When will these cars have a breakthrough in terms of UI and privacy (let's ignore the cost for a moment).
I don't want to spend a shitload of money on an iPhone with wheels which doesn't even come with all the privacy promises apple makes and which is full of dark patterns, subscription models, and proprietary interfaces (talking about apple carplay, android auto, feature allowing you to use spotify, etc. The mere fact the car has these makes me not want to buy it, even though I would never use them. Paying money to have a hardcoded e.g. spotify client in my car is encouraging exactly the wrong design practices.).
Never. The government wants you to drive "an iPhone with wheels" because it comes with a convenient spying device. Means they don't need to put up a network of cameras to track you (some do anyway). It probably also bundles a remote kill switch just in case you offend some bureaucrat or just if you expend all your future energy ration. The suggestion to remove the antenna will probably make it fail a government "safety" inspection.
This basically describes Tesla only. Drive a different brand and you get a very similar experience to a gas powered car. Unfortunately a terrible track record on privacy is par for the course in all vehicles in 2025.
This is is not just problem for the owners but anyone else. All those cameras are privacy problem in general (sometimes used also with parked cars - like in case of Tesla).
Buy a cheap EV. Remove the antenna, privacy problem solved. Use your phone for satnav and streaming audio via bluetooth. Same as with a TV, you get it cheaper because they're expecting you to subscribe, so you don't and profit.
I live in Germany, which has its automobile industry being shredded into pieces by China, and it's for a good reason though.
China is so ahead of the west in EVs, their battery tech, supply chain and also expertise is so amazing.
In China, you can buy even a car with swappable batteries. They are also extremely cheap in comparison to the West.
For people that live in the best Chinese cities and work in a white collar job, it's very cheap as well. Cheaper than it is in America or Europe as the purchase parity there is much higher.
The West needs to drop the "free markets economics" and heavily invest and subsidize EVs, they are the future.
We can't afford to wait 10 years and lag behind so much, China will end up producing all cars in the world and that's millions of well-paid jobs.
Go to Brazil and you'll see how many BYDs are everywhere. China will unfortunately eat the entire third-world car market, which has long been a good line of profit to US/EU car manufacturers.
The car industry in Germany is being Nokia'd. The iPhone didn't win because the US had central planning.
I'm not convinced at all free market economics are holding us back. Rather other parts of the world are leapfrogging us despite not adopting it.
It was always obvious EVs would be the future. I remember being at a friend's party in Germany more than a decade ago, talking to some guests who worked in the auto industry. Told them about this new upcoming car company called Tesla and how it would transform the entire transportation sector and eat their lunch. The entire group laughed me out of the room and talked about the amazing research they were doing on "clean diesel" or something, I kid you not.
It's simply a combination of innovator's dilemma, complacency and no appetite for risk taking.
> I live in Germany, which has its automobile industry being shredded into pieces by China, and it's for a good reason though.
This is wrong. In the past German car makers made a great profit from selling cars in China and had a really good time. Now the Chinese have learned to build their own cars, which lead to a significant loss of market share for German and other foreign car makers.
But German car makers are still quite profitable. For example BMW just announced a profit of 7.68B Euros, and are still the largest exporter of cars in the USA (yes, exporter). The race is still on, and despite strong competition from Chinese car manufacturers, German car makers are everything but "shredded into pieces".
I live in Germany, and have heard the same story for years - only with Tesla instead of "Chinese cars". And look, who is dying now? Meanwhile, my ID.7 is just an excellent car.
Totgesagte leben länger, and such. The problems for German car makers were never that they could not deliver BEV, but that people would not buy them in numbers which would justify complete transition. Manufacturers like BMW, who were driving a more cautious, dual BEV/Hybrid approach for the same model did much better, and it is not like an BMW i4 is not a very good BEV.
Because of low human rights advantage, their products are much cheaper. They also send all used batteries back to China, leaving no pollution to your country. But such thing won't last forever.
