Completely unmentioned: Chinese EVs are $10k worldwide except USA.
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/08/2025-byd-seagull-ev-sta...
replies(9):
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/08/2025-byd-seagull-ev-sta...
Beyond that, the chinese EV brands are in market capture mode right now. The competition is cut throat and the margins are extremely thin.
It‘s a market skimming strategy that will presumably be a last man standing scenario. If the winner(s) are decided, prices will definitely not remain as low as they are right now in some places.
Seems fine to leave something like that unmentioned, as a quick check reveals it not to be true at all.
So if you saw the pretax figures it'd probably be true
But why would I look at the pretax figures? Who would look at that, unless you're doing a business purchase? It basically has no meaning for the average person since they'll never buy anything without the taxes anyways.
Chinese manufacturers have come a long way and I wish I could buy one in the US but they are also pricing at razor thin margins to starve out competition.
Even in Vietnam the Dolphin is $25k
Apples to Oranges
You might as well add in the lifetime maintenance costs while you're at it (would be very useful to know technically ... Maybe BYD makes it up on repairs or something)
BYD is profitable. Admittedly that's more of an exception than a rule for Chinese EV brands, but BYD is also the most important.
> It‘s a market skimming strategy that will presumably be a last man standing scenario. If the winner(s) are decided, prices will definitely not remain as low as they are right now in some places.
Even if most of the brands disappear we're very unlikely to get to an n=1 monopoly scenario. Even a couple dozen or so companies competing in the EV space should prevent margins from getting too high.
In the olden days the ICE industry was at times run by fewer than 10 companies per country, that was enough competition to prevent consumers getting too screwed by pricing.
How do you know that? Neither the submission article (hubspot) or the article referenced by the parent comment (gmauthority) mentions anything about the figures being pretax or posttax, why would they default to talking a price no one else would use?
> You might as well add in the lifetime maintenance costs while you're at it
If that's something you have to pay up front to get the car, then yeah, add it to whatever figures you reference. But I don't think that's how it works normally, so how is that the same thing at all?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/car-sales-t...
Yes but also heavily indebted:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-19/byd-s-sup...
A country's government sees an opportunity to invest into a promising new technology that could reap tremendous economic benefits. Such benefits include new jobs, new income, the ability to increase social/political capital worldwide, and help usher in a world that is that much less reliant on oil.
That's what countries in the first world are supposed to do.
If Americans can't get a new car for under $25,000 but Southeast Asia can get them for under $10K, something is wrong. If the entry level car is 2.5x more expensive in America it means Americans are getting fleeced. I haven't lived in America for a long time and I feel like this makes it very obvious to me when the BS machine over there is in full spew. Free markets drive consumer prices down to the cost of production.
I don't know the auto industry in detail but it is an extensively documented fact that America has few free markets left, and they've been replaced by cartels - each industry has a couple of crooks at the top who rotate between private and public jobs. On the public side they come up with excuses to not enforce the anti-trust laws that are on the books, and they add regulations that raise the cost of business. On the private side they come up with ways to improve margins which usually involve fucking consumers.
Let's not make excuses for the criminals. America needs free markets and cheaper cars. Elite lawlessness is the cause of increased costs in America.
Some places that is the price of the car.
so the American customer is getting fleeced on SUVs much worse than on sedan, because SUV margins are higher (and thats why OEMs are switching to SUVs)
People have been known to cross state lines to purchase cars, to save a few hundred dollars on the purchase. In any case, a $10k vehicle is not going to cost over $11k post-tax in any state.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/car-sales-t...
Americans paid $25k for $18k sticker price vehicles a decade ago. Now they're paying $32k for $25k vehicles. People I talk to who have new cars say their payments are from $500-800/mo, often for longer than 60 months.
If my 20 year old Toyota ever quits, I'll probably build what amounts to a street legal go-kart and invest in another, larger cooler and freezer.
The fact still stands, very rarely are Chinese EVs priced like that and it’s really only for the bare bones budget ones that barely meet local safety standards. I think about VF in Vietnam they have a 2 door 4 seater that’s $12k. Only a single airbag and I doubt any real modern crash standards built in. Works great for that market but not for the US.
Otherwise, feel free to adjust $10k -> $12.5k or whatever the VAT is in your region.
If they were perfectly interchangeable, sure. But if nothing else, lets look at safety and emissions regulations -- different regulatory regimes will absolutely put different requirements onto the build and components. Not an expert in automotive regulation in SEA vs. US, but I'd buy this argument more if the comparison was between, say, Europe and the US.
There's also likely a bunch of soft cost differences -- dealership dynamics, etc. that add a fair amount to the sticker price, and those probably do have some merit to your case.
This has already happened to consumer electronics, power tools, manufacturing equipment, solar panels, and batteries.
The strategy is especially effective on products with a high startup cost in markets that have to deal with high amounts of regulation and labor unions because being government-owned means you get to skip all that. There's no reason to expect that cars won't be next.
The footer mentions the PVP (recommended pricing) is 11.780€, which is after the government MOVES III rebate which removes 7K, which would explain the difference.
Do we want to get to a point where every industry is completely run by whichever country is willing to throw the most money at it?
Other nations aren’t at risk of losing their auto industries domestically because of either.
All Asian/European carmakers have tons of options available everywhere else they could bring here but they don't cos people just don't buy them. Even sedans are harder to sell today, the US is its own cosmos and trying to coerce it into "small family car" when all the ads are about being a rugged f150 driver is very hard.
Look at how people talk about minivans here, all about "the emasculation of men". It would require a lot of leadership to change the market perspective on these cars or americans getting very poor for it to work. It is also incredibly convenient, I myself drive a large SUV that's larger than the average WW2 tank and its insanely convenient to have that much space for a family of 6.
