I went into the article wondering thinking that surely Apple wouldn't axe the investment they've made unless some major roadblock had come up or they decided to pursue something so new and...
I went into the article wondering thinking that surely Apple wouldn't axe the investment they've made unless some major roadblock had come up or they decided to pursue something so new and innovative that they would be sure to make huge margins on it, since that's their thing.
...the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team ... will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the company.
Oh. Of course.
Though actually Apple has only spent "hundreds of millions of dollars a year" on the car project, while having spent in excess of $113 billion (according to the article) on all R&D projects in just 5 years. That's kind of bonkers and really shows that the car project wasn't a sizeable portion of the total R&D budget.
Even if Apple was facing stiff competition and a "cooling market" for EVs (even though EV sales aren't actually falling, it's that sales growth is not growing and there's a link to that in that very article), I think a lot of people would've gone apeshit to buy an Apple car. I bet my Tesla-owning neighbors would be the first ones to convert to Apple because they're tired of Tesla's quirks.
Right now I wonder where this leaves the Sony Honda vehicle collaboration (Vision-S 01 "Afeela" | Vision-S 02 SUV). Sony and Honda have a 50/50 partnership in the company bringing the Afeela to the U.S. with production expected in 2026 (as of a press release in early 2023).
I think it would be really tough for Apple to achieve the kind of margins on cars that it has been able to on consumer tech. Their valuation kind of depends on these high margins, so they are...
I think it would be really tough for Apple to achieve the kind of margins on cars that it has been able to on consumer tech. Their valuation kind of depends on these high margins, so they are loath to do anything which would lower them?
Right, I don't see that their margins would be very high, even if they charged the sorts of money for labor on repairs that is typical of the German car brands (in the U.S. I'm told that's around...
Right, I don't see that their margins would be very high, even if they charged the sorts of money for labor on repairs that is typical of the German car brands (in the U.S. I'm told that's around $100-120/hr for a certified tech). But I don't think that's it.
One might think that selling a product designed to make use of subscription services would help make up the difference in profit margins, but Apple's so dominant that maybe they wouldn't gain that much market share from upselling Apple car owners additional services ... because they're already bought into Apple Music and Apple TV+ and all that stuff. (Unless ... heated seat subscriptions?)
So yeah, I don't know where the pathway to fat profits would be, but even at $100k I'd think people would be lining up around the block (and putting a second mortgage on their homes) to buy an Apple car.
Is it just me or has the hype around EVs died down a lot? I think EVs can be good vehicles, but the current rate of improvement with EVs means your car is significantly worse than new offerings...
Is it just me or has the hype around EVs died down a lot?
I think EVs can be good vehicles, but the current rate of improvement with EVs means your car is significantly worse than new offerings after only a single generation. ICE cars still work basically as well at 10 years old as they do off the dealership lot where EVs can have battery degradation, obsolete charging ports, or just worse range and charging speed compared to new models that kills resale value.
I really want EVs to take off in the US because of reduced traffic noise and tailpipe emissions, but maybe there needs to be a different monetization model for EVs.
Nio in China has battery swapping where the owner of the car doesn't own the battery. The battery is swapped at the battery swap stations and degraded batteries can be serviced by the manufacturer. If you bought a used model of a Nio, you wouldn't worry about battery health like you would with EVs in the US.
One thing that makes me very sad is that given the sheer investment into EVs if that money had been spent on building electrified rail we would have very fast, convenient and low emission...
One thing that makes me very sad is that given the sheer investment into EVs if that money had been spent on building electrified rail we would have very fast, convenient and low emission transport. Sadly that seems a long long way off
Large scale electrified rail in the US would cost many orders of magnitude more money than what has been spent on all EV development and construction combined in the entire world. Just one, 500...
Is this really true? I think you're kind of looking at the California high-speed rail disaster and trying to extrapolate this to the entirety of the US. A few things California's political system...
