Electric and Hybrid Car Thread

[Badhobz]

Dark just told me in Shanghai that van loaded out is equivalent of 178k Canadian …. In Shanghai !!!!

Welp, there goes my dream of owning one. That’s insane money.

[djstyles]

Excellent, hopefully sometime in the future I can get the Xiaomi SU7 Pro Max Ultra or whatever equivalent comes out by then. Bring on the Chinese (cars)!

[GLOW]

i think i saw it'll be with a 6% duty, reasonable...

any chance the BYD sedan will come over here and be in that $35k range?

[noclue]

Wonder if Tesla will bring the Model Y Long into Canada. Most likely they'll probably drop the price on the premium AWD to $58-60K.

[JDMDreams]

Yea I'm wondering if Tesla will drop price too

[Manic!]

I was hopping for the BYD shark to come to Canada.

[JDMDreams]

My wallet is ready

[bcedhk]

how long does it typically take for the agencies to approve the crash test and safety ratings for NA? Or have most of the BYD and Xiaomi's already recieved approval in North America?

If not, my guess is Polestar and Tesla will be hoarding that quota for the next year or two...I'm looking forward to heavily discounted used teslas when mainlanders switch to china EVs to boost their social credit scores.

[AstulzerRZD]

Originally Posted by bcedhk

Have most of the BYD and Xiaomi's already recieved approval in North America?

Other than Tesla and Polestar, ZERO domestic models are designed for/have passed North American crash test.
It will take a FULL generation and re-engineering of the crash structure, 2-3 years and 100M+ in cost.

North American crash test is a completely different animal - roof has to be 3X stronger, seatbelts are off in one of the tests, force is 40% higher.

This is super skillful diplomacy - it gives China a W without pissing off the US too much.
If we actually wanted to see Chinese EV, Carney would say "we accept european crash test"

[JDMDreams]

I thought I saw somewhere Europe crash test is already Canada crash test. Euro cars come here with no modification

[Hehe]

Originally Posted by AstulzerRZD

Other than Tesla and Polestar, ZERO domestic models are designed for/have passed North American crash test.
It will take a FULL generation and re-engineering of the crash structure, 2-3 years and 100M+ in cost.

North American crash test is a completely different animal - roof has to be 3X stronger, seatbelts are off in one of the tests, force is 40% higher.

This is super skillful diplomacy - it gives China a W without pissing off the US too much.
If we actually wanted to see Chinese EV, Carney would say "we accept european crash test"

Second this. The 50,000units or whatever would end up mostly MIC Tesla being imported here.

It takes time to setup distribution channels, dealership and everything. Unless there's some clause in there that assures whatever happens after 50k, no one but Tesla can benefit from this quickly.

[Badhobz]

Given how both china and canada are very much anti trump and anti elon right now, i dont think they'll give it to Tesla... i could very much be wrong, but i dont think they'll let the world's biggest functional retard have his way.

Originally Posted by Hehe

Second this. The 50,000units or whatever would end up mostly MIC Tesla being imported here.

[djstyles]

I didn't know that the Buick Envision and the Lincoln Nautilus and quite a few other Chevy and Ford products were made in China. I think the Ford Everest is pretty cool looking. I saw them all over the place in Thailand.

[AstulzerRZD]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

I thought I saw somewhere Europe crash test is already Canada crash test. Euro cars come here with no modification

Most European cars are now designed both for FMVSS and ECE.
Sometimes the bumpers are stil different, like on MB coupe and convertible.

The Chinese EV sold in Europe are designed for ECE only.

[noclue]

Feel like lucid will kick the bucket in the next 3 years once the Saudi investors get tired of losses. Nice cars but no sales and not enough time to rollout the mid market vehicles in current market conditions.

[JDMDreams]

^^ wouldn't it be rivian first? Who's paying for rivian? Vw? Amazon?

[Traum]

As an interesting corollary to the EV deal, I wonder if Polestar will re-introduce the PS2 back into the Canadian market?

If it does, I'd be pretty happy bcos the PS2 has been one of the few EVs that I have some amount of interest in.

[UnknownJinX]

Originally Posted by noclue

Feel like lucid will kick the bucket in the next 3 years once the Saudi investors get tired of losses. Nice cars but no sales and not enough time to rollout the mid market vehicles in current market conditions.

Jason at Engineering Explained complained about his Lucid Air recently, though Lucid did take his criticism fairly well. They are going through some internal organizational changes at the moment.

That said, yeah, I dunno how they can reach profitability. Pretty much just at the mercy of the Saudi big boys now.

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

^^ wouldn't it be rivian first? Who's paying for rivian? Vw? Amazon?

