But somewhere around 25% of the EV market.
For anyone curious, here’s a review from 2004 of a typical BYD sedan, the Seal. The review was mostly positive and praised the car’s good looks and practical interior. Unlike the Tesla Model 3 with which it compares, the interior has instrumentation in front of the driver as well as a big touchscreen, and more physical controls for important functions. On balance, the reviewer gave it 7 out of 10, noting that it could use more refinement. Surprisingly, it costs more than the Tesla Model 3, at least in the UK.
The CBC had an article about them and checked on comparative prices in Canada. They didn’t list either the Tesla Model 3 or the BYD Seal, but they had the lowest price for a Tesla Model Y as just under $50K, and the lowest for a BYD Sealion 7 at just under $55K. I’m starting to get the impression that despite their manufacturing cost advantages BYD isn’t offering very aggressive pricing.
Do you think that Tesla isn’t doing or at least capable of doing the same?
The US government wants to protect their people against Chinese spying. Nobody is protecting against American spying.
I just got back from a month in the Philippines and there were many, MANY, Chinese cars and EVs there. Not only BYD, which there were many, but I also spotted Chery, Geely, GAC (Guangzhou Automobile Group), Denza, Hongqi, BAIC (Beijing Automotive Industry Corporation), Haval, Jetour, and even MG. Yes, MG, the former British company Morris Garages but is now, per wiki, controlled by Chinese state-owned automaker SAIC Motor. The MG logo is even the same MG octagon as when they were the British cars from the 60s and 70s.
Some of these Chinese cars were BEVs, some PHEVs, and some ICEs. Diesel is still a popular option there, and these were sooty, smoky diesels. I didn’t not see any ULSD diesel fuel there. I’m pretty sure it’s eventually coming (I hope it is!), but that could be a ways off.
There were even many Vinfast EVs from Vietnam there. But I digress, we’re talking about Chinese EVs here.
Seeing all the Chinese cars was quite impressive. I was taking pictures all over the place — I have an album of 520 pictures of interesting cars/vehicles I saw there, and I plan to eventually post about them over in @Telemark’s thread, What's the most interesting car you saw today? . I’m still compiling my notes on them, but getting my notes prepped for this post is helpful.
I’ll whet your whistles with my pictures of the Hongqi e-HS9, a very impressive full size luxury BEV crossover SUV. Per wiki, this rig seats 7, has a range of over 300 miles, and its design reminds you of the Rolls-Royce Cullinan (and I have to agree); and, both were designed by British car designer Giles Taylor who is (again, per wiki) the current vice president of design and chief creative officer for the Chinese state-owned FAW Group’s Hongqi marque. He worked as a chief designer for Rolls-Royce, Jaguar and as an exterior designer for Citroën. His designs include the eighth generation Rolls-Royce Phantom and the redesigned Jaguar XJ of the 2010s.
Although I’m not a big fan of its front end design, overall the Hongqi e-HS9 was one of the most impressive cars that I saw in the Philippines.
I rented a motorcycle there, with a gas engine, and I did not pay attention to the charging infrastructure. But with all the EVs I saw, I’d imagine the charging infrastructure should be substantive.
The designs on many of those Chinese EVs were nice. Some were quite handsome vehicles. If these cars come into the US, Elon could be in serious trouble.
My understanding is about 10 million BEVs were sold in China last year, of which only about 500k were Teslas. The majority of the rest were chinese made BEVs.
In australia, which doesn’t tariff chinese EVs, supposedly about 28% of BEVs sold last year were Teslas.
BYD overtook Tesla as the biggest seller of BEVs in 2025, a position they are likely going to keep holding for years to come. Tesla sales peaked at 1.8 million in 2023 and have slightly declined since at 1.64 global Tesla sales in 2025. Meanwhile the BEV market keeps expanding, but Tesla’s share of total sales keeps shrinking.
All of the major automotive companies are tracking your data. Some already have plans to remove Apple CarPlay and Android Auto features from future models so that they don’t have to share this information Apple and Google. They want that data for their own use.
That won’t work. Even without car connectivity features, Apple and Google can already collect almost all of that information just from the phones themselves.
It means Apple and Google would not get carside data for free like they do now. Nor would they get payments from the car companies for CarPlay and Android Auto.
Data collection is a many headed beast.
It’s also about cyber security. The auto industry is years behind phones and are trying to catch up before a major breach occurs
Was this Canadian price WITH the 100% tariff that applied in the past? Because the current price in Australia for a BYD Sealion 5 is $37,000 AUD (= 34,400 CAD)
I wouldn’t think so, because it says BYDs will just shortly become available in Canada, so they said that for comparative purposes they sourced BYD and Geely prices from Australia. Here is the article.. Scroll down for the table of estimated prices. Note that they’re quoting a Sealion 7, not a 5.
You reminded me that in my 31 days in the Philippines with a lot of traveling in country including some 900 miles riding a motorcycle, I was watching for Teslas and counted a grand total of only 8 of them there.
