gmauthority.com/blog/2024/05/former-gm-chief-engineer-says-byd-seagull-ev-is-clarion-call-to-u-s-auto-industry/
Former GM Chief Engineer Says BYD Seagull EV Is Clarion Call To U.S. Auto Industry
Newsany “silver bullet” or one single secret to the BYD Seagull
Asian companies in general EXCEL at making this class of vehicle. In the US, these won't sell outside cities. Europeans buy lots of them too (Italian Microlino). Japanese Kei cars - (you can get ICE ones here)
The BYD Seagull (Chinese: 比亚迪海鸥; pinyin: Bǐyǎdí Hǎi'ōu) is a battery electric city car manufactured by BYD Auto since 2023. Positioned below the Dolphin within BYD's line-up, it is currently the smallest BYD vehicle, occupying the A00-class in Chinese segmentation (equivalent to European A-segment).\5]) It is part of the Ocean product line and marketed through "Ocean Network"-branded dealerships and stores. The car was made available in Brazil and some other Latin American markets in 2024 as the BYD Dolphin Mini.\6])
GM has sold over a million city cars in China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV
The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV (Chinese: 五菱宏光MiniEV) is a battery electric city car manufactured by SAIC-GM-Wuling since 2020.\5]) Retail deliveries began in China in July 2020. As of February 2023, global sales since inception have passed 1.1 million units, and the Mini EV has become the best-selling electric car in China.\6])
In-housing components is also one reason Tesla has been able to pressure other automakers on pricing. They make an insane number of parts in-house, including ones that other companies won't touch.
"... GM has sold over a million city cars in China. ... 1.1 million units ..."
I see this hyped from GM et al all the time. The reality behind this is that GM own a 44% interest, so effectively GM's component is 484 Thousand. The car sells for just under $3000 U.S. equivalent, and that's without a battery! The car requires an additional battery subscription and would never pass U.S. safety standards. So a GM revenue of $190 million at best, not shabby but definitely chump change in the automotive world and not indicative of GM success in China, although it's made to sound that way.
I’m in the UK and I saw my first Seal today. Well impressive looking car.
I saw an Atto and a Dolphin in Sydney last month.
I see a seal every day!
:)
'.... while the Alliance for American Manufacturing described the Chinese vehicles as a potential “extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector.”
You always see these weird juxtapositions of "Americans have lost interest in EVs" and "Chinese EVs will kill the US car industry." Sometimes in the same breath.
Everyone with a brain knows average Americans are going to buy the cheapest thing that gets the job done in the end because they are mostly too broke to say no to a deal. Everyone hates Walmart yet they are still the largest retailer.
And honestly? Even a cheap shitbox electric car is still nice to drive. Cheap ICE cars are buzzy, loud and generally unplesant to be in. But that changed with electrification.
If you have a 2 car household, a second electric runabout is perfect.
Classic "The enemy is simultaneously weak and strong" propaganda.
'.... while the Alliance for American Manufacturing described the Chinese vehicles as a potential “extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector.”
They are though. Maybe not the Dolphin / Seagull, but absolutely the cars in segments a step or two higher like those that would compete with the Corolla / Corolla Cross / Camry / RAV4.
People who look at this from the angle of "Big Three bad" are incredibly narrow-minded and don't see what restrictionless imports of Chinese EVs would do to one of the few industries the US still has as a country. It potentially affects every brand from Chevrolet to BMW to Tesla. And their supply chains. And especially their workers.
Question. If the US auto industry is threatened by a foreign industry that has to ship these products thousands of miles overseas, shouldn't they be wondering how they can do better rather than just essentially banning competition? I thought that is what the free market was about. Especially when the offered product is significantly better than anything you see on the US market.
I mean, in its own way, effectively forcing Chinese automakers to build cars in the United States or face the tariff is not much different than China forcing foreign automakers to form state-owned joint ventures to sell their cars in the Chinese market.
No one is playing fair here. Not China, not the United States. Heck, even the EU as an entity is considering more stringent protectionist measures, despite some reservations from Germany and Hungary.
A declining - or nonexistent - US auto industry doesn't just have implications for the US market either. It has implications for every market that companies export from the United States to. While we can argue all day about the actions that have led the industry to this point, we cannot afford to let Chinese automakers dominate the world.
And I understand and agree that a frictionless approach that says "screw established industry" is the better policy for the climate. But it can't come at the cost of the livelihoods of those who have their food bills paid by that established industry.
