When China’s BYD recently overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla as the global leader in sales of electric vehicles, casual observers of the auto industry might have been surprised.
But what’s caught other carmakers around the world off-guard is something else about BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway: its low prices.
“No one can match BYD on price. Period,” Michael Dunne, CEO of Asia-focused car consultancy Dunne Insights, told the Financial Times. “Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea and Japan are in a state of shock.”
BYD can keeps its costs low in part because it owns the entire supply chain of its EV batteries, from the raw materials to the finished battery packs. That matters because a battery accounts for about 40% of a new electric vehicle’s price.
I’m saying they’re not fit for purpose, America has a shit ton of road and pedestrian deaths. The safety regulations don’t do enough.
Hey since you seem to be ignorant of old car safety hazards ive got a '78 Ford pinto to sell you.
But seriously modern American cars (or atleast the post 80s ones) are a shitton safer than their old counterparts. And this is coming from someone who loves old piece of shit cars (Id drive the Homer).
Modern American safety features to a point were paid in blood. Tuna canning in small cars is isnt nearly as common as it once was, and the pealing the smashed in head of the drive off of the stearing wheel isnt all that common anymore.
There are certainly some so called safety features that are laregly pointless IMO but my hatred of back up cams aside, survivability of car crashes have skyrocketed.