Keep in mind, that $25k AUD is just $16600. And for that price, you're getting a real car with driver-assist features and a reasonable crash safety rating.
US manufacturers are going to be ok as long as there are policies banning foreign cars and there are tariffs, which is going to be true for a long time.
And somehow US consumers feel comfortable paying more for worse cars.
Man, living in Canada, I wish we were allowed to import Chinese cars. If America is putting tariffs on us and threatening our sovereignty, that's all the more reason to divest from American made cars.
I had family friends visiting Australia from USA and they were surprised by the sheer number and varieties of Chinese cars on our roads. I too have a BYD Dolphin and Shark, they loved them and felt they’re missing out big time on this. Mind you we have lots of Teslas on the roads as well, but they are bleeding their lead.
Those Teslas in Australia are Chinese made too of course as are the majority of Teslas globally. USA made really doesn’t exist at all in Australia. It’s merely USA branded. Even the Ford Ranger that’s sold in Australia is made in Thailand.
> And somehow US consumers feel comfortable paying more for worse cars.
It's baffling and a complete self goal.
The GMC dealership near me is spilling full-size++ pick-ups and enormous Suburban/Tahoe/whatevers out of it's lot and onto the grass. The average sticker is ~$48K/~$750 per month and, depending on driving habits, it can cost hundreds of dollars per week to run these vehicles. That's to say nothing of insurance, maintenance and the cost of replacing those monster truck tires every 2-3 years.
Compare all that to a BYD you could realistically buy outright for $10-15K and charge in your driveway every night.
Yes we do. We have nice big wide roads. Heck, my European immigrant friends love trucks more than natives, in my experience. If you have the space for them, there are some very appealing attributes. My Lightning will carry anything I want, tow big trailers, has huge interior space for the family, will outrun most cars (even many 'fast' ones), and is more fuel efficient than a [non-plugin] Prius.
I wouldn't want to own it in a very dense city, but there are only a couple of those in the US. Most US cities even at their densest locations are fine with a half ton.
The Lightning BEV has been discontinued. The Lightning will continue to be produced, after a delay, but it will only come as an EREV configuration. Ford has been mum on the details but my guess is it will share a large part of the underlying architecture with the pure BEV version. I won't be shocked if Ford backpedals at some point in a couple years and offers both variants simultaneously.
I'm not entirely convinced Ford would have discontinued the BEV if the F150 aluminum manufacturer hadn't caught on fire a few times over the space of a month or so. Ford really needs to go for maximum margin trucks when they cannot produce all that they want, so it made sense to put the Lightning BEV on indefinite hold.
What car has that? Please do not spread misinformation.
The Lightning taillights are expensive, a couple grand directly from Ford, primarily because of the integrated blind spot radar. That is the part that needs to be re-paired to the truck if you replace it, the taillights themselves are same as they ever were. Most of the time when someone breaks a taillight they just grab one from eBay and swap over the BLIS because it wasn't damaged.
Also, expensive taillights and headlights are 1) not unique to the Lightning, and 2) not unique to Ford.
My buddy who owns a lightning told me this story first hand. Perhaps he was exaggerating. His taillight got smashed, so this price was for the full unit not just the bulb.
This is a bit of a stereotype. The most popular cars in the US are now SUVs and CUVs, probably because a lot of Americans are well-approximated by spheres.
BYD Dolphin is right on the edge of being a CUV. They can trivially scale it up a bit. It'll be more expensive, but not by much.
I think it's a little early to make that claim. Jim Farley is definitely paying attention, for example. He drove a Chinese EV for a year, IIRC, and on many occasions talked bout the challenges of competing with them.
I don't know what the real barrier to success will be, but I don't think it will be blindness. It may be difficulty competing on labor cost, but that's a good case for carefully applied tariffs to keep competition fair.
US manufacturers are fine because the US has a long history of economic protectionism. These cars are effectively banned in the US due to tariffs which protect US automakers.
Once FSD, we will make rules about the software that will have the effect of excluding Chinese companies. I seriously doubt that I'll see Chinese cars here in my lifetime.
The Holden Spark appears to just be a re-badge of a Chevrolet Spark, which was made by their South Korean subsidiary, and was discontinued three years ago [0].
that should really apply to all vehicles, because I'm pretty sure there isn't a new vehicle on the market in the US that doesn't have surveillance tech built in.
Absolutely. But this has an extra layer of urgency. Their entire goal is to be able to remotely turn off all of our infrastructure, which is handy leverage if you're looking to do things like invading a certain island nation.
The US car manufacturers are cooked.