I seriously hope the next US administration stops bending over backwards to protect the big 3. If we want to address climate change, we're gonna low cost greentech and china is currently the king of that in evs, batteries and solar.
If we're really so concerned about 'supply chain' issues we could build up a strategic reserve of batteries and solar panels. If china wants to continue subsidizing their industry below costs of manufacture I see no reason why we shouldn't exploit their generosity to meet our climate goals as quickly as possible.
One of the 'good news' stories re: the recent datacenter buildout is that grid storage is now being more widely deployed, and that compliments the roll out of renewable energy.
Talking about Chinese subsidies without mentioning US subsidies is almost enough to make me discount the rest of your comment.
Anyone who mentions China's subsides without mentioning the US's $2.5B+ in EV subsidies is mostly likely ignorant and bluffing, or intentionally misleading you.
And don't even get me started on how it took $80B in AIFP subsidies to keep our auto industry from just dying completely ~16 years ago.
This "China subsidizes EVs" BS needs to end. Everyone subsidizes. The only meaningful questions are how much and to what end.
Just look at the US national debt and budget deficit. It's actually America that is destroying the rest of the world with their unlimited credit card.
How many countries can go so deeply into debt without lenders cutting them off?
Hear, Hear. We are seriously missing out over here in the US and continuing to be protectionist over the big 3 automakers is not going to improve our climate situation.
I consistently hear 2 main arguments against electric vehicles in the US. Range, and cost.
BYD & China is solving both. Range is important because we lack charging infrastructure still, and anyone who rents at an apartment complex, you are screwed and have to rely on public charging stations. Big batteries are important for these folks. People also still have range anxiety, so when a fuel efficient gas car will get ~400+ miles per full tank, only having more expensive cars with a ~250 mile range is a non starter for a lot of people in the US.
Cost is self explanatory. One of the better electric cars sold in the US, the Ioniq 6 STARTS at $38k, which is already more than a significant chunk of the population can afford - you're looking at close to an $800/month payment at current rates for entry level. BYD could sell in the US at around $20,000.
Not to say EV charging has been solved, it is still very much in progress, but 64% of Americans live within 2 miles of a public charging station. We should continue to use policy to encourage "EV ready" infra in residential and apartment settings, places of business, commercial/retail, government, etc, but lots of folks can be served today. The vast majority US housing stock is single family homes (attached and detached combined), and those can, in most cases, be upgraded to support a dedicated circuit for charging. And, to your point, you'll also want to mandate new apartment building build outs are EV charging ready for their tenants.
> The number of EV charging stations has more than doubled since 2020. In December 2020, the Department of Energy reported that there were nearly 29,000 public charging stations nationwide. By February 2024, that number had increased to more than 61,000 stations. Over 95% of the American public now lives in a county that has at least one public EV charging station.
> EV charging stations are most accessible to residents of urban areas: 60% of urban residents live less than a mile from the nearest public EV charger, compared with 41% of those in the suburbs and just 17% of rural Americans.
2 miles is an awfully long way, and 36% of Americans are even further away. That’s 4 miles round trip. Presumably many of those charging stations aren’t that big and disallow you leaving your car overnight. The rest of the numbers are similarly bad.
It’s not insane to hope many cars will be able to go and charge themselves at 2am, when roads are quiet and chargers are free, a few years from now. Optimise over the entire system, schedule it, car ready for the morning.
This is going to be a long time coming. Owners of EVs overwhelmingly live in houses not apartments. No one is going to send their car off to pay many times their home rate per kWh when they could get a home L2 charger and charge it themselves. It would pay for itself in under a year.
My comment is not solving for people who would be better served by charging at home, because they don’t care about the distance to a charger. Waymo’s can already find their own way to a charger, so it’s not a huge stretch to imagine people innovating around this problem for owned cars.
Waymo might build a waymo specific solution, but the general case for the general population won't exist for a long time.
The demand isn't there. The group of people who buy EVs and don't have a home to charge at is too small. And that won't change until the economics of purchasing an EV fundamentally change.
I’m making very loose claims. Hope, it’s not an huge stretch, etc. My error bars are very wide, intentionally, because it’s hard to predict the next 5 years. Your position is a lot more brittle. If self driving works, cars can go fill themselves up. That can change demand, so the demand argument falls away. If taxi’s work and scale up, costs drop, so the economic issue falls away. For you to be right, no innovation must happen.
The point I’m primarily trying to make, repeatedly: distance to a charger is not some universal rule that prevents uptake. The least likely thing to be true is that the market stays the same. If it remains the same in the US for a few years, China will crush this market.
I disagree, you're missing a really important part. If self driving exists, then cars can drive themselves to the spot where the chargers are, which is necessary but not sufficient.
Either a human needs to be employed overnight plugging in and unplugging these cars ($$) or else every single charger that supports this needs to have new fancy robotic arms and some agreed-upon protocol that cars can use to request a charge.
Considering that so far the story of EV chargers in America has looked like "download my app!" people struggling and failing to get credit card readers reliably working, I have no faith that this would happen in a few years.
> 64% of Americans live within 2 miles of a public charging station.
If this includes AC chargers, leaving your car for 8 hours 2 miles away is an absolute pain.
If it doesn't, the question becomes are the chargers occupied? Are they operational?
Waiting at a gas station takes a minute, waiting at a charger takes 30.
I've been driving an EV for more than 5 years and pretending that charging isn't a significant hindrance to EV ownership is disingenuous. It's actually gotten worse because more EVs are on the road and the chargers haven't kept pace with the rising demand.
I’m currently on a road trip and was leaving the car at a nearby charger which was walking distance from where I’m staying - I can’t imagine owning one where either this wasn’t available or there wasn’t a fast charger I could spend 10 minutes at.
The actual long distance drives were super easy thanks to Superchargers - 5-10 minute stops keep you driving for hours! It doesn’t feel disadvantaged compared to gas so long as the infrastructure is there.
Byd recently came out saying the hyper competitive landscape and low prices needs to end soon. The Chinese government is propping up a lot of their auto industry right now. So some protectionism is needed if you don’t want one of the last bits of manufacturing strength to disappear in the US.
Genuine question, we have manufacturing strength in the US auto industry?
Even among Americans, American cars aren't considered that good. There's a massive reliability premium you pay for Honda and Toyota. Even cars with 100k miles on them (frustratingly as a buyer) keep their value. And they're manufactured in the US, inasmuch as any car can be said to be manufactured in a single location.
I've been searching around and I can't even find data about other countries importing our cars which to me would be the biggest signal of strength.
I have a 2018 Model 3 and your description of BYD is exactly how I would describe my Tesla. It feels cheap and plasticky and it creaks. I also briefly had a Model 3 rental car that was newer than mine (but I don't know what year it was) and it also felt the same.
I had thought about throwing an exception for Tesla because they did manage to create cars that people outside the US want. So I guess that does count but I doubt they're what anyone thinks of when they think of American car makes.
Oh I would for sure buy a BYD today if I were able. The ones I've ridden in have been really nice. I mean they are literally plastic but so is every car in the "economy" price range. I don't think their interiors were noticeably different than any other non-luxury car. I've been told that their higher end models don't have this problem.
Hopefully this will allow cheaper cars to get ~400mi of range but I doubt we'll ever see much more in mainstream cars. Batteries are simply too expensive and too heavy. Fuel tanks are cheap to build, but we still see no gasoline passenger cars with large tanks. The manufacturers sort of standardize around a "normal" capacity, and just want the one option to design, manufacture, crash test, etc.
Not only the climate situation, the economic situation. If the US protects the old tech for another decade it’ll never catch up. The US needs to move along the experience curve as fast as possible, build skills and volume and charging stations and suitable power grids and sources. I would much, much rather be China than the US in this fight right now.
My car gets ~500 miles/800 km per tank. My wife's car, which has a more efficient engine and transmission and is also smaller, but with the same huge tank, gets ~600 miles/960 km per tank. I will have to stop for a bathroom somewhere along a route that long, but only once or twice. I used to have to stop three times for a ~900 mile/1500 km trip that I did a few times.
This is a problem with EV proponents who try to argue that "you'll stop every couple of hours for half an hour or so anyway, so charging isn't an issue". No, I won't. I'll drive 1000 miles with less than 45 minutes of downtime on the whole trip. I don't stop every two hours. Maybe 15 minutes every 4 hours, of which 10 is fueling and going to the bathroom and 5 is getting off and back on the highway.
That's not a slam against EV's, but let's acknowledge their weak points honestly.
Your 500 and 600 miles per fill-up is the kind of outlier that isn't much worth discussing. That kind of range can't be more than about 5-7% of US autos.
My car (Mazda3 hatch) gets 24 mpg, which is actually typical for US mid-sized cars.
I have a 3-5 minute gas station fill up every 260 miles or so, basically once a week. The Chinese MG4 does 435 miles on a charge, 95% of which I could charge at home, the remaining 5% of my miles are my twice a year road trips @ ~400 mi (to LA) and ~800 mi (to Seattle).
The MG4 makes LA without a stop and Seattle with 1 stop.
That's a once a year stop for ~30 minute in the EV compared to 3-4 hours a year sitting at smelly gas stations for my Mazda ICE.
I would certainly trade never having to ever take my car into a gas station, ever again, for one brief stop once a year on my leisurely road trip if I had the cash to buy a great EV.
I think the argument is not whether EVs will take an extra 65-80 min to go 1000 miles, it’s whether that matters to the average driver. Realistically for my family it doesn’t. I’m sure for some (predominately) solo drivers it does. But then there’s the question of how often you’re driving 1000 mile trips that an extra 1.5hrs max actually impacts anything real in your life…
I guess if you’re trying to follow an ICE car on a road trip then yeah it might be a weak point. If you’re already stopping every 200 miles then it’s no matter. For us, we enjoy travel days more with the built in stretch/bathroom breaks.
