> In a single hall at the show, there were more EV models on display than there are available ones in the entire United States. There are 17 halls at this show. Seventeen. And they all have more EVs than the US market.
> The show features 1,451 vehicles, including 181 world premieres and 71 concept cars, sprawling across a record-breaking 380,000 square meters of exhibition space at two venues. It’s now the largest auto show in the world — and it’s not even close.
No surprises here. China is already the biggest car market, both by production and units sold. And the gap is substantial. The US and EU automotive industries are getting left in the dust. A powerful industrial base and an authoritarian regime that is not completely in the dying fossil industry's pocket seem to be a winning combination this century. If anything stops them, it will be the long term consequences of the one child policy, which turbocharged the usual developed country population issues.
> Meanwhile in Germany: Let's stick to combustion engines for at least 10 more years with 500km range and a multiple of energy and maintenance costs...
BMW is heavily invested in Neue Klasse[1], the iX3 has a long waiting list and a 800KM range.
The range estimates use different test procedures. BMW's quoted range uses the WLTP test procedure. China's CLTC test procedure is much more generous.
As noted in the article:
> "The Seal 08’s claimed 1,000+ km CLTC range translates to roughly 620+ miles — though real-world figures under EPA or WLTP testing would be lower. For reference, the recently updated Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ claims 926 km under WLTP (575 miles) with its new 800V architecture and 118 kWh battery."
To compare the range properly you need to do a real world test of the vehicles on the same circuit in the same conditions.
What's your spreadsheet's coefficient for emotions like fun? BMW doesn't sell cars so much as they sell a brand. It's an emotional play for buyers to need "The Ultimate Driving Machine™."
At this point it seems EV economics will make the EU government mandates irrelevant. Electric cars will be cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. The only remaining question is how quickly rapid charging infra will be deployed which will make electric the default choice even for those of us who cannot charge at home.
The point of the mandates is to ensure that the EU car companies survive.
It's basic game theory, you all commit to ramping up delivery of EVs at the same time because one of you could benefit in the short term if you defect, so without the law everyone does so and everyone loses.
High prices for electricity in Europe means that's not necessarily the case. If the cost of a tank of gasoline is the same as, or even cheaper, than an equivalent charge of the battery pack, how many people are going to be convinced to go electric?
(0.33 to .35 euro per kwh, .4 on an old contract, double the price in France or US, and more than legendarily expensive Switzerland. Still way cheaper than the same range in gas btw)
Bring in fast chargers or a lot of the commercial offerings into the mix and you're looking at .6 per kWh. Never mind the subscription/account bullshit a lot of companies are doing.
Regardless of that, I would still only ever buy an EV when I get a new car.
Yes. Even with the ludicrous subsidies and support from governments, ICEs are a nightmare to feed and maintain. (And inefficient and massively polluting.)
So, one of the reasons I asked is because the motors used in EV's also are usually embedded inside transmissions which require regular oil changes (like any gearbox) and the motor itself needs to be serviced every x years - or even be replaced. These motors house Neodymium magnets - which is a rare earth metal. Although, some designs like in the earlier Teslas used coils for both the stator and the rotor using a switched reluctance design.
Plus, you have to service the steering column, wheels, bearings, etc. Not saying these are equal to ICE costs - definitely not. I just thought even EVs had to get regular maintenance as they are fundamentally the same apart from the drivetrain itself.
I have no argument, just an observation that for six decades I've always taken multiplier to possibly mean any positive, negative, or zero value, rational or irrational, etc.
yeah … this is my take - Trump has pushed me to get an EV next time, and BYD is already killing it in UK. Only hope for continued EU car industry is to get the UK back in the single market (haha).
The 400 km in 5 minutes figure relies on finding a charger that can consistently deliver 1 MW; a prominent UK YouTuber just reported being unable to find a public charger that can consistently exceed 100 kW in all the years he's been testing electric cars.
As much as I think that electric cars are the future - and my next car will be one - there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put in place and improved before they can reach their advertised potential, just as there was for petroleum-powered cars.
I can't speak for the UK, but with my Model 3 2019 I was charging <10% to 30% @ 250kW (max the car supports) for a good 5+m in Switzerland and Italy already 4 years ago (both at Tesla Superchargers V3 and Ionity 350kW public chargers).
Of course the charger is not the only limiting factor, the grid also needs to support it. If you're in a small town with no big shops/industry, you're way less likely to have 1+MW cables installed, there was never a need for such peak capacity before.
The word "consistently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and most of the limiting will be on the car side for average cars and average chargers.
e.g. a Hyundai Ioniq 5 might charge at above 200kW up to around 45% peaking around 260kW on a 300kW charger then taper down to about 50kW at 80% full.
But that's a relatively good car for charging, many others won't push the older, lower spec chargers that are only advertising 100-150kW to their max (which might actually be from a low of 90 to a high of 175 on the charger side).
Some chargers display whether the car or the charger is limiting the rate as people often inaccurately blame the charger.
This new BYD car, on a standard high speed charger is likely to flatline the existing 350kW chargers up to near 80% in a similar way to how the Ioniq does that on older 150kW chargers.
I don’t doubt that’s true in the UK and Europe but this is a Chinese company at a Chinese car expo so I’d imagine that these chargers are popping up all over China.
Maybe one day the rest of the world will catch up?
Exporting their cars to Europe, Australia and New Zealand is a big part of BYD's business model; charging availability in those markets is not a fringe issue for them.
There are more than fifty EV marques competing for market share in China, and as per recent FT reporting, the Chinese government continues to subsidise the formation of new EV manufacturers. These companies have no option other than to be export-led businesses.
For now, most of the 1-MW chargers are located in China, where they have been installed during the last half of year or so.
Therefore there is no wonder that none could be found in UK.
Because BYD and other companies have announced plans to sell such cars in the EU, I assume that they will also promote the installation of such chargers wherever they export their cars.
But I would expect that some years will pass until such chargers could become available everywhere.
That 100kW claim seems pretty unlikely, or maybe it's UK only? Driving long distance in Europe I see the max ~230kW charging of the car everywhere apart from the rare times the charger's broken.
Actually, although UK provision is pretty bad, I got 235kW sustained last week in some small charging station off the M4.
Latter question: it's 92kWh, which is not unreasonable even if it's twice what some entry level cars are being sold with.
Deep dive on the pack: https://www.batterydesign.net/byd-blade-2-0-compared-to-1-0/ ; it seems they've done some good old fashioned mechanical engineering to minimize the "not cells" part of the battery while keeping the liquid cooling effective.
Cost in Europe: based on past cars .. maybe 50-100% more? Higher taxes AND higher margins.
I can find the previous Seal at £46k for the premium spec version (390kW / 83kWh): https://www.arnoldclark.com/new-cars/byd/seal/390kw-excellen... , or you can lease it for £321. UK leasing seems to be the last place it's possible to get an actual beat the market deal, which is odd.
