I live in Europe: My only “concern” about chinese cars (and I don’t mean chinese as in Volvo) that I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years. More than 500 unique models were released in
the first 6 months of 2026 alone [0]. It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago. Brands you never heared about, never updated Android versions etc
Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.
Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).
> I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years
Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.
I live in the United States: My only "concern" about cars made here is that the parts are and will be exorbitantly high due to protectionism by our government and will be a lot more for a lot fewer features, efficiency and innovation and we'll have to win a class action lawsuit to even open the hoods of cars we "own" so we can repair them ourselves.
I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.
I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.
We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.
I mean the core feature here is a vastly simplified drivetrain and often modular parts borrowed or 'appropriated' from the best of existing marques. There's a lot less to go wrong versus any existing ICE platform, and the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the the high-end BYD stuff.
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
Slight nitpick - "the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the high-end BYD stuff" - what makes you say this? I follow the Chinese car market a fair bit and the high end marques are generally making it to western markets, even Voyah.
Given how often parts are unavailable for new and late model "western" brands this is more like a generic worry that comes with car ownership than anything brand-specific. If anything the proliferation of brands demonstrates robust use of off-the-shelf components, which in turn suggests replacement parts should be ubiquitous.
I don't follow the car industry but I've worked on a project circa 2018 for all European manufacturers to help provide parts 15 years after the car was sold (I provided the Hadoop clusters and some of the predictive algorithms to try to predict which car parts will fail and how many will be needed over the car Lifetime.) BOOST4.0 or something. I don't know where it ended up going.
It's definitely an issue but typically not until you pass the ~20 year mark. I recently sold a very low volume car that is now 26 years old and there's definitely a secondary market now in hoarded parts as the originals become less and less available from the manufacturer.
You might want to take a closer look into the current state of play on new and late model vehicle parts availability and general serviceability, because your take here appears to be a couple decades out of date. Parts are frequently difficult or impossible to source for cars that are less than 5 years old.
TBH the market demand will ensure a Toyota Camry/Honda Civic 'invincible' style runabout will emerge that basically anyone can run into the ground and still depend on. The real issue to me is the morality of the production of the parts, particularly things involving rare-earth metals.
Ish. Traditional car manufacturers had this figured out but intentionally dropped the plot over the last couple decades because make number go up. Net result: my wife had a mouse die in a vent duct in her 2 year old SUV. We drove a dealership loaner for 8 months waiting for parts. They ended up replacing the entire dash assembly (including gauge clusters, and infotainment unit). Many (most?) modern car transmissions aren't field-serviceable because no parts are available. Any issue with the transmission means the entire unit gets replaced.
that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar, Zeekr) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features even car play. I know a few people that bought Chinese brands that only existed for 3 years.
I just wish that I could buy something akin to a modern EV version of a Honda Fit, Honda Element, or Toyota Matrix. Something that's affordable, not huge, and is a great town car but also brings utility and versatility highly disproportionate to its size and cost. I don't even care if it looks dorky.
This is the exact type of vehicle that manufacturers selling in the US seem to have an extreme allergy to. If it can't be badged as an SUV, isn't saddled with a needlessly space-inefficient interior, and can't carry an exorbitant price tag it won't be sold.
Mexico is more broadly a showroom for all sorts of vehicles you can't buy in the US, namely those that don't meet US safety or emissions requirements. The Hilux being the notable example, though not covered in the below link.
it is deeply ironic that a toyota hilux pickup truck - an actually practical pickup truck - does not meet US "standards" but the pedestrian killing, inefficient, wasteful, and expensive "pickups" from US auto companies somehow do.
The Hilux issue is a bit more complicated as a result of the "chicken tax" of 25% on imported light-duty trucks. Toyota made the Tacoma for the US market and built it here to avoid that tax, and now the economics of the Hilux don't make sense for them to import even if it met safety/emissions standards. It would certainly kill the market for the Tacoma.
Edit: My poor phrasing certainly did read that way though, I should have been more clear.
The Chinese have certainly taken over far more than just the Mexican market. You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these days, and while Toyotas were selling like hot cakes in Pakistan the dealerships have gotten huge waitlists for the Chinese ones now. As others have mentioned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity. I can confidently assume a Toyota from 1993 is still just being broken in at 150K miles, no clue if the same can be said about these with all the varieties and electronic components.
