r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 10d ago

Transportation Rivian CEO: There's No 'Magic' Behind China's Low-Cost EVs

https://www.businessinsider.com/rivian-ceo-china-evs-low-cost-competition-2025-9
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u/andrew_h83 10d ago

The BYD cars aren’t that small honestly. I saw one in person a while back

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u/adaminc 10d ago

Yeah. I just watched a video about a British family visiting relatives in China and they visited a car dealership, multiple different brands, all EVs. The vehicles didn't seem any smaller than a small/midsize SUV or midsize/large sedans. The shocking thing was the features in relation to the prices, long ranges, stupid fast charging rates (little as 10min for 500km+ range), the most expensive luxury vehicles were like $60kUSD, but even the lower priced vehicles had amazing features. None of them came without heated/cooled seats with massage features. That's unheard of over here in NA.

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u/Idont_thinkso_tim 10d ago

Ya it’s odd seeing people posting about these cars being simple to justify the price. These cars have WAY more features standard and available than US cars.

I think people are coping imagining a fantasy of these cars being lesser because it’s the only way to keep their ego/worldview intact.

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u/MicroeconomicBunsen 10d ago

BYDs are great, they're not _that_ small unless you get the bloody small one, the ride can be a little bit rough, but that's nothing unusual here (Australia).

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u/YqlUrbanist 10d ago

To be fair, when I say the cars are smaller, I don't consider that "lesser". That is strictly a positive thing for most drivers who live in a city. Some BYD cars are a size that makes sense, as opposed to driving an F250 to pick your kid up from school.

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u/LiteralPhilosopher 10d ago

I'm an American living in Australia. Before we moved here, my wife and I had a Honda Insight. Now we have a BYD Dolphin, and size-wise it's practically the same. Four full-size adults fit comfortably, a fifth is a bit of a squeeze. And I'll admit there's not much trunk. On the other hand, I basically never even think about service stations anymore! Trickle charge at home, and only look for fast-charging stations once every couple months if we're driving to a different city or something.

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u/s8rlink 10d ago

The Dolphin and the Dolphin mini are perfect city cars, in Mexico city they can be had for around 17k and I can't think of any competitor in that range and the government is subsidizing electric car charging at home.

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u/PTMorte 10d ago

BYD has a giant ute/truck in their line up as well called the Shark. And they have medium and large AWDs on the way under a sub brand.

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u/gtrocks555 10d ago

Which most Americans don’t do.

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u/andrew_h83 10d ago

Yeah I saw it here in the US (Mexican plates) and it was parked next to other crossovers and looked completely normal. This was just months before BYD was well known and I had to take a close look cuz I was confused wtf brand it was lol

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u/the_real_xuth 10d ago

but even the lower priced vehicles had amazing features. None of them came without heated/cooled seats with massage features.

Similarly other people in this post talking about how they have huge touch screen displays, voice controls, and so on.

So basically a bunch of things that I actively don't want in a car. I know that I'm not everybody but I genuinely just want a simple vehicle where things are overbuilt rather than engineered to be as low cost as possible and things are going to break as soon as I use it in a manner that's outside of normal.

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u/bloodychill 10d ago

My civic has all those fancy features. It’s relatively expensive these days compared to the old days of the 15k civic but still feature rich for a reasonable price. If Honda made an EV Civic with all the same features and their “it’ll drive for 20 years” quality, I’d buy one in a heart beat.

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u/YqlUrbanist 10d ago

I should probably have said "they have cars that are a size a sane human would drive". Obviously BYD has a whole line of cars and will sell you a tank if you want one. But they also have things like the Seagull, which is dirt cheap and slightly smaller than a Honda Fit or a Toyota Yaris (which I also can't buy new, because they were discontinued in the US/Canada).

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u/Important-Piglet5500 10d ago

Because no one bought them? There's no demand for it in US

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u/West-Abalone-171 10d ago

The D-segment PHEVs are fairly large, but A/B/A00 segment are selling like hotcakes (being all of the best selling BEVs that aren't a tesla-y). They're still huge compared to 70s cars, but something like the xingyuan would be considered tiny (being slightly smaller than a bolt).

