I've avoided Chinese EVs for political reasons, but it's getting harder. After the lease on my Kia EV6 ends in 6 months I can either upgrade to the new model with a whole 10% more range, or switch to one of the European brands which mostly have around half the charging speed.
The Mercedes CLA seems to be the only model that's significantly better and not totally crazy money.
Yep. Even the previous Seal was a very tempting option. If only it wasn't a privacy game over. I've also eyed the CLA, but it seems over the top. Too bad KiaHyundai is mostly doing van sized things.
Guessing the price is going to be 50% higher when it comes to market in the EU, and even so it'll still be half the price of it's only real competition in that range class
I think the tyre problem is not really a thing. EVs use synchronized motors and traction control to avoid extra wear due to uneven torque during normal driving.
My understanding is that the torque control speed is much faster though, so it's actually difficult to get the tires to slip. I can't screech my tires in my EV, but it'll do 0-60 ridiculously fast.
I can't remember if it was here or on reddit, but I read from a tyre shop / mechanic, that some EV users replace their tyres very often, because EV cars make it easy to drive very aggressive.
Anecdotally, my Kia Niro EV goes through tyres a lot faster than the two equivalent internal combustion vehicles in the family.
That said, the Niro weighs ~50% more than the other vehicles, and it has significantly higher acceleration/braking, so I'd hazard it gets driven harder on average.
Yes. Even with the ludicrous subsidies and support from governments, ICEs are a nightmare to feed and maintain. (And inefficient and massively polluting.)
(0.33 to .35 euro per kwh, .4 on an old contract, double the price in France or US, and more than legendarily expensive Switzerland. Still way cheaper than the same range in gas btw)
Bring in fast chargers or a lot of the commercial offerings into the mix and you're looking at .6 per kWh. Never mind the subscription/account bullshit a lot of companies are doing.
Regardless of that, I would still only ever buy an EV when I get a new car.
I have no argument, just an observation that for six decades I've always taken multiplier to possibly mean any positive, negative, or zero value, rational or irrational, etc.
So, one of the reasons I asked is because the motors used in EV's also are usually embedded inside transmissions which require regular oil changes (like any gearbox) and the motor itself needs to be serviced every x years - or even be replaced. These motors house Neodymium magnets - which is a rare earth metal. Although, some designs like in the earlier Teslas used coils for both the stator and the rotor using a switched reluctance design.
Plus, you have to service the steering column, wheels, bearings, etc. Not saying these are equal to ICE costs - definitely not. I just thought even EVs had to get regular maintenance as they are fundamentally the same apart from the drivetrain itself.
> Meanwhile in Germany: Let's stick to combustion engines for at least 10 more years with 500km range and a multiple of energy and maintenance costs...
BMW is heavily invested in Neue Klasse[1], the iX3 has a long waiting list and a 800KM range.
What's your spreadsheet's coefficient for emotions like fun? BMW doesn't sell cars so much as they sell a brand. It's an emotional play for buyers to need "The Ultimate Driving Machine™."
The range estimates use different test procedures. BMW's quoted range uses the WLTP test procedure. China's CLTC test procedure is much more generous.
As noted in the article:
> "The Seal 08’s claimed 1,000+ km CLTC range translates to roughly 620+ miles — though real-world figures under EPA or WLTP testing would be lower. For reference, the recently updated Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ claims 926 km under WLTP (575 miles) with its new 800V architecture and 118 kWh battery."
To compare the range properly you need to do a real world test of the vehicles on the same circuit in the same conditions.
At this point it seems EV economics will make the EU government mandates irrelevant. Electric cars will be cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. The only remaining question is how quickly rapid charging infra will be deployed which will make electric the default choice even for those of us who cannot charge at home.
High prices for electricity in Europe means that's not necessarily the case. If the cost of a tank of gasoline is the same as, or even cheaper, than an equivalent charge of the battery pack, how many people are going to be convinced to go electric?
The point of the mandates is to ensure that the EU car companies survive.
It's basic game theory, you all commit to ramping up delivery of EVs at the same time because one of you could benefit in the short term if you defect, so without the law everyone does so and everyone loses.
There's something to be said for letting the market decide. Something like a carbon tax would probably be a more economically effective way of dealing with CO2 than arbitrarily choosing this of that industry as a winner which hasn't exactly worked in terms of controlling carbon emissions. I think they are up about 80% since people started going on about them.
I'm an example of someone who doesn't fit the obvious ban combustion engine model. I own a German combustion engine car but don't use it much as I mostly get around by ebike + train.
Tax carbon rather than dictating which technology! My biggest emissions are probably gas heating and flights both of which have approx 0% tax so forcing me to get an electric car isn't really going to fix that. I'm not really a climate doomer but if you are, current policies are a good way to get doom.
Latter question: it's 92kWh, which is not unreasonable even if it's twice what some entry level cars are being sold with.
Deep dive on the pack: https://www.batterydesign.net/byd-blade-2-0-compared-to-1-0/ ; it seems they've done some good old fashioned mechanical engineering to minimize the "not cells" part of the battery while keeping the liquid cooling effective.
Cost in Europe: based on past cars .. maybe 50-100% more? Higher taxes AND higher margins.
I can find the previous Seal at £46k for the premium spec version (390kW / 83kWh): https://www.arnoldclark.com/new-cars/byd/seal/390kw-excellen... , or you can lease it for £321. UK leasing seems to be the last place it's possible to get an actual beat the market deal, which is odd.
It's just a 92kWh battery. There are many cars with 100kWh or more on the market already. And that's only a fraction of the energy stored in an average gas tank (upwards of 500kWh). A combustion car just loses most of that energy to heat from actual explosions. From a physics perspective, a normal car is a much bigger bomb than even the longest range EV.
Batteries are much less powerful bombs than fuel tanks, because they cannot produce a so great volume of gas.
Batteries are dangerous mainly as sources of fire that is difficult to extinguish. For instance extinguishing with water may actually cause an explosion, by gas produced by the decomposition of water.
Most lithium-based batteries are more dangerous than other batteries not because they are batteries, but because they use an organic electrolyte instead of a water-based electrolyte. So their electrolyte is a fuel, which may explode when the battery catches fire.
However, there is much less electrolyte in a battery than fuel in a fuel tank, so the volume of expanding gas during an explosion is much less.
I believe Elon is taking SpaceX public because he knows that Tesla is cooked. The Chinese have already won. They're pumping out cars for $10,000, 1,000 km range, and at jaw-dropping scale.
Tesla are in a strange place: people keep pointing out how decoupled the stock price is from the car business, and the stock refuses to go down. Partly because they're still selling the dream of full FSD.
Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD and going straight for the full EV crown. Japanese companies are clinging to hybrids, which they do well, but are still dependent on petrol.
America simply won't let the Chinese cars in and will continue to buy $100k gas guzzler trucks, because that's what the market demands.