You can do 1000 miles in one day, but it is a really unpleasant trip. Doing it in two is so much nicer. Take a hotel one night. Have a really nice meal at a slow restaurant a couple of times. Visit a couple of roadside attractions.
Those are five long charging opportunities, which is two more than you need for a 1000 mile trip.
Overnight charging at hotels is awesome. 5 years ago if a hotel had EV chargers it was very likely one was available. Unfortunately, it's more common that they're all busy now.
I hear you, and your concern is real for your context.
But to be fair, not every product has to perfectly fit every context. To be successful a product can fill a small niche, or it can appeal to a large market- it doesn't have to satisfy every use case.
So you're right - driving 1000 miles with no downtime is not an EV strength. But the percentage of the market doing that is tiny. Conversely the proportion of people who live in a house (home charging) and drive < 100 miles a day, is huge.
Even for those doing a "once a year road trip" - well, hire cars exist.
So I completely agree that an EV is not useful to you. I would suggest though that a product can be massively successful, while at the same time appealing to a subset of the market. And appealing to a subset does not limit validity or indeed profitability.
Lipstick seems to be a successful product, despite only appealing to something less than 50% of the market.
That sounds like you have a more efficient car than many of us. When I switched to an EV I actually got a range upgrade due to having a really inefficient ICE vehicle. Regardless, most of us aren't spending our days doing multi hundred mile drives. We shouldn't be optimizing for that scenario.
You’re an outlier. Most people don’t do long road trips often, and when they do they don’t care to drive 1000 miles with minimal stops, and their gas cars don’t have that much range in a tank of fuel.
Yes, EVs do slow down long road trips a bit. But it’s really not much of a difference. I just did 3000 miles in 10 days in one.
Agreed but this car would solve that for just $25,000 if we didn’t have 100% tariffs on Chinese vehicles. 1,200 mile range, can charge 800 miles in 12 minutes.
It's still incredible how many people STILL equate "Made in China" with low quality. These folks are stuck in the 90s. China builds things to spec. If you want low quality they'll give you that. But require high quality, they can do that too. You just need to pay for it.
As someone who works in US manufacturing, the situation is much more dire and I think the "low quality / high quality" back-and-forth is burying the lede.
It's not just that China has reached some kind of quality parity with North America. There are now significant market segments that the US functionally cannot manufacture because we completely ceded the institutional knowledge and infrastructure in favor of financialization and outsourcing of the US economy.
My specific area of expertise is robotic / computer controlled manufacturing equipment and a lot of the components (high precision servos, sensors and other motion components) are functionally impossible to source domestically. There are still some boutique manufacturers making things in low efficiency / low volume in the USA but touring the manufacturing campuses of Chinese suppliers has been shocking in the last five years. The sheer scale of efficient, automated assembly they are capable of operating at makes a big-three automotive assembly line look like a dirt-floored shack with men knocking things together with rocks.
They are laser focused on lights-out manufacturing at extreme volume in ways I have never seen in the US. Entire production lines of high complexity electronics that are completely vertically integrated (everything from the injection molding for the plastic enclosure to the PCB manufactured on one campus) with human hands touching them for the first time as they leave the automated quality control line to be boxed up.
I don't think American people fully comprehend the brain and skill drain that has already taken place.
> If china wants to continue subsidizing their industry below costs of manufacture I see no reason why we shouldn't exploit their generosity to meet our climate goals as quickly as possible.
Are they even doing that? A few billion dollars a year is meaningful but it's not dumping for an industry this big.
Anyone who mentions China's subsides without mentioning the US's $2.5B - $3.0B in subsidies for EVs is ignorant and bluffing, or intentionally misleading you.
It depends on what they're worried about. A subsidy tied to car purchase is mostly irrelevant to an accusation of artificially cheap exports, because those subsidies don't apply to exports. Unless they're crazily large amounts or other manipulation is happening, they mostly just help the company scale faster and the export prices are legitimate.
Also, the only way to make your companies competitive is by having them face competition, not by protecting them by artificial and anti consumer duties.
Because someone takes power who is more concerned with image than economic long term success. See the US for a recent example of a country abdicating its strong economic position for no reason beyond the leaders' ego.
Stellantis sells a good number of EVs in Europe, but almost entirely in form factors that won't sell in North America. Perhaps this expertise and experience will be useful.
I hope domestic manufacturers survive the "protection" Trump is giving them, but the protection may prove fatal.
...and later announced it would be coming back but on the new battery platform they were using for their other new EVs. It's supposed to go into production later this year.
The big 3 are not the ones asking for this. It actively hurts them. They aren’t delusional, they NEED government support to compete globally against Chinese EVs. Every big 3 CEO to a T has made it clear they know it’s if, not when ICE sales become a rounding error on their books.
Point your gun where it belongs which is the oil industry and its lobbyists.
Why can't we have better marketing for different types of people.
Example: God made the sun and the sky. That's where heaven is. Fossil fuels come from under the earth. Something else really bad is down there too. I don't want to spell it out, but it's the opposite of heaven.
Or for the "independent, lion-not-sheep" types: I don't depend on big companies. My energy comes from up above. You can't take the sky from me. etc.
A key problem is that anger, hate, and fear are more powerful motivators than hope and optimism. That fact has been leveraged to weaponize those emotions to a degree that inspires awe at it's success.
Freedom to power your home without paying "the man" should be compelling to all who could use it. Texas is ironically a prime state for renewable energy and the dollars generated from it have convinced some, but many still reject it as "wokeness".
I mean, at this pace, this isn't even green tech. Electric cars are just better and within two years will have better range. We are risking being totally left behind because they want to keep burning gasoline for Texas.
The climate thing itself is a giant oligarchy influenced manipulative game play. This nation is built on capital. Capital by its nature looks to dominate humanity and freewill.
The treacherous twists to turn a noble pursuit into a way for developed nations to continue dominate developing nations is beyond the space of this comment, but you can see that clearly over the history: Caesar Hitler Mao Trump Xi etc.
We people have truly never been able to wield the power ourselves.
The US has no ability to stop China from becoming wealthy, they already have the will and political leadership to build high tech for a global market. At this point, it's just angry old people sticking brooms in their own bike wheels at speed.
> If china wants to continue subsidizing their industry below costs of manufacture I see no reason why we shouldn't exploit their generosity
Because the unfair advantage distorts the market leading to a potentially otherwise noncompetitive product destroying the competition at which point they can (and will) jack up prices, so not only do you get more expensive vehicles, but you've also destroyed an entire industry and several adjacent industries at the same time.
It's not like you can't just snap your fingers and re-establish a vehicle manufacturing supply chain once it disappears.
I get people just want cheap vehicles, but the short-term benefit simply isn't worth it.
> BYD’s solid-state EV batteries set a record by gaining 1,500 km (932 miles) range in just 12 minutes of charging.
> The test charged the battery to just 80%, meaning total EV range could reach upwards of 1,875 km (1,165 miles). Keep in mind, that is CLTC range. On the EPA scale, it would be closer to 1,300 km (808 miles)
Is this true? How quickly will other companies be making these types of batteries?
Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
For the last part, my guess is that the advantages are much more valuable in an EV than they are in a phone (where batteries are mostly fine. While longer life and faster charging are always nice to have:they are just that: nice to have), so if you are A) production limited and B) they are still more expensive (the article states they expect them to be price-comparable by the end of the decade), then they probably aren't worth it in a phone (yet).
When price comes down and production comes up (assuming those things happen), then I would expect them to start appearing in phones as well.
That logic seems crazy to me. Extra hundreds of miles are also just nice to have, and with the same material that goes into a 500kg car pack you could make 10000 double life phone batteries and sell them for $100 each. There's more per-cell overhead in the phone batteries but is it worth a million dollar drop in revenue?
Consumers seem to disagree with you on the first part. I personally think that current battery tech is fine for EVs (I have an EV with a 260 mile range, and only a 77kW max charge rate, and I think it's fine even for 10+ hour road trips), but a segment of the consumer space wants more than that.
I personally thought that the more interesting part of the article was where they claimed to be able to add 800 miles of range in 12 minutes. At those kinds of charge rates, my ideal EV would probably have a 300ish mile range that I could charge from 10-80 in <10 minutes (although I believe that part of the way they get those charge rates is with large battery packs, so a smaller pack would probably not charge as fast).
Additionally, while the specs for EV sedans are currently fine, batteries are only barely good enough for larger, less efficient vehicles. Maybe the killer app here isn't a sedan that goes 1000 miles, but a truck or SUV that can go 500.
The point is, whatever your and my opinions on the adequacy of current EV charging, the market seems to value improved battery specs more highly in the EV space than it does in the phone space (or maybe it doesn't and BYD is making a mistake by keeping their batteries for their cars instead of selling them to phone manufacturers).
EV batteries degrade more quickly when charged too far above half-way. As a result, your ideal EV might actually have 600 miles of range and you’d just leave it half-charged most of the time.
From everything I've heard/read you can pretty safely go to 80-90% of listed state of charge (manufacturers often also include a hidden buffer for exactly this reason).
My car, which like I said has a 260 mile range, I only charge to 80% unless I'm going on a long road trip. So for 90%+ of the time, it's never charged more than 80% (and I very rarely discharge it to less than 15%). For most people, a 300 mile range like I describe would be plenty to be able to not need 100% charge except on rare occasions. But even if it's not for you, or for some people, I very specifically said "my ideal EV". A 600 mile range that I almost never use is just extra weight that I'm carrying around and decreasing efficiency, and isn't actually providing much real battery protection. I am absolutely not someone who drives 360 miles a day (which is what you could do if you were doing an 80% to 20% discharge on a 600 mile battery every day. I'm pretty confident that stats suggest that very few people drive that much on a regular basis. The 150 miles I get from the the 80% to 20% range on my current battery is already more than enough.
