Seems like a good plan. Canada has the third largest hydroelectric power production in the world, and quite a bit of nuclear, so let's use it properly. People talk about transmission infrastructure like it's difficult, but we're the ones who made the ~5,000 KM HVDC system that feeds the northern US from James Bay! I don't see why we can't quickly electrify transportation, it's the kind of project Canada seems to be pretty good at.
I mean, this is hiding a lot of geographic reality. You're using the word Canada pretty broadly here, when the reality is that the left-half of the country past Ontario (or arguably Quebec) is pretty shit in this regard.
Quebec has that hydroelectric power production. And their power grid is cheap and pretty clean. And their government and populace is highly pro-EV and yeah, it's great.
Ontario a bit second to that but reliant on nuclear, and those nuclear plants will be going offline for maintenance and its ... a whole thing.
Under Doug Ford we just keep increasing the amount of natural gas in the mix and the prices keep going up on electricity. (This being the guy who lied his way into power claiming that under the Ontario Liberals we had "the most expensive power in North America" [again a total lie])
The rest of the country? Oof. Have you looked at the prairie provinces power generation?
Sure, but nearly half the population of Canada west of Ontario is in BC (5.0M out of 11.8M west of Ontario), and 92% of BC's electric generation comes from hydro (89%) and wind (3%). I like these numbers.
The bulk of the rest of the west's population is Alberta and they generate most of their electricity from natural gas. That province is Canada's sore spot from an emissions and CO2 perspective.
Right, I meant to call out BC as a relatively positive example but didn't. I agree they're doing the right moves for now.
(I'm from Alberta originally, and fled during the Klein years. I have many ... sensitive ... spots about that place)
That said... electricity generation aside... Massive LNG terminals on the BC coast aren't exactly a positive for the planet. In fact the approval of the first by the Trudeau gov't basically blew Canada's possibility of ever meeting its international climate commitments just on its own.
Yeah, I agree. We have a large and persuasive LNG industry influencing government policy.
Not a lot of critical discussion is permitted because of the sheer money at stake. So many resource corporations, their employees, towns, and a heavily lobbied government don't want to sit and have a rational discussion about, oh, say, "How and when will we ween ourselves off LNG because we should?" :-|
I get the impression that BC is in a tough spot in that between the forestry/natural gas and speculative real estate "bread", there's not a lot of other meat & cheese in the economic sandwich. Not to say there isn't anything, but manufacturing, tech, and agriculture are proportionally smaller than in Ontario and Quebec. (Though I see more interesting tech positions in Van these days than I do around here in the GTA)
Especially when it comes to economic development in Northern BC or even outside the lower mainland at all, it's difficult to walk away from extractive industries.
The situation out west is indeed rough. Saskatchewan still burning coal and Alberta... Being Alberta. It's not to say we can't fix it, those are both places where you can build plenty of solar and wind power for very cheap.
These problems are very political, but also very fixable. I think (well, hope) once it becomes clear that cheap Chinese EVs are here to stay the tide will begin to turn. In terms of total lifetime cost, you can either spend 200K CAD on a Silverado or 50K CAD on a Dolphin.
alberta is alberta because provinces are pushed into competition on using their local resources.
you cant fix it without nationalizing control over BC and quebec hydro and alberta oil, and using them to canada's benefit rather than the individual provinces'
If Smith fails in her attempts to gerrymander provincial ridings, there is a small chance (based on recent polls) that the growing split between far-far-right and far-right in Alberta yields another "accidental" NDP victory next election.
They're hardly anti-O&G but they do have a slightly more reasonable position around energy mix and renewables. Investing hardcore back into the green energy sectors that Smith tried to kneecap would really improve the situation there.
(If that happens, I'll probably move back to Edmonton after 25 years away. My daughter is doing her BFA at the UofA anyways, and my whole family is still there)
That's the thing about SK... we do actually have a pretty significant hydro investment. Problem is that the untapped hydro resources are quite remote. We can't really extract a whole lot more energy out of the South Saskatchewan River without causing upstream and downstream problems.
My own research and modelling basically showed... if we're going to remain energy independent (i.e. the ability for SaskPower to power the entire province without net imports), including riding out the worst scenario (cold, dark, and calm in the winter) for a week while moving towards minimum carbon, it's going to pretty much need to be a strong mix of nuclear, solar, wind, and natural gas peakers. We keep the existing hydro capacity because it's great, but there isn't much more to be had.
Where it gets really gnarly is looking at also eliminating SaskEnergy and transitioning residential and commercial heating and cooling to electric (e.g. heat pumps) is going to require at least 3x the nuclear buildout that we've got planned PLUS significant energy retrofits to every house. Trying to move to electric-only HVAC without energy retrotifts adds like another 33% nuclear capacity requirements (+ additional solar and wind of course) and it starts to get financially infeasible.
It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there.
Related, it seems like the only pull that nuclear is getting in AB as an adjunct support for the fossil fuel industry, to help with oil sands extraction. Which just shows how distorted the political-economic system is at this point.
They’re never the first but they consistently bring new major shifts in cars to the working class, without making some major compromises to the car (BYD) or being expensive (Tesla).
They:
- Brought affordable V8 engines to the working class
- Got rid of the V8 and brought much more fuel efficient turbocharged vehicles to the working class
- Made the first and a popular hybrid SUV, which is what Americans buy
- Brought the first affordable passenger aerodynamic cars to the working class
- Brought military grade aluminum bodies to a working class truck, massively increasing fuel economy
- They obviously invented the moving car assembly line and were the first to make cars affordable
Currently they’re working on an inexpensive electric car platform that borrows some of Tesla’s manufacturing ideas (but is way less complex because Tesla is actually unable to use it on their cars), switching to 48V, and trialing a new tree-based assembly line.
And it will be a fully repairable car unlike BYD’s which transfers all impacts to the battery frame, which is safe and saves a lot of money but makes the cars impossible to repair. (BYD started as a tech company so they tend to view things to be disposable, like smartphones.)
Ford watches all the other carmakers add new features and then figures out how to make it affordable and then they spend massive marketing campaigns to normalize it with regular people.
I'm confused on the choice of Ford as a champion. Yes SUVs and trucks dominate in the US and that's Ford's focus, but I'm not sure what they learned from the commercial failures that were the Escape Hybrid and the F150 Lightning so that they will get it right and democratize EVs to the masses the second time. Or how their incremental innovations on ICE will translate to the "from the ground up" redesigns needed for a good EV. Kodak didn't fare so well in the digital camera transformation.
Also, BYD started as a battery company, not a consumer tech company. Their choice of cell-to-body integration certainly makes repairs hard, but it adds to safety, range, weight, in addition to cost. That looks to me like a very deliberate trade-off, not a sacrifice in the name of undercutting everyone. Tesla did it for their 4680 cell Model Y.
Fellow American here, I hope we do. Not because electric cars are any worse than combustion cars - they are better. But they're still cars. Electrifying them is a bandaid on the gaping wound that is our transportation infrastructure. Ideally missing out on the electrification of cars dethrones the car as the only way most people get around.
I’m pro public transportation, but if EVs are held back in the U.S., does it seem more likely that will cause public transportation to sprout up, or that people will just continue relying on ICE?
The best thing for the environment seems to be to do everything to get off ICE, including both EVs and public transport.
Falling behind on electric cars will probably not cause other options to thrive, but ideally it is a symptom of other options thriving.
Also to be clear, I have been saying "electric cars" instead of EVs because I do see EVs as a large part of the solution. Lots of areas that would not be realistically covered by public transit could close the gaps with personal electric vehicles, like e-(cargo)bikes, e-trikes, and e-scooters (along with their acoustic counterparts for those who prefer, of course). The main problem with this being a solution right now is that for most of America, the infrastructure for these looks like a helmet and thoughts and prayers. Fixing America's transportation infrastructure includes trains, and roads to ride personal vehicles everywhere.