People in America and Canada where there is a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs don't appreciate what they are missing out on.
For ~$60k you can buy vehicles like the Li Auto L9 that are nicer than a brand new Rolls Royce. The value for price you get blows other manufacturers out of the water.
I'd prefer standardized, swappable batteries. Imagine driving up to a gas^Wbattery station, you place your car at a certain spot and your old battery drops out and a new one is inserted and off you go, not even having to leave the car. The old battery is charged slowly, cheaply and safely, while you're on the road again 5 minutes before that one guy still filling diesel.
Awesome to see BYD continue to innovate! I wish Tesla continued to push on powertrain improvements like this rather than making a triangle shaped truck.
The triangle shaped truck was used as a testbed for several innovations: 4 wheel drive (not just for parking gimmicks), size increase of gigapressed parts, first deployment of the 4680 dry process batteries, 48V for the non-traction electrical systems, Ethernet based networking for systems interconnect.
Obvious safety concerns aside, I really worry that we are losing perspective on what the grid is capable of and the possibility that distributed technology won't get us to the ideal outcome fast enough.
The power plant nearest to me could only handle ~1000 instances of this kind of charging before it is completely saturated. The transmission (transformer) infrastructure is the biggest bottleneck. Even if Entergy built several additional gigawatts of capacity on their existing site, they'd have no way to deliver it. Tesla would have to install supercharging stations in their switch yard and figure out how to operate at much higher supply voltages.
Meanwhile, there is unidentified source of lithium pollution in Beijing, causing 20 times higher concentrations among pregnant women and newborns[0]. Guess everything has its cost, even for clean energy.
I wonder how the Lithium is entering the food chain? Given they've tested drinking water, food, and air.
Dust from processing? occupational exposure? unscrupulous recycling operations? but Lithium isn't a heavy metal so exposure would have to be ongoing.
Definitely need to test some additional cities and try and understand what's going on here. While concerning these blood levels are at 3% of the doses typically studied in psychiatric conditions. There's some potential public health benefits to low level lithium exposure actually [2] but at the same time you don't want to be unintentionally exposing pregnant folks.
China supposedly made a breakthrough in battery technology, what does that have to do with lithium pollution in China? You sound bitter about China’s progress.
I’m admittedly really out of the loop on battery tech developments but I was hopeful the industry was slowly steering towards iron/sodium batteries to replace lithium for reasons of cost and pollution. Did that hit a roadblock or is it just still very early stage?
The comments here are more interesting than the article.
Often on HN that statement would mean that someone with relevant technical experience has commented, but not this time.
Instead the comments on a fairly mundane incremental improvement in technology are full of concern trolling, whataboutism, nitpicking and cope.
This suggests to me that people are starting to absorb the information that China is ahead in this area of tech and they are emotionally uncomfortable with that reality.
'as quick as filling up a tank' is a bit exaggerated (5 min for 250 miles) but I guess it's impressive that it's getting to the same order of magnitude.
Battery charging/discharging speed is limited not by capacity but by current relative to capacity. Li-ion batteries can generally be recharged in constant current mode without significant degrading up to "4C" - 4x its mAh rating, above a low threshold below which it's not yet safe to charge at full speed, and below ~80% where it's no longer safe to charge with constant current but charging has to switch to low current constant voltage mode.
Cutting down charging time to below 1/4th standard Earth hours require material science breakthroughs(hard). While this system might be useful for charging a 4MWh train packs, or a 1MWh semi pack with a not insignificant degradation penalty, this does not accelerate charging for most EV users even if this was to be deployed widely.
The article does not really say anything about the system, but I wonder how this differ from MCS [0] which allows up 3.75MW theoretically and should (fingers crossed) begin to slowly roll out in Europe for trucks this year.
1 MW charging. Impressive if the battery can handle that on the long run. Though I guess for a lot of users it will not be used often, only on long vacation trips or similar.
