Vertical integration is a double edged sword. When your car is a decade old or more, and stuff starts breaking, the only vendor that makes parts for it is BYD - and its up to them if they bother selling to you, at what price, provided they still make these parts at that time.

Time will tell how cheap and easy will they be to maintain, which affects residual value at the end of the lease, which affects payments.

Nobody pays sticker price for new cars as a lump sum. If BYDs (or whatever car) are impossible to maintain, that means nobody will want them used, and residual value will be low, which means BYDs will cost more to the end user to own than a more expensive car by a different manufacturer.

Which seems to be the case for now in places like Germany, but we will have to wait and see how the situation develops and the second hand market builds up.

> Vertical integration matters. If BYD controls much of the chain from the mine to the ship, they’re not paying everyone else’s margin along the way. That can translate into more car for the money.

This is interesting. Wasn't the idea in Europe (and maybe elsewhere, too, no idea) that outsourcing components would lead to economies of scale? After all, a Mercedes or BMW or VW seat is still roughly a seat?

It's interesting to me that we seem to switch back and forth between the two models, each time saying the new approach is "better".

And also the simplicity of the products. You don't need to design a different engine for each car, you just vary the number of cells and change the motors. Your battery division can keep pumping out batteries, regardless of what models you make. If you design a new model, you can keep using the existing lines. It's perfect for mass production.