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#canada#charging#cars#byd#china#car#battery#power#don#chinese
Discussion (86 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_%E2%80%93_New_England_T...
Quebec has that hydroelectric power production. And their power grid is cheap and pretty clean. And their government and populace is highly pro-EV and yeah, it's great.
Ontario a bit second to that but reliant on nuclear, and those nuclear plants will be going offline for maintenance and its ... a whole thing.
Under Doug Ford we just keep increasing the amount of natural gas in the mix and the prices keep going up on electricity. (This being the guy who lied his way into power claiming that under the Ontario Liberals we had "the most expensive power in North America" [again a total lie])
The rest of the country? Oof. Have you looked at the prairie provinces power generation?
These problems are very political, but also very fixable. I think (well, hope) once it becomes clear that cheap Chinese EVs are here to stay the tide will begin to turn. In terms of total lifetime cost, you can either spend 200K CAD on a Silverado or 50K CAD on a Dolphin.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/byd/dolphin-surf/long-t...
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/byd/atto-3/long-term-re...
They're now quite popular in the UK, along with Jaecoo, although not a huge number of them are pure-EV. Since I have been in the market for a car recently, I've been carspotting to see what's actually on the roads, and looking out for green-flash plates. VW and Tesla seem to be the carspotting winners so far. Autocar (and other reviewers) are mad about the Renault 5, which does look extremely good. I have an Abarth(!) 600E on lease-order, which I will review for HN eventually.
It is very funny that the Seagull had to be renamed Surf because Brits hate seagulls, though.
Seagulls, despite the name, aren't restricted to the sea. We have tons of them far from the sea (as well as on our rather large coasts).
I don't know that there is. It takes ages to develop an EV-focused platform, and the lines to manufacture it. Tesla is the only American manufacturer that has already done that work, and they're circling the drain. Aside from them, there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt. All of the top-of-the-line EVs are Korean or Chinese, and the 2nd tiers are all European. America's EVs aren't even on the horizon, they'll be playing catchup for decades.
I drive a Chevrolet Blazer EV. Test drove a Equinox EV as well. There is the silverado EV as well. Chrysler and Ford are mostly working on plug in hybrids which is 90% of the advantages of an EV for those who charge at home (if people will is debated).
Which is to say the big-3 car makers all have EV or close enough EV cars and are making more.
I think a big portion of why Tesla is so prominent is because it's relatively easy to get a Tesla almost anywhere.
The real loss is the international trade and the effect that’ll have on the overall economy. Mexico and Canada will already be dominated by Chinese cars and it’ll be too late to compete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country
It won’t take much to get BYD access to the US. It’s a two-step process:
- Toss a million bucks at Trump or wait for a Democratic administration
- Build a plant in Alabama/Tennessee/South Carolina/Georgia
That’s literally all it takes.
I am not as optimistic. If that doesn't happen the only candidate likely to let china do as they wilt is aoc. Vance would happily start ww3 with them. Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
I sincerely doubt the US is capable of this. Trump has lit your soft power on fire. Trying to get people to give up a superior and cheaper product is an extremely large ask.
- a new Great Power enemy is selected; it would make sense for this to be Russia, but India is also a candidate
- some sort of face-saving moral victory is achieved which allows the US to continue feeling superior and not threatened by China's capability (unclear what this might look like)
- Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
Among all Chinese leaders from the past and likely to the near future, Xi Jinping is the warmest towards US. He cherished his short stay in Iowa and his daughter graduated from Harvard. I dont think future leaders will share that feeling.
Glad to hear this!
Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?
Update: link to the article I was reading: https://electrek.co/2025/03/19/chinese-authorities-delay-app...
Why is that ironic? The US talks about stealing/preventing others from stealing stuff from them too, not sure why this would be surprising.
Now the tables have turned and China is the country with the superior IP.
China's aviation, chip, space, and military tech are weaker than those of the West.
> it is now deploying 2.4 times more charging power per month than Tesla adds to its Supercharger network
And this is fantastic for EV owners in general, assuming the charging network is open to all.
> In short, BYD isn’t just shipping cars to Canada – it’s planning to build and operate its own charging infrastructure
They're mastering the "don't build on someone else's foundation" philosophy. Vertical integration is a very powerful tool.
Interestingly BYD actually puts batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak" to minimise the strain on the grid. So often times cars will actually charge from that battery instead of directly from the grid.
I don't think that's what they'll do. Charging off peak means being able to store the entirety of the energy demand for the power station in a battery, which is going to be very expensive (assuming 20 cars charge during peak hours every day, that'd mean having to swallow the cost of 20 cars worth of battery per charging station. Good luck getting a good ROI with that).