Is this really true? I think you're kind of looking at the California high-speed rail disaster and trying to extrapolate this to the entirety of the US. A few things
California's political system is quite disfunctional, so much so that SNCF (French state railway company) gave up and instead bid to build high-speed rail in Morocco because it was "less politically disfunctional". The train line in Morocco opened in 2018 (see e.g. NYTimes)
Even then that particular project is noteworthy because it is literally one of (if not the most) expensive US train projects so if you want to predict costs using current US construction costs it is disingenuous to use that as the basis for all costs. For example if you want to build something in rural Oklahoma it will probably cost less
It is possible to build high-speed electrified rail at a cost of ~30mn euro per km and this is what it costs France/Spain/Italy to build. I can't see why the US shouldn't be able to do this. France has even been able to build high speed rail at US$8.4mn/km in the original TGV Sud-Est line.
The US already has a lot of rail infrastructure, it's just used for freight and not electrified. Electrifying the existing rail would in many casees be cheaper.
Presumably the US would not build high-speed railway everywhere, building lower-speed (so usually up to 200km/hr) rail would be less expensive and allow a Swiss style approach of slow but extremely on time
Only time will tell, assuming the political power exists to continue pushing rail projects in the US. Im looking at the existing data we have for the US on creating new rail or retrofitting old...
Only time will tell, assuming the political power exists to continue pushing rail projects in the US.
Im looking at the existing data we have for the US on creating new rail or retrofitting old freight rail systems and those numbers are still extraordinary. Can it be done for cheaper? Almost certainly. Do I believe that the US has a path forward to actually achieve that goal? Not from what we've seen over the past 100 years.
One thing to consider is China’s approach. They have been able to standardize parts of their rail infrastructure, so making a new line is a matter of picking the right pieces to group together....
One thing to consider is China’s approach. They have been able to standardize parts of their rail infrastructure, so making a new line is a matter of picking the right pieces to group together.
The US does that to a certain extent with the Interstate Highway Standards that allows interstates and highways to be built relatively quickly. If the US standardized passenger rail infrastructure construction, we could build much more quickly and cheaply than we do now.
I don't take part in planning, costing, or the actual construction of rail projects so take with a grain of salt here... I do work for a railway but I don't do maintenance or capital projects....
I don't take part in planning, costing, or the actual construction of rail projects so take with a grain of salt here... I do work for a railway but I don't do maintenance or capital projects.
Railways, like roads, are not a lego set. The majority of construction expense and time is spent building the road bed, like 80 to 90% of construction time, I can't speculate on cost. Freight rail does follow a basic standard and passenger service like Amtrak, Via, and some others operate on freight lines so they do have to comply with general standards.
Electrifying rail infrastructure is a whole other ball of wax though and trying to get freight railways to go along with that would be... tough... and I would imagine there is no standard for this in North America.
China can also eminent domain without a second thought. What are their citizens gonna do, protest the central government? The US has a sordid history with eminent domain and transportation...
China can also eminent domain without a second thought. What are their citizens gonna do, protest the central government?
The US has a sordid history with eminent domain and transportation projects. I'm absolutely in favour of cutting back the red tape and environmental reviews, but I understand why there are concerns about the government forcing people to sell for public projects.
China has a lot more capital, and more importantly a LOT more power to do whatever they want, for better or worse that power doesn't exist in the US. It costs 10x more to do the same job here as...
China has a lot more capital, and more importantly a LOT more power to do whatever they want, for better or worse that power doesn't exist in the US. It costs 10x more to do the same job here as it does in China.
economies of scale play a role. as you get more engineers and planners with know-how and experience, price per mile drops drastically. same with the price of components themselves
economies of scale play a role. as you get more engineers and planners with know-how and experience, price per mile drops drastically. same with the price of components themselves
I definitely agree, but a huge portion of the cost of these projects (in the US) is environmental and community impact assessments. That and the cost of the land itself. It can take years to get...
I definitely agree, but a huge portion of the cost of these projects (in the US) is environmental and community impact assessments. That and the cost of the land itself. It can take years to get these studies done for even a small project, and often they turn out negative meaning its a "wasted" cost.
And to be clear, we have those environmental impact assessments for a reason now. They're one of those things that hinder rail projects yes, but they also hinder DuPont from propping up toxic...
And to be clear, we have those environmental impact assessments for a reason now. They're one of those things that hinder rail projects yes, but they also hinder DuPont from propping up toxic waste disposal sites next to water supplies.
That and like...once you get out of major population centers the value proposition for rail gets a lot worse, especially on rough terrain. You gonna run a rail line to the thousands of tiny towns with less than 10,000 people?
