Rendered at 10:34:22 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
King-Aaron 9 hours ago [-]
I've got a friend whos a master tech/trainer with our state automotive body, and is HV certified etc for dealing with these cars. He's currently got a BYD Shark strewn across his workshop for an autopsy.
I have to say I'm super impressed with how heavy duty everything is. The control arms, subframes, etc all look good and don't fit the 'chinese car bad' narrative you always hear. The powertrain components all look to be extremely high quality.
I've poked around a few EV's with him now, and I do feel like the Chinese market cars are evolving to a really good standard faster than their Korean counterparts did back in the 80s/90s.
esskay 5 minutes ago [-]
BYD are genuinely decent cars. And they've skyrocketed in popularity across parts of the world.
In the UK the major car dealers are franchises, and you tend to see for example a Ford garage next to a Toyota garage, and they are operated by the same company. Most of these places have closed one of the branded ones and turned it into a BYD franchise dealership. Theres so many of them across the country now.
I'd take a BYD over something like a Tesla thats for sure - far better cars, it's not even a fair comparison anymore.
I dare say they'll struggle a little more in the US with the whole "China bad" propaganda engrained into society, which is likely why BYD have gone for the agressive expansion in Europe instead.
gofastercloud 7 hours ago [-]
In the last few years Chinese manufacturing has reached a very high-level. The reason most people still believe that Chinese-made stuff is poor quality is because they will do what they are told and they are usually told “make this as cheap as possible” by whoever is paying the bills.
While I reckon some other countries still have specialist manufacturing in key areas that surpasses China, most “common” parts can be made in China to a standard that meets or exceeds Western countries, if you’re willing to pay for it.
roncesvalles 3 hours ago [-]
>they will do what they are told and they are usually told “make this as cheap as possible” by whoever is paying the bills
It's more complicated than this. Historically, Chinese manufacturing has been notorious for quietly undermining the quality of the product to improve their margins over time, in a way that the commissioning brand doesn't notice. If a Chinese manufacturer quotes you a price too good to be true, they're probably quoting you at-cost and will build in their margin later, once the orders start flowing in.
People should realize China is huge and manufactures one third of world's goods.
You're going to have excellence and crap across such a gargantuan amount of production and companies, a high amount of variance.
dumb1224 2 hours ago [-]
High amount variance of quality is a daily reality and as any chinese consumer we are very used to that since the beginning of e-commerce. However there are multiple aspects to the quality feel. Production of high quality items is one thing (e.g one can do better QA etc), what I heard from some local car garages in China is that standardisation in the industry is still quite poor. E.g Parts to replace and bolts and nuts are not as standardised say as the German counter parts (purely from a mechanics point of view).
Having said that a lot of German car suppliers are in China, and the German car manufacturing industry evolved over a significantly longer period of time.
King-Aaron 3 hours ago [-]
A really good example of this is the luxury watch market. China manufactures a heap of shitty knockoffs. They also manufacture a heap of the high end legitimate brand watches. And they manufacture some nice and obscenely expensive high end luxury watches.
UltraSane 39 minutes ago [-]
The most infamous example of this is hip implants made in China that had to be recalled due to being made wrong. This is also why Chinese structural steel is rarely used in North America and Europe.
viceconsole 6 hours ago [-]
I find that Chinese manufacturing offers the complete range of quality for every price point. At reasonable prices, the quality meets or exceeds that of other countries. But if you want something cheap and cheaply made, you can find that as well. And at the extreme, you still have counterfeit parts and products.
Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago [-]
> While I reckon some other countries still have specialist manufacturing in key areas that surpasses China
I don't think this is true. Maybe super specialist things like chip manufacturing products, but it's guaranteed China is spending heavily on R&D to develop their own. When it comes to cars / car parts they will be on par with if not surpassing most countries.
Also keep in mind China's sudden onset had a big impact on European and US car manufacturing, with VW / VAG closing major factories in Germany. Mind you, that's also because VAG was the biggest car manufacturer in China, until suddenly BYD and co opened up their factories and dominated the market in a short amount of time.
smugma 5 hours ago [-]
Apple in China is a great book and shows how good China is on focusing on quality when that is the given objective.
youre-wrong3 2 hours ago [-]
BYD cars in China are not very good. But to export them they need to be higher quality to meet criteria. I would never buy one in China. Happily own one outside of China.
acdha 7 hours ago [-]
> The reason most people still believe that Chinese-made stuff is poor quality is because they will do what they are told and they are usually told “make this as cheap as possible” by whoever is paying the bills.
I’m reminded of all the dismissals people made about the skill levels of Indian software developers when the explanation was that the more skilled ones knew they could do better than the MBAs were offering to make the savings sound even more impressive.
p_l 4 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, the manager pushing the outsourcing pockets the money, outsourcing company pockets the money, and the local and indian teams get to be abused and latter gets extra blame for things outside their control.
I would say the problem is heavily structural and linked to few companies that very much pursue lowest possible effort, harming both employee and customer. We had a company that infamously pursued a somewhat similar (just with not as much leverage over employees) strategy in Poland - a common refrain was how other companies would get people jumping jobs from them who gave variants of "I needed some spending money while finishing my degree, escaped as soon as I could" story.
Unfortunately it seems a bit harder to do when some places apparently hire with only category appearing to be "according to census they speak english", then put them on project with minimal training and zero time or space to acquire more training.
acdha 3 minutes ago [-]
Yes - I remember one time hearing someone from a big consulting company make the argument that even the top Indian graduates would work for peanuts (even by local standards) and asking them how likely it was that they’d be that smart but unable to determine their market value.
This was unsurprising after my entire life hearing people complain about declining quality and imported junk while always picking the cheapest item on the shelf at the store, even when they had plenty of money for a better quality option. There’s just a certain mindset which can’t look past the lowest possible price.
uejfiweun 2 hours ago [-]
I wish China didn't have such a hostile government to the West. Because I'd love to buy a BYD car and see this for myself, or try the Xiaomi car that MKBHD was so keen on. But because of the hostility I kind of get why there are bans.
joe_mamba 2 hours ago [-]
>I wish China didn't have such a hostile government to the West.
In what way are they hostile? I am also part of "the west" and they never threatened us.
The west != just the USA.
km3r 2 hours ago [-]
Are western companies able to freely compete in China? Last I checked, no, they need local partners at best, or are blocked completely at worst. And not just American but any outside company.
yorwba 54 minutes ago [-]
This is now limited to only some restricted industries: https://www.ndrc.gov.cn/xxgk/zcfb/ghxwj/202504/P020250424307... Yes, the list is long, but it's a significant improvement to the before times when all industries were off limits save for a few exceptions where foreign investment was allowed. Notably, the car industry has been mostly unrestricted for a few years now.
King-Aaron 2 hours ago [-]
What their government does in regards to local industry is effectively what donald trump is attempting to do with the US economy. Except they do it well.
quijoteuniv 4 hours ago [-]
Vertical integration matters. If BYD controls much of the chain from the mine to the ship, they’re not paying everyone else’s margin along the way. That can translate into more car for the money.
I own a BYD Tang, so I’m biased, but the value for money has been hard to beat.
Scale probably helps too. When you sell millions of cars using many of the same parts, availability is better and parts are more likely to stay affordable than on low-volume models with lots of redesigns.
torginus 3 hours ago [-]
Vertical integration is a double edged sword. When your car is a decade old or more, and stuff starts breaking, the only vendor that makes parts for it is BYD - and its up to them if they bother selling to you, at what price, provided they still make these parts at that time.
Time will tell how cheap and easy will they be to maintain, which affects residual value at the end of the lease, which affects payments.
Nobody pays sticker price for new cars as a lump sum. If BYDs (or whatever car) are impossible to maintain, that means nobody will want them used, and residual value will be low, which means BYDs will cost more to the end user to own than a more expensive car by a different manufacturer.
Which seems to be the case for now in places like Germany, but we will have to wait and see how the situation develops and the second hand market builds up.
spacebanana7 2 hours ago [-]
Additionally, vertically integrated companies don't get to tag along on innovations produced by upstream suppliers. Many EV companies will effortlessly have their range increase by a couple % each year, with battery costs falling, just because they can adopt the improvements of CATL/Panasonic/BYD etc.
vladvasiliu 3 hours ago [-]
> Vertical integration matters. If BYD controls much of the chain from the mine to the ship, they’re not paying everyone else’s margin along the way. That can translate into more car for the money.
This is interesting. Wasn't the idea in Europe (and maybe elsewhere, too, no idea) that outsourcing components would lead to economies of scale? After all, a Mercedes or BMW or VW seat is still roughly a seat?
It's interesting to me that we seem to switch back and forth between the two models, each time saying the new approach is "better".
hermanzegerman 3 hours ago [-]
VW, Mercedes and BMW also squeeze their suppliers very hard, and they operate with razor thin margins. So I agree and wouldn't say that doing everything in house is always going to be the cheaper way
taffronaut 41 minutes ago [-]
Having an adversarial relationship with your suppliers is not necessarily the best arrangement. It means that suppliers will nickel-and-dime you for every change and ship minimum possible quality to you. The cost of loss of agility and quality will impact your bottom line.
avhception 3 hours ago [-]
My family operated a business on exactly these razor thin margins. You always live on the razors edge. You're unable to invest into the future, unable to improve your processes, and god forbid there is even a minor disruption. I don't think it's sustainable. We've since faltered, as have our many of our competitors and suppliers.
MagicMoonlight 3 hours ago [-]
And also the simplicity of the products. You don't need to design a different engine for each car, you just vary the number of cells and change the motors. Your battery division can keep pumping out batteries, regardless of what models you make. If you design a new model, you can keep using the existing lines. It's perfect for mass production.
yuye 7 hours ago [-]
>The control arms, subframes, etc all look good and don't fit the 'chinese car bad' narrative you always hear.
While I think the "chinese quality bad" narrative still applies to many Chinese brands, this isn't as universal as it was in the past.
I think my eyes were first opened when I bought myself a Huawei phone(before the Google ban). My first few smartphones had been Samsung, I've always felt the term "planned obsolence" was the best way to describe these phones: After just a year, the phone felt considerably slower, and after two it was almost unusable.
Huawei flagship phones were similar in price to Samsung, but I felt they lasted way longer.
beAbU 29 minutes ago [-]
Pre google ban huawei phones were incredible. 2-day batteries, great screens, fantastic cameras and an awesome price. I had a Samsung after my last huawei and it felt like a solid downgrade, even though the samsung was way more expensive.
FYI, if you are looking for a post google huawei, check out honor phones.
HerbManic 7 hours ago [-]
I have had a fairly good run with a lot of these Chinese phones. Huawei when we could still get them was great. Xiaomi is great build quality but they are rotting out their OS with too much bloat and up sell. Oppo has been brilliant in that they are built well, cheap and allow you strip out anything you don't want.
King-Aaron 3 hours ago [-]
Oh man I miss my Huawei phones. I had an Oppo at one stage too.
