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Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

reuters.com

131–140 of 237 posts

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#131
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, F150 lightening is such a failure. There was a recent video of it trying to haul very minimal load and it pretty much drained the battery in less than 100 miles. Was that due to something specific with the Lightning, or was it just due to the intrinsic energy requirements of hauling loads? (Or in other words, does an EV even exist that's notably better at hauling loads?)

TBH, those tests are mostly marketing failures. EV trucks aren't really good at hauling trailers over large distances, as the aerodynamics produce a massive impact on range. Multiple tests have shown this by showing 50% or more range reduction from pulling lightweight, non-aerodynamic loads. The marketing failure is that the companies have allowed consumers to incorrectly extrapolate from this to thinking that heavy…

Yep, so many people think hauling weight kills your gas mileage, but it doesn't really have that big of an effect unless you are hauling a massive load through stop and go traffic while in a hurry. The vast majority of people do most of their hauling of things down the highway, not through the middle of cities, and 90% of the losses from hauling load is just wind resistance against the poorly aerodynamic trailer which is a lot while at highway speeds. If someone is traveling down the highway at 70 MPH in their SUV with 1500 lbs in the back hatch, the only extra fuel it takes over the same SUV being empty is a tiny amount of extra friction in the tires that comes out to a fraction of a MPG.

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#132
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WV seems to do amazingly in Europe so not sure what you are talking about. It is Tesla thaumt seems to be leaving the EV market with no new exciting models and making the European market hate the brand. https://www.best-selling-cars.com/electric/2025-half-year-eu...

Reuters disagrees https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

That article says nothing about VW EV sales being poor in Europe. In fact it calls VW’s EVs increasingly popular.

The losses seem to be due to a tariff hit in the U.S. and due to Porsche change in strategy to focus more on hybrids and ICEs (0possibky because they’re focusing on EVs through VW?).

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#133
post #17
post #7

Tesla was dead in the water when it became obvious that they couldn't make a sub-$30K car happen. They will still probably do well as a luxury brand, but China is going to fill in the demand for affordable EVs in the rest of the world outside USA/EU.

I don't think we've seen the end game yet. I have an electric cargo bike. During a kids party yesterday I ran 5 different errands with it while someone with a car managed to get stuck in traffic, not find a parking spot, and miss the whole thing. The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have…

Episode n# 348 of hackers never having heard about motorcycles. There's almost a billion motorcycles in the world currently.

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BYD recently went live with a highly automated, large scale manufacturing facility in Brazil. The BYD Dolphin Mini sells for ~$22,500, and the manufacturer already has 200 showrooms open across the country. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/22/cop-brazil... https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/First-BYD-Electric-Vehicle-...

They are everywhere. The only limit to adoption is that many people live in buildings where chargers can't easily be installed.

The limit to adoption is non existent or slow public charging infrastructure.

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#136
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long EV trips are possible amd convenient if there are enough chargers along the route. Sadly, this isn't the case on many routes in the US, at least. Europe is doing much better. I have no experience in other places.

Different people optimize for different things. I have a 450 mile trip (each way) next weekend. I can do it in 1 full tank of gas, but realistically I’ll stop once to fill up halfway. I don’t plan any other stops. If I had an EV, I’d probably have to stop twice, for 30+ minutes each, extending my already long trip by an hour each way.

Why would you do that when you can easily make that trip in a typical 320 mile range EV with a single 20 minute charge?

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism on inputs kills manufacturing. Imagine having to pay 15% more for all inputs and trying to compete with someone who doesn't have pay that.

Well, at least domestically you don’t have to compete with someone who doesn’t have to pay that because their product is probably tariffed directly. Internationally, yes if you manufacture the international product in the home country, but AFAIK in auto at least there are usually satellite factories and have been for some time, and those wouldn’t be subject to home country tariffs would they?

Precisely, you need to set up plants overseas to dodge the input tariffs instead of onshoring manufacturing for export. That causes reductions in manufacturing investment compared to the alternative.

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#138
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Americans only want trucks and SUVs." (I hear people say.) Cool. Then allow BYD non-trucks, non-SUVs into the U.S. then. The Japanese back in the 70's showed U.S. automakers that price and mileage (in that decade anyway) were important to Americans. I suspect price is still important.

Why would they allow it? It would destroy the remaining car industry in the US. Better to at least maintain a car industry, even if it’s inefficient.

A jobs subsidy program that focused on more productive industries would be better than subsidizing an auto industry that never aimed for international competitiveness.

We have exceptionally productive fields in the US tumor are the envy of the world. If we can't be productive in auto manufacturing, devoting a ton of our workforce too it is a misallocation of our limited resources.

If we are going to be subsidizing unprofitable industry fro national security purposes, we need to either 1) ruthlessly cut the least productive manufacturers from access to subsidies, or 2) nationalize it. Any other choices would be very inefficient.

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BYD recently went live with a highly automated, large scale manufacturing facility in Brazil. The BYD Dolphin Mini sells for ~$22,500, and the manufacturer already has 200 showrooms open across the country. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/22/cop-brazil... https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/First-BYD-Electric-Vehicle-...

I'm surprised Mercedes was ever price competitive for taxis even in Germany, I mean the average VW would do the job just as well at half the cost. These days they're both priced like they're selling Ferraris anyway so yeah. The ID Buzz starting at 70k EUR is such a joke.

I can't wait for BYD to enter the European market with a true minibus like VW's ID Buzz. There is a rumor that the M9 is coming in 2026.

Re: Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

#140
post #44

> Chinese brands There is far more to the logistics and adoption of this outside of "Tesla failed to capture the region" as the article's title eludes to. Bribery, government corruption, risky loans, undercutting. It is well documented in the case of large infrastructure projects and the same playbook will be revealed in time.

than it's not that different than american brands. In brazil, ford was heavily subsidized by the government for more than a decade. They bribed the politians and received back in subsidies. Their cars are also expensive and their engines known for being a weak and poor version of their US counterparts.
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