I’m out for 2-3 days. Better take an external battery for the phone. Done.
Doesn’t work with a car.
Really easy to work around Apple’s utterly crap battery life. If it were better that would be nice to have.
Going a certain distance so can’t take an ev at all. It’d be nice if you could, if your usage is mostly very urban, sure that’s just nice. Gotta visit Dad on the farm a dozen times a year or whatever? That’s not your life so you don’t see it as essential even if the rest of the driving is much shorter range.
To fix iPhone battery life, create an automation that turns on battery save mode when battery dips below 80%. Works really well. I figure they don’t build this functionality into the settings because people would use it instead of buying a new phone when the battery degrades.
Want an extra 100 miles of range? That's 600lbs of cargo. A person can't place that in a trunk, and a trailer would probably barely extend range due to the extra drag and efficiency loss.
I think maybe there’s some cross thread confusion.
The comparison I’m making is an external phone battery is $10. Replacing an ev battery is, hell i dunno, $10.000?
Not needing an external phone battery would be nice.
Needing external ev batteries is far more likely to be cost prohibitive. Adjacent to this thread people have raised size and weight issues as well. I didn’t even bother going that far because the straight up price puts it in a different ball park to an external phone battery.
Right, that's the discussion up to a certain spot.
Then the GP had a counterargument to EV batteries being expensive, by suggesting you could rent one for your three day trip for a pretty small amount of money.
And not only would that charge be quite small compared to everything else going on with your car, the further you drive with the extended battery the more you save by electricity being cheaper than gasoline. And that includes having to pay for depreciation.
I’d take a phone double the thickness to get double the battery life between charges. Options on that front are limited. Had an ulefone for a while which was better than most until the screen started getting constant phantom presses making it unusable.
Many companies have been trying to make solid state batteries for years but it's hard to make anything that works at scale as opposed to some 2mm sample on a lab bench. I guess the likes of BYD got there first because they have put a lot of investment dollars and engineers in, being the world's second largest battery maker. I think CATL the largest are also working on it. And Toyota. I'm not sure any have been able to manufacture in quantity at an acceptable price though. Soon probably.
> Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
Oh, that's easy. I already knew the answer, which probably means just about every AI could tell you. Phone batteries use Li Polymer (which is solid state BTW), because they can be any shape, including flat, wide and very thin. Other chemistry's can't be thin.
They already exist in Chinese phones, the new one plus has insane battery life because of its 6000mah battery, while still being as thin as a normal phone.
Other phones targeting the Chinese market have reached 8000.
But companies like Apple and Samsung like to just sit on their laurels and sell the same thing again.
I believe it's been 5 years that some Chinese phones already have Silicon Carbon battery... Samsung/Apple was crazy slow on this, and later this year everyone will get "Shocked" when apple supposedly show up their new phone with the new battery...
> Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
Not quite energy density, but the energy density, cost, complexity when combined with the discharge profile generates a very "interesting" phase space.
There's a few promising technologies which have very, very good efficiencies but only like very slow predictable discharge cycles. These are excellent for say building giant GW batteries in the desert, but not so great for even car batteries.
Phones and tech have bursty power needs based on use, the cost of taking other tech down to the size of a phone is extremely high (especially if you're first to market unless you know you will sell millions of units). Not to mention the reliability of batteries typically decreasing as the size drops.
Cars tend to be in the middle with their discharge profiles being relatively smooth compared to say a laptop, but yes you still have economies of scale, complexity, reliability and supply chain and patents to contend with ;)
> isn't a normal cell in an EV battery is like a AA size?
No. Some companies use tons of cylindrical cells that are larger AAs (like 18mmx65mm, 21mmx80mm, or 46mmx80mm). But even then at 46mm in diameter it's a good bit bigger than a AA.
But lots of manufacturers use prismatic or pouch like batteries. They're large and rectangular. Like these batteries on this BYD, they're called "blades". Most other major manufacturers use prismatic cells.
The tech used to get such fast charging isn't revolutionary, it's just extremely (dangerous) high voltage DC charging that only exists in any capacity in China.
Also, what happens when an EV taxi runs out of battery power in China? They actually have stations setup all over that you simply drive into and it replaces the entire battery pack... in minutes.
Really no more dangerous than a 480v, 300A level 3 charger in the US. Both have enough to kill. It's not like you'd be less dead if a level 3 charger malfunctioned. They both require redundant monitoring hardware and female plugs on the hot end.
My favourite is the standard of water cooled high current high voltage cables for charging EVs...
Imo that's stepping beyond the risk profile of filling a tank with a known high explosive that can evaporate and suffocate and catch fire in the sun ... But risk profiles are inherently personal
would be very interested to know if people know what the cold-weather behavior of these batteries are: i'm in montana and battery life, especially in winter, can be a life-or-death issue and that (+ range/recharge time) is a reason a lot of folks here look at ev's skeptically, would love to hear they handle cold better
I think people are working off of outdated information. I have a 2020 Model 3 and it's been fine in subzero temperatures. Yes, range goes down by about 20%, but if anything it's more convenient than a gas car in the cold because you don't have to wait for an engine to heat up before the cabin gets warm. Also you always wake up with a full tank (so to speak) because you don't need to go to a gas station to refill. And EVs tend to be AWD, so they're easy to drive in the winter. During one snowstorm I had to help dig out trucks that got stuck, but my car was fine.
Newer models have heat pumps that greatly improve efficiency in cold weather. They also have better battery chemistries that store more energy in the same form factor. Unless you live in a very remote, very cold location (eg: rural Alaska), an EV is a fine choice.
Norway is not cold: its temperature is very heavily moderated by the ocean. Trondheim's lowest mean daily minimum is 24.6 degrees F. The coldest place I could find there is Lomen, which mininums out at around 20 degrees F.
I am strongly pro-EV, and think they're broadly fine in every part of the US, and having just gotten back from Norway they're 100% on the right track, but they're nowhere near comparable to even my hometown of Minneapolis (8.8 degrees F lowest mean minimum).
Canada is cold. Every major city in the country is full of Teslas. I’ve been driving mine for 6 years and have the same experience as the Montana commenter. In fact so much better than a gas car that freezes up and takes time to warm up.
It’s simply not a concern. Only a range reduction. A non-issue.
This is just more "it's different for us, somehow" American exceptionalism. Norway is much further north than any part of the continental US and the vast majority of new vehicle sales are BEVs.
Many of the Northern European countries have capitals that are north of the northernmost point in the US, but those places are significantly warmer than similar latitudes in North America due to the North Atlantic Current.
Montana is colder than Norway in the winter. Norway gets a lot of warming from the coasts. There's not much coastline in Montana. It gets hit pretty hard by polar winds without the mediation of the oceans.
Turns out there's more to climate than just latitude. Lots of the US is colder than Western Europe on average despite mostly being far further South. NYC is colder than London in the winter even though it's coastal and a much lower latitude.
london isnt even cold compared to the US. i was amazed to learn this but its true… and these idiots dont take into account that most people in norway are not only driving in warmer conditions but almost always in the city… whereas in the US we are driving across vast frozen tundra hundreds of miles away, the literal width of norway on either side, from any kind of help. EVs barely make it during summer time
If it’s less than like 100 miles (161km) I think that the vast majority of EV batteries are going to get you where you want to go, even with 25% reductions due to cold weather. FWIW, the American average is around 36 miles/day.
There is a semi famous YouTuber named Hank Green that lives in Montana and daily drives an EV. He occasionally makes videos about his experience.
IMO “handle cold better” is a bit of a misnomer for EVs. ICE cars are inefficient all the time because they’re converting most of their energy into heat even when it’s warm - with an EV you’re effectively just getting bonus range when it’s warm.
If you developed a hyper-efficient ICE engine that didn’t generate a pile of waste heat, you’d have to actively make it less efficient in the cold, or install heating hardware and burn extra gas to power that hardware - but nobody would criticize that hyper-efficient engine for being “worse in the cold”.
I might be speaking for myself, but WRT cars I’m less concerned with “efficiency” in the technical sense than with other metrics, like how far it goes on one full tank/charge/whatever, how long it takes to fill the tank/battery/whatever, and how much filling the tank/battery/whatever costs.
> and battery life, especially in winter, can be a life-or-death issue
How so? A full battery can run your seat heaters for about a month. That's a lot better than the hours of heat you'd get out of a full tank of gasoline.
Not to mention that you'll never get carbon monoxide poisoning from a gasoline engine with a tailpipe blocked with snow.
I believe they are talking about how the range/capacity is significantly affected in deep cold weather. It's not about life-or-death that you'll freeze to death - it's that your 300mi EV turns into a 150mi EV and that makes range planning unpredictable and more challenging in rural areas.
-30 isnt really even challenging for a gasoline car, you would need -60 or more for gasoline to become thick enough to be a concern. More likely at that temperature is your battery being unable to turn your engine over to try and start it and might require a jump to get turning over.
Diesels may struggle at that temperature, buts its a known issue that northerners add anti-gelling additives and/or block heaters for. Of course an EV can and should have built in battery heaters for that too.
Is it road-accessible? What kinds of vehicles can get there?
The cars in the article have twice as much range as a gas car or more, even in the cold. And it's easier to charge them at remote locations than to get fuel deliveries to those same remote locations.
I'm sure a scenario could be contrived where any type of car wins, but on average I expect a long range battery car to do quite well.
Such a weird comment. Tailpipe blocked with snow? I've lived in (the cold part of) Canada nearly my whole life, never happened. Snow doesn't fall sideways and upwards to block a tailpipe lol. And range is the relevant part of a vehicle, given Canada is so large and sparsely populated, not how long seat heaters heat.
Did you learn to drive in Canada? A prominent part of the your driving lessons should have been that one of the first things you do after getting stuck in mud or snow is to ensure your tail pipe is clear.
What kills in the winter is unpredictability. Range is predictable and easy to mitigate.