If the Netherlands can do it, the richest nation in the world can do it.
It’ll happen eventually, it’s an economic certainty. And when it finally does it probably won’t be that bad for the American consumer buying a car.
The real loss is the international trade and the effect that’ll have on the overall economy. Mexico and Canada will already be dominated by Chinese cars and it’ll be too late to compete.
I don't know that there is. It takes ages to develop an EV-focused platform, and the lines to manufacture it. Tesla is the only American manufacturer that has already done that work, and they're circling the drain. Aside from them, there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt. All of the top-of-the-line EVs are Korean or Chinese, and the 2nd tiers are all European. America's EVs aren't even on the horizon, they'll be playing catchup for decades.
> there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt.
I drive a Chevrolet Blazer EV. Test drove a Equinox EV as well. There is the silverado EV as well. Chrysler and Ford are mostly working on plug in hybrids which is 90% of the advantages of an EV for those who charge at home (if people will is debated).
Which is to say the big-3 car makers all have EV or close enough EV cars and are making more.
A major problem is that dealers hate carrying and selling EVs. If you want to get these vehicles you either have to special order them or you have to buy used.
I think a big portion of why Tesla is so prominent is because it's relatively easy to get a Tesla almost anywhere.
*edit* I'm out of date. It looks like the dealers around me are all stocking EVs now.
You are right, looks like my local chevy dealers also have EVs on their lots. In fact, now that I'm searching this time it looks like most of the other dealers have EVs.
This wasn't the case when I searched around Dec last year.
I wonder if the shift in gas prices has caused all these dealers to start stocking EVs.
I'm actually out of date. The last time I searched (Dec last year) it was the case that it was quite hard to find any EV brand that wasn't Tesla. This appears to have changed as now I can find most EV brands in local stock.
The US specific part is that a decent portion of the population makes, at least occasionally, longer trips outside of urban centers where more limited range, longer charging stops, and the need to carefully plan routes to hit chargers (that are hopefully functioning) make ICE derived power more attractive.
I see parallels with the failed metric system transition: a voluntary shift with inconsistent policy, the impression that it's all just an elitist/foreign conspiracy, cultural/political resistance, and so on. Of the major developed economies, only Japan is lower on BEV market share. Realistically the transition will probably happen in pockets, for instance California has similar EV sales share as Germany right now.
As a European, US will probably overtake Europe on EVs soon and fast. You have two unique differences to many other countries - a lot of population lives in private houses or condos, where they can just plug in EV in a regular socket without much changes. And US has a sprawling net of private solar installations which will stimulate EVs even more as soon as people will wake up to bills they incur. And lastly US has a proper non-broken and user friendly net of charging stations, courtesy of one rocketman.
Europe on the other hand had a big headstart and squandered it (and no, Norway doesn't count, Norway's experience can't and won't be transferred to other countries). I've spent almost a year looking at the new apartment complexes in a 1 mil city at different price tiers and levels of completion. Almost no charging spots in any of them, or maybe 1-2 spots per 200 apartment building AND they are priced even higher than high cost basic concrete parking place. Public charging stations are very limited in numbers, often closed or out of service. Interop is crap, I've used a corporate EV Astra while on a business trip and the card didn't work anywhere outside of the office parking lot, which by the way is a parking for a 5 storied business center occupied by IT companies and it has exactly 1 (one) moderately crappy charging pole with 1 (one) port. I had to drive to a Ford dealership in my Opel EV and a very pleasant gentleman had to swipe his card to start charging. Oh, and no charging poles had any display or app options, it literally had red, yellow or green led light and that's all we got. And it took me 1.5 hours to top up barely 100 km of range. Now that is an expensive 45k euro EV made no earlier than 2023 with minimal wear and mileage.
In short - Europe "rode" on a wave of rich individuals buying their fun cars and able to afford all externalities for them. This population is running out or leveling. And Europe (both collectively and per-country basis) did barely anything to prepare other people, without fun car money or private houses for EV transition. For example, in my freshly constructed building there are 180 apartments and zero EV chargers. Would any of us buy EV any time soon? Especially since just the car itself usually cost more than similar ICE and there are no subsidies? Doubt it. And it is starting to show, when wildly optimistic EV transition targets are starting being pushed in the future.
> I've spent almost a year looking at the new apartment complexes in a 1 mil city at different price tiers and levels of completion. Almost no charging spots in any of them, or maybe 1-2 spots per 200 apartment building AND they are priced even higher than high cost basic concrete parking place.
Anecdotal but it’s been my experience too here in the US. I don’t have a home to plug my car in and I really don’t want to deal with these charging games where you need an app and you have to queue and then be ready to swap your car in. Then you have to keep in mind when it’s done because others are in line. It’s such a hassle that I’m not getting an EV anytime soon. Plus my current vehicle runs without issue and probably will for the next 5-8 years (or more)
> I've spent almost a year looking at the new apartment complexes in a 1 mil city at different price tiers and levels of completion.
This may be a country-specific thing. They seem to be pretty common in new-build apartment complexes in Ireland, say (I believe because there's a government grant for it).
> Especially since just the car itself usually cost more than similar ICE and there are no subsidies?
That seems to be changing now, at least for small cars. Price of id.Polo including subsidies in Ireland: 20k. Price of (unsubsidised) normal non-electric Polo: 26k. Even if subsidies were removed, these would be about the same price. (Ireland may be an unusually extreme case, because cars are subject to an emissions-based tax (VRT), but the trend is clear).
> Interop is crap, I've used a corporate EV Astra while on a business trip and the card didn't work anywhere outside of the office parking lot,
This is getting fixed, though in typical EU fashion it'll take a while. The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, brought in a couple of years ago, requires all public EV chargers to support standard contactless payments (ie they can't require a subscription or special app or whatever), but it only really applies to new equipment for now; the obligation for _existing_ equipment won't come in until the start of next year.
While America is slow, the transition is happening. There are a fair number of electric cars on the road. Some like the cybertruck are obvious, but there are a lot of cars that come in ICE or EV variants that you can't tell and people are talking. Don't lose hope.
It will happen. My guess is that Canada is BYD’s pilot into the US. They have very similar buyer characteristics and the Canadian tariff deal allows them to enter the market without taking the risks of local factories.
It won’t take much to get BYD access to the US. It’s a two-step process:
- Toss a million bucks at Trump or wait for a Democratic administration
- Build a plant in Alabama/Tennessee/South Carolina/Georgia
A million? 100M only gets you an ev advertisement on the Whitehouse lawn. It will need to be something more like Saudi Arabia's investment in ivanka, i mean the affinity group. 25M a year to his son in law gets your phone calls answered when you feel like Iran is acting up too much.
I am not as optimistic. If that doesn't happen the only candidate likely to let china do as they wilt is aoc. Vance would happily start ww3 with them. Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
> Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
I sincerely doubt the US is capable of this. Trump has lit your soft power on fire. Trying to get people to give up a superior and cheaper product is an extremely large ask.
It is less about the us being capable of it, than the us getting out of the way. Japan, India, and SK all have vested interests in preventing further concentration of Chinese mercantilist power. Saying an establishment us president would focus the fury and might of allies is a bit outdated I agree. SK survived a coup, Piland is working on it. Hungary might even pull it off. Maybe the us will right the ship as well vs overcorrect into a different sort of populist autocrat. But even then as you say; That soft power went up in flames.
The soft power that people talk about yielded instantly when used. Trump’s foreign policy has been fairly scatter shot and foolish but it has only revealed that soft power is only soft. When you attempt to exercise it you find nothing there.
