When China’s BYD recently overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla as the global leader in sales of electric vehicles, casual observers of the auto industry might have been surprised.
But what’s caught other carmakers around the world off-guard is something else about BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway: its low prices.
“No one can match BYD on price. Period,” Michael Dunne, CEO of Asia-focused car consultancy Dunne Insights, told the Financial Times. “Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea and Japan are in a state of shock.”
BYD can keeps its costs low in part because it owns the entire supply chain of its EV batteries, from the raw materials to the finished battery packs. That matters because a battery accounts for about 40% of a new electric vehicle’s price.
Is this another case of subsidizing the product to sell the data? Information over each individuals driving habits, audio from the car, connection to the phone. Could be valuable to the CCP.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/
That it is happening is the issue, foolish to think that it is only the CCP that would be interested in doing this and not say the largest military industrial complex in the world known for over extending and threading on the rights of people across the globe.
Louis Rossman was making a video about cars in the US spying on you though, everyone wants that data.
Therefore chances are that our kids will be fed up with it and will be driving cars made by Mozilla? Cool.