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.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      That’s a pretty unfortunate viewpoint. At least in the corporate world, Lenovo laptops have a decent reputation for reliability (read: last long enough to where the replacement cycle is economical). Where I last worked IT, the lifespan of a Lenovo laptop was four years. That doesn’t mean that they break after four years, but just that we recycle and replace them with a new computer after that. That seems to be average for a corporate laptop.

      Calling them “cheap shit” means you’re either uninformed and unfamiliar or you hold your standards far higher than the average computer buyer.

      • Kbin_space_program@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        Oh I know the corporate world loves the idea of Lenovo laptops.

        They’re cheap and can easily run web apps and office. All that most people need them for.

        If you have to run any software of consequence though, they’re simply not up to it.

        • BugKilla@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I run software of consequence and have no issues with performance, heat or general functionality. You’ll need to cite some evidence to back up your claim.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          What do you consider “software of consequence”? I worked for a mid-size municipal government. We had hundreds of users (or at least hundreds of Active Directory accounts). Everyone used Lenovo laptops. We had city planners running ArcGIS on them, the engineers at the public works department planned roads and sewage lines on them, HR calculated payroll on them, the council used them for their meetings, the municipal court staff used them for managing filings and tickets, and the police department used them to issue said tickets.

          If none of that is “software of consequence”, then what the goddamn fuck is?

          • Ferris@infosec.pub
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            10 months ago

            I believe if you look a second time the person you replied to has become someone who replied to them.

        • intelisense@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          I think we’re mixing up the consumer grade Lenovo laptops (cheap crap) with Lenovo Thinkpads (business grade and built like a tank). We use a lot of Thinkpads and they’re good - nice even, and they survive a lot of abuse.