I live in Europe: My only “concern” about chinese cars (and I don’t mean chinese as in Volvo) that I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years. More than 500 unique models were released in
the first 6 months of 2026 alone [0]. It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago. Brands you never heared about, never updated Android versions etc
Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.
100s of models share a few standard platforms with like 80% parts commonality in the broader ecosystem. A subbrand from one of the giants with staying power is going to be fine, someone in PRC going to keep after market parts flowing forever, like they do for western brands. Of course whether this convenient/ubiquitous in reign like Europe depends on geopolitics, if EU going to make it hard for PRC producers then PRC producers going to have hard time with EU consumers, which arguably is the point. Really have to see what PRC plants in EU starts delivering, ultimately there's no reason for rest of EU to be dependant on German or French cars if they have Chinese cars at home.
Chinese brands are all relatively young and even healthy looking major companies have a habit of spectacular sudden failure due to less good bookkeeping and auditing practices.
SOEs are 50+ years old, legacy titans like BYD ~30+, older than Tesla. Tesla tier tech upstarts nio, xpeng, li ~10. But ultimately who cares, the big / influential players are arguably too big to fail by local gov standards whose going to keep going forever, or consolidate under players that can keep them going. The brands too small to survive aren't seriously exporting to the west anyway (like yes there's brand/marketting plays like hiphi which is basically vinfast tier). Car makers, especially ones with tech stack are not Luckin Coffee, if state/province wants to keep a strategic brand going forever, they will. Just like western auto pork barrel due to "excellent" financiered bookkeeping and auditing.
Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).
While I've occasionally had an engine part fail most of the major repairs I've needed to do to cars over the years has been suspension related, it's consistently abused and closest to the road / debris.
That said... many of the different EVs sit on the same base, so maybe it won't actually be as hard to get parts as it seems.
Chinese EVs are more eclectic than western EVs. But ya, suspension parts....are those things that automakers innovate on? Though I guess BYD is an exception, since they own their own parts maker.
Innovation is rare among the broad consumer car market but modify to fit new bodies and motor layouts, yes, for sure. For most mainstream cars however you'll often find that a few models per generation for any given manufacturer either share parts or are interchangeable.
That's absolute nonsense. So what if it's an EV? It still requires replacement door hinges, fenders, panels, suspension parts, wiring harnesses, software updates, etc. Repairing a car is a great deal more complex than simply changing oil or replacing brake pads. All mechanical objects experience wear and tear and require maintenance.
I live in the United States: My only "concern" about cars made here is that the parts are and will be exorbitantly high due to protectionism by our government and will be a lot more for a lot fewer features, efficiency and innovation and we'll have to win a class action lawsuit to even open the hoods of cars we "own" so we can repair them ourselves.
A lot of cars companies restrict who can buy parts and what parts. For example if you want to buy the rear quarter panel for a Rivian you must be an approved repair shop and they will only allow so many in a given area. This is not specific to rivian. Lots of car companies do this with newer models. I have a friend who runs a high end repair shop and another who does restoration and the one who does Mercedes restoration won’t work on cars newer than x because he can’t get parts
You don't want BYD cars. Those unreliable POSs have a useful life shorter than a cellphone.
At one point, BYD was the top choice of EV buses in the U.S. They were blacklisted by every transit agency in America even before Trump's order because their vehicles were less reliable than the 40+ year old buses they were replacing.
We tariffed them (Europe will too) because China subsidizes them and is building excess industrial capacity to run our companies out of business where we have higher wages and such. China also artificially keeps its currency low to boost exports toward the same goals.
It's more important that we protect domestic industry and good union jobs than it is for us to import EVs at lower prices.
"The number of Chinese EV brands selling at least one product rose to a record 143 at the end of 2025, according to a tally by management consultant AlixPartners.”
(In one noted instance from the article a company built (through local government subsidies and tax breaks and other schemes) capacity to build around 100,000 cars/year and have only built 600 to date.
"Now, in a country with a shrinking population, reliable big-city mass transit and a growing robotaxi industry, sales of passenger cars to regular Chinese families are unlikely to ever again record a sustained surge, analysts said. But cities and their private-sector partners are reluctant to admit that their lofty ambitions won’t be fulfilled, which would result in factory closures and lost jobs.”
"In recent months, Germany’s once-towering trade surplus with China in automotive products has turned into a deficit. Germany—the country widely credited with inventing the automobile—is embracing Chinese brands, while German automakers are struggling in China.”
"In the U.K., BYD is selling its flagship Seal hybrid sedan for the equivalent of around $44,000, more than $10,000 less than a similarly equipped Volkswagen Passat. These vehicles are sold at Chinese price points we cannot match with European cost structures,” said Volkswagen Chief Executive Oliver Blume in an August memo to staff."
