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

#351

Post by bsder » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:40 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #200

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…

That's certainly a take. China just has this decades long history of targeting foreign industries, flooding the market with that product, and then being the only one left standing. The idea that we should allow cheap vehicles to flood the domestic market because that will "cause the US auto manufacturers compete" ignores the wholly uneven playing field at work here, and the government backed goal of one side. Just th…

> The idea that we should allow cheap vehicles to flood the domestic market because that will "cause the US auto manufacturers compete" ignores the wholly uneven playing field at work here

We have been here before. This is Japan and the 1970s all over again.

The US car companies will absolutely refuse to deliver the affordable, high volume cars everybody wants until kicked in the ass and balls several times. In the 1970s it was land yachts; in the 2020s it's gigantic SUVs and brodozers.

I do not like what China and BYD represent. However, if they are the only way to dislodge the US car companies that are blocking progress, so be it.

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

#352

Post by esperent » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:43 PM UTC

thisisit wrote: post #266

throwaway_7274 wrote: post #20

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.

Whenever the topic of Chinese infrastructure comes up I am reminded of a 2016 Wired documentary about Shenzhen. It was positive portrayal of hacker culture in Shenzhen. But one thing really stood out to me. They had demarcation line separating the city and “urban village”. It looked like lots of poor people lived in the urban village. The guide mentioned that the urban village will be torn down completely in 3 months…

Tearing down a slum is not gentrification.

Gentrification is when existing communities that used to have decent if basic living situations get gradually priced out of an area as richer people and their expensive amenities move in. Gradually, as house prices go up and food gets more expensive, people sell and move. It's a slow, mostly voluntary thing, or at least, driven by market forces rather than official mandates.

Tearing down a slum is a much more disruptive thing that instantly displaces a entire community. Although it's unclear what happened to that community in this case and I can't find anything clear about it online (lots of clearly biased articles for one side or the other though).

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

#353

Post by bobomonkey » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:45 PM UTC

HerbManic wrote: post #312

cromka wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China will likely become the go-to place for immigrants within couple decades. Just like any other developed economy had.

I do wonder about this. With demographic collapse coming for almost all nations, or with a notable trend line for it to come, what would happen if other nations basically prevent emigration? Better to keep their people than lose them. Alternatively, those with large populations can use this as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations. The coming decades will be interesting.

When Europe lost a tone of people to disease, wages went up, housing was cheep and people made families.

Sadly, big business wants cheap labor so we can't have nice things.

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

#354

Post by m4rtink » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #194

ErneX wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visit if you can, and take some bullet trains! We had a blast last year there.

Shanghai was great in the 2010s. Seems like a different place today. Are the bullet trains making enough to pay down construction debt yet? My understanding is that that has been a struggle, which is going to be a problem when they get past being new and start having more and more maintenance expense on top of paying back construction debt.

Well, the Shinkansen lines managed to bankrupt JNR in Japan just fine. :) Still they are a massive benefit for the country.

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

#355

Post by Karrot_Kream » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

buildfocus wrote: post #315

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US with its high natgas generation is much cleaner than a majority coal driven generation scheme. I'm puzzled why we talk about "US decline" when we're pretty much creating paeans to marginal energy construction. Sure China's trajectory is good. But it's still not at the point where it's cleaner per capita than the US and it's still quite far from that. Let's talk about reality here. The US shouldn't rest on its…

> But it's still not at the point where it's cleaner per capita than the US and it's still quite far from that. China has significantly lower co2 emitted per capita than the US already. Per kWh no, but that's a different thing. AFAICT China's renewable growth is now outpacing demand growth significantly though, so that per-capita gap will widen, and the per kWh is steadily improving as well, and faster than the US. F…

> China has significantly lower co2 emitted per capita than the US already. Per kWh no, but that's a different thing.

Sorry I meant per kWh not per capita.

I don't disagree that China's path looks cleaner than the US right now, but also think "US decline" is viral hyperbole. It's the kind of thing people use on Twitter to get everyone to start discussing something. It's the kind of thing people say on Reddit all the time to add a doomer emotional valence on their comment. I want HN to be better than that but it's obviously not.

The US has been losing in the automotive market for decades now, with Japanese brands hitting 25% penetration in the '80s, the Korean brands starting in the '90s, and by 2020 Asian brands making up roughly 45% of the market. US automakers are staying afloat in the CAFE-exempt space of light trucks.

It's true that this administration has been hostile to renewables, notably shutting down offshore wind. But I'm not sure what this has to do with "decline". In 2.5 years we'll have a different admin. There's already pressure to electrify cars with high gas prices thanks to the Hormuz crisis.