Is that true though? People are currently forced to buy gas guzzlers since there are simply no practical and cheap EVs available in the United States. If Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US, it's not a given that people would still prefer ICE cars.
Indeed, the fact that they are banned suggests that the Govt knows that the domestic car industry can't compete with them.
Manufacturing was always going to be temporary in the USA. You just can't win at manufacturing cost sensitive goods when all your workers want to be highly paid.
Should have gone the Apple route - design in the USA, make in China, and use a walled garden to ensure hardware clones aren't desirable and can't run any of your apps/features.
They should by now have some kind of platooning feature where you press a button and it'll hook up to the Tesla car ahead of you for long distance journeys.
Or a 'tesla miles club', where driving 100k miles gets you perks like free insurance, theme park tickets etc.
Or something like 'free parking when you park with a friend who also has a tesla'.
Basically Tesla needs the equivalent of the iMessage blue bubble lock in effect and the 'all my stuff is on iCloud it would be too hard to move to android' effect.
No, it's because Elon understands the model of selling cars for humans to drive will be dead by the end of the next decade. With self-driving cars, the economics of buying a personal car stop making sense (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization), the cost-per-mile of a self-driving car is lower than that of a personal one, so people will switch to ride hailing over purchasing a car. This happened before around 2015 when Uber was massively subsidizing ride hailing, where it was cheaper to Uber everywhere than to buy a car. Many people realized the cost of insurance + car payment was higher than just Ubering everywhere, so they took Uber and never bought a car. And given the option of driving a car manually or letting the computer drive for you, 95% of people will choose the computer for convenience. Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.
The consumer car market will collapse 50-80% by 2040, and Tesla leadership sees this.
There is no point on trying to innovate on a dying market. It makes far more sense to move onto future markets, i.e. selling cybercabs and robots.
If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less. Add dead heading and milage will increase even further.
If cars still get about 200 000 miles of life like they do now then we'll have fewer cars, replaced more often, so still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
We'll need million mile cars to reduce that, and those don't appear to be coming from Tesla.
> If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less
People won't be driving at all.
> still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
Doesn't address my point, that consumers won't be the ones buying cars. These cars will be sold to self-driving vehicle fleet managers, not consumers.
Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
> those don't appear to be coming from Tesla
Tesla just killed its consumer vehicles Model X and Model S. Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
> > If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less
> People won't be driving at all.
Poor choice of words. There will be more cars on the roads, not fewer. Somebody will have to build those cars.
> Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
But the car market is larger, not smaller, and that's what matters. Fleet vehicles are generall not cheaper than consumer vehicles; a new city bus is now $1M and not because city transport authorities are swimming in cash.
> Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
Which is only one portion of the picture. Have they spent any effort on million mile batteries? Have they spent any effort on million mile suspensions? Have they spent any effort on million mile interiors -- nobody wants to get into a taxi with > 200 000 miles on the odo, but million mile trains and buses are fine because they're made of hard wearing material that is easy to deep clean.
Taxi drivers generally run Toyota's and Mercedes' for a reason.
Do you live in a dorm with a shared bathroom? Most of your home is only used a few times a day.
People buy cars because it's a little bubble of home away from home. They store their stuff in there, it smells like them, and they don't get stranger's vomit on a seat when they want to drive somewhere.
The "people won't buy cars because self-driving" take just completely ignores the human nature.
I understand your argument but you are neglecting the numbers.
The cost per mile for a personal EV is $0.75/mi.
The cost per mile for a shared AV EV (at scale) is $0.40/mi.
The cost savings are extremely significant. I would agree with you if these numbers were close (maybe 10% cheaper just to rideshare everywhere) but it will be nearly 50% cheaper to rideshare self-driving than own. Tens of millions of people are going to switch.
Not to mention -- as more people switch to shared AV, the cost of ownership for humans goes UP even more. Fewer human drivers mean higher insurance rates, fewer personal cars are sold so the cost per car increases, personal car repair shops close and the cost of individual car repairs increases. Etc.
Are you neglecting the numbers? Dorms barely exist in the US. You couldn't move into a dorm even if you wanted to. They were effectively illegal to construct since the 1930s, regulated to death by the 1950s, and only recently rules on SROs were relaxed to allow them.
I've seen "hacker houses" try and fail to make dorms. One I went to put three bunk beds in the basement, with 12 people living in the house. They eventually got shut down by the city for violating occupancy laws.
Sure, more people would use them, but it doesn't mean that the majority of people would trade normal housing with dedicated bathrooms (that are used only for a fraction of the day) for that. Normal housing market didn't die when dorms were legal to construct.
The savings that can be made from living in a tiny box with a shared bathroom instead of a regular American house are extreme and are much bigger than savings from not owning a car. Do you seriously think that will convince people and we will see the death of dedicated housing units in the near future?
I ran the numbers. Car ownership today @ 15,000 miles per year costs $1,003/mo. Traveling the same distance with AV would cost $520/mo. Monthly savings are $483/mo or around $5,800/yr.
See I'd agree with your argument if the savings were small, basically nobody is giving up their car for 10% savings, but these savings are very significant. Car ownership costs are the second biggest expense for most households after rent, and self-driving cars cut this in half.
I can see many households downsizing, and instead of owning 2-3 cars, only owning 1 and replacing those trips with self-driving rideshare fleet vehicles.
Especially for the younger generation - teens today drive far fewer miles than ever, which skews the costs away from car ownership even futher. I predict many will not get their own individual car, they'll just rideshare.
I know that's the sales pitch, but does the economics actually work out that way? You mention subsidized ride hailing, for example.
> (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization)
How much of that 5% is commuting, though? If there are two one-hour long windows in the day where a lot of people want to make the same trip at the same time, the fact that cars are idle in the middle of the night or day doesn't help with that. And that's also going to be peak surge pricing time.
The time economics gets worse in non-suburban areas. In high density urban areas, it's already too congested to not take public transport. In very low density areas, you might hail a ride, but you've got to wait for it to become available and arrive.
> Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.
Only in certain locations, and still dependent on occasional remote operator intervention. Tesla have been promising for years and not delivered, and every year they don't deliver makes it less likely that they ever will.
I think there's room in the market for such substitution, but it underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
Your analysis neglects the effect of self-driving vehicles on public transit. Self-driving busses and self-driving vans will vastly expand available public transit routes. Many public transit routes are not profitable (because they require a driver who costs ~$20-30/hour). Self-driving busses and vans will enable these routes, and shift people away from private vehicle long-distance commuting.
This will have a number of benefits, including increasing frequency of public transit, reduced traffic, reduced long-distance transit costs, etc.
Waymo is actually viable in pretty much the entirety of the US, they are able to expand whenever they want, but choose not to, because they're too risk averse.
When was the last time you sat in a self-driving Tesla? Today it's actually really good. It's gotten so much better over the past 5 years. I can see Tesla's self-driving business being viable by 2030.
> underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
This is the most vocal demographic of vehicle owners, but in reality they are not a significant percentage of the population. IMO most people don't like driving, and would rather not drive.
When was the last time you sat in a self-driving Tesla? Today it's actually really good. It's gotten so much better over the past 5 years.
Yeah, but people have been saying this exact thing for literally a decade. "Have you tried v18.419.18304, bro? It's so good, another six months and FSD will be solved!"
It's very relevant. In my experience, I've noticed the majority of FSD critics (either for Teslsa FSD or Waymo) have never actually tried riding in one, or last tried it nearly a decade ago when the technology was immature.
Products change. Apple maps was a terrible product a decade ago, but today it's arguably better than Google maps.
pjc50 never replied to the question, so I'm going to take that as a 'never tried it or haven't tried it recently'.
Yeah, maybe it's different now, but the Tesla stans burned their credibility many years ago.
Also, the evidence still suggests that FSD is nowhere near as safe and capable as Waymo, so I find it pretty uninteresting tbh. Tesla seems like just a washed-up former side project of a drug-addled billionaire who has moved on from trying to build things to trying to destroy them. You can spend your money however you want, but I'd rather drive myself than give Musk a penny.
This doesn't change anything. Tesla is not leading in anything anymore.
I was in China a few weeks ago, and in some cities you can already get the equivalent of Waymo. There are also dozens of huge companies working on self driving there, with very friendly laws that make it easier to get training data and test things.
There are hundreds of companies working on robots as well, and many of them are already ahead when it comes to productionizing them.
Tesla entered a new market around a decade ago, back when they had little to no competition. For years, they were ahead of everyone. But now, everything they do has competition, and in most features/products that competition is ahead of them.
The consumer car market will collapse 50-80% by 2040
Absolutely not. You're correct about Waymo having solved self-driving cars, but approximately no one is going to choose using Waymo over owning a self-driving car, just like approximately no one did that back in 2015 with Uber. Sure, a few bloggers in major urban areas did, but they represent a tiny, tiny fraction of the global market. People like owning cars, for a variety of reasons, and I don't think that's going to change. Even if I took Waymo 80% of the time, I'd still want a car. And I hate owning cars! It just beats the alternatives.
Many, many people will switch, because the cost difference is absurd. The cost per mile for a personal EV is $0.75/mi. The cost per mile for a shared AV EV (at scale) is $0.40/mi. People will save hundreds of dollars per months by not owning a car.
Millions of Americans can barely make their car payments, car payments + insurance are the second highest expense for most households, and I can absolutely see a huge percentage of this group switching to self-driving rideshare only.
I'd generally agree with you that people want to own cars, but for many infrequent drivers it does not make sense to own.
Infrequent drivers make up a minority of Americans. I wish more people used public transit and cycling for transportation, but it's not a cultural practice outside of NYC and a handful of neighborhoods elsewhere.
>Many, many people will switch, because the cost difference is absurd. The cost per mile for a personal EV is $0.75/mi. The cost per mile for a shared AV EV (at scale) is $0.40/mi. People will save hundreds of dollars per months by not owning a car.
Meanwhile legacy EV maker Tesla continues doing nothing other than silly toy projects. (Or rather hyping up silly toy projects and actually doing nothing at all)
It's not really about driving 700km (although on a road trip that would be nice) - it's about not having to think twice about driving 200km when you forgot to plug the car in last night, and it's only at 60% charge.
I have a Niro with an on-paper 460km range. If I don't habitually want to operate it outside of the 20-80% charge range, we're playing with about ~170km of range in the colder months. I live 50km from the city, so a roundtrip to a big box store costs >100km. That's not a margin where I get to not think about range.
> In a single hall at the show, there were more EV models on display than there are available ones in the entire United States. There are 17 halls at this show. Seventeen. And they all have more EVs than the US market.
> The show features 1,451 vehicles, including 181 world premieres and 71 concept cars, sprawling across a record-breaking 380,000 square meters of exhibition space at two venues. It’s now the largest auto show in the world — and it’s not even close.
No surprises here. China is already the biggest car market, both by production and units sold. And the gap is substantial. The US and EU automotive industries are getting left in the dust. A powerful industrial base and an authoritarian regime that is not completely in the dying fossil industry's pocket seem to be a winning combination this century. If anything stops them, it will be the long term consequences of the one child policy, which turbocharged the usual developed country population issues.
yeah … this is my take - Trump has pushed me to get an EV next time, and BYD is already killing it in UK. Only hope for continued EU car industry is to get the UK back in the single market (haha).
The real news is BYD is making blade2, and flash charging (10m - 97%) standard going forward, i.e. all models all price points will recharge as fast as filling gas tank. The flash charging network supposedly also open to all compatible vehicles (probably some sort of titration on older batteries). Once blade2 proliferate, flash charging throughput = can convert many small lots, i.e. convenience stores into recharge stations like gas stations. I think flash charging infra basically just has a fuckload of old blade batteries drip charging from existing electric infra, so no need for major grid overhaul = the station in box charging infra almost anywhere (i.e. if grid supports heavy industrial AC, it can support flash cabinets) is going to be as big as charging time.
E: @10m charge per car, the system basically is scaled to typical gas tank up transaction times, i.e. 10-12m per car. The battery storage sized to survive rush hour throughput then charge off grid or roof solar during lull. Basically parity with gas infra. The plan is also to second life old batteries, i.e. 60-70% capacity blade1s... lots of 1st gen bats retiring, storage is going to be essentially "free" via upcycling. AKA entire battery circular economy PRC mandated recently. The last part is what makes BYD so cracked, IIRC central gov legislated extended producer responsibility recently, i.e. BYD (largest battery producer) legally had to take back and recycle batteries - cradle to grave responsibility, instead of billions in logistics for storing/recycling/shredding they're just slapping them in flash stations to increase deprecation cycle.
Flash charging is 1MW - 1000V, 1000A. That peak power has to be provided by the grid or some energy storage that can be replenished in time for the next cars. We need cheap and smallish batteries (because burying is not always an option) to be able to install that much storage and peak power output in the MW/MWh range all over the place. We'll eventually have this but we might be talking in decades rather than years.
The 1 MW chargers installed until now (in China) are 1000 V / 1000 A.
So the charging voltage has been increased, to allow a less increase in the charging current.
I assume that the car negotiates with the charger the charging voltage and the maximum charging current, and then the charging proceeds at the limits established by the least capable of the two.
@10m per car across 2 cables = ~36 cars over 3 hour rush hour throughput (comparable to 2 gas pump) = need ~4000 kWh, 1500 kWh from battery 1800 kWh from grid = 3300 kWh. This worst case all cars 0-97% charge, realistically mixture so 3300 kWh should cover typical peak scenarios. Then midday lull for grid to refill batteries for evening rush, after again overnight charge from grid. Basically 1x2cable station can service 100-150 cars/day comparable to high-density gas pump.