The real news is BYD is making blade2, and flash charging (10m - 97%) standard going forward, i.e. all models all price points will recharge as fast as filling gas tank. The flash charging network supposedly also open to all compatible vehicles (probably some sort of titration on older batteries). Once blade2 proliferate, flash charging throughput = can convert many small lots, i.e. convenience stores into recharge stations like gas stations. I think flash charging infra basically just has a fuckload of old blade batteries drip charging from existing electric infra, so no need for major grid overhaul = the station in box charging infra almost anywhere (i.e. if grid supports heavy industrial AC, it can support flash cabinets) is going to be as big as charging time.
E: @10m charge per car, the system basically is scaled to typical gas tank up transaction times, i.e. 10-12m per car. The battery storage sized to survive rush hour throughput then charge off grid or roof solar during lull. Basically parity with gas infra. The plan is also to second life old batteries, i.e. 60-70% capacity blade1s... lots of 1st gen bats retiring, storage is going to be essentially "free" via upcycling. AKA entire battery circular economy PRC mandated recently. The last part is what makes BYD so cracked, IIRC central gov legislated extended producer responsibility recently, i.e. BYD (largest battery producer) legally had to take back and recycle batteries - cradle to grave responsibility, instead of billions in logistics for storing/recycling/shredding they're just slapping them in flash stations to increase deprecation cycle.
I think this is underestimating just how much 1MW is, even allowing for the fractional duty cycle of time spent changing over who's using the charging station. 1MW of 500W solar panels is 2000 panels, for example. It's probably going to be reserved for highway stations that are also conveniently located near substations.
Although you're now making me wonder at what point it becomes more economical to ship electricity in batteries rather than do lengthy, expensive, and annoyingly controversial grid upgrades.
The 1-MW chargers have internal batteries, so they can pull a much lower average power from the electrical grid.
The connection to the electrical grid of a charging station is not dimensioned based on the charging times. It is dimensioned based on the number of cars that must be charged during a given time interval at that location (assuming a certain average charging energy).
So regardless if fast chargers or slow chargers are used, what matters is how many electric cars are used in a region and how much they travel each day.
Fast chargers can matter only indirectly, if their presence will convince more of the car users to switch to EVs, requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption.
> The 1-MW chargers have internal batteries, so they can pull a much lower average power from the electrical grid.
We go back to what I was saying earlier [0], you'll need a lot of local storage to keep that charger running at full speed without breaking the back of the distribution grid. That comes on top of the solid grid capacity at every one of those many small parking lots.
One stall alone needs 1MW maybe equally split between the grid and the local battery, for probably 50-70kWh per car. Just 3-4 of these cars charging in a parking lot would mean a constant multi-MW pull from the grid on top of the battery that also needs to be recharged from somewhere. To guarantee that you lower that average you need to have enough local storage.
The technology exists, it works really well for large dedicated charging spots. The problem is the cost of scaling when you have to deal with lots of small plots (what OP proposed). A 1kW installation with 2-3kWh battery storage is the size of a small container and we've had them for years. Why do you think every small parking lot hasn't been equipped with one?
> requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption
This doesn't scale like software. Adding production is comparatively easy, adding distribution capacity isn't. It needs a lot of equipment that's not really available [1], and a lot of construction work to expand the grid capacity.
I posted math in another comment, maybe wildly off. It's 1500 kWh of battery from 30 old blade1s / upcycled byd packs, + 600kWh of grid power (typical industrial i.e. no need for major grid changes) + 30 kWh of solar roof (i.e. minor contribution). Scaled for 3300kWh for 2-3 hour morning/afternoon rush, about 100kwH per car. 100-150 cars per day like typical gas pump. The key point is the battery storage with upcycled old batteries (i.e. 0 capex) is CHEAP and space efficient, and since storage basically free, they can simply stack more packs in future to grow buffer if required. Of course assuming long term proven safety, i.e. no laws mandating burial. Otherwise storage is couple parking spots big x 2m high. Can stack to 4-6m... but I think regulatory will probably prevent it from any higher. TLDR basically system scaled/designed to use typical grid power + size battery buffer + charging speed for gas station parity.
Flash charging is 1MW - 1000V, 1000A. That peak power has to be provided by the grid or some energy storage that can be replenished in time for the next cars. We need cheap and smallish batteries (because burying is not always an option) to be able to install that much storage and peak power output in the MW/MWh range all over the place. We'll eventually have this but we might be talking in decades rather than years.
@10m per car across 2 cables = ~36 cars over 3 hour rush hour throughput (comparable to 2 gas pump) = need ~4000 kWh, 1500 kWh from battery 1800 kWh from grid = 3300 kWh. This worst case all cars 0-97% charge, realistically mixture so 3300 kWh should cover typical peak scenarios. Then midday lull for grid to refill batteries for evening rush, after again overnight charge from grid. Basically 1x2cable station can service 100-150 cars/day comparable to high-density gas pump.
In terms of physical size, battery storage smaller than gas in terms of physical infra = doesn't need to be underground (assuming long term blade safety ensured). Gas needs storage for multiple days / week so need to scale underground tank accordingly. 1500kWh scaled for rush hour = battery storage (recycled) realistically ~30 recycled blade1s slapped into racks, a couple parking spaces worth, and can be stacked vertically. It's much more space efficient (and cost efficient) than gas.
Even older supercharger sites in crumbling post-collapse USA are 1MW (4x 250KW stalls).
I think Tesla has an off grid(!) supercharger site in California with 168x 500kW peak v4 chargers.
It seems pretty doable to just spread the chargers around to meet the same throughput without causing any hot spots on the grid. The cars already have internet connected navigation systems that can react to how busy a site is and direct you to the next one.
Big deal for ubiquitous charge and moving away from charge hub model. Stop by any local convenience store and getting topped up in 10 min, no need to even consider detour time, i.e. BYD parterning up with KFC china to add flash charge - KFCs everywhere in PRC. The bigger deal is infra play, battery buffer mitigates grid hotspots (supercharger sites), so drop station in box in more places with less regulatory drama / capex in grid rework. Combining short charge time + ubiquitous/dropin charger combo that makes it work. Removes friction for drivers and much more economical for builders, can replace 60 spot supercharger site with 10 flash chargers. Instead of building out a charging hub, slap a few chargers in some existing retail lots, i.e. charge where you fastfood with minimal of permitting and construction - the hardware are cabinets on concrete ground pad- it's closer to modular appliance like industrial hvac than infra. Potential for proliferation very fast. IMO it's intermodal container moment for charging.
