New BYD Hybrid Can Drive Non-Stop for More Than 2k Kilometers
bloomberg.comYou only need about 35 hp to keep a 4000lb car cruising at 70 mph. The idea? Run the powertrain totally on battery, then toss in a 50 or 70 hp engine just to charge it up.
It's flipping the hybrid script: instead of using electric for low demand and gas for more juice, it's electric for the main power and gas just for the battery.
This puts the heavy lifting on the 90% efficient powertrain and eases up on the super inefficient 25% one.
Toyota should've been all over this back in 2015.
> Toyota should've been all over this back in 2015.
METI (the Japanese Ministry that develops Japan's R&D strategy) is hesitant about using lithium ion battery technology due to lithium dependency issues and memories about the impact the 1970s oil shock had on Japan [0][1], along with IP issues.
This is why Japan has been pushing it's domestic champions to research Hydrogen Fuel Cells [2] and solid state batteries [3]
This is also the strategy that Toyota adopted [4][5].
[0] - https://www.sojitz.com/history/en/era/05/
[1] - https://www.ide.go.jp/library/English/Publish/Periodicals/De...
[2] - https://www.meti.go.jp/shingikai/enecho/shoene_shinene/suiso...
[3] - https://www.meti.go.jp/english/report/pdf/0520_001a.pdf
[4] - https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/39330548.html
[5] - https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/39330500.html
Ironically this keeps them dependent on oil.
And natural gas; it's clear from https://www.meti.go.jp/shingikai/enecho/shoene_shinene/suiso... that the plan is to get hydrogen from natural gas, with electrolysis as a thin renewable figleaf over the issue of CO2 emissions.
(don't trust any source that describes hydrogen as an "energy source". There is no naturally occurring hydrogen reserve. It is not a source.)
They might be in a better place if TEPCO hadn't messed up their nuclear plant designs in a tsunami zone.
Lithium can be pulled from seawater. Japan might have to pay more for their lithium, but they can never be cut off from it.
Seawater based lithium extraction is very cost inefficient as it's basically just electrolysis.
This means the only options long term are Hydrogen and Sodium Solid State.
I'd recommend reading the Japanese government docs and presentations I linked above as they explain why Japan and it's companies are doing what they are doing.
$5/kg, 10-50 kg per vehicle. Not an obstacle.
https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/Can-seawat...
You don’t think this wasn’t considered?
Did you take into consideration optimal load efficiencies? What about the total cost of ownership for the energy conversion from ICE?
In 2015, hybrids were already well optimised for the current technology limitations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner–Porsche
Lohner–Porsche is a term encompassing several electric vehicles designed by Ferdinand Porsche and manufactured at Lohner-Werke in the early 1900s. They include the first hybrid electric vehicle and the first commercial hub motor car. The hybrid "Mixed" or "Mixte" racecars are powered by a gasoline engine which drives four electric motors, one in each wheel hub. The battery-powered "Touring" or "Chaise" commercial cars utilize only two front-wheel hub motors.
Isn't this the same thing Chevy did with the Volt?
You're right, it is. They dropped it when they released the Bolt, or more correctly, Chevy went all electric with the Bolt.
I believe this approach is called series (or serial?) hybrid and is used by the BMW i3, which was introduced in 2013.
Yeah, I’m fairly sure the “range extender” (engine) component was optional, not sure what the take rate was. A small percentage of an already infrequently-purchased car.
Stellantis is doing this for an upcoming Ramcharger reboot.
How is that useful? It just has a big tank of gas, no? That doesn't really seem revolutionary.
2.9 l/100 km is pretty good though.
I don’t think you have the right figures.
A quick online search has the Hyundai Sonata Hybrid as the highest range hybrid at 670 miles (1000km so half BYD’s figure), with a 50L tank that would put at a 5l/100k.
