China car giant BYD says it can thrive without US

I was curious about that so tried googling ….

Canadian buses were

• earlier models - I see years like 2018
• at least some were built in a new plant in Canada
• part of the blame was lack of spare parts
• part of the blame was limited range, especially in winter

London buses

• newer. I see years like 2024
• no real winter
• I see articles about a new larger battery to fix range issues
• appeared to have similar problems, including a major recall for fire risk

Maybe London benefitted from newer models and doesn’t get as cold as canada

Wasn’t just Canada, US cities all had problems in testing.

Good. Those names have been during way too smugly for the quality of their vehicles.

Competition: the final boss of capitalism.

I can confirm the price of new cars in France, it seems to be everywhere. Also, “thanks to” leasing, you would think most people can afford BMWs and brand new big cars at a very high price. It’s really irresponsible when you know that they don’t earn enough for those cars, and they will lose thousands of dollars in the process.

Average new car price has gone up a lot because the average new car has been purchased by rich people who demand high performance and luxury features. And rich people have been doing great the last 50 years, so the top of the market has totally run away with high prices.

If you actually dig into specific models and what they go for, you see that the most basic cars have only gone up slightly in price, but are also much higher performing (0-60 times, quarter mile times, braking distance), more efficient (better highway/city gas mileage), more reliable (more miles/years to failure), and have a lot more standard features that used to be expensive add-ons (automatic transmissions, power windows/locks, power steering), and are generally better constructed (smaller panel gaps, better sound proofing/vibrations), and much, much safer by pretty much every measure.

Today’s cars, even the cheapest ones, are much better than the cars from the 90’s, much less the cars from the 70’s (5-digit odometers because getting past 100,000 miles wasn’t necessarily expected, bodies that rusted within a decade of normal use).

So if a first generation Honda Civic in 1974 cost $3000 in 1974 dollars (inflation adjusted to $21,000 today), we should compare what that car was, compared to what a Honda Civic is today (starting at around $25,000 for the barebones model, $30,000 for a few nicer features). Compare torque/horsepower specs, actual performance at 0-60/quarter mile, gas mileage, all of that. I’m not entirely convinced that the people of 1974 were getting a better bargain on their cars than today’s new economy car buyer.

I hate that cars have gotten so big, and that the SUV is basically the American default at this point. But I don’t think that car prices have actually gone up that high in the 30 years I’ve been driving. And cars from before I was driving just…sucked.

Are you sure on the TPMS date? I’ve got a vehicle that’s much newer than 2007 that doesn’t have it

Yeah, even before its ceo came out of the closet as Nazi- after growing to a successful car business they got distracted by new and shiny

But I still think their cars are better technology than anything else in the us, and now cheaper than most. They still have their big upcoming push into semis. They still have most superchargers. They still have a rapidly growing storage business. The cybertruck flop really hurt them and I don’t see how they can afford another.

But ai doesn’t really have a profitably business model yet and humanoid robots are a much bigger gamble with no market yet. This is where a more typical business owner would create new corporate entities so Tesla could become a successful car company while the ceo could try other gambles

now both Hyundai and Kia have stopped selling EV models last year solely in the US

They’re basically one company and they stopped importing EVs. They still build and sell plenty of new EVs in the U.S., made in their plants in the state of Georgia. They’re also currently expanding capacity at their plants, in the hopes of catching more of the growing electric SUV market.

So they no longer sell the top of the line trim level of the Kia EV6, or the Hyundai Ioniq 6, but they’re still building and selling very similar models on the same platform. The Kia EV6 still exists in the lower trim levels, and the Ioniq 6N and the Ioniq 5 and 5N, and their smaller EVs (Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona) are still available, too. Both brands launched their 3-row electric SUVs in the US, too (Hyundai Ioniq 9, Kia EV9).

A lot of companies are slowing down their EV rollouts, but I wouldn’t say that Hyundai/Kia is the best example of that.

Hyundai has pulled the ioniq 6 but the ioniq 5 and soon to be ioniq3 are sold in the USA still. Unless there was some news I missed. For Kia, Im not sure what their status is.

My own opinion, they were too expensive and the EV charging network wasn’t built up enough to prevent people from feeling like the available range options weren’t large enough.

If you are making an ad campaign, all of the US speaks the same language, generally has the same safety regulations, and a much larger percent of the people are your target ad personnel

The EU is a cohesive unit for regulations but speak many different language and once you branch out of the EU to all of Europe you can see why there are huge advantages to advertising in the US.

So no it’s not the absolute number that matters