Tesla loses ground as Chinese EVs dominate global markets
106 comments
·March 19, 2025IshKebab
HarHarVeryFunny
BYD Han is basically what Tesla model 3 promised to be - very nice $25K car.
https://www.gneenev.com/product/electric-cars-ev/484.html
In the US best selling Tesla is Model Y, but even without the brand damage I'm not sure that type of design/price is going to do well in the UK, and Cybertruck is not well suited to UK's narrower roads (esp. in city).
numpad0
Do anyone know why American brands never seem to agree to slim down cars by ~15% for export sales? IIUC, excessive width universal to every American cars including all Tesla models was always a massive detrimental factor outside US for past ~50 years.
tim333
Cybertruck is also not legal in the UK.
d3nj4l
I saw BYDs on the road in India. There's a 110% tariff on foreign EVs in India - and people are still buying them.
porridgeraisin
Yep. Chennai here. Saw one the other day.
silverquiet
I saw one in the US a few weeks ago that had a Mexican license plate. Pretty interesting because I'm aware of the brand but had not seen one in person.
xrd
Hmm. Does this mean they are street legal?
I'm baffled by the multiple levels of irony if you could go into Mexico and buy an EV that you can then use in the US. That would make even Elon's head twist off.
blovescoffee
Of course they’re street legal? You just can’t buy them in the US. They’re all over Mexico and they’re great.
infecto
Not sure why its baffling. If you are near the border you will quite often see out of country plates (Canada/Mexico). I am guessing you would still need some kind residency to purchase the vehicle.
Not sure what it's like today but historically crash standards in Mexico did not exist. Toyota for the longest time was selling 20+y/o models as brand new. The crash tests of those were startling. It may have improved in the last few years though.
numpad0
You can lawfully drive through land borders in most countries, with permits and such. The plates don't change themselves when you do that.
e-brake
Tons of them on the streets in Guadalajara
pjc50
I've been keeping an eye on BYD and they're just starting to appear in the UK, but there are already quite a few MG EVs - the old British brand MG was bought by a Chinese company. There's a light blue non-metallic colour which seems to be one of their standard colours and is very distinctive.
Also Flexbus running Chinese buses.
pimeys
In Helsinki all new electric busses are BYD's. Have been for some years already.
Gud
Not surprising, BYD is the worlds biggest producer of electric buses! They even have a factory in the US.
romanovcode
The only reason BYD was heavily "censored"/tariffed was because US said EU to do so.
Now that US soft-power is waning (800b from EU + 500b from Germany alone for militech) the floodgates might open and it will way surpass the Tesla. Maybe even some partnership between BMW/VW/Daimler with BYD can come out of it - imagine that.
joakleaf
The official reason EU added tariffs on Chinese cars, was that Chinese EV manufacturers receive unfair government subsidies. This allowed Chinese cars to be priced lower than European cars.
So it was to protect EU car manufacturers (which are still struggling a bit with EVs).
I don't think it was US "soft-power". However, the EU may impose tariffs on US produced cars as part of the coming trade-war, which may hurt Tesla in future (or maybe not as they also produce Tesla cars in Germany).
lycopodiopsida
It is also worth mentioning, that the imposed tarifs are different for different chinese manufacturers - based on received subsidies. BYD is among the least affected. In the end, nothing stops chinese manufacturers to produce cars in EU - it is what they forced european manufacturers to do in china, so fair game.
aaomidi
When we give Tesla owners 7500 USD to buy a tesla, that’s an “unfair government subsidy”.
romanovcode
You are right, but you miss one critical part. EU did not impose those same tariffs on Tesla, which arguably disrupted the EU EV market even heavier, which is in very similar category, especially now that Elon is basically the president.
cscurmudgeon
[dead]
sMarsIntruder
I hope that Tesla will change its top management asap.
Imagine a situation where you have a new 800V infrastructure already applied to cybertruck and decide to update the Model Y with just “minor” adjustments. Which means that both M3 and MY will get 800V/48V when? 2/3 years minimum.
It recalls me a Nokia moment.
Meanwhile China is running.
lesuorac
> I hope that Tesla will change its top management asap.
Change it to who?
