BYD Launches Hybrids with 1,300-Mile Driving Range

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/byd-launches-hybrids-with-1-300-mile-driving-range-5a3ae139

by lxm • 2 years ago

50 112 2 years ago

wsj.com

Gasp0de2• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/SNYoe

timbit42• 2 years ago

Doesn't have the entire article.

Gasp0de2• 2 years ago

This is useless. No one wants to (or should) drive 20 hours without stopping. Car manufacturers could also start selling gasoline cars with a 200L tank but they don't, because there is no use for them.

resters7• 2 years ago

20 hours over the course of how many days? Don't assume everyone has a charger at home.

Considering that in many places there are not superchargers nearby, having additional capacity/range is a major benefit.

vel0city5• 2 years ago

This is a plug-in hybrid car. If you can't charge at home, realistically it is just going to be like any other hybrid car just maybe with a bigger gas tank and slightly better MPG. What routes are people routinely driving where they need 1,300mi between recharging and refueling?

kyawzazaw• 2 years ago

How is it useless? When the main complaints about ev driving is the mile range? Nobody is saying you have to drive 20hours continuously. It’s for when chargers aren’t available

vel0city5• 2 years ago

This isn't an EV, its a hybrid. Any talk of range anxiety or charging speeds due to charging issues is moot.

ok123456• 2 years ago

You can drive 20 hours over multiple days. For example, you could charge a commuter car once a week.

ggreer• 2 years ago

If it's a commuter car, you're plugging it in at home every night and waking up with a full charge.

jgeada2• 2 years ago

Stopping at a gas station or charger is just pure overhead. It is never something I want to do, it is just something that I have to do to keep the car running.

Maximizing the interval between these refueling stops, where I have to pay to keep my car running, is a net win to me.

Tempest1981• 2 years ago

A 200L tank wouldn't be an easy fit in most existing vehicles. (And imagine a $200+ fill up)

It's more impressive than BYD did it with a 50L tank.

atonse2• 2 years ago

While that sounds interesting on paper, what sort of problem is this solving, exactly?

Even during my childless-with-gas-car days, the most we'd drive without stopping was maybe 3 hours. I would think even professional truckers would stop once every few hours for bathroom breaks and such.

Maybe it helps people that don't live near a charger, so they'd have to charge less often?

But even then, charging a battery up to 1,300 miles would take FOREVER even on the fastest chargers.

singleshot_• 2 years ago

Google “trucker bomb,” or maybe don’t.

runako2• 2 years ago

Consider that there are still regions where rapid EV chargers are not ubiquitous, this solves the problems of range anxiety and trip length.

For a weeklong trip to a location where there are no chargers, you can have the confidence of making it there, tooling around for the week, and making it back to a place with a charger. You might not need this in your region, but I am familiar with regions in the US where this would come in handy.

atonse2• 2 years ago

Yeah this is a good point. I have never had range anxiety on the road, but have had a bit more when I get to certain destinations.

But we also haven't been to any place in the US yet where we were hundreds of miles away from a supercharger.

vel0city5• 2 years ago

But that's the case with pretty much any plug-in hybrid that already exists. This has pretty similar pure-EV range to many other plug-in hybrids.

michaelmior• 2 years ago

Note that it's a hybrid. So the 1,300 miles isn't just electric. In which case, I think the problem of range anxiety is less relevant since refueling the gas engine is likely relatively easy just about anywhere.

jcmontx• 2 years ago

charging a battery up to 1,300 miles

it's a PHEV, not a BEV

somerandomqaguy• 2 years ago

Even during my childless-with-gas-car days, the most we'd drive without stopping was maybe 3 hours. I would think even professional truckers would stop once every few hours for bathroom breaks and such.

....?

Limit is a 30 minute break every 8 in a work period. I believe it's 11 hours driving time per 24 hour period in the US. 13 hours in southern Canada and 15 hours in the northern Canada. Then another limit being 70 hours every 7 or 8 days.

IIRC it was set after studies showed that the probability of crashing increased after 11 hours of continuous driving or so, but don't quote me on that.

resters7• 2 years ago

This combined with the news that Tesla is shrinking its supercharger team is a tremendous competitive advantage. Maybe US automakers will need a 200% tariff on Chinese EVs to compete.

zug_zug2• 2 years ago

I've seen this shared a few times... and I'm not sure I get why.

