I visited one of their mall stores of theirs and literally the only product (out of many) not requiring an app was some sort of shaving machine. A goddamn pole fan requiring an app!
On the other hand, all modern cars seem to be pretty bad at this. Tesla cars appear to be a privacy nightmare.
Some notable takeaways:
- The car companies claim not only the owners' data, but the data of _any passengers_. I don't think people reasonably expect that sitting in a friend's car grants consent to collect data on them.
- Almost no brands allow people to request their data be deleted.
- Nissan claims the right to know their owner's sexual activity. Kia claims the right to know their owner's sex lives.
Realistically, even iot wall sockets and switch controllers are now a well served market. Is there any electrical appliance that has no merit being externally controllable, and thus a potential data source?
We'd need Synology to gain way more market power than Apple and Google (and Xiaomi and every other global makers) to get a full user managed hub instead of the cloud first approach we have now.
Exactly. We'll hardly find one car, or for that matter any object with enough electronics on board which is both closed and connected, that doesn't use the technology to gather data on the user. Spying is a profitable business nobody in the industry can resist to.
I hope the industry moves both the fast chargers and the cars to 800V asap. (Naturally, fast chargers should retain 400V backward compatibility). When cars charge faster it is kind of like having more chargers.
800V lets them have all the HV conductors within the car half the thickness.
Back in 2015, it didn't make sense because EV's didn't charge that fast, and battery balancing tech was still expensive (and cost scales proportional to the voltage).
However, now battery balancing tech is mere cents per volt, and customers demanding fast charging means super thick (and expensive!) wires in the car and battery pack.
1000 volt MOSFETS have also become a lot cheaper (used in the motor inverters), whereas before car manufacturers were reusing 600 volt mosfets designed for other things.
The only downside of higher voltages are increased insulation requirements. However, PVC insulation allows 10kV per mm, so the insulation thickness required is still tiny (although clearly you cannot use outdoor air as an insulator in either case).
Is there increased risk to emergency responders who might have to cut into a vehicle to rescue occupants? Or is there a possibility that deformation from an accident could result in metal parts charged to 800V? I hope things are designed to prevent that. Perhaps the insulation you mention is armored for the high voltage paths.
I’ve used a 300 KW DC charging station once. The cable is very thick and heavy. There are practical limits.
This suggests the base model is 400v, while the other models are 800v.
That in turn means that the onboard charger, DC/DC, motor inverters and AC compressor inverter must be different between the models, or that they have designed 400v/800v dual-mode hardware for all those things.
Having so many parts different between models drives up costs.
Having dual-mode hardware also drives up costs - typically the power electronics have cost ~proportional to max voltage * max current. If you need a fixed output power, you are only using half of either voltage or current if the hardware is dual-mode, so you are wasting half of the power electronics cost, which is huge.
(before someone points out that Tesla cybertruck has dual-mode 400v/800v since it can rewire the battery to charge at either voltage... Well it never drives along in the 400 volt mode. And even then, I'd bet the AC compressor is at dramatically reduced power output while on a 400v charger)
> According to Xiaomi, the SU7 is a pretty aerodynamic car with a drag coefficient of only 0.195 Cd, the lowest among production vehicles.
No doubt this was helped by hiring James Qiu who had previously worked on Mercedes-Benz's Vision EQXX design, a concept car with a record setting 0.17 Cd.
[1] https://carnewschina.com/2023/12/28/xiaomi-officially-unveil...
The statement about the V6 is throwing me. Can anyone fill me in what they're using the V6 for? I thought the SU7 was full electric, not a hybrid.
Has anyone considered making an inexpensive, reliable, simple EV for commuters?
These have been around for awhile, they aren't really suited to the American market though; e.g.
Yeah, definitely not many American markets. Several highways around me have posted speed limits of 75MPH, traffic often flows even faster than that. Driving in a car that can barely reach 60mph would often result in a speed differential of like 15+mph with the rest of traffic. I'd feel extremely unsafe going almost 20mph slower than the surrounding traffic while in a subcompact car.
Most of the previous comments take it to mean a small car that doesn't need to travel very fast or far, perhaps in a city where parking is scarce.
