Do anyone know why American brands never seem to agree to slim down cars by ~15% for export sales? IIUC, excessive width universal to every American cars including all Tesla models was always a massive detrimental factor outside US for past ~50 years.

Cars aren't like iPhones, and shipping cars across oceans really only makes sense for luxury vehicles, which is the real reason why Chinese cars aren't available in the U.S. yet.

Most non-luxury foreign cars available for sale in the U.S. are actually assembled in factories in Mexico or the United States.

If Ford wanted to sell cars to the E.U. (competitively), they'd design smaller models and manufacture them in Europe. If BYD wants to sell cars in the U.S., they'll built out a plant in Mexico.

Ford does sell cars in the EU. They're an extremely popular brand in the UK. They just sell normal sized cars, not F150s.

Then the comment I was replying to was incorrect.

It's also kind of interesting, the Euro Ford focus had a a lot of Volvo tech iirc. And the Ka isn't sold in the US at all, but it's a very cool car.

Cybertruck is also not legal in the UK.

Sorry but BYD interior is kinda crap. Depends what you value of course. Features are there but if feels like cheap kitsch.

So they're definitely taking Tesla's lane then.

Tesla's "build quality" is okay, but software is excellent. So quite opposite really. BYD materials are good, but software is garbage. The inside looks is kitsch. And IDK about you but I use software every day on my car and do not obsess on softness of the air vent material...

Software may have great features but the gimmicks are unsafe. When I rented a Model Y to see if we wanted to buy, my kids wanted to play a game while we were at a very long light - when the light changed, the car prevented me from shifting gear to Drive until we quit the game. Now, it was my fault I let my kids do this - but the design (game had priority over driving) made me question the company's priorities.

Convinced me that car really is a tablet with wheels.

To start a game you need to shift in park to begin with. This is just ridiculous...

And it's not about the features per se. Lots of cars have the features, but no car is able to integrated them in a package thats actually useable.

Disagree here - I recently took delivery of a BYD Shark 6 and was especially impressed with the build quality and interior quality. I'd say on par with the BMW X5 we had, and slightly better than the Polestar 2 that we have.

The software on the other hand... I would love per-key profiles (like the polestar) and buttons doing the thing they're labeled for when using CarPlay - but I _hope_ these things can be updated OTA. The UI and responsiveness is really quick however, especially compared to the P2 which feels woefully underpowered with constant UI lags.

Terrible software seems to be par for the course in cars.

Yep it's not quality per-se as bad materials. It's just overall experience that just a bit like a wut. Note I'm coming from Tesla and only tested Atto3 which is a bit aged already.

I mean, sure, but the interior of any $25k car is kinda crap. A Mazda 3 might be the nicest thing you get at that price range.