As an aside the best phone I ever had was a HTC One X, another brand that I sorely miss.
monegator 1 hours ago [-]
And they have really good designs (after all, they are taking inspiration from the most succesful european cars. I saw the station wagon the other day, it's amazing. the octavia EV as it should be.)
The problem is always going to be: what's going to happen in 10 years, or whatever, after warranty expires?
The problem with vertical integration is for the customer, and it's repairs: traditional manufacturing is more expensive because you have a constellation of companies manufacturing pars with official and unofficial second sources. While this increases the overall cost of the vehichle, it decreases the final price of every component because the customer (independent mechanic) can choose to use a different source. The market working as intended.
BYD is currently the only EV i would consider, because it's the best value and the engineering quality is indeed high, but because i want to own, not rent, i'm preoccupied of what's going to happen in X years.
Yes, it's the same fear we had three-four decades ago when toyota/suzuki/kia entered the european market, that bet paid off but also because cost of repairs went down over time as they were also traditional manufacturers. (Yet for some exotic components you still must go to the OEM, and pay 2-3 times the equivalent sensor/component for an european car.)
However, with vertical integration you are always at mercy of the manufacturer. Better engineering, yes. Better integration, better efficiency, but you will suffer for repairs if you can't have second sources.
Think apple. (and tesla. but tesla is shit quality)
Or john deere.
Toutouxc 6 hours ago [-]
I have a Chinese EV too, an MG4 built by SAIC. It’s a really cheap car, significantly cheaper than its non-Chinese counterparts like the VW ID.3 or (roughly) a Hyundai Kona.
The factory rust protection was maybe a bit on the lighter side, but everything else on it looks completely normal. The drivetrain is simple (no heat exchange mechanism between battery coolant and motor coolant, a slightly whiny motor), but also genuinely competent and modern for a 2022 design (a mature skateboard RWD platform with a thin CTP battery with large cells and generous cell/coolant heat exchange). There are no obvious wtf solutions, nothing that would look too thin or too flimsy. The infotainment and the SW of the car does have the occasional funny moments, but all that is happening on what looks and feels like a solid piece of hardware.
hvb2 5 hours ago [-]
Cars only show if they're well made after like a decade? These are not washing machines or something.
Sadly that's also why it's hard to buy a new car, you only know what's a quality car years down the line.
First impression matters though.
asdff 52 minutes ago [-]
>Sadly that's also why it's hard to buy a new car, you only know what's a quality car years down the line.
Not always. Sometimes the components are a lot older than the car and have earned a bit of a reputation. The powerplant in my car is like 20 years older than the model year. The underlying platform is nearly as old as well. All proven to be boringly reliable.
I guess this changes in the EV era with faster rate of iterations compared to the ICE era. More lessons still to learn with the EV cars I'm sure. Meanwhile a 4 cyl compact car is practically a commodity and aside from safety widgets like backup cameras, have been relatively unchanged for 15 or 20 years.
tecleandor 1 hours ago [-]
> Cars only show if they're well made after like a decade?
Unless you have a wet belt in your Puretech engine that will blow up in 5-8 years...
Mechanics and enthusiasts around here (Spain) call this engines "pudretech" (rot-tech)...
King-Aaron 3 hours ago [-]
I think it depends on the car. I've seen VW products fall apart in months after sale, we actually had a Mk5 golf that went back to the dealer three times in it's first year for fuel system faults.
There are a lot of low price bracket Chinese imports (MGs mainly) that seem to have severe rust issues that are present at delivery.
And Toyotas a few years ago had a problem where certain colour cars would have their paint fall off in huge sheets as the primer was incorrect or something.
I do agree in principle that most modern cars should be pretty good for their warranty period/first owner, but I've also seen some egregious edge cases!
arethuza 17 minutes ago [-]
A few years back my wife had a Toyota that had serious electrical problems (all instruments would stop working) that was eventually traced to a faulty sunroof combined with a terrible design...
spacebanana7 2 hours ago [-]
Cars can still show that they're poorly made pretty quickly.
lostlogin 3 hours ago [-]
I’d be stoked if a washing machine lasted a decade.
mesrik 1 hours ago [-]
How so, not last a decade?
I had AEG Lavamat 1055 about 35 years (from 1982), worked well without hitch. It was quite small, top loading model etc. Fast spin-dry w/ variomatic (shaking also while spinning). Laundry out of it was quite dry already.
Then 2017 building plumbing had to be redone and gave reason to remake bathroom completely and replacing old equipment. I would have bought Miele model but it didn't fit reserved place and I ended up buying Electrolux instead.
That's now month short of 9 years and I have no reason to believe it will not work well at least another 10 years to come. regardless advertised 10 years warranty.
This current one has more electronic parts, but now searching by its model found only fault codes all seem to be user errors, overfilling, water hose not open, draining filter clogged etc. All non issues whoever bothers knowing how to maintain and operate that thing over years. No complaints about issues with electronics problems.
These were first used by a couple and later single (me) needs which are usually once a week plus twice a month washing 4-5 uses single day. Which becomes bit over 100 washing in year.
That's just 1000 washings in 10 years and 3500 in 35 years. For a family washing every day once it would be 3563 uses in 10 years.
If washing machine isn't badly kept against instructions and it isn't cheapest knock off plastic rubish, why would be a surprise if it doesn't last at least that 10 years use washing family laundry. And last many decades with single or dink use?
rithdmc 1 hours ago [-]
Be thankful you didn't buy Beko. I had a horrible uphill battle trying to get them to honour a 2 year warranty in Ireland after about a years usage.
After they finally engaged with the warranty, they had someone come out to 'fix' it once every couple weeks until I gave up and just bought a different brand washer/dryer.
I'm now sworn off Beko, and will happily tell everyone I can about my terrible service :)
lostlogin 47 minutes ago [-]
> How so, not last a decade?
Maybe it’s me then. We just don’t get that long out of them. We have tried Fisher and Paykel and Samsung. Never had more than and year warranty either.
They do run at least once a day often more, but that’s not enough to explain it.
I'd be disappointed if it didn't. My Bosch is running for about 13 years right now and just as well as when I bought it.
Maybe it helps I'm in the EU and there's a law stating you have right of compensation if it dies within a decade...
asymmetric 2 hours ago [-]
Genuinely?
emodendroket 7 hours ago [-]
People talking about Chinese manufacturing all being junk are completely stuck in the past.
UncleOxidant 7 hours ago [-]
My grandfather in the 1970s used to complain about crappy Japanese tools. By the 1980s they were world-class. Same is happening with Chinese manufacturing.
krelian 6 hours ago [-]
There is a joke just about that in Back to the Future (1985)!
StilesCrisis 5 hours ago [-]
In BttF2, it is taken to the logical extreme and Marty's boss is Mister Fujitsu-san: https://youtu.be/UlEFqR4SaVA
Theodores 41 minutes ago [-]
My great-grandfather used to complain about crappy German tools.
My great-great-grandfather used to complain about crappy Scottish tools.
He was English. I am not sure you can buy as much as a paperclip made in England now.
Has to be said that nobody on this side of the pond ever complained about the quality of American Snap On tools though, just so long as the boss was paying for them.
cucumber3732842 37 minutes ago [-]
>I have to say I'm super impressed with how heavy duty everything is.
But do you actually have a frame of reference though?
It's really easy to make stuff look good and then have it suck because someone in some other department nerfed it.
I'm not saying they're bad but HN is not a community I trust to make such assessments.
epolanski 3 hours ago [-]
"chinese X bad" is really ignorant. One in 6 people on the planet lives in China, it's a gargantuan country that is the world leader in manufacturing. You're going to have a high variance of quality output for the mere fact that the overall output is massive.
People often equate low-value Chinese manufacturing that focuses on low cost with their manufacturing quality across all fields.
King-Aaron 3 hours ago [-]
I feel that in the west we have been fed a version of China that doesn't necessarily reflect the true image of the country.
dumb1224 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's anyone (lay person)'s fault. As a chinese person moved to European in the early 2000s for the longest time I wouldn't touch a chinese product (although I'm very proud of the progress made in terms of industrialisation).
Things changed in 2012 when I bought a 'cheap-ish' Huawei phone, it was nothing of a flagship, no performance but it was really solid product. Very light and well built too. How ironic that was my first ever experience of buying a product exported to Europe.
pepperoni_pizza 2 hours ago [-]
Does the true version have slave labor, reeducation camps for minorities, needing permission to travel, running protestors over with tanks, and gutter oil by any chance?
alfiedotwtf 2 hours ago [-]
> all look good and don't fit the 'chinese car bad' narrative you always hear.
“No wonder this circuit failed, it says made in Japan”
“What do you mean doc, all the best stuff is made in Japan”
dakolli 7 hours ago [-]
I'd rather own Chinese everything over American. Everything America makes is slop and corners are cut for profits so the owners of companies can own their third home and maybe a yacht. The truth is Chinese engineering quality exceeds the West in almost every domain at this point.
I'd move there given the opportunity, the business owners of America are willing to poison and put the lives of their fellow citizens at risk for literal pieces of paper. I'm ashamed to be American.
HerbManic 7 hours ago [-]
I agree with the quality of some of the stuff coming out of China but when it comes to poisons and risking the lives of citizens, I have some bad news for you. That is how they undercut so heavily by foregoing those standards.
emodendroket 7 hours ago [-]
China has moved beyond being a "value" manufacturer and they've cleaned up a lot.
don_esteban 4 hours ago [-]
In China, they hang those that are responsible. In US, they get slap on their hand.
King-Aaron 3 hours ago [-]
Or they get cabinet positions.
davidwritesbugs 4 hours ago [-]
Not saying you are wrong about many US business owners but having travelled in China I can tell you that Chinese companies have no qualms about poisoning their neighbours for enhanced profits - my guide there said it was what he hated about his country. Money drives ethics pretty much everywhere I reckon.
fooo1882992 1 hours ago [-]
Imagine glazing the country where a dozen companies were caught mixing melamine into baby formula, hospitalizing 50,000 and killing 6.
Oh, I love the 2 sides of HN...
Here everybody's ready to buy a BYD and even move to China, due to the sheer quality of the product (for the money) and the integrity of the people, totally forgetting about the 'social credit system' and the data that these cars might be sending or being exposed to having the car remotely disabled.
Not to mention the repairability...
Just a few days ago there was a popular post taking a modem out of the RAV4. Bet you can't do even that on a BYD without rendering the car non-functional.
Netcob 1 hours ago [-]
That pot&kettle contest between the US and China is really heating up!
You might want to switch from "social credit" (which was a failed local project from over a decade ago) to "blacklist", or just criticize the overall surveillance system, which is pretty invasive.
I'm getting a bit tired of people posting on social media websites and then pretending they are not a part of them. "Reddit" did this, "HN" did that... let's just admit that we're all chronically online people who get irritated whenever we stumble out of our bubble and more than one person dares to disagree with us.
esskay 2 minutes ago [-]
The "Two sides" you're spotting is US posters vs non US posters. It's not exactly a secret that the US has long had a propaganda process going against China with their own citizens. From the outside it's weird how 'cult like' some parts of the US education system come across with things like this. It's similar to the whole socialism = communism = bad fear embedded into US society.