Just for 2 stalls you need to provide 2MW peak power (e.g. 1MW from the grid and 1MW from the battery), and you need probably at least 2MWh local storage to make sure you can always buffer the load. Add the large solar installation to "trickle charge" that battery. Every KFC needs upgrade works for the grid, the battery, and the solar panels. That's technically possible but financially not too attractive. Transformers are in short supply, construction work to upgrade every one of the lines isn't fast or cheap, and the production capacity isn't there yet to feed to the upgraded grid. That's why I said decades.
China might pull it off because they can steamroll objections and focus on individual topics to push them according to the plan. Can many other countries afford this?
Nothing ever is when you just have to type about it.
> 1MW (4x 250KW stalls)
Flash charging is 1MW per stall. You can lower the speed but then you're not flash charging.
The challenge isn't whether you can build a 1MW charger, BYD literally did it already [0] and is planning to build 4000 of them across China. The big deal is to do what OP proposed, to convert many small convenience store parking lots to flash charging type sites. The technology for a 1MW charger is there, scaling this to "many small parking lots" [1] is damn hard. It needs rebuilding the power grid for the increased capacity, and having enough local storage. Neither is cheap and fast to get.
The math doesn't work for converting "many small lots" unless you get creative about what "many" and "small" mean. Every one of those lots needs the 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar installation. It's not a problem of whether the technology exists, but scaling it in an economically feasible manner.
It's moving power requirement from industrial scale to commercial scale, not even large commercial. See BYD partnering with 10000s of PRC KFCs, if the grid can support KFCs it can support flash charge, which makes it more or less ubiquitous anywhere with reliable grid.
The modularization + battery is what makes variable scaling feasible, do not even need full 1500 kWh + 600kW grid power depending on throughput, that's based on max utilization parity with gas pumps, most systems can be smaller. System is also inherently variable mix match grid draw and battery % according to need. i.e. 500kHw battery storage and 300kWh draw for low utility areas. More battery for high utility area which going to have good grid anyway (at least in PRC). The scaling is easy because as mentioned in another comment, the system is almost drop in, commercial HVAC / applicate installation.
AND because it's functionally drop in, low footprint, there is no minimal # of piles, you can spread 1-2 piles in any lot with a couple spots to spare because you don't have high fixed capex of digging a big ass underground oil tank or permitting / earthworks for charging hub with many piles. The system scales to smallest possible increment, ~1-2 parking spots for pile charger + recycled battery. Everything on paper makes this stack MORE economical and easier to proliferate in more spatial configurations than gas / hub charging infra assuming there is grid. i.e. this won't work in off grid stations.
The already existing 1 MW chargers have internal batteries, so they do not need from the grid the peak power, but only the average power.
The average power is lower, as there are idle times between cars. Moreover, in the beginning only a few cars would be able to charge at 1 MW, so the average power will be even lower, allowing a later upgrade of the connection to the electrical grid, when fast-charging cars would become more frequent and when there would also be more EV owners, so that more cars would have to be charged per day.
The 1 MW chargers installed until now (in China) are 1000 V / 1000 A.
So the charging voltage has been increased, to allow a less increase in the charging current.
I assume that the car negotiates with the charger the charging voltage and the maximum charging current, and then the charging proceeds at the limits established by the least capable of the two.
Guessing the price is going to be 50% higher when it comes to market in the EU, and even so it'll still be half the price of it's only real competition in that range class
I've avoided Chinese EVs for political reasons, but it's getting harder. After the lease on my Kia EV6 ends in 6 months I can either upgrade to the new model with a whole 10% more range, or switch to one of the European brands which mostly have around half the charging speed.
The Mercedes CLA seems to be the only model that's significantly better and not totally crazy money.
Yep. Even the previous Seal was a very tempting option. If only it wasn't a privacy game over. I've also eyed the CLA, but it seems over the top. Too bad KiaHyundai is mostly doing van sized things.
I believe Elon is taking SpaceX public because he knows that Tesla is cooked. The Chinese have already won. They're pumping out cars for $10,000, 1,000 km range, and at jaw-dropping scale.
Tesla are in a strange place: people keep pointing out how decoupled the stock price is from the car business, and the stock refuses to go down. Partly because they're still selling the dream of full FSD.
Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD and going straight for the full EV crown. Japanese companies are clinging to hybrids, which they do well, but are still dependent on petrol.
America simply won't let the Chinese cars in and will continue to buy $100k gas guzzler trucks, because that's what the market demands.
Is that true though? People are currently forced to buy gas guzzlers since there are simply no practical and cheap EVs available in the United States. If Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US, it's not a given that people would still prefer ICE cars.
Indeed, the fact that they are banned suggests that the Govt knows that the domestic car industry can't compete with them.
No, it's because Elon understands the model of selling cars for humans to drive will be dead by the end of the next decade. With self-driving cars, the economics of buying a personal car stop making sense (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization), the cost-per-mile of a self-driving car is lower than that of a personal one, so people will switch to ride hailing over purchasing a car. This happened before around 2015 when Uber was massively subsidizing ride hailing, where it was cheaper to Uber everywhere than to buy a car. Many people realized the cost of insurance + car payment was higher than just Ubering everywhere, so they took Uber and never bought a car. And given the option of driving a car manually or letting the computer drive for you, 95% of people will choose the computer for convenience. Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.
The consumer car market will collapse 50-80% by 2040, and Tesla leadership sees this.
There is no point on trying to innovate on a dying market. It makes far more sense to move onto future markets, i.e. selling cybercabs and robots.
I know that's the sales pitch, but does the economics actually work out that way? You mention subsidized ride hailing, for example.
> (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization)
How much of that 5% is commuting, though? If there are two one-hour long windows in the day where a lot of people want to make the same trip at the same time, the fact that cars are idle in the middle of the night or day doesn't help with that. And that's also going to be peak surge pricing time.
The time economics gets worse in non-suburban areas. In high density urban areas, it's already too congested to not take public transport. In very low density areas, you might hail a ride, but you've got to wait for it to become available and arrive.
> Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.
Only in certain locations, and still dependent on occasional remote operator intervention. Tesla have been promising for years and not delivered, and every year they don't deliver makes it less likely that they ever will.
I think there's room in the market for such substitution, but it underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
Your analysis neglects the effect of self-driving vehicles on public transit. Self-driving busses and self-driving vans will vastly expand available public transit routes. Many public transit routes are not profitable (because they require a driver who costs ~$20-30/hour). Self-driving busses and vans will enable these routes, and shift people away from private vehicle long-distance commuting.
This will have a number of benefits, including increasing frequency of public transit, reduced traffic, reduced long-distance transit costs, etc.
Waymo is actually viable in pretty much the entirety of the US, they are able to expand whenever they want, but choose not to, because they're too risk averse.
When was the last time you sat in a self-driving Tesla? Today it's actually really good. It's gotten so much better over the past 5 years. I can see Tesla's self-driving business being viable by 2030.
> underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
This is the most vocal demographic of vehicle owners, but in reality they are not a significant percentage of the population. IMO most people don't like driving, and would rather not drive.
