alt Hacker News> develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast.
How do you know this for a fact? Chinese press releases? You've driven one? Some auto blogger drove one?
After world war 2 Gorbachev or whoever visited the United States and during that trio visited a supermarket. He thought it was a facade, possibly, put on just for him, there's no way Americans are this prosperous (or whatever, this good at agriculture, farm equipment, etc)
Also do the race cars have 4 wheel drive, or all-wheel drive? I'm wagering all-wheel with "torque vectoring" and "Yaw control", like a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X.
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Listening to the heads of the American and European car companies say the same and driving in them in china. I know that is different than personally disassembling one and reviewing it, but I am not sure the incentive for the other companies to say they have inferior products, unless it was a play for subsidies or deregulation of some form.
Personally I feel that the rest of the world continues to dramatically under estimate China’s progress and technological advancement at our own peril. Is there fluff and are their lots of untrue claims, of course, but that is certainly not something they have a monopoly on.
Aren't you getting your analogy backwards? American supermarkets have the same role in the story as Chinese cars.
I am somewhat confused at the intensity of pushback for the statement “leading electric vehicles.”
Chinese EVs are leading and that doesn’t necessarily mean being the best, most advanced vehicles. They are leading in value/pricing, and in many regions they are leading in sales.
BYD sells almost double the EV volume of Tesla globally as of December 2025. They are objectively leading in that respect.
I think the parent comment of yours made a good point (or at least adjacent to a good point) about China’s ability to enter the market: they can’t compete with 100 years of internal combustion engine development along with the vast parts supplier network of the West, but they can compete on battery chemistry, battery supply, motors, and the more vertically integrated EV space where automakers don’t need to depend on a huge network of parts suppliers like they did in the past.
I also think that a lot of pushback to the innovation that China is delivering is criticism that is stuck in the past. If you buy a Xiaomi car, it integrates perfectly with all your Xiaomi consumer devices. You can control your rice cooker or robot vacuum from your car’s integrated infotainment system. This type of approach was exactly what Apple was going to deliver before they abandoned their automotive project.
Or, you can buy a Mercedes and you’ll get a car with more precise handling and perfectly tuned driving characteristics. The infotainment system looks like Windows Vista.
Which side of the aisle do you think most consumers care about? I think most people buy into Xiaomi’s approach.