The US obviously isn't the only one guilty of this kind of thing, it just happens to have been one of the most effective.
mbeavitt 1 hours ago [-]
I really don’t understand why this social credit concept has become so widespread. It does sort of exist but not in the big government breathing down your neck kind of way.
Here’s an example - you can rent e-bikes and power banks at low cost, they are everywhere. If you don’t return an e-bike or power bank after using it, not only will that company charge you, but you’ll likely get blacklisted from renting more, even at other companies.
This is a good thing, no???
BiteCode_dev 1 hours ago [-]
Feels like its the same poeple saying locked down OS stores are great because security and chrome engine in all browser is fantastic because then everything is standardized.
But worse because here we are talking deep human topics.
Such long period of peace made people forget about how the world work. And clearly studing history in school ks not working. I guess in the US they are getting a new shot right now to remember.
pepperoni_pizza 2 hours ago [-]
It would be naive to think HN is not immune to influence operations. The people singing praises to China are not necessarily people.
xandrius 2 hours ago [-]
Even more naive to think that the HN crowd is any more immune to propaganda than the non-HN folk.
BiteCode_dev 1 hours ago [-]
They are probably people, paid for it. The comment are too well made.
But also some are just real people from HN that are the worst kind of dumb : uneducated but smart, so they think their opinion is valid.
This is where the "history at schoolis useless" people show their true color.
tiagod 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't the social credit system mostly a credit score, similar to the one implemented in the United States? As someone living in a European country without such a thing, I also find that one pretty dystopian.
About the data sending, wasn't there a quite recent incident where an American car manufacturer was leaking the real-time position of all their clients' vehicles? Aren't US telecoms selling position data of their clients? Isn't the US filled with surveillance cameras managed by a private company keeping track of every car?
Do you base your last statement on anything, or is it just a hunch?
Netcob 1 hours ago [-]
From what I read it's mostly a credit score and blacklist system. In the 2010s there was a project to use it to reward and punish people for some everyday stuff based on whether it did or didn't align with the party's morals, but it got scrapped. That's the part everyone thinks is going on over there.
I agree it's dystopian, but I live in Germany and we have a similar thing called "Schufa". For most people it mostly means that if they default on a credit, they'll be less likely to find an apartment. It differs from the US one in the sense that banks don't require you to get into debt before they trust you, that whole "build your credit score" nonsense.
BiteCode_dev 1 hours ago [-]
No, the social credit system can restrict your basic freedom, including the freedom of moving, without a judge being involved.
The fact you are casually talking about it is infuriating.
It's like taking about the yellow star and stay "isn't it like the pins in the US".
tiagod 1 hours ago [-]
I see, thanks for the correction. Aren't people put in ICE detention centers and offshore prisons indefinitely with no charges and no judge involved, though? Or is that OK because they aren't citizens?
kakacik 1 hours ago [-]
Well then we can unpack US and all the crap thats happening there. From an outsider, there ain't much difference China vs US, just different shades of brown. Comparing those 2, China is definitely more friendly to Europe, US gov publicly stated they want to break EU and make continent weaker FFS.
Nobody is moving to China just because they make good cars now, I have never seen anybody stating that so no idea why the hyperbole. But good (enough) cars they do make and various other products, ignoring facts ain't a smart move in any case.
Removing modem may kill new BMW as well as new Chevrolet and so on, so that argument is... weird. Expect more integration and dependence on online, like it or not. Repairability goes against primary incentives of all car manufacturers, they get significant revenue from official repair shops, often more than from sales themselves. Definitely true for that BMW, have a friend quite high in their sales team in Munich and he stated that few times.
zakisaad 13 hours ago [-]
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.
Nonetheless: very cool tech demo!
rationalist 8 hours ago [-]
It was suspected in the past that Lumafield used AI to write the descriptions of previous scans. It is possible they are still doing so.
ranger_danger 6 hours ago [-]
If it's AI then I'm surprised to see it make this mistake:
> None of these components is particularly extraordinary in isolation
dash2 3 hours ago [-]
Why is that a mistake?
Terr_ 2 hours ago [-]
I'm guessing parent-poster is saying the "is" should be "are", on the basis that the word "components" is plural.
That said, I didn't perceive a problem either, and my self-diagnosis is that "none of the X" feels like it could be evoking a singular item that failed to be found.
tecleandor 1 hours ago [-]
Yep, I think the singular is ok, as it could be just one. Seems like it could be both.
Cambridge says...
> In formal styles, we use none of with a singular verb when it is the subject. However, in informal speaking, people often use plural verbs...
Collins says:
> Since none has the meanings “not one” and “not any,” some insist that it always be treated as a singular and be followed by a singular verb: The rescue party searched for survivors, but none was found. However, none has been used with both singular and plural verbs since the 9th century. When the sense is “not any persons or things” (as in the example above), the plural is more common: … none were found. Only when none is clearly intended to mean “not one” or “not any” is it followed by a singular verb: Of all my articles, none has received more acclaim than my latest one.
pimlottc 12 hours ago [-]
Having a mechanical key hidden in the electronic key fob is nothing new, it’s common on many cars.
zakisaad 11 hours ago [-]
I guess my intent was not to point out that it has a mechanical key, rather that the description of the key on the webpage was wrong (it is not hinged).
The mechanical key fallback pattern is standard across the industry for sure.
defrost 11 hours ago [-]
It's entirely possible that the BYD key they scanned and the BYD key you possess are of different designs.
jonathanlydall 6 hours ago [-]
Possible, but I doubt it.
Article says key fobs are the same across all their cars and this looks the same as mine for a Sealion 5, there is no hinge for the key you just pull it out.
Likely the article authors just assumed from looking at the scan, if they’d actually tried to remove the key they would have realised their mistake.
postepowanieadm 5 hours ago [-]
This: different markets get different style keys.
pimlottc 10 hours ago [-]
Ah, I misread your earlier revision's enthusiasm at the end as being about the mechanical key, not the CT scan.
imp0cat 5 hours ago [-]
Before keyless became defacto standard, most keys were fixed on a hinge - you'd first unlock your car by pressing a button on the fob, then swing the key open and use it to start the car.
Nowadays the physical key is only a backup, safely stowed inside the fob. It is meant to be pulled out only in an emergency.
a96 5 hours ago [-]
Mercedes changed to the IR key in maybe turn of the 90's. The plastic blob would be used to turn the ignition like before, but the locking part was electrical (optical). There was still a metal key that could be pulled out and used on the exterior locks if the central locking was out.
When keyless start came, there was a dummy button that fit in the ignition lock that could be pushed to start. If there was a problem, you could pop it out and use the key as before.
IIRC, all that, so may have mistakes. Just crossed my mind that they went a few decades between no metal ignition key and keyless. MB being MB, I wouldn't be surprised if they still had models with that same "old" system and keyless as an option.
phinnaeus 12 hours ago [-]
I remember playing with my parent's VW key fob as a fidget toy in the 00s. Little spring loaded switchblade style mechanical key.
aidenn0 11 hours ago [-]
And yet my Hyundai key fob, despite being the largest fob I've ever seen doesn't do this :/
spockz 4 hours ago [-]
Yes sadly the Hyundai and Kia key fobs of EVs (at least EV9) don’t have the mechanical backup key in the fob anymore. So you need to carry it on your keychain. Don’t leave it in your trunk. If the 12V battery does out you won’t be able to get into the car.
MobiusHorizons 9 hours ago [-]
Anecdotally on my Hyundai ionic hybrid from 2018 it does have a mechanical key in the fob, but it is very non-obvious. It’s physically the same piece as the keyring section at the top of the fob. There is a small catch you release to remove the key from the plastic fob body and it slides out the top.
All this to say Hyundai certainly knows how to do this. If they didn’t do it, it is almost certainly a deliberate omission.
cwbriscoe 12 hours ago [-]
My 2015 Honda had that and my new car does as well.
al_borland 10 hours ago [-]
I wasn’t surprised by the backup key, but rather by how empty it was. I really wish key fobs were smaller. They are quite bulky in a pocket and bigger than all my actual keys combined.
DaSHacka 8 hours ago [-]
If you own a 3D printer, there are oftentimes STLs people publish online to shrink the size of the fob.
Made my keys much less bulky
al_borland 8 hours ago [-]
Now that’s an idea… I found one for my car, but kind of hate it.
I don’t have a 3D printer currently. I did help my cousin’s kid by one and they told me if I ever wanted to print something to let them know, but I have a feeling I’ll need to design my own with some trial and error.
I’ve hesitated buying one, because the idea of having a machine to melt plastic in my house seems like a bad idea when it comes to air quality.
dghlsakjg 6 hours ago [-]
Depends on the plastic, but even the most benign ones put out very minor amounts of fumes if YouTube testers are to be believed. Note that fumes in this case just means that they are seeing changes in AQI meters, which is something that can happen with too many people sitting in a room.
If it’s something you worry about, the enclosed models frequently either come with, or can be fitted with a carbon filter, and if you are really worried, you can use dryer vent to get it outside.
With the most popular plastic (PLA) at printing temperatures, there isn’t any data showing toxic byproducts. When you get into things like ABS and resin you have to think more about fumes.
shrx 4 hours ago [-]
Do not print a key fob out of PLA. It will not survive summer car temperatures. A better choice is PETG, or ABS and ASA if you have an enclosed printer that can vent outside.
exhilaration 1 hours ago [-]
FYI my local library in suburban Pennsylvania has a 3D printer for public use. Check yours.
2dvisio 4 hours ago [-]
The mechanical key has a hinge (to be able to operate it), but it’s not “hinged” to the fob.
> 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%.
Tesla is indeed smaller in scale (cars/year):
BYD 4.6M
Ford 4.4M
Tesla 1.6M
pimlottc 12 hours ago [-]
I assumed this was referring to the early days of the Ford assembly line
delichon 12 hours ago [-]
Yes, Ford claimed up to 90% in the 1930s when they were producing up to 1.4M cars and trucks per year. (Down to less than 400K in the worst of the depression.)
foobarian 11 hours ago [-]
I suppose it makes sense, back then you wouldn't think there would be an existing supply chain of companies like Mopar just waiting for a car manufacturer to spin up and start buying their stuff
bryanlarsen 9 hours ago [-]
The original Ford plant to raw ore, coal & limestone as inputs. There weren't any Mopar's, but Ford didn't have to build their own steel plants...
ElevenLathe 9 hours ago [-]
The original Model T plant (the Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit proper) was not vertically integrated, and in fact most of the "running gear" (all the complicated stuff, basically everything but the coachwork) was purchased as parts from the Dodge brothers (who owned a plant at what is now Detroit/Hammtramck Assembly -- formerly Dodge Main and then GM Poletown -- a GM plant making EVs like the Sierra and Hummer EVs) and merely assembled by Ford employees (albeit in an admittedly revolutionary assembly line process that changed capitalism forever).
