I live in Europe: My only “concern” about chinese cars (and I don’t mean chinese as in Volvo) that I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years. More than 500 unique models were released in
the first 6 months of 2026 alone [0]. It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago. Brands you never heared about, never updated Android versions etc
I live in the United States: My only "concern" about cars made here is that the parts are and will be exorbitantly high due to protectionism by our government and will be a lot more for a lot fewer features, efficiency and innovation and we'll have to win a class action lawsuit to even open the hoods of cars we "own" so we can repair them ourselves.
I mean the core feature here is a vastly simplified drivetrain and often modular parts borrowed or 'appropriated' from the best of existing marques. There's a lot less to go wrong versus any existing ICE platform, and the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the the high-end BYD stuff.
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
Given how often parts are unavailable for new and late model "western" brands this is more like a generic worry that comes with car ownership than anything brand-specific. If anything the proliferation of brands demonstrates robust use of off-the-shelf components, which in turn suggests replacement parts should be ubiquitous.
TBH the market demand will ensure a Toyota Camry/Honda Civic 'invincible' style runabout will emerge that basically anyone can run into the ground and still depend on. The real issue to me is the morality of the production of the parts, particularly things involving rare-earth metals.
Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features. I know a few people that bought Chineses brands that only existed for 3 years.
Mexico is more broadly a showroom for all sorts of vehicles you can't buy in the US, namely those that don't meet US safety or emissions requirements. The Hilux being the notable example, though not covered in the below link.
it is deeply ironic that a toyota hilux pickup truck - an actually practical pickup truck - does not meet US "standards" but the pedestrian killing, inefficient, wasteful, and expensive "pickups" from US auto companies somehow do.
The Chinese have certainly taken over far more than just the Mexican market. You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these days, and while Toyotas were selling like hot cakes in Pakistan the dealerships have gotten huge waitlists for the Chinese ones now. As others have mentioned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity. I can confidently assume a Toyota from 1993 is still just being broken in at 150K miles, no clue if the same can be said about these with all the varieties and electronic components.
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
Suits me. US manufacturers willingly chose to double and triple down on luxury pricing models and chose to include enough software and sensors for a moderately capable aircraft, cutting every corner they could find in terms of reliability and serviceability in the process. I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
> I gleefully await the "find out" phase of this little experiment.
I wouldn't hold your breath. US manufacturers and their unions are very well taken care of in Washington, DC. Been that way for decades and will likely be that way for several more, unless something entirely unforeseen happens.
People make a fuss about China unfairly subsidizing its auto market but this is exactly how subsidies should work.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its auto industry over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that of course is rugged capitalism at work.
Here in South Africa I’m seeing more and more BYDs all the time, the high fuel prices due to the Iran war is making their entry level EV pay for itself for people with any kind of commute.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
You're well over the 90 day mark where E10 is well into its degradation and standard unleaded is starting to sour. A nice problem to have in many respects, but just to be aware!
Just to add a different perspective. As a mexican, I often wonder how the future will look like for those cars in terms of repairability. I don't think lots of people are really pondering wether the car company will be here long enough to provide a reasonable amount of support for the niche technical issues that will arise.
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
Are there actual national security concerns though? Or is that just an excuse for protectionism? I suspect the latter, and in europe politicians may make the calculation that cheap cars > car manufaturing jobs.
Yes, there are huge national security concerns when everybody's cars are always on the network and all fly-by-wire. It would be trivial for anyone who writes the software for these things to include logic or network bombs in them that would enable a catastrophic strike on a country or the rest of the world. Cars being on the network all the time is really a terrifically stupid idea.
Careful readers may note the complete lack of the word "China" in the previous paragraph. But, yes, technically it is even that much more dangerous to have a whole bunch of potentially-hackable robots roaming up and down all your transportation corridors that were also created by your major economic and military rival.
But I don't even like it when it isn't created by your rival, though, because there's no guarantee that your rival can't hack anybody's software. I fear the day when some significant fraction of cars on the road are given instructions to floor the pedal and then do a hard turn to the left 10 seconds later. (Or the right for countries where that is the "turn into oncoming traffic" direction.)