"About the only major market where Chinese automakers aren’t causing upheaval is the U.S., where tariffs and restrictions on Chinese vehicle technology have all but locked out the country’s automakers. General Motors and Ford are among the few automakers still pumping out relatively healthy profits.”
Government subsidies in China — while 5 to 10 percent of Chinese automakers’ capital spending, estimated O’Donovan, compared to about 1.5 percent in Europe — are no longer the Chinese auto sector’s primary advantage. Chinese carmakers now enjoy deeper structural advantages from their enormous scale, dense supply chains, high factory utilization and automated production.
Several companies in China now tout their “dark factories” where they make or assemble many parts of their cars with no human labour at all. It’s likely that the larger Chinese companies are capable of undercutting European makers even without government subsidies or wage parity.
Once upon a time American-made televisions were a thing, back in the days of tubes. Television repair was a legitimate trade. Then Japanese electronics companies entered the market. Because of supply chain distances, and politics, they knew that servicing TVs in the US would be difficult. So the Japanese manufacturers decided to make TVs that would not need repair. And American TVs basically disappeared.
I'm not saying that will happen with cars, but it is something to think about.
I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.
I mean, I drive a Toyota Venza from 2011 and finding parts outside of shelling out insane amounts of cash to Toyota is a pain, and that's Toyota. There seem to be random bits an parts that are unique to my car.
I mean the core feature here is a vastly simplified drivetrain and often modular parts borrowed or 'appropriated' from the best of existing marques. There's a lot less to go wrong versus any existing ICE platform, and the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the the high-end BYD stuff.
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
Slight nitpick - "the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the high-end BYD stuff" - what makes you say this? I follow the Chinese car market a fair bit and the high end marques are generally making it to western markets, even Voyah.
We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.
Given how often parts are unavailable for new and late model "western" brands this is more like a generic worry that comes with car ownership than anything brand-specific. If anything the proliferation of brands demonstrates robust use of off-the-shelf components, which in turn suggests replacement parts should be ubiquitous.
I don't follow the car industry but I've worked on a project circa 2018 for all European manufacturers to help provide parts 15 years after the car was sold (I provided the Hadoop clusters and some of the predictive algorithms to try to predict which car parts will fail and how many will be needed over the car Lifetime.) BOOST4.0 or something. I don't know where it ended up going.
It's definitely an issue but typically not until you pass the ~20 year mark. I recently sold a very low volume car that is now 26 years old and there's definitely a secondary market now in hoarded parts as the originals become less and less available from the manufacturer.
You might want to take a closer look into the current state of play on new and late model vehicle parts availability and general serviceability, because your take here appears to be a couple decades out of date. Parts are frequently difficult or impossible to source for cars that are less than 5 years old.
TBH the market demand will ensure a Toyota Camry/Honda Civic 'invincible' style runabout will emerge that basically anyone can run into the ground and still depend on. The real issue to me is the morality of the production of the parts, particularly things involving rare-earth metals.
Ish. Traditional car manufacturers had this figured out but intentionally dropped the plot over the last couple decades because make number go up. Net result: my wife had a mouse die in a vent duct in her 2 year old SUV. We drove a dealership loaner for 8 months waiting for parts. They ended up replacing the entire dash assembly (including gauge clusters, and infotainment unit). Many (most?) modern car transmissions aren't field-serviceable because no parts are available. Any issue with the transmission means the entire unit gets replaced.
This is pretty horrible news that I hadn't really heard about, especially since American cars are so expensive now.
Why was this not a problem in the past? I know covid and tariffs have changed the supply picture a lot but I was vaguely under the impression there was some kind of parts availability requirement for manufacturers.
that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar, Zeekr) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features even car play. I know a few people that bought Chinese brands that only existed for 3 years.
I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.
> I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years
Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.
wut, after market parts in PRC is incredibly robust, they hammer out generics for western auto, of course they keep domestic stocked for ever with original tooling. There's no giant dumps for "dicarded" EVs that can't get parts or service, there's lots for retired fleet cars, i.e cars that were serviced for so long that they've been driven to death and retired (600000km / 8 years service life) or in some cases potemkin cars to steal subsidies, but even the latter shows PRC can basically conjure components on a whim if there's any profit. They can literally conjure up EVs as disposable financial instruments.
I visited China 5 years ago. All the fancy cars of the upper middle class were German. Audis, vw, bmws and Mercedes everywhere.
I visited this year again. Almost none of the new cars were German. I did not see most of their latest models on the streets. And I definitely did not see a single German electric car.
They now have a dozen of brands some of them under the tech umbrella of Huawei that provides the info-entertainment and auto pilot and they are everywhere! And btw the assembly quality was now reaally nice.
No idea about their safety or longevity, but it was nice being driven in them
The Chinese have certainly taken over far more than just the Mexican market. You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these days, and while Toyotas were selling like hot cakes in Pakistan the dealerships have gotten huge waitlists for the Chinese ones now. As others have mentioned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity. I can confidently assume a Toyota from 1993 is still just being broken in at 150K miles, no clue if the same can be said about these with all the varieties and electronic components.