The other world powers are exercising their will directly through power as power: no amount of Hollywood or America Is The Good Guy belief ever bought America a trade deal or sanction power.
The only power that America has is her Navy and the nuclear weapons under the seas. Power that cannot be summoned is not power. The illusion that it is suited American allies and her wider array of beneficiaries because it allowed them to call upon the world hegemon for aid. But America is not that sole superpower anymore so it is useful to her to know the illusion for what it is: an illusion.
Yeah... that's just not the case. The US routinely successfully exercised its soft power prior to Trump 2.0. For example it's why this news article even exists - the US (under Biden) exercised its soft power to get Canada to effectively ban Chinese EVs - otherwise they would already be here.
The news article is the news article but the reality is Canada operated under the threat of tariffs and now they have unconditional tariffs. Threatening someone with something lets you extract concessions. Using the threat removes the ability and makes it just math. China’s tariffs are more damaging than the US’s and are releasable so Canada makes deals with them.
It’s more a story of hard power than soft power since economic damage ultimately led the way.
The leaders there know that China isn't exactly a friend of liberal western democracy. They have won the current round of propoganda, but that doesn't mean they are anyone's friend either.
No, they have won the current round of foreign relations. Threats to invade numerous allies. Blatant war crimes like murdering random people on boats. Violating established and signed trade deals left right and centre. Openly soliciting and accepting bribes. Kidnapping foreign countries citizens and holding them in inhumane camps. None of this is a matter of "propaganda" - it's a matter of actual actions the US is taking.
> The leaders there know that China isn't exactly a friend of liberal western democracy.
Indeed, but this has never been a prerequisite for trade with liberal western democracies. See for example the gulf monarchies we trade with.
It is pretty much a prerequisite for extraordinary actions like successfully asking liberal western democracies to restrict trade though, and the US no longer meets it...
> Which is to say Trump failed at the current round of propaganda.
No, it really isn't. "Propaganda" merely refers to communication intended to influence. Trump failed when it came down to actual actions, not just communication. And when he failed in communication it was actual diplomacy meant to come to agreements, not merely the words meant to influence minds.
Propaganda is the least of the USes problems right now.
I suspect America will continue to be weird about China until one of three things happens:
- a new Great Power enemy is selected; it would make sense for this to be Russia, but India is also a candidate
- some sort of face-saving moral victory is achieved which allows the US to continue feeling superior and not threatened by China's capability (unclear what this might look like)
- Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
> Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
Among all Chinese leaders from the past and likely to the near future, Xi Jinping is the warmest towards US. He cherished his short stay in Iowa and his daughter graduated from Harvard.
I dont think future leaders will share that feeling.
I read an article recently that said something along the lines of “China is pausing on the idea of a BYD Mexico factory over fears of US stealing their technology.”
Both countries have been accusing each other of stealing technologies since forever, nothing here is new. No tables have been turned, unless you've been sleeping under a rock for the last three decades.
In the context of automotive technology, the tables have absolutely turned. There was nobody anywhere interested in Chinese automotive technology 10 years ago.
What company has better mass market battery technology than BYD? Who else has megawatt fast charging?
BYD sells more vehicles globally than Honda. I think that concept would have been unthinkable to the general public not very long ago.
Western media has been overwhelmingly one sided regarding state led IP theft for the last three decades. China steals western IP has been the story, and it hasn't been even a little balanced until reading this.
Of course national media is biased, that's why you read news from multiple countries so you don't end up in such echo-chambers. I'm assuming we're talking about reality here, not "as reported by US media", but I guess if it's the latter, I could see how some Americans thinks it is now irony.
They're now quite popular in the UK, along with Jaecoo, although not a huge number of them are pure-EV. Since I have been in the market for a car recently, I've been carspotting to see what's actually on the roads, and looking out for green-flash plates. VW and Tesla seem to be the carspotting winners so far. Autocar (and other reviewers) are mad about the Renault 5, which does look extremely good. I have an Abarth(!) 600E on lease-order, which I will review for HN eventually.
It is very funny that the Seagull had to be renamed Surf because Brits hate seagulls, though.
> The automaker has built over 5,700 Flash Charging stations in China in about a year, and as we reported earlier today, it is now deploying 2.4 times more charging power per month than Tesla adds to its Supercharger network.
> This will be a logistical challenge for the grid but absolutely fantastic for BYD owners in particular.
Interestingly BYD actually puts batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak" to minimise the strain on the grid. So often times cars will actually charge from that battery instead of directly from the grid.
> batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak"
I don't think that's what they'll do. Charging off peak means being able to store the entirety of the energy demand for the power station in a battery, which is going to be very expensive (assuming 20 cars charge during peak hours every day, that'd mean having to swallow the cost of 20 cars worth of battery per charging station. Good luck getting a good ROI with that).
Instead I think they'll just use the battery so that they never drain the full power of a charge when a car is charging. Drawing a megawatt of current 5% of the time is putting lots of pressure on the local grid, and it can be mitigated by having a battery with the capacity of a car battery that you charge slowly during the whole day (including during peak hour) and discharge fast when a car is charging (for instance, if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption).
> if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption)
You definitely need to have that to not load the grid with 1MW, but the question still remains what the capacity of the battery is. A charger that promises a 5 minute 1MW charge BUT which can only do it once per hour and then falls back to 200kW doesn't seem as special as a charger that actually charges a car every five minutes.
It's convenient to get going in 5 minutes. But the time you REALLY want the charger to be quick is when you are third in line to charge at that charger.
I was definitely using simplifying assumptions to get my point straight here.
Setting the actual parameters for such systems is an engineering job, I just wanted to illustrate that the goal isn't going to have the charging station off the grid during peak hours thanks to the batteries, and more about managing the burden you put on the grid.
Generally fast charging has been a much harder nut to crack than fast discharge. If you have fast charging you necessarily have fast discharge in my experience.
> And this is fantastic for EV owners in general, assuming the charging network is open to all.
Given that the job descriptions seem to include working with local subsidy programs, I sure hope the Canadian government is going to require an open standard or adding more DC chargers under existing standards.
Does anyone know if they have looked at how charging quickly impacts the longevity of the battery? Can the cells be damaged by the rapid increase in temperature and current?
Even if it did, this type of rapid charging only happens on long road trips.
I don’t specifically know for this type of battery but I’ve looked at pretty in-depth analysis of smartphone batteries (way less sophisticated battery management tech) and fast versus slow charging made very little lifespan difference. The best mitigations were fewer cycles and keeping the battery in its sweet spot (not discharging to 0% and charging to 100%)
Significant work has been done on the "dendritic" failure mode of electrodes, where crystals grow from one electrode to another and may punch through separator membranes. This has gradually increased cell lifetimes. Now it's all down to temperature. Control-loop monitoring has got a lot better than "shove X amps in there and hope for the best".
There's been a lot of study into this already and the forming consensus is that fast DC charging is less of an issue on battery longevity than was first thought. In cars with decent thermal management systems it seems to have a fairly limited effect on battery lifetime as opposed to natural calendar aging.
Fast charging appears to damage batteries less than expected. There are lots of reports of taxis which almost exclusively used fast charging with over 200,000 miles on their battery.
Of course that is normal fast charging. Flash charging is 3x or more faster, so that's unknown.
Probably a bit but here’s the thing: if charging fast is, well….faster…then people care less if they loose a little extra battery because getting it back is less inconvenient.
There’s a graph i imagine here where slow charging, you want to retain all capacity. Faster it gets, you tolerate more battery loss.
Some US politicians were proposing a total ban on allowing cars of Chinese origin into the US, which is rather extreme. They don't want to risk US nationals seeing them and wanting them.
> Detroit is doomed anyway once 9 out of 10 workers is replaced with "AI" controlled bots
As a non-American, I'd kinda assumed Detroit's car industry was already long-gone. Wasn't its industrial decline the inspiration for a bunch of dystopian films in the 80s and 90s?