Europe and Germany invested heavily in the Nordstream pipelines despite USA repeatedly warning them that Russia would weaponize energy dependence against them [1]. Germany even continued shuttering their nuclear plants after Crimea because they loved the cheap gas.
The point is, Europe's judgement cannot be trusted. They have allowed themselves to become dependent on very risky globalized sources despite decades of warnings.
This. There are no words to describe how asinine Europe's (and in particular Germany's) energy policy is. And it's all self inflicted for largely ideological reasons.
I think there are legitimate safety and national security concerns. I also think restrictions are imposed for protectionism / political / monetary reasons. We are living in a world where the people making the decisions wait until there is enough personal gain to act in one direction or another.
It's not for national security. It's to protect Detroit.
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
"He who loves the profit of the tyrant must hate the Commonwealth, and he who loves the Commonwealth must hate the profit of tyranny, for what profits the sovereign does not always profit the Commonwealth." - paraphrased from the anti-Machiavel.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
Submarine. China desperate to find a market for these dubious vehicles because domestic economy and market in very bad shape right now and getting worse.
No, between safety and emissions, a normal person effectively have to wait out the 25 year as spelled out in the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988. Once you hit that, it's relatively straightforward to import the car (straightforward if you know how to do it, there are importers who specialize in this market).
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
It would be extraordinarily simple to remedy this: Require by law the technical ability to physically disable all remote communication to and from a vehicle, and prohibit any remote communication requirement from the core functions of a vehicle.
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
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Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
I tried to like Teslas, but I find them incredibly cheap and uncomfortable. The road noise is worse than a 27 year old Subaru, which I found baffling since there's not even an engine, and I thought they were supposed to be aerodynamic and smooth.
But no, they're harsh and always feel like you're driving on a noisy worn out road.
What's the appeal of Teslas? For the price premium of them, what do you actually get?
I'm no fan of Teslas but they do still have one distinguishing feature over other EVs: last I checked, they were still by far the most efficient, in terms of kWh per km. It's as if nobody else even bothers streamlining their cars, they're too busy making chunky SUVs with massive grilles.
It's weird that for petrol cars, most people are really concerned with miles-per-gallon (maybe not so much in the US, until recently), yet for EVs all anyone seems to care about is range. I guess electricity is cheap enough that efficiency doesn't really matter, except when it gives you more range?
They're the safest cars on the road and they drive themselves. If you want to maximize your family's safety, you put them in a Tesla. For me, the stress of driving is completely gone now. Traffic jams, slow drivers, complicated turns in unfamiliar areas, none of that bothers me anymore.
If Chinese cars were available here for cheaper, drove themselves just as well, and were similarly safe, I'd consider them.
I found the user experience terrible as well - just trying to turn on the wipers or change the heat required trying to remember where they were in nested menus on a touchscreen while driving at 100kmh on the 401.
There are relatively few ways to mask the fact that a car weighs 2000kg. One of the non-ways of solving that problem is to put ultra-low-profile tires on huge wheels to make it look cool online and ride like shit.
Yeah I feel like the low profile tire trend is terrible in a lot of ways. Tire wear, resistance to flats, mileage, and road noise immediately come to mind.
This response is half a decade old. I use FSD every day and it drives much much safer than I would. I've owned my Tesla for less than 2 years and it improves further with every update.
There is path loss to consider. I would imagine that large scale electricity generation is more efficient than small scale ICE engines, and EVs have regeneration, so probably the EVs still come out ahead.
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
Even the worst ev driven off coal nets out to less emissions in its lifetime than gas cars. this has been known and well studied for like a decade. Keep up!
Also their LFP batteries are extremely simple and recyclable forever.
lumping those all together is missing half the point, ng in at least in the us where its a by product of oil extraction is a huge step up from coal/oil and will be with us for a very long time
0, https://www.carscoops.com/2026/08/chinese-automakers-lauchin...
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
https://www.jalopnik.com/the-coolest-non-us-cars-americans-c...
If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.
>hardly see a Tesla in London
Is that through competition, or because people don't want to be openly associated with Nazis?
