This was stated about the key: "Folded into the base is a mechanical backup key, a flat metal blade in a hinged housing."
I own a BYD: this is not true. The key is not hinged; rather, the entire mechanical key pulls out when a small clip is unlatched near the top of the assembly (you can see it in the CT). I assume the circular hinge-looking mechanism in the CT is just a by product of the plastic/metal weld process.
> The last company to vertically integrate a car from raw material to finished product at this scale was Ford. Today BYD’s system runs all the way from the lithium mine to the port.
Both BYD and Tesla claim to produce around 75% of their components. Ford is at around 25%.
> This prismatic cell is NOT a Blade, but it does share the same chemistry.
Kind of surprised that the part that is perhaps the most "BYD" of the entire car, isn't actually the same cell that the BYD Blade batteries use, which was what I was most excited about seeing :(
LFP prismatics are dirt cheap, I actually thought that was cooler -- it's rare to see a car part for a specific brand that is so close to a COTS equivalent.
Those are small parts, though. The interesting part is the E-axle. BYD builds a unit with an integrated motor, differential, axle, and wheel hubs. That, plus an electronics box and battery, is the power train. This simplifies vehicles considerably.
There are E-axle teardown videos. There's no big secret about how to do this. Copying this is hard for Detroit, because they have a huge investment in "engine plants".
With this design, BYD doesn't need standalone engine plants.
Tesla ought to be doing this, but they're into performance, not cost. They want to put two or four motors in a car. BYD does make supercars, to show off, but their volume products are reasonably good cars with E-axles and lithium iron phosphate batteries, which work fine. (It's not clear that Tesla is even into car design at all any more, but that's another issue.)
Detroit ought to be doing this, but they insist on making electric cars that are modified gasoline cars. Ford has an electric Mustang, an electric F-150, and an electric Transit. Chrysler doesn't even make cars any more, just one minivan. GM has a good Bolt now, which they are killing to appease Trump.
On the contrary, this much integration makes repairs nearly impossible, meaning you might have to swap the whole unit(for a lot of $$$) when something small inside it inevitably breaks.
Check out the articles published by EVclinic that cover such cases.
Aftermarket EV repairs are already big business due to how difficult and expensive the OEMs make it.
I don't have so much knowledge about EV repairs, but I got burnt by this on ICE cars already - had a car fail a regular fitness test on suspension bushes, they weren't replaceable without replacing the whole arm(s). What should've been a $40 part was being quoted as more than the cars value.
(I'm not sure if there was a way around this, there may well have been but I had other things going on and sold for scrap)
FWIW, this has been my experience since 2003 when I had to get suspension work done. Doesn’t matter if it’s a BMW or Honda, dealership or indie repair shop, the story I have heard consistently is that the bushing is part of the arm for structural integrity, stability, <reason I can’t remember, truth or crock>. Bushings typically fail faster than the arm does, and this repair is expensive ($1000+ for performance cars, not that much cheaper for Civics).
The “Design for purported Safety vs. Design for Saving Dollars” principle at work.
There's a reason everyone calls them mobile phones with wheels.
Edit: I agree with you and upvoted your comment which I feel was unfairly downvoted. But economics are going to win here, only a tiny fraction of the user base of cars (or phones) tinkers with them.
People actually want a convenient and cheap service for getting around. All other considerations can be derived from this. If it was cheaper to replace the car than get it serviced, they would replace it. Currently this is almost never the case of course, but if it happens in future, watch people switch behaviour instantly.
> If it was cheaper to replace the car than get it serviced, they would replace it.
This is doing a lot of work but I'm going to go with a charitable interpretation. I seriously doubt that we'll ever hit a state where replacing a 2 ton vehicle is cheaper than repairing it. And if we do, I'll have to re-evaluate my charitable interpretation, because something shady is likely going on.
The crazy thing is people don't even repair things that are cheaper to repair than replace. Our countertop icemaker broke and my wife wanted to throw it out. I fixed it with 20 minutes of time and a $15 motor from Amazon.
I think the broader trend isn't what's cheapest, its what is easiest, even if its more expensive. People in large part have no idea how to repair anything they own. This mass ignorance is leading to some pretty poor market incentives.
>I think the broader trend isn't what's cheapest, its what is easiest, even if its more expensive.
Really not true. If this is the trend you're seeing it's because you're sampling through people with relatively high disposable income(or who don't mind endless credit card debt), who can just afford to throw away broken things when it's just a rounding error of their salary.