I'm against BYD factories unless car parts shipped from china are not heavily tariffed. You don't want to allow them to ship entire kits from china to final assemble in Europe. You want them to buy from providers in Europe. Otherwise I'm in favor of massive tariffs on their cars to avoid dumping.
That’s the exact model they follow in Brasil - they ship over the car without seats or a steering wheel, install them in Brazil with a Chinese labour force, declare it Brazilian made, pay no tariffs on the parts or the final vehicle.
There’s an aspirational goal of at least 50% Brazilian parts, but its currently 0%.
Ban them. Beyond cars is the fact that somehow its ok to buy unregulated chinese made products following no safety standards of the EU on temu, shein, aliexpress etc allowing them to skip all the costs of producing safe consumer goods in the EU. Ban all of them or put a 1000% tariff on all of the items. To long the EU has been followed the financial interests of German industry and their dealings in China. Since that phase is over we should treat China as the hostile power it is and force cuts to trade. Not a single Euro more in trade in than export to China.
The current status quo is that the populace wants these products so badly that current rules that are supposedly about safety simply don't get enforced.
A ban would be even less effectve it doesn't come with any of the "good marketing" that safety rules and regulations do so there would be even less political will to support enforcement.
BYD's America containment policy to make Americans drool with jealousy. America will still be home to boring vanilla EVs that looked like it was stuck in the 2010s. BYD has a better chance of entering US market by offering tribute to Trump & Co over an inflexible protectionist / labor union friendly Democratic party.
So if China attacks Taiwan and NATO intervenes, how Canada will ensure BYD will not remotely brick the charging infrastructure or will not make cars suddenly speed up and crash into oncoming traffic?
Same question, but for Tesla and the proposed US invasion of Canada.
(one of those things which the POTUS says that we're all told shouldn't be taken as serious or real, as if that wasn't a massive disqualification for him)
We already have US threatening to invade for absolutely no reason while the American people stand by and keeps arguing about the scandal of the day, I think this argument has sailed for Canadians. The US is now a very unreliable business partner, nothing else.
We can get fucked on both sides but will do business with those that don't want to destroy our economy.
This is bold considering the uncertainty in the Canadian market right now.
For those not familiar with the situation...
Before Trump 2.0:
----------------
The auto sectors of Canada, U.S. and Mexico were highly integrated with parts and vehicles crossing the border at scale. There wasn't much EV production and the NA auto sector probably wasn't up to competing with the Chinese auto sector on prices, but there were steep tariffs keeping Chinese vehicles out of NA markets and many foreign ones too. The highly integrated nature of the sector was seen, by most, as a competitive advantage.
Trump 2.0:
---------
Trump wanted vehicles to be manufactured in the U.S., not Canada or Mexico. Because... reasons. He slapped sectoral tariffs (that violate CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC) on cars and parts from Mexico and Canada. His desire seems to be to cut Canada and Mexico out of the NA auto supply chain but somehow still force Canada and Mexico to buy only American, while maintaining tariffs on Chinese autos. It's not exactly easy or quick to just pick up an auto plant and move it, nor is it clear that being inside the U.S. tariff wall is better than being outside of it. These tariffs have mostly just caused the NA auto sector to become really uncompetitive right when people are starting to notice that Chinese autos are offering a lot more bang for the buck.
Canada responds:
---------------
Canada now allows in 49,000 autos to enter the country without facing the former 100% tariff rate. This was in exchange for China lifting tariffs on some Canola products. That's a small fraction of the Canadian auto market, but it's also 49,000 cars that won't be from the U.S. (or Canada). This prompted Trump to suggest that China will not allow Canada to play ice hockey anymore[1]... Hockey aside, this move has sent a message. If Trump does succeed in completely strangling the Canadian auto sector, why would Canada continue to give U.S. autos preferential access to their largest export market?
The uncertainty going forward:
-----------------------------
Is China's foothold in the Canadian market secure? Is it a bargaining chip that might be traded away, or is it permanent? Are trade talks between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico going to go so poorly that the 49,000 number gets upped significantly? China's response to this door cracking open is, evidently, to ram their foot in as fast as they can. A new EV brand or two would likely not make a huge impact in Canada, but a new rapid charging network might make itself indispensable in very short order. It's not like the U.S. has a response for this. Their main EV brand, Tesla, is poison in Canada because of Musk's links to Trump.
No, it is a marketing term relating to the chargers BYD is deploying. According to the article the chargers can charge a car with enough electricity to provide a range of 400km in around 5 minutes. Another separate, but important, factor is that these chargers apparently work very well in winter and can provide a similar charging speed at -20°C.
You must be confused with the Jeep recall where even parked cars just spotaneously catch fire.
It's insane to me how so many people bring up the idea of EVs catching fire when ICE vehicles are constantly having recalls for spontaneously catching fire.
I've had multiple recalls on multiple ICE cars advising me to not park the car near my house. I haven't with my EV.
Seems like a good plan. Canada has the third largest hydroelectric power production in the world, and quite a bit of nuclear, so let's use it properly. People talk about transmission infrastructure like it's difficult, but we're the ones who made the ~5,000 KM HVDC system that feeds the northern US from James Bay! I don't see why we can't quickly electrify transportation, it's the kind of project Canada seems to be pretty good at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_%E2%80%93_New_England_T...
I mean, this is hiding a lot of geographic reality. You're using the word Canada pretty broadly here, when the reality is that the left-half of the country past Ontario (or arguably Quebec) is pretty shit in this regard.
Quebec has that hydroelectric power production. And their power grid is cheap and pretty clean. And their government and populace is highly pro-EV and yeah, it's great.
Ontario a bit second to that but reliant on nuclear, and those nuclear plants will be going offline for maintenance and its ... a whole thing.
Under Doug Ford we just keep increasing the amount of natural gas in the mix and the prices keep going up on electricity. (This being the guy who lied his way into power claiming that under the Ontario Liberals we had "the most expensive power in North America" [again a total lie])
The rest of the country? Oof. Have you looked at the prairie provinces power generation?
Sure, but nearly half the population of Canada west of Ontario is in BC (5.0M out of 11.8M west of Ontario), and 92% of BC's electric generation comes from hydro (89%) and wind (3%). I like these numbers.
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...
The bulk of the rest of the west's population is Alberta and they generate most of their electricity from natural gas. That province is Canada's sore spot from an emissions and CO2 perspective.
Right, I meant to call out BC as a relatively positive example but didn't. I agree they're doing the right moves for now.
(I'm from Alberta originally, and fled during the Klein years. I have many ... sensitive ... spots about that place)
That said... electricity generation aside... Massive LNG terminals on the BC coast aren't exactly a positive for the planet. In fact the approval of the first by the Trudeau gov't basically blew Canada's possibility of ever meeting its international climate commitments just on its own.
Natural gas sucks.
the leaks can be improved, but I'd rather have europe and east asia burn Canadian fossil fuels than middle east and Russian ones
Yeah, I agree. We have a large and persuasive LNG industry influencing government policy.
Not a lot of critical discussion is permitted because of the sheer money at stake. So many resource corporations, their employees, towns, and a heavily lobbied government don't want to sit and have a rational discussion about, oh, say, "How and when will we ween ourselves off LNG because we should?" :-|
I get the impression that BC is in a tough spot in that between the forestry/natural gas and speculative real estate "bread", there's not a lot of other meat & cheese in the economic sandwich. Not to say there isn't anything, but manufacturing, tech, and agriculture are proportionally smaller than in Ontario and Quebec. (Though I see more interesting tech positions in Van these days than I do around here in the GTA)
Especially when it comes to economic development in Northern BC or even outside the lower mainland at all, it's difficult to walk away from extractive industries.