But some of my commutes have been very long, or very far, or very fast. If I'm going to spend three hours, or 100 miles, or average 80+ mph on it every single day, I'm not going to get a small econobox.
We all know commuting is an awful, awful experience; but when people spend a lot of time in their car, it's no surprise that they're spending more money to make that experience slightly less awful.
Chevrolet Chevette equivalent
It's just that they have two wheels and no climate control.
I saw Nio break the 1k range mark on a single battery charge the other day. That and their battery swapping stations. Now this.
Meanwhile BMW is still making a diesel X5 with colorful lights for about >100k in 2023 and also a diesel series 7. The exhaust on these stinks like the one in a VW from 2004. Their electric and hybrid offerings are also a joke.
Another player, Daimler, put a washing machine sized electric motor coupled onto the automatic gearbox into some of their hybrids, along with a underpowered 1.6L engine. The tumble dryer engine is powered by a 20kW battery, wasting juice as drag and heat in the gearbox. They had the gearboxes lying around from start/stop ICEs and found a use for them: dumping them onto an unsuspecting public. That is their idea of a hybrid. Of course it's underpowered and burns gas like there's no tomorrow the moment that you stop driving like grandma.
Renault is possibly the only brand with decent offerings. Everybody laughs while Dacia Spring, another Chinese built car, is leading the EV sales this year. Dacia is the budget brand in Renault's portofolio.
Where does the rest of 20.000+ increase of car prices come from? ;)
This seems incoherent to me? Metal stamping is a process, and die casting is a separate process, from what I understand. Is there any reason to die cast a chassis? Does the press strength around the casting molds matter? I’d assume chassis parts would be built out of stamped and bent sheet metal?
The mould must be held closed while metal is being injected. The "9100 tons" refers to the force keeping the mould closed. That force is approximately proportional to the surface area of the object being cast.
https://proleantech.com/xiaomis-super-large-die-casting-tech...
Despite decades of experience in the industry, until very recently Volkswagen weirdly thought the opposite was true. It's incredible it's taken them this long to U-turn on what's been a blindly obvious problem with their current interior designs. It got the point where every other manufacturer, that did the (old) sensible thing, was praised.
Interestingly, NVIDIA is making good moves in all the areas related to AI.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/5nm-NIO-Shenji-autonomous-driv...
Western companies are completely asleep at the wheel, pun not intended.
The U.S. is trying to do some good old fashioned protectionism to protect its industry but it’s either gonna fail, or it’s gonna reveal the massively lagging U.S. economic system which is incapable of building infrastructure and is increasingly incapable of encouraging R&D and new industries.
The only thing that could hold the Chinese back right now is the Chinese govt which has already managed to destroy 2-3 industries over the past few years (the extremely fast growing tech industry comes to mind) with arbitrary policy and decision making.
If I were a Chinese company right now, I would try and diversify my supply chain, R&D and even top talent into safer Western countries with auto making talent like Germany. However, fierce price competition in China may mean they don’t really have the luxury to do so.
I think now would be the time for the EU or individual European counties to sprinkle some light protectionism on their auto industry to give Chinese EV makers a reason to shift there without angering their Chinese govt overlords.
Every time a new model with better battery chemistry, longer range, faster charging is released, it makes a bunch of older models with previous-gen batteries, shorter range, slower charging obsolete to the point of unsellability. Then they end up rotting in an overgrown lot somewhere. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
Because of the fast release cadence, a model might become outmoded before it sold enough cars to recoup the development cost, but of course manufacturers can't just stop to save money while everyone else is putting out new models at breakneck speed and eating into their market share. So they're caught in a hamster wheel, burning cash while hoping that someone else will go bankrupt first. WM Motor looks like a candidate: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chines...
There's some techlore floating around https://pandapawdragonclaw.blog/2023/12/03/bri-notebook-the-... claiming that the overcrowded market is actually good for the industry as a whole because it makes it more competitive abroad, but that's cold comfort for investors who hoped to make their money back and then some.
We in Europe foolishly thought we are beyond that and here we are.
Thanks german industrialists.
We were supposed / dearly wishing to have solved that by now, thanks to all the "battery breakthroughs" that made it to the front page of HN in the last decade.
