Mexico is a showroom for electric vehicles you can't buy in the U.S.

Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.

[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...

Jokes on you. In the Northeast cars rust in less than 10 years. We don't need parts

Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).

Parts?

You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.

I don't say this happily.

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.

Truly. Brand names in Europe for .cn EVs sound like iPhone accessory listings from Amazon

> I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years

Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.

I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.

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.

We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.

[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...

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.

that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar, Zeekr) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part

> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago

lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands

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Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features even car play. I know a few people that bought Chinese brands that only existed for 3 years.

I see this (and similar statements) often repeated on the Internet, but it’s not what I saw during my two week trip to London and vicinity back in July. This was followed by a week in Paris.

In both London and Paris, I saw many, many Teslas, including late model Model 3 Juniper and Model Y Highland.

What I didn’t see were many Chinese EVs - which I was keeping an active lookout for. Maybe a dozen at most BYDs in each city, and 2 Jaecoos. My wife and I made a bet that I could spot at least 100 Chinese EVs during our trip. I lost - I didn’t even come close.

So what gives? The Internet told me I would see Chinese EVs everywhere. I did not.

The Internet also told me Europeans were boycotting Tesla and Elon, but I didn’t see that either.

There are Tesla's everywhere around my way in London. They are very very common. Maybe people have stopped buying them since Elon went crazy, but there are still a lot on the roads.

>You'll hardly see a Tesla in London these day

>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.

> If they do one day come the American shores, I assume that's the end of US car manufacturers.

And the rise of the AfD.

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.

Emissions? These are EVs mostly. And these cars are safe enough for the EU.

Any vehicles with GPS or cellular modules made in Russia or China are explicitly banned. There's also a pending law to ban any automakers that have 15% or greater ownership by people from China, Russia, or Iran.

They are just outright banned. Has nothing to do with safety or emissions.

Yeah safety, that's what it's all about

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.

I went there recently for a friends wedding, and about half the Uber's we took were driving Chinese EV's

BYD is taking over the world, one country at a time, Tesla is done worldwide just a matter of time.

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.

I was really impressed with the BYD’s I rode in for uber while in Mexico

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.

Europe doesn't ban American on-board software so why would they ban Chinese ones?

There are limits in place and about to be tightened, but I assume the bigger worry are the european car manufacturers.

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.

If only we took data privacy laws seriously here then we wouldn't be in such a predicament, just more consequences of our protectionist economy.

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.

> USA bans the onboard Chinese automotive software for national security reasons, effectively banning Chinese cars.

And that is perfectly reasonable. I go further and disable the cellular modem even in a domestically made car.

IIRC, the US administration is claiming that building a ballroom and an arch are needed for national security.

The US could provide a means for importing cars with electronic risks - have the electronic "brain" be made in the US and have it plug into a "dumb" (or well-defined interface) body.

Thanks! That worked fine.

Don't forget about all the High-Seniority union members who got paid very well to stall progress so the next generation has no ability to compete.

Disagree. The US manufacturers doubled down on over priced cars that nobody can afford, that's what the money went towards.

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.

1. Buy a BYD in Mexico.

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.

there are limitations, a non resident can get a car in for a year, and if it’s plated in Mexico a resident might get a similar permit.

register it with mexican plates and drive it over

Definitely, and a lot still do. But buying a Tesla is like buying a BYD since they're the dominant brand they're likely to have better support. A lot of lessons were learned on the Nissan Leaf, Ford Lightning, and even to this day buying a Rivian is like buying a BMW in that you know maintenance/repairability will be painful.

Are you sure you wanna hang your hat on that????

Show me where on the doll China touched you XD

This link still runs into a subscription paywall, as do most of your recent posts.

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?

Model Y is the best selling car model in the world, so just fine it seems, the government is protecting legacy auto, not Tesla with the ban

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mazda or toyota, same tech

Meaning electric cars at minimum 25% cleaner than an internal combustion vehicle.

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