BYD Seal 08 debuts with Blade Battery 2.0: 1,000km range, 5-min charging, 684hp

Which means that ICE Vehicle energy and maintenance costs are a multiple of (i.e. several times that of) EV energy and maintenance costs.

And so EV energy and maintenance costs are a fraction of the ICE energy and maintenance costs.

You can debate this assertion if you like, but first you have to read it successfully.

What other maintenance costs can you think of?

And how much does it cost to drive 500 miles in the electric car charged at £0.08/kWh vs diesel at 50 mpg (£1.91/L) or petrol car at 35 mpg (£1.58/L)?

But who am I kidding? I’m not their target audience.

It's basic game theory, you all commit to ramping up delivery of EVs at the same time because one of you could benefit in the short term if you defect, so without the law everyone does so and everyone loses.

Yes they will be, some time around now or the recent past, depending on country.

Source:

https://dmnews.co.uk/electric-cars-are-now-officially-cheape...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/17/new-uk-e...

And that EU scheme already covers aviation, though it's phased in with exemptions etc. so doesn't cover everything.

*Technically an emission trading scheme but these are basically equivalent to carbon taxes in effect.

There are more than fifty EV marques competing for market share in China, and as per recent FT reporting, the Chinese government continues to subsidise the formation of new EV manufacturers. These companies have no option other than to be export-led businesses.

I have a Niro with an on-paper 460km range. If I don't habitually want to operate it outside of the 20-80% charge range, we're playing with about ~170km of range in the colder months. I live 50km from the city, so a roundtrip to a big box store costs >100km. That's not a margin where I get to not think about range.

1500 kWh battery storage + 600kW grid draw + 30kW solar canopy (if weather allows).

@10m per car across 2 cables = ~36 cars over 3 hour rush hour throughput (comparable to 2 gas pump) = need ~4000 kWh, 1500 kWh from battery 1800 kWh from grid = 3300 kWh. This worst case all cars 0-97% charge, realistically mixture so 3300 kWh should cover typical peak scenarios. Then midday lull for grid to refill batteries for evening rush, after again overnight charge from grid. Basically 1x2cable station can service 100-150 cars/day comparable to high-density gas pump.

In terms of physical size, battery storage smaller than gas in terms of physical infra = doesn't need to be underground (assuming long term blade safety ensured). Gas needs storage for multiple days / week so need to scale underground tank accordingly. 1500kWh scaled for rush hour = battery storage (recycled) realistically ~30 recycled blade1s slapped into racks, a couple parking spaces worth, and can be stacked vertically. It's much more space efficient (and cost efficient) than gas.

The average power is lower, as there are idle times between cars. Moreover, in the beginning only a few cars would be able to charge at 1 MW, so the average power will be even lower, allowing a later upgrade of the connection to the electrical grid, when fast-charging cars would become more frequent and when there would also be more EV owners, so that more cars would have to be charged per day.

The connection to the electrical grid of a charging station is not dimensioned based on the charging times. It is dimensioned based on the number of cars that must be charged during a given time interval at that location (assuming a certain average charging energy).

So regardless if fast chargers or slow chargers are used, what matters is how many electric cars are used in a region and how much they travel each day.

Fast chargers can matter only indirectly, if their presence will convince more of the car users to switch to EVs, requiring the electrical power suppliers to take into account this increased consumption.

Or conservatively 100m x 100m of panels. About 1/5 of the roof area of a big-box store.

Is that true though? People are currently forced to buy gas guzzlers since there are simply no practical and cheap EVs available in the United States. If Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US, it's not a given that people would still prefer ICE cars.

Indeed, the fact that they are banned suggests that the Govt knows that the domestic car industry can't compete with them.

  Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD

If cars still get about 200 000 miles of life like they do now then we'll have fewer cars, replaced more often, so still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.

We'll need million mile cars to reduce that, and those don't appear to be coming from Tesla.

> (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization)

How much of that 5% is commuting, though? If there are two one-hour long windows in the day where a lot of people want to make the same trip at the same time, the fact that cars are idle in the middle of the night or day doesn't help with that. And that's also going to be peak surge pricing time.

The time economics gets worse in non-suburban areas. In high density urban areas, it's already too congested to not take public transport. In very low density areas, you might hail a ride, but you've got to wait for it to become available and arrive.

> Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo.

Only in certain locations, and still dependent on occasional remote operator intervention. Tesla have been promising for years and not delivered, and every year they don't deliver makes it less likely that they ever will.

I think there's room in the market for such substitution, but it underestimates how much people love their cars as a form of personal space and personal brand extension.

I was in China a few weeks ago, and in some cities you can already get the equivalent of Waymo. There are also dozens of huge companies working on self driving there, with very friendly laws that make it easier to get training data and test things.

There are hundreds of companies working on robots as well, and many of them are already ahead when it comes to productionizing them.

Tesla entered a new market around a decade ago, back when they had little to no competition. For years, they were ahead of everyone. But now, everything they do has competition, and in most features/products that competition is ahead of them.

Their valuation doesn't make any sense.

Absolutely not. You're correct about Waymo having solved self-driving cars, but approximately no one is going to choose using Waymo over owning a self-driving car, just like approximately no one did that back in 2015 with Uber. Sure, a few bloggers in major urban areas did, but they represent a tiny, tiny fraction of the global market. People like owning cars, for a variety of reasons, and I don't think that's going to change. Even if I took Waymo 80% of the time, I'd still want a car. And I hate owning cars! It just beats the alternatives.

Yes, that's Elon's claim.

I own a Tesla with FSD (hardware V3, so despite Elon's promises it will never work). I would never hire it out as a taxi. The risk of malicious damage is too great. I would have to insure for it, wear not having the car available when it happens, and the emotional impact of people destroying "my stuff" for the thrill of it.

The future of taxi's is a more traditional model like Waymo.