Suddenly seeing BYD Seagull selected as one of Time magazine's 2025 Best Inventions feels so surreal. How can a car that looks so ugly be possible? But it’s indeed true, and it seems Cai Yu’s explanation is correct:

America’s strong innovation capability is almost entirely concentrated in the most cutting-edge, highest-premium deep-tech fields.
Silicon Valley isn’t very interested in “ordinary life problems,” focusing more on autonomous driving, Mars exploration, trillion-dollar models, disruptive AI, and longevity and immortality.
This also means that today’s America remains the fundamental science center of the entire planet, the AI model hub, and the drug testing center.
But the cost is that the product supply system for daily life is very weak; the simple and efficient daily supply for American middle class and civilians is scarce.
These shortages are wrapped in grand narratives by elite discourse systems, turning into a fate that must be accepted.
However, China’s engineering capabilities can take AI large models from 1 to n, making electric vehicles cheaper, smart robots cheaper, and everything cheaper.
This leads to the word “inclusive” sounding natural in China, but extremely rare in the West.
From Cai Yu’s Business Reference 4 in The Knowledge.