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
I see this (and similar statements) often repeated on the Internet, but it’s not what I saw during my two week trip to London and vicinity back in July. This was followed by a week in Paris.
In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.
What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.
So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.
The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.
I can tell you from a - fairly prosperous town in the North of England where Range Rovers, Teslas and Porsches are very common - that BYDs and Jaecoos are everywhere.
Jaecoo have had the best selling model in the UK for two or three months running now. I have no idea how you managed to lose your bet. My experience is closer to the parent post - pull into any car park in the UK and you'll count more Chinese EVs than Teslas, often you can count more Jaecoo or BYD than Tesla.
I'm in Canada and have a Tesla, if I was going to buy another car I'd be definitely looking at the Chinese versions for this exact reason. Anyone openly buying a new Tesla in Canada these days is saying they are a sociopath and/or a predator.
Suits me. US manufacturers willingly chose to double and triple down on luxury pricing models and chose to include enough software and sensors for a moderately capable aircraft, cutting every corner they could find in terms of reliability and serviceability in the process. I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
> I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
I wouldn't hold your breath. US manufacturers and their unions are very well taken care of in Washington, DC. Been that way for decades and will likely be that way for several more, unless something entirely unforeseen happens.
At the end of the day, it's the labor cost difference- both for assembly and other parts of the supply chain. Tesla at least is trying very hard to get prices as low as possible, but the things still have to sell. We'll see if Slate ever delivers what they've been promising as a no-frills cheap car.
Given it's already happening I shouldn't have to hold my breath for long. Have a look at Ford's sales numbers in their bread-and-butter truck market. Volkswagen's getting replaced by Nokia on major indices in Europe. Toyota seems to see the writing on the wall and have been flirting with bringing the Hilux to North America. Across all domestic manufacturers dealer lot retention figures are through the damn roof and have been for some time now. They can't keep this shit up much longer.
Just to add a different perspective. As a mexican, I often wonder how the future will look like for those cars in terms of repairability. I don't think lots of people are really pondering wether the car company will be here long enough to provide a reasonable amount of support for the niche technical issues that will arise.
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
I noticed the same in India not long ago. Unlike in the US, there is broad cultural aspiration toward electric vehicles.
Even tuk-tuk/rickshaw drivers (who are largely lower income) have EV choices, while in the US lower income workers - like rideshare drivers - don't have many cheaper electric options, since EVs are mostly priced for upper income people.
It doesn't hurt that India has to import the vast majority of the petroleum it uses, and has unlimited solar resources.
Here in South Africa I’m seeing more and more BYDs all the time, the high fuel prices due to the Iran war is making their entry level EV pay for itself for people with any kind of commute.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
You're well over the 90 day mark where E10 is well into its degradation and standard unleaded is starting to sour. A nice problem to have in many respects, but just to be aware!
I drive a Mitsubishi PHEV. And it enforces this by not letting you drive on battery until you fill at least 20L of new fuel. So you're forced to use a portion of the tank at least every 90 days.
USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
Are there actual national security concerns though? Or is that just an excuse for protectionism? I suspect the latter, and in europe politicians may make the calculation that cheap cars > car manufaturing jobs.
Yes, there are huge national security concerns when everybody's cars are always on the network and all fly-by-wire. It would be trivial for anyone who writes the software for these things to include logic or network bombs in them that would enable a catastrophic strike on a country or the rest of the world. Cars being on the network all the time is really a terrifically stupid idea.
Careful readers may note the complete lack of the word "China" in the previous paragraph. But, yes, technically it is even that much more dangerous to have a whole bunch of potentially-hackable robots roaming up and down all your transportation corridors that were also created by your major economic and military rival.
But I don't even like it when it isn't created by your rival, though, because there's no guarantee that your rival can't hack anybody's software. I fear the day when some significant fraction of cars on the road are given instructions to floor the pedal and then do a hard turn to the left 10 seconds later. (Or the right for countries where that is the "turn into oncoming traffic" direction.)
So apparently Charlize Theron hacking self-driving cars for the "make it rain" one great scene in an installment of the Fast and The Furious franchise was not enough incentive for our short term gains corporate overlords to do anything about it. So apparently it takes your catastrophic strike(tm) to get the job done much like it took 9/11 to justify the price of reinforcing cockpit doors.