Where's the "decline" bit? What does it mean to "decline"? I maintain that it's largely bait to fish for upvotes and engagement.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:52 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…

[deleted]

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

#357

Post by mvdtnz » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

shipman05 wrote: post #327

soperj wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if everyone in the United States lived in just 1/3 of the United States Take a 100 mile strip down the east coast and the west coast. Add Chicago. That's pretty much everyone.

IDK if pretty much everyone can exclude Florida and Texas, the second and third most populated states. (Or I suppose you could be excluding the Northeast Corridor instead of Florida)

I'm no expert on USA but looking at a map Florida is very obviously on the east coast, and the entire peninsula is only slightly wider than GP's 100 miles.

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

#358

Post by culi » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #166

simonask wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vein, it’s reasonable to take a foreigner’s view with a grain of salt. For all its impressive progress, China doesn’t show off its problems. The “West” had the same problem many times during the first Cold War, where things in the Soviet Union seemed really great from the outside. Only after the collapse did the truth become clear. Now, I don’t think China is even remotely similar, but never forget that i…

In the US it's practically a right of passage to be a young adult and very vocally hate the country, hate the government. In China you don't have a life in front of you if you do that.

Try browsing Chinese social media (WeChat, Douyin, Weibo, etc). The internet is ripe with non-anonymous criticism of the gov't

People often point to the take down of Winnie the Pooh memes as censorship but I don't think people realize there's a long history of racist groups using Pooh as a slur about Asian people and Tigger about black people. The meme exploded in popularity from a picture of Obama and Xi being compared to Tigger and Pooh.

You can have whatever opinion you want about taking down racist content but I don't it's any different from Western platforms. But spending any time on Chinese social media will quickly dispel the idea of harsh consequences for speech (an especially silly idea coming from members of the nation that contains 25% of the world's prisoners)

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

#359

Post by phainopepla2 » Wed, May 06, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #120

phainopepla2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to downplay Trump's strongarming of industry or the obsequiousness shown by tech leaders, but let's be real, it's not remotely the same level of control.

the government is basically subservient to him, and there isn't anything stopping it from making a company cease to exist other than the status quo. If, for whatever reason, him (or in his absence the rest of the government) decide they don't want it to exist, it won't exist. It might not be as explicit as how the CCP does it, but it will have the same result

This might be true for small companies, but it's delusional to think that Trump could unilaterally put an end to one of the major tech companies. It would be a huge legal, political and financial battle, at a minimum. Either you're overestimating Trump's power or underestimating the power of the tech companies.

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

#360

Post by dangus » Wed, May 06, 2026, 11:00 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #225

dangus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 succe…

> 1. Protecting your interests by building a dynamic strategy. "Dynamic" is doing a hell of a lot of work there. I guess what you mean is steal technology from the west, undercut pricing on foreign goods and dump products in their markets to destroy the competition, end up being the last one standing, because you freely violate trade agreements (as a member of the WTO) and other treaties. > " so they have developed t…

Your first point is ironic considering Western tech companies are being taken to court for training AI off of pirated intellectual property. I’m not trying to be pro-China but I think this idea that “stealing” technology is exclusive to China is naive. There’s a whole classic Silicon Valley story about the development of the GUI at Apple and Microsoft on the subject. Steve Jobs was furious with Bill Gates when Windows debuted especially since Microsoft was a premier Macintosh developer.

It’s also a little bit ignorant of the existence of different cultural views of copying. Americans who love the second amendment wouldn’t want Europeans telling them to follow European gun laws, why should China follow Western IP laws?

The culture of copying and iterating in the Chinese hardware industry has proven to be incredibly good for innovation and healthy competition, just like open source has been incredibly good for the US software industry.

One example of Western IP ideology being stifling: 3D printing was artificially held back from consumers by patents on FDM printing. The moment those patents expired, prices dropped by two orders of magnitude. It’s easy to argue that Western IP laws result in oligopolies and monopolies forming as an inevitability.

Even if you don’t agree with that, the fact remains that many technology transfers to China are done willingly for payment (e.g., IBM PC division sold to Lenovo, Motorola Mobility sold to Lenovo, high speed rail technology was sold to China. Nobody twisted Volkswagen’s arm and demanded that they build factories in China and train local workforces on automotive production, that was done for the same profit-seeking reasons Toyota came to America and taught GM the Toyota Production System).

Leveraging their coal power for today and building wind/solar/battery for tomorrow is a smart strategy that pragmatically considers their current resource mix. Trump administration canceling already approved wind projects because he doesn’t like how his Scottish golf course has a view of them is not smart strategy.

China is not a big oil producer relative to their size and population. In that sense countries like the US, Canada, and Russia are far more energy secure.