Last year I wrote that the BYD Seagull was the most important car that debuted last year, and certainly the most important one named after an Anton Chekov play. That was back when this thing cost about $14,000 in China. Due to an ongoing price war in China, BYD has managed to drop that price below $10,000. How?
A price war is about the only war that I have any stomach for at the moment, but eventually, a price war turns into a trade war, and the EU is considering proactive/retroactive tariffs as it investigates if Chinese cars are unfairly subsidized (hint: they are, as are European cars). Nissan dealers appear to be in their own protracted battle against Nissan and its addiction to fleet sales.
And, finally, we’ll talk about Our Next Energy.
This Thing Costs $9,700 If You Can Believe It
Sure, Chinese cars have been subsidized by the government. Yes, they have benefited from a huge national effort to be good at batteries. Yes, Chinese automakers probably learned a lot from joint ventures with U.S. companies. Yes, Chinese automakers benefit from laxer environmental regulations and fewer moral compunctions when it comes to either child labor in the Congo or slave labor.
None of that is a guarantee that you can build a good car. Decades of government-backed car companies utilizing questionably motivated labor in the Soviet Union never managed to produce a truly great car.
Chinese automaker BYD’s Seagull (Dolphin Mini elsewhere) is an attractive city car with a reasonable range of about 130-180 miles (depending on the measure you’re using). At $14,000 it was a steal. At $9,700 I don’t even have words for it. This car will cost about $21,000 in Mexico and even that seems like a decent deal for a roughly Honda Fit-sized subcompact EV city car.
The how of this is important and has a lot to do with BYD’s huge lead and huge scale. The why is even more important, and I’ll look to this Reuters report on China’s wild price war for more information:
BYD has become a relentless discounter in the price war Tesla began in the world’s largest auto market last year. That aggressive stance has helped it unseat its U.S. rival as the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles even if most of BYD’s cars are sold in China.
I enjoy the mention there that, essentially, Tesla started this price war and seems to be losing it. You come for the king, you best not miss, as Joey Tribbiani once famously stated.
The next question is, of course, what happens to margins if you discount this much? Tesla has already struggled with lower-than-usual margins in its price war. Reuters addresses that as well:
Gross profit margins for the Warren Buffett-backed automaker have to date held up reasonably well. It logged a 22% margin in the third quarter, up from 18.7% in the second quarter, according to Reuters calculations.
That’s not bad!
EU Is Thinking About Retroactive Tariffs Against Chinese EVs
I’ve already written at length about the general hypocrisy of the EU’s investigation into whether or not Chinese cars are unfairly subsidized. Sometimes it’s ok to be a hypocrite, however, and I don’t necessarily blame European Union officials for being worried about the sudden influx of cheap Chinese electric cars.
But, because the EU is a big European bureaucracy, it has to do the whole let’s-investigate-it thing. That’s nice and all, but the volume of Chinese car imports has risen 11% since October. There’s not enough time to wait.
In order to address this timing issue, the EU is saying it’s going to start keeping track of every import into the company so that, if the investigation finds out something fishy is going on, it can retroactively charge duties on those vehicles that are already here and, presumably, already sold to consumers.
From The South China Morning Post:
The document says that if the EU waited to impose duties, its own manufacturers would “suffer from diminishing sales and reduced production levels if imports continue at the current increased levels”.
It can also be assumed that the commission is satisfied it has enough evidence to put duties on EVs made in China, but wants to expedite the process.
The note, which was published in the EU’s official journal on Wednesday, said that regarding subsidies, “the commission has at its disposal sufficient evidence tending to show that imports of the product concerned from the PRC [China] are being subsidised”.
I’m shocked, shocked that there are unfair government subsidies going on in this establishment!
Beijing is almost certainly going to get big mad about this and who knows where it goes, but I think even that great poet Nelly would note that our Trade Cold War is getting hot in here, though, given the folks involved, I suggest everyone keep their garments on.
Nissan Dealers: ‘We’re Getting Crushed’
There are many reasons why, if you’re a dealer, you don’t want your parent company to dump a lot of its cars to fleets. The biggest is that it’s bad for residual values as fleets, specifically rental car companies, turn over cars quickly, meaning a flood of cheap and relatively new cars (depending who borrows them) that make it harder for you to charge for your actual new version.
I highly suggest you read this piece in Automotive News because it’s thorough and extremely brutal about Nissan, which is going back to its old ways of relying on fleet sales. The data is great, specifically that 44% of February sales volume went to fleets, and that about 25% over the first 11 months of fiscal 2023 also ended up as fleet sales.