The Highland Park plant was Ford's play to cut the Dodge Brothers out of the process by machining most of his own parts. The peak of vertical integration would be the River Rouge plant which, as you say, machined all its own parts from iron and steel made on-site from raw ore (but never made the Model T).
kevin_thibedeau 12 hours ago [-]
They would go so far as to license components for in-source production from suppliers who couldn't meet the needed volume.
m463 8 hours ago [-]
Still lower than farmers and their horses. :)
Cyph0n 11 hours ago [-]
So BYD for cars and Samsung for phones and consumer electronics more generally (from fab upwards).
In fact, I believe Samsung is the only company on the planet that can design & build a state of the art smartphone from scratch - silicon/fabrication, SoC, battery, baseband, camera sensor, memory, and display.
What other high tech vertically integrated producers exist in this group?
grumbelbart2 4 hours ago [-]
They are "more" vertical, but they too have vital suppliers that they could not do without. The semiconductor supply chain is deep. Everybody knows ASML, but there are countless others that produce raw wafers, etching machines, special chemicals and so forth.
xethos 10 hours ago [-]
While I could have sworn RIM put out their own modems (which Qualcomm used to make life difficult for them, especially as the world transitioned from 3G to 4G), and did their own hardware and software, I can't currently find a source
a96 5 hours ago [-]
Qualcomm makes life difficult for anyone who has to deal with them.
Danox 4 hours ago [-]
And now it appears Microsoft and Nvidia are gonna make life difficult for them in the computer market.
wbl 11 hours ago [-]
IBM
Cyph0n 10 hours ago [-]
IBM no longer has fabs (spun off as Globalfoundries and later sold), and no longer manufactures PCs (sold to Lenovo?), but it does make mainframes I guess?
HerbManic 7 hours ago [-]
I am still amazed that IBM is pushing their POWER processors forwards for things like their System Z Mainframes. From what I have heard they are still really fast with I/O and general shifting of data but I'm not sure how much better than is than the alternatives.
Wouldn't be surprised if that finally gets sunset in the next few years.
a96 5 hours ago [-]
POWER still exists? That's kind of neat. I had a POWER 1 rs6k way back. Almost wish I'd had room to keep it just as a sort of museum piece. The processor was several chips on one or two large PCBs IIRC.
I thought GlobalFoundries was AMD's fab division spun off.
qalmakka 5 hours ago [-]
Precisely. IBM paid them to take their fabs away (yes, they paid them, not the opposite, they were so obsolete that it was basically a waste disposal operation)
bram98 10 hours ago [-]
They are mainly in services now, no?
throwaway2037 4 hours ago [-]
In 2021, the majority of IBM's "Global Technology Services" was spun-off as an independent company named Kyndryl.
Folded into the base is a mechanical backup key, a flat metal blade in a hinged housing. It reads warmer than everything else in the scan. It exists for the moment the battery dies or the RF link fails. Every BYD keyless entry system includes this fallback.
It's simple things like this which incumbent manufacturers need to avoid losing sight of.
Etheryte 4 hours ago [-]
Nearly every manufacturer does this though? It's often simply done in such a sleek way that customers don't even know it's there.
chrisco255 5 hours ago [-]
My 2019 Ford has this as well, this is not novel.
lbreakjai 3 hours ago [-]
My 2014 Fiesta did too.
bdavbdav 4 hours ago [-]
Huh? What keyless car doesn’t have this (except Tesla, but they’re an odd one, and I guess not an incumbent manufacturer…)
gogusrl 4 hours ago [-]
The Volvo EX30/EX90 and Polestars 3/4/5 don't have a backup physical key or even buttons on the remote to force an unlock. That works exactly how you'd expect :)
Animats 13 hours ago [-]
Nice.
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.
bluGill 12 hours ago [-]
GM has several EVs that are ground up designs. They look just like the ICE version but that is cosmetic, everything else is different.
AlotOfReading 12 hours ago [-]
Now if only GM's executives could stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
m463 8 hours ago [-]
> Tesla ought to be doing this, but they're into performance, not cost.
You have some false beliefs about Detroit’s product lines.
Fords mustang mach e is unrelated to the gas one. Totally different platform. It was designed from the ground up as an electric platform. The electric F-150 was a shrewd bet that didn’t pay off, but a pretty defensible decision to try to electrify the most popular vehicle in North America without changing the outside look too much. Under the sheet metal it doesn’t share a lot of drivetrain parts with the gas truck.
Chevy makes full size electric trucks on an all electric platform with three truck/SUV models across three brands. The bolt was cancelled in 2022 with the last one produced in December 2023. They have restarted production of the Bolt for the 2026 model year. The Bolt is also built on a platform designed as electric only. The factory building the Bolt is being tentatively retooled next year to build higher margin cars as a result of Trumps tariffs. I don’t see how any of that has anything to do with appeasing Trump.
Stellantis is its own mess, and they suck at designing all cars regardless of energy source.
Animats 4 hours ago [-]
True, the Mach E mostly just shares the name. The E-Transit really is the same van with a different power train. It ought to be taking over fleet sales, but it only sells about 12K units/year, vs. 162K for the fuel powered version.
The Ford electric F-150 was overdesigned and overpriced.
Comments on the Bolt indicate it's being killed due to "changes in the political environment."
imp0cat 5 hours ago [-]
> Fords mustang mach e is unrelated to the gas one.
That is right! Some might even go as far as to call the electric Mustang an abomination, a disgrace of the Mustang name.
ErroneousBosh 13 hours ago [-]
> BYD builds a unit with an integrated motor, differential, axle, and wheel hubs
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.
serf 12 hours ago [-]
it's not really like a 'live axle' from an older truck, it's more like a de-Dion style suspension (or dead axle).
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.
ErroneousBosh 3 hours ago [-]
Ah, like on my old Volvo 340 ;-) They were fun, all that weight at the back (the diff and gearbox were bolted together under the rear floor) gave it excellent balance. Bit of a shame all that 50/50 weight distribution was only pushed along by a 1.4 Renault engine then, I guess.
Have you ever seen the Jaguar IRS setup? It's more like a twin-wishbone suspension *but the driveshaft is the upper link!* It's in compression and stops the hub tilting out, and the rear brakes are inboard to reduce weight even further.
sephamorr 12 hours ago [-]
On the platforms I've worked with, the weight isn't the issue so much as the quantity of expensive and vibe sensitive parts that are unsprung.
numpad0 12 hours ago [-]
Looks like they do in-hub motor for buses and in-differential(like everyone else) for passenger cars?
joe_mamba 13 hours ago [-]
>This simplifies vehicles considerably.
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.
ssl-3 12 hours ago [-]
On the other hand: If the assembly is reliable-enough, then repair isn't normally something that needs to be pursued in the first place.
Like Honda engines on their myriad pedestrian cars. I'm sure there's exceptions, but the engines tend to be ridiculously reliable. The rest of the car often fails (due to age and/or rot and/or deferred maintenance and/or crash) and leaves a very good engine behind.
Accordingly, junkyards are full of Honda engines that work fine.
Thus, there's very few people rebuilding them. They certainly can be rebuilt, but it usually just doesn't make financial sense to strip it all down and freshen everything up.
So when an engine does fail on an otherwise-working Honda daily-driver that is actually worth repairing, then the usual move is to swap in a used motor.
---
So if it's reliable enough, and there's also critical mass, then it doesn't matter much if the BYD drivetrain unit has easily-repairable components.
B1FF_PSUVM 8 hours ago [-]
> pedestrian cars.
That's an interesting turn of phrase ...
ssl-3 7 hours ago [-]
Thanks. As the owner of a 14-year-old Honda that is equipped in the most lavish of trim options, I found great pleasure in selecting that particular subperlative.
joe_mamba 2 hours ago [-]
>So if it's reliable enough, and there's also critical mass, then it doesn't matter much if the BYD drivetrain unit has easily-repairable components.
True, but swapping ICE engines was such an easy fix because of the modularity of powertrains that detached the messy hot rotating vibrating part(engine block) from the electronics and the rest.
These new ultra compact EV units are like if the ECU, catalytic converters, and starter motor would be built inside the engine block.
HPsquared 13 hours ago [-]
The eternal conflict between "design for manufacture" and "design for maintenance".
justinclift 11 hours ago [-]
Apparently both can be done together, it's just that it takes a bunch more effort so most places don't bother.
mnahkies 13 hours ago [-]
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)
jhatax 12 hours ago [-]
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.
simplyluke 11 hours ago [-]
> repair is expensive ($1000+ for performance cars, not that much cheaper for Civics)
I can almost guarantee the lion's share of this is shop labor, not parts, and pressing a bushing out and back in would be more expensive after accounting for that labor than just swapping the suspension arms. This is often the piece that gets missed in these discussions of "why am I replacing this huge assembly for a tiny part", if the whole assembly is coming out to deal with that tiny part anyways and shop labor is $200/hour it's cheaper to swap the assembly a lot of the time.
Try getting any repair beyond routine maintenance done on a car in the US for under $1000 these days. Car maintenance is one of the things I'm happy to DIY in most cases because the delta on costs is massive and as someone that works on computers all day it's vaguely enjoyable to get angry at a mechanical object for a change.
brianwawok 8 hours ago [-]
I’ve moved in to doing my own plumbing, electric, HVAC. Tend to keep new enough cars that they don’t need much, knock on wood. But it’s not uncommon in “making” $500 an hour or more doing electric or HVAC.
ryandrake 6 hours ago [-]
In my area, no tradesman is willing to even get out of bed for less than $1000. They have more high dollar work than they know what to do with and some of them don’t even pick up the phone anymore. You have to be made of money or learn how to DIY everything.
userbinator 7 hours ago [-]
and pressing a bushing out and back in would be more expensive after accounting for that labor than just swapping the suspension arms
Really? It's literally a few minutes (a few dozen $ at $200/hr, or $3.33/min) for any shop with a press. Removing the assembly from the rest of the car is going to take much longer.
lelanthran 5 hours ago [-]
> (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)
I've heard of people (who own a press) simply pressing out the existing bushing and pressing in a new one.
The trick is to get a new one - typically you'd have to press out the existing one, then run around town to find a match.
slaw 12 hours ago [-]
Instead of $40 part it is $150 part. Very easy to replace. Less than 1 hour labor for both sides.
that's the reason why BYD provides lifelong warrant for their batteries, motors
cyberax 13 hours ago [-]
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.
numpad0 12 hours ago [-]
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.
lelanthran 5 hours ago [-]
> Power electronics are still modular and are easily swappable.
Depends. These parts are custom designed, physically, and difficult to find off-the-shelf replacements for.
The heater fan-controller on my wife's SUV died. This is simply a current-limiting device: receives (I assume) CAN signals from the dashboard rotary encoder and determines what current to send the fan.
While I could have dragged my 'scope to the car, determine what signals it's getting from the dash system (all integrated, btw), it was easier to find one in China and wait six weeks.
