There’s zero hope for them here.
Just get some cheap EVs to Canada - they will sell well as hydro power is very cheap in BC and Quebec.
Is it really “cracking”? Like, it’s just one of 3 countries. It’s not some hack that will magically get them marketshare in US and Canada
Exactly. The Mexican automotive market is very different from the US and Canada.
Had a few Ubers use BYD cars when I was in CDMX last month. They were pretty basic, but comfortable and seemed well built. I’m not sure the model, but was about the size of a Golf and had a powered sliding door in the back.
BYD D1, made to DiDi’s specifications and marketed only to rideshare drivers, includes dashcam forward and aft as standard.
I had to google what that was, nothing piques my interest more than telling me I can’t buy it.
BYD D1
Honestly, the sliding rear door is fantastic for that use.
I visited a Chery dealership in Ensenada, BC back in June. The experience felt very upscale from the moment I stepped into the showroom. Even though I told the staff that I was visiting from the US and just wanted to check out the vehicles out of curiosity, they treated me as if I were a customer who was actively looking to buy a car. They showed me a few models, including the new Omoda. I got to fire them up, check out the infotainment system, and took a few pictures with the cars.
Overall, I’d say the brand, one of the oldest Chinese car brands, is a formidable competitor to the Koreans. The build quality and choice of materials was on par with a top trim Hyundai or Kia, but at a lower price, and with a MUCH better dealership experience. The manager of the dealership actually told me that there is internal discussion about expansion to the United States and Canada, but exact dates are still unknown. If they can maintain the same dealership experience, they’ll easily blow the Koreans out of the water. Remember, the Korean brands faced the same stigma when they first came to the USA, but they overcame it. I think Chery can overcome the stigma quite rapidly.
I think the biggest obstacle to Chinese brands entering the US isn’t the quality of their products, but poor US-China relations. The way things are, if a Chinese brand started gaining real traction in the US, there’d probably be calls to ban it and other Chinese cars from the country.
Specially targeting Chinese brands for being Chinese would most likely be a significant escalation that results in retaliation.
China is GM’s largest market and Tesla and Ford’s second largest market, they have significant leverage if they choose to retaliate in kind.
Most likely there wouldn’t be a hard ban, just Chinese cars are banned from government procurement programs, which shouldn’t hurt them as all foreign cars are excluded in practice.
You don’t see a Toyota or Mercedes police car, and neither companies are struggling.
What might exist is social and peer pressure to not buy one. It might be effective in the heartlands, but costal cities especially ones with high immigrant populations probably won’t care. People want a quality car at a good price.
That’s the thing though: a car made in Mexico can’t be banned without banning basically every automaker.
The only avenues to something like this would be convincing Mexico to make a major law change to prevent Chinese companies from operating.
The U.S government can just target sanction any popular Chinese OEMs, but of course that would be an escalation that results in the Chinese sanctioning American companies like GM, Ford and Tesla.
Yes, theoretically they could do that, but it would be pretty easily acknowledged as barely constitutional and illegal under US law (signed trade treaties) to ban named foreign competitors when you start losing.
The country of manufacture is irrelevant to the US government’s ability to impose restrictions on the sale of new vehicles within their borders. Chinese manufacturers could completely own the Mexican market and still have no presence in the US if a law is passed that says they’re not allowed.
Um it definitely isn’t irrelevant. They can definitely easily create barriers to import of Chinese manufactured vehicles, but once those vehicles begin being manufactured in Mexico, which is within the next few years, USMCA (new NAFTA) comes into play and it becomes extremely difficult to keep them out as long as they meet all other requirements for new vehicles.
Nothing besides maintaining the illusion of free trade stops the US government from singling out a specific company for special restrictions. They already did so to BYD and CRRC in 2021, even though both companies have US factories.
That’s not how it works.
Brands like Renault, Peugeot, & Seat have been sold in Mexico without ever touching the US market. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking.
Yea Mexico is full of cars not found in the US, including the helix
and the Jimny!
Suzuki if you’re reading this, please bring it to the rest of north America!
I work for an OEM and one of the wildest things I learned on the job is that up until about 2017, Mexico effectively had no vehicle safety requirements. It was basically just seatbelts and headlights and you are good to go.
This made it easy to bring decontented European models to market. US safety laws (Canada uses a lightly modified version of US FMVSS) are a technical trade barrier designed to prevent foreign automakers from entering without significant cost.
up until about 2017, Mexico effectively had no vehicle safety requirements. It was basically just seatbelts and headlights and you are good to go.
Based
Not just foreign automakers.
Ford can’t afford to sell their own cars here because the cost of federalizing them would exceed projected sales (smaller models have historically been designed by Ford Europe).
And that doesn’t even go into Ford’s legal troubles with CBP over the chicken tax (for the transit van).
The US regulations don’t benefit anyone except the useless, overpaid bureaucrats at NHTSA.