So it has double the range AND double the efficiency of the current highest range, costing half the price… seems like a very big deal
A Prius V is 4.1 L/100 km in combined cycle and 3.8 L/100 km in city driving. It is unclear what the 2.9 l/100 km refers to (and if it's real, like Toyota who said the Prius plug-in would be 2.10 L/100 km), but it's not double the efficiency.
But doubling the range is not that interesting to me, they could make the tank 4 times bigger and that would be useless for most purposes, and that was just my point. The price seems interesting indeed, but that is the price in China, which would be very different elsewhere I guess.
I don’t think this is meant for general appeal, it is a very intelligent BYD flex to show that hybrid cars can have long range and that they can beat their competitors in one more metric.
I wonder how Tesla is going to respond. They might have most of the EV market in the US but if I was looking for my first EV, I wouldn't choose them.
The US put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs and the rest of the Western/developed world are probably going to follow suit so… they can probably respond by doing nothing in particular.
I’m conflicted about these tariffs since on one hand I understand the security threats and I’d like the rest of the world to catch up so it’s not just China dominating the market, but on the other it seems sad that affordable and effective EVs are here and probably can make a significant dent in emissions but the politics keep them from being utilized.
What makes you think the rest of the western world would follow suit? From Europe it feels like massive tariffs on Chinese goods are a uniquely American phenomenon.
> From Europe it feels like massive tariffs on Chinese goods are a uniquely American phenomenon.
Where in Europe are you?
The EU is looking at enforcing a 50% tariff on Chinese EVs in the coming months [0][1]. A trade war has already unofficially started between China and the EU [2].
[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/probe-into-chinese-subsidies...
[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/31575d29-1945-4a90-8640-04967e1d1...
[2] - https://www.politico.eu/article/china-beijing-market-eu-trad...
Thanks for links, hadn't heard about this.
I would say the same thing for Australia. There is no local car industry there, so no protectionism from the govt. on importing foreign cars, one would assume.
They just go to Mexico after we've renewed the USMCA for 16 and Mexico stops being afraid of Washington D.C.
In Mexico they assemble cars from Chinese parts and ship duty free to the US and Candada.
Or build more factories in the US. Geely owns Volvo and they're building in the US. All the EU makers, the Korean and Japanese makers too have factories in the US.
Tariffs are on real imports, not on US or USMCA made products.
>The US put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs and the rest of the Western/developed world are probably going to follow suit so…
Considering China, South Korea, and Japan just finished up a meeting which included moving forward with talks on a Free Trade Agreement in the face of American-led sanctions and tariffs...
It's going to be fun seeing just how effective American diplomacy and economic violence actually is nowadays.
China, South Korea, and Japan really don't have the best diplomatic/trade relationship.
South Korea has in particular suffered a great deal undr China's economic coercion since THAAD in 2017 -- their global giants like Samsung, Hyundai lost over 90% of their sales in China and they have likewise removed much of their manufacturing footprint in China. Not all too sure they want to jeopadize otherwise collaborative relationship with friendly ally, the US, for a hostile trading bully next door, China.
That's what I would think too, but meanwhile Japanese PM Kishida looked very happy about the meeting and moving forward with FTA talks. I have no clue as to how South Korea felt about it, though given this was a trilateral talk I would assume similar sentiments.
If that FTA does become a thing, the US will have lost before any hot war even began. May we live in fun times.
Why they're affordable? I mean why other automakers can't have cheap cars but China can? There can't be any magic.
- labour still somewhat cheaper
- vastly easier land use situation, and impossibility of local protest
- the big one: synergy. Making batteries and electronics and steel parts all comparatively close to each other inside the same customs zone.
- less regulatory capture (they actually have to compete!)
lol downvoted for writing a reasonable explanation. People on Hacker News really love bashing China and not actually talking substance. Maybe this is a sign for our nations’ futures.
A combination of industrial policy, extreme competition in China's domestic market for cars, and a huge eco-system of subsuppliers.