I do not like this. But it seems to be how it works here.
Europe and Germany invested heavily in the Nordstream pipelines despite USA repeatedly warning them that Russia would weaponize energy dependence against them [1]. Germany even continued shuttering their nuclear plants after Crimea because they loved the cheap gas.
The point is, Europe's judgement cannot be trusted. They have allowed themselves to become dependent on very risky globalized sources despite decades of warnings.
This. There are no words to describe how asinine Europe's (and in particular Germany's) energy policy is. And it's all self inflicted for largely ideological reasons.
and yet Russia didn't weaponize nordstream, meanwhile our "ally" Ukraine destroyed it for us and people still continue pumping there dozens of billions EUR on prolonging endless war
Russia would happily supply cheap gas, it is self imposed EU resrictions together with green deal shooting themselves in their own foot, same thing with EU airlines taking detour to avoid russian airspace while Chinese airlines happily save kerosene flying through RU airspace
US, China, Israel? I am sure many companies will happily earn money supplying both sides while those idiots are figthting each other in endless war, there is only one winner in this war - military industrial complex.
I think there are legitimate safety and national security concerns. I also think restrictions are imposed for protectionism / political / monetary reasons. We are living in a world where the people making the decisions wait until there is enough personal gain to act in one direction or another.
It's not for national security. It's to protect Detroit.
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
"He who loves the profit of the tyrant must hate the Commonwealth, and he who loves the Commonwealth must hate the profit of tyranny, for what profits the sovereign does not always profit the Commonwealth." - paraphrased from the anti-Machiavel.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
The US could provide a means for importing cars with electronic risks - have the electronic "brain" be made in the US and have it plug into a "dumb" (or well-defined interface) body.
Does anyone know if you can buy one in Mexico and drive it across the border?
I imagine it is very complicated to own it long term in the US. But if it were legally registered in Mexico, could you drive it in the US for a period of time?
People make a fuss about China unfairly subsidizing its auto industry but this is exactly how subsidies should work.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its own auto companies over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that is considered rugged capitalism at work.
No, between safety and emissions, a normal person effectively have to wait out the 25 year as spelled out in the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988. Once you hit that, it's relatively straightforward to import the car (straightforward if you know how to do it, there are importers who specialize in this market).
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
Definitely, and a lot still do. But buying a Tesla is like buying a BYD since they're the dominant brand they're likely to have better support. A lot of lessons were learned on the Nissan Leaf, Ford Lightning, and even to this day buying a Rivian is like buying a BMW in that you know maintenance/repairability will be painful.
BYD cars were my biggest tourist attraction on my last trip to Mexico, it was what I was looking forward to seeing the most, as soon as I got out the airport and saw taxis using them
Submarine. China desperate to find a market for these dubious vehicles because domestic economy and market in very bad shape right now and getting worse.
It would be extraordinarily simple to remedy this: Require by law the technical ability to physically disable all remote communication to and from a vehicle, and prohibit any remote communication requirement from the core functions of a vehicle.
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
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Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
There is path loss to consider. I would imagine that large scale electricity generation is more efficient than small scale ICE engines, and EVs have regeneration, so probably the EVs still come out ahead.
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
Even the worst ev driven off coal nets out to less emissions in its lifetime than gas cars. this has been known and well studied for like a decade. Keep up!
Also their LFP batteries are extremely simple and recyclable forever.
lumping those all together is missing half the point, ng in at least in the us where its a by product of oil extraction is a huge step up from coal/oil and will be with us for a very long time
I live in Europe: My only “concern” about chinese cars (and I don’t mean chinese as in Volvo) that I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years. More than 500 unique models were released in the first 6 months of 2026 alone [0]. It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago. Brands you never heared about, never updated Android versions etc
0, https://www.carscoops.com/2026/08/chinese-automakers-lauchin...
Jokes on you. In the Northeast cars rust in less than 10 years. We don't need parts
Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.
[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...
Parts?
You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.
I don't say this happily.
Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).
> I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years
Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.
I live in the United States: My only "concern" about cars made here is that the parts are and will be exorbitantly high due to protectionism by our government and will be a lot more for a lot fewer features, efficiency and innovation and we'll have to win a class action lawsuit to even open the hoods of cars we "own" so we can repair them ourselves.
I don't quite follow that. Can you give an example? I buy car parts all the time and install them myself as well.
