I can’t speak for other countries, but here in Brazil we suddenly got a massive influx of Chinese electric car brands. The feeling I get is that I went to sleep in a country where you couldn’t even find an electric charger and woke up in one where I could do a road trip with an electric car with zero issues.
Vehicles are extremely expensive here, but a Tesla would be out of this world expensive even if we just directly converted USD to BRL, which is not anywhere close to the actual final price. The Chinese cars are affordable by comparison, they do not lock you into weird proprietary non-standards, they have easy to purchase spare parts and do not require some weird dance to get a repair technician when you need one… I can say Tesla would have zero success here at this point. Completely different context, but I can see why they’re no longer growing in the US given how there are other mature electric cars brands out there - missing the pretentious tech bro appeal, of course.
I see a lot of BYD cars here in Australia as well (along with some other brands). And I guess even if you buy a Tesla here, your car will be made in China no matter what.
You can’t really get any of those Chinese car brands in the USA. Best you can usually do is import one directly yourself and by then the price doesn’t make sense. I assume that GM and Ford have something to do with it.
BYD is reportedly going to build a Mexico factory to enter into the US. More power to them, a cheap EV maker would move things along very quickly in adoption.
I know what you’re thinking: “but muh china” which is a good counterpoint, and here’s my response.
Honestly my question would be for build quality, but if the Mexicans are building it that goeas away.
And any other issues I have with the cars are problems I have with all modern cars, and most of them can be solved with wire cutters and power tools. Also id probably at most get a used one, because fuck buying new.
I can’t speak for other countries, but here in Brazil we suddenly got a massive influx of Chinese electric car brands. The feeling I get is that I went to sleep in a country where you couldn’t even find an electric charger and woke up in one where I could do a road trip with an electric car with zero issues.
Vehicles are extremely expensive here, but a Tesla would be out of this world expensive even if we just directly converted USD to BRL, which is not anywhere close to the actual final price. The Chinese cars are affordable by comparison, they do not lock you into weird proprietary non-standards, they have easy to purchase spare parts and do not require some weird dance to get a repair technician when you need one… I can say Tesla would have zero success here at this point. Completely different context, but I can see why they’re no longer growing in the US given how there are other mature electric cars brands out there - missing the pretentious tech bro appeal, of course.
I see a lot of BYD cars here in Australia as well (along with some other brands). And I guess even if you buy a Tesla here, your car will be made in China no matter what.
You can’t really get any of those Chinese car brands in the USA. Best you can usually do is import one directly yourself and by then the price doesn’t make sense. I assume that GM and Ford have something to do with it.
BYD is reportedly going to build a Mexico factory to enter into the US. More power to them, a cheap EV maker would move things along very quickly in adoption.
I know what you’re thinking: “but muh china” which is a good counterpoint, and here’s my response.
Honestly my question would be for build quality, but if the Mexicans are building it that goeas away.
And any other issues I have with the cars are problems I have with all modern cars, and most of them can be solved with wire cutters and power tools. Also id probably at most get a used one, because fuck buying new.