In terms of physical size, battery storage smaller than gas in terms of physical infra = doesn't need to be underground (assuming long term blade safety ensured). Gas needs storage for multiple days / week so need to scale underground tank accordingly. 1500kWh scaled for rush hour = battery storage (recycled) realistically ~30 recycled blade1s slapped into racks, a couple parking spaces worth, and can be stacked vertically. It's much more space efficient (and cost efficient) than gas.
Even older supercharger sites in crumbling post-collapse USA are 1MW (4x 250KW stalls).
I think Tesla has an off grid(!) supercharger site in California with 168x 500kW peak v4 chargers.
It seems pretty doable to just spread the chargers around to meet the same throughput without causing any hot spots on the grid. The cars already have internet connected navigation systems that can react to how busy a site is and direct you to the next one.
Big deal for ubiquitous charge and moving away from charge hub model. Stop by any local convenience store and getting topped up in 10 min, no need to even consider detour time, i.e. BYD parterning up with KFC china to add flash charge - KFCs everywhere in PRC. The bigger deal is infra play, battery buffer mitigates grid hotspots (supercharger sites), so drop station in box in more places with less regulatory drama / capex in grid rework. Combining short charge time + ubiquitous/dropin charger combo that makes it work. Removes friction for drivers and much more economical for builders, can replace 60 spot supercharger site with 10 flash chargers. Instead of building out a charging hub, slap a few chargers in some existing retail lots, i.e. charge where you fastfood with minimal of permitting and construction - the hardware are cabinets on concrete ground pad- it's closer to modular appliance like industrial hvac than infra. Potential for proliferation very fast. IMO it's intermodal container moment for charging.
Just for 2 stalls you need to provide 2MW peak power (e.g. 1MW from the grid and 1MW from the battery), and you need probably at least 2MWh local storage to make sure you can always buffer the load. Add the large solar installation to "trickle charge" that battery. Every KFC needs upgrade works for the grid, the battery, and the solar panels. That's technically possible but financially not too attractive. Transformers are in short supply, construction work to upgrade every one of the lines isn't fast or cheap, and the production capacity isn't there yet to feed to the upgraded grid. That's why I said decades.
China might pull it off because they can steamroll objections and focus on individual topics to push them according to the plan. Can many other countries afford this?
Nothing ever is when you just have to type about it.
> 1MW (4x 250KW stalls)
Flash charging is 1MW per stall. You can lower the speed but then you're not flash charging.
The challenge isn't whether you can build a 1MW charger, BYD literally did it already [0] and is planning to build 4000 of them across China. The big deal is to do what OP proposed, to convert many small convenience store parking lots to flash charging type sites. The technology for a 1MW charger is there, scaling this to "many small parking lots" [1] is damn hard. It needs rebuilding the power grid for the increased capacity, and having enough local storage. Neither is cheap and fast to get.
The math doesn't work for converting "many small lots" unless you get creative about what "many" and "small" mean. Every one of those lots needs the 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar installation. It's not a problem of whether the technology exists, but scaling it in an economically feasible manner.
It's moving power requirement from industrial scale to commercial scale, not even large commercial. See BYD partnering with 10000s of PRC KFCs, if the grid can support KFCs it can support flash charge, which makes it more or less ubiquitous anywhere with reliable grid.
The modularization + battery is what makes variable scaling feasible, do not even need full 1500 kWh + 600kW grid power depending on throughput, that's based on max utilization parity with gas pumps, most systems can be smaller. System is also inherently variable mix match grid draw and battery % according to need. i.e. 500kHw battery storage and 300kWh draw for low utility areas. More battery for high utility area which going to have good grid anyway (at least in PRC). The scaling is easy because as mentioned in another comment, the system is almost drop in, commercial HVAC / applicate installation.
AND because it's functionally drop in, low footprint, there is no minimal # of piles, you can spread 1-2 piles in any lot with a couple spots to spare because you don't have high fixed capex of digging a big ass underground oil tank or permitting / earthworks for charging hub with many piles. The system scales to smallest possible increment, ~1-2 parking spots for pile charger + recycled battery. Everything on paper makes this stack MORE economical and easier to proliferate in more spatial configurations than gas / hub charging infra assuming there is grid. i.e. this won't work in off grid stations.
I'm sorry to say it but a lot of your assumptions are not accurate. Nothing is impossible but it's a lot harder than your assumptions make it look.
> if the grid can support KFCs it can support flash charge
A large KFC probably peaks at 200kW. Stoves, HVAC, lighting. A single flash charging stall could power 10 average KFCs. I hope this puts things in context.
> See BYD partnering with 10000s of PRC KFCs
BYD said they'll build 4000 charging stations [0]. China can pull it off because they can afford to "stick to the plan" no matter what and because they're able to manufacture the necessary grid components to keep up [1]. Can many other countries?
> do not even need full 1500 kWh + 600kW grid power depending on throughput
You keep doing the math that ignores one term: per stall. You either have the capacity to flash charge at every stall, or you don't and you have to find excuses for your customer and move the goalposts in this conversation. If you want to guarantee that capacity then you need no less than 1MW/stall. How you supply it doesn't matter but grid+battery have to supply it. No matter how you mix and match and balance, you'll need to install one and upgrade the other.
> the system is almost drop in, commercial HVAC / applicate installation.
Except you don't replace an existing installation, you add something that needs 10+ times the electrical capacity of everything else put together. That increase needs to be accounted for somewhere.
> you can spread 1-2 piles in any lot with a couple spots to spare because you don't have high fixed capex of digging a big ass underground oil tank or permitting / earthworks for charging hub with many piles.
You literally have to do all that work but for the grid, transformers, panels. KFCs aren't built with 2MW overhead just in case.
The already existing 1 MW chargers have internal batteries, so they do not need from the grid the peak power, but only the average power.
The average power is lower, as there are idle times between cars. Moreover, in the beginning only a few cars would be able to charge at 1 MW, so the average power will be even lower, allowing a later upgrade of the connection to the electrical grid, when fast-charging cars would become more frequent and when there would also be more EV owners, so that more cars would have to be charged per day.
My understanding from watching a video on this last night, the same Blade 2.0 cells going into the cars are going into the charging stations. And it just so happens that BYD is massively scaling the manufacturing of these.
I think this is underestimating just how much 1MW is, even allowing for the fractional duty cycle of time spent changing over who's using the charging station. 1MW of 500W solar panels is 2000 panels, for example. It's probably going to be reserved for highway stations that are also conveniently located near substations.
Although you're now making me wonder at what point it becomes more economical to ship electricity in batteries rather than do lengthy, expensive, and annoyingly controversial grid upgrades.
The 1-MW chargers have internal batteries, so they can pull a much lower average power from the electrical grid.