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
I see this (and similar statements) often repeated on the Internet, but it’s not what I saw during my two week trip to London and vicinity back in July. This was followed by a week in Paris.
In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.
What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.
So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.
The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.
I can tell you from a - fairly prosperous town in the North of England where Range Rovers, Teslas and Porsches are very common - that BYDs and Jaecoos are everywhere.
You can pick other counties, manufacturers and views etc.
My own anecdata from Nordics is that Musk was out of the news for a while but has put himself back in the bad light again last week with the Ukraine horrible behavior and there’s a bit of coverage of his funding midterms too.
Even the dramatic price deals Tesla have been offering won’t really tempt back the educated disposable income environmentally conscious early adopters who used to champion him when Tesla swept into the market with the first viable EVs.
Where I am it is Kia that has taken Tesla’s place as the go-to EV brand.
Jaecoo have had the best selling model in the UK for two or three months running now. I have no idea how you managed to lose your bet. My experience is closer to the parent post - pull into any car park in the UK and you'll count more Chinese EVs than Teslas, often you can count more Jaecoo or BYD than Tesla.
There are Tesla's everywhere around my way in London. They are very very common. Maybe people have stopped buying them since Elon went crazy, but there are still a lot on the roads.
I'm in Canada and have a Tesla, if I was going to buy another car I'd be definitely looking at the Chinese versions for this exact reason. Anyone openly buying a new Tesla in Canada these days is saying they are a sociopath and/or a predator.
When this person openly meddles into politics of your country by supporting openly fascist and racist parties and spreading lies, it might not be that extreme to not want to support him.
Whether or not it’s extreme and weird, it’s certainly widely held. In North America, buying a Tesla is widely seen (and rightly so IMO) as condoning Elon’s Naziism.
Suits me. US manufacturers willingly chose to double and triple down on luxury pricing models and chose to include enough software and sensors for a moderately capable aircraft, cutting every corner they could find in terms of reliability and serviceability in the process. I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
> I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
I wouldn't hold your breath. US manufacturers and their unions are very well taken care of in Washington, DC. Been that way for decades and will likely be that way for several more, unless something entirely unforeseen happens.
At the end of the day, it's the labor cost difference- both for assembly and other parts of the supply chain. Tesla at least is trying very hard to get prices as low as possible, but the things still have to sell. We'll see if Slate ever delivers what they've been promising as a no-frills cheap car.
Given it's already happening I shouldn't have to hold my breath for long. Have a look at Ford's sales numbers in their bread-and-butter truck market. Volkswagen's getting replaced by Nokia on major indices in Europe. Toyota seems to see the writing on the wall and have been flirting with bringing the Hilux to North America. Across all domestic manufacturers dealer lot retention figures are through the damn roof and have been for some time now. They can't keep this shit up much longer.
Don't forget that cars and nationalism go hand in hand. The CEO of Ford or BMW have their country's leaders on speed dial. Cars are a part of the national identity.
I live in a country who's indigenous auto industry was already killed off in the 1970s. So people here have no real loyalty and will happily buy any newcomers. Toyota, Kia, BYD- if it's good people will buy it.
Just to add a different perspective. As a mexican, I often wonder how the future will look like for those cars in terms of repairability. I don't think lots of people are really pondering wether the car company will be here long enough to provide a reasonable amount of support for the niche technical issues that will arise.
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
Mexico is more broadly a showroom for all sorts of vehicles you can't buy in the US, namely those that don't meet US safety or emissions requirements. The Hilux being the notable example, though not covered in the below link.
Emissions? These are EVs mostly. And these cars are safe enough for the EU.
Any vehicles with GPS or cellular modules made in Russia or China are explicitly banned. There's also a pending law to ban any automakers that have 15% or greater ownership by people from China, Russia, or Iran.
They are just outright banned. Has nothing to do with safety or emissions.
I don't disagree, I only mention it to clarify that "available in Mexico but not the US" isn't limited to Chinese EVs. The article's tone in my opinion implies some kind of conspiracy to deprive the US of cool EVs, when in fact there is a much broader conspiracy to deprive us of Hiluxes (Hiluxi?)!
it is deeply ironic that a toyota hilux pickup truck - an actually practical pickup truck - does not meet US "standards" but the pedestrian killing, inefficient, wasteful, and expensive "pickups" from US auto companies somehow do.
The Hilux issue is a bit more complicated as a result of the "chicken tax" of 25% on imported light-duty trucks. Toyota made the Tacoma for the US market and built it here to avoid that tax, and now the economics of the Hilux don't make sense for them to import even if it met safety/emissions standards. It would certainly kill the market for the Tacoma.
Edit: My poor phrasing certainly did read that way though, I should have been more clear.