Their price to earnings is like 100x. The entire market cap is built by Elon's non-stop hyping of FSD / Robo-Taxi / etc. We gunna resurrect Billy Mays here to do the marketing?
The entire executive office is just dumping their Tesla stock, they know the company has no value and if they get rid of Musk it's probably a nail in the coffin for the stock price.
pjc50
> if they get rid of Musk it's probably a nail in the coffin for the stock price.
It's already significantly off its peak, and Musk is now so unpopular because of his political interventions that people are firebombing Tesla dealerships and vandalizing the cars. I can't really see how that's going to be good marketing.
blackoil
Valuing it like a regular car company will bring share price below 50. Anything above requires faith that it will transform to some AI, energy, fsd transport company.
croes
So market cap is based on exaggerations and lies.
Not a good long term strategy.
Maybe that‘s the reason for Musk‘s turn into politics.
Use his power as long as it exists
FirmwareBurner
>So market cap is based on exaggerations and lies.
Market cap is defined by whatever stock buyers decide to justify their purchase. If people keep buying the stock to get it to the moon because of whatever hype, what else matters?
werdnapk
FSD is required for robo-taxis... so as Elon has said the last 10 years... "next year". Tesla doesn't use lidar either, so good luck with the FSD.
huijzer
According to Lars Moravy, the front gigacasting and steer-by-wire were not implemented for the new Model Y due to them having trouble switching the supply chain over [1]. I guess the 800V is for the same reason. Lars said it was much easier for the Cybertruck to change to the newer systems because they expected lower sales numbers. The Model Y on the other hand has to go into mass production straight away at 3 different factories, and they wanted to keep the production process the same at all three (he talks about this at 28:50).
MVissers
I mean, we all know who the driver is to launch 'cybertrucks' and 'robotaxis' instead of more affordable variations.
Also, not sure what the whole 800v hype is about. I rent EVs for roadtrips and Tesla's are basically the fastest charging ones with current architecture, haven't had a need for 800v since at the cell level the charging speed is already maxed out.
Re: the Y, even though they won't sell because some hand gestures and behaviors, they did almost every complaint people have about the old model Y.
zelos
Looking at EVDatabase, it seems like the 800v cars charge quite a lot faster? The EV6 manages 205kW average compared to 124kW for the long range Model Y. From my experience, the EV6 hits those charging speeds very reliably.
kgermino
Everything I've seen is that Hyundai/Kia's charge noticeably (though not massively) faster than Tesla's. I've never DCFC a Tesla to compare but my Ioniq is usually under 20 mins in practice
croes
There are many people who complain about long charging times.
And there exist countries outside Tesla‘s supercharger network.
epolanski
Most of the board colludes with the CEO. Nearly impossible.
londons_explore
China has everything needed for cheap and efficient manufacturing. The design skills, the infrastructure, the cheap labour, the network of factories, etc.
The US does not.
The only reason the US might win at car manufacturing will be if there are sufficient tariffs or other trade barriers. In a free market, China will win.
ecocentrik
The US is not going to win at car manufacturing outside the US anymore and right now it's not even clear it will win inside the US or with our closest trading partners. Tariffs are not being wielded effectively to protect US car manufacturing in the US.
tim333
Tesla were doing pretty well at competing with the Chinese in China.
daveguy
Agreed. Tarrifs and doge are clearly being wielded to diminish US standing in the world. See also: shutting down relatively inexpensive aid programs that feed hungry people all over the world. And shutting down pro-democracy broadcasting throughout the world.
Our adversaries have never had a better opportunity to jump in as heroes. Or even just, not assholes.
Destruction of soft power directly by the tool in charge.
US influence around the world went poof in a matter of weeks. Xi and Putin couldn't have planned it better.
lenerdenator
In a completely free market, it's less clear. A lot of what Chinese companies do could be called dumping, and they're doing it with government support.
coldpie
> A lot of what Chinese companies do could be called dumping
I'd be interested to read more about this claim, if you have a link/source.