The connection to the electrical grid of a charging station is not dimensioned based on the charging times. It is dimensioned based on the number of cars that must be charged during a given time interval at that location (assuming a certain average charging energy).
So regardless if fast chargers or slow chargers are used, what matters is how many electric cars are used in a region and how much they travel each day.
Fast chargers can matter only indirectly, if their presence will convince more of the car users to switch to EVs, requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption.
> The 1-MW chargers have internal batteries, so they can pull a much lower average power from the electrical grid.
We go back to what I was saying earlier [0], you'll need a lot of local storage to keep that charger running at full speed without breaking the back of the distribution grid. That comes on top of the solid grid capacity at every one of those many small parking lots.
One stall alone needs 1MW maybe equally split between the grid and the local battery, for probably 50-70kWh per car. Just 3-4 of these cars charging in a parking lot would mean a constant multi-MW pull from the grid on top of the battery that also needs to be recharged from somewhere. To guarantee that you lower that average you need to have enough local storage.
The technology exists, it works really well for large dedicated charging spots. The problem is the cost of scaling when you have to deal with lots of small plots (what OP proposed). A 1kW installation with 2-3kWh battery storage is the size of a small container and we've had them for years. Why do you think every small parking lot hasn't been equipped with one?
> requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption
This doesn't scale like software. Adding production is comparatively easy, adding distribution capacity isn't. It needs a lot of equipment that's not really available [1], and a lot of construction work to expand the grid capacity.
I posted math in another comment, maybe wildly off. It's 1500 kWh of battery from 30 old blade1s / upcycled byd packs, + 600kWh of grid power (typical industrial i.e. no need for major grid changes) + 30 kWh of solar roof (i.e. minor contribution). Scaled for 3300kWh for 2-3 hour morning/afternoon rush, about 100kwH per car. 100-150 cars per day like typical gas pump. The key point is the battery storage with upcycled old batteries (i.e. 0 capex) is CHEAP and space efficient, and since storage basically free, they can simply stack more packs in future to grow buffer if required. Of course assuming long term proven safety, i.e. no laws mandating burial. Otherwise storage is couple parking spots big x 2m high. Can stack to 4-6m... but I think regulatory will probably prevent it from any higher. TLDR basically system scaled/designed to use typical grid power + size battery buffer + charging speed for gas station parity.
The 400 km in 5 minutes figure relies on finding a charger that can consistently deliver 1 MW; a prominent UK YouTuber just reported being unable to find a public charger that can consistently exceed 100 kW in all the years he's been testing electric cars.
As much as I think that electric cars are the future - and my next car will be one - there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put in place and improved before they can reach their advertised potential, just as there was for petroleum-powered cars.
I don’t doubt that’s true in the UK and Europe but this is a Chinese company at a Chinese car expo so I’d imagine that these chargers are popping up all over China.
Maybe one day the rest of the world will catch up?
Exporting their cars to Europe, Australia and New Zealand is a big part of BYD's business model; charging availability in those markets is not a fringe issue for them.
There are more than fifty EV marques competing for market share in China, and as per recent FT reporting, the Chinese government continues to subsidise the formation of new EV manufacturers. These companies have no option other than to be export-led businesses.
The word "consistently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and most of the limiting will be on the car side for average cars and average chargers.
e.g. a Hyundai Ioniq 5 might charge at above 200kW up to around 45% peaking around 260kW on a 300kW charger then taper down to about 50kW at 80% full.
But that's a relatively good car for charging, many others won't push the older, lower spec chargers that are only advertising 100-150kW to their max (which might actually be from a low of 90 to a high of 175 on the charger side).
Some chargers display whether the car or the charger is limiting the rate as people often inaccurately blame the charger.
This new BYD car, on a standard high speed charger is likely to flatline the existing 350kW chargers up to near 80% in a similar way to how the Ioniq does that on older 150kW chargers.
That 100kW claim seems pretty unlikely, or maybe it's UK only? Driving long distance in Europe I see the max ~230kW charging of the car everywhere apart from the rare times the charger's broken.
Actually, although UK provision is pretty bad, I got 235kW sustained last week in some small charging station off the M4.
For now, most of the 1-MW chargers are located in China, where they have been installed during the last half of year or so.
Therefore there is no wonder that none could be found in UK.
Because BYD and other companies have announced plans to sell such cars in the EU, I assume that they will also promote the installation of such chargers wherever they export their cars.
But I would expect that some years will pass until such chargers could become available everywhere.
I can't speak for the UK, but with my Model 3 2019 I was charging <10% to 30% @ 250kW (max the car supports) for a good 5+m in Switzerland and Italy already 4 years ago (both at Tesla Superchargers V3 and Ionity 350kW public chargers).
Of course the charger is not the only limiting factor, the grid also needs to support it. If you're in a small town with no big shops/industry, you're way less likely to have 1+MW cables installed, there was never a need for such peak capacity before.
The Mercedes CLA seems to be the only model that's significantly better and not totally crazy money.
That said, the Niro weighs ~50% more than the other vehicles, and it has significantly higher acceleration/braking, so I'd hazard it gets driven harder on average.
Bring in fast chargers or a lot of the commercial offerings into the mix and you're looking at .6 per kWh. Never mind the subscription/account bullshit a lot of companies are doing.
Regardless of that, I would still only ever buy an EV when I get a new car.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spodumene
Which means that ICE Vehicle energy and maintenance costs are a multiple of (i.e. several times that of) EV energy and maintenance costs.
And so EV energy and maintenance costs are a fraction of the ICE energy and maintenance costs.
You can debate this assertion if you like, but first you have to read it successfully.
If your argument is about the actual running costs of EVS and ICE Vehicles: also no.
I have no argument, just an observation that for six decades I've always taken multiplier to possibly mean any positive, negative, or zero value, rational or irrational, etc.
No, and that's the point of using a different word "submultiple".
> I've always taken multiplier
"a multiple of" is not the same thing as "multiplier". Or "submultiple" either. Different words have different meanings. So not relevant.
> to possibly mean any positive, negative, or zero value, rational or irrational,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multiple
multiple, noun: the product of a quantity by an integer. So no.
1/2 * x
What do you think 1/2 here is? Stick to doom.
I think it's a ratio between two integers. If you have a point to make here, you also first have to write it successfully.
What other maintenance costs can you think of?
And how much does it cost to drive 500 miles in the electric car charged at £0.08/kWh vs diesel at 50 mpg (£1.91/L) or petrol car at 35 mpg (£1.58/L)?
Plus, you have to service the steering column, wheels, bearings, etc. Not saying these are equal to ICE costs - definitely not. I just thought even EVs had to get regular maintenance as they are fundamentally the same apart from the drivetrain itself.
BMW is heavily invested in Neue Klasse[1], the iX3 has a long waiting list and a 800KM range.