The situation out west is indeed rough. Saskatchewan still burning coal and Alberta... Being Alberta. It's not to say we can't fix it, those are both places where you can build plenty of solar and wind power for very cheap.
These problems are very political, but also very fixable. I think (well, hope) once it becomes clear that cheap Chinese EVs are here to stay the tide will begin to turn. In terms of total lifetime cost, you can either spend 200K CAD on a Silverado or 50K CAD on a Dolphin.
alberta is alberta because provinces are pushed into competition on using their local resources.
you cant fix it without nationalizing control over BC and quebec hydro and alberta oil, and using them to canada's benefit rather than the individual provinces'
that constitutional reform isnt gonna happen
If Smith fails in her attempts to gerrymander provincial ridings, there is a small chance (based on recent polls) that the growing split between far-far-right and far-right in Alberta yields another "accidental" NDP victory next election.
They're hardly anti-O&G but they do have a slightly more reasonable position around energy mix and renewables. Investing hardcore back into the green energy sectors that Smith tried to kneecap would really improve the situation there.
(If that happens, I'll probably move back to Edmonton after 25 years away. My daughter is doing her BFA at the UofA anyways, and my whole family is still there)
But if you keep looking past the prairies you’ll find another province, one that also has invested heavily in hydroelectric power.
That's the thing about SK... we do actually have a pretty significant hydro investment. Problem is that the untapped hydro resources are quite remote. We can't really extract a whole lot more energy out of the South Saskatchewan River without causing upstream and downstream problems.
My own research and modelling basically showed... if we're going to remain energy independent (i.e. the ability for SaskPower to power the entire province without net imports), including riding out the worst scenario (cold, dark, and calm in the winter) for a week while moving towards minimum carbon, it's going to pretty much need to be a strong mix of nuclear, solar, wind, and natural gas peakers. We keep the existing hydro capacity because it's great, but there isn't much more to be had.
Where it gets really gnarly is looking at also eliminating SaskEnergy and transitioning residential and commercial heating and cooling to electric (e.g. heat pumps) is going to require at least 3x the nuclear buildout that we've got planned PLUS significant energy retrofits to every house. Trying to move to electric-only HVAC without energy retrotifts adds like another 33% nuclear capacity requirements (+ additional solar and wind of course) and it starts to get financially infeasible.
It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there.
Related, it seems like the only pull that nuclear is getting in AB as an adjunct support for the fossil fuel industry, to help with oil sands extraction. Which just shows how distorted the political-economic system is at this point.
As an American, I'm going to be really sad when we miss this transition. Maybe there's still time?
Ford is probably going to do it.
They’re never the first but they consistently bring new major shifts in cars to the working class, without making some major compromises to the car (BYD) or being expensive (Tesla).
They:
- Brought affordable V8 engines to the working class
- Got rid of the V8 and brought much more fuel efficient turbocharged vehicles to the working class
- Made the first and a popular hybrid SUV, which is what Americans buy
- Brought the first affordable passenger aerodynamic cars to the working class
- Brought military grade aluminum bodies to a working class truck, massively increasing fuel economy
- They obviously invented the moving car assembly line and were the first to make cars affordable
Currently they’re working on an inexpensive electric car platform that borrows some of Tesla’s manufacturing ideas (but is way less complex because Tesla is actually unable to use it on their cars), switching to 48V, and trialing a new tree-based assembly line.
And it will be a fully repairable car unlike BYD’s which transfers all impacts to the battery frame, which is safe and saves a lot of money but makes the cars impossible to repair. (BYD started as a tech company so they tend to view things to be disposable, like smartphones.)
Ford watches all the other carmakers add new features and then figures out how to make it affordable and then they spend massive marketing campaigns to normalize it with regular people.
I'm confused on the choice of Ford as a champion. Yes SUVs and trucks dominate in the US and that's Ford's focus, but I'm not sure what they learned from the commercial failures that were the Escape Hybrid and the F150 Lightning so that they will get it right and democratize EVs to the masses the second time. Or how their incremental innovations on ICE will translate to the "from the ground up" redesigns needed for a good EV. Kodak didn't fare so well in the digital camera transformation.
Also, BYD started as a battery company, not a consumer tech company. Their choice of cell-to-body integration certainly makes repairs hard, but it adds to safety, range, weight, in addition to cost. That looks to me like a very deliberate trade-off, not a sacrifice in the name of undercutting everyone. Tesla did it for their 4680 cell Model Y.
Fellow American here, I hope we do. Not because electric cars are any worse than combustion cars - they are better. But they're still cars. Electrifying them is a bandaid on the gaping wound that is our transportation infrastructure. Ideally missing out on the electrification of cars dethrones the car as the only way most people get around.
I’m pro public transportation, but if EVs are held back in the U.S., does it seem more likely that will cause public transportation to sprout up, or that people will just continue relying on ICE?
The best thing for the environment seems to be to do everything to get off ICE, including both EVs and public transport.
Falling behind on electric cars will probably not cause other options to thrive, but ideally it is a symptom of other options thriving.
Also to be clear, I have been saying "electric cars" instead of EVs because I do see EVs as a large part of the solution. Lots of areas that would not be realistically covered by public transit could close the gaps with personal electric vehicles, like e-(cargo)bikes, e-trikes, and e-scooters (along with their acoustic counterparts for those who prefer, of course). The main problem with this being a solution right now is that for most of America, the infrastructure for these looks like a helmet and thoughts and prayers. Fixing America's transportation infrastructure includes trains, and roads to ride personal vehicles everywhere.
If the Netherlands can do it, the richest nation in the world can do it.
It’ll happen eventually, it’s an economic certainty. And when it finally does it probably won’t be that bad for the American consumer buying a car.
The real loss is the international trade and the effect that’ll have on the overall economy. Mexico and Canada will already be dominated by Chinese cars and it’ll be too late to compete.
> Maybe there's still time?
I don't know that there is. It takes ages to develop an EV-focused platform, and the lines to manufacture it. Tesla is the only American manufacturer that has already done that work, and they're circling the drain. Aside from them, there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt. All of the top-of-the-line EVs are Korean or Chinese, and the 2nd tiers are all European. America's EVs aren't even on the horizon, they'll be playing catchup for decades.
> there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt.
I drive a Chevrolet Blazer EV. Test drove a Equinox EV as well. There is the silverado EV as well. Chrysler and Ford are mostly working on plug in hybrids which is 90% of the advantages of an EV for those who charge at home (if people will is debated).
Which is to say the big-3 car makers all have EV or close enough EV cars and are making more.
A major problem is that dealers hate carrying and selling EVs. If you want to get these vehicles you either have to special order them or you have to buy used.
I think a big portion of why Tesla is so prominent is because it's relatively easy to get a Tesla almost anywhere.
*edit* I'm out of date. It looks like the dealers around me are all stocking EVs now.
I only know that the Chevy dealer near me has several EVs on the lot. I have no idea about elsewhere though.
You are right, looks like my local chevy dealers also have EVs on their lots. In fact, now that I'm searching this time it looks like most of the other dealers have EVs.
This wasn't the case when I searched around Dec last year.
I wonder if the shift in gas prices has caused all these dealers to start stocking EVs.
I wonder how US-specific this phenomenon is. UK dealerships don't seem to have a problem stocking them, and have been quick to pick up BYD franchises.
I'm actually out of date. The last time I searched (Dec last year) it was the case that it was quite hard to find any EV brand that wasn't Tesla. This appears to have changed as now I can find most EV brands in local stock.
The US specific part is that a decent portion of the population makes, at least occasionally, longer trips outside of urban centers where more limited range, longer charging stops, and the need to carefully plan routes to hit chargers (that are hopefully functioning) make ICE derived power more attractive.