Here in South Africa I’m seeing more and more BYDs all the time, the high fuel prices due to the Iran war is making their entry level EV pay for itself for people with any kind of commute.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
You're well over the 90 day mark where E10 is well into its degradation and standard unleaded is starting to sour. A nice problem to have in many respects, but just to be aware!
I drive a Mitsubishi PHEV. And it enforces this by not letting you drive on battery until you fill at least 20L of new fuel. So you're forced to use a portion of the tank at least every 90 days.
Chery brands have 24% market share car sales in S.A - it was ironic seeing the BMW dealership closing in my town and being replaced by a BYD one.
It will be interesting to see how VW responds next year with the locally manufactured small SUV Tengo targeting the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro 4 - why bother with an old Polo Vivo when you get something WAY better and modern.
VWs are decent cars, but they've been somewhat "premiumly" priced since at least 2000, in my view the brand is irrationally overvalued by South Africans.
When I looked at a Polo around 2018, the finishes were a bit nicer, but compared to the Honda Jazz I went with (with CVT, cruise control, climate control) it was considerably more expensive.
BMWs and Mercedes are apparently having a really hard time here right now. Chinese cars are really comparable in terms of features and finish but for like half the price, the only other reason to buy a luxury German car is as a status symbol, but for the genuinely affluent here, a Mercedes or BMW isn't exclusive enough.
They're not dead yet as there are still quite a few South Africans who deem it essential to their social status to have the nicest possible car at the absolute limit of what they can afford. My theory on why they do this is because others can see the car they pitch up in, but don't see that each night it's parked outdoors of a rented apartment worth barely more (possibly less) than the car.
USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
Are there actual national security concerns though? Or is that just an excuse for protectionism? I suspect the latter, and in europe politicians may make the calculation that cheap cars > car manufaturing jobs.
Yes, there are huge national security concerns when everybody's cars are always on the network and all fly-by-wire. It would be trivial for anyone who writes the software for these things to include logic or network bombs in them that would enable a catastrophic strike on a country or the rest of the world. Cars being on the network all the time is really a terrifically stupid idea.
Careful readers may note the complete lack of the word "China" in the previous paragraph. But, yes, technically it is even that much more dangerous to have a whole bunch of potentially-hackable robots roaming up and down all your transportation corridors that were also created by your major economic and military rival.
But I don't even like it when it isn't created by your rival, though, because there's no guarantee that your rival can't hack anybody's software. I fear the day when some significant fraction of cars on the road are given instructions to floor the pedal and then do a hard turn to the left 10 seconds later. (Or the right for countries where that is the "turn into oncoming traffic" direction.)
So apparently Charlize Theron hacking self-driving cars for the "make it rain" one great scene in an installment of the Fast and The Furious franchise was not enough incentive for our short term gains corporate overlords to do anything about it. So apparently it takes your catastrophic strike(tm) to get the job done much like it took 9/11 to justify the price of reinforcing cockpit doors.
I do not like this. But it seems to be how it works here.
Europe and Germany invested heavily in the Nordstream pipelines despite USA repeatedly warning them that Russia would weaponize energy dependence against them [1]. Germany even continued shuttering their nuclear plants after Crimea because they loved the cheap gas.
The point is, Europe's judgement cannot be trusted. They have allowed themselves to become dependent on very risky globalized sources despite decades of warnings.
This is ridiculous comment. Europe invested in a partnership with Russia because they didn't want the US to continue to dominate them economically, especially when it comes to energy. Now they've been cut off from both Russian oil and West Asian oil and the result is a Europe that is powerless to stand up against the US.
The EU is stuck choosing which of their two masters they're stuck with until they switch to renewables
Obama and Merkel held a joint press conference in 2014 where Obama publicly warned about Germany's energy dependence on Russia and Merkel assured everyone that Germany had a "10 to 15 year plan" [1] and then proceeded to continue shutting down its nuclear plants anyway.
Three years later US Energy Secretary Rick Perry went to Poland and gave another speech imploring Germany not to shutter their nuclear plants.
Then Germany celebrated the closing of the last plant with festivities at the Brandenberg Gate and the very next year Russia invaded Ukraine.
I know it's easy to blame everything on some external factor, but sometimes Europe's problems really are simply because they make very bad decisions entirely on their own.
This. There are no words to describe how asinine Europe's (and in particular Germany's) energy policy is. And it's all self inflicted for largely ideological reasons.
and yet Russia didn't weaponize nordstream, meanwhile our "ally" Ukraine destroyed it for us and people still continue pumping there dozens of billions EUR on prolonging endless war
Russia would happily supply cheap gas, it is self imposed EU resrictions together with green deal shooting themselves in their own foot, same thing with EU airlines taking detour to avoid russian airspace while Chinese airlines happily save kerosene flying through RU airspace
... while Europe did not allow the Ukraine War to interrupt its longstanding massive purchase contracts for gas from Russia.
