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Zamafir
@zamafir.bsky.social

Sure they are, CLTC is more generous than WLTP or EPA. Problem is lazy blogs not calling out market specific range and pricing and just lazily converting across.

nikomo
@nikomo.fi

Yeah doing the Wh to distance math, that's not happening. They're claiming the car with the bigger pack is almost twice as effecient as other cars. It is CLTC after all, people rag on WLTC already so who cares. A car with 100km range in the summer for that cheap is real good.

ken-fry.bsky.social
@ken-fry.bsky.social

Something they seem to "get": a smaller car needs less power, smaller tires and components, and a smaller battery pack. Less copper in the wiring. Fewer resources consumed. "Less is more." So far, most other manufacturers are interested only in large, powerful cars and trucks.

Zamafir
@zamafir.bsky.social

Not really corners but the Chinese branded cars in Chinese market have different safety standards than those exported to Europe, which is why the SU7 update includes significant structural improvements presumably for European crash tests.

nikomo
@nikomo.fi

Lot of gimmies off the bat. Small battery they've announced, but I'd also expect very rudimentary suspension. Also drum brakes, but you want those on EVs anyways. That makes the platform very cheap, the rest of it goes towards building the cabin. EVs are mostly just electric skateboards.

nikomo
@nikomo.fi

It's a newer company, but crash safety is such a solved problem by now that I don't foresee any issues. It might be on the basic side, but crash-activated airbags are enough after you've done your finite element analysis on the chassis to make sure the crash energy is going in the right places.

Bargain bin catgirl
@edivimo.bsky.social

I have one. I don't worry too much about cut corners because the most important parts: the battery and the engine, are pretty solid because BYD build its own batteries and an electric engine is a more reliable technology than a combustion engine.

Bargain bin catgirl
@edivimo.bsky.social

With that EV the range anxiety is the think I don't like. Here in Costa Rica, there are very few EV recharge stations and they're often out of service, so I need to plan more a trip to an unknown place. Still, recharging at home is easy, even when I'm renting, because 220V plugs are common here. 1/2

Sean Kennedy
@seanmkennedy.bsky.social

Probably not too many if you've seen any BYD cars. There is help from the government to incentivize building EVs, BYD and EV makers have scale to build them and a robust amount of market competition to push down prices to compete.