- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- politics@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/49178
I took my first ride in a Chinese car recently. Not in the U.S., of course, since sky-high tariffs have made them almost impossible to import. I was visiting family in the U.K., and we rented a BYD Sealion SUV. And let me tell you: I saw immediately why American car companies are desperate to have these things kept out of this country. It was elegantly designed, incredibly comfortable, and a smooth ride.
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If only U.S. companies could innovate and reinvest instead of spending billions on stock buybacks to drive up share price. Big 3 apparently authorized $5 billion in buybacks in 2022/2023.
Any good ones that we can comfortably say weren’t build with slave labour? Or which ones have actual power in their unions?
I’d love to check affordable options from them
Xiaomi SU7 Max for a few weeks, she literally started writing it love notes:
Or…
Xiaomi SU7 Max for a few weeks, she started writing it love notes:
I’m in IT and personally I’d genuinely like to see a “grey hat” examination of the internet traffic they send/receive before I’m ready to listen to a car reviewer giving reviews on how nice the seats are or charging is.
The fact that I work in IT is also why my home is secured with security doors and deadbolts.That’s sort of why I want them. America loves to customize cars. We’d take them apart and put them back together again six ways from Sunday.
There’d be YouTube channels dedicated to this and recycling the drivetrains with various levels of creativity. There’d be someone rewinding motors for torque and reflashing anything they could find to see what happens.
It will be a good time
It’s worth looking into how much data modern US cars are gathering as well, if you’re concerned with that. Frankly, it seems like you’re just deciding who gets your data at a certain point.
It’s worth looking into how much data modern US cars are gathering as well
Well known.
Location & Movement: Real-time GPS coordinates, route history, frequently visited destinations (like home or work), and travel times.
Driving Behavior: Speed, harsh braking, rapid acceleration, steering angles, and how often you engage safety features like lane-keep assist.
Vehicle Telematics: Odometer readings, tire pressure, battery/fuel levels, diagnostic trouble codes, and maintenance needs.
Infotainment & Syncs: Call logs, text messages, contact lists, and connected music or app preferences. Some systems use voice recognition and record conversations.
Biometrics & Cabin Monitoring: Cabin microphones, seat sensors (which register your weight), and cameras that track eye and head movements for fatigue.
External Cameras: 360-degree cameras, dashcams, and automated parking sensors that catalog the physical environment around your vehicle.
If I’m ever forced to buy a new car you better believe I’m finding the lte module and faraday caging that shit, regardless of what emblem is on the grill.
Hear me out. Your car, your phone, and these days, the streets themselves practically track you everywhere you go. They are creating a pattern profile for you, and for everyone else. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but the silver lining is that we know about it.
Wanna be invisible for a day? Throw your phone in the car and have your partner or friend drive around with it. The logs for that day will show you being a happy little drone driving around like normal. Here is the thing… As the surveillance state gets more and more toys to play with, they forget the important basics, the primitive tools, the personal skills, and the willingness to do the legwork that actually matters.
If it makes you feel better/differently about the effectiveness of surveillance. Some guy kidnapped Nancy Guthrie, got captured on camera, sent a ransom note, and we still don’t know who the fuck he is.
…But they’ll know it’s your friend driving. The cars have cameras in them. And microphones.
It doesn’t work like that, and you can expect it to go into limp mode until it can phone home.
Maybe so. In that case I’m thinking a few gallons of gasoline and a match may handle the situation.
I’m just never buying a car made after 2018.
Yeah… As much as I’d love to ride an EV, i think i need to stick to an older gas car just to avoid all the tracking.
As an Australian im ok with the chinese tracking me, what i don’t want is my government or a 5eyes nation tracking me, my government is the one who wants to do me harm.
I have nothing at all against EVs what-so-ever, but I do have a problem with telemetry/data collection/always-connected-equipment of any kind.
You can safely assume that everything that goes through the car’s computer is sent to the manufacturer, no difference if it’s Tesla, BYD or BMW
They all do it, but at the very least, European manufacturers are liable for GDPR violations for cars being used in the EU.
I was sent a tiktok link by someone recently so I opened it and this is what they have showing on their website:
Remote-access “transfers of EEA User Data to China”: Update on Irish GDPR decision
In April 2025, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) found that TikTok had not complied with GDPR requirements in relation to transfers of some “EEA User Data to China by way of remote access”. The DPC ordered TikTok to bring its transfers into compliance within 6 months, failing which they must be suspended. TikTok strongly disagrees with the DPC’s decision and is appealing through the Irish courts. The High Court of Ireland has paused the decision while that happens, allowing the transfers to continue for now.
They straight up don’t give a fuck, they’ll just continue doing what they’re doing and appeal it through the courts.
What happens if they do lose? They’ll just close down their European operations and leave a huge sign blaming the GDPR and people will complain until they get special privileges. Because as a Chinese company, they can easily afford to lose a huge market like Europe.
BYD, Geely, etc can do the same. China’s got enough leverage on us.
Not wrong, I’d find the LTE hardware and put a faraday cage around it even if it were BMW, Tesla (yuck, car for dumasses and nazis) or General Motors- but when you KNOW the company is required by law in their country to share data collected with an opposition government, the reasons for caring don’t just increase, they launch to space.