The United States is, contrary to what many subreddits' denizens seem to believe, not actually at war with Russia. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Anything the US does, or does not, regarding sanctions on Russia is up to the US to decide.
US, China, Israel? I am sure many companies will happily earn money supplying both sides while those idiots are figthting each other in endless war, there is only one winner in this war - military industrial complex.
Yes! This seems like such a patently obvious thing that it’s amazing it needs to be said. Yes! There are national security concerns with China having detailed transportation data from other countries! Good god I feel like I’m taking crazy pills that I have to type this.
I think there are legitimate safety and national security concerns. I also think restrictions are imposed for protectionism / political / monetary reasons. We are living in a world where the people making the decisions wait until there is enough personal gain to act in one direction or another.
Fines are not bans. American software companies are welcome to respect the law any time now. For a US reference, see the recent Meta fines in New Mexico.
That's why ban was in quotes. They say it's not allowed, but they would rather take money than disallow the software. It's just how they choose to enforce their laws.
USA doesn't want the software present in Chinese cars (or things like TikTok and networking infra) and "bans"/makes it illegal. Instead of fining the Chinese companies repeatedly, they block it. Perhaps because there are viable alternatives within the country.
"He who loves the profit of the tyrant must hate the Commonwealth, and he who loves the Commonwealth must hate the profit of tyranny, for what profits the sovereign does not always profit the Commonwealth." - paraphrased from the anti-Machiavel.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
It's not for national security. It's to protect Detroit.
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
The US could provide a means for importing cars with electronic risks - have the electronic "brain" be made in the US and have it plug into a "dumb" (or well-defined interface) body.
Does anyone know if you can buy one in Mexico and drive it across the border?
I imagine it is very complicated to own it long term in the US. But if it were legally registered in Mexico, could you drive it in the US for a period of time?
Mexican residents can bring a non us legal car to the us for up to a year. If you’re a US citizen living in Mexico it is more complicated but I think you should still be able to bring it for a year.
I noticed the same in India not long ago. Unlike in the US, there is broad cultural aspiration toward electric vehicles.
Even tuk-tuk/rickshaw drivers (who are largely lower income) have EV choices, while in the US lower income workers - like rideshare drivers - don't have many cheaper electric options, since EVs are mostly priced for upper income people.
It doesn't hurt that India has to import the vast majority of the petroleum it uses, and has unlimited solar resources.
> This sort of protectionism can work temporarily but isn’t really sustainable.
This policy isn't about trade. It's not even about automobiles, really. It's about hard power.
A nation's hard power in peacetime can be estimated (in part) by the number of tanks / planes / ships it has available, but in the event of a hot war with a great power, that static figure is matters less and less over time. In a protracted war, the far more important factor is the rate at which new tanks / planes / ships that can be manufactured going forward. Thus, in the context of America's strategic competition with China, our heavy industry is just as important a component of our hard power as are our existing stockpile of armaments.
If someone proposed that we send a sizable portion of our tanks/planes/ships over to China, we would easily identify that as an absurd strategic blunder. Why would you reduce your armaments stockpile while increasing that of your main strategic adversary?! Well, opening our automobile market to the Chinese would undoubtedly result in the equivalent outcome for armament manufacturing capacity. It would mean less domestic armament manufacturing capacity and more Chinese armament manufacturing capacity (subsidized by Americans!). To allow such a thing would also be an absurd strategic blunder!
We can all wish that the world was a peaceful place, and that the era of great power wars is behind us for good, but to mistake our wishes for reality would be very dangerous. Strength is the only source of security. This policy is a means of preserving what strength we have left.
People make a fuss about China unfairly subsidizing its auto industry but this is exactly how subsidies should work.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its own auto companies over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that is considered rugged capitalism at work.
Subsidies to keep a failing industry alive are, reasonably, seen as a different phenomenon than subsidies to help a successful industry beat its international competitors. If Americans want to toss a bunch of money into a hole to ensure people can keep buying F-150s as commuter cars, that's just not a big problem for anyone else.
No, between safety and emissions, a normal person effectively have to wait out the 25 year as spelled out in the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988. Once you hit that, it's relatively straightforward to import the car (straightforward if you know how to do it, there are importers who specialize in this market).
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
Definitely, and a lot still do. But buying a Tesla is like buying a BYD since they're the dominant brand they're likely to have better support. A lot of lessons were learned on the Nissan Leaf, Ford Lightning, and even to this day buying a Rivian is like buying a BMW in that you know maintenance/repairability will be painful.
Submarine. China desperate to find a market for these dubious vehicles because domestic economy and market in very bad shape right now and getting worse.
It would be extraordinarily simple to remedy this: Require by law the technical ability to physically disable all remote communication to and from a vehicle, and prohibit any remote communication requirement from the core functions of a vehicle.