[1]:https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/company/neue-klasse.html
But who am I kidding? I’m not their target audience.
As noted in the article:
> "The Seal 08’s claimed 1,000+ km CLTC range translates to roughly 620+ miles — though real-world figures under EPA or WLTP testing would be lower. For reference, the recently updated Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ claims 926 km under WLTP (575 miles) with its new 800V architecture and 118 kWh battery."
To compare the range properly you need to do a real world test of the vehicles on the same circuit in the same conditions.
It's basic game theory, you all commit to ramping up delivery of EVs at the same time because one of you could benefit in the short term if you defect, so without the law everyone does so and everyone loses.
Yes they will be, some time around now or the recent past, depending on country.
Source:
https://dmnews.co.uk/electric-cars-are-now-officially-cheape...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/17/new-uk-e...
I'm an example of someone who doesn't fit the obvious ban combustion engine model. I own a German combustion engine car but don't use it much as I mostly get around by ebike + train.
Tax carbon rather than dictating which technology! My biggest emissions are probably gas heating and flights both of which have approx 0% tax so forcing me to get an electric car isn't really going to fix that. I'm not really a climate doomer but if you are, current policies are a good way to get doom.
And that EU scheme already covers aviation, though it's phased in with exemptions etc. so doesn't cover everything.
*Technically an emission trading scheme but these are basically equivalent to carbon taxes in effect.
Deep dive on the pack: https://www.batterydesign.net/byd-blade-2-0-compared-to-1-0/ ; it seems they've done some good old fashioned mechanical engineering to minimize the "not cells" part of the battery while keeping the liquid cooling effective.
Cost in Europe: based on past cars .. maybe 50-100% more? Higher taxes AND higher margins.
I can find the previous Seal at £46k for the premium spec version (390kW / 83kWh): https://www.arnoldclark.com/new-cars/byd/seal/390kw-excellen... , or you can lease it for £321. UK leasing seems to be the last place it's possible to get an actual beat the market deal, which is odd.
Batteries are dangerous mainly as sources of fire that is difficult to extinguish. For instance extinguishing with water may actually cause an explosion, by gas produced by the decomposition of water.
Most lithium-based batteries are more dangerous than other batteries not because they are batteries, but because they use an organic electrolyte instead of a water-based electrolyte. So their electrolyte is a fuel, which may explode when the battery catches fire.
However, there is much less electrolyte in a battery than fuel in a fuel tank, so the volume of expanding gas during an explosion is much less.
He knows Tesla is on borrowed time.
Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD and going straight for the full EV crown. Japanese companies are clinging to hybrids, which they do well, but are still dependent on petrol.
America simply won't let the Chinese cars in and will continue to buy $100k gas guzzler trucks, because that's what the market demands.
Is that true though? People are currently forced to buy gas guzzlers since there are simply no practical and cheap EVs available in the United States. If Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US, it's not a given that people would still prefer ICE cars.
Indeed, the fact that they are banned suggests that the Govt knows that the domestic car industry can't compete with them.
Should have gone the Apple route - design in the USA, make in China, and use a walled garden to ensure hardware clones aren't desirable and can't run any of your apps/features.
They should by now have some kind of platooning feature where you press a button and it'll hook up to the Tesla car ahead of you for long distance journeys.
Or a 'tesla miles club', where driving 100k miles gets you perks like free insurance, theme park tickets etc.
Or something like 'free parking when you park with a friend who also has a tesla'.
Basically Tesla needs the equivalent of the iMessage blue bubble lock in effect and the 'all my stuff is on iCloud it would be too hard to move to android' effect.
The consumer car market will collapse 50-80% by 2040, and Tesla leadership sees this.
There is no point on trying to innovate on a dying market. It makes far more sense to move onto future markets, i.e. selling cybercabs and robots.
If cars still get about 200 000 miles of life like they do now then we'll have fewer cars, replaced more often, so still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
We'll need million mile cars to reduce that, and those don't appear to be coming from Tesla.
People won't be driving at all.
> still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.
Doesn't address my point, that consumers won't be the ones buying cars. These cars will be sold to self-driving vehicle fleet managers, not consumers.
Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
> those don't appear to be coming from Tesla
Tesla just killed its consumer vehicles Model X and Model S. Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
Building on the proven sales success of the Cybertruck?
> People won't be driving at all.
Poor choice of words. There will be more cars on the roads, not fewer. Somebody will have to build those cars.
> Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.
But the car market is larger, not smaller, and that's what matters. Fleet vehicles are generall not cheaper than consumer vehicles; a new city bus is now $1M and not because city transport authorities are swimming in cash.
> Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.
Which is only one portion of the picture. Have they spent any effort on million mile batteries? Have they spent any effort on million mile suspensions? Have they spent any effort on million mile interiors -- nobody wants to get into a taxi with > 200 000 miles on the odo, but million mile trains and buses are fine because they're made of hard wearing material that is easy to deep clean.
Taxi drivers generally run Toyota's and Mercedes' for a reason.
People buy cars because it's a little bubble of home away from home. They store their stuff in there, it smells like them, and they don't get stranger's vomit on a seat when they want to drive somewhere.
The "people won't buy cars because self-driving" take just completely ignores the human nature.
The cost per mile for a personal EV is $0.75/mi.
The cost per mile for a shared AV EV (at scale) is $0.40/mi.
The cost savings are extremely significant. I would agree with you if these numbers were close (maybe 10% cheaper just to rideshare everywhere) but it will be nearly 50% cheaper to rideshare self-driving than own. Tens of millions of people are going to switch.
Not to mention -- as more people switch to shared AV, the cost of ownership for humans goes UP even more. Fewer human drivers mean higher insurance rates, fewer personal cars are sold so the cost per car increases, personal car repair shops close and the cost of individual car repairs increases. Etc.
I've seen "hacker houses" try and fail to make dorms. One I went to put three bunk beds in the basement, with 12 people living in the house. They eventually got shut down by the city for violating occupancy laws.
If dorms were legal, more people would use them.
The savings that can be made from living in a tiny box with a shared bathroom instead of a regular American house are extreme and are much bigger than savings from not owning a car. Do you seriously think that will convince people and we will see the death of dedicated housing units in the near future?
See I'd agree with your argument if the savings were small, basically nobody is giving up their car for 10% savings, but these savings are very significant. Car ownership costs are the second biggest expense for most households after rent, and self-driving cars cut this in half.
I can see many households downsizing, and instead of owning 2-3 cars, only owning 1 and replacing those trips with self-driving rideshare fleet vehicles.
Especially for the younger generation - teens today drive far fewer miles than ever, which skews the costs away from car ownership even futher. I predict many will not get their own individual car, they'll just rideshare.
Living in a hostel with a shared bathroom can cut the biggest expense (rent) by more than half.
Would you?
I don't believe you. Run the numbers for me for a private room at a hostel in NYC or SF, and get back to me.
