This is extremely refreshing. I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. Cars and trucks are so over-engineered and come with tons of low value options intended to drive up the price.
For a case in point, consider that headlights that turn on and off automatically in response to darkness (or rain) are not a standard feature on many cars, yet they include a manual switch that costs more than a photosensor only because of the trim-level upgrades.
Cars could include a slot for a tablet but instead come with overpriced car stereos and infotainment systems that are always light years worse than the most amateurish apps on any mobile app store.
As should be very clear by now after the 2008 US auto industry bailouts and the 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, the US auto industry is heavily protected and faces virtually no competition, which is why a common sense vehicle like the one in the article sounds revolutionary, though I imagine BYD could deliver something a lot more impressive for $10K if allowed to compete in the US without tariffs.
BYD is also heavily subsidized by the Chinese government.
If the us were not to fight back, the non subsidized industries would die, Chinese would stop subsidizing, rack up the price and competition would be too difficult to start again because of the monopoly on lithium and advance on technology.
It's been done thousands of times with other industries and countries.
Most recently Google, who had been giving Android for free when windows phone were licensed and Samsung tyzen cost money to develop, then forced manufacturer to accept outrageous terms to ship Google play service in their phone when all competition was already dead, is now under scrutiny for antitrust.
China’s approach to funding BYD is meant to replace much of the capital it might raise in freer markets, providing subsidies, tax breaks, and preferential policies to offset limited access to liquid equity and debt markets.
This support, totaling $10-12 billion from 2018-2022 plus in-kind benefits, mirrors the role of U.S. automakers’ $160-220 billion in public market raises and $50-100 billion in private capital, but with less financial risk for BYD due to state backing.
I think what people are missing is that EVs can be dramatically simpler to manufacture than internal combustion vehicles. This leverages manufacturing advantages and so with or without subsidies, China has big advantages due to its advancements in manufacturing tech.
Recall when China started making hoverboards for a fraction of the price of a Segway? Making EVs at scale required largely the same manufacturing pipeline.
It is the foresight of China’s industrial policy, not the amount of subsidy that has created the manufacturing powerhouse China has become.
US attempts are crude (sledgehammer) methods that leave the market far less free with mostly downside for everyone and no industrial policy goals, only domestic incumbents being protected from reality.
The lack of freer markets is itself a response to the biggest subsidy the Chinese government provides its manufacturers, the currency controls.
RMB is undervalued by ~10-30%, with latter being extreme estimates, pegged to usd with small floating band. It's minor advantage vs executing competent industrial policy that durably drives production costs down fraction vs competitors. Add 10-30% to PRC EV production costs and western (especially US) producers still nowhere near.
That’s _just_ the peg. The other currency controls include the prevention of currency outflows by Chinese capital and the restriction on foreign holders of Chinese debt. All of that drives the costs down.
My personal opinion is that the Chinese EV would dominate in a completely free market, but we will never know.
My broader point is that it’s weird to say that the cash subsidies make up for the lack of freer markets capital, that’s double dipping.
Currency controls drive costs down (really loss/inefficiency) in the sense that it contains misallocation like illicit capital flight, i.e. stashing grafted funds meant for industrial programs abroad. That's less advantage than mitigating the disadvantage of legacy of PRC corruption - not double dipping, but ensuring sauce stays in the domestic bowl to be dipped at all. And ultimately "freely" competing with reserve USD privilege is a stacked game - the currency controls themselves aren't subsidies, they protect employment of subsidies, i.e. ensuring higher % of X gets directed properly to industry, rather than mansions in vancouver, it's not a multiplier like X*2.
If the argument is that currency controls gives PRC a more stable basis for financing industrial policy (deal with fluctuations and keep domestic captive bond buyers), then sure, but that layer is levelling the playing field. Ultimately it comes to productively using actual allocated $$$ for indy programs to develop durable competitive advantages that can be sustained in lieu of subsidies. VS printing more billions to bail out legacy auto as domestic job programs - which op was replying to, everyone protects domestic auto, even PRC also has to prop up some SEOs, but they also focus on indy programs that's just about hammering pure industrial competitiveness to eventually build comparable item for fraction of the cost.