Jaecoo and BYD are well-known brands now in UK, however.
I wouldn't hold your breath. US manufacturers and their unions are very well taken care of in Washington, DC. Been that way for decades and will likely be that way for several more, unless something entirely unforeseen happens.
USA meanwhile has spent over $120 billion to prop up its auto industry over the last two decades and has nothing to show for it except some very rich executives, and that of course is rugged capitalism at work.
That infact made me consider BYD even more seriously. Being able to see the car in person is far more impressive the a YouTube video.
I’ve been super happy with my Sealion 5 (PHEV) I bought in May, tank is still over half full since last filling it up mid July and having done about 4,500km since.
I have had two minor software issues. One time the one parking sensor warning indicator kind of got stuck on the centre screen (no noise though). The other was my wireless CarPlay refusing to connect. In both cases they self corrected once the car had been turned off (and unplugged) for a little while. A bit annoying at the time, especially as there seems to be no manual way to force a reset, but super isolated.
Most here might assume I'm talking about BYD, and although they are the main brand as far as I can see, Google lists more than 25 chinese car brands currently available in Mexico. I believe the future of that will be a lot of e-waste and problems for the electrical grid.
For all the talk about data and technology sovereignty in Europe about USA tech, you would think they would take that more seriously too. Instead Europe is flooded with underpriced Chinese cars that they have no control over.
Careful readers may note the complete lack of the word "China" in the previous paragraph. But, yes, technically it is even that much more dangerous to have a whole bunch of potentially-hackable robots roaming up and down all your transportation corridors that were also created by your major economic and military rival.
But I don't even like it when it isn't created by your rival, though, because there's no guarantee that your rival can't hack anybody's software. I fear the day when some significant fraction of cars on the road are given instructions to floor the pedal and then do a hard turn to the left 10 seconds later. (Or the right for countries where that is the "turn into oncoming traffic" direction.)
The point is, Europe's judgement cannot be trusted. They have allowed themselves to become dependent on very risky globalized sources despite decades of warnings.
[1] https://2021-2025.state.gov/nord-stream-2-and-potential-sanc...
Our domestic industry should be laser focused on being more competitive with Chinese vehicles, but if they could do relatively little R&D and keep the status quo going at high costs to the consumer, they'll do it.
That's about the level of sovereignty expressed in product-by-product donor protection.
And that is perfectly reasonable. I go further and disable the cellular modem even in a domestically made car.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/12/eu-deal-...
And personally I trust a Tesla as much as chinese car. But a VW one only slightly more.
There are some small exceptions for show cars (as is, never used on public roads) and similar things, but they all limit/prohibit use on public roads.
2. Buy a scrapped Tesla in the US.
3. Rebadge the BYD with the Tesla's logos.
4. Bury the Tesla in your yard.
5. Register the rebadged BYD with the Tesla's VIN, slap some plates on it, and drive.
https://duckduckgo.com/&q=i+went+to+mexico+to+test+drive+the...
An operator should be able to use their vehicle with zero remote software use. No smartphone requirement, no onboard radio requirement. This may mean that certain features like FSD or navigation tools are disabled for safety reasons, but there are plenty of useful safety features that do not require live updates.
From a privacy and utility perspective, this is a no-brainer. Second, as a software security layperson, I think this would largely eliminate any "sleeper cyber sabotage" security concerns that are cited for prohibiting Chinese vehicles.
---
Given how obvious this seems to me, I'm confident that we're really banning Chinese EVs for economic reasons.
It's weird that for petrol cars, most people are really concerned with miles-per-gallon (maybe not so much in the US, until recently), yet for EVs all anyone seems to care about is range. I guess electricity is cheap enough that efficiency doesn't really matter, except when it gives you more range?
If Chinese cars were available here for cheaper, drove themselves just as well, and were similarly safe, I'd consider them.
Temp is always visible in bottom left of screen, no sub menu needed
And you can use voice commands for anything, you should test drive a new one
Please provide a better source if you have one
https://www.iea.org/countries/mexico/electricity
And the emissions can be more easily controlled/scrubbed at the large scale.
Also their LFP batteries are extremely simple and recyclable forever.