I’m not really convinced China is that far ahead of everyone else in the EV market. Sure, they have cheap cars, but is the quality better? I haven’t tried a lot, but to me it seems the quality and features are pretty much the same as european, japanese or south korean. I just bought a Japanese car, because the BYD that was comparable but cheaper just felt like a toy car. Everything about the interior just felt like cheap plastic. The infotainment screen was a mess, and I had to go into 3 (3!) submenus to turn on the heated seats.
I’m not convinced the chinese cars are better. They’re comparable and cheap, but it’s not like they offer something no one else does.
Agreed, they probably are cheap garbage (I myself don’t know, I haven’t driven cars regularly in a while), but two things:
Manufacturing volume is really important in making cars. You need know-how, you need experts and ways to make things better and deliver incremental improvements, and that becomes a lot easier when you have higher volumes.
People don’t have lots of cash to burn these days - quality is easy to sacrifice when you don’t have the cash to pay up.
I’m not really convinced China is that far ahead of everyone else in the EV market. Sure, they have cheap cars, but is the quality better? I haven’t tried a lot, but to me it seems the quality and features are pretty much the same as european, japanese or south korean. I just bought a Japanese car, because the BYD that was comparable but cheaper just felt like a toy car. Everything about the interior just felt like cheap plastic. The infotainment screen was a mess, and I had to go into 3 (3!) submenus to turn on the heated seats.
I’m not convinced the chinese cars are better. They’re comparable and cheap, but it’s not like they offer something no one else does.
Agreed, they probably are cheap garbage (I myself don’t know, I haven’t driven cars regularly in a while), but two things:
Manufacturing volume is really important in making cars. You need know-how, you need experts and ways to make things better and deliver incremental improvements, and that becomes a lot easier when you have higher volumes.
People don’t have lots of cash to burn these days - quality is easy to sacrifice when you don’t have the cash to pay up.