Stephen Wilmot

In the European Union, interestingly, they only imposed the tariffs on electric vehicles, which meant that actually

byd in particular pivoted towards plug-in hybrids which weren't covered by the tariffs in the us there isn't a market for chinese cars the us is the one country that really has so far kept them out and it's not just due to very high tariffs but also the rhetoric against chinese cars from washington and there's a rule that was enacted in the final years of the biden administration called the connected vehicle rule which essentially bans chinese software from cars that makes it very hard for them to

gear up for a market entry though some still are talking about entering the market presumably by leveraging local software providers but it's still a bit unclear and there's some indications that there's a path forward specifically in the u.s what is the latest on that

President Trump said in Detroit this month that Chinese automakers were welcome as long as they built in the US.

The challenge, of course, for automakers is it's much easier for them to build a brand presence through exports initially and then build a factory rather than trying to set up initially by building a factory.

That's a very high risk kind of investment.

So exactly how appealing that will be for the likes of BYD remains to be seen.

They're responding everywhere.

In the European market, the rise of Chinese cars is the trend that every local automaker is watching.

They're trying to match what they call China speed to shorten their development cycles, to lower their costs, to essentially try and match the advances that the Chinese have made.

In the U.S., Ford is talking a lot about trying to match the Chinese technology and costs even without Chinese cars in the U.S.

It's partly a sense that it's inevitable eventually that they'll have to compete head to head, even if the time frame isn't entirely clear.