BYD, Nio, Xpeng, should establish at least one production line for a volume model in the United States. They don't have to build every car they sell in the US in the US. But if China wants to not play fair, then the US gets to not play fair back. It's only fair.
The issue is that the only American companies worth saving is Tesla/Rivian. Ford GM They’ve had tons subsidies, decades of experience, but they built shit cars 80s to 00s. They were only saved by the CAFE exemptions for trucks. One got a huge loan and one got fully bailed out. Did everyone forget the shit box neons and cavalier, while Honda made Fit and Civics?
Then we gave them 1.5B to figure out how to build evs/phevs. Then the states gave them millions to build factories in USA. And now they’re begging us to ease tailpipe. They have always been bailed out on the taxpayers dime. Maybe we should try the stick instead of the carrot, because the carrot hasn’t been working for 40 years.
So you're saying that American Honda, Toyota North America, Nissan USA, BMW North America, Volkswagen Group of America, Mercedes-Benz USA, Hyundai USA, and Kia USA are also not worth saving?
All of those companies - who are subsidiaries with local USA headquarters - have plants in the USA that would also be affected by unrestricted Chinese imports.
Honda doesn’t have a single EV. They even discontinued their only PHEV. Maybe they should die because of mismanagement.
VW is actually producing EVs en masse, especially in EU. They are doing extremely well on the electrification front.
Nissan is shit, they’ve been mismanaged for years. They left the leaf to rot and created exploding CVTs.
Hyundai, Kia both have extremely good EVs, and will do fine.
BMW is doing fine. Their EV division is doing well.
The previous tariff was 25% + $7500 price differential. It’s the equivalent of around $12k-15k worth of subsidies for a $40k vehicle. If that amount of price differential wasn’t good enough, then really, I don’t think these companies need to be around anymore.
So yeah, i did not mention unrestricted import, but a moderate amount of tariffs but allow them to import would help those automakers squirm a bit would be good. A 100% tariff is signaling to China that they are not welcomed and they’ll get banned if they try. Price differential was already $12K. We have tried the carrot for 15 years, all these automakers don’t care because they know big daddy will bail them out.
When the Chinese government owns half of your company, they are implementing the equivalent of a 100% tariff. You understand this, right?
The Chinese government does not own half of Tesla. Western companies can buy themselves out of they wanted to. Chinese and Western brands coexist in China. The same does not exist in USA, nor will it in the future now.
When GM came to China, they were happy to play with the CCP’s fuck fuck games for $$. But when China comes to USA, they want to ban the Chinese market. They also had all this time to learn how the Chinese supply chain operate to improve themselves.
Just like the time Toyota came to GM in 1984 and literally held their hands and taught GM how to make high quality cars. They learned nothing and didn’t increased their quality control. Since then and they are continually asking government to bail them. The CAFEs truck loophole was literally designed for GM/Ford to prosper because they couldnt design a reliable commuter to save themselves.
Wow. Just wow.
Those “shit” cars were a direct result of trying to compete with the Japanese who were literally dumping cars into the US market. We have a working example of what would happen if we allowed a repeat of that with the Chinese manufacturers.
Why work harder when you don’t have to? People are still going to have to buy vehicles. It is too bad because I really like the design of the Chinese evs. The Big three don’t make anything appealing. Kia/Hyundai make neat vehicles. Besides that, you’re getting into Porsche level for a nice design.
Example: People like screens. Chinese companies: "Let's make the entire width of the dashboard one huge screen." People... "Yayyyy that is one huge mutha of a screens."
Well, if at abolish the unions and manage to drastically decrease pay on labor it'll really help. Perhaps if we can start sending prisoners to work at Ford factories too. If we still don't have the staffing, we should just make being a Cherokee Indian illegal . We could of course expand to more tribes as needed.
Unions are why evs look bad in North America? Same western parent brands in Europe have nicer looking cars. Unfortunately, they get North Americanized when they come here. I can see the company proposing new models to the union at the negotiating table.
Co-“here is our new model. Isn’t it beautiful?”
UN-“ nope make it more bland. Make this other one like soap left in the shower. Meet these demands or we strike” Lol
With forced labor, China is taking a page out of the book that made the USA the economic powerhouse it is.
China isn't a free market and don't follow free market principles. If they were then they wouldn't have shutdown 100s of auto makers and consolidated them into one then pumped it full of government money.
If we copied China we would only have ford or Tesla and pump as much tax money into them as we do to Ukraine.