It's the winter. You've slid off the road. You're probably in the ditch. You've probably taken some damage to the vehicle. Whether or not you've taken damage, you're now stuck. Something is preventing you from safely walking for help. At -30 or worse after an accident that's more likely than not.
The above is not an uncommon scenario in the winter. So you wait in the vehicle for help to arrive, hoping you don't freeze to death before it does.
You're safer in an electric vehicle.
- If you've plowed into a snow covered ditch, your car may be partially or fully entombed, and you're at risk of a carbon monoxide poisoning.
- there are stories of such vehicles not being found for days. Having heat for days might save your life
> Did you learn to drive in Canada? A prominent part of the your driving lessons should have been that one of the first things you do after getting stuck in mud or snow is to ensure your tail pipe is clear.
Yes I learned to drive in Canada. In a snowy region (3-10 metres of snow yearly depending on elevation). And I ski 50-100+ days per year. And will drive extra for powder snow.
Amount of times I've got stuck in snow? Zero. If you learn to drive in the snow, have winter tires, you just don't get stuck. Especially when you're putting in thousands (tens?) of kms and hundreds of days on snow covered roads.
Did YOU learn to drive here? Guessing no if you get stuck in the snow or slide off the road...
Edit - should add, around here (Alberta Rockies to the BC interior) there's as much as hundreds of KMs between towns/cities. Bad place to ever get stuck. Which is why you simply don't. Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
The only place I've ever gotten stuck in the snow is in my own yard, and I've been driving in snow for over 40 years.
But every single time I go out in the winter I have a plan for what I'll do if it does happen. Because it happens to people, good drivers and bad, snow tires or not.
> Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
You shouldn't be trusting any vehicle. Both an electric car and a gasoline car might let you down when you need it. The gasoline car is more likely to let you down, though. I presume you have a proper winter kit in your vehicle so you don't have to trust your vehicle.
Winter kit? Of course. My father gave me one the day I turned 16. Never needed it but you're right, when it's -40 and you're in the middle of nowhere, better safe than sorry.
But it sounds like it's hard to get a handle on how common it is. It feels like it's more on the level of "a handful a year in North America/freak occurrance", rather than "common way to die".
None of the ‘answers’ address the range issues with batteries in the cold. Or how you can be totally fucked if your pack drops below a certain temp, and you don’t have enough charge to heat the pack and get home.
Probably even more fucked than if your diesel tank gelled. At least you can heat it up directly if you really need to.
You handle it the exact same way you do on a gasoline vehicle. You never let your tank go below 50%. If you slide off the road with a low tank or a low battery you can get in trouble, so don't do that.
If I let my electric car sit overnight with at least 20% charge, I know it will start in the morning, even if it was -45 overnight. You can't say that with a gasoline vehicle. It'll take almost all of that 20% to get up to temperature, but once it's up it maintains it well.
And anyplace cold has ubiquitous block heater plugs. At really cold temperatures it'll barely charge on a block heater plug because it'll use all the energy keeping the battery warm, but it means you start with a warm battery and a warm car, so the range drop is massively reduced.
I drive a gas-powered Subaru because the Volvo dealership in Montana was being insufferable when I wanted a C40. My neighbour can easily go 200+ miles in the winter. (Apparently pre-conditioning is a thing.) Works fine for road trips to Missoula and Salt Lake City, for them, from Jackson.
The resistance to electrification in the US is one of the country's biggest self inflicted wounds.
In the long run, I really don't think we can tariff our way around technical innovation.
900 miles of range in 12 mins of charging... Charge for 20 mins and have enough range for 2 full days of travel driving!
And this is only when driving long distances. Anyone with a driveway can eassily charge overnight for typical daily driving.
The whole package: many types of energy source providing electricity, never having to go to a gas station for typical daily driving, path to complete elimination of petro combustion byproducts, massive simplification of the overall vehicle mechanism, significant performance enhancements, etc.
All technical evaluation come out in favor of EVs...
It’s hard to win technical innovation when you’re this behind. The best you can do is to kick the can down the road, instead of short term suffering of your citizens.
The thing is, the average American is also very sensitive to any kind of change to their daily life. And taking advice from anyone how “it is better for you” is against the whole individual thought idea. So, good luck.
Maybe you have confused it with iron phosphate, which is also fairly popular in lower cost EVs? That one has a lot of advantages, but does have relatively poor energy density.
It's a next generation Lithium battery, I've seen lithium chemistry power storage quoted as high as 600 in some prototypes so I'm guessing they cracked something in the lithium chemistry.
Given it's still lithium based I'd still think twice before chucking a bucket of water on one that's fizzing :p
As for how this battery is better I'm not an expert, but good to read if true.
It is. I want American auto manufacturing to continue to be a thing. With this administration most industries will see 4 years of technological and competitive regression though so it’s probably a losing battle.
BYD wiping out the Big 3 would also wipe out a significant amount of manufacturing that is "auto industry adjacent". How much more industry do you want to see wiped out in the US? We already can't produce paper masks or toilet paper, for example ...
I want the Big 3 to die horrible flaming death, but they need to get replaced by something else domestic. Letting anybody (let alone BYD) simply wipe out all our domestic manufacturing capacity is mega-bad.
Electric cars will carry a thousand pounds of battery to get that much range, while a typical gas car will only be equipped to carry a hundred pounds of fuel, using less than a third as much space. It's not even 5% of the car's weight.
I seriously hope the next US administration stops bending over backwards to protect the big 3. If we want to address climate change, we're gonna low cost greentech and china is currently the king of that in evs, batteries and solar.
If we're really so concerned about 'supply chain' issues we could build up a strategic reserve of batteries and solar panels. If china wants to continue subsidizing their industry below costs of manufacture I see no reason why we shouldn't exploit their generosity to meet our climate goals as quickly as possible.
One of the 'good news' stories re: the recent datacenter buildout is that grid storage is now being more widely deployed, and that compliments the roll out of renewable energy.
Talking about Chinese subsidies without mentioning US subsidies is almost enough to make me discount the rest of your comment.
Anyone who mentions China's subsides without mentioning the US's $2.5B+ in EV subsidies is mostly likely ignorant and bluffing, or intentionally misleading you.
And don't even get me started on how it took $80B in AIFP subsidies to keep our auto industry from just dying completely ~16 years ago.
This "China subsidizes EVs" BS needs to end. Everyone subsidizes. The only meaningful questions are how much and to what end.
Just look at the US national debt and budget deficit. It's actually America that is destroying the rest of the world with their unlimited credit card. How many countries can go so deeply into debt without lenders cutting them off?
Quite a few, to be honest. USA debt to GDP ratio is high but not catastrophically high.
Hear, Hear. We are seriously missing out over here in the US and continuing to be protectionist over the big 3 automakers is not going to improve our climate situation.
I consistently hear 2 main arguments against electric vehicles in the US. Range, and cost.
BYD & China is solving both. Range is important because we lack charging infrastructure still, and anyone who rents at an apartment complex, you are screwed and have to rely on public charging stations. Big batteries are important for these folks. People also still have range anxiety, so when a fuel efficient gas car will get ~400+ miles per full tank, only having more expensive cars with a ~250 mile range is a non starter for a lot of people in the US.
Cost is self explanatory. One of the better electric cars sold in the US, the Ioniq 6 STARTS at $38k, which is already more than a significant chunk of the population can afford - you're looking at close to an $800/month payment at current rates for entry level. BYD could sell in the US at around $20,000.
Not to say EV charging has been solved, it is still very much in progress, but 64% of Americans live within 2 miles of a public charging station. We should continue to use policy to encourage "EV ready" infra in residential and apartment settings, places of business, commercial/retail, government, etc, but lots of folks can be served today. The vast majority US housing stock is single family homes (attached and detached combined), and those can, in most cases, be upgraded to support a dedicated circuit for charging. And, to your point, you'll also want to mandate new apartment building build outs are EV charging ready for their tenants.
https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/23/electric-ve...
Key takeaways from the above:
> The number of EV charging stations has more than doubled since 2020. In December 2020, the Department of Energy reported that there were nearly 29,000 public charging stations nationwide. By February 2024, that number had increased to more than 61,000 stations. Over 95% of the American public now lives in a county that has at least one public EV charging station.
> EV charging stations are most accessible to residents of urban areas: 60% of urban residents live less than a mile from the nearest public EV charger, compared with 41% of those in the suburbs and just 17% of rural Americans.
Maps: https://supercharge.info/map | https://www.plugshare.com/ | https://afdc.energy.gov/stations#/find/nearest?country=US&fu...
2 miles is an awfully long way, and 36% of Americans are even further away. That’s 4 miles round trip. Presumably many of those charging stations aren’t that big and disallow you leaving your car overnight. The rest of the numbers are similarly bad.
Doesn’t appear to be a problem for EV sales. Is your closest gas station 2 miles away?
https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q4-2024-ev-sales/
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/trends-in...
The chargers probably have 2/4 chargers working at any given time.
It’s not insane to hope many cars will be able to go and charge themselves at 2am, when roads are quiet and chargers are free, a few years from now. Optimise over the entire system, schedule it, car ready for the morning.
This is going to be a long time coming. Owners of EVs overwhelmingly live in houses not apartments. No one is going to send their car off to pay many times their home rate per kWh when they could get a home L2 charger and charge it themselves. It would pay for itself in under a year.
My comment is not solving for people who would be better served by charging at home, because they don’t care about the distance to a charger. Waymo’s can already find their own way to a charger, so it’s not a huge stretch to imagine people innovating around this problem for owned cars.
Waymo might build a waymo specific solution, but the general case for the general population won't exist for a long time.
The demand isn't there. The group of people who buy EVs and don't have a home to charge at is too small. And that won't change until the economics of purchasing an EV fundamentally change.
