英语新闻选读：击败特斯拉的比亚迪价格让世界汽车制造商“震惊”

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Steve Mollman: China’s Tesla-beating EV maker BYD has carmakers around the world ‘in a state of shock’ over its prices. Fortune.com. January 6, 2024.

When China’s BYD recently overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla as the global leader in sales of electric vehicles, casual observers of the auto industry might have been surprised.

But what’s caught other carmakers around the world off-guard is something else about BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway: its low prices.

“No one can match BYD on price. Period,” Michael Dunne, CEO of Asia-focused car consultancy Dunne Insights, told the Financial Times. “Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea and Japan are in a state of shock.”

BYD can keeps its costs low in part because it owns the entire supply chain of its EV batteries, from the raw materials to the finished battery packs. That matters because a battery accounts for about 40% of a new electric vehicle’s price.

比亚迪海鸥(图片|配置|询价)

While BYD cars are not yet a common sight on American roads, many experts believe it’s only a matter of time, despite the high tariffs that help keep them at bay for now. Currently in the U.S., made-in-China EVs are subject to a 25% tariff, which goes atop a 2.5% tariff on imported cars.

But if BYD or other Chinese carmakers were to come in with a $20,000 car, noted Dunne, they’d still be a “good position” despite the high tariffs, given that the average price of a new car in the U.S. this year is about $48,000.

BYD launched an EV called the Seagull with a cutthroat price of about $11,000 last year in China, where it quickly became one of the bestselling EVs. “But it is overseas that the EV could be a truly disruptive force,” wrote the UK-based market intelligence firm Autovista Group.

Even today, BYD’s Dolphin hatchback starts at $33,000 in Britain, according to Reuters, or nearly 30% below the starting price of the VW’s rival ID.3 hatchback.

But BYD is planning to export much cheaper models to markets around the world, including Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia. And over the past three years, China’s EV exports have jumped 851%, the New York Times reported in October.

As for the U.S., BYD may enter from south of the border. In Mexico, the company is scouting locations for a new manufacturing plant, according to the FT.

Mexico has a free trade agreement with the U.S. and Canada. In November, House lawmakers warned about Chinese giants like BYD “gaining a back door to the U.S. market” through the southern neighbor.

Last year, Ford Motor executive chairman Bill Ford Jr. warned that American automakers are “not quite yet ready” to compete with Chinese rivals on EVs. “They developed very quickly, and they’ve developed them in large scale, and now they are exporting,” he told CNN. “They are not here, but they will come here we think at some point.”

比亚迪总裁王传福推介比亚迪产品

BYD also has the advantage of its founder and CEO Wang Chuanfu, a relentless cost-cutter whom the late Charlie Munger—Buffett’s long-time partner at Berkshire—described in one of this final interviews last year.

On the Acquired podcast, Munger said that Wang could look at somebody’s part in the morning “and in the afternoon he could make it. I’ve never seen anybody like that…He is a natural engineer and a get-it-done-type production executive, and that’s a big talent to have in one place.” He added, “The guy at BYD is better at actually making things than Elon is.”

参考译文：

史蒂夫·莫尔曼《中国击败特斯拉的电动汽车制造商比亚迪的价格让世界各地的汽车制造商“震惊”》。财富网站2024年1月6日。

当中国的比亚迪最近取代埃隆•马斯克的特斯拉成为全球电动汽车销量领导者时，汽车行业的普通观察者可能会感到惊讶。

但让全球其他汽车制造商措手不及的是比亚迪的另一件事:它的低价。比亚迪得到了沃伦•巴菲特的伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的高度认可。

专注于亚洲汽车的咨询公司邓恩观察首席执行官迈克尔•邓恩向英国《金融时报》表示：“在价格上，没有人能与比亚迪匹敌。美国、欧洲、韩国和日本的董事会都对此表示震惊。”

比亚迪之所以能够保持低成本，部分原因是它拥有电动汽车电池的整个供应链，从原材料到成品电池组。这很重要，因为电池约占新电动汽车价格的40%。

虽然比亚迪汽车在美国的道路上还不常见，但许多专家认为，这只是时间问题，尽管目前高关税有助于阻止它。目前在美国，中国制造的电动汽车需要缴纳25%的关税，而（从其他国家）进口的汽车的关税仅为2.5%。

但邓恩指出，如果比亚迪或其他中国汽车制造商推出售价2万美元的汽车，尽管关税很高，但它们仍处于“有利地位”，因为今年美国新车的平均价格约为4.8万美元。

比亚迪去年在中国推出了一款名为海鸥的电动汽车，售价约为1.1万美元，非常便宜，但它很快成为中国最畅销的电动汽车之一。总部设在英国的市场情报公司Autovista Group写道：“电动汽车有可能成为一股真正的颠覆性力量。”

据路透社报道，目前，比亚迪的海豚掀背车在英国的起价为3.3万美元，比竞争对手大众的ID.3掀背车的起价低了近30%。

但比亚迪正计划向包括欧洲、南美和东南亚在内的全球市场出口价格便宜得多的车型。据《纽约时报》（2023年）10月份报道，在过去三年中，中国的电动汽车出口增长了851%。

至于美国，比亚迪可能会从边境以南进入。据英国《金融时报》报道，该公司正在墨西哥物色新制造工厂的选址。