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
---
Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
BYD cars were my biggest tourist attraction on my last trip to Mexico, it was what I was looking forward to seeing the most, as soon as I got out the airport and saw taxis using them
I tried to like Teslas, but I find them incredibly cheap and uncomfortable. The road noise is worse than a 27 year old Subaru, which I found baffling since there's not even an engine, and I thought they were supposed to be aerodynamic and smooth.
But no, they're harsh and always feel like you're driving on a noisy worn out road.
What's the appeal of Teslas? For the price premium of them, what do you actually get?
I'm no fan of Teslas but they do still have one distinguishing feature over other EVs: last I checked, they were still by far the most efficient, in terms of kWh per km. It's as if nobody else even bothers streamlining their cars, they're too busy making chunky SUVs with massive grilles.
It's weird that for petrol cars, most people are really concerned with miles-per-gallon (maybe not so much in the US, until recently), yet for EVs all anyone seems to care about is range. I guess electricity is cheap enough that efficiency doesn't really matter, except when it gives you more range?
My wife has a new EV and it says we saved 44 gallons this month and I only spent $100 on charging. $45 dollars of it was testing an expensive DC charger that’s 3x as expensive as my house.
At current US prices that would be, what, $150-$200 in gasoline? So the electricity is 2x cheaper. That’s a great saving, but you could save that much with a hybrid as well. It still seems worth making the EV as efficient as possible.
They're the safest cars on the road and they drive themselves. If you want to maximize your family's safety, you put them in a Tesla. For me, the stress of driving is completely gone now. Traffic jams, slow drivers, complicated turns in unfamiliar areas, none of that bothers me anymore.
If Chinese cars were available here for cheaper, drove themselves just as well, and were similarly safe, I'd consider them.
There are relatively few ways to mask the fact that a car weighs 2000kg. One of the non-ways of solving that problem is to put ultra-low-profile tires on huge wheels to make it look cool online and ride like shit.
Yeah I feel like the low profile tire trend is terrible in a lot of ways. Tire wear, resistance to flats, mileage, and road noise immediately come to mind.
I found the user experience terrible as well - just trying to turn on the wipers or change the heat required trying to remember where they were in nested menus on a touchscreen while driving at 100kmh on the 401.
I'm calling BS on "road noise is worse than a 27 year old Subaru", this is an insane claim that needs some hard evidence. Please just google what you actually get, or test drive one. They've been a best selling vehicle brand for a few years, with literally millions on the road at any given time.
If you can't be bothered to operate in even a little bit of good faith, please stop littering forums.
I know they sell great, and my most measures they are a win, glad they allowed EVs to go mainstream, I love it. It just isn't the car for me, I don't like the driving experience, their features aren't my interests (dont care about screens or self driving and the materials or comfort, for me).
I'm not going to get decibel meters, but they are just "loud" and harsh to my feeling. Maybe its the lack of the engine behaviors in a regular car, and the silence of the EV makes the road noise seem more than it really is, I dunno. Other EVs feel quieter, more insulated, but only so much weight you can add to hit a target efficiency, I get it.
Just my opinions, man
Fair enough, I got a bit defensive and came off a bit harder than intended. I just get frustrated hearing a lot of comments like this then it turns out the people never even went in a Tesla for more than one Uber ride to an airport or something, yet they take every chance to spew hate. There are plenty of things that are not perfect about Tesla's but their acoustics imo are one of the best parts. I drive one daily and I've been in old and new suburus and it's crazy to me that they can be compared, but also I understand that there are many factors that could make significant changes to the comparison.
This response is half a decade old. I use FSD every day and it drives much much safer than I would. I've owned my Tesla for less than 2 years and it improves further with every update.
There is path loss to consider. I would imagine that large scale electricity generation is more efficient than small scale ICE engines, and EVs have regeneration, so probably the EVs still come out ahead.
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
Even the worst ev driven off coal nets out to less emissions in its lifetime than gas cars. this has been known and well studied for like a decade. Keep up!
Also their LFP batteries are extremely simple and recyclable forever.
lumping those all together is missing half the point, ng in at least in the us where its a by product of oil extraction is a huge step up from coal/oil and will be with us for a very long time
I just wish that I could buy something akin to a modern EV version of a Honda Fit, Honda Element, or Toyota Matrix. Something that's affordable, not huge, and is a great town car but also brings utility and versatility highly disproportionate to its size and cost. I don't even care if it looks dorky.
This is the exact type of vehicle that manufacturers selling in the US seem to have an extreme allergy to. If it can't be badged as an SUV, isn't saddled with a needlessly space-inefficient interior, and can't carry an exorbitant price tag it won't be sold.
0, https://www.carscoops.com/2026/08/chinese-automakers-lauchin...
[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...
That said... many of the different EVs sit on the same base, so maybe it won't actually be as hard to get parts as it seems.
You stated your comment in the future tense. What are you anticipating?