I’m making very loose claims. Hope, it’s not an huge stretch, etc. My error bars are very wide, intentionally, because it’s hard to predict the next 5 years. Your position is a lot more brittle. If self driving works, cars can go fill themselves up. That can change demand, so the demand argument falls away. If taxi’s work and scale up, costs drop, so the economic issue falls away. For you to be right, no innovation must happen.
The point I’m primarily trying to make, repeatedly: distance to a charger is not some universal rule that prevents uptake. The least likely thing to be true is that the market stays the same. If it remains the same in the US for a few years, China will crush this market.
I disagree, you're missing a really important part. If self driving exists, then cars can drive themselves to the spot where the chargers are, which is necessary but not sufficient.
Either a human needs to be employed overnight plugging in and unplugging these cars ($$) or else every single charger that supports this needs to have new fancy robotic arms and some agreed-upon protocol that cars can use to request a charge.
Considering that so far the story of EV chargers in America has looked like "download my app!" people struggling and failing to get credit card readers reliably working, I have no faith that this would happen in a few years.
> 64% of Americans live within 2 miles of a public charging station.
If this includes AC chargers, leaving your car for 8 hours 2 miles away is an absolute pain.
If it doesn't, the question becomes are the chargers occupied? Are they operational?
Waiting at a gas station takes a minute, waiting at a charger takes 30.
I've been driving an EV for more than 5 years and pretending that charging isn't a significant hindrance to EV ownership is disingenuous. It's actually gotten worse because more EVs are on the road and the chargers haven't kept pace with the rising demand.
I’m lucky to be able to charge quickly at home.
I’m currently on a road trip and was leaving the car at a nearby charger which was walking distance from where I’m staying - I can’t imagine owning one where either this wasn’t available or there wasn’t a fast charger I could spend 10 minutes at.
The actual long distance drives were super easy thanks to Superchargers - 5-10 minute stops keep you driving for hours! It doesn’t feel disadvantaged compared to gas so long as the infrastructure is there.
> It's actually gotten worse because more EVs are on the road and the chargers haven't kept pace with the rising demand.
It is curious that this is the case. If chargers were profitable a couple of years ago, you would expect more chargers and more profit today.
I haven’t noticed much growth in chargers where I live but I have noticed more EVs on the road.
Byd recently came out saying the hyper competitive landscape and low prices needs to end soon. The Chinese government is propping up a lot of their auto industry right now. So some protectionism is needed if you don’t want one of the last bits of manufacturing strength to disappear in the US.
Genuine question, we have manufacturing strength in the US auto industry?
Even among Americans, American cars aren't considered that good. There's a massive reliability premium you pay for Honda and Toyota. Even cars with 100k miles on them (frustratingly as a buyer) keep their value. And they're manufactured in the US, inasmuch as any car can be said to be manufactured in a single location.
I've been searching around and I can't even find data about other countries importing our cars which to me would be the biggest signal of strength.
Teslas are great cars.
I've only been in BYDs in Mexican Ubers and I would not buy one, it felt cheap and plasticky and creaked.
I have a 2018 Model 3 and your description of BYD is exactly how I would describe my Tesla. It feels cheap and plasticky and it creaks. I also briefly had a Model 3 rental car that was newer than mine (but I don't know what year it was) and it also felt the same.
I had thought about throwing an exception for Tesla because they did manage to create cars that people outside the US want. So I guess that does count but I doubt they're what anyone thinks of when they think of American car makes.
Oh I would for sure buy a BYD today if I were able. The ones I've ridden in have been really nice. I mean they are literally plastic but so is every car in the "economy" price range. I don't think their interiors were noticeably different than any other non-luxury car. I've been told that their higher end models don't have this problem.
Hopefully this will allow cheaper cars to get ~400mi of range but I doubt we'll ever see much more in mainstream cars. Batteries are simply too expensive and too heavy. Fuel tanks are cheap to build, but we still see no gasoline passenger cars with large tanks. The manufacturers sort of standardize around a "normal" capacity, and just want the one option to design, manufacture, crash test, etc.
Not only the climate situation, the economic situation. If the US protects the old tech for another decade it’ll never catch up. The US needs to move along the experience curve as fast as possible, build skills and volume and charging stations and suitable power grids and sources. I would much, much rather be China than the US in this fight right now.
> ~400+ miles per full tank
My car gets ~500 miles/800 km per tank. My wife's car, which has a more efficient engine and transmission and is also smaller, but with the same huge tank, gets ~600 miles/960 km per tank. I will have to stop for a bathroom somewhere along a route that long, but only once or twice. I used to have to stop three times for a ~900 mile/1500 km trip that I did a few times.
This is a problem with EV proponents who try to argue that "you'll stop every couple of hours for half an hour or so anyway, so charging isn't an issue". No, I won't. I'll drive 1000 miles with less than 45 minutes of downtime on the whole trip. I don't stop every two hours. Maybe 15 minutes every 4 hours, of which 10 is fueling and going to the bathroom and 5 is getting off and back on the highway.
That's not a slam against EV's, but let's acknowledge their weak points honestly.
Your 500 and 600 miles per fill-up is the kind of outlier that isn't much worth discussing. That kind of range can't be more than about 5-7% of US autos.
My car (Mazda3 hatch) gets 24 mpg, which is actually typical for US mid-sized cars.
I have a 3-5 minute gas station fill up every 260 miles or so, basically once a week. The Chinese MG4 does 435 miles on a charge, 95% of which I could charge at home, the remaining 5% of my miles are my twice a year road trips @ ~400 mi (to LA) and ~800 mi (to Seattle).
The MG4 makes LA without a stop and Seattle with 1 stop.
That's a once a year stop for ~30 minute in the EV compared to 3-4 hours a year sitting at smelly gas stations for my Mazda ICE.
I would certainly trade never having to ever take my car into a gas station, ever again, for one brief stop once a year on my leisurely road trip if I had the cash to buy a great EV.
I think the argument is not whether EVs will take an extra 65-80 min to go 1000 miles, it’s whether that matters to the average driver. Realistically for my family it doesn’t. I’m sure for some (predominately) solo drivers it does. But then there’s the question of how often you’re driving 1000 mile trips that an extra 1.5hrs max actually impacts anything real in your life…
I guess if you’re trying to follow an ICE car on a road trip then yeah it might be a weak point. If you’re already stopping every 200 miles then it’s no matter. For us, we enjoy travel days more with the built in stretch/bathroom breaks.
You can do 1000 miles in one day, but it is a really unpleasant trip. Doing it in two is so much nicer. Take a hotel one night. Have a really nice meal at a slow restaurant a couple of times. Visit a couple of roadside attractions.
Those are five long charging opportunities, which is two more than you need for a 1000 mile trip.
And when I charge up. Well you know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the one who charges overnight...
Overnight charging at hotels is awesome. 5 years ago if a hotel had EV chargers it was very likely one was available. Unfortunately, it's more common that they're all busy now.
I hear you, and your concern is real for your context.
But to be fair, not every product has to perfectly fit every context. To be successful a product can fill a small niche, or it can appeal to a large market- it doesn't have to satisfy every use case.
So you're right - driving 1000 miles with no downtime is not an EV strength. But the percentage of the market doing that is tiny. Conversely the proportion of people who live in a house (home charging) and drive < 100 miles a day, is huge.
Even for those doing a "once a year road trip" - well, hire cars exist.
So I completely agree that an EV is not useful to you. I would suggest though that a product can be massively successful, while at the same time appealing to a subset of the market. And appealing to a subset does not limit validity or indeed profitability.
Lipstick seems to be a successful product, despite only appealing to something less than 50% of the market.
That sounds like you have a more efficient car than many of us. When I switched to an EV I actually got a range upgrade due to having a really inefficient ICE vehicle. Regardless, most of us aren't spending our days doing multi hundred mile drives. We shouldn't be optimizing for that scenario.
I'd like to see the stats on how many people regularly drive 500+ miles in a day.
I'm American, so grew up in car culture, but I've never driven more than 200 - 300 miles in a day.
I do it about once a month.
You’re an outlier. Most people don’t do long road trips often, and when they do they don’t care to drive 1000 miles with minimal stops, and their gas cars don’t have that much range in a tank of fuel.
Yes, EVs do slow down long road trips a bit. But it’s really not much of a difference. I just did 3000 miles in 10 days in one.
Agreed but this car would solve that for just $25,000 if we didn’t have 100% tariffs on Chinese vehicles. 1,200 mile range, can charge 800 miles in 12 minutes.
If our 350 mile vehicle could actually do 350 it would be fine but the reality is that it can barely do 200 ish
It's still incredible how many people STILL equate "Made in China" with low quality. These folks are stuck in the 90s. China builds things to spec. If you want low quality they'll give you that. But require high quality, they can do that too. You just need to pay for it.
As someone who works in US manufacturing, the situation is much more dire and I think the "low quality / high quality" back-and-forth is burying the lede.
It's not just that China has reached some kind of quality parity with North America. There are now significant market segments that the US functionally cannot manufacture because we completely ceded the institutional knowledge and infrastructure in favor of financialization and outsourcing of the US economy.
My specific area of expertise is robotic / computer controlled manufacturing equipment and a lot of the components (high precision servos, sensors and other motion components) are functionally impossible to source domestically. There are still some boutique manufacturers making things in low efficiency / low volume in the USA but touring the manufacturing campuses of Chinese suppliers has been shocking in the last five years. The sheer scale of efficient, automated assembly they are capable of operating at makes a big-three automotive assembly line look like a dirt-floored shack with men knocking things together with rocks.
They are laser focused on lights-out manufacturing at extreme volume in ways I have never seen in the US. Entire production lines of high complexity electronics that are completely vertically integrated (everything from the injection molding for the plastic enclosure to the PCB manufactured on one campus) with human hands touching them for the first time as they leave the automated quality control line to be boxed up.
I don't think American people fully comprehend the brain and skill drain that has already taken place.