Just a reminder, this is Factual Questions. Posts about the price or availability of various brands of electric cars in various countries are on topic. If you’d like to talk about your opinions of various electric cars, that’d be better suited for IMHO.
The point is, Canada has decided to allow them because the alternative EV’s are far more expensive, so it’ a different market segment. Model 3’s were likely not listed because being made in the USA, they incur the retaliatory tariff (because of the US import tariff on vehicles assembled in Canada). Model Y’s here come from Germany - just standard tariff - and so a fair comparison. Telsa did import 3’s from China until the 100% tariff was imposed.
Also remember when pricing vehicles here for import - the Canadian dollar is worth about 72¢ US, so the price is still not very high.
I guess the question is - will US Customs charge the tariff on the tariffed Canadian price (add 6.5%) or the price before that tariff? Probably the former, as that is what will show on the bill of sale.
I seem to recall that around the time Trump was going nuts imposing tariffs on everyone, Musk for some reason decided to increase the price of Teslas in Canada, and as I recall, the Model 3 was particularly hard hit. I don’t know if those price increases are still in effect. I do know that for a variety of reasons Tesla sales globally have been falling even as the EV market has been growing.
Some followup questions to the OP.
What if the American bought a used Chinese EV in Canada? Would the tariff at the border be on the price of a new vehicle or what they paid for the used one?
If it’s a Canadian driving the car, do they have to leave a deposit (to be refunded when they return) when they drive across?
Trump is threatening (or maybe has already imposed, I’m not sure) additional tariffs on countries that aren’t going along with his Greenland invasion. Some of these countries have automobile manufacturers which may import cars to Canada. Does the tariff have to be paid at the border for cars from them? Does it matter when the car was imported?
If it came over on a car hauler it would be stopped by customs and if the vehicle is certified for use on American roads you would pay the tariff based on the country of manufacturer.
If driven over by a private citizen they could (most likly would) be stopped and questioned. If it hasn’t been crash tested (or emissions tested) for US road use it isn’t getting driven in. You would not be able to register it. They may actually seize the vehicle if you are not a Canadian owner. A Canadian owner might be allowed to turn it around and go home
American manufacturers can import them for test and evaluation purposes. They can drive them on the road by following certain procedures. Many American vehicles for future model years have not yet finished certification for road use, yet can have limited road use by their test teams.
These cars are widely sold in Europe, which has more stringent road/vehicle standards than the USA - eg the Tesla Truck is not legal on EU or UK roads due to not meeting safety/design standards - so I’m not sure why you would think these cars would not comply with US standards.
I didn’t think they wouldn’t, although the ones they sell in China may not. But that doesn’t mean they’ve been certified legal in the US.
Based on the review that I cited (which was from December 2024, so already a bit dated) I think it would be wise for anyone contemplating a BYD to wait a few years for them to refine their engineering, and track the reviews. Two things that immediately come to mind, for instance, are that some automated features like lane tracking result in incessant annoying beeping that you can’t turn off, and adaptive cruise control that’s too aggressive – on the vehicle in the review I cited, the reviewer said it strongly applied the brakes when a truck moved into its lane, even though the truck was so far ahead that no action was actually necessary.
I’d be very interested to see just how cheap the BYD vehicles are going to be in Canada, because I’m not seeing it now, based on the CBC article. The ones I’ve seen are actually quite nice looking, but to be truly competitive they’d have to sell for about half the price listed in that article.
I drove an Omoda 5 in Spain last year - it was impressive, but also bewildering.
It went bong every time I entered a new speed limit zone (not always correctly; in particular it kept picking up the reduced speed limits on the motorway exit ramps, even when I was not exiting).
It went bing bong when it thought I was breaking the speed limit (which would probably have been welcome if it was right about the speed limits more consistently).
It kept pulling on the steering when it thought I was in the wrong position in the lane, even though I was maintaining a quite reasonable position.
There were a couple of times when we drove through roadworks and the lanes were reduced in width and the car went into a panic when there was another vehicle alongside in the next lane - the entire display screen rapidly flashed red, an alarm siren sounded and it tried to steer me toward the barrier (which was already pretty close).
The reversing camera, which included a synthesised ‘drone view’ of the car was absolutely superb, but then there were other times for example when going around a roundabout when the dash display showed a sort of cinematic synthesised third person view of the car from a position somewhere off the left-hand wing, which was pretty disorienting and distracting, and not even slightly useful.
In normal driving conditions the dash display showed an animated 3D representation of the other vehicles on the road in relation to me, but it was not especially reliable and vehicles regularly appeared out of nowhere or disappeared. Not much point having this feature if it’s so misleading.
And there was a camera facing me through the steering wheel; if the car thought I was not looking at the road properly, it would make bing bong noises and flash up a warning to not take my eyes off the road and would disable the accelerator, causing the car to slow down; it did this when I looked at the signs on the motorway, or if I was trying to read the name of a road to turn off onto, etc.
All quite impressive tech for sure, but a bit raw in the implementation for features that are being used in earnest on real streets. It was a hire car so I was locked out from disabling any of the features.