You stated your comment in the future tense. What are you anticipating?
We csnlt buy BYD cars because our government tariffed them to hell and back. There's literally no reason to not expect the same would apply to parts.
That’s exactly what I fear may happen in Europe.
I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.
I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.
We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.
[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...
I mean the core feature here is a vastly simplified drivetrain and often modular parts borrowed or 'appropriated' from the best of existing marques. There's a lot less to go wrong versus any existing ICE platform, and the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the the high-end BYD stuff.
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
Slight nitpick - "the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the high-end BYD stuff" - what makes you say this? I follow the Chinese car market a fair bit and the high end marques are generally making it to western markets, even Voyah.
Given how often parts are unavailable for new and late model "western" brands this is more like a generic worry that comes with car ownership than anything brand-specific. If anything the proliferation of brands demonstrates robust use of off-the-shelf components, which in turn suggests replacement parts should be ubiquitous.
I don't follow the car industry but I've worked on a project circa 2018 for all European manufacturers to help provide parts 15 years after the car was sold (I provided the Hadoop clusters and some of the predictive algorithms to try to predict which car parts will fail and how many will be needed over the car Lifetime.) BOOST4.0 or something. I don't know where it ended up going.
It's definitely an issue but typically not until you pass the ~20 year mark. I recently sold a very low volume car that is now 26 years old and there's definitely a secondary market now in hoarded parts as the originals become less and less available from the manufacturer.
You might want to take a closer look into the current state of play on new and late model vehicle parts availability and general serviceability, because your take here appears to be a couple decades out of date. Parts are frequently difficult or impossible to source for cars that are less than 5 years old.
TBH the market demand will ensure a Toyota Camry/Honda Civic 'invincible' style runabout will emerge that basically anyone can run into the ground and still depend on. The real issue to me is the morality of the production of the parts, particularly things involving rare-earth metals.
That's mostly a Tesla thing, isn't it? The traditional western car manufacturers figured this out many decades ago.
Ish. Traditional car manufacturers had this figured out but intentionally dropped the plot over the last couple decades because make number go up. Net result: my wife had a mouse die in a vent duct in her 2 year old SUV. We drove a dealership loaner for 8 months waiting for parts. They ended up replacing the entire dash assembly (including gauge clusters, and infotainment unit). Many (most?) modern car transmissions aren't field-serviceable because no parts are available. Any issue with the transmission means the entire unit gets replaced.
But where did that replacement dash assembly come from? They just intentionally made it less granular because make number go up.
I see your point, but it's a slightly different one.
that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar, Zeekr) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features even car play. I know a few people that bought Chinese brands that only existed for 3 years.
I just wish that I could buy something akin to a modern EV version of a Honda Fit, Honda Element, or Toyota Matrix. Something that's affordable, not huge, and is a great town car but also brings utility and versatility highly disproportionate to its size and cost. I don't even care if it looks dorky.
This is the exact type of vehicle that manufacturers selling in the US seem to have an extreme allergy to. If it can't be badged as an SUV, isn't saddled with a needlessly space-inefficient interior, and can't carry an exorbitant price tag it won't be sold.
Mexico is more broadly a showroom for all sorts of vehicles you can't buy in the US, namely those that don't meet US safety or emissions requirements. The Hilux being the notable example, though not covered in the below link.
https://www.jalopnik.com/the-coolest-non-us-cars-americans-c...
Yeah safety, that's what it's all about
it is deeply ironic that a toyota hilux pickup truck - an actually practical pickup truck - does not meet US "standards" but the pedestrian killing, inefficient, wasteful, and expensive "pickups" from US auto companies somehow do.
The Hilux issue is a bit more complicated as a result of the "chicken tax" of 25% on imported light-duty trucks. Toyota made the Tacoma for the US market and built it here to avoid that tax, and now the economics of the Hilux don't make sense for them to import even if it met safety/emissions standards. It would certainly kill the market for the Tacoma.
Edit: My poor phrasing certainly did read that way though, I should have been more clear.
Toyota has not attempted to certify the Hilux in USA because they already sell the Tacoma, which occupies the similar market.
Nobody has said the Hilux can't be sold in USA. Toyota simply hasn't tried.