Agreed. Maybe you’ve seen this, but Destin Sandlin’s recent video on this topic does a good job of demonstrating the institutional knowledge gap [0].
He also was a guest on the Search Engine podcast to discuss the same topic earlier this year [1]. I enjoyed this more than the video.
I think there’s some nuance and slight nationalism to take with a grain of salt, but the point is extremely well demonstrated.
[0] https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY?si=2jaYQZEinXsJBk2L
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/search-engine/id161425...
Thank you for this, I just watched. Very enlightening.
> If china wants to continue subsidizing their industry below costs of manufacture I see no reason why we shouldn't exploit their generosity to meet our climate goals as quickly as possible.
Are they even doing that? A few billion dollars a year is meaningful but it's not dumping for an industry this big.
Anyone who mentions China's subsides without mentioning the US's $2.5B - $3.0B in subsidies for EVs is ignorant and bluffing, or intentionally misleading you.
It depends on what they're worried about. A subsidy tied to car purchase is mostly irrelevant to an accusation of artificially cheap exports, because those subsidies don't apply to exports. Unless they're crazily large amounts or other manipulation is happening, they mostly just help the company scale faster and the export prices are legitimate.
Also, the only way to make your companies competitive is by having them face competition, not by protecting them by artificial and anti consumer duties.
> If we want to address climate change
At least 40% of Americans do not give a crap about addressing climate change. Many Americans see EVs as a waste of time and a direct attack on the US.
If you are willing to take the risk that if China invades Taiwan your car will no longer work or be serviceable.
I highly doubt that would happen. Why would China want to destroy their reputation as the world's manufacturer?
Because someone takes power who is more concerned with image than economic long term success. See the US for a recent example of a country abdicating its strong economic position for no reason beyond the leaders' ego.
Because ideology is a hell of a drug. Xi is a true believer.
With that logic, capitalism and "democracy" are ideologies too. The US is the same, just different.
robot arm movements
*all beliefs are the same*
> If we want to address climate change
Given our recent election results, it seems to me that we don't want to.
Few place climate change as more important than national security. Won’t happen.
The DoD has been saying for at least a decade that climate change as an interesting threat to national security.
GM has the Bolt, Blazer, Siverado, and Hummer EV's. I think they're genuinely trying to make EV's work. Ford and Stellantis on the other hand...
Ford has ambitious plans. It's still vapor ware, but promising. https://www.axios.com/2025/06/18/ford-china-ev
Stellantis sells a good number of EVs in Europe, but almost entirely in form factors that won't sell in North America. Perhaps this expertise and experience will be useful.
I hope domestic manufacturers survive the "protection" Trump is giving them, but the protection may prove fatal.
They cancelled the Bolt in 2023.
...and later announced it would be coming back but on the new battery platform they were using for their other new EVs. It's supposed to go into production later this year.
The big 3 are not the ones asking for this. It actively hurts them. They aren’t delusional, they NEED government support to compete globally against Chinese EVs. Every big 3 CEO to a T has made it clear they know it’s if, not when ICE sales become a rounding error on their books.
Point your gun where it belongs which is the oil industry and its lobbyists.
> Point your gun where it belongs which is the oil industry and its lobbyists.
They are indeed the enemy. They've managed to convince a large swath of the population to hate everything that is not fossil-fueled.
Why can't we have better marketing for different types of people.
Example: God made the sun and the sky. That's where heaven is. Fossil fuels come from under the earth. Something else really bad is down there too. I don't want to spell it out, but it's the opposite of heaven.
Or for the "independent, lion-not-sheep" types: I don't depend on big companies. My energy comes from up above. You can't take the sky from me. etc.
A key problem is that anger, hate, and fear are more powerful motivators than hope and optimism. That fact has been leveraged to weaponize those emotions to a degree that inspires awe at it's success.
Freedom to power your home without paying "the man" should be compelling to all who could use it. Texas is ironically a prime state for renewable energy and the dollars generated from it have convinced some, but many still reject it as "wokeness".
It boggles the mind.
I mean, at this pace, this isn't even green tech. Electric cars are just better and within two years will have better range. We are risking being totally left behind because they want to keep burning gasoline for Texas.
> meet our climate goals as quickly as possible
heheh
The climate thing itself is a giant oligarchy influenced manipulative game play. This nation is built on capital. Capital by its nature looks to dominate humanity and freewill.
The treacherous twists to turn a noble pursuit into a way for developed nations to continue dominate developing nations is beyond the space of this comment, but you can see that clearly over the history: Caesar Hitler Mao Trump Xi etc.
We people have truly never been able to wield the power ourselves.
They already doing that for decades, the problem is that move making china rich. Which is US don't want
The US has no ability to stop China from becoming wealthy, they already have the will and political leadership to build high tech for a global market. At this point, it's just angry old people sticking brooms in their own bike wheels at speed.
How we made it: will China be the first electrostate? - https://www.ft.com/content/e1a232c7-52a0-44dd-a13b-c4af54e74... | https://archive.today/OSFYo
They sure has, problem is people also like cheap goods
> If china wants to continue subsidizing their industry below costs of manufacture I see no reason why we shouldn't exploit their generosity
Because the unfair advantage distorts the market leading to a potentially otherwise noncompetitive product destroying the competition at which point they can (and will) jack up prices, so not only do you get more expensive vehicles, but you've also destroyed an entire industry and several adjacent industries at the same time.
It's not like you can't just snap your fingers and re-establish a vehicle manufacturing supply chain once it disappears.
I get people just want cheap vehicles, but the short-term benefit simply isn't worth it.
And US subsides are of course totally okay and not unfair at all? The US does the same thing while it cries and points fingers. The same in the EU.
Most relevant part:
> BYD’s solid-state EV batteries set a record by gaining 1,500 km (932 miles) range in just 12 minutes of charging.
> The test charged the battery to just 80%, meaning total EV range could reach upwards of 1,875 km (1,165 miles). Keep in mind, that is CLTC range. On the EPA scale, it would be closer to 1,300 km (808 miles)
Is this true? How quickly will other companies be making these types of batteries?
Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
For the last part, my guess is that the advantages are much more valuable in an EV than they are in a phone (where batteries are mostly fine. While longer life and faster charging are always nice to have:they are just that: nice to have), so if you are A) production limited and B) they are still more expensive (the article states they expect them to be price-comparable by the end of the decade), then they probably aren't worth it in a phone (yet).
When price comes down and production comes up (assuming those things happen), then I would expect them to start appearing in phones as well.
That logic seems crazy to me. Extra hundreds of miles are also just nice to have, and with the same material that goes into a 500kg car pack you could make 10000 double life phone batteries and sell them for $100 each. There's more per-cell overhead in the phone batteries but is it worth a million dollar drop in revenue?
Consumers seem to disagree with you on the first part. I personally think that current battery tech is fine for EVs (I have an EV with a 260 mile range, and only a 77kW max charge rate, and I think it's fine even for 10+ hour road trips), but a segment of the consumer space wants more than that.
I personally thought that the more interesting part of the article was where they claimed to be able to add 800 miles of range in 12 minutes. At those kinds of charge rates, my ideal EV would probably have a 300ish mile range that I could charge from 10-80 in <10 minutes (although I believe that part of the way they get those charge rates is with large battery packs, so a smaller pack would probably not charge as fast).
Additionally, while the specs for EV sedans are currently fine, batteries are only barely good enough for larger, less efficient vehicles. Maybe the killer app here isn't a sedan that goes 1000 miles, but a truck or SUV that can go 500.
The point is, whatever your and my opinions on the adequacy of current EV charging, the market seems to value improved battery specs more highly in the EV space than it does in the phone space (or maybe it doesn't and BYD is making a mistake by keeping their batteries for their cars instead of selling them to phone manufacturers).
EV batteries degrade more quickly when charged too far above half-way. As a result, your ideal EV might actually have 600 miles of range and you’d just leave it half-charged most of the time.
From everything I've heard/read you can pretty safely go to 80-90% of listed state of charge (manufacturers often also include a hidden buffer for exactly this reason).
My car, which like I said has a 260 mile range, I only charge to 80% unless I'm going on a long road trip. So for 90%+ of the time, it's never charged more than 80% (and I very rarely discharge it to less than 15%). For most people, a 300 mile range like I describe would be plenty to be able to not need 100% charge except on rare occasions. But even if it's not for you, or for some people, I very specifically said "my ideal EV". A 600 mile range that I almost never use is just extra weight that I'm carrying around and decreasing efficiency, and isn't actually providing much real battery protection. I am absolutely not someone who drives 360 miles a day (which is what you could do if you were doing an 80% to 20% discharge on a 600 mile battery every day. I'm pretty confident that stats suggest that very few people drive that much on a regular basis. The 150 miles I get from the the 80% to 20% range on my current battery is already more than enough.
I’m out for 2-3 days. Better take an external battery for the phone. Done.
Doesn’t work with a car.
Really easy to work around Apple’s utterly crap battery life. If it were better that would be nice to have.
Going a certain distance so can’t take an ev at all. It’d be nice if you could, if your usage is mostly very urban, sure that’s just nice. Gotta visit Dad on the farm a dozen times a year or whatever? That’s not your life so you don’t see it as essential even if the rest of the driving is much shorter range.
To fix iPhone battery life, create an automation that turns on battery save mode when battery dips below 80%. Works really well. I figure they don’t build this functionality into the settings because people would use it instead of buying a new phone when the battery degrades.
Similarly, I use an automation that turns on low power mode any time the phone’s not charging. Not found any real downsides to this.
It's obviously more valuable to double the range of a car compared to a phone.
But is it multiple thousands of times more valuable? I don't think so.
It really should work with a car (there's no reason why they couldn't support additional external battery packs in the trunk or as a trailer, etc).
The reason is that batteries are heavy.