If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less. Add dead heading and milage will increase even further.
If cars still get about 200 000 miles of life like they do now then we'll have fewer cars, replaced more often, so still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
We'll need million mile cars to reduce that, and those don't appear to be coming from Tesla.
> If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less
People won't be driving at all.
> still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
Doesn't address my point, that consumers won't be the ones buying cars. These cars will be sold to self-driving vehicle fleet managers, not consumers.
Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
> those don't appear to be coming from Tesla
Tesla just killed its consumer vehicles Model X and Model S. Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
> > If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less
> People won't be driving at all.
Poor choice of words. There will be more cars on the roads, not fewer. Somebody will have to build those cars.
> Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
But the car market is larger, not smaller, and that's what matters. Fleet vehicles are generall not cheaper than consumer vehicles; a new city bus is now $1M and not because city transport authorities are swimming in cash.
> Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
Which is only one portion of the picture. Have they spent any effort on million mile batteries? Have they spent any effort on million mile suspensions? Have they spent any effort on million mile interiors -- nobody wants to get into a taxi with > 200 000 miles on the odo, but million mile trains and buses are fine because they're made of hard wearing material that is easy to deep clean.
Taxi drivers generally run Toyota's and Mercedes' for a reason.
Do you live in a dorm with a shared bathroom? Most of your home is only used a few times a day.
People buy cars because it's a little bubble of home away from home. They store their stuff in there, it smells like them, and they don't get stranger's vomit on a seat when they want to drive somewhere.
The "people won't buy cars because self-driving" take just completely ignores the human nature.
This doesn't change anything. Tesla is not leading in anything anymore.
I was in China a few weeks ago, and in some cities you can already get the equivalent of Waymo. There are also dozens of huge companies working on self driving there, with very friendly laws that make it easier to get training data and test things.
There are hundreds of companies working on robots as well, and many of them are already ahead when it comes to productionizing them.
Tesla entered a new market around a decade ago, back when they had little to no competition. For years, they were ahead of everyone. But now, everything they do has competition, and in most features/products that competition is ahead of them.
Manufacturing was always going to be temporary in the USA. You just can't win at manufacturing cost sensitive goods when all your workers want to be highly paid.
Should have gone the Apple route - design in the USA, make in China, and use a walled garden to ensure hardware clones aren't desirable and can't run any of your apps/features.
They should by now have some kind of platooning feature where you press a button and it'll hook up to the Tesla car ahead of you for long distance journeys.
Or a 'tesla miles club', where driving 100k miles gets you perks like free insurance, theme park tickets etc.
Or something like 'free parking when you park with a friend who also has a tesla'.
Basically Tesla needs the equivalent of the iMessage blue bubble lock in effect and the 'all my stuff is on iCloud it would be too hard to move to android' effect.
I think the tyre problem is not really a thing. EVs use synchronized motors and traction control to avoid extra wear due to uneven torque during normal driving.
I can't remember if it was here or on reddit, but I read from a tyre shop / mechanic, that some EV users replace their tyres very often, because EV cars make it easy to drive very aggressive.
Anecdotally, my Kia Niro EV goes through tyres a lot faster than the two equivalent internal combustion vehicles in the family.
That said, the Niro weighs ~50% more than the other vehicles, and it has significantly higher acceleration/braking, so I'd hazard it gets driven harder on average.
Meanwhile legacy EV maker Tesla continues doing nothing other than silly toy projects. (Or rather hyping up silly toy projects and actually doing nothing at all)
It's just a 92kWh battery. There are many cars with 100kWh or more on the market already. And that's only a fraction of the energy stored in an average gas tank (upwards of 500kWh). A combustion car just loses most of that energy to heat from actual explosions. From a physics perspective, a normal car is a much bigger bomb than even the longest range EV.
Batteries are much less powerful bombs than fuel tanks, because they cannot produce a so great volume of gas.
Batteries are dangerous mainly as sources of fire that is difficult to extinguish. For instance extinguishing with water may actually cause an explosion, by gas produced by the decomposition of water.
Most lithium-based batteries are more dangerous than other batteries not because they are batteries, but because they use an organic electrolyte instead of a water-based electrolyte. So their electrolyte is a fuel, which may explode when the battery catches fire.
However, there is much less electrolyte in a battery than fuel in a fuel tank, so the volume of expanding gas during an explosion is much less.
There's a big Chinese auto show happening this week so there's a lot of announcements.
The same site has an overview post:
https://electrek.co/2026/04/26/beijing-auto-show-2026-insane...
> In a single hall at the show, there were more EV models on display than there are available ones in the entire United States. There are 17 halls at this show. Seventeen. And they all have more EVs than the US market.
> The show features 1,451 vehicles, including 181 world premieres and 71 concept cars, sprawling across a record-breaking 380,000 square meters of exhibition space at two venues. It’s now the largest auto show in the world — and it’s not even close.
No surprises here. China is already the biggest car market, both by production and units sold. And the gap is substantial. The US and EU automotive industries are getting left in the dust. A powerful industrial base and an authoritarian regime that is not completely in the dying fossil industry's pocket seem to be a winning combination this century. If anything stops them, it will be the long term consequences of the one child policy, which turbocharged the usual developed country population issues.
Meanwhile in Germany: Let's stick to combustion engines for at least 10 more years with 500km range and a multiple of energy and maintenance costs...
> Meanwhile in Germany: Let's stick to combustion engines for at least 10 more years with 500km range and a multiple of energy and maintenance costs...
BMW is heavily invested in Neue Klasse[1], the iX3 has a long waiting list and a 800KM range.
[1]:https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/company/neue-klasse.html
Good for BMW, isn't it? According to my excel sheet 800km range is still less than 1000km range, for double, triple the price compared to a Byd?!
The range estimates use different test procedures. BMW's quoted range uses the WLTP test procedure. China's CLTC test procedure is much more generous.
As noted in the article:
> "The Seal 08’s claimed 1,000+ km CLTC range translates to roughly 620+ miles — though real-world figures under EPA or WLTP testing would be lower. For reference, the recently updated Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ claims 926 km under WLTP (575 miles) with its new 800V architecture and 118 kWh battery."
To compare the range properly you need to do a real world test of the vehicles on the same circuit in the same conditions.
What's your spreadsheet's coefficient for emotions like fun? BMW doesn't sell cars so much as they sell a brand. It's an emotional play for buyers to need "The Ultimate Driving Machine™."
Why does it have to be so massive?
But who am I kidding? I’m not their target audience.
Their design department needs an intervention
At this point it seems EV economics will make the EU government mandates irrelevant. Electric cars will be cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. The only remaining question is how quickly rapid charging infra will be deployed which will make electric the default choice even for those of us who cannot charge at home.
The point of the mandates is to ensure that the EU car companies survive.
