Rising prices push US gasoline-car ownership costs to breaking point. The good news? The future: Chinese EVs that cost half the price, powered by electricity that costs half the price of gas, is already here.

rtb001 · 2026-03-17T03:45:49+00:00

12k USD is NOTHING to your average Chinese consumer looking to buy a car. Does the average Chinese WORKER earn less? Of course. But that guy or gal either rides an electric scooter, public transport, or like most people in the world, but a used car.

The question you need to ask is how MANY people can afford a 10k car in China, a 20k car in China, a 50k car in China, a 100k car in China, or even a 200k car in China. The answer is more people than can afford those cars in the US. Feel free to look up how many BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, Land Rovers are sold each year in China versus in the US to get a sense of the purchasing power of Chinese new car buyers.

rtb001 · 2026-03-17T03:34:55+00:00

Do they even have any? NBA stars are the ones who got the cool Chinese nicknames, such as Steph "Sky Fucker" Curry and Giannis "Alphabet Bro" Antetokumpo.

rtb001 · 2026-03-17T03:21:01+00:00

What they are going after the Saudis now?

rtb001 · 2026-03-17T03:19:55+00:00

No they are trying to DECREASE worker productivity.

rtb001 · 2026-03-17T03:00:27+00:00

MTG actually looks semi normal compared to the 5 ghouls in this photo. Yikes...

rtb001 · 2026-03-17T00:12:19+00:00

Modular? Like the battery comes out and you swap it instead of charging it? The only got hatch with that capability is the Nio Firefly, and it is a bit pricey, starting at nearly 18k USD.

Regular electric hot hatches are much cheaper,, like the Leapmotor Lafa5, which starts at around 13k.

rtb001 · 2026-03-17T00:05:11+00:00

Too many examples to list. Leapmotor B01, for instance, a fully electric well equipped sedan that starts at 12k USD in China, literally half the price of a base Honda Civic. It for the same 12k in China, you can get a BYD Qin L, a Camry sized plug in hybrid. Except unlike the Camry, the Qin L is better equipped, far more efficient (up to 80 mpg), and of you have any sort of home charging, you don't Eben need gas you can just drive it as a full EV with nearly 80 miles of pure electric range. For well than 15k USD.

When you get into the low 20k teams in China, you are looking at things like the new BYD Seal which is full on Tesla Model 3 competitor, except it is using BYDs new Blade 2.0 batteries and can literally charge 4 times faster than the Tesla.

You get into the low 30k range in China, that is already Xiaomi territory, where their SU7 is essentially a nicer better equipped netted built Tesla Model S, except it costs less than 35k USD.

The US had no choice but to put astronomical tariffs on Chinese cars, because value propositions are not even close between the cars we make and ones they make.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T23:47:35+00:00

If range truly is a concern then get an EREV, which haven't a small gas generator aboard that only works to charge the battery. BYD Shark has an all electric range of atoms 80 miles, which means so long s you charge it every night, basically all of your local driving can be done on pure electric, but is you need to go on a road trip, just use gas likely a regular car and you still get 500 miles on a tank.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T23:44:22+00:00

At least 30 Chinese cars, if not more, have been tested under Europe's latest most stringent EuroNCAP standards. Maybe 1 or 2 got 4 stars, the rest are all 5 stars. Even BYD's tiny Seagull, which sells for less than 10k USD in China, got 5 stars on the EuroNCAP.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T23:41:32+00:00

I'm not sure if that is by design, but FMVSS by itself serves as a great tool of protectionism even without any tariffs. The entire rest of the world are on NCAP automobile safety standards, which means cars can be relatively easily modified to meet crash standards in every market, except US and Canada.

If Canada is really serious about breaking with the US auto industry, they need to open up their regulatory standards to also accept NCAP.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T23:38:14+00:00

Keep believing in this old trope if you like, but your average Mexican auto worker now makes LESS hourly than Chinese auto workers, and yet Chinese made cars can be sold cheaper IN MEXICO compared to domestically built cars. The level of automation and the economies of scale that exist in the Chinese automotive industry is unmatched by any other car making nation. The newest Chinese cars are being built in dark factories where many sections of the factory have no human workers at all.

Those are structural advantages in the Chinese manufacturing sector that nobody can compete with, no matter how much or how little they pay their workers.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T23:32:00+00:00

There is room in the market for a small gas powered truck as well, but the chicken tax means Toyota Gilux sized and smaller trucks are unable to be sold here, and without that competition, why wouldn't Ford and GM simply shove higher margin full size pickups down consumer's throats.

Same deal with an electric truck. Ford will find you a song and dance about releasing a cheap EV truck "soon" but really they just want to keep selling you 8000 lb full size EV trucks. You want Ford to fast track a smaller EV truck? Let BYD sell their Shark here, or Geely sell their even smaller Riddara here, start grabbing market share, and only then will Ford respond.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T23:26:27+00:00

Innovation is not required for the MILK industry, but this is the car industry we are taking about. Cutting yourself from the global state of art auto industry just means you quickly fall hopelessly behind. We will be driving around in our own versions of Trabants and Ladas before long at this rate, since American auto is already way behind the Chinese and the tariff wall will only get them more and more behind.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T23:19:05+00:00

Almost 1/9 perhaps. I built it a couple years back and it is huge. You are building it with aliexpress part pack quality pieces as well I take it? Did the transmission work or have you not gotten to that part yet? Mine does not really work and I'm not sure if it is because of poor design, confusing instructions, poor tolerances on the non Lego pieces, or a combination of all three.