But if you look at lower income people(with sane spending habits and financial literacy) you'll see how they first ask around if something can be repaired before they claw money from their checking account to buy something new.
My local facebook group is full of students asking if someone can fix their macbooks for cheap as they can't afford a new one or what Apple is quoting them, which is close in cost to buying a new one.
My gf still had her barely functional Windows 7 notebook up until a year ago because she didn't feel like spending money to buy a new one.
>There's a reason everyone calls them mobile phones with wheels.
Which is why I'm so baffled how and why the EU has spent so much time and effort regulating batteries and charging cables for smartphones, but still ignores this massive issue of ease of repairability and right to repair of personal cars that has been plaguing cars since the ICE days and is now only getting worse with EVs, that's costing car owners a lot more money than what's costing users to pay Apple to replace your cracked display and dead battery.
Like it feel like they just keep going for the lowest hanging fruits while ignoring the entire forest.
Jarvis, pull up on the central HUD how much the EU car brands spent on lobbying in the EU over the last 15 years.
Why would it be less repairable? Power electronics are still modular and are easily swappable. Mechanical parts are more integrated, but they so simple that they can last for decades.
And once they give out, you can just replace the whole unit for maybe $2000.
EU added "cybersecurity" requirements in response to Comma.ai that means that a lot of ECUs going forward use signed messages AND often crypto key pairing against an onboard security auth box. The pairing process often require something like a scuffed up manufacturer rental Panasonic Toughbook with weird half baked apps and passwords. The car would refuse to drive or whatever if the owner wouldn't play along with that game.
>Power electronics are still modular and are easily swappable.
Only if someone makes and sells those power electronics to you along with the appropriate DRM tools required for calibration and pairing with the other electronics of the car. Otherwise you're shit outta luck.
>Mechanical parts are more integrated, but they so simple that they can last for decades.
Simple != decades of reliability, when the design and manufacturing quality are piss poor in the race to the bottom for cost cutting and shareholder returns. Timing chains were also supposed to last a lifetime but plenty have been recalled due to know timing chain issues from manufacturing quality.
VW and Kia/Hyundai EVs were found to use custom dimensions motor bearings that can't be bought on the open market from anywhere, so only the OEM and their dealers can get them via their supply chain.
Most of those stories are 1/ crashes and 2/ hybrids. Again, with rare exception, manufacturers are just making gas cars with EV power trains. Tesla and BYD are making next gen transport. Are you old enough to remember when TVs broke so often that TV Repairman was a job? One day we will look back on car mechanics the same way.
I do remember the visceral joy of trying to keep a supercharged Camaro on the track, but those memories are overwhelmed by the terror of “what is that noise”. Now I drive a Tesla that accelerates faster than that Camaro, handles better, and hasn’t been to the shop once.
If I win the lottery I will buy another Camaro and a Corvette and I’ll work on them for fun, and kids will look at me the way I looked at old men who take care of antique steam engines and traction engines and take them to fairs. That sure is a lot of noise and smoke and doohickeys for very little speed and power!
I own a Model 3 and I like driving it, but I scratch my head at everyone who claims there are no mechanical problems. I'm glad you didn't have any, but there are some repairs that are almost obscenely common.
In the past year, the heater failed (PTC Heater had to be replaced), and the lateral link ball joint ball joint had to be replaced. That is about CAD5000$ worth of work. There is also an issue with a wire in the rear center seatbelt that broke (but after a check, it doesn't really have any safety concerns wrt airbags so it is OK to leave as is), and the top roof glass cracked. (I also had to replace the front windshield, but that's normal in Calgary and I don't hold it against the car)
I'm not "rough handling", I have a Toyota Sienna without any of these problems. On the bright side, the battery has no problems and no imbalances so fixing it will keep the car running for years (hopefully).
I bring this up because I find it very annoying that people were painting hagiographies of these cars when they have real issues. None of the issues above should be happening. Moreover, there are no 3rd parties providing parts (supposedly because of patents).
In the end, I'll never buy another gas car again but my cute tiny car has a bigger turn radius than my Sienna. It's lost more value than my Sienna. I agree with the poster who said that it isn't even clear if Tesla is interested in cars anymore.
If BYD is also creating cars that are expensive to maintain, then hard pass. I'm ok with having legislation to fix this.
>Most of those stories are 1/ crashes and 2/ hybrids.
No, they're faulty coolant seals of the electric motor, wrecking the power unit.
>but those memories are overwhelmed by the terror of “what is that noise”.
I just turned up the music till the noise went away. Problem solved.
