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Old 05-26-2019, 09:52 AM   #28 (permalink)
niky
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rmay635703 View Post
We have already had about a half dozen Chinese cars come over the ocean all have been underwhelming with rather severe levels of major failures.
Wheego, BYD, Miles, Kandi, Greatland, and other Chinese companies have already tried selling their EVs here and all have ended up as projects in diyelectriccar forums because of their epic failure rates of basic components

Until they import cars in significant numbers and stay in business long enough to support them we won’t know if they can do better than their other recent offerings here
See, aside from BYD, which is a major manufacturer, the rest of those sound like rebadged crap bought lowest bidder with tacked on American hardware (I literally laughed out loud when I first saw the price of the Zap Xebra, knowing how utterly terrible the "glider" it was based on is, and how much cheaper the Chinese electric version was).

And here, you've got BYD, which just a model generation or two ago was building knock-off fifteen year old Corollas and pirated Lexii... but which is now building the most successful hybrid-electric SUVs in China.

The pace of improvement is very, very fast. China has, in the past decade, started rapidly bringing itself up to global NCAP compliance. Some companies are targeting million mile durability for their engines, and the torture tests and teardowns are approaching what you'd see for the Japanese.

I've been driving Chinese cars since they could kill you if you looked at them funny (which, to be fair, was only fifteen years or so ago), and I've been impressed by what I've seen. The latest models I've driven were within the upper third in terms of quality compared to mainstream brands. All that remains to be seen is long-term durability.
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