But the quotes, it’s the quotes. The quotes are rough:
Nissan’s dependence on rental fleets to move metal is “catastrophic” for its retailers, said a dealer, one of four interviewed for this article. They asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the automaker.
“Nissan is selling around the dealer network, half of whom are already unprofitable,” the dealer said.
Here’s another one:
“We’re getting crushed,” one of the dealers said. “Honda is selling 100,000 a month, Toyota is selling 170,000, and we’re selling 30,000.”
Dealership lots are piling up with last year’s models, including reportedly more than 30,000 Rogue and nearly 5,000 Ariya crossovers.
This is bad for consumers as well. There are consumers who bought a Nissan Rogue in 2022 or early 2023 and paid above MSRP and still owe money on that car, which means when values plummet they’re underwater and, as one dealer put it, “will never get out of their Nissan.”
‘Our Next Energy’ Lays Off More Staff
Last summer I paid a social visit to a friend at Our Next Energy, the Michigan-based battery startup, and there were so many employees crammed into its HQ that the company had to hire a valet just to park staff cars. I saw a Rivian R1T shoved up on a curb.
This was a big contrast from a couple of years earlier when I shot a video for them at my old company and it felt like ONE was approximately nine people in a big office.
The expected slowdown in the EV market has impacted the company, with CEO and Founder Mujeeb Ijaz moved over into the role of CTO while a new CEO, Paul Humphries, instigating another round of staff reductions.
Per The Detroit News:
The latest reduction includes 37 jobs, 24 of which are in Michigan, as the company deemphasizes administrative roles in favor of its technical work, according to a statement. That’ll leave about 240 employees in Michigan and closer to 270 nationally.
The company is still making batteries as it tries to scale up toward profitability, but it just goes to show that building a battery industry, even with heavy subsidies, is tough work.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I accidentally ended up at a Gin Blossoms concert a couple of years ago. I was visiting a friend at a ski town and her husband worked there and invited us to the summer event they were having and, lo and behold, the Gin Blossoms were playing. They put on a good show, and this throwback review on Pitchfork of the album’s sad history reminded me to listen to that album:
Since regrouping around the turn of the century, they’ve carried on as a workhorse touring act, sharing ’90s nostalgia packages with bands like Everclear and Sugar Ray and headlining county fairs and gatherings like Canton, Ohio’s Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival Ribs Burnoff or the Mid-South Great Steak Cookoff at Southland Park Gaming and Racing—wherever masses are charring meat outdoors, there’s a chance Gin Blossoms could be there. It’s not a bad living, really.
The Big Question
What was the last car you rented? Did you like it?
Last time I would have rented, I bought a (relatively) cheap pickup to avoid having to rent something for a month or so. So it has been some time and my memory struggles enough with things that happened this week. I think my last rental may have been a Ford Fusion. Which was a pretty decent car to drive around Nevada in.
I did get a loaner EV6 from a Kia dealer for a couple weeks. Not a rental, but I liked the acceleration, it was comfortable, and it was quieter than my Niro. If the warranty work on my Niro hadn’t been a nightmare, I might be driving an EV6 now.
VW Passat. Not a bad ride. Peppy enough and very roomy.
On an EV-adjacent topic of tires, Sailun apparently makes a quite good EV-focused all season tire. I guess it’s not shocking given all the EV’s in China that a domestic tire maker would come out with an all season engineered to survive constant jolts of torque.
The last car I rented was a 2023 Camry, and I was shocked by how outdated it was. It was a low end trim for sure, but it still had a physical key that you had to turn to start the car, a infotainment system with graphics that looked at least 10 years old. It felt like a resistive touch screen, but maybe it was just a really bad capacitive touch display. It was oddly configured with adaptive cruise control and lane departure warnings, but no blind spot monitors.
It was the Emerald Aisle at National in Orlando, but there wasn’t much choice. I like to get a car rather than an SUV if I’m going to have to leave luggage in the trunk (so it’s not visible), so my other choices were a Malibu or an Altima. There was a KIA K5, but it was locked and didn’t have any keys, otherwise I would have taken that. Otherwise it was a sea of compact SUV’s.
I did rent a Town and Country Minivan last year for a week for our family vacation out in Arizona. We put about 1500 miles on it and it was comfortable and easy to drive. I’m consistently amazed at the packaging that they can do with a minivan. They are really a versatile package that does a lot of things really well.
The Camry got a new optional 12″ infotainment system a couple years back with much improved software and hardware, presumably the rental spec didn’t option it. The lane departure and adaptive cruise control are standard on every trim as is required to earn IIHS awards, and BLIS was probably missing due to the chip shortage at the time.