I think driving range is an important metric for fully-electric vehicles since recharging isn't easy everywhere in the country.

Otherwise I think MPG is the right metric.

Not sure why driving range of a HYBRID would be a relevant metric, that would be a factor of a lot of things, like gas tank size, which doesn't pertain to efficiency/environmentalism.

skybrian2• 2 years ago

Gallons per hundred miles would be a better metric, since it would make it clearer that improving gas mileage of inefficient vehicles makes a lot more difference for gas consumption.

mikeyouse2• 2 years ago

My favorite demonstration of this is that increasing your mileage from 10mpg to 12mpg, from 20mpg to 30mpg, and from 60mpg to 1,000mpg all save the same amount of gas.

throwaway4good• 2 years ago

It has a 65 l tank and official consumption is 2.9 l / 100 km.

eyjafjallajokul• 2 years ago

It's 2.9L/100km for those who use metric.

That is 34.5km/L or 81.1MPG.

These numbers are incredible.

zug_zug2• 2 years ago

Looks like google says prius gets anywhere from 45 to 78 MPG, which feels like too wide a window.

Sounds promising but would love to see an exact apples-to-apples comparison before I get too excited.

xela79• 2 years ago

same I get with Mercedes CLA 250E over the last 40000km, drove 25640km electric only, good for average fuel consumption of 2.9L/100km

and that 250E battery is good for 60km range in summer, 40km in winter

jgeada2• 2 years ago

It is unfortunate that all this innovation is happening in China, and subject to all sorts of protective tariffs to protect the absurdly dumb and backwards thinking US automotive industry. If they can't adapt to the modern world and what customers want, they should be allowed to go bankrupt. But no, we have to keep subsidizing and protecting the ability to make yet more gargantuan SUVs.

MattGaiser3• 2 years ago

American auto industry has had several reset chances since Japanese automakers began wiping the floor with them and each time they have found themselves behind within 5-10 years. It’s pretty incredible.

Krasnol3• 2 years ago

Germany goes the same way and instead of supporting EVs and infrastructure drastically, they discuss how to roll back the phase out of combustion engine cars.

Sad to see how a country, which is so proud of their car industry, fails so spectacularly.

OtherShrezzing• 2 years ago

The British car show Top Gear had a joke about this phenomenon when discussing the size of their American car's engines:

How big's your engine? 5.7 litre Buick and a 7 litre v8 motor!
It's 160HP in the Buick
It's 200HP in the 7.0l [other American car]
How do [American car companies] get so few horsepower from these engines?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RKai81eBRE

azinman2• 2 years ago

So let’s play this out. Say China floods the US market and the US players go out of business as you suggest. What then happens to the US’s industrial base? What happens if there’s a major war (maybe even against china!) and no car factories to retool? You think a new crop of auto companies come up and then are able to compete against lower wage workers combined with gov financing?

simonbarker876• 2 years ago

This is the bit everyone misses. It’s not about protecting a backwards US or EU etc automotive OEM. It’s about stopping a government backed business models from Chinese companies wiping out the rest of the world’s auto makers in a way those companies simply can’t compete with … and then jacking up pricing in a couple of decades.

lxm• 2 years ago

Substitute "china" for "japan" and roll back the clock a few decades. Even though Toyota, Nissan and Honda are top-selling brands, Detroit spiffed up its quality controls, and a bunch of those manufacturers set up factories in the US anyways.

brianSP• 2 years ago

I haven't seen a US made car in ages in my country, US cars are too big and unsafe. They all are European or Japanese.

AnotherGoodName2• 2 years ago

Not great but let's play the other side out. Third party countries such as Australia already have over 80% of the EV market dominated by Chinese made vehicles.

If the US closes it's borders to imports it'll retain a market only fit for domestic consumption. It's cars will not be competitive internationally.

The only real way out is for the US to find a way to remain competitive full stop. Isolationism or just allowing foreign imports to dominate should not be options either way.

resters7• 2 years ago

Say China floods the US market

You mean if China produces vehicles that offer tremendous value and consumers love them? Lots of happy consumers who can spend money on other things they want.

and the US players go out of business

US automakers have been bailed out several times now and have been insulated from competitive pressures. It is inevitable that several of them will go out of business. This is not a bad thing. The valuable bits will be snapped up by other firms. (pension obligations will be another story). [^1][^2]

What happens if there’s a major war...

