Even with the new 100% tariff on electric vehicles imported from China, BYD would still have the cheapest EV in the US. According to a new report, BYD’s lowest-priced EV would still undercut all US automakers at under $25,000.
After discontinuing the production of vehicles powered entirely by internal combustion engines in March 2022, BYD has been at the forefront of the industry’s shift to EVs.
Honestly in my opinion it is time to remove all tariffs on EVs under 25k and let anyone who wants to fill that slot in. American car manufacturers refuse to fill the market need.
I don’t think the Bolt was a practical vehicle? You can’t take road trips with it, even across the charger-dense East Coast USA - it won’t get you from Miami to Orlando, or from New York to DC.
Driving it from 80% to 20% charge gives a range of 155 miles, which is decent, but then a fast charging station would need 1.4 hours to charge it back up from 20% to 80%.
budget cars in a nutshel are not practical for long range, which is why theres no demand for it in the US. range is one of the biggest reasons why car companies dont sell new EVs for under 30k for the most part. buyers are too picky about what they want in a budget car so the sales flounder and people wonder why no company even attempts to.
personally people buying budget evs need to either wait for better infrastructure, or be the practical person and rent a vehicle for long distance travel.
people are essentially asking for a car that basically cant exist to exist, hence the real situation is why wpuld someone buy a budget new car when you can buy a used premium car
And even the East Coast is severely lacking on EV infrastructure. The only chargers in my hometown are a pair that they installed with the new elementary school, and those are locked all day because they don’t want random people sitting at an elementary school when there’s kids there. The stupidity of the design aside, the next closest charging station I know of is about 75 miles away.
I’d drive an EV if it was practical, but when you can really only charge them on a self-installed home charger, it really impacts where you can go with them.
This is why electric cars need to be “second car” cheap. I have a super-mega-hauler-SUV because about 4 times a month, I REALLY need one. Every other trip is done in my ancient tiny Honda. Every 10k miles on my Honda at 35mpg it saves me about $1500 in running costs over the SUV. If I could buy an $8k electric runabout it’d be even faster payoff.