(I may have chosen the first option if this happened in the winter, but in summer the heater is never used anyway).
joe_mamba 13 hours ago [-]
>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.
cyberax 9 hours ago [-]
There is nothing terribly complicated there. It's just an AC motor ("brushless DC") with a classic 3-phase inverter and a resolver. There are plenty of companies that make controllers for this kind of setup. Granted, they are typically not powerful enough for SOTA drivetrains, but it's a question of time.
Power electronics will need to fit into the footprint of the e-axle. Or maybe you'll need to manufacture a new housing. Both are easily doable for small companies.
> 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.
Again, an independent manufacturer can easily make them.
joe_mamba 3 hours ago [-]
>Both are easily doable for small companies.
As cheap as the mass produced ones with the economies of scale? I seriously doubt it. You're talking about a car ECU. Go see how much ECUs cost that don't deal with power electronics.
>Again, an independent manufacturer can easily make them.
Yeah but again, for how much? You can make anything if money is no option. But if cost is too high people will just scrap the car and buy a new one.
lowbloodsugar 13 hours ago [-]
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!
jbm 12 hours ago [-]
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.
brianwawok 8 hours ago [-]
My Model Y headlight failed. Bought the ballast for like $125 on eBay. Had to take my dang front of the car apart, but Tesla had a really nice manual online. So it has pros and cons for sure!
numpad0 12 hours ago [-]
> manufacturers are just making gas cars with EV power trains. Tesla and BYD are making next gen transport.
From what I see online, Teslas, especially MS/MX, are actually quite like an EV-swapped Toyota than anything futuristic. A lot about their cars(exception being CT and Semi) are ICE-mass-market-car coded. They're car equivalents of ARM PCs in ATX form factor like NVIDIA's DGX Station, opposite to the likes of trashcan Mac Pro.
m463 8 hours ago [-]
MS/MX have been discontinued. Their basic design was ~ 20 years old (2007)
I think model 3/y were more clean slate designs.
numpad0 20 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, so like, a PowerMac G5. But not like Mac Mini or iPhone.
joe_mamba 13 hours ago [-]
>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?
Toutouxc 7 hours ago [-]
> turned up the music till the noise went away
I viscerally hate people who do or seriously suggest this. First, ignoring any strange noise in a car almost always leads to more expensive and stressful repairs down the road. Second, how the hell do people hear a noise and are simply okay with not knowing the source? Not understanding the situation and not being able to make any kind of informed decision?
joe_mamba 3 hours ago [-]
>I viscerally hate people who do or seriously suggest this.
It was a joke mate, chill.
rwmj 13 hours ago [-]
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.
binary132 13 hours ago [-]
People don’t want cars they can tinker with, they want cars they can get repaired instead of replaced when something breaks….
rwmj 13 hours ago [-]
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.
bcrosby95 12 hours ago [-]
> 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.
binary132 12 hours ago [-]
A lot of it does come down to a cost / benefit analysis where time preference is extremely overweighted due to an abundance of seemingly free credit and, shall we say, a tragic dustbowl famine of available cognitive resources.
keybored 2 hours ago [-]
It’s a culture of learned helplessness, which you demonstrate.
joe_mamba 12 hours ago [-]
>I think the broader trend isn't what's cheapest, its what is easiest, even if its more expensive.
I don't think this is true. If this is the trend you're seeing it's probably 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 income.
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 minimum wage 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 if I could just keep fixing it.
Some broke people try not to buy new things if they can, but some are broke because they can't stop buying new things.
binary132 11 hours ago [-]
well, people want to have enough money to do what they need to do, of course, so they will choose things that they can in order to minimize cost and time spent, and increase convenience. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to own things that can be repaired. Owning repairable things is also valuable. I don’t think anyone actually wants to “own nothing and be happy”. But they might be able to be coerced into it, sure.
joe_mamba 12 hours ago [-]
>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 ports for phones, but still ignores this massive issue of ease of repairability and right to repair of personal vehicles that has been plaguing car owners since the ICE days and is now only getting worse with EVs, that's costing us a lot more money than what's costing users to pay Apple to replace your cracked display and dead battery.
It feels like they just keep going for the lowest hanging fruits to score easy wins that don't impact local industry, while ignoring the entire forest behind them.
Jarvis, pull up on the central HUD how much the EU car industry spent on lobbying in the EU over the last 15 years.
hnav 12 hours ago [-]
The EU is beholden to the Germans, ease of repair would wreck the profit margins of VAG, BMW and Daimler both because of reduced after-sales profits and due to cost increases to manufacturing and engineering.
markvdb 11 hours ago [-]
Any electric gear with the battery as its main wear part. Ebikes. Sit-on mowers. Cars.
This is about so much more than cost. Agency, autonomy, environment, efficiency, geopolitics even.
I refuse to buy drm'ed gear. The exception is second hand where I can reliably avoid the drm with little effort. At its simplest, that means never using specific drm'ed functionality. At its most complicated, that means mitm'ing an encrypted can bus.
com2kid 9 hours ago [-]
Even older chemistry EV batteries last over 200k miles.
Given that so far in my 20 years of driving I've only racked up around 80k miles, that 200k "wear part" will out last the rest of my time on earth.
bryanlarsen 9 hours ago [-]
There are lots of parts on a car that will likely wear out faster than the battery on a modern liquid cooled large NMC or LFP lithium battery. You should be able to get over 200,000 miles on the battery. You probably won't get near that much from the suspension, etc.
a96 5 hours ago [-]
Absolute BS. Wear parts are the parts that move and EV batteries are notoriously long lived unless they're Broken As Designed (Nissan Leaf).
XorNot 12 hours ago [-]
The EU has scored wins there though.
The mobile phone industry turns product into landfill on a yearly or more frequent basis.
People might do a yearly model swap on a car, but the car itself stays on the road for 10-20 years.
Changing how it's built needs to be done cautiously, but also has a much longer payback period.
binary132 13 hours ago [-]
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.
joe_mamba 3 hours ago [-]
>I’m very confused as to why this is downvoted
HN doesn't like like opinions that don't paint EVs in the best light possible. It's like a religious cult in some regards.
embedding-shape 14 hours ago [-]
> 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 :(
Terr_ 1 hours ago [-]
I wonder if they simply couldn't fit it inside the scanner?
From what I can find online, the biggest blade-cell dimension is 9.6cm, but I'm having a harder time finding the size limitations for the scanners.
embedding-shape 7 minutes ago [-]
> I wonder if they simply couldn't fit it inside the scanner?
As far as I know, the cells they use for the Blade does look more or less to what they actually scanned, I'm guessing it's the same size as the actual cell they used. Makes sense they couldn't fit the entire Blade assembly, as it's lots of cells put together, but I don't understand why they couldn't use the real thing instead of something else...
serf 12 hours ago [-]
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.
latentframe 7 hours ago [-]
BYD biggest innovation may be organizational more than technological
vuurmot 2 hours ago [-]
this is a very interesting comment. care to elaborate on it?
esafak 6 hours ago [-]
What can you say about it?
arcade79 3 hours ago [-]
My take: China is now producing cars of such good quality that companies are putting CT-scans of their cars online ..
Been driving Tesla the last 9 years .. entirely possible that my next car will be a BYD.
codedokode 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder why window switch panel uses 14 pins socket. Wouldn't it be simpler to use 3-4 pins with serial protocol?
_3u10 13 hours ago [-]
All you need to know is that BYD cars are good enough that the US had to effectively ban them.
tedggh 12 hours ago [-]
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.
gravelc 12 hours ago [-]
BYD only entered the Australian car market in 2022.
They are also priced much lower than KIA and Tesla.
FWIW I now own a GWM Cannon Αlpha PHEV pickup. Have also owned a Jeep Wrangler - the tech, build quality and reliability is not even on the same planet.
I can't imagine how the US manufacturers would compete with the Chinese ones on a level playing field. Not from the US, but it's hard to see how any administration would allow that. Would be the end of the local industry.
yen223 6 hours ago [-]
In Australia, the cheapest BYD EV is cheaper than the cheapest Toyota.
hnav 12 hours ago [-]
US manufacturers' niche is half-ton and above trucks. Even mighty Toyota's offering is playing distant #4 in that market with Nissan capitulating after 20 years of trying.
yen223 6 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: Australia's most popular vehicle has always been utes (aka pickup trucks)
Last year it was the Ford Ranger.
decimalenough 10 hours ago [-]
The BYD Shark 6 is already a hit, and the upcoming Shark 8 is aimed squarely at the ginormous US-style truck crowd.
One without cheap cars or EV's, even though that's what people want and need now.
8 hours ago [-]
decimalenough 10 hours ago [-]
BYD is not just zippy little city cars. The BYD Sealion 7 SUV (EV) and Shark full-size truck (PHEV) are incredibly popular in Australia, which is a very similar market to the US, and I'm sure they would sell like hotcakes if allowed into 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.
_3u10 11 hours ago [-]
The lada and movkvisch of car brands with people willing to cross the wall to buy BYD in Mexico
kyrra 13 hours ago [-]
Potentially predicated on anti-dumping rules.
_carbyau_ 10 hours ago [-]
I am torn on this. Anti-dumping is one thing, and yet disruption was an overused keyword for a long time in Silicon valley.
1. Huge scale subsidies like this are effectively a manufacturing attack. This is mean at the level of international politics and yet the world recently seems to be waking up to the idea they were handing over every practice of manufacture to China.
2. On the other hand, while the Chinese car companies are finding their footing they have not yet perfected the bullshit tiered marketing approaches that see relatively cheap to manufacture features gated to "high-equipment level" cars.
For example, now even the cheapest cars can have 360 degree parking cameras. Of course, the Chinese engineering level remains to be seen but many would argue this is competition in the market.
kazinator 11 hours ago [-]
> Fourteen pins in two parallel rows carry every signal this panel produces to the rest of the vehicle. Automotive connectors are among the most common failure points in modern cars: corrosion, fretting, and thermal cycling work on these joints over years of use. One connector failure on a module this integrated takes out mirrors, windows, locks, and child safety all at once.
Pack that shit full of silicone dielectric grease, check it every year or two, and it should be good for decades.
mk_stjames 6 hours ago [-]
This sounds like copy written by someone who hasn't actually spent a lot of time with the automotive world and in trying to sound like they have.
Electrical connectors on automotive harnesses are far, far more reliable now on modern cars than they ever have been in the past, even with the increase in number of such connectors.
Companies like Delphi and Amphenol put immense engineering effort into the way modern connectors are designed, with weather sealing and contact plating that is way better than anything pre 1990's-ish was. Plastics really got way better after the turn of the Millenium compared to what they were before- I remember working on 1980s cars in the early 2000s (so, 20 year old cars) where connectors would ofter crumble in your hands when disconnecting them, or have completely corroded terminals, terrible sockets that yield and wouldn't keep continuity, etc. Compared that to all the cars I've worked on in the last 20 years where connectors have just not really been a worry (among the brands I've work on, at least). The electronics / sensors / modules themselves are much more likely to fail than the connectors they attach with, in my current experience. The only time connectors seem to fail is when cycled roughly/wrongly by people doing service incorrectly. Failure in place? Rare.