I would prefer more comprehensive public transit infrastructure in the US, so I'm glad to see more pushes and work towards that. I don't think we will ever get rid of the car, though, so I hope...
I would prefer more comprehensive public transit infrastructure in the US, so I'm glad to see more pushes and work towards that. I don't think we will ever get rid of the car, though, so I hope that we can replace the remaining cars with EVs.
Sort of. It's still going strong in Europe, but you see a lot of frustration coming from the price of these cars. They're all in the luxury class. Rather than make something affordable, like the...
Sort of. It's still going strong in Europe, but you see a lot of frustration coming from the price of these cars. They're all in the luxury class. Rather than make something affordable, like the Leaf, you get large crossovers and SUVs starting at 40k and up.
People will just buy a 10/15k second-hand ICE instead.
I drive a very barebones car right now, it's got aircon and a radio/CD player and that's really about it in terms of creature comforts/tech (if a CD player really does count as "tech" in 2024!)....
I drive a very barebones car right now, it's got aircon and a radio/CD player and that's really about it in terms of creature comforts/tech (if a CD player really does count as "tech" in 2024!). I'd love an EV that was like this. I'm not interested in a big shiny screen, cameras/sensors everywhere or anything else. Make it safe, make it cheap, and I'll buy it.
Same. I want a car that can be easily repaired for not a lot of money. I don't want a screen distracting me on the road. I do want knobs and buttons that I can operate by feel without taking my...
Same. I want a car that can be easily repaired for not a lot of money. I don't want a screen distracting me on the road. I do want knobs and buttons that I can operate by feel without taking my eyes off of the road.
I'll take all the steering improvements and brake assist etc you can give me, but don't use tech to make my life as a driver more difficult because cool shiny new feature.
Ive got the next closest thing in an EV - a 2015 Fiat 500e that I bought in 2018. Its got AC, heated seats and a CD player. Oh, and bluetooth for your phone. Pretty basic by today's standards. No...
Ive got the next closest thing in an EV - a 2015 Fiat 500e that I bought in 2018. Its got AC, heated seats and a CD player. Oh, and bluetooth for your phone. Pretty basic by today's standards. No screen, no cameras, no sensors, no over the air updates, no autonomous driving features. It's your basic grocery getter and we love it for that.
The sad part is that some poor soul had to shell out 34k USD for this bare bones mini EV (but she was a doctor so I guess she didn't mind too much) and when it was only 3 yrs old with 22k miles on it I only paid 8k for it. Now if they could only sell them new for that price, they'd sell well. But the new Fiat 500 Electric is still 33k USD. But it is a better, longer range, bigger car.
And in the US, that 40k price tag is marked up 10k+ at the dealerships for "market adjustment". The reality is the charging infrastructure and the affordable versions of these cars just don't...
And in the US, that 40k price tag is marked up 10k+ at the dealerships for "market adjustment".
The reality is the charging infrastructure and the affordable versions of these cars just don't exist en masse yet.
I don't think this assumption is actually true. ICE vehicles do lose efficiency over time and tend to require quite a bit more maintenance when compared to a BEV. The obsolete charging ports seems...
ICE cars still work basically as well at 10 years old as they do off the dealership lot where EVs can have battery degradation, obsolete charging ports, or just worse range and charging speed compared to new models that kills resale value.
I don't think this assumption is actually true. ICE vehicles do lose efficiency over time and tend to require quite a bit more maintenance when compared to a BEV. The obsolete charging ports seems to be more an element of competition finally settling onto standards for a newer product offering. In the next 5 years all BEV in the USA will be using NaCS. Battery degradation is a very real concern though, I agree with that. My hope is that we will have the ability to buy and have new batteries installed after ~10 years with the old batteries being recycled and safely disposed of. If we can make battery replacement an easy thing we should be able to keep the same BEV for a long time.
In the early days of the Internet there was a humor piece emailed and Usenetted around about what the auto industry would like if different tech companies took over. I remember a bit of the part...
In the early days of the Internet there was a humor piece emailed and Usenetted around about what the auto industry would like if different tech companies took over. I remember a bit of the part about Apple cars. Perfect cars, expensive, only about to run on a small percentage of roads. :-)
I don't know if this is related or not, and it seems too early to know how successful they will be selling cars in the US, but some people seem really worried about cheap electric cars from...
