BYD overtook Tesla as the world’s top seller of electric vehicles (EV) at the end of last year, crowning an extraordinary rise for the Chinese carmaker.
It delivered more fully electric cars than Tesla for the first time in the three-month period to December 31, and slashed the sales lead held by Elon Musk’s company over the year as a whole.
So how did a little-known Chinese battery maker grow so quickly to become Tesla’s biggest rival?
I can’t imagine Chinese automakers and specifically BYD are incapable of meeting USA safety regulations, there just has to be enough money in the USA market to make it worth it to put the extra effort in. The fact that Vinfast (from Vietnam) was able to pass the USA regulations with their new car for sale in the USA is good evidence meeting the safety measures is not only possible but not a monumental feat.
There’s too much profit in selling cars in the USA (and the rest of the world as a market continues to be saturated) for Chinese automakers to skip the USA forever.
Oh, I agree entirely that BYD is totally capable of producing vehicles that would pass US standards, I do apologize if I came off as suggesting otherwise.
It’s more that part of the reason that BYD is successful is that their cars are much more “basic” than US counterparts, where what used to be “luxuries” in the 1980s and 90s are now included in every new US vehicle. You can’t find a US vehicle with no power locks, no power windows, no computer dashboard, just buttons and knobs and an FM radio.
BYD is quite capable, but doing all those things to pass US safety standards would drastically increase the cost of their vehicles, and thus they would probably be making that line for the US only. It costs quite a bit to spin up manufacturing for just one country that’s different than the rest. Makes way more sense to stay streamlined and keep business in markets that accept them as-is.
The bigger point was that the US is unlikely to change its safety standards to accept them simply because the US government is totally broken and unable to even pass a budget without it being a total shitshow.
The failure here is on the part of the US government, not BYD.
It sounds like you’re talking about BYD from about 10 years ago. Modern BYD cars rival western, Japanese and Korean brands sold in the USA today:
Here’s the BYD Seal which is the chief competitor to the Tesla Model 3 as an example: