Countdown until Trump stupidly bans it as it “harms” President Musk.
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biden basically did that already. ever noticed there are no byds on the road in the us?
i seem to recall it wasn’t an outright ban, but unreasonable tariffs on chinese evs specifically. a soft ban, but enough to be as effective.
The official reason for tariffs is government subsidy AFAIK, but in reality the moment they lower the tariffs, US and EU automobile industry is done.
The heavy subsidy by the Chinese government is the reason they would dominate though. The tariffs won’t ever be lifted unless they stop manipulating the prices to be lower than domestic competitors…
If China is subsidizing the vheicle and we purchase them here, that means we are drawing from China’s subsidies.
The claim is this is to save industries but the notion that was need to save specific industry is never questioned.
We’re told we’re protecting jobs but that’s bullshit. We’re only protecting the profits of capitalists.
i seem to recall it wasn’t an outright ban, but unreasonable tariffs on chinese evs specifically.
Yeah, tariffs.
Otherwise, you’d see the subcompact EVs with a 150mile range for about $9,000 US that BYD sells.
No US manufacturer can remotely compete with the cost of EVs from China. Rather than letting people buy cheap EVs, the government decided to tariff them so that they cost as much as a luxury car.
how fast would it cause the battery to degrade, though?
That’s the beauty of it. Just get a new one every two years like every other electronic device and you won’t need to worry about that. Subscription plans will be available.
I wish the batteries were modular/interchangeable. You could just pull into a station, remove the spent battery and replace it with a full one, the spent one can then just get recharged and stored at the station for the next user to change out. You could even bring some extra ones in the trunk for a long trip!
The problem is the form factor. They’re broad, flat batteries under the floor of the car, because that’s the most available space when you take out the drivetrain. If you wanted to make them swappable, you’d have to sacrifice the space under the hood or the trunk. Or the passenger space. And all that comes with their own safety concerns.
There is a company that does this in China. You lease the battery, and pay roughly the same amount as a tank of fuel to swap it, so not a cheap process, and it only works on a small number of vehicles. They’re also losing money hand over fist, and aren’t likely to last very long.
Also, a long trip is precisely when I need all my trunk space.
Yeah, I’ve thought about this too, but real use cases would be rare and maybe somewhere along highways for long trips, but you’d need a lot of stations in hard to predict locations to make it something people could use. Most of the time a simple recharge at night at the domicile would suffice. Add trying to get battery form factors standardized when companies can’t even agree on a universal charger and challenges to upgrading vehicle frames and design if such a standard was ever adopted and it just seems unsustainable.
I have a Chinese flashlight and the battery trademark is so unfortunate (soonfire) like WTF. Lol.
That dying batteries last goal is to provide you with light. How inspiring.
Stuff I’ve heard on naysays:
“The battery will blow up!!!”
No, it won’t if it’s a solid state battery - solid state batteries barely even notice such a charging rate, their temperature might change by half a degree from this monster charging rate.
“You can’t supply the power because lines”
Modern large commercial buildings already suck down this amount and more.
“The grid overall can’t take 1MW”
So, the 1,000 MW nuclear reactor can’t provide 1MW? How about a reactor station with 4 units cranking 4000 MW? How about we add another 1000 in renewables? How about another 800MW with a single gas turbine? How about adding roof solar and a battery bank below ground for the charging station to supplement the power? We haven’t even touched hydro or geo yet. Making power is not a problem, and we’ll build out the power as we need it.
Modern large commercial buildings already suck down this amount and more.
And how mamy cars in said building? How many will be allowed to charge at the same time? Should we expect same grid for large commercial buildings and rural charging stations?
If there’s literally one place in America we need to throw money at, it’s the electrical grid.
We have a decades out of date power infrastructure, Europe especially has us beat.
Just like electrification originally, and later the internet, increasing power delivery will have benefits for everyone that pay off for centuries .
Mostly we need to make the grid far smarter.
Evs should be allowed to load coordinate with the grid, so they switch on at the optimum times for grid stability in exchange for major discounts on power.
A superload like this one should have to request clearance, then the grid compensates by reducing ‘cheap ev power’ in the area, while also requesting evs configured for v2g to be ready to possibly supply.
The supercharger has a slightly higher cost per kwh to make up for this, but that is the cost of convenience.
What about defects in the machine or car? Could that lead to people being struck by lightning coming from the box next to their automobil?
If the insulation doesn’t insulate, that is a risk indeed. There would probably have to be some detection mechanism for damaged insulation on top of regular maintenance checks. I don’t know if some wiring in the insulation could measure the integrity. Maybe if the voltage would oscillate regularly, picking up on the induction of those changes might allow detecting if the shielding is inconsistent before it actually becomes threat? I only have half-remembered bits of an intro course on electrical engineering years ago, so maybe I’m way off.
this would be a massive leap for EVs
I’m sure it’s similar to how they trained DeepSeek for $5M when it was really over a $1B…
They make all kinds of false claims.
But will it smell as good as filling up a tank of gas?