Healthy trade between the US and China dramatically reduces the chances of a major war. China is not run by an irrational child, its policy is influenced by wealthy business owners and its large capitalist class. Those people do not want to go to war with their best customers. [^3][^4]

(Warmongering over China is coming strictly from US hawks who are attracted to the narrative to distract attention from tough times at home.)

You think a new crop of auto companies come up and then are able to compete against lower wage workers combined with gov financing?

The US auto industry has been significantly bailed out several times. US auto industry workers are heavily subsidized by US government policies. [^5][^6][^7]

---

[^1]: https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/auto-bailout

[^2]: https://www.thebalance.com/auto-industry-bailout-gm-ford-chr...

[^3]: https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/tr...

[^4]: https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-trade-can-reduce-conflict

[^5]: https://hbr.org/2019/06/how-china-wins

[^6]: https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/chinas-capitalist-classes-th...

[^7]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bailout.asp

Dalewyn2• 2 years ago

Easy answer: The US loses and loses bigly.

The brutal fact of the matter is if the US needs to blockade Chinese cars lest the US automotive industry completely collapses on itself, the US has already lost. There is nothing worth protecting at that point; an industry that can't make first rate products can't create instruments of war that can win.

If we wanted Pax Americana to last, shit needed to change at least a few decades ago. Anyone who was paying attention to EV development would have foreseen China dominating the field.

torginus4• 2 years ago

Why would China flood the US market? Their advantage is that they can make stuff cheaper. The USA is the wealthiest country in the world, and has one of the highest median selling prices for new cars. I don't think an $10-$15k basic small car would be a bestseller there.

If you are implying that the Chinese can make cars that can satisfy the upmarket needs of US consumers, and do it significantly cheaper, then that implies the US automakers are gouging their customers or are simply incompetent. In both cases, protecting them amounts to putting shareholder interest before the interest of the common people.

aagha• 2 years ago

and no car factories to retool

Retool what?

Just because GM was able to switch from cars to tanks for WW2 doesn't mean they could do it now if they had to.

resters7• 2 years ago

Some may recall before the fall of the Soviet union when Soviet citizens were forced to buy Soviet-made cars that were laughably unreliable compared to vehicles manufactured elsewhere.

The US is entering this territory of absurd protectionism that benefits the few at the expense of everyone else. We now have 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs and surely with the rate of innovation we are seeing, they will be 200% before long.

Tesla is bizarrely focused on gigapress and making the EV high-end when the economics of a vehicle with many fewer moving parts and a simpler design should be leading us toward sub-$10K cars and trucks.

As usual, Chinese firms seem to have better engineering chops and much better practical understanding of what the market wants.

rasz• 2 years ago

before the fall of the Soviet union when Soviet citizens were forced to buy Soviet-made cars

Anyone could buy imported car, the only problem was lack of $$$ hard currency.

simonbarker876• 2 years ago

China massively subsides its automotive OEMS. To the point that the whole thing might as well be considered a public sector endeavour. The only way the US can counter this is with tariffs or subsidising way beyond what they currently are. If US customers stopped buying SUVs OEMs would stop making them.

VerminOctopus1• 2 years ago

The US does this as well. They’ve dumped billions into Tesla alone.

maicro2• 2 years ago

Wouldn't that be an argument for Americans (and others) to buy _as many_ Chinese cars as possible? Unless China is imposing export tariffs/taxes/etc. on them, this would basically be draining the subsidized money from their economy - every purchase is a chunk of that subsidized money escaping.

markus_zhang3• 2 years ago

I think geopolitics plays a heavy hand here. I don't see how the US government could negotiate or even allow Chinese EV to be sold on US soil -- and even allowing them to open factories is not a popular move -- not to say that opening factories in the US is expensive.

The more likely outcome is that the US government would seek ways to force the EU governments to remove Chinese brands from the EU market, or at least imposing a very heavy import tax, like 200%. This, of course, will deal a heavy blow to the EU car makers themselves too, but I believe the US does have enough strings to pull.

AnotherGoodName2• 2 years ago

That just means the US and EU are in collective isolationism. Will they force third party countries into this agreement to spend more on EU/US cars over Chinese ones?

