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Sure. If it were well made, had a good safety record, affordable replacement parts and didn’t phone home.
Same considerations I give to any other car.
Are there any new cars that don’t phone home?
By don’t phone home you mean don’t phone YOUR home, right? 😂 I got plenty of their calls last week.
100% I’d consider it. For me, “Chinese EVs are dangerous” is in the same category as “immigrants are causing affordability issues.” Red herrings peddled by the North American uber-wealth class
Totally agree.
It sucks, but Chinese manufacturing has an uphill battle in a market where people got addicted to cheap, and cheaply made Chinese products.
Doesn’t mean chinese factories can’t make a good new thing.
According to statistical data from China’s National Fire and Rescue Administration, the rate of spontaneous fires in NEVs increased by 32 percent in the first quarter of 2024. This means that currently, an average of eight NEVs catch fire in China every day — nearly 3,000 a year.
In late 2023, news that four BYD dealerships were stricken by fire in a single month made waves on social media.
One owner of a BYD car described how, when charging their vehicle, the car suddenly began emitting smoke and soon thereafter spontaneously burst into flames.
Buy a BYD, make a battery warranty claim and then tell me again how good it is. Its Burn Your Driveway good. They have already been caught out breaking Australian consumer warranty law. Early adopters who advocated for them, now paying the price and advocating against them when their 1 year 30,000km warranty claim from a dead battery was rejected.
Isn’t BYD the world’s #1 or #2 battery company?
They ought to respect consumer protections and warranty laws but I don’t think dismissal of their batteries outright makes sense.
I don’t really have a problem with a certain amount of protectionism as a concept, but Canada has a long history of granting special privileges to specific companies in key industries, then sitting back while those powers are used to mercilessly abuse consumers. I’m not super confident this is going to be any different.
No such thing.
The $10k Chinese EV is only $10k in China. When localized for other markets, it’s much closer to the same price as all other EVs. Some of this is tariffs, but there’s a bunch of changes they need to make to meet safety requirements. Even the $15k Seagull they talk about in the article is expected to be the cheapest offering in Europe, eventually, and they’re aiming for 20k Euros, which is 30k CAD.
Why when I can buy reliable and well-made cars from the North America and Japan?
Ideally to drive the price of competing cars down or at the very least make the current models more feature rich/compelling than their cheaper Chinese counterparts to justify the price gap.
As it stands, Chinese built EV’s have feature parity for the most part with locally built or otherwise imported EV’s. All at a relatively great price for the product.
But they are not held to the same labor standards, environmental standards, intellectual property laws, or fair financial support.
So of course they’re cheaper and of course they have parody because they’re using forced labor stolen intellectual property and being funded by an authoritarian regime.
If China’s willing to play on the big stage and a somewhat fair way then maybe I would consider buying a vehicle from them.
So what if it was a Chinese car that was imported through Chevrolet and Ford and assembled in America using 100% made Chinese parts?
There are similar occurrences in the past with ice vehicles.
I am deeply skeptical of China’s commitment to consumer safety.
There’s still a few years to see how they fare in other countries before possibly arriving in North America if that’s where you reside. Lots of time to deliberate!
They should build a factory in Canada like the rest of the autos. Then labor practices and safety will follow Canadian standards, and more of the significant purchase price will remain in our local economy. That will also level the playing field with other Canadian made cars instead of decimating the future of the industry, since lower cost EVs are far from profitable yet. Yes #FuckCars and all that, but there always will be a need for cars even if we drive fewer of them. It’s good to be able to build EVs in Canada. The neoliberal dream that we can offshore and buy things made anywhere in the world while having people in our economy flourish has failed. Doing more of it won’t make it work.
Lots of BYD in Europe, you can watch them on YT or others, people love them
As long as they meet or exceed safety regulations here and all customer data is stored in North America with any software updates being managed and delivered through a non-china entity then I’m fine with it.
Even better, all software should be required to be open source for security.
Do people just love them because of the low price though? If they cost the same as a Tesla would people still love them?
What’s to gains:
BYD, a Chinese car manufacturing giant, debuted its Seagull EV last year at a starting price of about $14,600 Cdn for a 305-kilometre-range version. The cheapest options available in Canada, by contrast, start at roughly $38,000.
