[nytesky]

How is safety and quality for Chinese EVs? There was the 2008 melamine baby formula scandal, where a toxic substance was deliberately introduced into baby formula for domestic market. Chinese food imports were curtailed across many countries.

Capitalism over there is at another level, and cars are so complicated with tiny changes can have huge problems. Look at the immobilizer chips that Kia dropped to save $5, which resulted in thousands of car thefts and the whole Kia Boyz phenomenon.

[storus]

Electric cars are way way simpler than ICE cars. It's just market segmentation gone wrong when EU car manufacturers wanted to sell these cheaper cars as premium/luxury ones (i.e. greed) and therefore couldn't learn the lessons from producing them at scale on cheaper models. China had poor ICE cars and bet everything on EVs, scaled their production up, reiterated a few times, and now Nio/Xiaomi/BYD/Zeekr are better than anything built in the EU.

[johanvts]

I think the fear of low-quality and dangerous corner cutting is a big reason Chinese evs have not been even more popular in the EU. However as some brands start to establish themselves for longer they gain trust. Also we have Euro N-cap tests which are pretty extensive and lots of Chinese cars have earned excellent scores.

[happycube]

China also picked up (from A123) and ran with LFP batteries which are inherently safer.

[seanmcdirmid]

> There was the 2008 melamine baby formula scandal

That was in 2008, which was 18 years ago. Comparing China in 2026 to China in 2008 is like comparing Japan in 1978 to Japan in 1960.