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Discussion (74 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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.
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
But who am I kidding? I’m not their target audience.
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)?
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.
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.
Looking back, I wonder if we will see this period as similar to what the 1957 Suez crisis did to the UK.
Edit: Spelling
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.
Actually, although UK provision is pretty bad, I got 235kW sustained last week in some small charging station off the M4.
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.
Maybe one day the rest of the world will catch up?
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.
E: @10m charge, the system basically is scaled to typical gas tank up transaction times, i.e. 10-12m. 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% blade1s... lots of 1st gen bats retiring, storage is going to be essentially "free" via upcycling. AKA entire battery circular economy PRC mandated recently.
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 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.
Or, why not, maybe we need fewer cars.
The Mercedes CLA seems to be the only model that's significantly better and not totally crazy money.
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.
He knows Tesla is on borrowed time.
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.
> (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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.