Anyone who thinks automotive electronics were more reliable in the past, live a bit with the electrical systems of a car from the 1970's thru the mid 1990's and report back to me on how that goes. Bonus points if it's Italian or British.
imp0cat 5 hours ago [-]
I think the point is that all those "dumb" switches, terminals or cables that get worn out can be replaced relatively easily (ie you need a multimeter and some patience to find the bad one). But if something in the integrated module fails, well good luck repairing that. These things are probably designed to be replaced as a whole, which is fine if you can get a new one. But as the cars get older, this is going to be a problem.
Strong old-man-yells-at-cloud vibe, I know. ;)
mk_stjames 5 hours ago [-]
Yes but specifically, in this article, the passage is written about a harness connector on a door window switch module as follows:
>Fourteen pins in two parallel rows carry every signal this panel produces to the rest of the vehicle. Automotive connectors are among the most common failure points in modern cars: corrosion, fretting, and thermal cycling work on these joints over years of use. One connector failure on a module this integrated takes out mirrors, windows, locks, and child safety all at once.
This just reads weird to me.
Corrosion on an interior module connector is not as much of a concern these days unless the car is in a flood or the door card sealing is broken due to something like a poor repair job.
Fretting? What would cause fretting on pins of a connector that never gets touched by a human after it leaves the factory. It is a static connection, it doesn't get plugged and unplugged.
Thermal cycling? It is inside a door panel... not near a hot exhaust or inside an engine. It sees normal interior temperature cycles.
An actual Closures Engineer would more likely call out vibration shock during door slam in a closures FMEA as a potential electrical window switch fault hazard resulting from the connector loosening if the chosen connector lacks sufficient mechanical fastening moreso than anything..
Saying that connectors themselves are "among the most common failure points in modern cars".... just sets of flags to me as overly flatulent, generated puff writing. "Oh I need to list three things about connectors (thinking).... Corrosion -Fretting- Thermal Cycling-!! and this makes connectors among the most common failures in modern cars (no sources cited)".
(I'm a former automotive engineer.)
mk_stjames 4 hours ago [-]
In addition I'll give one more criticism:
Above that reads this bit:
>Its driver door panel consolidates mirror adjustment, mirror fold, door locks, all four window controls, and child locks into a single networked module. That consolidation exemplifies BYD's vertical integration favoring fewer subassemblies, each designed in-house and dropped into place, with firmware determining how any of it behaves.
Integrated door switch modules have been more common than not on cars for easily the last 15 years now, and I don't think this in any way exemplifies BYD's "Vertical Integration" or "favoring fewer subassemblies" (these two things actually don't even necessarily imply each other!!). There are plenty of cars that use such assemblies and the companies outsource to tier 2's for the actual manufacturing - Mercedes and Valeo, for example. Because they don't actually take apart the module and look for, say, a logo on the silkscreen of the PCB, I don't think the author actually confirmed if BYD 'designs' (let alone manufactures) the complete switch unit in-house. They could. I'm not saying they can't. But...
But this whole article is written from a weird authoritative viewpoint when really I think it should back down a bit and just describe what the damn CT scans show.
squokko 3 hours ago [-]
Time to start learning Mandarin
pch00 2 hours ago [-]
> Time to start learning Mandarin
Mandarin has been on the curriculum at my son's school for the past few years. Prescient planning imho.
13 hours ago [-]
dangus 11 hours ago [-]
I want to buy a Chinese car and I am annoyed that my protectionist government won’t let me. Lowering transportation cost would be the most impactful thing to my budget.
All that serves to do is ensure the American car industry falls far behind by being coddled into a lack of competition.
Toyota showed the world the Toyota Production System. What Tesla, Kia/Hyundai, and Chinese EVs have shown American automakers is how much vertical integration can be an asset, especially with the lower part counts of electric vehicles.
The model where every part is contracted out to parts manufacturers is proving to be antiquated.
yakbarber 11 hours ago [-]
Totally agree, this protectionism killed the Australian car industry because eventually you just can’t compete.
halapro 3 hours ago [-]
Protectionism by who? By definition protectionism cannot kill your own country's car industry.
viasfo 14 hours ago [-]
CT scans of BYD car components. BYD is fully vertically integrated at a level unseen since early 20th-century Ford.
yanhangyhy 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
AgentReinAi 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
AAYALAG 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
spiral09 13 hours ago [-]
[dead]
londons_explore 11 hours ago [-]
Previous lumafield blog posts have been full of amazing graphics and knowledge.
But this one seems to be "state the obvious" and "recant political talking points with no new evidence".
866-RON-0-FEZ 11 hours ago [-]
This looks like a stealth advertisement for their CT scanning business. There is nothing educational of value for the general public here.
The only reason you would do this is for competitive analysis and I assure you the other car companies have already analyzed these parts.
bendauphinee 11 hours ago [-]
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. On the other side of it though, so what, we get to look inside stuff with a cool scan. They’ve been doing these posts for several years now, and they’re all interesting.
LandenLove 11 hours ago [-]
The part where they highlight the rippling in the lithium battery was interesting. They mention it can accelerate degradation over time. It's unclear if this specific example is within tolerances, but I have seen in other CT scans how dramatic the lithium rippling can become.
But overall, yeah, this is mostly an advertisement. They have other videos on their YouTube where they scan random items.
perching_aix 11 hours ago [-]
It's called content marketing, and there's nothing stealthy about it in particular.
gsquaredxc 8 hours ago [-]
I would say that there’s quite substantial value perhaps not to the general public but to the general HN user from their reports. I was very excited to see them have a public scan of an LFP battery because the previous scans they did of batteries were very informative on which brands to trust and the level of inconsistency that can exist. Their analysis of BYD’s battery design is very useful to someone who is looking to understand LFP and the levels of quality control necessary to have safe batteries. The reports are a bit of a “How it’s Made” but written for the target audience of engineers and has similar utility.
calvinmorrison 11 hours ago [-]
There actually is a company who does this. full tear downs, of cars top to bottom. Interesting stuff
I have to say I'm super impressed with how heavy duty everything is. The control arms, subframes, etc all look good and don't fit the 'chinese car bad' narrative you always hear. The powertrain components all look to be extremely high quality.
I've poked around a few EV's with him now, and I do feel like the Chinese market cars are evolving to a really good standard faster than their Korean counterparts did back in the 80s/90s.
In the UK the major car dealers are franchises, and you tend to see for example a Ford garage next to a Toyota garage, and they are operated by the same company. Most of these places have closed one of the branded ones and turned it into a BYD franchise dealership. Theres so many of them across the country now.
I'd take a BYD over something like a Tesla thats for sure - far better cars, it's not even a fair comparison anymore.
I dare say they'll struggle a little more in the US with the whole "China bad" propaganda engrained into society, which is likely why BYD have gone for the agressive expansion in Europe instead.
While I reckon some other countries still have specialist manufacturing in key areas that surpasses China, most “common” parts can be made in China to a standard that meets or exceeds Western countries, if you’re willing to pay for it.
It's more complicated than this. Historically, Chinese manufacturing has been notorious for quietly undermining the quality of the product to improve their margins over time, in a way that the commissioning brand doesn't notice. If a Chinese manufacturer quotes you a price too good to be true, they're probably quoting you at-cost and will build in their margin later, once the orders start flowing in.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quality_fade
You're going to have excellence and crap across such a gargantuan amount of production and companies, a high amount of variance.
Having said that a lot of German car suppliers are in China, and the German car manufacturing industry evolved over a significantly longer period of time.
I don't think this is true. Maybe super specialist things like chip manufacturing products, but it's guaranteed China is spending heavily on R&D to develop their own. When it comes to cars / car parts they will be on par with if not surpassing most countries.
Also keep in mind China's sudden onset had a big impact on European and US car manufacturing, with VW / VAG closing major factories in Germany. Mind you, that's also because VAG was the biggest car manufacturer in China, until suddenly BYD and co opened up their factories and dominated the market in a short amount of time.
I’m reminded of all the dismissals people made about the skill levels of Indian software developers when the explanation was that the more skilled ones knew they could do better than the MBAs were offering to make the savings sound even more impressive.
I would say the problem is heavily structural and linked to few companies that very much pursue lowest possible effort, harming both employee and customer. We had a company that infamously pursued a somewhat similar (just with not as much leverage over employees) strategy in Poland - a common refrain was how other companies would get people jumping jobs from them who gave variants of "I needed some spending money while finishing my degree, escaped as soon as I could" story.
Unfortunately it seems a bit harder to do when some places apparently hire with only category appearing to be "according to census they speak english", then put them on project with minimal training and zero time or space to acquire more training.
This was unsurprising after my entire life hearing people complain about declining quality and imported junk while always picking the cheapest item on the shelf at the store, even when they had plenty of money for a better quality option. There’s just a certain mindset which can’t look past the lowest possible price.
In what way are they hostile? I am also part of "the west" and they never threatened us.
The west != just the USA.
I own a BYD Tang, so I’m biased, but the value for money has been hard to beat.
Scale probably helps too. When you sell millions of cars using many of the same parts, availability is better and parts are more likely to stay affordable than on low-volume models with lots of redesigns.
Time will tell how cheap and easy will they be to maintain, which affects residual value at the end of the lease, which affects payments.
Nobody pays sticker price for new cars as a lump sum. If BYDs (or whatever car) are impossible to maintain, that means nobody will want them used, and residual value will be low, which means BYDs will cost more to the end user to own than a more expensive car by a different manufacturer.
Which seems to be the case for now in places like Germany, but we will have to wait and see how the situation develops and the second hand market builds up.
This is interesting. Wasn't the idea in Europe (and maybe elsewhere, too, no idea) that outsourcing components would lead to economies of scale? After all, a Mercedes or BMW or VW seat is still roughly a seat?
It's interesting to me that we seem to switch back and forth between the two models, each time saying the new approach is "better".
While I think the "chinese quality bad" narrative still applies to many Chinese brands, this isn't as universal as it was in the past.
I think my eyes were first opened when I bought myself a Huawei phone(before the Google ban). My first few smartphones had been Samsung, I've always felt the term "planned obsolence" was the best way to describe these phones: After just a year, the phone felt considerably slower, and after two it was almost unusable.
Huawei flagship phones were similar in price to Samsung, but I felt they lasted way longer.
FYI, if you are looking for a post google huawei, check out honor phones.
As an aside the best phone I ever had was a HTC One X, another brand that I sorely miss.
The problem is always going to be: what's going to happen in 10 years, or whatever, after warranty expires?
The problem with vertical integration is for the customer, and it's repairs: traditional manufacturing is more expensive because you have a constellation of companies manufacturing pars with official and unofficial second sources. While this increases the overall cost of the vehichle, it decreases the final price of every component because the customer (independent mechanic) can choose to use a different source. The market working as intended.
BYD is currently the only EV i would consider, because it's the best value and the engineering quality is indeed high, but because i want to own, not rent, i'm preoccupied of what's going to happen in X years.