What’s at risk:
The stakes are high. Since 2020, Canada has attracted more than $46 billion in investments for 13 electric vehicle, battery and battery component manufacturing projects, according to a June 18 report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The same report says that Ottawa and the provinces have jointly promised up to $53 billion in return, including tax credits, production subsidies and capital investments. Industry groups, such as the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, warn all of that could be at risk if the industry isn’t protected.
Your second quote sounds a lot like typical complaining from american manufacturers about how cheap imports “ruin the free market” unless they are heavily taxed or banned. This isnt about the consumer or about corporate subsidies. North american manufacturers have no interest in making affordable cars because their profits on more luxurious models are higher. They will beg governments to ban their competitors so they can keep their share of the market without actually providing what the market wants.
If it didn’t have survalance sensors and had no internet connectivity, yes
That’s EVERY car now. Even if it is not enabled for the owner the hardware and software is present.
Thats why I’m saying that if they provided it, I’d buy it. Because its impossible to find a privacy friendly car. There’s a market for it.
I’ve seen articles of how the car maker will sell this to insurance and if you do anything wrong your rate will go up.
If I ever buy a new car you can bet I’ll be doing research on how to rip that shit out. Won’t even drive it home from the dealer without getting in there first.
If it can be removed. Car electronics are as integrated as your phone removing or disabling individual parts can totally fubar the car. Canada (and the rest of the world) needs to set some seriously harsh standards for vehicles and digital privacy.
When I need a new car it’ll be well researched and proven to be possible, or it will be a old 1990’s car and I’ll upgrade parts. I don’t mind soldering, researching chips, removing any antennas, etc.
In any case, It’s public knowledge so hopefully we get laws or something first to stop this shit.
https://pirg.org/articles/car-companies-are-sneakily-selling-your-driving-data/
Then again. My rate might go up because my car doesn’t submit reports
Without missing a heartbeat. Cars made in China tend to have extremely cool gadgets you never see in European cars. Be it front, back, lateral facing cameras or any other type of sensors. They’ve got so many cool stuff we’re just missing out on, man.
As long as it can pass Canadian safety regulations (so I won’t try to buy one through a back-channel import), I’d be fine with it.
Honestly I’d trust Chinese manufacturers more to just give me the basics of just driving and less of the unnecessary frills that make it a data hogging iPad on wheels.
Probably not, since their routers and other devices have shown what appears like purposeful security openings and data harvesting, I would not trust an EV from China to not log all my info. Or worse a remote kill to disable all vehicles when China doesn’t get what it wants and throws a tantrum
Yes.
No, I prefer being alive
If they sold cars that killed the owners, then they wouldn’t be able to sell more cars.
Sure you can have pessimism, totally understandable, but you should temper that pessimism with a modicum of pragmatism.
You do know that companies sell products that kill their consumers every single day right?
Chinese is almost synonymous with “cheap, low quality products” and when you make a cheap low quality car, people die. They’re going to come up with the next Pinto, I’m sure of it.
I don’t even want cars made in America.
New cars have an internet connection and GPS now, even if it is not exposed to the driver it is there.
New cars have one of those fucking touch screens in the dash leaving many of the features of your car held hostage by the lowest-bidder firmware that will never get an update and can not be replaced. That lowest-bidder firmware is also insecure, exposing your movement and vehicle features (engine control, transmission control, body control, climate control, locks, steering, braking, and the radio) to whoever happens to take the time to break it. When Dodge got owned a few year ago the problem was so big that they only way to prevent bad actors from owning cars was to block all traffic to the vehicles externally, the cars could not be made secure on their own.
New cars have horrible physical security as well, using the same CAN bus to operate exterior lights and unlock the fucking doors. They are vulnerable to replay/relay attacks which are possible with $50 off the shelf hardware. A lot of cars even let you program a band new fob with bluetooth, so for under 100 bucks someone can just drive away with your $60k phone on wheels.
Before we start deciding which country has the best cars how about we set some strong standards for the quality of all vehicles on Canadian roads?
