Volkswagen seeks to counter rivals with budget EV model

That's way too expensive for an "affordable EV".

The BYD Seagull retails here in Uruguay for less than that and we tax cars at about 100%. On China it seems to go for 10-12k.

It's a proper, basic city car. 4 to 6 air bags, ~300km range (more than what this article's car indicates), all basic security features and standard gadgets out of a modern car.

Our EV infrastructure is not viable if you don't have a charger at work/home and yet these have sold like hot cakes.

Legacy carmakers are making increasingly worse ICE cars for the most part (btw does GM sell a C-segment hatchback on any market, anymore?) and their EVs are simply uncompetitive. What's it going to take for them to wake up to the fact they're going to have to stop fleecing their customers with crappy products? Bankruptcy?

I don’t really trust BYD quality. I’ve seen way too many videos leak out of Chinese social media about build issues they refuse to acknowledge, thin or weak structural materials, fires, etc. Easier to trust Tesla or VW. I wonder if they would make different quality vehicles targeted at different markets.

The moment you focus on quality, your price can't be that low. Then good luck competing with VW or other cars.

These cars are garbage, people are happy because they are cheap, shiny and have all multimedia and can do 400KM... why not.

I'm old enough to have been around this bush twice already.

In the 70s your argument was made against emerging Japanese makers. Unknowns like Toyota, Datsun (now Nissan), Honda etc.

Then in the 90s it was Koreans entering the market. Daihatsu, Hyundai, Kia etc.

Now it's the Chinese brands arriving as well. The incumbents will talk about "quality" all day long, but in truth European quality was always a bit of a myth (British Leyland anyone?) And the heyday of BMW or Mercedes quality is long gone.

The gold standard for quality today? Probably Toyota or Honda.

So yeah, laugh off the Chinese options as low-quality.

The problem is China is taking the different strategy.

All of the products they are making actually have two lines, one for the oversea, one for the nation. The oversea line would be high quality at first. But once they eat up all the market share, the story would start to change. The oversea buyer would happily to see they are been treated the same as Chinese.

Just think about the product from TEMU.