Rivian as well - whether they're able to be successful long term or not is an open question.
It will absolutely happen. BYD is already in Mexico and the door has been opened in Canada.
I see parallels with the failed metric system transition: a voluntary shift with inconsistent policy, the impression that it's all just an elitist/foreign conspiracy, cultural/political resistance, and so on. Of the major developed economies, only Japan is lower on BEV market share. Realistically the transition will probably happen in pockets, for instance California has similar EV sales share as Germany right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country
As a European, US will probably overtake Europe on EVs soon and fast. You have two unique differences to many other countries - a lot of population lives in private houses or condos, where they can just plug in EV in a regular socket without much changes. And US has a sprawling net of private solar installations which will stimulate EVs even more as soon as people will wake up to bills they incur. And lastly US has a proper non-broken and user friendly net of charging stations, courtesy of one rocketman.
Europe on the other hand had a big headstart and squandered it (and no, Norway doesn't count, Norway's experience can't and won't be transferred to other countries). I've spent almost a year looking at the new apartment complexes in a 1 mil city at different price tiers and levels of completion. Almost no charging spots in any of them, or maybe 1-2 spots per 200 apartment building AND they are priced even higher than high cost basic concrete parking place. Public charging stations are very limited in numbers, often closed or out of service. Interop is crap, I've used a corporate EV Astra while on a business trip and the card didn't work anywhere outside of the office parking lot, which by the way is a parking for a 5 storied business center occupied by IT companies and it has exactly 1 (one) moderately crappy charging pole with 1 (one) port. I had to drive to a Ford dealership in my Opel EV and a very pleasant gentleman had to swipe his card to start charging. Oh, and no charging poles had any display or app options, it literally had red, yellow or green led light and that's all we got. And it took me 1.5 hours to top up barely 100 km of range. Now that is an expensive 45k euro EV made no earlier than 2023 with minimal wear and mileage.
In short - Europe "rode" on a wave of rich individuals buying their fun cars and able to afford all externalities for them. This population is running out or leveling. And Europe (both collectively and per-country basis) did barely anything to prepare other people, without fun car money or private houses for EV transition. For example, in my freshly constructed building there are 180 apartments and zero EV chargers. Would any of us buy EV any time soon? Especially since just the car itself usually cost more than similar ICE and there are no subsidies? Doubt it. And it is starting to show, when wildly optimistic EV transition targets are starting being pushed in the future.
> I've spent almost a year looking at the new apartment complexes in a 1 mil city at different price tiers and levels of completion. Almost no charging spots in any of them, or maybe 1-2 spots per 200 apartment building AND they are priced even higher than high cost basic concrete parking place.
Anecdotal but it’s been my experience too here in the US. I don’t have a home to plug my car in and I really don’t want to deal with these charging games where you need an app and you have to queue and then be ready to swap your car in. Then you have to keep in mind when it’s done because others are in line. It’s such a hassle that I’m not getting an EV anytime soon. Plus my current vehicle runs without issue and probably will for the next 5-8 years (or more)
> I've spent almost a year looking at the new apartment complexes in a 1 mil city at different price tiers and levels of completion.
This may be a country-specific thing. They seem to be pretty common in new-build apartment complexes in Ireland, say (I believe because there's a government grant for it).
> Especially since just the car itself usually cost more than similar ICE and there are no subsidies?
That seems to be changing now, at least for small cars. Price of id.Polo including subsidies in Ireland: 20k. Price of (unsubsidised) normal non-electric Polo: 26k. Even if subsidies were removed, these would be about the same price. (Ireland may be an unusually extreme case, because cars are subject to an emissions-based tax (VRT), but the trend is clear).
> Interop is crap, I've used a corporate EV Astra while on a business trip and the card didn't work anywhere outside of the office parking lot,
This is getting fixed, though in typical EU fashion it'll take a while. The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, brought in a couple of years ago, requires all public EV chargers to support standard contactless payments (ie they can't require a subscription or special app or whatever), but it only really applies to new equipment for now; the obligation for _existing_ equipment won't come in until the start of next year.
While America is slow, the transition is happening. There are a fair number of electric cars on the road. Some like the cybertruck are obvious, but there are a lot of cars that come in ICE or EV variants that you can't tell and people are talking. Don't lose hope.
It will happen. My guess is that Canada is BYD’s pilot into the US. They have very similar buyer characteristics and the Canadian tariff deal allows them to enter the market without taking the risks of local factories.
It won’t take much to get BYD access to the US. It’s a two-step process:
- Toss a million bucks at Trump or wait for a Democratic administration
- Build a plant in Alabama/Tennessee/South Carolina/Georgia
That’s literally all it takes.
A million? 100M only gets you an ev advertisement on the Whitehouse lawn. It will need to be something more like Saudi Arabia's investment in ivanka, i mean the affinity group. 25M a year to his son in law gets your phone calls answered when you feel like Iran is acting up too much.
I am not as optimistic. If that doesn't happen the only candidate likely to let china do as they wilt is aoc. Vance would happily start ww3 with them. Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
> Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
I sincerely doubt the US is capable of this. Trump has lit your soft power on fire. Trying to get people to give up a superior and cheaper product is an extremely large ask.
It is less about the us being capable of it, than the us getting out of the way. Japan, India, and SK all have vested interests in preventing further concentration of Chinese mercantilist power. Saying an establishment us president would focus the fury and might of allies is a bit outdated I agree. SK survived a coup, Piland is working on it. Hungary might even pull it off. Maybe the us will right the ship as well vs overcorrect into a different sort of populist autocrat. But even then as you say; That soft power went up in flames.
The soft power that people talk about yielded instantly when used. Trump’s foreign policy has been fairly scatter shot and foolish but it has only revealed that soft power is only soft. When you attempt to exercise it you find nothing there.
The other world powers are exercising their will directly through power as power: no amount of Hollywood or America Is The Good Guy belief ever bought America a trade deal or sanction power.
The only power that America has is her Navy and the nuclear weapons under the seas. Power that cannot be summoned is not power. The illusion that it is suited American allies and her wider array of beneficiaries because it allowed them to call upon the world hegemon for aid. But America is not that sole superpower anymore so it is useful to her to know the illusion for what it is: an illusion.
Yeah... that's just not the case. The US routinely successfully exercised its soft power prior to Trump 2.0. For example it's why this news article even exists - the US (under Biden) exercised its soft power to get Canada to effectively ban Chinese EVs - otherwise they would already be here.
The news article is the news article but the reality is Canada operated under the threat of tariffs and now they have unconditional tariffs. Threatening someone with something lets you extract concessions. Using the threat removes the ability and makes it just math. China’s tariffs are more damaging than the US’s and are releasable so Canada makes deals with them.
It’s more a story of hard power than soft power since economic damage ultimately led the way.
The leaders there know that China isn't exactly a friend of liberal western democracy. They have won the current round of propoganda, but that doesn't mean they are anyone's friend either.
> They have won the current round of propoganda
No, they have won the current round of foreign relations. Threats to invade numerous allies. Blatant war crimes like murdering random people on boats. Violating established and signed trade deals left right and centre. Openly soliciting and accepting bribes. Kidnapping foreign countries citizens and holding them in inhumane camps. None of this is a matter of "propaganda" - it's a matter of actual actions the US is taking.
> The leaders there know that China isn't exactly a friend of liberal western democracy.
Indeed, but this has never been a prerequisite for trade with liberal western democracies. See for example the gulf monarchies we trade with.
It is pretty much a prerequisite for extraordinary actions like successfully asking liberal western democracies to restrict trade though, and the US no longer meets it...
> They have won the current round of foreign relations.
Which is to say Trump failed at the current round of propaganda. If he had won this round you would excuse all those things.