I don't know if this is related or not, and it seems too early to know how successful they will be selling cars in the US, but some people seem really worried about cheap electric cars from Chinese manufacturers:
I just hear it as calls for protectionism. If domestic manufacturers can't outcompete China, they'd rather remove international manufacturers, like BYD, from the market.
I just hear it as calls for protectionism. If domestic manufacturers can't outcompete China, they'd rather remove international manufacturers, like BYD, from the market.
I think there are some legitimate concerns around cheap Chinese EVs like the new $15000 EV coming from BYD. Most Chinese EV makers are heavily subsidized by the government meaning they are not...
I think there are some legitimate concerns around cheap Chinese EVs like the new $15000 EV coming from BYD. Most Chinese EV makers are heavily subsidized by the government meaning they are not really competing but can afford to lose money selling cars for less. Combine this with legitimate privacy concerns anytime China is involved and it's not that far fetched.
I'm sympathetic to anti-dumping tariffs, but the current industry rumblings feel protectionist. The Chinese government mostly used subsidies to kickstart the industry, and most countries do the...
I'm sympathetic to anti-dumping tariffs, but the current industry rumblings feel protectionist. The Chinese government mostly used subsidies to kickstart the industry, and most countries do the exact same thing for their domestic manufacturers. China has produced some incredibly competitive car companies that are now eating each other's market share domestically: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Chinese-carmakers-face-price-war-growing-EV-competition-in-2024
Do you know how easy or difficult it would be for these Chinese cars to meet US safety standards? @Minori. I'm assuming they haven't already built to our rules, but I would be happy to be wrong
Do you know how easy or difficult it would be for these Chinese cars to meet US safety standards?
The answer is a bit complicated. The US has famously idiosyncratic automobile standards which is why its taken so long for adaptive high beams to be approved for example. I don't think most...
The answer is a bit complicated. The US has famously idiosyncratic automobile standards which is why its taken so long for adaptive high beams to be approved for example. I don't think most Chinese manufacturers meet US standards right now (excluding Polestar). However, Chinese cars seem to be perfectly safe.
Europe is generally considered the strictest market with consistent standards and everything I can find says Chinese manufacturers are meeting EU safety standards.
I went into the article wondering thinking that surely Apple wouldn't axe the investment they've made unless some major roadblock had come up or they decided to pursue something so new and innovative that they would be sure to make huge margins on it, since that's their thing.
Oh. Of course.
Though actually Apple has only spent "hundreds of millions of dollars a year" on the car project, while having spent in excess of $113 billion (according to the article) on all R&D projects in just 5 years. That's kind of bonkers and really shows that the car project wasn't a sizeable portion of the total R&D budget.
Even if Apple was facing stiff competition and a "cooling market" for EVs (even though EV sales aren't actually falling, it's that sales growth is not growing and there's a link to that in that very article), I think a lot of people would've gone apeshit to buy an Apple car. I bet my Tesla-owning neighbors would be the first ones to convert to Apple because they're tired of Tesla's quirks.
Right now I wonder where this leaves the Sony Honda vehicle collaboration (Vision-S 01 "Afeela" | Vision-S 02 SUV). Sony and Honda have a 50/50 partnership in the company bringing the Afeela to the U.S. with production expected in 2026 (as of a press release in early 2023).
I think it would be really tough for Apple to achieve the kind of margins on cars that it has been able to on consumer tech. Their valuation kind of depends on these high margins, so they are loath to do anything which would lower them?
Right, I don't see that their margins would be very high, even if they charged the sorts of money for labor on repairs that is typical of the German car brands (in the U.S. I'm told that's around $100-120/hr for a certified tech). But I don't think that's it.
One might think that selling a product designed to make use of subscription services would help make up the difference in profit margins, but Apple's so dominant that maybe they wouldn't gain that much market share from upselling Apple car owners additional services ... because they're already bought into Apple Music and Apple TV+ and all that stuff. (Unless ... heated seat subscriptions?)
So yeah, I don't know where the pathway to fat profits would be, but even at $100k I'd think people would be lining up around the block (and putting a second mortgage on their homes) to buy an Apple car.
Is it just me or has the hype around EVs died down a lot?