> (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization)
How much of that 5% is commuting, though? If there are two one-hour long windows in the day where a lot of people want to make the same trip at the same time, the fact that cars are idle in the middle of the night or day doesn't help with that. And that's also going to be peak surge pricing time.
The time economics gets worse in non-suburban areas. In high density urban areas, it's already too congested to not take public transport. In very low density areas, you might hail a ride, but you've got to wait for it to become available and arrive.
> Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.
Only in certain locations, and still dependent on occasional remote operator intervention. Tesla have been promising for years and not delivered, and every year they don't deliver makes it less likely that they ever will.
I think there's room in the market for such substitution, but it underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
This will have a number of benefits, including increasing frequency of public transit, reduced traffic, reduced long-distance transit costs, etc.
Waymo is actually viable in pretty much the entirety of the US, they are able to expand whenever they want, but choose not to, because they're too risk averse.
When was the last time you sat in a self-driving Tesla? Today it's actually really good. It's gotten so much better over the past 5 years. I can see Tesla's self-driving business being viable by 2030.
> underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.
This is the most vocal demographic of vehicle owners, but in reality they are not a significant percentage of the population. IMO most people don't like driving, and would rather not drive.
Yeah, but people have been saying this exact thing for literally a decade. "Have you tried v18.419.18304, bro? It's so good, another six months and FSD will be solved!"
Lunacy.
Products change. Apple maps was a terrible product a decade ago, but today it's arguably better than Google maps.
pjc50 never replied to the question, so I'm going to take that as a 'never tried it or haven't tried it recently'.
Also, the evidence still suggests that FSD is nowhere near as safe and capable as Waymo, so I find it pretty uninteresting tbh. Tesla seems like just a washed-up former side project of a drug-addled billionaire who has moved on from trying to build things to trying to destroy them. You can spend your money however you want, but I'd rather drive myself than give Musk a penny.
I was in China a few weeks ago, and in some cities you can already get the equivalent of Waymo. There are also dozens of huge companies working on self driving there, with very friendly laws that make it easier to get training data and test things.
There are hundreds of companies working on robots as well, and many of them are already ahead when it comes to productionizing them.
Tesla entered a new market around a decade ago, back when they had little to no competition. For years, they were ahead of everyone. But now, everything they do has competition, and in most features/products that competition is ahead of them.
Their valuation doesn't make any sense.
Absolutely not. You're correct about Waymo having solved self-driving cars, but approximately no one is going to choose using Waymo over owning a self-driving car, just like approximately no one did that back in 2015 with Uber. Sure, a few bloggers in major urban areas did, but they represent a tiny, tiny fraction of the global market. People like owning cars, for a variety of reasons, and I don't think that's going to change. Even if I took Waymo 80% of the time, I'd still want a car. And I hate owning cars! It just beats the alternatives.
Millions of Americans can barely make their car payments, car payments + insurance are the second highest expense for most households, and I can absolutely see a huge percentage of this group switching to self-driving rideshare only.
I'd generally agree with you that people want to own cars, but for many infrequent drivers it does not make sense to own.
What's the cost per mile at scale for a train?
Meanwhile legacy EV maker Tesla continues doing nothing other than silly toy projects. (Or rather hyping up silly toy projects and actually doing nothing at all)
It's really rare for me to drive 700km in one day. What kind of commute do you have?
I have a Niro with an on-paper 460km range. If I don't habitually want to operate it outside of the 20-80% charge range, we're playing with about ~170km of range in the colder months. I live 50km from the city, so a roundtrip to a big box store costs >100km. That's not a margin where I get to not think about range.
The same site has an overview post:
https://electrek.co/2026/04/26/beijing-auto-show-2026-insane...
> In a single hall at the show, there were more EV models on display than there are available ones in the entire United States. There are 17 halls at this show. Seventeen. And they all have more EVs than the US market.
> The show features 1,451 vehicles, including 181 world premieres and 71 concept cars, sprawling across a record-breaking 380,000 square meters of exhibition space at two venues. It’s now the largest auto show in the world — and it’s not even close.
Looking back, I wonder if we will see this period as similar to what the 1957 Suez crisis did to the UK.
Edit: Spelling
E: @10m charge per car, the system basically is scaled to typical gas tank up transaction times, i.e. 10-12m per car. The battery storage sized to survive rush hour throughput then charge off grid or roof solar during lull. Basically parity with gas infra. The plan is also to second life old batteries, i.e. 60-70% capacity blade1s... lots of 1st gen bats retiring, storage is going to be essentially "free" via upcycling. AKA entire battery circular economy PRC mandated recently. The last part is what makes BYD so cracked, IIRC central gov legislated extended producer responsibility recently, i.e. BYD (largest battery producer) legally had to take back and recycle batteries - cradle to grave responsibility, instead of billions in logistics for storing/recycling/shredding they're just slapping them in flash stations to increase deprecation cycle.
Or, why not, maybe we need fewer cars.
So the charging voltage has been increased, to allow a less increase in the charging current.
I assume that the car negotiates with the charger the charging voltage and the maximum charging current, and then the charging proceeds at the limits established by the least capable of the two.
1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar canopy (if weather allows).
@10m per car across 2 cables = ~36 cars over 3 hour rush hour throughput (comparable to 2 gas pump) = need ~4000 kWh, 1500 kWh from battery 1800 kWh from grid = 3300 kWh. This worst case all cars 0-97% charge, realistically mixture so 3300 kWh should cover typical peak scenarios. Then midday lull for grid to refill batteries for evening rush, after again overnight charge from grid. Basically 1x2cable station can service 100-150 cars/day comparable to high-density gas pump.
In terms of physical size, battery storage smaller than gas in terms of physical infra = doesn't need to be underground (assuming long term blade safety ensured). Gas needs storage for multiple days / week so need to scale underground tank accordingly. 1500kWh scaled for rush hour = battery storage (recycled) realistically ~30 recycled blade1s slapped into racks, a couple parking spaces worth, and can be stacked vertically. It's much more space efficient (and cost efficient) than gas.
Even older supercharger sites in crumbling post-collapse USA are 1MW (4x 250KW stalls).
I think Tesla has an off grid(!) supercharger site in California with 168x 500kW peak v4 chargers.
It seems pretty doable to just spread the chargers around to meet the same throughput without causing any hot spots on the grid. The cars already have internet connected navigation systems that can react to how busy a site is and direct you to the next one.
That's exactly where I flagged the challenge earlier to which you replied that the math is easy.
>> 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar canopy
Just for 2 stalls you need to provide 2MW peak power (e.g. 1MW from the grid and 1MW from the battery), and you need probably at least 2MWh local storage to make sure you can always buffer the load. Add the large solar installation to "trickle charge" that battery. Every KFC needs upgrade works for the grid, the battery, and the solar panels. That's technically possible but financially not too attractive. Transformers are in short supply, construction work to upgrade every one of the lines isn't fast or cheap, and the production capacity isn't there yet to feed to the upgraded grid. That's why I said decades.
