Hacker News

points by hungryhobbit 2 days ago | 0 comments

Does it matter? It's like saying "we fireproofed 1 of 200 apartments in a building" ... well great, but you still can't sell that building until you fireproof the other 199.

Same issue here: no one in America can even buy these things (practically-speaking), let alone drive them legally in US streets until China starts building them to conform to US safety standards.

Until that happens, we're just seeing nifty demos of impressively cheap cars ... that are also (subtly) very dangerous.

[–] shirro 2 days ago

BYD is currently the second biggest selling vehicle manufacturer (not just EV) in Australia after Toyota and ahead of Ford. It is also the only one increasing sales in the top three. All the vehicles sold here meet our strict design rules. There are some notable US vehicles that even with substantial engineering modifications probably couldn't be made compliant with our safety regulations.

[–] WheatMillington 2 days ago

You can't drive a BYD because your government tariffs them to hell. I can drive one in my country, and their safety record is great.

[–] ethanbezz 2 days ago

Perhaps they're just 'nifty demos' in the eyes of the US market, but in countries like Australia, where BYD is already the 2nd best selling car brand, they are very much not that.

[–] its-summertime 2 days ago

I suspect that the video originally posted on Weibo, the video in which all the text is in Chinese, might not be aimed at Americans. I think they are targeting a different market with this. Perhaps China.

[–] eigenspace 2 days ago

1 in 200 apartments in the building? You realize that the USA is one of the only car markets that has closed itself off to chinese cars, right?

BYD is the number 1 EV brand in the world currently by sales.

[–] 233mhz 2 days ago

Wait until your learn there is like a whole world outside of the US

[–] 4ndrewl 2 days ago

They conform to EU and UK safety standards (there are enough of them on the roads here to demonstrate that).

Are US safety standards that much higher - seems like a regulatory nightmare over there?

[–] MiroslavPokorny 2 days ago

Lookup the Pinto fuel tank story - American safety regulations in action.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-10-mn-54658...

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury on Friday ordered General Motors to pay a record $4.9 billion in damages to two women and four children who were trapped and burned when the gas tank of their 1979 Chevrolet Malibu exploded after a rear-end collision on Christmas Eve six years ago.

[–] rsynnott 2 days ago

US safety standards are _different_. Car standards are particularly messy in that a car that's road-legal in the EU probably isn't in the US and vice versa. Mostly small stuff; for instance they'll have different side mirrors.

Producing a version of these cars for US standards likely would not be difficult (every car manufacturer has to deal with about four standards regimes); it's just that they're no reason to do so currently.