Tesla has received billions of taxpayer subsidies, without which they would have died very early on: "Tesla has received $2.8 billion in government subsidies. About 88% of those subsidies came from states, while the rest came from federal grants. The state of Nevada has given Tesla $1.6 billion across tax rebates and grants from 2013 to 2023. [...] Musk’s companies also frequently use federal loans, as Tesla has received $466.5 million [...] since 2010."
And the domestic auto industry in general enjoys massive tax and regulatory advantages over imports: The Chicken Tax protection, CAFE and other exemptions for SUVs, and other import tariffs, all so the domestic industry can remain less efficient than they would be forced to be, had those barriers not been in place.
Idk why you're bringing up spaceX at all. Tesla hasn't received anything close to unilateral government support and control. Feel free to Google that next.
And again, purely as an example, The SAIC-GM joint venture is 50 percent owned by the Chinese state. And controlled by Shanghai's municipal government. That is a foreign automaker being literally wrapped around the finger of the government(s) of the country they want to sell cars in.
How is that somehow less problematic than a tariff?
Financially, That’s the equivalent of a 100% tariff, not counting the loss of all IP.
China has BYD, Wuling, Xiaomi, Im Motor, Zeekr, AITO, Nio, Xpeng.....etc. Do you have that much US brands in US? Do you have that level of choices? Do you want a free market with few choice or open market with lots of choices?
I'm just holding my breath on what bill the govt is going to impose next year.
And why are they an extinction level event? Eh? Because Americans want smaller cheaper EVs and American car makers are saying “no, we won’t make those.”
That’s a BYD Bolt. Just slightly uglier.
And more profitable.
Just a third the cost to make.
That’s what happens when you keep your currency devalued against other world currencies.
No that's what happens when you invest in a technology at a large scale 10 years before anyone else. China has massive production advantages in BEVs over almost every company except maybe Tesla. Mainly due to their mammoth investment in supply chains and the LFP chemistry battery cell.
It’s important to me that laborers be treated well. China has a horrific track record for this. …and yes, I understand western countries can do much better than they have.
Labor costs and Wall Streets outrageous profit requirements will never allow us to compete against the Chinese companies.
Labor costs represent about 10% of the price of a car, give or take. It's less than the amount of the tax credit.
I’ve read that Chinese factories are a lot more automated, than North American ones. The Chinese have lower ratio of workers per car.
modern automation, vertical integration and economies of scale should if american companies are actually smart. People act like china labor is so cheap no one can compete. China has been moving labor heavy manufacturing to cheaper countries for years now.
Something very interesting in this article:
-------
'However, there is one loophole shoppers can exploit when it comes to foreign EVs. The IRS exempts foreign-built EVs from the restrictions as long as drivers lease rather than buy. Still, buyers who want up to $7,500 in federal credits on a new EV will have to opt for a North American-finished EV like the Ford Mustang Mach-E.'
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/100-tariff-chinese-electric-cars-american-roads/
North American-finished EV like the Ford Mustang Mach-E.'
BYD cars made in Mexico or Canada qualify?
United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) entered into force on July 1, 2020. The USMCA, which substituted the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a mutually beneficial win for North American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses. The Agreement creates more balanced, reciprocal trade supporting high-paying jobs for Americans and grow the North American economy.
BYD is already a US manufacturer of electric busses in California.
BYD | RIDE BATTERY-ELECTRIC SCHOOL BUSES ADDED TO THE CALIFORNIA DGS CONTRACT
https://en.byd.com/news/byd-ride-battery-electric-school-buses-awarded-the-california-dgs-contract/
The buses are purpose-built by members of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation (SMART) Workers Union, Local 105, at the BYD | RIDE Coach and Bus Facility located in Lancaster, CA.
Waiting on them to announce their new plant there, allegedly in the next month or two. The write ups on the PHEV Shark truck are awesome.
Notice the lack of public complaint from Tesla.
Until the charging infrastructure catches up, I don’t care how super cheap EVs are, no one will buy them on large scale.
Range anxiety is the biggest thing holding back widespread EV adoption in US not cost anymore as new EVs rival cost of similarly equipped ICE cars.
You mean like your house you live in, which has electricity? That's the most common and convenient charging most are using.
I am still waiting for a tear down of the BYD seagull by Caresoft. They already did a tear down of the Cybertruck.
On a YouTube video, this person’s initial impression was that there was not any “silver bullet” or one single secret to the BYD Seagull, instead, it is a well designed product that was executed well. Additionally BYD is vertically integrated which gives them a huge advantage in terms of cost and quality. Even the headlights on the Seagull is made by BYD. This will make replicating BYD’s success much harder.