China might pull it off because they can steamroll objections and focus on individual topics to push them according to the plan. Can many other countries afford this?
Nothing ever is when you just have to type about it.
> 1MW (4x 250KW stalls)
Flash charging is 1MW per stall. You can lower the speed but then you're not flash charging.
The challenge isn't whether you can build a 1MW charger, BYD literally did it already [0] and is planning to build 4000 of them across China. The big deal is to do what OP proposed, to convert many small convenience store parking lots to flash charging type sites. The technology for a 1MW charger is there, scaling this to "many small parking lots" [1] is damn hard. It needs rebuilding the power grid for the increased capacity, and having enough local storage. Neither is cheap and fast to get.
[0] https://www.byd.com/mea/news-list/byd-unveils-super-e-platfo...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932032
> 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar canopy
The math doesn't work for converting "many small lots" unless you get creative about what "many" and "small" mean. Every one of those lots needs the 1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar installation. It's not a problem of whether the technology exists, but scaling it in an economically feasible manner.
The modularization + battery is what makes variable scaling feasible, do not even need full 1500 kWh + 600kW grid power depending on throughput, that's based on max utilization parity with gas pumps, most systems can be smaller. System is also inherently variable mix match grid draw and battery % according to need. i.e. 500kHw battery storage and 300kWh draw for low utility areas. More battery for high utility area which going to have good grid anyway (at least in PRC). The scaling is easy because as mentioned in another comment, the system is almost drop in, commercial HVAC / applicate installation.
AND because it's functionally drop in, low footprint, there is no minimal # of piles, you can spread 1-2 piles in any lot with a couple spots to spare because you don't have high fixed capex of digging a big ass underground oil tank or permitting / earthworks for charging hub with many piles. The system scales to smallest possible increment, ~1-2 parking spots for pile charger + recycled battery. Everything on paper makes this stack MORE economical and easier to proliferate in more spatial configurations than gas / hub charging infra assuming there is grid. i.e. this won't work in off grid stations.
> if the grid can support KFCs it can support flash charge
A large KFC probably peaks at 200kW. Stoves, HVAC, lighting. A single flash charging stall could power 10 average KFCs. I hope this puts things in context.
> See BYD partnering with 10000s of PRC KFCs
BYD said they'll build 4000 charging stations [0]. China can pull it off because they can afford to "stick to the plan" no matter what and because they're able to manufacture the necessary grid components to keep up [1]. Can many other countries?
> do not even need full 1500 kWh + 600kW grid power depending on throughput
You keep doing the math that ignores one term: per stall. You either have the capacity to flash charge at every stall, or you don't and you have to find excuses for your customer and move the goalposts in this conversation. If you want to guarantee that capacity then you need no less than 1MW/stall. How you supply it doesn't matter but grid+battery have to supply it. No matter how you mix and match and balance, you'll need to install one and upgrade the other.
> the system is almost drop in, commercial HVAC / applicate installation.
Except you don't replace an existing installation, you add something that needs 10+ times the electrical capacity of everything else put together. That increase needs to be accounted for somewhere.
> you can spread 1-2 piles in any lot with a couple spots to spare because you don't have high fixed capex of digging a big ass underground oil tank or permitting / earthworks for charging hub with many piles.
You literally have to do all that work but for the grid, transformers, panels. KFCs aren't built with 2MW overhead just in case.
[0] https://www.byd.com/mea/news-list/byd-unveils-super-e-platfo...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47604887
The average power is lower, as there are idle times between cars. Moreover, in the beginning only a few cars would be able to charge at 1 MW, so the average power will be even lower, allowing a later upgrade of the connection to the electrical grid, when fast-charging cars would become more frequent and when there would also be more EV owners, so that more cars would have to be charged per day.
Although you're now making me wonder at what point it becomes more economical to ship electricity in batteries rather than do lengthy, expensive, and annoyingly controversial grid upgrades.
The connection to the electrical grid of a charging station is not dimensioned based on the charging times. It is dimensioned based on the number of cars that must be charged during a given time interval at that location (assuming a certain average charging energy).
So regardless if fast chargers or slow chargers are used, what matters is how many electric cars are used in a region and how much they travel each day.
Fast chargers can matter only indirectly, if their presence will convince more of the car users to switch to EVs, requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption.
We go back to what I was saying earlier [0], you'll need a lot of local storage to keep that charger running at full speed without breaking the back of the distribution grid. That comes on top of the solid grid capacity at every one of those many small parking lots.
One stall alone needs 1MW maybe equally split between the grid and the local battery, for probably 50-70kWh per car. Just 3-4 of these cars charging in a parking lot would mean a constant multi-MW pull from the grid on top of the battery that also needs to be recharged from somewhere. To guarantee that you lower that average you need to have enough local storage.
The technology exists, it works really well for large dedicated charging spots. The problem is the cost of scaling when you have to deal with lots of small plots (what OP proposed). A 1kW installation with 2-3kWh battery storage is the size of a small container and we've had them for years. Why do you think every small parking lot hasn't been equipped with one?
> requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption
This doesn't scale like software. Adding production is comparatively easy, adding distribution capacity isn't. It needs a lot of equipment that's not really available [1], and a lot of construction work to expand the grid capacity.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932115
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47604887
As much as I think that electric cars are the future - and my next car will be one - there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put in place and improved before they can reach their advertised potential, just as there was for petroleum-powered cars.
Maybe one day the rest of the world will catch up?
There are more than fifty EV marques competing for market share in China, and as per recent FT reporting, the Chinese government continues to subsidise the formation of new EV manufacturers. These companies have no option other than to be export-led businesses.
e.g. a Hyundai Ioniq 5 might charge at above 200kW up to around 45% peaking around 260kW on a 300kW charger then taper down to about 50kW at 80% full.
But that's a relatively good car for charging, many others won't push the older, lower spec chargers that are only advertising 100-150kW to their max (which might actually be from a low of 90 to a high of 175 on the charger side).
Some chargers display whether the car or the charger is limiting the rate as people often inaccurately blame the charger.
This new BYD car, on a standard high speed charger is likely to flatline the existing 350kW chargers up to near 80% in a similar way to how the Ioniq does that on older 150kW chargers.
Actually, although UK provision is pretty bad, I got 235kW sustained last week in some small charging station off the M4.
Therefore there is no wonder that none could be found in UK.
Because BYD and other companies have announced plans to sell such cars in the EU, I assume that they will also promote the installation of such chargers wherever they export their cars.
But I would expect that some years will pass until such chargers could become available everywhere.
Of course the charger is not the only limiting factor, the grid also needs to support it. If you're in a small town with no big shops/industry, you're way less likely to have 1+MW cables installed, there was never a need for such peak capacity before.