I think EVs can be good vehicles, but the current rate of improvement with EVs means your car is significantly worse than new offerings after only a single generation. ICE cars still work basically as well at 10 years old as they do off the dealership lot where EVs can have battery degradation, obsolete charging ports, or just worse range and charging speed compared to new models that kills resale value.
I really want EVs to take off in the US because of reduced traffic noise and tailpipe emissions, but maybe there needs to be a different monetization model for EVs.
Nio in China has battery swapping where the owner of the car doesn't own the battery. The battery is swapped at the battery swap stations and degraded batteries can be serviced by the manufacturer. If you bought a used model of a Nio, you wouldn't worry about battery health like you would with EVs in the US.
One thing that makes me very sad is that given the sheer investment into EVs if that money had been spent on building electrified rail we would have very fast, convenient and low emission transport. Sadly that seems a long long way off
Large scale electrified rail in the US would cost many orders of magnitude more money than what has been spent on all EV development and construction combined in the entire world.
Just one, 500 mile rail project in California has already cost 128 billion dollars, and is nowhere near completion. Building rail is just prohibitively expensive in the US because of a myriad of factors, largely regulatory and property acquisition costs. We need to develop better ways to scale rail projects up without making them so expensive, but that alone will require a lot of time and effort.
Is this really true? I think you're kind of looking at the California high-speed rail disaster and trying to extrapolate this to the entirety of the US. A few things
Only time will tell, assuming the political power exists to continue pushing rail projects in the US.
Im looking at the existing data we have for the US on creating new rail or retrofitting old freight rail systems and those numbers are still extraordinary. Can it be done for cheaper? Almost certainly. Do I believe that the US has a path forward to actually achieve that goal? Not from what we've seen over the past 100 years.
One thing to consider is China’s approach. They have been able to standardize parts of their rail infrastructure, so making a new line is a matter of picking the right pieces to group together.
The US does that to a certain extent with the Interstate Highway Standards that allows interstates and highways to be built relatively quickly. If the US standardized passenger rail infrastructure construction, we could build much more quickly and cheaply than we do now.
I don't take part in planning, costing, or the actual construction of rail projects so take with a grain of salt here... I do work for a railway but I don't do maintenance or capital projects.
Railways, like roads, are not a lego set. The majority of construction expense and time is spent building the road bed, like 80 to 90% of construction time, I can't speculate on cost. Freight rail does follow a basic standard and passenger service like Amtrak, Via, and some others operate on freight lines so they do have to comply with general standards.
Electrifying rail infrastructure is a whole other ball of wax though and trying to get freight railways to go along with that would be... tough... and I would imagine there is no standard for this in North America.
China can also eminent domain without a second thought. What are their citizens gonna do, protest the central government?
The US has a sordid history with eminent domain and transportation projects. I'm absolutely in favour of cutting back the red tape and environmental reviews, but I understand why there are concerns about the government forcing people to sell for public projects.
China has a lot more capital, and more importantly a LOT more power to do whatever they want, for better or worse that power doesn't exist in the US. It costs 10x more to do the same job here as it does in China.
economies of scale play a role. as you get more engineers and planners with know-how and experience, price per mile drops drastically. same with the price of components themselves
I definitely agree, but a huge portion of the cost of these projects (in the US) is environmental and community impact assessments. That and the cost of the land itself. It can take years to get these studies done for even a small project, and often they turn out negative meaning its a "wasted" cost.
And to be clear, we have those environmental impact assessments for a reason now. They're one of those things that hinder rail projects yes, but they also hinder DuPont from propping up toxic waste disposal sites next to water supplies.
That and like...once you get out of major population centers the value proposition for rail gets a lot worse, especially on rough terrain. You gonna run a rail line to the thousands of tiny towns with less than 10,000 people?
I would prefer more comprehensive public transit infrastructure in the US, so I'm glad to see more pushes and work towards that. I don't think we will ever get rid of the car, though, so I hope that we can replace the remaining cars with EVs.
Sort of. It's still going strong in Europe, but you see a lot of frustration coming from the price of these cars. They're all in the luxury class. Rather than make something affordable, like the Leaf, you get large crossovers and SUVs starting at 40k and up.
People will just buy a 10/15k second-hand ICE instead.
I really wish countries would get rid of the tariffs on Chinese cars. I'd love to see BYD succeed with their smaller, cheaper electric cars.
