When China’s BYD recently overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla as the global leader in sales of electric vehicles, casual observers of the auto industry might have been surprised.
But what’s caught other carmakers around the world off-guard is something else about BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway: its low prices.
“No one can match BYD on price. Period,” Michael Dunne, CEO of Asia-focused car consultancy Dunne Insights, told the Financial Times. “Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea and Japan are in a state of shock.”
BYD can keeps its costs low in part because it owns the entire supply chain of its EV batteries, from the raw materials to the finished battery packs. That matters because a battery accounts for about 40% of a new electric vehicle’s price.
And don’t underestimate, that Human Right Violations are a competitive advantage, too. You don’t even need to argue with slave labor from Uygurs, but not allowing unions and having really low labour standards brings the costs down.
Is that why license plates are so cheap in the US?
I know youre making a prison joke but license plates are small stamped pieces of sheet metal. Im pretty sure you could automated that down with relative ease.
Right, but prison labor is still used in many other contexts.
I know, I was just saying that license plates are one of the elements of prison labor which has pribably been eliminated. Hell im not even against prison labor per se, I just wish they were paid a good sum for it. It would give them some cash to get started again once out.