Yes, it's the same fear we had three-four decades ago when toyota/suzuki/kia entered the european market, that bet paid off but also because cost of repairs went down over time as they were also traditional manufacturers. (Yet for some exotic components you still must go to the OEM, and pay 2-3 times the equivalent sensor/component for an european car.)
However, with vertical integration you are always at mercy of the manufacturer. Better engineering, yes. Better integration, better efficiency, but you will suffer for repairs if you can't have second sources.
Think apple. (and tesla. but tesla is shit quality)
Or john deere.
The factory rust protection was maybe a bit on the lighter side, but everything else on it looks completely normal. The drivetrain is simple (no heat exchange mechanism between battery coolant and motor coolant, a slightly whiny motor), but also genuinely competent and modern for a 2022 design (a mature skateboard RWD platform with a thin CTP battery with large cells and generous cell/coolant heat exchange). There are no obvious wtf solutions, nothing that would look too thin or too flimsy. The infotainment and the SW of the car does have the occasional funny moments, but all that is happening on what looks and feels like a solid piece of hardware.
Sadly that's also why it's hard to buy a new car, you only know what's a quality car years down the line.
First impression matters though.
Not always. Sometimes the components are a lot older than the car and have earned a bit of a reputation. The powerplant in my car is like 20 years older than the model year. The underlying platform is nearly as old as well. All proven to be boringly reliable.
I guess this changes in the EV era with faster rate of iterations compared to the ICE era. More lessons still to learn with the EV cars I'm sure. Meanwhile a 4 cyl compact car is practically a commodity and aside from safety widgets like backup cameras, have been relatively unchanged for 15 or 20 years.
Unless you have a wet belt in your Puretech engine that will blow up in 5-8 years...
Mechanics and enthusiasts around here (Spain) call this engines "pudretech" (rot-tech)...
There are a lot of low price bracket Chinese imports (MGs mainly) that seem to have severe rust issues that are present at delivery.
And Toyotas a few years ago had a problem where certain colour cars would have their paint fall off in huge sheets as the primer was incorrect or something.
I do agree in principle that most modern cars should be pretty good for their warranty period/first owner, but I've also seen some egregious edge cases!
I had AEG Lavamat 1055 about 35 years (from 1982), worked well without hitch. It was quite small, top loading model etc. Fast spin-dry w/ variomatic (shaking also while spinning). Laundry out of it was quite dry already.
Then 2017 building plumbing had to be redone and gave reason to remake bathroom completely and replacing old equipment. I would have bought Miele model but it didn't fit reserved place and I ended up buying Electrolux instead.
That's now month short of 9 years and I have no reason to believe it will not work well at least another 10 years to come. regardless advertised 10 years warranty.
This current one has more electronic parts, but now searching by its model found only fault codes all seem to be user errors, overfilling, water hose not open, draining filter clogged etc. All non issues whoever bothers knowing how to maintain and operate that thing over years. No complaints about issues with electronics problems.
These were first used by a couple and later single (me) needs which are usually once a week plus twice a month washing 4-5 uses single day. Which becomes bit over 100 washing in year.
That's just 1000 washings in 10 years and 3500 in 35 years. For a family washing every day once it would be 3563 uses in 10 years.
If washing machine isn't badly kept against instructions and it isn't cheapest knock off plastic rubish, why would be a surprise if it doesn't last at least that 10 years use washing family laundry. And last many decades with single or dink use?
After they finally engaged with the warranty, they had someone come out to 'fix' it once every couple weeks until I gave up and just bought a different brand washer/dryer.
I'm now sworn off Beko, and will happily tell everyone I can about my terrible service :)
Maybe it’s me then. We just don’t get that long out of them. We have tried Fisher and Paykel and Samsung. Never had more than and year warranty either.
They do run at least once a day often more, but that’s not enough to explain it.
This would probably last a couple I expect
My great-great-grandfather used to complain about crappy Scottish tools.
He was English. I am not sure you can buy as much as a paperclip made in England now.
Has to be said that nobody on this side of the pond ever complained about the quality of American Snap On tools though, just so long as the boss was paying for them.
But do you actually have a frame of reference though?
It's really easy to make stuff look good and then have it suck because someone in some other department nerfed it.
I'm not saying they're bad but HN is not a community I trust to make such assessments.
People often equate low-value Chinese manufacturing that focuses on low cost with their manufacturing quality across all fields.
Things changed in 2012 when I bought a 'cheap-ish' Huawei phone, it was nothing of a flagship, no performance but it was really solid product. Very light and well built too. How ironic that was my first ever experience of buying a product exported to Europe.
“No wonder this circuit failed, it says made in Japan”
“What do you mean doc, all the best stuff is made in Japan”
I'd move there given the opportunity, the business owners of America are willing to poison and put the lives of their fellow citizens at risk for literal pieces of paper. I'm ashamed to be American.
This happened in 2008 by the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
You might want to switch from "social credit" (which was a failed local project from over a decade ago) to "blacklist", or just criticize the overall surveillance system, which is pretty invasive.
I'm getting a bit tired of people posting on social media websites and then pretending they are not a part of them. "Reddit" did this, "HN" did that... let's just admit that we're all chronically online people who get irritated whenever we stumble out of our bubble and more than one person dares to disagree with us.
The US obviously isn't the only one guilty of this kind of thing, it just happens to have been one of the most effective.
Here’s an example - you can rent e-bikes and power banks at low cost, they are everywhere. If you don’t return an e-bike or power bank after using it, not only will that company charge you, but you’ll likely get blacklisted from renting more, even at other companies.
This is a good thing, no???
But worse because here we are talking deep human topics.
Such long period of peace made people forget about how the world work. And clearly studing history in school ks not working. I guess in the US they are getting a new shot right now to remember.
But also some are just real people from HN that are the worst kind of dumb : uneducated but smart, so they think their opinion is valid.
This is where the "history at schoolis useless" people show their true color.
About the data sending, wasn't there a quite recent incident where an American car manufacturer was leaking the real-time position of all their clients' vehicles? Aren't US telecoms selling position data of their clients? Isn't the US filled with surveillance cameras managed by a private company keeping track of every car?
Do you base your last statement on anything, or is it just a hunch?
I agree it's dystopian, but I live in Germany and we have a similar thing called "Schufa". For most people it mostly means that if they default on a credit, they'll be less likely to find an apartment. It differs from the US one in the sense that banks don't require you to get into debt before they trust you, that whole "build your credit score" nonsense.
The fact you are casually talking about it is infuriating.
It's like taking about the yellow star and stay "isn't it like the pins in the US".
Nobody is moving to China just because they make good cars now, I have never seen anybody stating that so no idea why the hyperbole. But good (enough) cars they do make and various other products, ignoring facts ain't a smart move in any case.
Removing modem may kill new BMW as well as new Chevrolet and so on, so that argument is... weird. Expect more integration and dependence on online, like it or not. Repairability goes against primary incentives of all car manufacturers, they get significant revenue from official repair shops, often more than from sales themselves. Definitely true for that BMW, have a friend quite high in their sales team in Munich and he stated that few times.
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 tech demo!
> None of these components is particularly extraordinary in isolation
That said, I didn't perceive a problem either, and my self-diagnosis is that "none of the X" feels like it could be evoking a singular item that failed to be found.
Cambridge says...
> In formal styles, we use none of with a singular verb when it is the subject. However, in informal speaking, people often use plural verbs...
Collins says:
> Since none has the meanings “not one” and “not any,” some insist that it always be treated as a singular and be followed by a singular verb: The rescue party searched for survivors, but none was found. However, none has been used with both singular and plural verbs since the 9th century. When the sense is “not any persons or things” (as in the example above), the plural is more common: … none were found. Only when none is clearly intended to mean “not one” or “not any” is it followed by a singular verb: Of all my articles, none has received more acclaim than my latest one.
The mechanical key fallback pattern is standard across the industry for sure.
Article says key fobs are the same across all their cars and this looks the same as mine for a Sealion 5, there is no hinge for the key you just pull it out.
Likely the article authors just assumed from looking at the scan, if they’d actually tried to remove the key they would have realised their mistake.
Nowadays the physical key is only a backup, safely stowed inside the fob. It is meant to be pulled out only in an emergency.
When keyless start came, there was a dummy button that fit in the ignition lock that could be pushed to start. If there was a problem, you could pop it out and use the key as before.
IIRC, all that, so may have mistakes. Just crossed my mind that they went a few decades between no metal ignition key and keyless. MB being MB, I wouldn't be surprised if they still had models with that same "old" system and keyless as an option.
All this to say Hyundai certainly knows how to do this. If they didn’t do it, it is almost certainly a deliberate omission.
Made my keys much less bulky
I don’t have a 3D printer currently. I did help my cousin’s kid by one and they told me if I ever wanted to print something to let them know, but I have a feeling I’ll need to design my own with some trial and error.
I’ve hesitated buying one, because the idea of having a machine to melt plastic in my house seems like a bad idea when it comes to air quality.
If it’s something you worry about, the enclosed models frequently either come with, or can be fitted with a carbon filter, and if you are really worried, you can use dryer vent to get it outside.
With the most popular plastic (PLA) at printing temperatures, there isn’t any data showing toxic byproducts. When you get into things like ABS and resin you have to think more about fumes.
https://youtu.be/0aspbvdCXqs?si=9pcToYeg4EcoHfPJ
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):
The Highland Park plant was Ford's play to cut the Dodge Brothers out of the process by machining most of his own parts. The peak of vertical integration would be the River Rouge plant which, as you say, machined all its own parts from iron and steel made on-site from raw ore (but never made the Model T).
In fact, I believe Samsung is the only company on the planet that can design & build a state of the art smartphone from scratch - silicon/fabrication, SoC, battery, baseband, camera sensor, memory, and display.
What other high tech vertically integrated producers exist in this group?
Wouldn't be surprised if that finally gets sunset in the next few years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER1 IRC.
Actually, yes, we would: https://www.kmoser.com/ctscan/
It's simple things like this which incumbent manufacturers need to avoid losing sight of.
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.
not as much anymore. model s/x discontinued.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/01/tesla-kills-models-s-an...
Fords mustang mach e is unrelated to the gas one. Totally different platform. It was designed from the ground up as an electric platform. The electric F-150 was a shrewd bet that didn’t pay off, but a pretty defensible decision to try to electrify the most popular vehicle in North America without changing the outside look too much. Under the sheet metal it doesn’t share a lot of drivetrain parts with the gas truck.
Chevy makes full size electric trucks on an all electric platform with three truck/SUV models across three brands. The bolt was cancelled in 2022 with the last one produced in December 2023. They have restarted production of the Bolt for the 2026 model year. The Bolt is also built on a platform designed as electric only. The factory building the Bolt is being tentatively retooled next year to build higher margin cars as a result of Trumps tariffs. I don’t see how any of that has anything to do with appeasing Trump.
Stellantis is its own mess, and they suck at designing all cars regardless of energy source.
Comments on the Bolt indicate it's being killed due to "changes in the political environment."