80%+ of EVs in Australia are Chinese made. Will the US/EU accept they just can't make competitive cars or will they force other countries to buy their cars? https://www.drive.com.au/news/china-builds-80-per-cent-of-ne...

nextworddev• 2 years ago

If you thought Tiktok was spyware, then would you be interested in a BYD EV?

poulpy123• 2 years ago

protective tariffs are what allowed USA (and all industrial countries) to develop their industry

maicro2• 2 years ago

Hey, that sounds a lot like unbridled free market capitalism to me, which nobody in the US would ever go for. Wait a second...

xnx• 2 years ago

2 days ago. 79 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40510617

artninja1988• 2 years ago

In my experience, driving ranges of electric cars are heavily cherry picked with the best possible conditions and even then they are very generous. We'll see if someone independent can see what the driving range really ends up being

freedomben• 2 years ago

They are inaccurate, but it's not simply that they are cherry-picked. It is just extremely difficult to give an estimation when one of the main factors is grade. No matter how much grade you pick to use for your benchmark, it is going to be wrong for a lot of people.

Epa standards for MPG have had the same problem for many years. It definitely improved for most people when they stopped using a completely flat area and started having some grade changes, but it is still just a matter of where you fall on the averages for where you live and drive.

aresant• 2 years ago

Not having to waste the time, energy, and planning to go to a gas station is a major selling feature

The average miles driven on a car per year is 13,500

The median range of a gasoline automobile is ~400 miles

Assuming most people don't drive to absolute empty figure that's something like 40 trips per year to the gas station

This BYD cuts that down to ~10 trips per annum

Or framed another way you go to the gas station once every five weeks vs once a week

(1) https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mi...

(2) https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1221-janu...

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40510617

gnicholas2• 2 years ago

If I had a car that could go over a thousand miles between fill-ups, I would never fill it all the way. I’d rather not haul around half a tank of gas that I won’t need, and which marginally hurts the mileage. I also wouldn’t want to have gallons of gas sitting in the tank for months, which is what the result would be if I filled it.

Of course, this line of thinking is why I’d never buy a vehicle with this capability. I’d rather buy one with fewer features, a smaller gas tank, and/or a smaller battery.

asadotzler3• 2 years ago

If your current car tripled or quadrupled its mileage, would you also stop filling it up? Seems a silly idea to me as you never know when you're gonna want to go a little bit further than you normally do on a tank.

I drive so little that I only fill up about monthly and I could fill up weekly to 1/3rd tank to save a little bit of weight penalty, but that would be silly and a waste of all that gas station time when the gas in the tank does just fine for a month (a year might be different.)

gnicholas2• 2 years ago

There’s a difference between going from weekly to monthly and going from monthly to semi-annually. For one thing, (AIUI), it’s not good to have gas sitting in your car for more than a few months.

Also, it’s possible that during a given week you don’t go near a gas station (from where I live, if I hop on the freeway and head to the city, I don’t pass any). But it’s unlikely that if you drive for a month you’re not near a gas station at a convenient time to stop. So getting rid of the annoyance of weekly fill-ups is different from dealing with monthly fill-ups (which is not especially annoying).

reify• 2 years ago

The word Hybrid stuck out for me

My maths is not what is used to be.

A thousand miles with gasoline and 300 miles on battery = 1,300 miles

either that or you have to tow a small trailer with extra batteries

On a lighter note

Even Tiger Woods cant drive 1,300 miles so the Chinese have no chance

yatz• 2 years ago

Unless we know the details such as battery pack size and capacity of gas tank, it’s hard to imagine how big of an innovation this is. If you add Prius’s range of 550+ on 11.3 gallons gas tank and BYD’s battery powered car range of 400+ - that’s about a 1000 miles right there.

Nonetheless, if they are able to keep the cost down and gain a 30% efficiency- that’s still pretty good.

torginus4• 2 years ago

Honestly I think a fundamental misconception about Chinese EVs is that people tend to view them as a monolith, and often talk about unfair government backed and funded push to destroy Western carmakers.

The reality is that there are more than a dozen serious Chinese EV brands and they are in a cutthroat competition even for their own domestic market and most of their production goes to domestic customers. I don't think subsidies in this context should be a considered a weapon of international trade.

BYD Launches Hybrids with 1,300-Mile Driving Range

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