Regardless, we desperately need to de-carbonize our transportation sector. If China is the only country willing to put the dollars in to actually do that, then they deserve to reap the benefits of the new energy economy they helped build. Economics of the cars themselves aside, any effort put in to minimizing the costs of climate change will pay for itself by the end of the century.
d3nj4l
I've heard this said often, but is there any proof BYD is selling their cars at a loss? And note that I'm not saying R&D loss - is BYD ever selling a car below what it cost to make and sell that unit?
tim333
According to their financials Q3 2024 they made 14bn pre tax profit on 201bn sales and were liable for 2bn tax on that (in CNY). So looks profitable and tax paying. Not sure if they get helped in other ways.
myrmidon
Blaming Chinese manufacturing dominance on government subsidies or lack of environmental regulations or human rights violations or somesuch is simply delusional.
It is missing the forest for the trees. The core fact is that chinese manufacturing pays workers an average $25k/year ($15k before purchasing power adjusting!!) for a 49h week. Are american workers (or other westerners) willing to work for that? No. Are consumers actually willing to pay the difference? Probably also no.
I'm not saying that there are no problems with the above in China, but thats not where their manufacturing dominance comes from. On the other hand, their government did make a bunch of good decisions and they did provide a lot of the necessary prerequisites for local industry to thrive.
But longer term, rising wages are gonna affect them in the same way that they did US industry 60 years ago, and Japanese manufacturing 30 years ago. We have less local manufacturing now because we grew so rich and that is not the worst problem to have.
tim333
US manufacturers were running plants in Mexico where the wages were probably not much above that. The deeper problem is China has a lot of dedicated engineers developing stuff and dominating in batteries and the like that are largely churned out by automated machinery.
This is kind of what chinese assembly is looking like these days - robots and high tech https://youtu.be/gjbwq5vp0C4?t=12
That was Geely and there's some video of BYD here https://youtu.be/Bd_bx6a4hgE
FirmwareBurner
>A lot of what Chinese companies do could be called dumping, and they're doing it with government support.
European and American car makers have also gotten enormous support from their governments, except in other forms, like for example VW not being bankrupted to hell by the German government during Diesel gate for example.
myrmidon
Do you think that the NOx-affair consequences for VW were too little? What would have been appropriate in your opinion?
Every government can be expected to help local industry where reasonable, because that is in many ways what the constituents/electorate actually wants/needs.
infecto
It's not even that the labor is as cheap as it used to be but it's generally a very able and willing workforce with a labor structure where there are no qualms with automating parts of the process. The auto manufacturing race has already been lost in my opinion. Nobody is doing it as well or at the same scale as China.
soco
How will US win with trade barriers? With them it can only secure the US market, and even this only provided the entire production chain is located in the US. Because you can forget about exporting goods weighted by trade tariffs - as you can see nobody accepts being tariffed without retaliating. So it can win, if you redefine the word "win".
JKCalhoun
Yeah, thinking about that. You better hope the people of the US feel comfortable dropping $50K with enough frequency for it to be sustainable.
gedy
> as you can see nobody accepts being tariffed without retaliating
I'm not defending our tariff strategy, but afaik this is actually the point being made that the US imports with low/no tariffs while US exports are tariffed in many countries.
ZeroGravitas
I'd assume that's bullshit for "many countries" and here's a comment from the EU calling it specifically bullshit in regards to them:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...
> Doesn't the US have a point about an asymmetry in tariffs, such as the EU's 10% tariff on cars compared to the US's 2.5% tariff?
> Tariff structures vary between economies, with some EU tariffs higher than those of the US and many others lower. Both the EU and the US have equally low tariffs overall.
> While the EU applies a 10% Most Favored Nation (MFN) tariff on cars, it's important to note that the US imposes a 25% tariff on pickup trucks—the largest segment of the US auto market, accounting for about one-third of all vehicle sales. In fact, the best-selling vehicle in the US is a pickup truck, the Ford F-150.
> The EU remains open to balanced negotiations that foster a level playing field for both sides.
yabatopia
You forgot the total lack of enforcing even basic environmental regulations, the massive government subsidies (diect and indirect), Uyghur forced labor, etc.
And China is anything but a free market. In a truly free market, most Chinese carmakers wouldn't even exist. They mostly exist because Western carmakers were forced to form China dominated joint-ventures, share technology and ownership in order to enter the Chinese market.