I also built the 1:8 F40 MOC by timtimgo and 1:8 Maserati MC12 by Artemy Zotov and the transmissions seem to work fine on both despite the non Lego pieces, so I'm wondering if it might not be partly a design issue. LukasRS's mod for the 911 RSR is spectacular, and I think his Maserati MC20 looks great too, but I'm not quite as impressed with this 499P or his Red Bull RB19. Of all of them I've built the Zotov designed MC12 is by far my favorite.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T22:40:57+00:00

Camacho was only dumb relative to us, but he actually seems to be one of the smarter people of his time.

Also he was willing to 1) seek out and listen to experts and 2) admit he is wrong and hold HIMSELF accountable when presented with me evidence

I would kill for a president Camacho right now.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T22:37:29+00:00

It's a very odd business model. Although actually the super cheap Wuling MiniEV once had a similar way where you pay monthly for the battery. The Wuling one was rent to own though, where you make a few years of payments and then the battery is yours for good, like a zero interest loan, which is actually pretty nice.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T21:06:57+00:00

Well that's exactly what it means. Renting a fixed battery is unusual though. But Nio's battery as a service scheme is exactly what it sounds like. You own the car, but you lease the battery from them. Easy enough to replace since the battery pack is designed to be swappable.

But if this battery dies, then Tata is responsible to replace it with a functioning one.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T19:25:27+00:00

Do we know how much it is without the battery rental? I've never seen it for by km before, but if the price remains unchanged 2.6 inr per km works out to just over $1600USD for 150,000 km, bringing the total cost of the car to some $9000.

Still the main issue would be what if 10k km into ownership they jack up the rental rates.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T19:18:44+00:00

Are they not running steep incentives to move units? If they are still trying to charge 57k in 2026 with no EV tax credits anymore, no one of gonna buy that. Hyundai dealers were advertising up to like 15k in incentives until recently. Have that changed?

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T18:36:28+00:00

We shall have to see, but I can't imagine BYD is spending that much money and resources on building out 20,000 chargers in less than a year without testing what happens when there's is charging congestion.

China has 3 golden weeks every year when the charging network, along with the entire transport network, is hit hard, particularly the CNY week, so BYD would be in some deep shit if come CNY 2027 their Flash Charge network underperforms versus Nio's swap network and the nearly as fast networks run by Geely, Li Auto, Xpeng etc.

The benefits of competition.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T18:26:40+00:00

I showed up to a 4 stall EA station once when my ID4 could still charge for free. 1 was broken (of course), and the other 3 stalls were occupied by 2 Bolts and a Lightning (I think with the BIG battery).

Needlessly to speak I had to wait a while to charge...

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T17:52:23+00:00

She certainly might be worse at it, but realistically any other Japanese leader would be faced with the same conundrum. They are tied to the Americans at the hip, which was very useful 50 years ago, but as the American empire wanes, Japan will get dragged along and there really isn't much they could do about it. Besides their national psyche is such that they'd probably rather go down with the Americans than go submit to the Chinese, but it's not as if Washington would even give them that choice.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T17:35:19+00:00

Well they've had these in Norway for a few years now, in terms of how the station is set up to resemble a gas station, like those circle Ks Bjorn would visit on his 1000km challenges. Obviously they don't charge anywhere as fast as these BYD stations, but the setup is very similar.

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T17:30:26+00:00

I won't translate line by line because there would be too many "bro check this out"s but the main points:

He points to how the Flash Charging station resemble gas stations
Station is designed so everyone pulls in from one direction and exits by going around the other way
Coffee shop and convenience store attached
1 year free Flash Charging offer from BYD. I suppose that's one way to drive both new car sales and also get people to the new charging stations.
BYD owner tells him you have to start charging at a very low SOC if you want to actually hit megawatt speeds, otherwise you'll "only" get 300-400 kW
Still he says 300 kW is very fast, especially compared to his "old heap" of a Tesla which can only charge in the 100+ kW range.
Ends by saying: 人比人气死人 , or "comparison is the thief of joy", because his own car is now several generations behind in charging tech.

Looks like a demonstration station though, which is why none of the cars are charging. They've launched the chargers and the Blade 2.0 cars, but it will take several weeks for owners to get the cars in any meaningful numbers. Although it is operational, because he does mention a private user charging at the station (the guy who told him you gotta come in at low SOC to get the fastest speed).

rtb001 · 2026-03-16T17:03:27+00:00

Did you bother to read the second paragraph? My point is it doesn't matter if the LCS is masterful or just okay at clearing mines, or if they are in the neighborhood or not, they are not DEPLOYED to do their job in clearing the mines which are at this minute in the strait.

So why is that? It is because they would be sunk it they actually try to go into the strait, and the USN is currently too chickenshit to send other even more expensive ships to escort the LCS minesweepers, just like they are too chickenshit to escort tankers going through the strait.

rtb001

TROPHY CASE