I wonder myself, if countries are already having infrastructure problems, especially in summer, where also Air conditioning systems are active at full blast (I speak now from an EU perspective), how can these MW Chargers be able to handle the load?
During winter, without using carbon fossil generated energy, it's pretty unrealistic, isn't?
I believe in China EV batteries are commonly on some kind of subscription system, replaced at service intervals or when their total capacity runs low, so from a consumer point of view it doesn't matter so much if it shortens the battery life. If you’re buying the pack outright it matters more.
Yeah, I think the goal of these systems is not that everyone has a MW charger in their home. You still (relatively) slow-charge the car at night, and only use the MW chargers for infrequent highway top-ups
Pretty sure it was sacrificed by its owner (and let's be clear here, NOT founder...)
Also, people are very quick to declare something "dead" or "sacrificed". Financially speaking, Elon has become an invincible god that would be fine even if all his companies went right down to 0. TSLA is going to find some kind of bottom after which some 'institutional investor' from Saudi Arabia will bail them out....
I'm not sure whether this negativity is justified. It seems like a genuine breakthrough that could alleviate the range anxiety of many people who are interested in EVs but not fully convinced.
yes, there is a lot of work going into battery technology at present. There is news most days.
It is true that most of the announcements relate to things that are one or more of: an incremental gain, not going to make it to production at all, or not production-ready this year. That's the nature of research. However, a percentage of them are actual.
"Five minute charging" is an actual milestone. As in, it is feature parity with ICE vehicles. Once you get to that charging speed, another increase in speed gives steeply diminishing returns, and other aspects of the experience become more important.
[+] [-] Arch-TK|1 year ago|reply
I don't want to spend a shitload of money on an iPhone with wheels which doesn't even come with all the privacy promises apple makes and which is full of dark patterns, subscription models, and proprietary interfaces (talking about apple carplay, android auto, feature allowing you to use spotify, etc. The mere fact the car has these makes me not want to buy it, even though I would never use them. Paying money to have a hardcoded e.g. spotify client in my car is encouraging exactly the wrong design practices.).
[+] [-] Am4TIfIsER0ppos|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bbatha|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] timeon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mavhc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] est|1 year ago|reply
Zero auto-pilot features, no cameras, just plain Android tablet you can install .apk you want.
[+] [-] thiago_fm|1 year ago|reply
China is so ahead of the west in EVs, their battery tech, supply chain and also expertise is so amazing.
In China, you can buy even a car with swappable batteries. They are also extremely cheap in comparison to the West.
For people that live in the best Chinese cities and work in a white collar job, it's very cheap as well. Cheaper than it is in America or Europe as the purchase parity there is much higher.
The West needs to drop the "free markets economics" and heavily invest and subsidize EVs, they are the future.
We can't afford to wait 10 years and lag behind so much, China will end up producing all cars in the world and that's millions of well-paid jobs.
Go to Brazil and you'll see how many BYDs are everywhere. China will unfortunately eat the entire third-world car market, which has long been a good line of profit to US/EU car manufacturers.
[+] [-] wim|1 year ago|reply
I'm not convinced at all free market economics are holding us back. Rather other parts of the world are leapfrogging us despite not adopting it.
It was always obvious EVs would be the future. I remember being at a friend's party in Germany more than a decade ago, talking to some guests who worked in the auto industry. Told them about this new upcoming car company called Tesla and how it would transform the entire transportation sector and eat their lunch. The entire group laughed me out of the room and talked about the amazing research they were doing on "clean diesel" or something, I kid you not.
It's simply a combination of innovator's dilemma, complacency and no appetite for risk taking.
[+] [-] jansan|1 year ago|reply
This is wrong. In the past German car makers made a great profit from selling cars in China and had a really good time. Now the Chinese have learned to build their own cars, which lead to a significant loss of market share for German and other foreign car makers.