Being a friend of liberal western democracies is not a requirement for trade. However it does influence how trade happens.
>restrict trade though, and the US no longer meets it...
Again, the US lost the current round of propaganda.
> Which is to say Trump failed at the current round of propaganda.
No, it really isn't. "Propaganda" merely refers to communication intended to influence. Trump failed when it came down to actual actions, not just communication. And when he failed in communication it was actual diplomacy meant to come to agreements, not merely the words meant to influence minds.
Propaganda is the least of the USes problems right now.
Trumps actions made Chinese propaganda much easier. They are a direct cause of losing the propaganda war.
The US has bigger problems, but the propaganda is important since it influences the future.
Agreed!
The CCP still hasn't figured out that we'll take their money and still hate them.
Western civilization has been sneaky and duplicitous for centuries, and we're good at it.
Still, if you're going to buy a car from an enemy of liberal western democracy, you might as well buy BYD over Tesla.
Idk we have a lot of protectionism around vehicle sales in the US already. I don't think it'll be easy but it could happen.
I suspect America will continue to be weird about China until one of three things happens:
- a new Great Power enemy is selected; it would make sense for this to be Russia, but India is also a candidate
- some sort of face-saving moral victory is achieved which allows the US to continue feeling superior and not threatened by China's capability (unclear what this might look like)
- Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
> Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
Among all Chinese leaders from the past and likely to the near future, Xi Jinping is the warmest towards US. He cherished his short stay in Iowa and his daughter graduated from Harvard. I dont think future leaders will share that feeling.
Nope the congressfolks from Ohio and Michigan would never allows that
I read an article recently that said something along the lines of “China is pausing on the idea of a BYD Mexico factory over fears of US stealing their technology.”
Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?
Update: link to the article I was reading: https://electrek.co/2025/03/19/chinese-authorities-delay-app...
More likely related to the slave labor in their Brazil factory [0].
I personally will not buy any Chinese EV until they fix stuff like this.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Brazil_working_conditions_...
> Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?
Why is that ironic? The US talks about stealing/preventing others from stealing stuff from them too, not sure why this would be surprising.
That was the irony, that the US accuses China of stealing IP with the assumption that US IP is superior.
Now the tables have turned and China is the country with the superior IP.
Both countries have been accusing each other of stealing technologies since forever, nothing here is new. No tables have been turned, unless you've been sleeping under a rock for the last three decades.
In the context of automotive technology, the tables have absolutely turned. There was nobody anywhere interested in Chinese automotive technology 10 years ago.
What company has better mass market battery technology than BYD? Who else has megawatt fast charging?
BYD sells more vehicles globally than Honda. I think that concept would have been unthinkable to the general public not very long ago.
> In the context of automotive technology
Ah, you're talking exclusively about cars? Still don't see the irony, but I guess the new claim you make isn't as outlandish as your initial claim.
Western media has been overwhelmingly one sided regarding state led IP theft for the last three decades. China steals western IP has been the story, and it hasn't been even a little balanced until reading this.
Of course national media is biased, that's why you read news from multiple countries so you don't end up in such echo-chambers. I'm assuming we're talking about reality here, not "as reported by US media", but I guess if it's the latter, I could see how some Americans thinks it is now irony.
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China has better execution.
China's aviation, chip, space, and military tech are weaker than those of the West.
Usually it’s better to have the best technology, but at some point execution and scale lead to having the best overall solution.
Having the best tech do not often result in the most sales.
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Any long terms Europe BYD owners? How is the build quality of their export vehicles?
Long-term reviews are available: https://driveauthority.com/is-byd-reliable-after-5-years/
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/byd/dolphin-surf/long-t...
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/byd/atto-3/long-term-re...
They're now quite popular in the UK, along with Jaecoo, although not a huge number of them are pure-EV. Since I have been in the market for a car recently, I've been carspotting to see what's actually on the roads, and looking out for green-flash plates. VW and Tesla seem to be the carspotting winners so far. Autocar (and other reviewers) are mad about the Renault 5, which does look extremely good. I have an Abarth(!) 600E on lease-order, which I will review for HN eventually.
It is very funny that the Seagull had to be renamed Surf because Brits hate seagulls, though.
Canadians also hate seagulls, so I wonder if they will do the same (although I'm not sure the Seagull was intended to come to Canada).
Re: The dead comment wondering why when Canadians largely don't live near the sea.
Seagulls, despite the name, aren't restricted to the sea. We have tons of them far from the sea (as well as on our rather large coasts).
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I own a Sealion 7 since August. Build quality is much better than European brands like BMW or Audi, it really feels premium. I'm loving this car.
What about the software side?
> The automaker has built over 5,700 Flash Charging stations in China in about a year, and as we reported earlier today, it is now deploying 2.4 times more charging power per month than Tesla adds to its Supercharger network.
Glad to hear this!
Anyone know if it's NACS or a proprietary connector?
This will be a logistical challenge for the grid but absolutely fantastic for BYD owners in particular.
> it is now deploying 2.4 times more charging power per month than Tesla adds to its Supercharger network
And this is fantastic for EV owners in general, assuming the charging network is open to all.
> In short, BYD isn’t just shipping cars to Canada – it’s planning to build and operate its own charging infrastructure
They're mastering the "don't build on someone else's foundation" philosophy. Vertical integration is a very powerful tool.
> This will be a logistical challenge for the grid but absolutely fantastic for BYD owners in particular.
Interestingly BYD actually puts batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak" to minimise the strain on the grid. So often times cars will actually charge from that battery instead of directly from the grid.
> batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak"
I don't think that's what they'll do. Charging off peak means being able to store the entirety of the energy demand for the power station in a battery, which is going to be very expensive (assuming 20 cars charge during peak hours every day, that'd mean having to swallow the cost of 20 cars worth of battery per charging station. Good luck getting a good ROI with that).
Instead I think they'll just use the battery so that they never drain the full power of a charge when a car is charging. Drawing a megawatt of current 5% of the time is putting lots of pressure on the local grid, and it can be mitigated by having a battery with the capacity of a car battery that you charge slowly during the whole day (including during peak hour) and discharge fast when a car is charging (for instance, if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption).
> if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption)
You definitely need to have that to not load the grid with 1MW, but the question still remains what the capacity of the battery is. A charger that promises a 5 minute 1MW charge BUT which can only do it once per hour and then falls back to 200kW doesn't seem as special as a charger that actually charges a car every five minutes.
It's convenient to get going in 5 minutes. But the time you REALLY want the charger to be quick is when you are third in line to charge at that charger.
I was definitely using simplifying assumptions to get my point straight here.
Setting the actual parameters for such systems is an engineering job, I just wanted to illustrate that the goal isn't going to have the charging station off the grid during peak hours thanks to the batteries, and more about managing the burden you put on the grid.
So do those batteries support fast charging AND fast discharging?
Yes. IIRC they are the same batteries in the cars.
Oh then that's like the battery swap idea but without the swapping!
Generally fast charging has been a much harder nut to crack than fast discharge. If you have fast charging you necessarily have fast discharge in my experience.
One of the wonders of vertical integration.
Tesla often does this too.
> And this is fantastic for EV owners in general, assuming the charging network is open to all.
Given that the job descriptions seem to include working with local subsidy programs, I sure hope the Canadian government is going to require an open standard or adding more DC chargers under existing standards.
Does anyone know if they have looked at how charging quickly impacts the longevity of the battery? Can the cells be damaged by the rapid increase in temperature and current?
Even if it did, this type of rapid charging only happens on long road trips.