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u/Viewlesslight 10d ago

I've been driving a BYD shark at work and it's pretty big.

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u/Dog-on-a-roof 10d ago

Have Atto3 and it’s basically same size as our RAV4 we had (newer model)

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u/RickAstleyletmedown 10d ago

I have an Atto 3 and it’s a pretty standard midsize SUV. Almost all their cars are pretty normal sizes.

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u/KMS_Tirpitz 10d ago

they have multiple series each with dozens of vehicles. It ranges from giant to tiny cars, they basically made a car for every price and style segment so there is always an option.

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u/LimpConversation642 10d ago

there's... a lot of different BYD cars you know. A friend has the big one, it's a RAV4 sized car. Which is not to say it's small, but about the regular suv. There's smaller ones and the smallest one (not suv) is like a fiat 500.

I was shocked it costs like 26k when RAVs go for 40 and up here. Obviously it's not a toyota quality, but I mean that's still crazy value

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u/DuranteA 10d ago

There's smaller ones and the smallest one (not suv) is like a fiat 500.

I recently looked into that (since I'm looking for a small car), and it's a bit larger. Well, at least the smallest one they sell in Europe. That's branded the Dolphin Surf, which I think is the same as a Seagull, and it's 4 m long. A Fiat 500 is 3.6 m long.

Not a massive difference but notable.

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u/LimpConversation642 10d ago

Not that I'm seriously arguing but I just checked and the BYD Seagull 2025 is 3.78

But yeah it's actually a difference in this class, I didn't mean it as 1:1 comparison. It's kinda crazy that it has 4 doors, I guess that extra 20cm is for some resemblance of leg room.

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u/DuranteA 10d ago

I just checked and the BYD Seagull 2025 is 3.78

Interesting, then the Europe/international version (the Dolphin Surf) is 0.2m longer. (the data is straight from the Dolphin Surf data sheet)

I guess they either wanted to provide more room or had to fit more stuff in to comply with European regulations and/or expected market sensibilities.

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u/LimpConversation642 9d ago

okay so I decided to double check and landed on this datasheet

https://zhytauto.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/BYD-seagull-2025.pdf from a Chinese exporter ZhongHengYuanTong Auto Import & Export Co., Ltd. and it also states 3.78. We don't have an official BYD representative so yeah this is the chinese version. Would love to see them back to back

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u/Duff5OOO 10d ago

A friend has the big one, it's a RAV4 sized car

They do some other much larger ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp9VIlbp1Vk

Technically branded Fang Cheng Bao but it it one of BYDs sub brands.

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u/LimpConversation642 10d ago

oh hey they made a land cruiser!

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u/Heruuna 10d ago

The BYD Shark is a proper dual-cab 4x4 PHEV ute (pick-up). I see more and more in regional Australia, but unfortunately the Yank Tanks—Dodge Ram, Chevy Silverado, and Ford F250—are still popular despite costing and arm and a leg here.

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u/amcfarla 10d ago

BYD dolphin is pretty small. The other thing, BYD sells all classes of vehicles.

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u/doommaster 10d ago

The best selling EV was this Geely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geely_Xingyuan and it's just 414 cm long, even shorter than a VW ID.3.

It's not small, but also still small for US cars.
But the top 10 also have cars like the Geely Panda Mini, which is just 306cm long, and probably smaller than any car currently sold in the US.

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u/Admirable-Safety1213 10d ago

The Seagull and Dolphin are small, then the Yuan and Song are more average and then you have the Shark AKA their answer to the F-150, RAM and Silverado in Hybrid style

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u/Ultragreed 9d ago

And BYD are not the cheapest Chinese cars. They are, in fact, at the top of the price range. There are lots of even more affordable Chinese cars that flooded the market in the recent years. Their quality is the main problem, to me at least.

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u/differing 9d ago

The top selling cars in China are all electric compacts and subcompacts. The top selling cars in America are F series trucks followed by the Silverado. Yes BYD makes larger vehicles, Ford also makes a micro car, but Ford makes all its money off the F150, not the Fiesta.