IMO why this proposal is exciting. If US producer can figure out how to produce somethign that's only 50% more expensive then PRC versus 200%, then it's a huge win.
To be honest most of those accessories are actually incredibly cheap at manufacturing time and several have a direct impact on safety (e.g. ensuring people don't drive around with lights off). The cost usually comes as companies use them for pricing tiers where they market them as suggested extras to ratchet up profits.
Driving with your lights off at dusk or dark gets you (rightfully) pulled over by law enforcement in CA. It's well-correllated with driving under the influence.
I'm a huge fan of many car safety regulations, but this isn't one.
(Sign me up for car-hiding-in-blind-spot notification lights on side mirrors, though, those are great)
I don't understand what you're saying here - you think it's good to have your lights turned on - but you don't want them to automatically turn on?
That doesn't make any sense. Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection, and automatic light sensors save lives.
It could make sense. We don't know the numbers.
Let's say net X lives are saved each year because of automatic lights turning on.
Let's say net Y lives would be saved each year without automatic lights, via more effective detection of drunk drivers and stopping them before they kill someone.
Is X > Y? We don't know.
> Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection
There are a lot of avenues to decrease DUI, among which one is effective detection combined with enforcement.
The EU has done lots of reach on road and car safety, there's lots of data out there - just perhaps not in the US as many American made cars have significantly lagged behind in terms of safety features.
I don't know if it's an EU rule, but in my (European) country cars are required to have their lights on at all times, even during the day. The lights switch on automatically when you start the car
I'm baffled that daytime running lights are not mandatory on all models of all cars in 2025. My 13 year old Grand Caravan has them, though I suspect it's because it comes from the Daimler Chrysler era.
After I visited Iceland where it's mandatory, I liked the improved visibility so much I turn my lights on for every single trip. It was not a takeaway I was expecting to have from the trip.
It's a good idea in some places. An overcast winter's day in the North isn't that well lit by default.
There may be something like that that does make it counterintuitive. Usually those kind of Malcom Gladwell paradoxes end up overstated.
There would be other factors, like drunk people are probably safer with their lights on too. Lane keeping probably makes it harder to detect drunk drivers too but also may make them safer.
This is simply because police don’t do their jobs. It would be trivial to simply wait outside bars at 2AM and give out tons of DUIs but a significant percentage of the population are alcoholics and this would result in massive blowback against the police.
Go to any small town watering hole at 2AM to see this in effect. The police have no legal obligation to prevent crime or enforce laws. None.
I'll do you one better, car headlights should never be off while the motor is running. Just like motorcycles since the 70s (maybe 80s?).
No switch at all, ignition on, headlights on, period.
Niche counter example:
Parents who sit in their idling cars for (fucking) ages while their cars are facing the tennis courts thus blinding the player on the other side of the court for however long it takes them to either turn their car off, drive off, or someone to tell them turn their fucking headlights off.
Along similar lines would be those people who constantly start up their cars in campgrounds after hours for whatever reason.
How long have you been holding that one?
It's only been a recent thing, noticeably more frequent the last couple of years.
Before that I've not had to intervene at all, as far as I can remember.
There aren't that many courts where cars park facing them, but my home courts are one of them ;)
Simple solution: when the wheels start rolling, the lights come on.
I'd still prefer to override both on/off though.
Personally I feel like cars with headlights in the daytime on days with good visibility can be too noticeable. I find myself giving them too much attention because they stand out more in my visual field.
When the oncoming cars do not have headlights on I find it easier to give them just enough attention to see that they are behaving normally leaving more attention to devote to things other than oncoming cars.
I like this. Turns out a few countries require DRL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytime_running_lamp
But what about for electric cars? Maybe whenever the car is in anything other than P, and for 5 minutes after P?
>I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even.
The closest this comes to is a Dacia spring. Which is not a great car. The dacia could not be made at US labor costs. 15k is an absurd price, Chinese companies can do it because they pay Chinese labor costs and have serious economies of scale. Unless you sell hundreds of thousands of these a year AND pay US workers like Chinese ones, 15k will not happen.
BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA (well, they were planning a factory in Mexico, and tariffs on car parts will kill that if something doesn’t change). They already set up a bus factory in SoCal. My guess is that Chinese automakers are still hesitant about introducing their brands to Americans given politics (Volvo and Polestar are Chinese owned but I think the design is still mainly done in Sweden?).
Japanese, Korean, and European brands already make a lot of vehicles to get around tariffs, although it makes sense for some sedans to be made abroad given American lack of interest in them (so economy of scales doesn’t work out), and sedans typically not being tariffed as harshly as trucks.
BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA (well, they were planning a factory in Mexico, and tariffs on car parts will kill that if something doesn’t change). They already set up a bus factory in SoCal. My guess is that Chinese automakers are still hesitant about introducing their brands to Americans given politics (Volvo and Polestar are Chinese owned but I think the design is still mainly done in Sweden?).
Chinese investment in the US is inherently risky. For example TikTok. BYD would be stomping GM and Ford. The next thing you know, they would need to sell their factory.
Companies spending money to navigate tariff regimes adds tremendous cost and inefficiency that makes everyone worse off.
Wouldn’t they still need to pay tariffs on all the parts they manufacture in china? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the tariffs but it sounds like Chinese companies would have to build completely separate supply chains to keep the US market
Before no, or at least not very high tariffs. Now I have no idea, Trump’s story changes daily. However lots of US made autos are using Chinese parts so they are all affected to some degree.
>heavily protected and faces virtually no competition
Huh? Out of the top 25 vehicles sold in the US in 2024, 16 of them are non-US automakers. Just because the US is actively blocking China from dumping heavily subsidized vehicles into the north american market, doesn't mean they "face no competition". Kia and Hyundai alone show that it's VERY possible to break into the US market if you have even a little bit of interest playing fair.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g60385784/bestselling-cars...
The only real way to break into the US market is to have factories in the US. Trucks in particular are protected by the notorious 25% "chicken tax", which has been in place since the 1960s.
>Trucks in particular are protected by the notorious 25% "chicken tax", which has been in place since the 1960s.
And yet, that applies to everyone, including US automakers, which is why Ford had to do unnatural things to import the transit from Europe.
They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of.
Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.
> they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of. > > Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.
Why should manufacturing jobs be well-paying? Human productivity has not kept up with business improvements at all. A contemporary robot can assemble car modules much faster than a robot from, say, the 60s. A human now works at the same speed as a human from the 60s.
I don't think this is true. Yes robot capabilities have increased but those business processes also make people more productive. I recently toured the F-150 assembly line and it is clear a lot has been done to improve worker productivity.
"Manufacturing jobs" doesn't mean doing the same job as in the 60s. Human productivity improves by offloading more to machines/tools/processes while having the humans manage other things. A human making cars now is not moving their limbs twice as fast as humans in the 60s, they're using tools that get the job done 3x faster than the person in the 60s. The jobs are actually quite different across time, but we colloquially call both "manufacturing jobs".
> They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of.
"The US can't make anything" is an absurd delusion. We are the second most productive economy in the world.
> Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.
We are fully capable of meeting our defense needs already. If you really care about reinforcing our military-industrial capability the best way to do it is to arm Ukraine.
> in the US for under $15K even
People say stuff like this. When you buy a $1 USB cable from AliExpress that probably took 25 seconds to manufacture, okay, that makes some sense, from that narrow point of view. But then the courier is going to spend like 3 minutes futzing with delivering it to you. Someone is paying something, no? You have an incomplete picture of costs, and hopefully your answer to the example conundrum isn't, "Delivery drivers are underpaid."
It's more complicated than features leading to a bill of materials and time in a factory.
It costs at least $15,000 to replace a roof in San Francisco, and maybe closer to $60,000. It costs basically nothing to manufacture roof tiles, and the whole thing can be done in a day. If you could answer the question why, and persuasively, you know, run for mayor.