That is right! Some might even go as far as to call the electric Mustang an abomination, a disgrace of the Mustang name.
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.
Have you ever seen the Jaguar IRS setup? It's more like a twin-wishbone suspension *but the driveshaft is the upper link!* It's in compression and stops the hub tilting out, and the rear brakes are inboard to reduce weight even further.
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.
Like Honda engines on their myriad pedestrian cars. I'm sure there's exceptions, but the engines tend to be ridiculously reliable. The rest of the car often fails (due to age and/or rot and/or deferred maintenance and/or crash) and leaves a very good engine behind.
Accordingly, junkyards are full of Honda engines that work fine.
Thus, there's very few people rebuilding them. They certainly can be rebuilt, but it usually just doesn't make financial sense to strip it all down and freshen everything up.
So when an engine does fail on an otherwise-working Honda daily-driver that is actually worth repairing, then the usual move is to swap in a used motor.
---
So if it's reliable enough, and there's also critical mass, then it doesn't matter much if the BYD drivetrain unit has easily-repairable components.
That's an interesting turn of phrase ...
True, but swapping ICE engines was such an easy fix because of the modularity of powertrains that detached the messy hot rotating vibrating part(engine block) from the electronics and the rest.
These new ultra compact EV units are like if the ECU, catalytic converters, and starter motor would be built inside the engine block.
(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.
I can almost guarantee the lion's share of this is shop labor, not parts, and pressing a bushing out and back in would be more expensive after accounting for that labor than just swapping the suspension arms. This is often the piece that gets missed in these discussions of "why am I replacing this huge assembly for a tiny part", if the whole assembly is coming out to deal with that tiny part anyways and shop labor is $200/hour it's cheaper to swap the assembly a lot of the time.
Try getting any repair beyond routine maintenance done on a car in the US for under $1000 these days. Car maintenance is one of the things I'm happy to DIY in most cases because the delta on costs is massive and as someone that works on computers all day it's vaguely enjoyable to get angry at a mechanical object for a change.
Really? It's literally a few minutes (a few dozen $ at $200/hr, or $3.33/min) for any shop with a press. Removing the assembly from the rest of the car is going to take much longer.
I've heard of people (who own a press) simply pressing out the existing bushing and pressing in a new one.
The trick is to get a new one - typically you'd have to press out the existing one, then run around town to find a match.
https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/jeep,2012,grand+cherokee...
And once they give out, you can just replace the whole unit for maybe $2000.
Depends. These parts are custom designed, physically, and difficult to find off-the-shelf replacements for.
The heater fan-controller on my wife's SUV died. This is simply a current-limiting device: receives (I assume) CAN signals from the dashboard rotary encoder and determines what current to send the fan.
While I could have dragged my 'scope to the car, determine what signals it's getting from the dash system (all integrated, btw), it was easier to find one in China and wait six weeks.
(I may have chosen the first option if this happened in the winter, but in summer the heater is never used anyway).
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.
Power electronics will need to fit into the footprint of the e-axle. Or maybe you'll need to manufacture a new housing. Both are easily doable for small companies.
> 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.
Again, an independent manufacturer can easily make them.
As cheap as the mass produced ones with the economies of scale? I seriously doubt it. You're talking about a car ECU. Go see how much ECUs cost that don't deal with power electronics.
>Again, an independent manufacturer can easily make them.
Yeah but again, for how much? You can make anything if money is no option. But if cost is too high people will just scrap the car and buy a new one.
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.
From what I see online, Teslas, especially MS/MX, are actually quite like an EV-swapped Toyota than anything futuristic. A lot about their cars(exception being CT and Semi) are ICE-mass-market-car coded. They're car equivalents of ARM PCs in ATX form factor like NVIDIA's DGX Station, opposite to the likes of trashcan Mac Pro.
I think model 3/y were more clean slate designs.
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 viscerally hate people who do or seriously suggest this. First, ignoring any strange noise in a car almost always leads to more expensive and stressful repairs down the road. Second, how the hell do people hear a noise and are simply okay with not knowing the source? Not understanding the situation and not being able to make any kind of informed decision?
It was a joke mate, chill.
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.
I don't think this is true. If this is the trend you're seeing it's probably 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 income.
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 minimum wage 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 if I could just keep fixing it.
Some broke people try not to buy new things if they can, but some are broke because they can't stop buying new things.
Which is why I'm so baffled how and why the EU has spent so much time and effort regulating batteries and charging ports for phones, but still ignores this massive issue of ease of repairability and right to repair of personal vehicles that has been plaguing car owners since the ICE days and is now only getting worse with EVs, that's costing us a lot more money than what's costing users to pay Apple to replace your cracked display and dead battery.
It feels like they just keep going for the lowest hanging fruits to score easy wins that don't impact local industry, while ignoring the entire forest behind them.
Jarvis, pull up on the central HUD how much the EU car industry spent on lobbying in the EU over the last 15 years.
This is about so much more than cost. Agency, autonomy, environment, efficiency, geopolitics even.
I refuse to buy drm'ed gear. The exception is second hand where I can reliably avoid the drm with little effort. At its simplest, that means never using specific drm'ed functionality. At its most complicated, that means mitm'ing an encrypted can bus.
Given that so far in my 20 years of driving I've only racked up around 80k miles, that 200k "wear part" will out last the rest of my time on earth.
The mobile phone industry turns product into landfill on a yearly or more frequent basis.
People might do a yearly model swap on a car, but the car itself stays on the road for 10-20 years.
Changing how it's built needs to be done cautiously, but also has a much longer payback period.
HN doesn't like like opinions that don't paint EVs in the best light possible. It's like a religious cult in some regards.
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 :(
From what I can find online, the biggest blade-cell dimension is 9.6cm, but I'm having a harder time finding the size limitations for the scanners.
As far as I know, the cells they use for the Blade does look more or less to what they actually scanned, I'm guessing it's the same size as the actual cell they used. Makes sense they couldn't fit the entire Blade assembly, as it's lots of cells put together, but I don't understand why they couldn't use the real thing instead of something else...
Been driving Tesla the last 9 years .. entirely possible that my next car will be a BYD.
They are now the 2nd biggest seller after Toyota (https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/insight/byd-overtakes-rivals-...).
They are also priced much lower than KIA and Tesla.
FWIW I now own a GWM Cannon Αlpha PHEV pickup. Have also owned a Jeep Wrangler - the tech, build quality and reliability is not even on the same planet.
I can't imagine how the US manufacturers would compete with the Chinese ones on a level playing field. Not from the US, but it's hard to see how any administration would allow that. Would be the end of the local industry.
Last year it was the Ford Ranger.
https://bydautomotive.com.au/shark-6
https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/byd-shark-8-co...
The U.S. Wants to Ban China's High-Tech Cars but They're Already Here in El Paso - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363751
* WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/chinese-cars-byd-geely-u-...
One without cheap cars or EV's, even though that's what people want and need now.
https://bydautomotive.com.au/sealion-7
https://bydautomotive.com.au/shark-6
1. Huge scale subsidies like this are effectively a manufacturing attack. This is mean at the level of international politics and yet the world recently seems to be waking up to the idea they were handing over every practice of manufacture to China.
2. On the other hand, while the Chinese car companies are finding their footing they have not yet perfected the bullshit tiered marketing approaches that see relatively cheap to manufacture features gated to "high-equipment level" cars.
For example, now even the cheapest cars can have 360 degree parking cameras. Of course, the Chinese engineering level remains to be seen but many would argue this is competition in the market.
Pack that shit full of silicone dielectric grease, check it every year or two, and it should be good for decades.
Electrical connectors on automotive harnesses are far, far more reliable now on modern cars than they ever have been in the past, even with the increase in number of such connectors.
Companies like Delphi and Amphenol put immense engineering effort into the way modern connectors are designed, with weather sealing and contact plating that is way better than anything pre 1990's-ish was. Plastics really got way better after the turn of the Millenium compared to what they were before- I remember working on 1980s cars in the early 2000s (so, 20 year old cars) where connectors would ofter crumble in your hands when disconnecting them, or have completely corroded terminals, terrible sockets that yield and wouldn't keep continuity, etc. Compared that to all the cars I've worked on in the last 20 years where connectors have just not really been a worry (among the brands I've work on, at least). The electronics / sensors / modules themselves are much more likely to fail than the connectors they attach with, in my current experience. The only time connectors seem to fail is when cycled roughly/wrongly by people doing service incorrectly. Failure in place? Rare.
Anyone who thinks automotive electronics were more reliable in the past, live a bit with the electrical systems of a car from the 1970's thru the mid 1990's and report back to me on how that goes. Bonus points if it's Italian or British.
Strong old-man-yells-at-cloud vibe, I know. ;)
Corrosion on an interior module connector is not as much of a concern these days unless the car is in a flood or the door card sealing is broken due to something like a poor repair job.
Fretting? What would cause fretting on pins of a connector that never gets touched by a human after it leaves the factory. It is a static connection, it doesn't get plugged and unplugged.
Thermal cycling? It is inside a door panel... not near a hot exhaust or inside an engine. It sees normal interior temperature cycles.
An actual Closures Engineer would more likely call out vibration shock during door slam in a closures FMEA as a potential electrical window switch fault hazard resulting from the connector loosening if the chosen connector lacks sufficient mechanical fastening moreso than anything..
Saying that connectors themselves are "among the most common failure points in modern cars".... just sets of flags to me as overly flatulent, generated puff writing. "Oh I need to list three things about connectors (thinking).... Corrosion -Fretting- Thermal Cycling-!! and this makes connectors among the most common failures in modern cars (no sources cited)".
(I'm a former automotive engineer.)
Above that reads this bit:
Integrated door switch modules have been more common than not on cars for easily the last 15 years now, and I don't think this in any way exemplifies BYD's "Vertical Integration" or "favoring fewer subassemblies" (these two things actually don't even necessarily imply each other!!). There are plenty of cars that use such assemblies and the companies outsource to tier 2's for the actual manufacturing - Mercedes and Valeo, for example. Because they don't actually take apart the module and look for, say, a logo on the silkscreen of the PCB, I don't think the author actually confirmed if BYD 'designs' (let alone manufactures) the complete switch unit in-house. They could. I'm not saying they can't. But...But this whole article is written from a weird authoritative viewpoint when really I think it should back down a bit and just describe what the damn CT scans show.
Mandarin has been on the curriculum at my son's school for the past few years. Prescient planning imho.
All that serves to do is ensure the American car industry falls far behind by being coddled into a lack of competition.
Toyota showed the world the Toyota Production System. What Tesla, Kia/Hyundai, and Chinese EVs have shown American automakers is how much vertical integration can be an asset, especially with the lower part counts of electric vehicles.
The model where every part is contracted out to parts manufacturers is proving to be antiquated.
But this one seems to be "state the obvious" and "recant political talking points with no new evidence".
The only reason you would do this is for competitive analysis and I assure you the other car companies have already analyzed these parts.
But overall, yeah, this is mostly an advertisement. They have other videos on their YouTube where they scan random items.
https://www.jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-company-that-tears-...