There’s a lot of discussion about tariffs right now to keep out products that would disrupt domestic products, like vehicles from Tesla, Ford, GM, and Dodge. A tariff is a tax that makes imported products more expensive. There are several companies in China that are making cheap EV’s, but make no mistake, any talk about tariffs is because of BYD.
They are selling about 10,000 cars a month around the world, roughly split between electric cars and hybrid gas/electric. Most of our readers are from the USA, and you may not have heard of BYD. They have been leaving the EU and the US for last, due to the added difficulties of meeting the detailed requirements in those regions. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it can also mean they have been able to work the bugs out of their designs over the past ten years.
They have begun selling the AWD version of their Tang SUV in Norway, as the first step in their EU expansion. Norway has generous government subsidies for EV purchases due to their oil-fed sovereign wealth fund. What this means is that Norway has very few people, and a LOT of oil and natural gas, so the taxes on their oil industry have created a huge pile of surplus cash that they use to provide benefits to their citizens. It also helps that their cities are very densely packed, so Norwegians typically don’t have to drive far to get around. Also, gas and diesel car engines may have a hard time starting in their sub-zero winters, while EV’s run just fine in the cold.
BYD has also opened up a warehouse and office near Los Angeles (in Pasedena), in preparation for their push into US markets. And its not just cars, BYD is a huge global company that also makes large electric and hybrid vehicles like buses, heavy-transport trucks, trash-trucks, forklifts, and batteries for power storage from solar farms.
Competition is good, but the history of BYD appears to show that they have the full backing of the Chinese government, and the companies that it will be competing with feel that BYD has an unfair advantage, since they don’t actually need to make a profit to survive. For instance, customers in South America, Africa, and China have the option to buy the BYD “Seagull” for roughly $12,000. That’s an eye-popping price for an EV, even if it is pretty small.
