturing automation areas of AI anyway...

[1]I'd rather have kitchen appliances than novelty image generation, spamblogs or ad retargeting, but then again I'd also rather have access to knowledge and communications than plastic toys...

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

#297

Post by gambiting » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

10xDev wrote: post #280

gambiting wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>and see what has happened in Europe as a massive cautionary tale As a European - what has happened to us, exactly? I'm curious what kind of thing you think is happening to Europe that is such disaster that even China should be afraid of it.

European GDP per capita has not grown since the crash in 2008. Ever since we have heard that immigrants are being imported for jobs, yet the economy only gets worse, house prices increases due to supply and demand and crime rate is not equal among groups. Yes some people are just white supremacists but also, immigration hasn't solved anything in Europe in recent times. It is not like the US where you have a massive s…

>>Ever since we have heard that immigrants are being imported for jobs

You do realize that most of European migration is internal, right? Polish workers going to Germany, that kind of thing? It would be like complaining that American migration is crazy because of all the people moving from Kansas to take jobs in California.

>> house prices increases due to supply and demand and crime rate is not equal among groups

As compared to....?

>>It is not like the US where you have a massive startup scene and get an Elon Musk from South Africa to create jobs and add meaningful value.

I'm like, honestly not sure what to say to that. I could maybe start listing successful businesses started and/or ran by immigrants in the EU if that helps? Or is the fact that none of them are as famous as Elon Musk a dealbreaker?

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

#298

Post by dzhiurgis » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

2dvisio wrote: post #250

prism56 wrote: post #40

Ive seen soo many BYD cars in the UK in the last year. I'm not in the market for a new car, but anyone who has looked recently what is the draw to BYD? Is it strictly value/price?

Value price for us. The Sealion 7 for us had the combination of features, dimensions, range, 800v platform, for a price that was simply unbeatable (leasing). Out of question that Volvo ex90, Kia ev9, Hyundai Ioniq 9 or even the BMW ix3 would have come on top if it wasn’t for the price.

> 800v platform

Ones in NZ are 400v and tops at 150KW charging.

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

#299

Post by somelamer567 » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

TitaRusell wrote: post #60

Why should Australians or Dutch people have loyalty to foreign car industry? Who killed Holden or DAF? It wasn't BYD lol.

The point of China's mercantilist and imperialist games with electric cars, is to attack and kill Western industry, and deprive us of the ability to defend ourselves.

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

#300

Post by sfjailbird » Wed, May 06, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #3

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…

> This is to say nothing of the CCP and their record on human rights

The U.S. record on human rights is horrific, if you see it from a global perspective (which you should). China is a saint in comparison.