>Now I drive a Tesla that accelerates faster than that Camaro, handles better, and hasn’t been to the shop once.
Good for you, but do you know there's a whole lotta other EV brands out there? And many are not as well and reliably designed as your Tesla.
>I do remember the visceral joy of trying to keep a supercharged Camaro [...] If I win the lottery I will buy another Camaro and a Corvette and I’ll work on them for fun
Nice story, but what does all this have to do with the parent you're replying to? Did he mention ICEs anywhere?
I’m very confused as to why this is downvoted but I tossed you an upvote since I do my best to work against the constant brigading I always see on this forum.
you still see these in velocipede-style vehicles commonly.
and to your point : a dead axle is an effort to reduce unsprung weight compared to a live axle; it also lets you actually use alignment as a remediation for asymmetry issues rather than just pre-delivery straightening.
I don’t think BYD would be a hit in the US as they are in Europe. It’s an entirely different market. They may be relatively successful just not to the point of taking an important market share, they would probably be like Mazda. Many of the subsides for Chinese EV ended this year too, and they are now realizing price alone is not a differentiator. So even if BYD eventually makes it to the US, they will be priced close to other brands like KIA and Tesla, but without the advantage of the brand and strong local presence. So no, there’s no concerns with BYD and we may see them sooner than later in the US.
It's worse than that. Trump's tariffs have knee-capped North American auto companies right when they needed to be upping their game. The auto sector is tightly integrated across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Or was... Now there's tariff's on every part and frame that crosses a border. The American plan seems to be to put up a wall and force Americans to buy domestic while nobody else in the world buys American cars.
I own a BYD: this is not true. The key is not hinged; rather, the entire mechanical key pulls out when a small clip is unlatched near the top of the assembly (you can see it in the CT). I assume the circular hinge-looking mechanism in the CT is just a by product of the plastic/metal weld process.
Nonetheless: very cool!
Both BYD and Tesla claim to produce around 75% of their components. Ford is at around 25%.
Tesla is indeed smaller in scale (cars/year):
Actually, yes, we would: https://www.kmoser.com/ctscan/
Kind of surprised that the part that is perhaps the most "BYD" of the entire car, isn't actually the same cell that the BYD Blade batteries use, which was what I was most excited about seeing :(
Those are small parts, though. The interesting part is the E-axle. BYD builds a unit with an integrated motor, differential, axle, and wheel hubs. That, plus an electronics box and battery, is the power train. This simplifies vehicles considerably.
There are E-axle teardown videos. There's no big secret about how to do this. Copying this is hard for Detroit, because they have a huge investment in "engine plants". With this design, BYD doesn't need standalone engine plants.
Tesla ought to be doing this, but they're into performance, not cost. They want to put two or four motors in a car. BYD does make supercars, to show off, but their volume products are reasonably good cars with E-axles and lithium iron phosphate batteries, which work fine. (It's not clear that Tesla is even into car design at all any more, but that's another issue.)
Detroit ought to be doing this, but they insist on making electric cars that are modified gasoline cars. Ford has an electric Mustang, an electric F-150, and an electric Transit. Chrysler doesn't even make cars any more, just one minivan. GM has a good Bolt now, which they are killing to appease Trump.
On the contrary, this much integration makes repairs nearly impossible, meaning you might have to swap the whole unit(for a lot of $$$) when something small inside it inevitably breaks.
Check out the articles published by EVclinic that cover such cases.
Aftermarket EV repairs are already big business due to how difficult and expensive the OEMs make it.
(I'm not sure if there was a way around this, there may well have been but I had other things going on and sold for scrap)
The “Design for purported Safety vs. Design for Saving Dollars” principle at work.
Edit: I agree with you and upvoted your comment which I feel was unfairly downvoted. But economics are going to win here, only a tiny fraction of the user base of cars (or phones) tinkers with them.
This is doing a lot of work but I'm going to go with a charitable interpretation. I seriously doubt that we'll ever hit a state where replacing a 2 ton vehicle is cheaper than repairing it. And if we do, I'll have to re-evaluate my charitable interpretation, because something shady is likely going on.
The crazy thing is people don't even repair things that are cheaper to repair than replace. Our countertop icemaker broke and my wife wanted to throw it out. I fixed it with 20 minutes of time and a $15 motor from Amazon.
I think the broader trend isn't what's cheapest, its what is easiest, even if its more expensive. People in large part have no idea how to repair anything they own. This mass ignorance is leading to some pretty poor market incentives.