The Chinese have certainly taken over far more than just the Mexican market. You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these days, and while Toyotas were selling like hot cakes in Pakistan the dealerships have gotten huge waitlists for the Chinese ones now. As others have mentioned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity. I can confidently assume a Toyota from 1993 is still just being broken in at 150K miles, no clue if the same can be said about these with all the varieties and electronic components.
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
I see this (and similar statements) often repeated on the Internet, but it’s not what I saw during my two week trip to London and vicinity back in July. This was followed by a week in Paris.
In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.
What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.
So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.
The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.
I can tell you from a - fairly prosperous town in the North of England where Range Rovers, Teslas and Porsches are very common - that BYDs and Jaecoos are everywhere.
Jaecoo have had the best selling model in the UK for two or three months running now. I have no idea how you managed to lose your bet. My experience is closer to the parent post - pull into any car park in the UK and you'll count more Chinese EVs than Teslas, often you can count more Jaecoo or BYD than Tesla.
>You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these day
>hardly see a Tesla in London
Is that through competition, or because people don't want to be openly associated with Nazis?
Jaecoo and BYD are well-known brands now in UK, however.
I'm in Canada and have a Tesla, if I was going to buy another car I'd be definitely looking at the Chinese versions for this exact reason. Anyone openly buying a new Tesla in Canada these days is saying they are a sociopath and/or a predator.
> If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
And the rise of the AfD.
Suits me. US manufacturers willingly chose to double and triple down on luxury pricing models and chose to include enough software and sensors for a moderately capable aircraft, cutting every corner they could find in terms of reliability and serviceability in the process. I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
> I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
I wouldn't hold your breath. US manufacturers and their unions are very well taken care of in Washington, DC. Been that way for decades and will likely be that way for several more, unless something entirely unforeseen happens.
At the end of the day, it's the labor cost difference- both for assembly and other parts of the supply chain. Tesla at least is trying very hard to get prices as low as possible, but the things still have to sell. We'll see if Slate ever delivers what they've been promising as a no-frills cheap car.
Given it's already happening I shouldn't have to hold my breath for long. Have a look at Ford's sales numbers in their bread-and-butter truck market. Volkswagen's getting replaced by Nokia on major indices in Europe. Toyota seems to see the writing on the wall and have been flirting with bringing the Hilux to North America. Across all domestic manufacturers dealer lot retention figures are through the damn roof and have been for some time now. They can't keep this shit up much longer.
Just to add a different perspective. As a mexican, I often wonder how the future will look like for those cars in terms of repairability. I don't think lots of people are really pondering wether the car company will be here long enough to provide a reasonable amount of support for the niche technical issues that will arise.
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
I noticed the same in India not long ago. Unlike in the US, there is broad cultural aspiration toward electric vehicles.
Even tuk-tuk/rickshaw drivers (who are largely lower income) have EV choices, while in the US lower income workers - like rideshare drivers - don't have many cheaper electric options, since EVs are mostly priced for upper income people.
It doesn't hurt that India has to import the vast majority of the petroleum it uses, and has unlimited solar resources.
I noticed that when I was there. I was pleasantly surprised to see as many BYD as I did.
That infact made me consider BYD even more seriously. Being able to see the car in person is far more impressive the a YouTube video.
I went there recently for a friends wedding, and about half the Uber's we took were driving Chinese EV's
BYD is taking over the world, one country at a time, Tesla is done worldwide just a matter of time.
Here in South Africa I’m seeing more and more BYDs all the time, the high fuel prices due to the Iran war is making their entry level EV pay for itself for people with any kind of commute.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
You're well over the 90 day mark where E10 is well into its degradation and standard unleaded is starting to sour. A nice problem to have in many respects, but just to be aware!
I drive a Mitsubishi PHEV. And it enforces this by not letting you drive on battery until you fill at least 20L of new fuel. So you're forced to use a portion of the tank at least every 90 days.
I appreciate the warning, will certainly do some homework here.
I was really impressed with the BYD’s I rode in for uber while in Mexico
USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
Are there actual national security concerns though? Or is that just an excuse for protectionism? I suspect the latter, and in europe politicians may make the calculation that cheap cars > car manufaturing jobs.
Yes, there are huge national security concerns when everybody's cars are always on the network and all fly-by-wire. It would be trivial for anyone who writes the software for these things to include logic or network bombs in them that would enable a catastrophic strike on a country or the rest of the world. Cars being on the network all the time is really a terrifically stupid idea.