Instead I think they'll just use the battery so that they never drain the full power of a charge when a car is charging. Drawing a megawatt of current 5% of the time is putting lots of pressure on the local grid, and it can be mitigated by having a battery with the capacity of a car battery that you charge slowly during the whole day (including during peak hour) and discharge fast when a car is charging (for instance, if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption).
You definitely need to have that to not load the grid with 1MW, but the question still remains what the capacity of the battery is. A charger that promises a 5 minute 1MW charge BUT which can only do it once per hour and then falls back to 200kW doesn't seem as special as a charger that actually charges a car every five minutes.
It's convenient to get going in 5 minutes. But the time you REALLY want the charger to be quick is when you are third in line to charge at that charger.
Given that the job descriptions seem to include working with local subsidy programs, I sure hope the Canadian government is going to require an open standard or adding more DC chargers under existing standards.
I don’t specifically know for this type of battery but I’ve looked at pretty in-depth analysis of smartphone batteries (way less sophisticated battery management tech) and fast versus slow charging made very little lifespan difference. The best mitigations were fewer cycles and keeping the battery in its sweet spot (not discharging to 0% and charging to 100%)
Of course that is normal fast charging. Flash charging is 3x or more faster, so that's unknown.
BYD is using, among other methods, a "3D direct refrigerant cooling system", so the batteries are dipped in phase-changing coolant.
Aside from that the cells are pre-warmed and were optimised for lower internal resistance.
There’s a graph i imagine here where slow charging, you want to retain all capacity. Faster it gets, you tolerate more battery loss.
(one of those things which the POTUS says that we're all told shouldn't be taken as serious or real, as if that wasn't a massive disqualification for him)
We can get fucked on both sides but will do business with those that don't want to destroy our economy.
US Governement doesn't allow BYD imports
BUT you can lease a car from Canada for a year in US
So lease BYD a year at a time with Canadian plates, etc. to US drivers
There's just a limit to how long the car can be in the US
So lease for a year at a time from Canada
Musk himself was an illegal Canadian import so hey only fair lol
Every year you just exchange the car/lease/plate whatever
Once enough people drive $5000 electric cars they will insist politicians allow them officially
Detroit is doomed anyway once 9 out of 10 workers is replaced with "AI" controlled bots
There’s an aspirational goal of at least 50% Brazilian parts, but its currently 0%.
For those not familiar with the situation...
Before Trump 2.0:
----------------
The auto sectors of Canada, U.S. and Mexico were highly integrated with parts and vehicles crossing the border at scale. There wasn't much EV production and the NA auto sector probably wasn't up to competing with the Chinese auto sector on prices, but there were steep tariffs keeping Chinese vehicles out of NA markets and many foreign ones too. The highly integrated nature of the sector was seen, by most, as a competitive advantage.
Trump 2.0:
---------
Trump wanted vehicles to be manufactured in the U.S., not Canada or Mexico. Because... reasons. He slapped sectoral tariffs (that violate CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC) on cars and parts from Mexico and Canada. His desire seems to be to cut Canada and Mexico out of the NA auto supply chain but somehow still force Canada and Mexico to buy only American, while maintaining tariffs on Chinese autos. It's not exactly easy or quick to just pick up an auto plant and move it, nor is it clear that being inside the U.S. tariff wall is better than being outside of it. These tariffs have mostly just caused the NA auto sector to become really uncompetitive right when people are starting to notice that Chinese autos are offering a lot more bang for the buck.
Canada responds:
---------------
Canada now allows in 49,000 autos to enter the country without facing the former 100% tariff rate. This was in exchange for China lifting tariffs on some Canola products. That's a small fraction of the Canadian auto market, but it's also 49,000 cars that won't be from the U.S. (or Canada). This prompted Trump to suggest that China will not allow Canada to play ice hockey anymore[1]... Hockey aside, this move has sent a message. If Trump does succeed in completely strangling the Canadian auto sector, why would Canada continue to give U.S. autos preferential access to their largest export market?
The uncertainty going forward:
-----------------------------
Is China's foothold in the Canadian market secure? Is it a bargaining chip that might be traded away, or is it permanent? Are trade talks between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico going to go so poorly that the 49,000 number gets upped significantly? China's response to this door cracking open is, evidently, to ram their foot in as fast as they can. A new EV brand or two would likely not make a huge impact in Canada, but a new rapid charging network might make itself indispensable in very short order. It's not like the U.S. has a response for this. Their main EV brand, Tesla, is poison in Canada because of Musk's links to Trump.
[1]https://globalnews.ca/video/11645943/trump-warns-canada-that...
every time.
It's insane to me how so many people bring up the idea of EVs catching fire when ICE vehicles are constantly having recalls for spontaneously catching fire.
I've had multiple recalls on multiple ICE cars advising me to not park the car near my house. I haven't with my EV.