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BYD's allowed to sell in Europe. They're not crushing the market here. They're not substantially cheaper, or better for what they offer for the price compared to other manufacturers.


Within only a few months I see more Chinese Electric cars than Tesla (or us cars generally) on swiss streets.

Depending on what you are looking for they are WAY cheaper than comparable cars.


No way I'd trust them. When you crash them or they have a battery fault, the doors lock you inside before the battery catches fire. Many videos of this happening inside China with one recent event in the West.


> No way I'd trust them. When you crash them or they have a battery fault, the doors lock you inside before the battery catches fire.

This matches reports from Tesla users. The cybertruck is specially prone to this sort of design problems.


Only cybertrucks I've heard about catching on fire where the ones purposely set on fire. While I'm sure it happens I doubt it's any higher than any other vehicle on the road


Why is that a common failure mode in a crash? I can't think of a reason or bug that would lead to the doors locking after a crash.


Fail-safe designs are more expensive because they require redundancies, fully manual linkages, or just non-centralized control.

The Cybertruck went with daisy chained PoE automotive Ethernet variant. The same cables delivering power to subcomponents handle data. Damage/problems in a single component can not only bring down the network but kill power to all the car's subsystems. It means less wiring in the Cybertruck (and lower production expense) at the cost of durability and fail-safety. Someone looked at TokenRing Ethernet and said "yes that is best".


I think it's a well intentioned safety feature that was never fully thought through. Locking the doors in a crash can prevent a passenger from being ejected from a vehicle. However, if there is no reliable way to unlock the door once the acceleration forces have subsided, you've created a death trap.


Most cars lock as you start driving, I assume the issue is they’re not unlocking when crashed.


There's a mechanical latch release handle integrated into the doors, but they are very much not meant to be used during normal operation and are designed to be inconspicuous. This seems to cause at least some people to fail to operate them during a fast-paced emergency situation.


Are there not similar videos of Tesla, or other electric cars doing the exact same thing?


Can you share some of those videos here please?


That sounds like some kind of tiktok scare lol


VW is selling more EVs in Europe than BYD.


VW is not an American car maker. There are way more European cars in Switzerland than either Chinese or US. Obviously. Also more Japanese tho


EU import taxes designed to make them less cheap than local cars do that.


China has one of the least free trade regimes in the world, their currency controls alone amount to potentially more than Euro tariffs on cars and that’s just one part of their governmental stacking of the deck for their manufacturers.

I think it’s easy to look at the outputs of their industries and compare them extremely favorably to the outputs elsewhere, especially in EV.

But once you start comparing tariff adjusted pricing it gets much trickier much faster.


The EU has imposed tariffs and levies on BYD, totaling 27% [1].

[1] https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/chinese-e...


BYD could slash european prices by quite a bit. They price them competitively to take advantage of the margin. The increase in price compared to their domestic MSRP is pretty wild, 2x in some cases. In a race to the bottom, they will win.


You're right, but comparing Switzerland to America... You need a car to live in 90% of the USA. That said, talking only about specs or prices is pretty reductionist. If anyone on this forum could forecast car sales based on pre-delivery marketing, you know, become a billionaire investor.




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