Want an extra 100 miles of range? That's 600lbs of cargo. A person can't place that in a trunk, and a trailer would probably barely extend range due to the extra drag and efficiency loss.
for $10, right?
Renting a U-Haul starts at $19.95 per day...
Uh. How much do car batteries cost again?
A hell of a lot less than entire trucks.
I think maybe there’s some cross thread confusion.
The comparison I’m making is an external phone battery is $10. Replacing an ev battery is, hell i dunno, $10.000?
Not needing an external phone battery would be nice.
Needing external ev batteries is far more likely to be cost prohibitive. Adjacent to this thread people have raised size and weight issues as well. I didn’t even bother going that far because the straight up price puts it in a different ball park to an external phone battery.
Hope we’re all on the same page again!
Right, that's the discussion up to a certain spot.
Then the GP had a counterargument to EV batteries being expensive, by suggesting you could rent one for your three day trip for a pretty small amount of money.
And not only would that charge be quite small compared to everything else going on with your car, the further you drive with the extended battery the more you save by electricity being cheaper than gasoline. And that includes having to pay for depreciation.
Well something is up because i simply do not see that counter argument anywhere in this thread. Crazy huh?
"Renting a U-Haul starts at $19.95 per day..."
To be clear the middle paragraph of my post was explaining why I think they said that, and the last paragraph was me adding my own commentary.
Battery life is fine but phone company are always after thinner and lighter. I can’t imagine no company will jump on this.
Just look at rumored iphone air
I’d take a phone double the thickness to get double the battery life between charges. Options on that front are limited. Had an ulefone for a while which was better than most until the screen started getting constant phantom presses making it unusable.
My hand does not shrink. Try holding and using a phone as thick as a credit card compared to one 5mm thick and ask yourself which feels better.
Ie, I agree totally with your sentiment
Many companies have been trying to make solid state batteries for years but it's hard to make anything that works at scale as opposed to some 2mm sample on a lab bench. I guess the likes of BYD got there first because they have put a lot of investment dollars and engineers in, being the world's second largest battery maker. I think CATL the largest are also working on it. And Toyota. I'm not sure any have been able to manufacture in quantity at an acceptable price though. Soon probably.
> Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
Oh, that's easy. I already knew the answer, which probably means just about every AI could tell you. Phone batteries use Li Polymer (which is solid state BTW), because they can be any shape, including flat, wide and very thin. Other chemistry's can't be thin.
They already exist in Chinese phones, the new one plus has insane battery life because of its 6000mah battery, while still being as thin as a normal phone.
Other phones targeting the Chinese market have reached 8000.
But companies like Apple and Samsung like to just sit on their laurels and sell the same thing again.
They are not using Solid State but Semi Solid State with Silicon Carbon. We should be expecting 400Whr/Kg by end of this year.
But yes Apple and Samsung has been very slow in adoption to new Battery Tech, even when it is somewhat market tested by Chinese phone markers.
I believe it's been 5 years that some Chinese phones already have Silicon Carbon battery... Samsung/Apple was crazy slow on this, and later this year everyone will get "Shocked" when apple supposedly show up their new phone with the new battery...
>and later this year everyone will get "Shocked" when apple supposedly show up their new phone with the new battery...
That is on the assumption they will use the battery....
> Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
Not quite energy density, but the energy density, cost, complexity when combined with the discharge profile generates a very "interesting" phase space.
There's a few promising technologies which have very, very good efficiencies but only like very slow predictable discharge cycles. These are excellent for say building giant GW batteries in the desert, but not so great for even car batteries.
Phones and tech have bursty power needs based on use, the cost of taking other tech down to the size of a phone is extremely high (especially if you're first to market unless you know you will sell millions of units). Not to mention the reliability of batteries typically decreasing as the size drops.
Cars tend to be in the middle with their discharge profiles being relatively smooth compared to say a laptop, but yes you still have economies of scale, complexity, reliability and supply chain and patents to contend with ;)
I guess I would have just assumed that because batteries are chemistry the size scales relatively easily.
Anyways- isn't a normal cell in an EV battery is like a AA size? Is this still true for solid state?
> isn't a normal cell in an EV battery is like a AA size?
No. Some companies use tons of cylindrical cells that are larger AAs (like 18mmx65mm, 21mmx80mm, or 46mmx80mm). But even then at 46mm in diameter it's a good bit bigger than a AA.
But lots of manufacturers use prismatic or pouch like batteries. They're large and rectangular. Like these batteries on this BYD, they're called "blades". Most other major manufacturers use prismatic cells.
> According to local reports, BYD’s solid-state EV batteries set a record by gaining 1,500 km (932 miles) range in just 12 minutes of charging.
If so, can this be beneficial to use cases outside auto industry? Eg. Power walls. If so, I am more excited for that. I am tired of electricity bills.
The tech used to get such fast charging isn't revolutionary, it's just extremely (dangerous) high voltage DC charging that only exists in any capacity in China.
Also, what happens when an EV taxi runs out of battery power in China? They actually have stations setup all over that you simply drive into and it replaces the entire battery pack... in minutes.
Really no more dangerous than a 480v, 300A level 3 charger in the US. Both have enough to kill. It's not like you'd be less dead if a level 3 charger malfunctioned. They both require redundant monitoring hardware and female plugs on the hot end.
For the audience - up to 1500V, 600A. Or just shy of a Megawatt. Yowzers.
My favourite is the standard of water cooled high current high voltage cables for charging EVs...
Imo that's stepping beyond the risk profile of filling a tank with a known high explosive that can evaporate and suffocate and catch fire in the sun ... But risk profiles are inherently personal
would be very interested to know if people know what the cold-weather behavior of these batteries are: i'm in montana and battery life, especially in winter, can be a life-or-death issue and that (+ range/recharge time) is a reason a lot of folks here look at ev's skeptically, would love to hear they handle cold better
I think people are working off of outdated information. I have a 2020 Model 3 and it's been fine in subzero temperatures. Yes, range goes down by about 20%, but if anything it's more convenient than a gas car in the cold because you don't have to wait for an engine to heat up before the cabin gets warm. Also you always wake up with a full tank (so to speak) because you don't need to go to a gas station to refill. And EVs tend to be AWD, so they're easy to drive in the winter. During one snowstorm I had to help dig out trucks that got stuck, but my car was fine.
Newer models have heat pumps that greatly improve efficiency in cold weather. They also have better battery chemistries that store more energy in the same form factor. Unless you live in a very remote, very cold location (eg: rural Alaska), an EV is a fine choice.
theres cold and theres cold
Is Norway cold cold? 88% of new cars last year there were EVs.
Norway is not cold: its temperature is very heavily moderated by the ocean. Trondheim's lowest mean daily minimum is 24.6 degrees F. The coldest place I could find there is Lomen, which mininums out at around 20 degrees F.
I am strongly pro-EV, and think they're broadly fine in every part of the US, and having just gotten back from Norway they're 100% on the right track, but they're nowhere near comparable to even my hometown of Minneapolis (8.8 degrees F lowest mean minimum).
EVs are already better in climates that need separate block heaters for ICE cars.
Canada is cold. Every major city in the country is full of Teslas. I’ve been driving mine for 6 years and have the same experience as the Montana commenter. In fact so much better than a gas car that freezes up and takes time to warm up.
It’s simply not a concern. Only a range reduction. A non-issue.
This is just more "it's different for us, somehow" American exceptionalism. Norway is much further north than any part of the continental US and the vast majority of new vehicle sales are BEVs.
Many of the Northern European countries have capitals that are north of the northernmost point in the US, but those places are significantly warmer than similar latitudes in North America due to the North Atlantic Current.
Montana is colder than Norway in the winter. Norway gets a lot of warming from the coasts. There's not much coastline in Montana. It gets hit pretty hard by polar winds without the mediation of the oceans.
Turns out there's more to climate than just latitude. Lots of the US is colder than Western Europe on average despite mostly being far further South. NYC is colder than London in the winter even though it's coastal and a much lower latitude.
london isnt even cold compared to the US. i was amazed to learn this but its true… and these idiots dont take into account that most people in norway are not only driving in warmer conditions but almost always in the city… whereas in the US we are driving across vast frozen tundra hundreds of miles away, the literal width of norway on either side, from any kind of help. EVs barely make it during summer time
How far are you driving in a typical day?
If it’s less than like 100 miles (161km) I think that the vast majority of EV batteries are going to get you where you want to go, even with 25% reductions due to cold weather. FWIW, the American average is around 36 miles/day.
There is a semi famous YouTuber named Hank Green that lives in Montana and daily drives an EV. He occasionally makes videos about his experience.
IMO “handle cold better” is a bit of a misnomer for EVs. ICE cars are inefficient all the time because they’re converting most of their energy into heat even when it’s warm - with an EV you’re effectively just getting bonus range when it’s warm.
If you developed a hyper-efficient ICE engine that didn’t generate a pile of waste heat, you’d have to actively make it less efficient in the cold, or install heating hardware and burn extra gas to power that hardware - but nobody would criticize that hyper-efficient engine for being “worse in the cold”.
I might be speaking for myself, but WRT cars I’m less concerned with “efficiency” in the technical sense than with other metrics, like how far it goes on one full tank/charge/whatever, how long it takes to fill the tank/battery/whatever, and how much filling the tank/battery/whatever costs.
> and battery life, especially in winter, can be a life-or-death issue
How so? A full battery can run your seat heaters for about a month. That's a lot better than the hours of heat you'd get out of a full tank of gasoline.
Not to mention that you'll never get carbon monoxide poisoning from a gasoline engine with a tailpipe blocked with snow.