At one point, BYD was the top choice of EV buses in the U.S. They were blacklisted by every transit agency in America even before Trump's order because their vehicles were less reliable than the 40+ year old buses they were replacing.
It's more important that we protect domestic industry and good union jobs than it is for us to import EVs at lower prices.
Here's a great article I shared elsewhere: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/china-cars-domestic-sale-...
(In one noted instance from the article a company built (through local government subsidies and tax breaks and other schemes) capacity to build around 100,000 cars/year and have only built 600 to date.I'm not saying that will happen with cars, but it is something to think about.
Not being able to repair something isn't the same as not needing repair. Had lots of CRT Sony TVs over the yeasr and they definitely had issues.
I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.
We’ll see how this plays out, but the industry definitely needs a calibration
You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.
I don't say this happily.
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...
Why was this not a problem in the past? I know covid and tariffs have changed the supply picture a lot but I was vaguely under the impression there was some kind of parts availability requirement for manufacturers.
But where did that replacement dash assembly come from? They just intentionally made it less granular because make number go up.
I see your point, but it's a slightly different one.
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.
I visited this year again. Almost none of the new cars were German. I did not see most of their latest models on the streets. And I definitely did not see a single German electric car.
They now have a dozen of brands some of them under the tech umbrella of Huawei that provides the info-entertainment and auto pilot and they are everywhere! And btw the assembly quality was now reaally nice.
No idea about their safety or longevity, but it was nice being driven in them
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.
What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.
So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.
The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.
And indeed, Tesla is gaining share in Europe. <https://www.kansas.com/news/business/article317450876.html>
I searched around and found this site:
https://www.eu-evs.com/brandCharts/TESLA/GB/Volumes-Yearly
You can pick other counties, manufacturers and views etc.
My own anecdata from Nordics is that Musk was out of the news for a while but has put himself back in the bad light again last week with the Ukraine horrible behavior and there’s a bit of coverage of his funding midterms too.
Even the dramatic price deals Tesla have been offering won’t really tempt back the educated disposable income environmentally conscious early adopters who used to champion him when Tesla swept into the market with the first viable EVs.
Where I am it is Kia that has taken Tesla’s place as the go-to EV brand.
>hardly see a Tesla in London
Is that through competition, or because people don't want to be openly associated with Nazis?
Jaecoo and BYD are well-known brands now in UK, however.
I wouldn't hold your breath. US manufacturers and their unions are very well taken care of in Washington, DC. Been that way for decades and will likely be that way for several more, unless something entirely unforeseen happens.
And the rise of the AfD.
Having said that, if the only choice is cars with screens and touch controls...no thanks.
I live in a country who's indigenous auto industry was already killed off in the 1970s. So people here have no real loyalty and will happily buy any newcomers. Toyota, Kia, BYD- if it's good people will buy it.
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/10/05/gas-cars-fall-below-50-percen...
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
https://www.jalopnik.com/the-coolest-non-us-cars-americans-c...
Any vehicles with GPS or cellular modules made in Russia or China are explicitly banned. There's also a pending law to ban any automakers that have 15% or greater ownership by people from China, Russia, or Iran.
They are just outright banned. Has nothing to do with safety or emissions.
Edit: My poor phrasing certainly did read that way though, I should have been more clear.
Nobody has said the Hilux can't be sold in USA. Toyota simply hasn't tried.
That infact made me consider BYD even more seriously. Being able to see the car in person is far more impressive the a YouTube video.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
It will be interesting to see how VW responds next year with the locally manufactured small SUV Tengo targeting the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro 4 - why bother with an old Polo Vivo when you get something WAY better and modern.
It needs to retail at R269,000.00 or cheaper.
When I looked at a Polo around 2018, the finishes were a bit nicer, but compared to the Honda Jazz I went with (with CVT, cruise control, climate control) it was considerably more expensive.
BMWs and Mercedes are apparently having a really hard time here right now. Chinese cars are really comparable in terms of features and finish but for like half the price, the only other reason to buy a luxury German car is as a status symbol, but for the genuinely affluent here, a Mercedes or BMW isn't exclusive enough.
They're not dead yet as there are still quite a few South Africans who deem it essential to their social status to have the nicest possible car at the absolute limit of what they can afford. My theory on why they do this is because others can see the car they pitch up in, but don't see that each night it's parked outdoors of a rented apartment worth barely more (possibly less) than the car.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
Careful readers may note the complete lack of the word "China" in the previous paragraph. But, yes, technically it is even that much more dangerous to have a whole bunch of potentially-hackable robots roaming up and down all your transportation corridors that were also created by your major economic and military rival.
But I don't even like it when it isn't created by your rival, though, because there's no guarantee that your rival can't hack anybody's software. I fear the day when some significant fraction of cars on the road are given instructions to floor the pedal and then do a hard turn to the left 10 seconds later. (Or the right for countries where that is the "turn into oncoming traffic" direction.)