I drive a very barebones car right now, it's got aircon and a radio/CD player and that's really about it in terms of creature comforts/tech (if a CD player really does count as "tech" in 2024!). I'd love an EV that was like this. I'm not interested in a big shiny screen, cameras/sensors everywhere or anything else. Make it safe, make it cheap, and I'll buy it.
Same. I want a car that can be easily repaired for not a lot of money. I don't want a screen distracting me on the road. I do want knobs and buttons that I can operate by feel without taking my eyes off of the road.
I'll take all the steering improvements and brake assist etc you can give me, but don't use tech to make my life as a driver more difficult because cool shiny new feature.
Ive got the next closest thing in an EV - a 2015 Fiat 500e that I bought in 2018. Its got AC, heated seats and a CD player. Oh, and bluetooth for your phone. Pretty basic by today's standards. No screen, no cameras, no sensors, no over the air updates, no autonomous driving features. It's your basic grocery getter and we love it for that.
The sad part is that some poor soul had to shell out 34k USD for this bare bones mini EV (but she was a doctor so I guess she didn't mind too much) and when it was only 3 yrs old with 22k miles on it I only paid 8k for it. Now if they could only sell them new for that price, they'd sell well. But the new Fiat 500 Electric is still 33k USD. But it is a better, longer range, bigger car.
And in the US, that 40k price tag is marked up 10k+ at the dealerships for "market adjustment".
The reality is the charging infrastructure and the affordable versions of these cars just don't exist en masse yet.
I don't think this assumption is actually true. ICE vehicles do lose efficiency over time and tend to require quite a bit more maintenance when compared to a BEV. The obsolete charging ports seems to be more an element of competition finally settling onto standards for a newer product offering. In the next 5 years all BEV in the USA will be using NaCS. Battery degradation is a very real concern though, I agree with that. My hope is that we will have the ability to buy and have new batteries installed after ~10 years with the old batteries being recycled and safely disposed of. If we can make battery replacement an easy thing we should be able to keep the same BEV for a long time.
archive link https://archive.is/pcysl
In the early days of the Internet there was a humor piece emailed and Usenetted around about what the auto industry would like if different tech companies took over. I remember a bit of the part about Apple cars. Perfect cars, expensive, only about to run on a small percentage of roads. :-)
I don't know if this is related or not, and it seems too early to know how successful they will be selling cars in the US, but some people seem really worried about cheap electric cars from Chinese manufacturers:
AAM Calls Cheap Chinese EVs Built In Mexico “An Extinction Level Event” (Clean Technica)
(AAM is the Alliance for American Manufacturing.)
I just hear it as calls for protectionism. If domestic manufacturers can't outcompete China, they'd rather remove international manufacturers, like BYD, from the market.
I think there are some legitimate concerns around cheap Chinese EVs like the new $15000 EV coming from BYD. Most Chinese EV makers are heavily subsidized by the government meaning they are not really competing but can afford to lose money selling cars for less. Combine this with legitimate privacy concerns anytime China is involved and it's not that far fetched.
I'm sympathetic to anti-dumping tariffs, but the current industry rumblings feel protectionist. The Chinese government mostly used subsidies to kickstart the industry, and most countries do the exact same thing for their domestic manufacturers. China has produced some incredibly competitive car companies that are now eating each other's market share domestically: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Chinese-carmakers-face-price-war-growing-EV-competition-in-2024
Usually, I care a lot about privacy, but I'm not convinced a Chinese car is really that big of a concern. US, EU, Japanese, and Korean manufacturers are already insane with their data collection, so I can't imagine a dumber Chinese car being any worse: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/
Do you know how easy or difficult it would be for these Chinese cars to meet US safety standards?
@Minori.
I'm assuming they haven't already built to our rules, but I would be happy to be wrong
They evidently meet Australian safety standards, and I can't imagine the US is that much more stringent in any kind of safety regulation.
But we might be specifically different in idiosyncratic ways. idk.
The answer is a bit complicated. The US has famously idiosyncratic automobile standards which is why its taken so long for adaptive high beams to be approved for example. I don't think most Chinese manufacturers meet US standards right now (excluding Polestar). However, Chinese cars seem to be perfectly safe.
Europe is generally considered the strictest market with consistent standards and everything I can find says Chinese manufacturers are meeting EU safety standards.