Careful readers may note the complete lack of the word "China" in the previous paragraph. But, yes, technically it is even that much more dangerous to have a whole bunch of potentially-hackable robots roaming up and down all your transportation corridors that were also created by your major economic and military rival.
But I don't even like it when it isn't created by your rival, though, because there's no guarantee that your rival can't hack anybody's software. I fear the day when some significant fraction of cars on the road are given instructions to floor the pedal and then do a hard turn to the left 10 seconds later. (Or the right for countries where that is the "turn into oncoming traffic" direction.)
So apparently Charlize Theron hacking self-driving cars for the "make it rain" one great scene in an installment of the Fast and The Furious franchise was not enough incentive for our short term gains corporate overlords to do anything about it. So apparently it takes your catastrophic strike(tm) to get the job done much like it took 9/11 to justify the price of reinforcing cockpit doors.
I do not like this. But it seems to be how it works here.
As they say, safety regulations are written in blood.
Ask Europe if they think there are "actual national security concerns" about them being so heavily reliant on USA tech companies and services.
China isn't threatening to invade European countries.
Europe and Germany invested heavily in the Nordstream pipelines despite USA repeatedly warning them that Russia would weaponize energy dependence against them [1]. Germany even continued shuttering their nuclear plants after Crimea because they loved the cheap gas.
The point is, Europe's judgement cannot be trusted. They have allowed themselves to become dependent on very risky globalized sources despite decades of warnings.
[1] https://2021-2025.state.gov/nord-stream-2-and-potential-sanc...
This. There are no words to describe how asinine Europe's (and in particular Germany's) energy policy is. And it's all self inflicted for largely ideological reasons.
and yet Russia didn't weaponize nordstream, meanwhile our "ally" Ukraine destroyed it for us and people still continue pumping there dozens of billions EUR on prolonging endless war
Russia would happily supply cheap gas, it is self imposed EU resrictions together with green deal shooting themselves in their own foot, same thing with EU airlines taking detour to avoid russian airspace while Chinese airlines happily save kerosene flying through RU airspace
They're just providing Russia with all the components they need to build as many drones and rockets as they need to keep striking striking Europe.
Whilst USA provides the funding for Russia to buy weapons in dollars.
Can you source your statement that China is supplying drone components to Russia?
Let me Google that for you
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/09/06/china-secr...
It is common knowledge, just google it and whichever new site you trust to skip the "Omg you trust news site X?" step
At this point US is a bigger security concern than China.
Who do you think is building weapons, parts, and sharing tech with Russia to use on Ukraine?
Is America buying Russian diesel? How’s that working out?
US, China, Israel? I am sure many companies will happily earn money supplying both sides while those idiots are figthting each other in endless war, there is only one winner in this war - military industrial complex.
There are ways it could be handled. Waymo imports Chinese made Zeekr vans, but Waymo probably replaces all onboard software and hardware.
Just like with the data center 'debate', it's best to assume both sides are just churning out propaganda.
I think there are legitimate safety and national security concerns. I also think restrictions are imposed for protectionism / political / monetary reasons. We are living in a world where the people making the decisions wait until there is enough personal gain to act in one direction or another.
If only we took data privacy laws seriously here then we wouldn't be in such a predicament, just more consequences of our protectionist economy.
Europe doesn't ban American on-board software so why would they ban Chinese ones?
Europe "bans" tons of American software, though for now they just use it as their main revenue source.
https://www.xtb.com/int/market-analysis/news-and-research/eu...
There are limits in place and about to be tightened, but I assume the bigger worry are the european car manufacturers.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/12/eu-deal-...
And personally I trust a Tesla as much as chinese car. But a VW one only slightly more.
IIRC, the US administration is claiming that building a ballroom and an arch are needed for national security.
It's not for national security. It's to protect Detroit.
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
"He who loves the profit of the tyrant must hate the Commonwealth, and he who loves the Commonwealth must hate the profit of tyranny, for what profits the sovereign does not always profit the Commonwealth." - paraphrased from the anti-Machiavel.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
> USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.
And that is perfectly reasonable. I go further and disable the cellular modem even in a domestically made car.
The US could provide a means for importing cars with electronic risks - have the electronic "brain" be made in the US and have it plug into a "dumb" (or well-defined interface) body.
https://archive.ph/sGqBh
Thanks! That worked fine.