I saw Everclear live in 2012, at JC Dobbs in Philly. This show was about 20 years after they had done their first tour of the country and visited Dobbs then. IIRC there were about 30 people there. Also saw Big daddy Kane perform there, to a similarly small crowd.
I’m too lazy too look but I keep seeing stories about these Chinese EVs but what about their quality(outside of battery) and safety ratings? I never see that stuff mentioned. Are they cheap ass death traps?
The ones that come to Europe perform very well now on the EURO NCAP standards.
China took advantage of the western companies that wanted to come take a run at selling a few cars in China to boost their quarterlies and get the CEO a nice bonus. So VW, GM, BMW, etc. all set up shop there and were required to partner with a domestic manufacturer.
So the Chinese learned from European and American companies, and now are coming to eat their lunch by undercutting them on price and offering a similar product to what they make…because they know how they can do it now.
Last rental was a very beaten up RWD V6 Charger. Maybe 65k miles or so, paint and body damage on every single panel. 3 different brands of tires, all 4 of which were nearly slick. This was in January, in a hilly area, with constant snow. Also something with the belt drive was so catastrophically wrong it sounded supercharged on acceleration. This was a full price rental from a major national brand. Small miracle it didn’t explode or die on us.
Honda Ridgeline and it was fantastic. I even squeezed 27mpg out of it! Thanks Enterprise for bailing me out.
Also a big FUCK YOU to the Alamo at the ATL airport. I got to the counter after not getting any sleep on a red eye flight and they just casually told me they sent all their cars to Florida because of a recent hurricane and I was shit out of luck and on my own.
To be fair, if it was Hurricane Ian, several hundred people died and whole towns were flattened. So, it’s not like they did that for funsies.
If it wasn’t Ian…yeah fuck those dudes!
It was hurricane Idalia last year. The fact there was zero communication and zero effort to make the situation right was what burned me. Just a manager standing there saying tough luck, go try Avis (not that they even talked to Avis about availability; they were just sending people there).
Took a $75 cab ride into the city since I knew all the other agencies were getting slammed by Alamo screwing it’s customers and was able to get the Ridgeline last minute for cheaper at Enterprise then my reservation with Alamo.
I’ve only rented a handful of cars:
2014 Nissan Versa Note: better than I thought it would be, though I didn’t drive it much.
2014 Chevy Sonic: had for about a month. Not a bad little car, honestly. Think cheap and cheerful.
2016 Hyundai Elantra: the most grey thing I’ve ever driven. Horrible, hard plastic everywhere on the inside. Had for about two weeks and was so thankful to get rid of it.
2019 Kia Optima: rented on vacation and it was just fine, if a little underpowered. Comfortable, reasonably efficient and spacious enough.
Few years ago, I had to drive a Sonic fleet vehicle pretty often.. It always shocked me. Not anything special, but it was relatively comfortable, quick enough for around town driving, and the base stereo was decent for a cheap little econobox. Never really had any complaints about it.. and I vehemently dislike everything GM. I’ve driven basically every model from every mark and thought all of them to be complete dogshit. All except the humble little Sonic.
Yeah, I figured I’d hate driving it but was pleasantly surprised. No matter how fast I drove, I couldn’t make it get much less than 30mpg on the highway. And the motorcycle-like instrumentation was a nice touch too. I kinda started to like the styling by the time I returned it.
Guess what, red-blooded Americans- our government also subsidizes automakers, and has done so forever.
That Interstate highway right next to the plant? Gubmint built that. The massive water system upgrades needed to support steelmaking? Gubmint paid for that. Foreign policy that keeps the price of gas artificially low so goobers can afford to drive around in a vehicle that gets 17 MPG? Gubmint did that. Those massive port facilities that ship out all of those BMWs and Teslas? Yup, Gubmint did that too.
True. I would expand to all road/highway building in general as they are 90% paid for by federal funds without much scrutiny. Also, there are no taxes or compensation of the negative externalities to unfettered driving like pollution, land use from roads and parking lots, injury risk for everyone outside that vehicle, slowing down buses, etc., which all disproportionately impacts low income demographics.
“Socialism is when your fire department saves your house. Capitalism is when your insurance company denies your claim”.
Those negative externalities are taxed heavily in China and the EU, which both have CO2 emissions penalties. One could say that the US lacking these penalties is a very ‘direct’ indirect subsidy to the domestic auto industry.
Also see: “Inflation Reduction Act”
Wow, congratulations! You’re one of like 1% of Americans who know what that is!
Oh, some people know! It’s just that it sounds like a “great and helpful” name, so there is no need to read the bill. It must be great for us, right?… Right?
Scumbags, I tell ya. Scumbags!
Hmm, now I’m not sure you read it.
