this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Meh, most of the BEV's available are big inefficient wallowing SUV's with hefty price tags regardless of the clean car discount.
I'm hoping some of the Chinese manufacturers will bring affordable sedan or station wagon BEV's to the market. Lighter, better aerodynamics, more range for the same battery size.
Not interested in hybrids, the worst of both worlds
I just cannot bring myself to trust my life to a Chinese car.
I have done business there. I know what it's like. It does not fill me with confidence.
Also it's one thing to be spied on by ad companies (which is bad enough) but quite another to be spied on by an adversarial dictatorship.
Exactly. Same reason I won't use Chinese brand phones.
That seems like a silly worry to me. I would be more concerned about what my own country or a corporation or the USA could do to me than China. Think about it. The USA could charge me with something like copyright violation and boom I get arrested just like that. China accuses me of a crime and the government won't do shit.
While I share your concerns about local spying, giving a foreign entity a real time feed of every street, every passing licenseplate (via on board cameras) etc. seems like a bad idea. You should absolutely be vigilant against your own government as well. But China has shown many times in the past to use whatever means available to gather data for example on dissidents living abroad. That's not a silly worry, it's a daily occurrence.
I'm sure they won't do shit, but why would I let a foreign entity that EMPHATICALLY only cares about itself access to my information when I don't have to?
Corporations spy on us too, and this is motivated by profit. The Chinese government is much more insidious. If I were a Chinese expat, for example, I should genuinely be concerned about them finding information on me and arresting me when I visit there.
You are doing that now though.
I am not a chinese expat though. I have literally zero concern that China is going to get me or do anything to me let alone care about me.
OTOH I am very afraid to attend a protest or even accidentally cross the street during a protest because I know I will go on some list and my face will be recorded by our own government.
I trust the NZ government a lot more than the CCP, and you should too.
Neither am I, but I can recognize the terrible actions taken by that government, and not want to support it in any way.
Why? Are you seriously trying to compare the New Zealand, or any western government, to the CCP? If you are, then I seriously doubt you understand quite how bad the CCP is.
Depends on the topic. I trust NZ government more than the CCP in most things but I fear the NZ government more than I fear the CCP because the NZ government exercises more power over me than the CCP does.
BTW why do you keep ignoring the other evil empire in the picture? I trust the US government less than I trust both the NZ government and the CCP.
Cough Israel, cough Saudi Arabia.
Because I don't want to be on the list of known dissidents the government keeps.
Yes.
As bad as they are they can not exert any power over me. OTOH both the NZ government and the US government can exert tremendous amount of power over me.
This is not a contest of who is worse the USA wins that hands down. This is a contest of who can harm me personally the most and who I should be afraid of the most.
You probably trust your life to chinese made parts in your current car.
Absolutely, but those are parts which are subject to overseas QA, standards and testing. For example, I have a Toyota. Chinese made parts must meet their strict quality control, must adhere to safety standards, etc.
I know first hand that, in China, regulations and standards can be bypassed with the correct payments. I do not trust that they have not done so, especially when there are other, better, choices.
We are talking about a country that has things like Melamine laced baby formula quite frequently. How did these things pass regulators and testing? Bribary.
The cars that are exported here must meet our standards.
Nio seems to be the one making waves that no one in NZ has heard of as they don't operate here. They are doing the Tesla promise of swapable batteries for real life, with a network of swap stations. Imagine buying a car and knowing you can in future swap the battery for a longer range one, one with better health, not to mention long range batteries from empty to fully charged in minutes.
The only reason I've heard of Nio was because I bought shares in them a couple of years ago. I sold when I doubled my money, which looks like it was a good move considering how low it is now!
Tom Scott made a video where he tested an automatic swap station:
https://youtu.be/hNZy603as5w
He also mentions the company is hemorrhaging money at the moment.
Yeah, that is normal for a VC funded company
That's awesome! I hadn't seen that video before. Looks pretty impressive, though I'd be curious for more details about the subscriptions. Do you get charged for use or whether you use it or not?
You lease the battery pack from them, from my understanding, so yes.
This is a stupid idea, and there's a very good reason why nobody but them is doing it.
Both swappable batteries and hydrogen are dead end technologies, at least as far as road vehicles are concerned. The economics of hydrogen will never compare to an EV, the range is only similar, and the charge rates of modern EVs have made the refuel time less significant.
With battery swaps, the logistics and capital required to build a charging station, which any EV can charge at, compared to a battery swap station which only one model of vehicle can use, mean this will never be widespread.
Meanwhile, most EVs will go from 10-80% capacity in about fifteen minutes.
Hydrogen is already being used in diesel / hydrogen hybrid trucks, but in terms of cars I don't think the technology is going anywhere fast.
In terms of battery swap, would the simple answer not be to have an open standard that different manufacturers can all use?
I normally see this quoted as 30 mins?
Try and find out the cost per KG for hydrogen, it's almost impossible. If you lease a hydrogen car, the fuel is included in the lease, and I've found it very hard to find a retail price for the stuff, but every price I have seen indicates it's phenomenally expensive, meaning a hydrogen vehicle is more expensive to run than a petrol vehicle.
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/analysis-it-is-now-almost-14-times-more-expensive-to-drive-a-toyota-hydrogen-car-in-california-than-a-comparable-tesla-ev/2-1-1519315
Here's some actual numbers, $200 usd to fill a Mirai, which will give you about 600km of range.
As to the battery swap thing, it took decades, and an EU ultimatum, for everyone to agree on a charging standard, what do you think your chances are of everyone agreeing on a battery design?
The truck companies I've seen doing hydrogen are generating the hydrogen themselves with water and electricity. I'm not sure whether it's financially viable or not, they seem to be doing it for the reduced carbon emmisions.
And yeah, you're right, a common battery standard will probably only exist if say GM or some group of Japanese car companies uses a standard across all their brands and allows this to be used by others. In other words, chances are probably pretty slim.
PHEVs are the best of both worlds for me living in an apartment with limited charging capacity.
We have two shared charges for PHEVs, they can be used for four hours maximum per day, this means that I can drive in EV mode to and from the shops as well as to my parents house, if I need to go further, I turn on Hybrid mode and it gives me great milage for a long time.