It's basic game theory, you all commit to ramping up delivery of EVs at the same time because one of you could benefit in the short term if you defect, so without the law everyone does so and everyone loses.
> Electric cars will be cheaper to buy and cheaper to run.
Yes they will be, some time around now or the recent past, depending on country.
Source:
https://dmnews.co.uk/electric-cars-are-now-officially-cheape...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/17/new-uk-e...
High prices for electricity in Europe means that's not necessarily the case. If the cost of a tank of gasoline is the same as, or even cheaper, than an equivalent charge of the battery pack, how many people are going to be convinced to go electric?
I thought EV's also have maintenance costs and energy costs?
Much less so than combustion engines, unless you're not able to charge at home.
My EV gets charged by energy made in Germany and EU, that's the difference.
(0.33 to .35 euro per kwh, .4 on an old contract, double the price in France or US, and more than legendarily expensive Switzerland. Still way cheaper than the same range in gas btw)
If charging at home.
Bring in fast chargers or a lot of the commercial offerings into the mix and you're looking at .6 per kWh. Never mind the subscription/account bullshit a lot of companies are doing.
Regardless of that, I would still only ever buy an EV when I get a new car.
where are the battery materials from?
Australia via China for a decent amount of it.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spodumene
Marocco maybe?
Both maintenance and charging are negligible costs.
Yes. Even with the ludicrous subsidies and support from governments, ICEs are a nightmare to feed and maintain. (And inefficient and massively polluting.)
How much does the major service cost, if we remember it includes engine and the entire transmission?
What other maintenance costs can you think of?
And how much does it cost to drive 500 miles in the electric car charged at £0.08/kWh vs diesel at 50 mpg (£1.91/L) or petrol car at 35 mpg (£1.58/L)?
So, one of the reasons I asked is because the motors used in EV's also are usually embedded inside transmissions which require regular oil changes (like any gearbox) and the motor itself needs to be serviced every x years - or even be replaced. These motors house Neodymium magnets - which is a rare earth metal. Although, some designs like in the earlier Teslas used coils for both the stator and the rotor using a switched reluctance design.
Plus, you have to service the steering column, wheels, bearings, etc. Not saying these are equal to ICE costs - definitely not. I just thought even EVs had to get regular maintenance as they are fundamentally the same apart from the drivetrain itself.
There are the words "a multiple of" in the parent post, just before the words "energy and maintenance costs"
Which means that ICE Vehicle energy and maintenance costs are a multiple of (i.e. several times that of) EV energy and maintenance costs.
And so EV energy and maintenance costs are a fraction of the ICE energy and maintenance costs.
You can debate this assertion if you like, but first you have to read it successfully.
> but first you have to read it successfully.
1/2 * x
What do you think 1/2 here is? Stick to doom.
> What do you think 1/2 here is?
I think it's a ratio between two integers. If you have a point to make here, you also first have to write it successfully.
The multiplication factor can't be a third?
That's not how the phrase "x is a multiple of y" is typically used, so colloquiality speaking: no it can't be 1/3. That would be a submultiple
If your argument is about the actual running costs of EVS and ICE Vehicles: also no.
So, it is in fact used that way sometimes then.
I have no argument, just an observation that for six decades I've always taken multiplier to possibly mean any positive, negative, or zero value, rational or irrational, etc.
> So, it is in fact used that way sometimes then.
No, and that's the point of using a different word "submultiple".
> I've always taken multiplier
"a multiple of" is not the same thing as "multiplier". Or "submultiple" either. Different words have different meanings. So not relevant.
> to possibly mean any positive, negative, or zero value, rational or irrational,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multiple
multiple, noun: the product of a quantity by an integer. So no.
China seems to be either leaving the US behind, or within striking distance in every single technology for the future.
Looking back, I wonder if we will see this period as similar to what the 1957 Suez crisis did to the UK.
Edit: Spelling
yeah … this is my take - Trump has pushed me to get an EV next time, and BYD is already killing it in UK. Only hope for continued EU car industry is to get the UK back in the single market (haha).
The 400 km in 5 minutes figure relies on finding a charger that can consistently deliver 1 MW; a prominent UK YouTuber just reported being unable to find a public charger that can consistently exceed 100 kW in all the years he's been testing electric cars.
As much as I think that electric cars are the future - and my next car will be one - there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put in place and improved before they can reach their advertised potential, just as there was for petroleum-powered cars.
I can't speak for the UK, but with my Model 3 2019 I was charging <10% to 30% @ 250kW (max the car supports) for a good 5+m in Switzerland and Italy already 4 years ago (both at Tesla Superchargers V3 and Ionity 350kW public chargers).
Of course the charger is not the only limiting factor, the grid also needs to support it. If you're in a small town with no big shops/industry, you're way less likely to have 1+MW cables installed, there was never a need for such peak capacity before.
The word "consistently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and most of the limiting will be on the car side for average cars and average chargers.
e.g. a Hyundai Ioniq 5 might charge at above 200kW up to around 45% peaking around 260kW on a 300kW charger then taper down to about 50kW at 80% full.
But that's a relatively good car for charging, many others won't push the older, lower spec chargers that are only advertising 100-150kW to their max (which might actually be from a low of 90 to a high of 175 on the charger side).
Some chargers display whether the car or the charger is limiting the rate as people often inaccurately blame the charger.
This new BYD car, on a standard high speed charger is likely to flatline the existing 350kW chargers up to near 80% in a similar way to how the Ioniq does that on older 150kW chargers.
I don’t doubt that’s true in the UK and Europe but this is a Chinese company at a Chinese car expo so I’d imagine that these chargers are popping up all over China.
Maybe one day the rest of the world will catch up?
Exporting their cars to Europe, Australia and New Zealand is a big part of BYD's business model; charging availability in those markets is not a fringe issue for them.
There are more than fifty EV marques competing for market share in China, and as per recent FT reporting, the Chinese government continues to subsidise the formation of new EV manufacturers. These companies have no option other than to be export-led businesses.
For now, most of the 1-MW chargers are located in China, where they have been installed during the last half of year or so.
Therefore there is no wonder that none could be found in UK.
Because BYD and other companies have announced plans to sell such cars in the EU, I assume that they will also promote the installation of such chargers wherever they export their cars.
But I would expect that some years will pass until such chargers could become available everywhere.
That 100kW claim seems pretty unlikely, or maybe it's UK only? Driving long distance in Europe I see the max ~230kW charging of the car everywhere apart from the rare times the charger's broken.
Actually, although UK provision is pretty bad, I got 235kW sustained last week in some small charging station off the M4.
I can't wait till they stuff the same battery in a down-market car. Would really like to see a >750km contender in the €30k range one of these days
How much will it cost in Europe and how did they manage to fit so much energy into their battery pack?
Latter question: it's 92kWh, which is not unreasonable even if it's twice what some entry level cars are being sold with.