Foresight is required when dealing with such entities, not hindsight.
If my electric car comes in at 1/4th the price of an American built one, so be it. The tradeoff here is that in countries that aren't engulfed by rent-seeking capitalists who only answer to themselves, countries like China have a policy goal and will make sure the state utilizes the private sector to meet the goal.
For example, Mr. Musk could easily take some of that $450 billion net worth of his and make his cars considerably cheaper. He has taken enormous subsidies and kept his cars expensive. In China, the state would not let someone with that amount of capital take subsidies, and most certainly wouldn't allow them to bribe the government with the government's money.
Where did you get that information? There were previous investigations by the EU Commission about Chinese government subsides, and "tax reductions or interest-free business loans" were the main allegations.
If a government believes in the potential and promise of a given technology and wants to dominate in that sector, it should be allowed to. That's the premise of worldwide capitalism and markets. Capital is allocated to where the owners of said capital wish to allocate it to, and that's the free market at work.
Is it an unfair advantage? Define "fair".
The whole point of specialization of industry is that yes, we absolutely should be OK with that. If that's where China wants to specialize and deploy resources, let them.
However, we've chased cost-cutting measure after cost-cutting measure in order to please the shareholder class at the expense of the working class, and this is the result. We shouldn't be surprised.
Up until 2024 there were no restrictions on cheap Chinese EVs that didn't apply to any other car. The cheap ~$10k Chinese EVs simply don't meet US safety standards.
There have been Chinese-built EVs sold in the US: https://www.polestar-forum.com/attachments/1000009812-jpg.27...
Tariffs on trucks ensured that there is a substantial number of manufacturers here in the US.
So, can you provide any info on the subsidies?
Some examples include:
* Politicians often give automakers often receive state and local tax breaks in exchange for constructing plants in their jurisdictions
* Federal grants and incentives for clean energy initiatives
* The infamous 2008 bailouts, where for example, the US Treasury bought enough GM shares that they became the controlling shareholder, effectively nationalizing the automaker.
Actual subsidies? -Federal: ATVM loans (e.g., Tesla, Ford), $7.5K EV tax credits.
-State: Georgia gave Rivian $1.5B. Tennessee handed VW ~$500M. Michigan’s tossed cash at GM like it’s confetti.
So yeah, no subsidies at all, just billions in “non-subsidy” market distortion to keep the hometown heroes afloat.
So, can you provide any substance to the conversation?
We've (the west) effectively encouraged this sort of behavior. OUTSOURCE IT ALL TO CHINA! Our corporations and shareholders have most certainly reaped the benefits from this. Our politicians have made a lot of money this way, too. Lots of people have deliberately turned a blind eye to this sort of behavior and didn't think about the long term ramifications of pushing everything to be built in China.
Call it cartel like behavior, fine.
China is merely playing the hand it has been dealt and looking out for itself and the survival of its economy and political apparatus. Trade is one way to do so, another is technological progress.
We've subsidized capitalists taking the risk to develop this tech. China has bypassed the ownership class and gone straight to the manufacturers. Some of those capitalists have enriched themselves when they should have passed those costs off to make their products cheaper to stay competitive - that's the whole point of subsidies. Instead, one of those capitalists chose to instead take the subsidies, keep his cars expensive, and make himself the wealthiest person on earth.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
And yeah, we subsidized Musk, dumb move but the answer isn’t to copy a system where the state decides who wins, loses, and what the price tag is. That’s not market efficiency, it’s command capitalism with a smile.
Don’t hate the game? Buddy, the game is rigged. China just rigged it better.
But the evidence is other countries aren’t complaining that Ohio offering tax credits to get a a Ford plant to go there instead of Pennsylvania is gutting their automotive industry. Which is exactly the issue we’re discussing.
Any such tax credits are simply American states competing against other American states, and have little to no ramification on the overall cost of an automobile, even domestically, let alone globally.
Meanwhile, China is doing loads of very well documented things that would make the automotive industry impossible for anyone outside of China if not for protectionist policies. Many other countries (basically any that make automobiles) are instituting tariffs as a result.
Further up this thread the discussion was about Asian market cars that are still sub $10k. There are both gasoline and EV vehicles that exist in this price range, but they are very different than the types of cars sold in the US market. They're more similar to off-road low-speed utility vehicles (and some are literally sold for this purpose in the US).
If you look at the western markets where there are Chinese EVs, higher safety standards, and higher buyer expectations, you'll see that they're very closely priced.
e.g.:
https://www.byd.com/uk/order-sealion-7
https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/modely/design#overview
The idea that other countries have equivalent cars that are cheaper just doesn't hold water. Asia has cars that are cheaper because you get less car.
As another example here, the cheapest BYD sold in the UK is the Dolphin Surf starting at $25,614 (18,650 GBP). Even if it doesn't require any changes to meet US regulations (which many cars do), I don't think many Americans are going to run out to buy what is considered a microcar here, just to save $2500 over a Leaf, that Americans already don't buy. It certainly isn't going to compete with the Corolla or Corolla Hybrid which starts at $22,325/$23,825 respectively.
Fair enough—China’s not losing sleep over whether Ford picks Ohio or Pennsylvania. But that doesn’t change the fact that state-level tax breaks are still subsidies. Public money influencing private decisions is the definition, whether it’s across borders or state lines.
And just to be clear, I never said they were globally material—you did. I asked for evidence on your claim that they don’t exist in any meaningful sense and leave an equally unbacked claim as you did. Funny how that upsets you so much.