But German car makers are still quite profitable. For example BMW just announced a profit of 7.68B Euros, and are still the largest exporter of cars in the USA (yes, exporter). The race is still on, and despite strong competition from Chinese car manufacturers, German car makers are everything but "shredded into pieces".
[+] [-] lycopodiopsida|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] feverzsj|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kelseydh|1 year ago|reply
For ~$60k you can buy vehicles like the Li Auto L9 that are nicer than a brand new Rolls Royce. The value for price you get blows other manufacturers out of the water.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tjnq2usV51c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwO-OcNUzyg
[+] [-] internet_points|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chadconway|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eecc|1 year ago|reply
It’s literally a concept car in production…
[+] [-] omarforgotpwd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] porphyra|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bob1029|1 year ago|reply
Obvious safety concerns aside, I really worry that we are losing perspective on what the grid is capable of and the possibility that distributed technology won't get us to the ideal outcome fast enough.
The power plant nearest to me could only handle ~1000 instances of this kind of charging before it is completely saturated. The transmission (transformer) infrastructure is the biggest bottleneck. Even if Entergy built several additional gigawatts of capacity on their existing site, they'd have no way to deliver it. Tesla would have to install supercharging stations in their switch yard and figure out how to operate at much higher supply voltages.
[+] [-] feverzsj|1 year ago|reply
[0]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3301053/unus...
[+] [-] grumpy-de-sre|1 year ago|reply
I wonder how the Lithium is entering the food chain? Given they've tested drinking water, food, and air.
Dust from processing? occupational exposure? unscrupulous recycling operations? but Lithium isn't a heavy metal so exposure would have to be ongoing.
Definitely need to test some additional cities and try and understand what's going on here. While concerning these blood levels are at 3% of the doses typically studied in psychiatric conditions. There's some potential public health benefits to low level lithium exposure actually [2] but at the same time you don't want to be unintentionally exposing pregnant folks.
1. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c12959
2. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.128
[+] [-] RustySpottedCat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] addicted|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] martinsnow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nujabe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] highwaylights|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] voidUpdate|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|1 year ago|reply
Often on HN that statement would mean that someone with relevant technical experience has commented, but not this time.
Instead the comments on a fairly mundane incremental improvement in technology are full of concern trolling, whataboutism, nitpicking and cope.
This suggests to me that people are starting to absorb the information that China is ahead in this area of tech and they are emotionally uncomfortable with that reality.
[+] [-] reitanuki|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] numpad0|1 year ago|reply
Cutting down charging time to below 1/4th standard Earth hours require material science breakthroughs(hard). While this system might be useful for charging a 4MWh train packs, or a 1MWh semi pack with a not insignificant degradation penalty, this does not accelerate charging for most EV users even if this was to be deployed widely.
[+] [-] heisenbit|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] poisonborz|1 year ago|reply
> peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW)
Who will deliver this in the next decades at scale? In western EU you find 150W poles at most, and that's like 10 stations/120km.
[+] [-] erk__|1 year ago|reply
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Charging_System
[+] [-] incompatible|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mansoorsheriff|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Mashimo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Kuinox|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] madduci|1 year ago|reply
During winter, without using carbon fossil generated energy, it's pretty unrealistic, isn't?
[+] [-] teamonkey|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] swiftcoder|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] afiori|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] sharpshadow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway77385|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nikanj|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] orangeboats|1 year ago|reply
>The new charging architecture will be initially available in two new EVs – Han L sedan and Tang L SUV priced from 270,000 yuan ($37,330)
[+] [-] jabiko|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|1 year ago|reply
yes, there is a lot of work going into battery technology at present. There is news most days.
It is true that most of the announcements relate to things that are one or more of: an incremental gain, not going to make it to production at all, or not production-ready this year. That's the nature of research. However, a percentage of them are actual.
"Five minute charging" is an actual milestone. As in, it is feature parity with ICE vehicles. Once you get to that charging speed, another increase in speed gives steeply diminishing returns, and other aspects of the experience become more important.