Deep dive on the pack: https://www.batterydesign.net/byd-blade-2-0-compared-to-1-0/ ; it seems they've done some good old fashioned mechanical engineering to minimize the "not cells" part of the battery while keeping the liquid cooling effective.
Cost in Europe: based on past cars .. maybe 50-100% more? Higher taxes AND higher margins.
I can find the previous Seal at £46k for the premium spec version (390kW / 83kWh): https://www.arnoldclark.com/new-cars/byd/seal/390kw-excellen... , or you can lease it for £321. UK leasing seems to be the last place it's possible to get an actual beat the market deal, which is odd.
as usual double to triple the Chinese price for EVs
The real news is BYD is making blade2, and flash charging (10m - 97%) standard going forward, i.e. all models all price points will recharge as fast as filling gas tank. The flash charging network supposedly also open to all compatible vehicles (probably some sort of titration on older batteries). Once blade2 proliferate, flash charging throughput = can convert many small lots, i.e. convenience stores into recharge stations like gas stations. I think flash charging infra basically just has a fuckload of old blade batteries drip charging from existing electric infra, so no need for major grid overhaul = the station in box charging infra almost anywhere (i.e. if grid supports heavy industrial AC, it can support flash cabinets) is going to be as big as charging time.
E: @10m charge per car, the system basically is scaled to typical gas tank up transaction times, i.e. 10-12m per car. The battery storage sized to survive rush hour throughput then charge off grid or roof solar during lull. Basically parity with gas infra. The plan is also to second life old batteries, i.e. 60-70% capacity blade1s... lots of 1st gen bats retiring, storage is going to be essentially "free" via upcycling. AKA entire battery circular economy PRC mandated recently. The last part is what makes BYD so cracked, IIRC central gov legislated extended producer responsibility recently, i.e. BYD (largest battery producer) legally had to take back and recycle batteries - cradle to grave responsibility, instead of billions in logistics for storing/recycling/shredding they're just slapping them in flash stations to increase deprecation cycle.
I think this is underestimating just how much 1MW is, even allowing for the fractional duty cycle of time spent changing over who's using the charging station. 1MW of 500W solar panels is 2000 panels, for example. It's probably going to be reserved for highway stations that are also conveniently located near substations.
Although you're now making me wonder at what point it becomes more economical to ship electricity in batteries rather than do lengthy, expensive, and annoyingly controversial grid upgrades.
The 1-MW chargers have internal batteries, so they can pull a much lower average power from the electrical grid.
The connection to the electrical grid of a charging station is not dimensioned based on the charging times. It is dimensioned based on the number of cars that must be charged during a given time interval at that location (assuming a certain average charging energy).
So regardless if fast chargers or slow chargers are used, what matters is how many electric cars are used in a region and how much they travel each day.
Fast chargers can matter only indirectly, if their presence will convince more of the car users to switch to EVs, requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption.
> The 1-MW chargers have internal batteries, so they can pull a much lower average power from the electrical grid.
We go back to what I was saying earlier [0], you'll need a lot of local storage to keep that charger running at full speed without breaking the back of the distribution grid. That comes on top of the solid grid capacity at every one of those many small parking lots.
One stall alone needs 1MW maybe equally split between the grid and the local battery, for probably 50-70kWh per car. Just 3-4 of these cars charging in a parking lot would mean a constant multi-MW pull from the grid on top of the battery that also needs to be recharged from somewhere. To guarantee that you lower that average you need to have enough local storage.
The technology exists, it works really well for large dedicated charging spots. The problem is the cost of scaling when you have to deal with lots of small plots (what OP proposed). A 1kW installation with 2-3kWh battery storage is the size of a small container and we've had them for years. Why do you think every small parking lot hasn't been equipped with one?
> requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption
This doesn't scale like software. Adding production is comparatively easy, adding distribution capacity isn't. It needs a lot of equipment that's not really available [1], and a lot of construction work to expand the grid capacity.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932115
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47604887
I posted math in another comment, maybe wildly off. It's 1500 kWh of battery from 30 old blade1s / upcycled byd packs, + 600kWh of grid power (typical industrial i.e. no need for major grid changes) + 30 kWh of solar roof (i.e. minor contribution). Scaled for 3300kWh for 2-3 hour morning/afternoon rush, about 100kwH per car. 100-150 cars per day like typical gas pump. The key point is the battery storage with upcycled old batteries (i.e. 0 capex) is CHEAP and space efficient, and since storage basically free, they can simply stack more packs in future to grow buffer if required. Of course assuming long term proven safety, i.e. no laws mandating burial. Otherwise storage is couple parking spots big x 2m high. Can stack to 4-6m... but I think regulatory will probably prevent it from any higher. TLDR basically system scaled/designed to use typical grid power + size battery buffer + charging speed for gas station parity.
Hmm, "Never underestimate a shipping container sized battery hauling down a highway"?
Flash charging is 1MW - 1000V, 1000A. That peak power has to be provided by the grid or some energy storage that can be replenished in time for the next cars. We need cheap and smallish batteries (because burying is not always an option) to be able to install that much storage and peak power output in the MW/MWh range all over the place. We'll eventually have this but we might be talking in decades rather than years.
Or, why not, maybe we need fewer cars.
I think flash charging infra math is:
1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar canopy (if weather allows).
@10m per car across 2 cables = ~36 cars over 3 hour rush hour throughput (comparable to 2 gas pump) = need ~4000 kWh, 1500 kWh from battery 1800 kWh from grid = 3300 kWh. This worst case all cars 0-97% charge, realistically mixture so 3300 kWh should cover typical peak scenarios. Then midday lull for grid to refill batteries for evening rush, after again overnight charge from grid. Basically 1x2cable station can service 100-150 cars/day comparable to high-density gas pump.
In terms of physical size, battery storage smaller than gas in terms of physical infra = doesn't need to be underground (assuming long term blade safety ensured). Gas needs storage for multiple days / week so need to scale underground tank accordingly. 1500kWh scaled for rush hour = battery storage (recycled) realistically ~30 recycled blade1s slapped into racks, a couple parking spaces worth, and can be stacked vertically. It's much more space efficient (and cost efficient) than gas.
I don't think it's that big a deal.
Even older supercharger sites in crumbling post-collapse USA are 1MW (4x 250KW stalls).
I think Tesla has an off grid(!) supercharger site in California with 168x 500kW peak v4 chargers.
It seems pretty doable to just spread the chargers around to meet the same throughput without causing any hot spots on the grid. The cars already have internet connected navigation systems that can react to how busy a site is and direct you to the next one.