I believe they are talking about how the range/capacity is significantly affected in deep cold weather. It's not about life-or-death that you'll freeze to death - it's that your 300mi EV turns into a 150mi EV and that makes range planning unpredictable and more challenging in rural areas.
if your car battery is dead because it was -30C all night, your gas car isn't starting either
-30 isnt really even challenging for a gasoline car, you would need -60 or more for gasoline to become thick enough to be a concern. More likely at that temperature is your battery being unable to turn your engine over to try and start it and might require a jump to get turning over. Diesels may struggle at that temperature, buts its a known issue that northerners add anti-gelling additives and/or block heaters for. Of course an EV can and should have built in battery heaters for that too.
Gasoline/petrol cars start after -30C all night without any issues.
I mean... a thought experiment like "medical emergency in remote location" would seem a useful place to start.
I'm thinking about it.
Is it road-accessible? What kinds of vehicles can get there?
The cars in the article have twice as much range as a gas car or more, even in the cold. And it's easier to charge them at remote locations than to get fuel deliveries to those same remote locations.
I'm sure a scenario could be contrived where any type of car wins, but on average I expect a long range battery car to do quite well.
Such a weird comment. Tailpipe blocked with snow? I've lived in (the cold part of) Canada nearly my whole life, never happened. Snow doesn't fall sideways and upwards to block a tailpipe lol. And range is the relevant part of a vehicle, given Canada is so large and sparsely populated, not how long seat heaters heat.
Did you learn to drive in Canada? A prominent part of the your driving lessons should have been that one of the first things you do after getting stuck in mud or snow is to ensure your tail pipe is clear.
What kills in the winter is unpredictability. Range is predictable and easy to mitigate.
It's the winter. You've slid off the road. You're probably in the ditch. You've probably taken some damage to the vehicle. Whether or not you've taken damage, you're now stuck. Something is preventing you from safely walking for help. At -30 or worse after an accident that's more likely than not.
The above is not an uncommon scenario in the winter. So you wait in the vehicle for help to arrive, hoping you don't freeze to death before it does.
You're safer in an electric vehicle.
- If you've plowed into a snow covered ditch, your car may be partially or fully entombed, and you're at risk of a carbon monoxide poisoning.
- there are stories of such vehicles not being found for days. Having heat for days might save your life
> Did you learn to drive in Canada? A prominent part of the your driving lessons should have been that one of the first things you do after getting stuck in mud or snow is to ensure your tail pipe is clear.
Yes I learned to drive in Canada. In a snowy region (3-10 metres of snow yearly depending on elevation). And I ski 50-100+ days per year. And will drive extra for powder snow.
Amount of times I've got stuck in snow? Zero. If you learn to drive in the snow, have winter tires, you just don't get stuck. Especially when you're putting in thousands (tens?) of kms and hundreds of days on snow covered roads.
Did YOU learn to drive here? Guessing no if you get stuck in the snow or slide off the road...
Edit - should add, around here (Alberta Rockies to the BC interior) there's as much as hundreds of KMs between towns/cities. Bad place to ever get stuck. Which is why you simply don't. Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
The only place I've ever gotten stuck in the snow is in my own yard, and I've been driving in snow for over 40 years.
But every single time I go out in the winter I have a plan for what I'll do if it does happen. Because it happens to people, good drivers and bad, snow tires or not.
> Also why I'm not trusting an electric car in -40 when there's no cell service for ~200 km spans.
You shouldn't be trusting any vehicle. Both an electric car and a gasoline car might let you down when you need it. The gasoline car is more likely to let you down, though. I presume you have a proper winter kit in your vehicle so you don't have to trust your vehicle.
Winter kit? Of course. My father gave me one the day I turned 16. Never needed it but you're right, when it's -40 and you're in the middle of nowhere, better safe than sorry.
It happens.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00039929.htm https://www.rearviewsafety.com/safety/news/news-release-dead...
But it sounds like it's hard to get a handle on how common it is. It feels like it's more on the level of "a handful a year in North America/freak occurrance", rather than "common way to die".
I know of somebody it happened to. Maybe it's not particularly common, but it's in my mind as something that happens.
Both of those involved the cars being encased in snow, as opposed to the tailpipe specifically being blocked.
Tell me you’ve never lived in a really cold climate without telling me you’ve never lived in a cold climate before.
I've experienced -48. You?
-40ish for a month. And -30 around that.
None of the ‘answers’ address the range issues with batteries in the cold. Or how you can be totally fucked if your pack drops below a certain temp, and you don’t have enough charge to heat the pack and get home.
Probably even more fucked than if your diesel tank gelled. At least you can heat it up directly if you really need to.
You handle it the exact same way you do on a gasoline vehicle. You never let your tank go below 50%. If you slide off the road with a low tank or a low battery you can get in trouble, so don't do that.
If I let my electric car sit overnight with at least 20% charge, I know it will start in the morning, even if it was -45 overnight. You can't say that with a gasoline vehicle. It'll take almost all of that 20% to get up to temperature, but once it's up it maintains it well.
And anyplace cold has ubiquitous block heater plugs. At really cold temperatures it'll barely charge on a block heater plug because it'll use all the energy keeping the battery warm, but it means you start with a warm battery and a warm car, so the range drop is massively reduced.
This is incredibly delusional.
No, it's lived experience.
I understand that Teslas sell [sold?] well, in Norway.
Tesla sales are suffering from the brand damage Musk has done:
https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Q...
Swasticars don't sell well. Musk needs to leave the company to give Tesla a chance to recover.
From what I understand, if he did leave, the value of the stock would plummet, so it sounds like a Faustian bargain.
Tesla's board of directors certainly aren't firing Musk. They don't care. They got theirs:
https://archive.md/XtUhS
They used to, but Musk's hand signal and association with Trump had a serious impact on subsequent Norwegian sales.
I’m in Wyoming. The Rivians do fine in the winter.
How far do you drive in them?
> How far do you drive in them?
I drive a gas-powered Subaru because the Volvo dealership in Montana was being insufferable when I wanted a C40. My neighbour can easily go 200+ miles in the winter. (Apparently pre-conditioning is a thing.) Works fine for road trips to Missoula and Salt Lake City, for them, from Jackson.
People in Nordic countries are fine with EVs.
The resistance to electrification in the US is one of the country's biggest self inflicted wounds.
In the long run, I really don't think we can tariff our way around technical innovation.
900 miles of range in 12 mins of charging... Charge for 20 mins and have enough range for 2 full days of travel driving!
And this is only when driving long distances. Anyone with a driveway can eassily charge overnight for typical daily driving.
The whole package: many types of energy source providing electricity, never having to go to a gas station for typical daily driving, path to complete elimination of petro combustion byproducts, massive simplification of the overall vehicle mechanism, significant performance enhancements, etc.
All technical evaluation come out in favor of EVs...
It’s hard to win technical innovation when you’re this behind. The best you can do is to kick the can down the road, instead of short term suffering of your citizens.
The thing is, the average American is also very sensitive to any kind of change to their daily life. And taking advice from anyone how “it is better for you” is against the whole individual thought idea. So, good luck.
> BYD’s solid-state batteries have an energy density of 400 Wh/kg, or nearly twice that of current lithium-ion batteries.
I thought the big issue with solid-state (besides dendrites) was a lower energy density than Li-ion? What happened?
Better density is one of the reasons solid state battery research has been pursued.
Maybe you are comparing the density of research batteries that weren't worth commercializing to highly developed lithium ion batteries?
Maybe you have confused it with iron phosphate, which is also fairly popular in lower cost EVs? That one has a lot of advantages, but does have relatively poor energy density.
It's a next generation Lithium battery, I've seen lithium chemistry power storage quoted as high as 600 in some prototypes so I'm guessing they cracked something in the lithium chemistry.
Given it's still lithium based I'd still think twice before chucking a bucket of water on one that's fizzing :p
As for how this battery is better I'm not an expert, but good to read if true.
Notably 400Wh/kg will be very useful for medium size UAV. Battery packs made out of the best 18650 or 21700 are around 255Wh/kg right now.
DoD better get in a big order then ;)
Weren’t Chinese battery manufacturers supposed to be shipping some sort of Lithium battery breakthrough this year?
Might be this if you've read something, this is still lithium based, it's just solid state vs LiPo
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35649935
1200 miles of range? I only need 100-200 regularly and maybe a bit more on special occasions. Can I spend 1/6 as much and get 1/6 the battery?
byd has a seagull model that's basically exactly that for $10k. Don't see why they wouldn't bring it to the US absent tarrifs.
I think it's closer to $16k-$20k without subsidies.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/22/byds-10000-seagull-ev-worryin...
Still cheap by US standards. Cheap basic cars barely even exist any more.
It is $8k before current 15% subsides.
https://electrek.co/2025/04/08/byds-low-cost-seagull-ev-now-...
Because it would destroy the auto industry overnight.
You say that like its a bad thing...
It is. I want American auto manufacturing to continue to be a thing. With this administration most industries will see 4 years of technological and competitive regression though so it’s probably a losing battle.
BYD wiping out the Big 3 would also wipe out a significant amount of manufacturing that is "auto industry adjacent". How much more industry do you want to see wiped out in the US? We already can't produce paper masks or toilet paper, for example ...
I want the Big 3 to die horrible flaming death, but they need to get replaced by something else domestic. Letting anybody (let alone BYD) simply wipe out all our domestic manufacturing capacity is mega-bad.
Yes I think it is, because over time it becomes too great an amount of leverage that another country can use to hold over your head.
So you don't actually believe in competition?
I think most disagreements come down to people wanting similar things at different scales.
It sounds like you're thinking of competition at the corporate scale.
It sounds like the commenter immediately previous is thinking of competition at the nation state scale.
Both (and more) are happening at the same time, and valid to optimize for.
I suspect most cars will still be in the 250-400mi range sweet spot, same reason that's where we're at with gas cars.
> same reason that's where we're at with gas cars
Why are we at that with gas cars?
Electric cars will carry a thousand pounds of battery to get that much range, while a typical gas car will only be equipped to carry a hundred pounds of fuel, using less than a third as much space. It's not even 5% of the car's weight.
ill believe it when i see it