Cerium
"forced"? Nothing but greed and a race to the bottom forced their hands.
tinyhouse
I don't know how if it's tariffs or something else, but the US has been preventing importing EVs from China for a long time. You cannot not notice all the Chinese EVs on the roads when traveling overseas. I always wondered why those cars don't make it to the US.
bildung
It's tariffs. The US has a 100% tariff on Chinese EV already since 2024.
spamizbad
The US auto industry is protected via tariffs. It would implode if those were lifted.
jhp123
The US has insulated the economic decision makers from consequences in the same way as centrally-planned economies like the USSR. We're seeing the same poor performance now.
For example, the tech sector spend the 2010s chasing dumb ideas like metaverse/vr, crypto, voice assistants, and so on. But it didn't lead to any shakeup or consequences for the people in charge. The same firms, investors, and executives were in power in 2020 after a decade of stagnation and failure. They are insulated from any upstart competition by strong monopolization and increasingly, capture of the state itself.
enaaem
This was always going to happen. It was a matter of time for competition to come. Tesla having tech company valuation is ridiculous, since they have none of the economic advantages typical of tech companies: easy scaling, network effect and user lock-in.
cess11
They also didn't have the knack for handling compliance, quality assurance and sophisticated supply logistics that the established car industry already has and would be necessary in the long term.
enaaem
Yeah moving fast and breaking things does not work for car companies. In a software company if some programmers fix a bug, they (generally speaking) fix it for all users. For cars, you have to recall and manually fix all cars individually.
AlotOfReading
A recall does not necessarily mean bringing vehicles into a shop. You can push OTA updates as a form of recall. You can decide for yourself whether that's a good idea though.
tonyedgecombe
To be fair they could probably have developed all that if they didn't have the distractions coming from the top.
piokoch
Hardly a surprise, the market is growing rapidly, so nothing strange that the first player is no longer the only player. Nevertheless it was Tesla that proved viability of EVs and has courage to create totally new market segment. We've seen this in the IT several times, Commodore, Atari, IBM (as a hardware producer, not consulting company as it is now) had their time coming up with a No 1. product and then others came.
maxglute
If only US had multiple tesla tier EV manufacturers. Hedging globla US EV reputation on one company and one man is ridiculous situation to be in.
mstaoru
China is good at producing things (thanks to the infrastructure and cheap labor, for now), but is pretty bad at consistent service and general customer friendliness. We can also be sure that their cars are not made to any stringent standards, "chabuduo" attitude (negligence + cost cutting) is very much alive. I'm waiting with interest for the first cutoff "these cars should start failing about now" date to see how Chinese brands will handle repairs, parts, and general service. My bet is, besides most of the today's brands will even disappear by that time (since it was a subsidy grab to begin with), it will not be a great experience for the owners.
lawn
Tesla is also infamous for bad customer service and poor quality control though.
Impressive as the rise of Tesla and the Chinese cars are, this is a strong point for why more traditional car makers may catch up in the future.
lenerdenator
To be fair, that tends to happen when a country's government decides that, come hell or high water, they're going to control a market.
Musk going more insane doesn't help.
criddell
Om Malik recently wrote what I though was a pretty insightful piece on what's going on in EVs and China:
https://crazystupidtech.com/archive/chinas-ev-boom-is-bad-fo...
1970-01-01
Tesla could complete with BYD if they weren't slipping into a global political crisis while simultaneously manufacturing vehicles that remain unaffordable to the majority of buyers.
Pulling a $19k Model 3 (delivered) out of the air is the only solution I can see. Musk will be forced to step aside if the sales continue to slip into Q3. They certainly will lose money on each delivery, but they will survive until the robocar tier is ready.
Epskampie
The robocar is bunk.
Yep I've been thinking BYD is just some Chinese brand that's only in China, but I saw one on the road in the UK recently and looked it up and they actually have something like 80 showrooms in the UK already. Way more than Tesla.
Maybe making a dumb triangular truck that nobody wanted wasn't such a good idea after all. I imagine the BYD cars have such mod cons as rain sensors that work and indicator stalks too.