Big deal for ubiquitous charge and moving away from charge hub model. Stop by any local convenience store and getting topped up in 10 min, no need to even consider detour time, i.e. BYD parterning up with KFC china to add flash charge - KFCs everywhere in PRC. The bigger deal is infra play, battery buffer mitigates grid hotspots (supercharger sites), so drop station in box in more places with less regulatory drama / capex in grid rework. Combining short charge time + ubiquitous/dropin charger combo that makes it work. Removes friction for drivers and much more economical for builders, can replace 60 spot supercharger site with 10 flash chargers. Instead of building out a charging hub, slap a few chargers in some existing retail lots, i.e. charge where you fastfood with minimal of permitting and construction - the hardware are cabinets on concrete ground pad- it's closer to modular appliance like industrial hvac than infra. Potential for proliferation very fast. IMO it's intermodal container moment for charging.
> The bigger deal is infra play, battery buffer mitigates grid hotspots
That's exactly where I flagged the challenge earlier to which you replied that the math is easy.
>> 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar canopy
Just for 2 stalls you need to provide 2MW peak power (e.g. 1MW from the grid and 1MW from the battery), and you need probably at least 2MWh local storage to make sure you can always buffer the load. Add the large solar installation to "trickle charge" that battery. Every KFC needs upgrade works for the grid, the battery, and the solar panels. That's technically possible but financially not too attractive. Transformers are in short supply, construction work to upgrade every one of the lines isn't fast or cheap, and the production capacity isn't there yet to feed to the upgraded grid. That's why I said decades.
China might pull it off because they can steamroll objections and focus on individual topics to push them according to the plan. Can many other countries afford this?
> I don't think it's that big a deal.
Nothing ever is when you just have to type about it.
> 1MW (4x 250KW stalls)
Flash charging is 1MW per stall. You can lower the speed but then you're not flash charging.
The challenge isn't whether you can build a 1MW charger, BYD literally did it already [0] and is planning to build 4000 of them across China. The big deal is to do what OP proposed, to convert many small convenience store parking lots to flash charging type sites. The technology for a 1MW charger is there, scaling this to "many small parking lots" [1] is damn hard. It needs rebuilding the power grid for the increased capacity, and having enough local storage. Neither is cheap and fast to get.
[0] https://www.byd.com/mea/news-list/byd-unveils-super-e-platfo...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932032
>> convert many small lots, i.e. convenience stores into recharge stations like gas stations
> 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar canopy
The math doesn't work for converting "many small lots" unless you get creative about what "many" and "small" mean. Every one of those lots needs the 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar installation. It's not a problem of whether the technology exists, but scaling it in an economically feasible manner.
It's moving power requirement from industrial scale to commercial scale, not even large commercial. See BYD partnering with 10000s of PRC KFCs, if the grid can support KFCs it can support flash charge, which makes it more or less ubiquitous anywhere with reliable grid.
The modularization + battery is what makes variable scaling feasible, do not even need full 1500 kWh + 600kW grid power depending on throughput, that's based on max utilization parity with gas pumps, most systems can be smaller. System is also inherently variable mix match grid draw and battery % according to need. i.e. 500kHw battery storage and 300kWh draw for low utility areas. More battery for high utility area which going to have good grid anyway (at least in PRC). The scaling is easy because as mentioned in another comment, the system is almost drop in, commercial HVAC / applicate installation.
AND because it's functionally drop in, low footprint, there is no minimal # of piles, you can spread 1-2 piles in any lot with a couple spots to spare because you don't have high fixed capex of digging a big ass underground oil tank or permitting / earthworks for charging hub with many piles. The system scales to smallest possible increment, ~1-2 parking spots for pile charger + recycled battery. Everything on paper makes this stack MORE economical and easier to proliferate in more spatial configurations than gas / hub charging infra assuming there is grid. i.e. this won't work in off grid stations.
The already existing 1 MW chargers have internal batteries, so they do not need from the grid the peak power, but only the average power.
The average power is lower, as there are idle times between cars. Moreover, in the beginning only a few cars would be able to charge at 1 MW, so the average power will be even lower, allowing a later upgrade of the connection to the electrical grid, when fast-charging cars would become more frequent and when there would also be more EV owners, so that more cars would have to be charged per day.
1MW/800V architecture = 1250A
The 1 MW chargers installed until now (in China) are 1000 V / 1000 A.
So the charging voltage has been increased, to allow a less increase in the charging current.
I assume that the car negotiates with the charger the charging voltage and the maximum charging current, and then the charging proceeds at the limits established by the least capable of the two.
[dead]
$42,000 for 1,000KM of range and 684hp. That's just ridiculously a good deal.
Guessing the price is going to be 50% higher when it comes to market in the EU, and even so it'll still be half the price of it's only real competition in that range class
I've avoided Chinese EVs for political reasons, but it's getting harder. After the lease on my Kia EV6 ends in 6 months I can either upgrade to the new model with a whole 10% more range, or switch to one of the European brands which mostly have around half the charging speed.
The Mercedes CLA seems to be the only model that's significantly better and not totally crazy money.
Yep. Even the previous Seal was a very tempting option. If only it wasn't a privacy game over. I've also eyed the CLA, but it seems over the top. Too bad KiaHyundai is mostly doing van sized things.
Not just a ridiculously good deal, but a good deal to Seal! (sorry, I couldn't help myself)
I believe Elon is taking SpaceX public because he knows that Tesla is cooked. The Chinese have already won. They're pumping out cars for $10,000, 1,000 km range, and at jaw-dropping scale.
He knows Tesla is on borrowed time.
Tesla are in a strange place: people keep pointing out how decoupled the stock price is from the car business, and the stock refuses to go down. Partly because they're still selling the dream of full FSD.
Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD and going straight for the full EV crown. Japanese companies are clinging to hybrids, which they do well, but are still dependent on petrol.
America simply won't let the Chinese cars in and will continue to buy $100k gas guzzler trucks, because that's what the market demands.
> because that's what the market demands.
Is that true though? People are currently forced to buy gas guzzlers since there are simply no practical and cheap EVs available in the United States. If Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US, it's not a given that people would still prefer ICE cars.
Indeed, the fact that they are banned suggests that the Govt knows that the domestic car industry can't compete with them.
The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt (and Volt) and Fiat e500 don't exist in your narrative? People want their big SUVs, even Tesla sells one or two.
No, it's because Elon understands the model of selling cars for humans to drive will be dead by the end of the next decade. With self-driving cars, the economics of buying a personal car stop making sense (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization), the cost-per-mile of a self-driving car is lower than that of a personal one, so people will switch to ride hailing over purchasing a car. This happened before around 2015 when Uber was massively subsidizing ride hailing, where it was cheaper to Uber everywhere than to buy a car. Many people realized the cost of insurance + car payment was higher than just Ubering everywhere, so they took Uber and never bought a car. And given the option of driving a car manually or letting the computer drive for you, 95% of people will choose the computer for convenience. Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.
The consumer car market will collapse 50-80% by 2040, and Tesla leadership sees this.
There is no point on trying to innovate on a dying market. It makes far more sense to move onto future markets, i.e. selling cybercabs and robots.
