From what I hear BYD is better than Tesla at this point. I think we’ve come to the time where China is reaching parity with us tech. I mean what do we have that they don’t?
It is very, VERY far from being that simple. They are several decades behind the US and EU in jet turbine technology, for instance. And their chip foundries are definitely not considered bleeding edge. You have to go to SK and Taiwan for that. And part of Taiwan’s publicized defense policy is “we will melt our chip foundries to slag if the PRC invades”. Them being basically the best in the world at chip fabrication was a strategic investment (in a very literal geopolitical sense) that they began in the 70s and 80s.
“Better” doesn’t tell the whole story. There are hundreds if not thousands of different technologies involved in making an electric vehicle, from material selection for the frame to batteries to all the different components, software, conforming, etc. BYD cars may be overall superior to Tesla cars (I don’t know if they are, both are above my budget) but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t two or three hundred little things that Tesla cars still do better.
The irony being, I trust the BYD vehicles more than I do Tesla to hold up. Chinese quality =/= crap quality anymore. They’ve done a massive manufacturing speedrun from zero to competitive in less than 20 years.
And Tesla’s been a constant pain of manufacturing blunders and recalls and dumb designs that break in stupid ways or are outright dangerous, even if they had EV tech way ahead of everyone else for the first 15 years of EVs being on the road.
Of course, shoddy knockoff products do exist still, but BYD and Xiaomi are not that.
BYD still isn’t as profitable on their EVs as well. They make most of their money on the PHEVs.
Obviously this decline in sales has an impact on that, but that’s a political/brand damage/Elon thing, not Tesla’s ability to make EVs that are more profitable.
From what I hear BYD is better than Tesla at this point. I think we’ve come to the time where China is reaching parity with us tech. I mean what do we have that they don’t?
It’s way past parity.
It is very, VERY far from being that simple. They are several decades behind the US and EU in jet turbine technology, for instance. And their chip foundries are definitely not considered bleeding edge. You have to go to SK and Taiwan for that. And part of Taiwan’s publicized defense policy is “we will melt our chip foundries to slag if the PRC invades”. Them being basically the best in the world at chip fabrication was a strategic investment (in a very literal geopolitical sense) that they began in the 70s and 80s.
Taiwan specializes in microchips, and China having to order chips from them isn’t a big deal … in terms of building/assembling an electric car.
The question was “what do we have that they don’t” and the answer is “it’s complicated, but the list is not short”
“Better” doesn’t tell the whole story. There are hundreds if not thousands of different technologies involved in making an electric vehicle, from material selection for the frame to batteries to all the different components, software, conforming, etc. BYD cars may be overall superior to Tesla cars (I don’t know if they are, both are above my budget) but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t two or three hundred little things that Tesla cars still do better.
The irony being, I trust the BYD vehicles more than I do Tesla to hold up. Chinese quality =/= crap quality anymore. They’ve done a massive manufacturing speedrun from zero to competitive in less than 20 years.
And Tesla’s been a constant pain of manufacturing blunders and recalls and dumb designs that break in stupid ways or are outright dangerous, even if they had EV tech way ahead of everyone else for the first 15 years of EVs being on the road.
Of course, shoddy knockoff products do exist still, but BYD and Xiaomi are not that.
BYD still isn’t as profitable on their EVs as well. They make most of their money on the PHEVs.
Obviously this decline in sales has an impact on that, but that’s a political/brand damage/Elon thing, not Tesla’s ability to make EVs that are more profitable.