I do not like this. But it seems to be how it works here.
The point is, Europe's judgement cannot be trusted. They have allowed themselves to become dependent on very risky globalized sources despite decades of warnings.
[1] https://2021-2025.state.gov/nord-stream-2-and-potential-sanc...
The EU is stuck choosing which of their two masters they're stuck with until they switch to renewables
Three years later US Energy Secretary Rick Perry went to Poland and gave another speech imploring Germany not to shutter their nuclear plants.
Then Germany celebrated the closing of the last plant with festivities at the Brandenberg Gate and the very next year Russia invaded Ukraine.
I know it's easy to blame everything on some external factor, but sometimes Europe's problems really are simply because they make very bad decisions entirely on their own.
[1] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/0...
Russia would happily supply cheap gas, it is self imposed EU resrictions together with green deal shooting themselves in their own foot, same thing with EU airlines taking detour to avoid russian airspace while Chinese airlines happily save kerosene flying through RU airspace
Can you source your statement that China is supplying drone components to Russia?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/09/06/china-secr...
The United States is, contrary to what many subreddits' denizens seem to believe, not actually at war with Russia. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Anything the US does, or does not, regarding sanctions on Russia is up to the US to decide.
Or just Yojimbo it.
https://www.xtb.com/int/market-analysis/news-and-research/eu...
USA doesn't want the software present in Chinese cars (or things like TikTok and networking infra) and "bans"/makes it illegal. Instead of fining the Chinese companies repeatedly, they block it. Perhaps because there are viable alternatives within the country.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/12/eu-deal-...
And personally I trust a Tesla as much as chinese car. But a VW one only slightly more.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
And that is perfectly reasonable. I go further and disable the cellular modem even in a domestically made car.
I imagine it is very complicated to own it long term in the US. But if it were legally registered in Mexico, could you drive it in the US for a period of time?
Even tuk-tuk/rickshaw drivers (who are largely lower income) have EV choices, while in the US lower income workers - like rideshare drivers - don't have many cheaper electric options, since EVs are mostly priced for upper income people.
It doesn't hurt that India has to import the vast majority of the petroleum it uses, and has unlimited solar resources.
And it’s not like GM and friends are catching up. If anything the gap is widening rapidly.
This policy isn't about trade. It's not even about automobiles, really. It's about hard power.
A nation's hard power in peacetime can be estimated (in part) by the number of tanks / planes / ships it has available, but in the event of a hot war with a great power, that static figure is matters less and less over time. In a protracted war, the far more important factor is the rate at which new tanks / planes / ships that can be manufactured going forward. Thus, in the context of America's strategic competition with China, our heavy industry is just as important a component of our hard power as are our existing stockpile of armaments.
If someone proposed that we send a sizable portion of our tanks/planes/ships over to China, we would easily identify that as an absurd strategic blunder. Why would you reduce your armaments stockpile while increasing that of your main strategic adversary?! Well, opening our automobile market to the Chinese would undoubtedly result in the equivalent outcome for armament manufacturing capacity. It would mean less domestic armament manufacturing capacity and more Chinese armament manufacturing capacity (subsidized by Americans!). To allow such a thing would also be an absurd strategic blunder!
We can all wish that the world was a peaceful place, and that the era of great power wars is behind us for good, but to mistake our wishes for reality would be very dangerous. Strength is the only source of security. This policy is a means of preserving what strength we have left.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its own auto companies over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that is considered rugged capitalism at work.
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
2. Buy a scrapped Tesla in the US.
3. Rebadge the BYD with the Tesla's logos.
4. Bury the Tesla in your yard.
5. Register the rebadged BYD with the Tesla's VIN, slap some plates on it, and drive.
"EVs you can't buy in the US yet." Give it a couple of years.
https://duckduckgo.com/&q=i+went+to+mexico+to+test+drive+the...
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
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Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
It's weird that for petrol cars, most people are really concerned with miles-per-gallon (maybe not so much in the US, until recently), yet for EVs all anyone seems to care about is range. I guess electricity is cheap enough that efficiency doesn't really matter, except when it gives you more range?
If Chinese cars were available here for cheaper, drove themselves just as well, and were similarly safe, I'd consider them.
Temp is always visible in bottom left of screen, no sub menu needed
And you can use voice commands for anything, you should test drive a new one
If you can't be bothered to operate in even a little bit of good faith, please stop littering forums.
Please provide a better source if you have one
https://www.iea.org/countries/mexico/electricity
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
It is well proven that even with electricity made 100% from coal an EV is still better than an ICE.
https://theicct.org/publication/electric-cars-life-cycle-ana...
Also their LFP batteries are extremely simple and recyclable forever.
This is the exact type of vehicle that manufacturers selling in the US seem to have an extreme allergy to. If it can't be badged as an SUV, isn't saddled with a needlessly space-inefficient interior, and can't carry an exorbitant price tag it won't be sold.