I know that's the sales pitch, but does the economics actually work out that way? You mention subsidized ride hailing, for example.
> (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization)
How much of that 5% is commuting, though? If there are two one-hour long windows in the day where a lot of people want to make the same trip at the same time, the fact that cars are idle in the middle of the night or day doesn't help with that. And that's also going to be peak surge pricing time.
The time economics gets worse in non-suburban areas. In high density urban areas, it's already too congested to not take public transport. In very low density areas, you might hail a ride, but you've got to wait for it to become available and arrive.
> Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.
Only in certain locations, and still dependent on occasional remote operator intervention. Tesla have been promising for years and not delivered, and every year they don't deliver makes it less likely that they ever will.
I think there's room in the market for such substitution, but it underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
Your analysis neglects the effect of self-driving vehicles on public transit. Self-driving busses and self-driving vans will vastly expand available public transit routes. Many public transit routes are not profitable (because they require a driver who costs ~$20-30/hour). Self-driving busses and vans will enable these routes, and shift people away from private vehicle long-distance commuting.
This will have a number of benefits, including increasing frequency of public transit, reduced traffic, reduced long-distance transit costs, etc.
Waymo is actually viable in pretty much the entirety of the US, they are able to expand whenever they want, but choose not to, because they're too risk averse.
When was the last time you sat in a self-driving Tesla? Today it's actually really good. It's gotten so much better over the past 5 years. I can see Tesla's self-driving business being viable by 2030.
> underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
This is the most vocal demographic of vehicle owners, but in reality they are not a significant percentage of the population. IMO most people don't like driving, and would rather not drive.
If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less. Add dead heading and milage will increase even further.
If cars still get about 200 000 miles of life like they do now then we'll have fewer cars, replaced more often, so still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
We'll need million mile cars to reduce that, and those don't appear to be coming from Tesla.
> If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less
People won't be driving at all.
> still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
Doesn't address my point, that consumers won't be the ones buying cars. These cars will be sold to self-driving vehicle fleet managers, not consumers.
Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
> those don't appear to be coming from Tesla
Tesla just killed its consumer vehicles Model X and Model S. Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
> > If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less
> People won't be driving at all.
Poor choice of words. There will be more cars on the roads, not fewer. Somebody will have to build those cars.
> Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
But the car market is larger, not smaller, and that's what matters. Fleet vehicles are generall not cheaper than consumer vehicles; a new city bus is now $1M and not because city transport authorities are swimming in cash.
> Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
Which is only one portion of the picture. Have they spent any effort on million mile batteries? Have they spent any effort on million mile suspensions? Have they spent any effort on million mile interiors -- nobody wants to get into a taxi with > 200 000 miles on the odo, but million mile trains and buses are fine because they're made of hard wearing material that is easy to deep clean.
Taxi drivers generally run Toyota's and Mercedes' for a reason.
> Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan
Building on the proven sales success of the Cybertruck?
Do you live in a dorm with a shared bathroom? Most of your home is only used a few times a day.
People buy cars because it's a little bubble of home away from home. They store their stuff in there, it smells like them, and they don't get stranger's vomit on a seat when they want to drive somewhere.
The "people won't buy cars because self-driving" take just completely ignores the human nature.
This doesn't change anything. Tesla is not leading in anything anymore.
I was in China a few weeks ago, and in some cities you can already get the equivalent of Waymo. There are also dozens of huge companies working on self driving there, with very friendly laws that make it easier to get training data and test things.
There are hundreds of companies working on robots as well, and many of them are already ahead when it comes to productionizing them.
Tesla entered a new market around a decade ago, back when they had little to no competition. For years, they were ahead of everyone. But now, everything they do has competition, and in most features/products that competition is ahead of them.
Their valuation doesn't make any sense.
Manufacturing was always going to be temporary in the USA. You just can't win at manufacturing cost sensitive goods when all your workers want to be highly paid.
Should have gone the Apple route - design in the USA, make in China, and use a walled garden to ensure hardware clones aren't desirable and can't run any of your apps/features.
Tesla makes more than half its cars in China. They are generally regarded as better in quality than the US built ones.
But they have no walled garden...
They should by now have some kind of platooning feature where you press a button and it'll hook up to the Tesla car ahead of you for long distance journeys.
Or a 'tesla miles club', where driving 100k miles gets you perks like free insurance, theme park tickets etc.
Or something like 'free parking when you park with a friend who also has a tesla'.
Basically Tesla needs the equivalent of the iMessage blue bubble lock in effect and the 'all my stuff is on iCloud it would be too hard to move to android' effect.
Can you just add power from the front and rear wheels like that?
I don't see why not, it's all contributing to acceleration, although it's going to be rough on the tyres.
And hey, even fairly modest EVs are rough on tyres, so no one is going to mind that tradeoff if they are looking for sporty acceleration
I think the tyre problem is not really a thing. EVs use synchronized motors and traction control to avoid extra wear due to uneven torque during normal driving.
I can't remember if it was here or on reddit, but I read from a tyre shop / mechanic, that some EV users replace their tyres very often, because EV cars make it easy to drive very aggressive.
And others don't. We replaced our EV tires at about 80 000 km.
The increased weight due to the battery is the bigger issue for wear on tires. A lot of EVs weigh a good 500kg more than their ICE counterparts.
I think bigger issue is torque. EVs have lot more torque and it is easier to use, so they can slip more often which then leads to wear.
Anecdotally, my Kia Niro EV goes through tyres a lot faster than the two equivalent internal combustion vehicles in the family.
That said, the Niro weighs ~50% more than the other vehicles, and it has significantly higher acceleration/braking, so I'd hazard it gets driven harder on average.
Flagship killer.
Nice to see innovation in the EV market.
Meanwhile legacy EV maker Tesla continues doing nothing other than silly toy projects. (Or rather hyping up silly toy projects and actually doing nothing at all)
That's not a battery, that's a reusable bomb. Good thing they also figured out how to keep them from having runaway reactions.
It's just a 92kWh battery. There are many cars with 100kWh or more on the market already. And that's only a fraction of the energy stored in an average gas tank (upwards of 500kWh). A combustion car just loses most of that energy to heat from actual explosions. From a physics perspective, a normal car is a much bigger bomb than even the longest range EV.
Batteries are much less powerful bombs than fuel tanks, because they cannot produce a so great volume of gas.
Batteries are dangerous mainly as sources of fire that is difficult to extinguish. For instance extinguishing with water may actually cause an explosion, by gas produced by the decomposition of water.
Most lithium-based batteries are more dangerous than other batteries not because they are batteries, but because they use an organic electrolyte instead of a water-based electrolyte. So their electrolyte is a fuel, which may explode when the battery catches fire.
However, there is much less electrolyte in a battery than fuel in a fuel tank, so the volume of expanding gas during an explosion is much less.