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A comment on BYD doubles its Brazil market share to 9.7% a year after opening its local plant. Parent comment

Re:BYD doubles its Brazil market share to 9.7% a year after ... by Matl on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:02PM (#50370043)
BYD cars are cheaper because China just has the most expertise at building things at scale and because they're making many formerly discrete car parts entire modules, which are cheaper to manufacture.

There's also been plenty of reporting of 'slave like conditions' at Tesla, GM etc.

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Re:BYD doubles its Brazil market share to 9.7% a year after ... by apercu on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:03PM (#50370054)
I mean, both can be true?
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Re:BYD doubles its Brazil market share to 9.7% a year after ... by Matl on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:08PM (#50370119)
Can be, but likely isn't to any greater extent than in the West without substantial evidence. And so perhaps it should not be the first reason listed for why it's cheaper when there are perfectly reasonable explanations outside of the constant 'China bad, evil' orientalist shtick that just shows how scared we in the West are of actual competition, accustomed to exploiting the world for half a millennia.
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Re:BYD doubles its Brazil market share to 9.7% a year after ... by maxglute on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:24PM (#50370322)
No, it can't. If PRC makers NEEDED low wages to undercut pricing vs west sure. But PRC EVs selling far above domestic MSRP, more than enough to cover wage differential, i.e. lower wages isn't doing the undercutting, it's enabling more profitable extraction. Reality is western competitors are simply not competitive regardless of wage differential when most structural competitiveness come from vertical integration. It doesn't help west is paying more to build worse. Paying less to build worse also not going to close gap.
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Re:BYD doubles its Brazil market share to 9.7% a year after ... by handle584 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @11:47PM (#50375315)
Slave-like by American standards maybe, not Chinese. In the US Janesville GM pays assembly workers $28/hr in 2008 before closure, and nowadays anywhere between $20-$35 and they enjoy a strong union and good pension.

A few labor lawsuits show that in China Tesla wage starts at ~$4.5/hr while BYD ~$1.7/hr. Tesla also limits overtime to 36 hrs/mo by China labor law, while gov allows BYD workers to clock 441.5 raw hours in a single month. Pension and union is basically non-existent. And the reason why ppl work at BYD instead of Tesla is by clocking monstrous overtime they actually make more despite lower hourly pay.

There are reasons why Tesla consistently ranks in China 1st/2nd by sales. One of them is Chinese workers are the ones exploited by sweatshops and a government only nominally communist so they are paying the price, while Western customers are enjoying good ol' NIMBYism.

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Re:BYD doubles its Brazil market share to 9.7% a year after ... by Matl on Thursday November 05, 2026 @08:34AM (#50378888)
> In the US Janesville GM pays assembly workers $28/hr in 2008 before closure, and nowadays anywhere between $20-$35

> In China Tesla wage starts at ~$4.5/hr while BYD ~$1.7/hr.

You can't compare wages in China vs the US like that. The cost of living is much, much different than in the US. Healthcare, energy costs etc. aren't comparable.

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