VW basically is paying Rivian for their software. The deal heavily favours VW, as the US$6 billions (IIRC) wasn't a one-time payment, but rather unlocked in tranches, requiring Rivian to reach certain performance benchmarks. Rivian so far isn't meeting those.

VW already has Rivian's software after the initial $1 billion investment, and also plans to use Rivian's platforms for their Scout trucks/SUVs in the future. So yeah, Rivian is pretty much just getting used and tossed by VW.

[JDMDreams]

Yes but vw and Porsche is broke

[Traum]

Originally Posted by UnknownJinX

VW basically is paying Rivian for their software. The deal heavily favours VW, as the US$6 billions (IIRC) wasn't a one-time payment, but rather unlocked in tranches, requiring Rivian to reach certain performance benchmarks. Rivian so far isn't meeting those.

VW already has Rivian's software after the initial $1 billion investment, and also plans to use Rivian's platforms for their Scout trucks/SUVs in the future. So yeah, Rivian is pretty much just getting used and tossed by VW.

I'm surprised to hear that the Rivian engineers / software developers aren't able to meet the performance benchmarks. Back when they first demoed their stuff on Audis, it seemed like they were able to pull out some pretty crazy stops to get the Audis working.

Also, given how the software was originally written by Rivian staff, generally these things don't translate well when a completely new batch of software developers take over. The new guys are gonna need a lot of time to familiarize themselves with the code base, and I'd be inclined to think that if the software developers VW had in the first place were any good, they wouldn't have written such crappy garbage on VW's initial cars anyway.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Traum

I'm surprised to hear that the Rivian engineers / software developers aren't able to meet the performance benchmarks. Back when they first demoed their stuff on Audis, it seemed like they were able to pull out some pretty crazy stops to get the Audis working.

Maybe Rivian should pay their devs and product managers more money - the postings I've seen for the Vancouver jobs show some really awful pay.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by AstulzerRZD

Other than Tesla and Polestar, ZERO domestic models are designed for/have passed North American crash test.
It will take a FULL generation and re-engineering of the crash structure, 2-3 years and 100M+ in cost.

North American crash test is a completely different animal - roof has to be 3X stronger, seatbelts are off in one of the tests, force is 40% higher.

This is super skillful diplomacy - it gives China a W without pissing off the US too much.
If we actually wanted to see Chinese EV, Carney would say "we accept european crash test"

Beyond the roof crash test - how different/better/worse are the Euro standards vs NA standards? Seems silly that we can't accept each others standards (I know all about the stupid headlight shit) - it's not like the EU doesn't care about safety (they seem pretty rigorous if anything).

[underscore]

Originally Posted by supafamous

Beyond the roof crash test - how different/better/worse are the Euro standards vs NA standards? Seems silly that we can't accept each others standards (I know all about the stupid headlight shit) - it's not like the EU doesn't care about safety (they seem pretty rigorous if anything).

I don't know anything about the testing standards, but since most European cars are smaller they probably don't have to worry about being tboned by someone in their emotional support truck like we do.

[AstulzerRZD]

Originally Posted by supafamous

Beyond the roof crash test - how different/better/worse are the Euro standards vs NA standards? Seems silly that we can't accept each others standards (I know all about the stupid headlight shit) - it's not like the EU doesn't care about safety (they seem pretty rigorous if anything).

What each region optimizes for:
- EU protects other pedestrians, cyclists, breathing, etc.
- NA protects Americans and their unbelted, head-on, rollover crashes with pickup trucks on highways

Regulatory approach:
- ECE type rating is performance-based - do whatever you want as long as you don't cause harm. Matrix headlights? Fine, just don't blind anyone. Chinese ADAS? Fine, just store data securely.
- NA FMVSS is prescriptive. Your headlight has two states, your battery vents _this_ way. This is why matrix headlights and Audi wagons didn't make it here.

Crash test difficulty:
- Basic NHTSA is not too hard - adds roof crush, the barriers are rigid, and unbelted test.
- IIHS is the real challenge - small overlap is 7x harder, side impact is 2x harder, and the insurers that fund it will absolutely wanna put Chinese EVs through this to price their risk.

Most car companies design for both, but if your primary market doesn't have a hard crash test, they're not gonna add extra 12 months, 10M in cost, and $1-3k in cost per car to meet US regs.

[AstulzerRZD]

Originally Posted by supafamous

Maybe Rivian should pay their devs and product managers more money - the postings I've seen for the Vancouver jobs show some really awful pay.

I guarantee all of the issues are on the VW side.

There will be disagreement on...
- How flexible/strict the software arch needs to be
- How many of the existing programs/software types it needs to support
- Code freezes and testing timelines they're being asked to support
- Validation (VW managers legit had clipboards with printed excel spreadsheets to validate software functionality).