China has positioned itself as the main car supplier in Mexico, with exports reaching $4.6 billion in 2023, according to data from Mexico’s Secretariat of Economy.
The Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Honda and Nissan to position itself as the seventh largest automaker in the world by number of units sold during the April to June quarter. This growth was driven by increased demand for its affordable electric vehicles, according to data from automakers and research firm MarkLines.
The company’s new vehicle sales rose 40 percent year over year to 980,000 units in the quarter—the same quarter wherein most major automakers, including Toyota and Volkswagen, experienced a decline in sales. Much of BYD’s growth is attributed to its overseas sales, which nearly tripled in the past year to 105,000 units. Now BYD is considering locating its new auto plant in three Mexican states: Durango, Jalisco, and Nuevo Leon.
Foreign investment would be an economic boost for Mexico. The company has claimed that a plant there would create about 10,000 jobs. A Tesla competitor, BYD markets its Dolphin Mini model in Mexico for about 398,800 pesos—about $21,300 dollars—a little more than half the price of the cheapest Tesla model.
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That tariff-free access is part of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (T-MEC), an updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement that, as of 2018, eliminated tariffs on many products traded between the North American countries. Under the treaty, if a foreign automotive company that manufactures vehicles in Canada or Mexico can demonstrate that the materials used are locally sourced, its products can be exported to the United States virtually duty-free.
MAGA strikes again
The flat truth is, subsidies or not, nobody would be able to compete with BYD because they’re completely vertically integrated(they even mine and refine their own lithium for christ sakes). They’re a company that both robustly sells battery cells and robustly sells cars. Their margins can go way tighter than anybody else can afford while they keep chasing new markets and line go up.
If quality was an issue, they might have a problem, but since they’ve been outcompeting Volkswagen and Tesla on that domestically, the only thing that will stop them at this point is tariffs, and making people pay more for an electric car when we’re in a climate crisis is just dumb to me despite the monopoly threat that BYD is.
My stance on Chinese cars is to have no tariffs on models that are $25kMSRP or less this disincentives them from overly marking them up.
If they’re assembled in America I can see them easily going higher than 25k. Someone bought a byd shark plug in hybrid pickup truck in Mexico on Reddit(they keep it registered in Mexico and drive it in the US) for just under 50k, but even at that price the quality of it was just a steal when you compare it to an F-150 lightning at 80k. They’d torch US automakers on all fronts if they were allowed to compete here.