Does anyone know if you can buy one in Mexico and drive it across the border?
I imagine it is very complicated to own it long term in the US. But if it were legally registered in Mexico, could you drive it in the US for a period of time?
Europe preaches about human rights but no problem doing business with China
Show me where on the doll China touched you.
Are you sure you wanna hang your hat on that????
People make a fuss about China unfairly subsidizing its auto industry but this is exactly how subsidies should work.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its own auto companies over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that is considered rugged capitalism at work.
Don't forget about all the High-Seniority union members who got paid very well to stall progress so the next generation has no ability to compete.
Could you provide evidence of senior union members making anything close to what executives make?
Disagree. The US manufacturers doubled down on over priced cars that nobody can afford, that's what the money went towards.
Is there any reasonable cost-effective way to import these into the USA? Or is that path blocked due to regulatory safety things?
No, between safety and emissions, a normal person effectively have to wait out the 25 year as spelled out in the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988. Once you hit that, it's relatively straightforward to import the car (straightforward if you know how to do it, there are importers who specialize in this market).
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
1. Buy a BYD in Mexico.
2. Buy a scrapped Tesla in the US.
3. Rebadge the BYD with the Tesla's logos.
4. Bury the Tesla in your yard.
5. Register the rebadged BYD with the Tesla's VIN, slap some plates on it, and drive.
I'd skip the Tesla part and just have it be a car you made. I think it'd be easier to get that approved and it's more legal.
You still have to deal with people thinking you drive a tesla.
Could probably do the same with a Nissan Leaf, would be cheaper too.
Step 6. Fines and maybe a night in jail.
FBI open up
there are limitations, a non resident can get a car in for a year, and if it’s plated in Mexico a resident might get a similar permit.
register it with mexican plates and drive it over
I see these comments a about future repairability and I wonder if Americans had the same general wary feeling when adopting Tesla cars.
Definitely, and a lot still do. But buying a Tesla is like buying a BYD since they're the dominant brand they're likely to have better support. A lot of lessons were learned on the Nissan Leaf, Ford Lightning, and even to this day buying a Rivian is like buying a BMW in that you know maintenance/repairability will be painful.
BYD cars were my biggest tourist attraction on my last trip to Mexico, it was what I was looking forward to seeing the most, as soon as I got out the airport and saw taxis using them
Submarine. China desperate to find a market for these dubious vehicles because domestic economy and market in very bad shape right now and getting worse.
https://wapo.st/4dZMFUo
This link still runs into a subscription paywall, as do most of your recent posts.
Searching for the article title usually finds some non-paywalled alternate sources, eg:
https://duckduckgo.com/&q=i+went+to+mexico+to+test+drive+the...
It's hard to imagine some times, but a lot of places in their own ways outside of North America are in the future.
It would be extraordinarily simple to remedy this: Require by law the technical ability to physically disable all remote communication to and from a vehicle, and prohibit any remote communication requirement from the core functions of a vehicle.
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
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Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
OT but I'm in the market for a hybrid compact SUV.. anything good? Kia?
mazda or toyota, same tech
I was curious, so I looked it up: 75% of electricity generation in Mexico comes from fossil fuels, mostly methane/etc gas.
https://www.iea.org/countries/mexico/electricity
Meaning electric cars at minimum 25% cleaner than an internal combustion vehicle.
There is path loss to consider. I would imagine that large scale electricity generation is more efficient than small scale ICE engines, and EVs have regeneration, so probably the EVs still come out ahead.
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
It's much better that than: ICE are way more inefficient and therefore polluting than burning fossils in power plants.
It is well proven that even with electricity made 100% from coal an EV is still better than an ICE.
Not necessarily, if you include the supply chain of the BEV? (I assume.)
Still significantly lower over vehicle lifetime
https://theicct.org/publication/electric-cars-life-cycle-ana...
Then you have to include the supply chain of the ICE vehicle too.
Even the worst ev driven off coal nets out to less emissions in its lifetime than gas cars. this has been known and well studied for like a decade. Keep up!
Also their LFP batteries are extremely simple and recyclable forever.
Okay then, with that confidence you simply must be correct.
lumping those all together is missing half the point, ng in at least in the us where its a by product of oil extraction is a huge step up from coal/oil and will be with us for a very long time