I don’t specifically know for this type of battery but I’ve looked at pretty in-depth analysis of smartphone batteries (way less sophisticated battery management tech) and fast versus slow charging made very little lifespan difference. The best mitigations were fewer cycles and keeping the battery in its sweet spot (not discharging to 0% and charging to 100%)
Significant work has been done on the "dendritic" failure mode of electrodes, where crystals grow from one electrode to another and may punch through separator membranes. This has gradually increased cell lifetimes. Now it's all down to temperature. Control-loop monitoring has got a lot better than "shove X amps in there and hope for the best".
There's been a lot of study into this already and the forming consensus is that fast DC charging is less of an issue on battery longevity than was first thought. In cars with decent thermal management systems it seems to have a fairly limited effect on battery lifetime as opposed to natural calendar aging.
Overall it's less the lone act of moving ions and more the heat that affects battery longevity.
BYD is using, among other methods, a "3D direct refrigerant cooling system", so the batteries are dipped in phase-changing coolant.
Aside from that the cells are pre-warmed and were optimised for lower internal resistance.
Fast charging appears to damage batteries less than expected. There are lots of reports of taxis which almost exclusively used fast charging with over 200,000 miles on their battery.
Of course that is normal fast charging. Flash charging is 3x or more faster, so that's unknown.
Probably a bit but here’s the thing: if charging fast is, well….faster…then people care less if they loose a little extra battery because getting it back is less inconvenient.
There’s a graph i imagine here where slow charging, you want to retain all capacity. Faster it gets, you tolerate more battery loss.
I looked, but didn't find anything. Perhaps it's too early to tell?
There is a huge startup opportunity, steal this idea:
US Governement doesn't allow BYD imports
BUT you can lease a car from Canada for a year in US
So lease BYD a year at a time with Canadian plates, etc. to US drivers
Some US politicians were proposing a total ban on allowing cars of Chinese origin into the US, which is rather extreme. They don't want to risk US nationals seeing them and wanting them.
https://driving.ca/auto-news/driver-info/proposed-us-bill-ta...
Canadian snowbirds drive their cars and RVs into the US all the time all the way down to the southern states
There's just a limit to how long the car can be in the US
So lease for a year at a time from Canada
Musk himself was an illegal Canadian import so hey only fair lol
You see them occasionally in southern California with Mexican plates
There you go, so someone turn that into a frictionless service
Every year you just exchange the car/lease/plate whatever
Once enough people drive $5000 electric cars they will insist politicians allow them officially
Detroit is doomed anyway once 9 out of 10 workers is replaced with "AI" controlled bots
> Detroit is doomed anyway once 9 out of 10 workers is replaced with "AI" controlled bots
As a non-American, I'd kinda assumed Detroit's car industry was already long-gone. Wasn't its industrial decline the inspiration for a bunch of dystopian films in the 80s and 90s?
I'm against BYD factories unless car parts shipped from china are not heavily tariffed. You don't want to allow them to ship entire kits from china to final assemble in Europe. You want them to buy from providers in Europe. Otherwise I'm in favor of massive tariffs on their cars to avoid dumping.
That’s the exact model they follow in Brasil - they ship over the car without seats or a steering wheel, install them in Brazil with a Chinese labour force, declare it Brazilian made, pay no tariffs on the parts or the final vehicle.
There’s an aspirational goal of at least 50% Brazilian parts, but its currently 0%.
Ban them. Beyond cars is the fact that somehow its ok to buy unregulated chinese made products following no safety standards of the EU on temu, shein, aliexpress etc allowing them to skip all the costs of producing safe consumer goods in the EU. Ban all of them or put a 1000% tariff on all of the items. To long the EU has been followed the financial interests of German industry and their dealings in China. Since that phase is over we should treat China as the hostile power it is and force cuts to trade. Not a single Euro more in trade in than export to China.
The current status quo is that the populace wants these products so badly that current rules that are supposedly about safety simply don't get enforced.
A ban would be even less effectve it doesn't come with any of the "good marketing" that safety rules and regulations do so there would be even less political will to support enforcement.
BYD's America containment policy to make Americans drool with jealousy. America will still be home to boring vanilla EVs that looked like it was stuck in the 2010s. BYD has a better chance of entering US market by offering tribute to Trump & Co over an inflexible protectionist / labor union friendly Democratic party.
Also to Europe.
So if China attacks Taiwan and NATO intervenes, how Canada will ensure BYD will not remotely brick the charging infrastructure or will not make cars suddenly speed up and crash into oncoming traffic?
From Canada's perspective, China is willing to cooperate even through conflict, and the US is literally threatening to invade.
Same question, but for Tesla and the proposed US invasion of Canada.
(one of those things which the POTUS says that we're all told shouldn't be taken as serious or real, as if that wasn't a massive disqualification for him)
We already have US threatening to invade for absolutely no reason while the American people stand by and keeps arguing about the scandal of the day, I think this argument has sailed for Canadians. The US is now a very unreliable business partner, nothing else.
We can get fucked on both sides but will do business with those that don't want to destroy our economy.
This is bold considering the uncertainty in the Canadian market right now.
For those not familiar with the situation...
Before Trump 2.0:
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The auto sectors of Canada, U.S. and Mexico were highly integrated with parts and vehicles crossing the border at scale. There wasn't much EV production and the NA auto sector probably wasn't up to competing with the Chinese auto sector on prices, but there were steep tariffs keeping Chinese vehicles out of NA markets and many foreign ones too. The highly integrated nature of the sector was seen, by most, as a competitive advantage.
Trump 2.0:
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Trump wanted vehicles to be manufactured in the U.S., not Canada or Mexico. Because... reasons. He slapped sectoral tariffs (that violate CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC) on cars and parts from Mexico and Canada. His desire seems to be to cut Canada and Mexico out of the NA auto supply chain but somehow still force Canada and Mexico to buy only American, while maintaining tariffs on Chinese autos. It's not exactly easy or quick to just pick up an auto plant and move it, nor is it clear that being inside the U.S. tariff wall is better than being outside of it. These tariffs have mostly just caused the NA auto sector to become really uncompetitive right when people are starting to notice that Chinese autos are offering a lot more bang for the buck.
Canada responds:
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Canada now allows in 49,000 autos to enter the country without facing the former 100% tariff rate. This was in exchange for China lifting tariffs on some Canola products. That's a small fraction of the Canadian auto market, but it's also 49,000 cars that won't be from the U.S. (or Canada). This prompted Trump to suggest that China will not allow Canada to play ice hockey anymore[1]... Hockey aside, this move has sent a message. If Trump does succeed in completely strangling the Canadian auto sector, why would Canada continue to give U.S. autos preferential access to their largest export market?
The uncertainty going forward:
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Is China's foothold in the Canadian market secure? Is it a bargaining chip that might be traded away, or is it permanent? Are trade talks between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico going to go so poorly that the 49,000 number gets upped significantly? China's response to this door cracking open is, evidently, to ram their foot in as fast as they can. A new EV brand or two would likely not make a huge impact in Canada, but a new rapid charging network might make itself indispensable in very short order. It's not like the U.S. has a response for this. Their main EV brand, Tesla, is poison in Canada because of Musk's links to Trump.
[1]https://globalnews.ca/video/11645943/trump-warns-canada-that...
Is “flash” the blinding light the car makes when it bursts into flames?
No, it is a marketing term relating to the chargers BYD is deploying. According to the article the chargers can charge a car with enough electricity to provide a range of 400km in around 5 minutes. Another separate, but important, factor is that these chargers apparently work very well in winter and can provide a similar charging speed at -20°C.
You must be confused with the Jeep recall where even parked cars just spotaneously catch fire.
It's insane to me how so many people bring up the idea of EVs catching fire when ICE vehicles are constantly having recalls for spontaneously catching fire.
I've had multiple recalls on multiple ICE cars advising me to not park the car near my house. I haven't with my EV.
It is almost as if gasoline is not a total safe material either.
> throwatdem12311
every time.