Also, how long are the gimmick features like in car karaoke going to last and how much will it be to repair them?
The assumption they will be repairable at all is wishful thinking at this point, but that’s not really what I’m worried about. Every new car has LTE and I don’t trust even American companies with telemetry, let alone a nation state that requires their exporters to share data with their governement.
The US govt can and has done the same, minimize everything
No one trusts the Chinese. Do we trust the Germans? Certainly the level of trust in the Americans has fallen based on the Donny the Demented storm trooper state. The Chinese play a long game where the free marketeers play short term profits and it’s obvious that they have produced a black swan.
And don’t drive any vehicle made in the US in the last 15years?
Because they want you to be a fucking debt slave and die penniless.
(That’s why they’re bragging about how well credit card companies are doing right now.)
I’ll stick with Hyundai for now but if BYD becomes available in Canada, I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.
Lemme guess “because they’re better than American cars”
Here’s the thing, with some of the new tech they are mandated on putting it cars (look up DMS and the 2021 Infrastructure Act) I’m not sure we are going to be able to avoid being spied on so I don’t really care who gets to do it. At least the Chinese market isn’t going to send Trumps gestapo after me because I said I don’t like fascists. I don’t like the slave labor aspect of the Chinese productions for sure and would avoid that. But given the state of the American car market I don’t give car if it’s made and or subsidized in china. A 22k car that fully charges in 10 min sounds like a dream right about now. The quicker we get away from fossil fuels the better.
At least the Chinese market isn’t going to send Trumps gestapo after me because I said I don’t like fascists.
You realize there are “Chinese police stations” within Canada, right?
What do they do?
Yeah, before the orange bastard came back, I would have absolutely defended the choice to not allow import of Chinese EVs for specifically privacy concerns and the Chinese government having access to my location and habits. Now? Fuck it. I don’t even care anymore. I’m more concerned about the domestic threat to even give a shit.
Amen brother.
2020 plain clothes federal agents kidnapping people to makeshift prisons and the none of that really being addressed should have been an ey opening for people to view their greatest threat being the government they live under. Same with the Snowden leaks and rather than that becoming illegal, much of of progressively becoming legal going forward. Maybe some even made retroactively legal
“They”
the big “they”
Hate that shit in a headline.
It’s all about the “national car manufacturers profit security”. Nothing more, nothing less.
Point: potential security risks identified
Counterpoint: cheaper
You see how these things don’t really intersect, right?
Thankfully in America we have
Point: potential security risks identified while extremely expensive!
the headlights can project movies
unironically yes. I saw a Sony? branded EV with a long thin screen on the front bumper playing Ghost of Yotai trailers.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/huawei-unveils-car-that-can-project-movies-with-its-headlights/
Huawei cars dont have a screen on the front. They project the movie out of the headlights.
If modern cars weren’t filled with tracking and surveillance equipment that empowers a foreign, not so friendly, state, then it wouldn’t be such a concern.
The funny part of all of this is that EVs don’t exist to save the environment, they exist to save car companies. Between the falling birth rates and the necessity to fix the car based infrastructure of cities, this “EV revolution” is a flash in the pan.
The amount of money and infrastructure that China dedicated to POVs will soon be an anchor around their neck as they come to reckon with the fallout of the “One Child” policy. They saw the US model as the method to reach global dominance, and went all in on a model that had alreasy reached the end of its relevance.
Yes and no. I’ve said for years that EVs exist to save car companies. They saw the writing on the wall and realized gas engines wouldn’t be viable forever. So I 100% agree with that.
However, a large part of why China’s EVs are so much cheaper is because they use different battery chemistry. American EVs went with lithium ion, because it has amazing energy density. But it is also prone to spontaneously exploding, the batteries age relatively quickly, and the construction requires massive amounts of a relatively rare metal. Something like a third of the cost of a new American EV is simply going towards the batteries. With a $30k car, that means ~$10k is simply going toward the batteries.
But China didn’t use Li+. They went with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries instead. These batteries had much worse energy density originally, (only about half of Li+), but they were easier to manufacture, cheaper because they didn’t require as much lithium, not prone to exploding, and they don’t lose capacity as they age. And so China did the math, and realized that very few people drive more than like a hundred miles at a time, and decided to go with LFP batteries instead of Li+. They were willing to take the reduction in range in return for a much safer, easier, cheaper battery.
And then something interesting happened. As Chinese manufacturers began using LFP batteries, the technology improved. A lot. So now, LFP batteries are closer to 90% of the energy density of Li+ batteries, and they still have none of the drawbacks that Li+ batteries do. If a Li+ EV gets 300 miles to the charge, a comparable LFP battery may get ~270 miles. And since they don’t quickly lose capacity as they age, they actually end up overtaking Li+ batteries after two or three years of regular use. And since those Chinese EVs aren’t pumping tons of lithium into their batteries, they’re able to keep their costs relatively low in comparison to the much more expensive Li+ batteries that American manufacturers have used.
All of this is to say that the battery advances alone will likely be worth the cost. China is quickly shifting towards solar, and batteries are a huge part of that. By adapting LFP technology into their solar systems, they could easily hit 100% renewable energy usage overnight, at a fraction of the cost (and risk) of using Li+ battery banks.