Really not true. If this is the trend you're seeing it's because you're sampling through people with relatively high disposable income(or who don't mind endless credit card debt), who can just afford to throw away broken things when it's just a rounding error of their salary.
But if you look at lower income people(with sane spending habits and financial literacy) you'll see how they first ask around if something can be repaired before they claw money from their checking account to buy something new.
My local facebook group is full of students asking if someone can fix their macbooks for cheap as they can't afford a new one or what Apple is quoting them, which is close in cost to buying a new one.
My gf still had her barely functional Windows 7 notebook up until a year ago because she didn't feel like spending money to buy a new one.
Which is why I'm so baffled how and why the EU has spent so much time and effort regulating batteries and charging cables for smartphones, but still ignores this massive issue of ease of repairability and right to repair of personal cars that has been plaguing cars since the ICE days and is now only getting worse with EVs, that's costing car owners a lot more money than what's costing users to pay Apple to replace your cracked display and dead battery.
Like it feel like they just keep going for the lowest hanging fruits while ignoring the entire forest.
Jarvis, pull up on the central HUD how much the EU car brands spent on lobbying in the EU over the last 15 years.
And once they give out, you can just replace the whole unit for maybe $2000.
Only if someone makes and sells those power electronics to you along with the appropriate DRM tools required for calibration and pairing with the other electronics of the car. Otherwise you're shit outta luck.
>Mechanical parts are more integrated, but they so simple that they can last for decades.
Simple != decades of reliability, when the design and manufacturing quality are piss poor in the race to the bottom for cost cutting and shareholder returns. Timing chains were also supposed to last a lifetime but plenty have been recalled due to know timing chain issues from manufacturing quality.
VW and Kia/Hyundai EVs were found to use custom dimensions motor bearings that can't be bought on the open market from anywhere, so only the OEM and their dealers can get them via their supply chain.
I do remember the visceral joy of trying to keep a supercharged Camaro on the track, but those memories are overwhelmed by the terror of “what is that noise”. Now I drive a Tesla that accelerates faster than that Camaro, handles better, and hasn’t been to the shop once.
If I win the lottery I will buy another Camaro and a Corvette and I’ll work on them for fun, and kids will look at me the way I looked at old men who take care of antique steam engines and traction engines and take them to fairs. That sure is a lot of noise and smoke and doohickeys for very little speed and power!
In the past year, the heater failed (PTC Heater had to be replaced), and the lateral link ball joint ball joint had to be replaced. That is about CAD5000$ worth of work. There is also an issue with a wire in the rear center seatbelt that broke (but after a check, it doesn't really have any safety concerns wrt airbags so it is OK to leave as is), and the top roof glass cracked. (I also had to replace the front windshield, but that's normal in Calgary and I don't hold it against the car)
I'm not "rough handling", I have a Toyota Sienna without any of these problems. On the bright side, the battery has no problems and no imbalances so fixing it will keep the car running for years (hopefully).
I bring this up because I find it very annoying that people were painting hagiographies of these cars when they have real issues. None of the issues above should be happening. Moreover, there are no 3rd parties providing parts (supposedly because of patents).
In the end, I'll never buy another gas car again but my cute tiny car has a bigger turn radius than my Sienna. It's lost more value than my Sienna. I agree with the poster who said that it isn't even clear if Tesla is interested in cars anymore.
If BYD is also creating cars that are expensive to maintain, then hard pass. I'm ok with having legislation to fix this.
No, they're faulty coolant seals of the electric motor, wrecking the power unit.
>but those memories are overwhelmed by the terror of “what is that noise”.
I just turned up the music till the noise went away. Problem solved.
>Now I drive a Tesla that accelerates faster than that Camaro, handles better, and hasn’t been to the shop once.
Good for you, but do you know there's a whole lotta other EV brands out there? And many are not as well and reliably designed as your Tesla.
>I do remember the visceral joy of trying to keep a supercharged Camaro [...] If I win the lottery I will buy another Camaro and a Corvette and I’ll work on them for fun
Nice story, but what does all this have to do with the parent you're replying to? Did he mention ICEs anywhere?
So wait, the whole axle is solid then? Like a 1960s pickup truck but with all the weight of the motor and gearbox hanging off it too?
That must give it ridiculous unsprung weight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Dion_suspension
you still see these in velocipede-style vehicles commonly.
and to your point : a dead axle is an effort to reduce unsprung weight compared to a live axle; it also lets you actually use alignment as a remediation for asymmetry issues rather than just pre-delivery straightening.