Won't prevent us from waiting, though...
This is the kind of fucking around that eventually leads to finding out. There is a reason Professional drivers aren't allowed to drive for more than 11 hours in a day, and have to take regular brakes.
Is this kind of highway fantasy or just US car culture?
In Europe I do not know a single person that has ever driven 1,000 km in one day. Let alone without stopping to refuel.
Or when a server the car uses gets shut down, and suddenly basic operations like opening the doors can't be done because it turns out the car's OS pings that server before letting any door open.
In Europe it feels a bit that way.
Sure, I'm confident the lobbied EU leaders will put speedbumps in place for the Chinese Auto makers in the EU market, but that will do more harm than good as the local brands won't be under enough pressure to innovate, knowing the governments have their back regardless.
Was the EU ever really in the race to begin with? They really wanted to be, but you can't actually centrally plan a working software or hardware economy.
> EU leaders will put speedbumps in place
That's the only tool they understand how to use. It's sad that this makes them feel they have to constantly use it.
> knowing the governments have their back regardless.
Yea.. you almost get the feeling these policies are _designed_ to create monopolies and have nothing at all to do with fostering competition.
Hydrogen would be great and at the moment it is developing where batteries are not convenient.
And of course, repairability. How much do I have to pay for battery replacement after a decade of usage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0
You can buy the battery outright (in which case you don't use the swap stations) or you can use a battery subscription to swap to a new battery as needed.
Nio has three battery sizes: 75 kWh, 100 kWh, and soon a 150 kWh option. All in the same physical dimensions:
https://carnewschina.com/2023/12/17/nio-et7-with-150-kwh-sem...
Xiaomi, more Chinese than Chinese, has released one of the most beautiful, nostril-less, vehicles in years.
Is every automaker stupid?
New VW passat came out, I saw it from up close and all subtle front and side curves are there, at same spots, done in >98% same way.
These automakers are mega corporations now, not some passionate geeks working out of garages. They follow trends, curb any unique excellence in order to have uniform brand design. Chinese, they take western brands with just copy&paste, I havent seen much more. Everybosy should see Taycan in that design.
"We've engineered the SU7 to offer a level of driving performance that stands among the best in its class, including the Porsche Taycan Turbo."
It of course depends in personal taste but Chinese car makers seem to all be targeting global expansion and are all conscious of good design because they do make efforts in this area and none of their models is ugly.
You would think that "savy" HN visitors who know about A/B testing, market data driven decisions, etc. would know that if something looks ugly it's usually designed that way for a reason. But keep being smug while you ruin your website/app's color schemes and layout based on the same data driven corporate design strategies.
Is there a "dumb" test that just fill up the battery, put the car on a bench, goes up to 130km/h (or whatever a sensible value for "highway speed" is), and waits for the battery to be empty ?
If it's a completely stupid idea, why ?
Without it, you're not testing anything useful in the real world.
The driving cycles have a number of issues but they purposefully try and capture more of the range of dynamics to help consumers better understand what they should actually expect from vehicles.
It is like comparing CPUs only on their ability to multiply quickly vs a suite of software benchmarks.
The battery can store NN kWh and the car weights XX Kg. How many Km can it travel?
It ignores wind resistance, road incline, use of air con, external temperature, number of passengers etc.
So it would even more meaningless than the somewhat synthetic tests already being done.
E.g., one would have to model and output the relevant solar spectrum to heat the vehicle and see how it responds to the IR heat load in maintaining human and battery operating temperature. Same with cold cycles, and the details get complicated when you try to average out the experienced conditions.
One of Tesla's mileage advantages comes from using the most advanced multilayer mirrors in their glass to minimize the effect of radiant heating/heat loss.
Fun aside: An interesting side effect of the technology is the appearance of red droplets when rain or dew is on the glass with the proper sunlight conditions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/9ustsa/ref...
https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a32603216/ev-ra...
If you can trust the US to defend you from Putin, you can trust the US to handle your data. China doesn't have that relationship with Germany as far as i'm aware
There are tons of interviews with regular people in China directly saying they are preparing for the war with West. So yeah no difference