The last car I rented was an altima with the cvt and it was a car
2022 Explorer last year when I was finishing up my work deployment. It was way too big for what I needed. Part of me was wishing to go back to the Jeep Gladiator I had the month before.
I haven’t rented a car in at least 20 years. And the last one I rented was a rundown junker from a place literally called “Rent-a-heap”. It ran fine though.
2001 Hundai piece of shit. Like Jerry Seinfeld, I bought the extra insurance. Cause I beat the living shit of of that turd for a week straight. At $100 bucks rental a week they lost their ass on me.
Before that 1990. Dodge Colt/Mitsubishi. That car was fantastic. It was the first rental that I did not want to return. Still looking for a clean one to this day.
My last rental was a Ford Sierra. I should get out more.
I’m driving a rental right now. It’s a Ford Edge. It’s an acceptable appliance. Over the last year i’ve rented the following:
4Runner – Nice
Pacifica – Nice
Malibu – Ok
Altima – Ok
Armada – A bit underwhelming
Cruze – Awful
Rav4 – Awful
You should have pulled over before you typed that.
The last car I rented was a lime green Suzuki Jimny.
My friends, it was the best rental car I’ve ever had. Better than an A4. Better than an XE. Even better than the Camaro SS convertible.
Never has a rental car made me so happy. I still light up every time I think about it.
My last rental was a 2018 Kia Optima, I was pleasantly surprised how good it was. Had it for 2 weeks and did a cross country trip in it. I didn’t want to give it back.
Last rental I had on vacation was a Kia Forte, liked it more than I expected, and was in better condition than I expected for a rental with nearly 30k on it from the particular company I rented from. The “IVT” behaved pretty well as far as CVTs go around DFW.
Work trips as a group had bigger rentals, last 2 have been an Expedition and a Murano. It hit home with the latter that it was an almost 8 year old design (at the time, now add a year or two). Fun fact, the design of the Murano’s hood has a crease that drops down closer towards the cowl that does a great job reflecting the midday Florida sun right into the eyes of the front passengers.
The last car I rented was a white Chevy Blazer. The interior design decisions baffled me, just so many poorly thought out buttons and dials. You can’t see the labels on the HVAC controls from the driver’s seat unless you put it all the way down!
Last car I rented was an EcoBoost Mustang Convertible in Houston.
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/59309/mustang-ecoboost-convertible-rental-car-review/1?_=1709741746856
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My last rental was a Turo’ed Audi A8 V10 to take to the Rolex 24 so I could look like a baller. OMG that car was amazing – comfy on the 3 hour trip, sound was amazing and damn she was quick. Favorite comment from the weekend was a passerby saying “that is nice, I love Ferraris”. Now once they depreciate about 50% more, I’m totally getting me one.
</bragging>
R8. Geez.
What’s funny (or maybe not surprising) is I knew (and I’m sure many others here knew too) that you were referring to an R8 in your post above based off of the combo of ‘Audi A8 V10’ And ‘nice Ferrari’ comments 🙂
This is the opposite energy of the jackass that parked their Rogue in the PCA lot.
I love it.
The last car I rented was 4 door Jeep Wrangler. We had it for 2 days which was enough to convince us we didn’t want to own a Wrangler.
My last rental was also a 4 door Wrangler. It was one of the most unpleasant automotive experiences of my life, outside vehicles that were objectively broken.
I got stuck with one once too. Made me wonder how anyone suffers with these things if they aren’t regularly using its off-road capabilities.
The last rental I had was a base model Kia Soul. The stop-start system was frustrating, and I hated how the instrument panel display handled the tach. Apart from that it was entirely fine. It was sufficient for schlepping around LA traffic while getting acceptable mileage.
I owned a Soul for a few years. While it was a super practical car for a lot of reasons, there were plenty of times the stop-start was straight up dangerous. You would hit the accelerator, the car would respond with, “OH well, I suppose I should turn back on now. One second here. Aaaanndd … hang on. Okay. Back on.” Another moment later and it would begin to attend to the business of actually moving forward.
Last car I rented was a Honda HR-V. It was fantastic. looked good, drove well, got good enough gas mileage, had decent space. The interior really punched above its weight class. 10/10 would rent again
The Tata Altroz costs $8,030 and gets up to 61mpg highway
I wasn’t familiar with this car. It seems to do well in crash testing (5 star global NCAP): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL1JgzfBvWk
What we need is a modern-day Malcolm Bricklin who will start bringing cars like this to the US.
Yes! Exactly
Or, just Malcolm Bricklin, he’s still kicking out there somewhere
Sure, it might be set up as a scam that goes under after a few years, but at least they’d sell some cars first