Lots countries have had subsidies and incentives for electric cars; however China's policies seems to have been uniquely succesful - exactly why is not obvious.
Some point to the "mayor economy" where cities compete in being attractive for companies to setup business. For example see the story of Tesla's Shanghai plant.
Very simple. You could contaminate freely on China, but not in Europe and USA. You can use as much coal as you want, with as many ashes, sulphur or radioactivity as you want.
That makes energy super cheap. But is is an external cost, people are paying with their health.
Europe and USA went to similar periods in the past. Now China is regulating more and more because pollution is a huge problem there.
Then you have salaries, that used to be cheap, now not so much.
Also a very important thing is that in China capital is not free, it is a communist system and your savings account are used to subsidise what the Government wants. EV, solar, electronic chips and batteries are a priority so they receive infinite amounts of money from Government.
Finally you have scale. China usually have enormous markets because it has so much people, although that applies to cheap things, for cars they don't have enough buyers inside so they want to sell in Africa and India and the West.
China's life expectancy is higher than the US.
What happens is that Chinese prices are not real because batteries and EV are subsidised by the Chinese Government. Also Chinese market is full of restrictions for foreign companies.
If China wants to subsidize the US renewables transition, why shouldn't we let them pay for it? Isn't that draining funds from the Chinese government directly?
It's called predatory pricing -- you buy cheap now, pay later when they come to recoup their cost. It won't drain their bank if they end up undercutting/destroying all local competitor and we become dependent on them.
This is not necessarily a problem if we can all peacefully coexist. China has a history of weaponizing their dominant market position to settle geopolitical/market disputes -- eg, rare earth metal ban against Japan in 2010; China's recent graphite "export control" to protect Chinese EV companies' business in markets abroad.
The fact that China practically banned all foreign EV battery makers from local EV market and forced EV OEMs to use locally made batteries by local battery makers to dominate the global battery market since 2016 under Xi's Make-In-China 2025 adds to the view that this isn't purely about saving the planet or making affordable EVs for the rest of us.
Their "made in China" policy is Bad while our "made in America" policy is Good?
No, I think they are about equal.
The US already has been countering China's every anticompetitive, discriminatory policy measure by more or less equal response: for instance, eliminating all subsidies on EVs with critical minerals sourced from non-free trading nations and banning Chinese EV/battery companies, and so on -- or otherwise known as Biden's IRA (vs Xi's Made-In-China 2025).
I'm not necessarily taking sides, but if you feel that the US's policy is bad, that's probably because China's original policy was also bad. If you were ok with China's exclusionary EV policy since 2016, you probably shouldn't be crying about the US's policy today since it's designed to mirror China's.
Do note however that, in March, China did file a WTO complaint accusing the US (IRA) of doing what China has been doing past decade under MIC 2025 -- misusing subsidies to force local content, local production (aka, in international trade lingo, it's called "local/domestic content requirement"). So I'm a bit troubled by China's double-standard.
Sigh, this old trope again. The Chinese government stopped subsidizing EV purchases in 2022. There are some tax breaks, but they're also getting phased out. Neither is or was ever all that different from the various EV subsidies found in most Western countries.
https://dialogue.earth/en/business/life-after-subsidies-for-...
Doing business in China is indeed very hard, but Tesla is still selling quite well there, despite absolutely furious competition.
China's EV subsidies have existed in various shapes and forms since 2009 -- they are always phasing out; then renewed, extended every 3-4 years. The last "direct purchase" subsidies ended on Jan 1, 2023; it was however extended as a "tax credit" in June 2023 for another 4 years with $72+B budget. This is also in the same article you cited (see translated below):
Now, in addition to this, there also various industry subsidies, export credit/refund/rebates, and other financial instruments by gov't that are difficult to account for (because they are not public info).Extension of the preferential tax policy for car purchases The total reduction and exemption is expected to reach 520 billion yuan —— Precision to provide assistance to the expansion of new energy vehicles 2023-06-21 The Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Taxation, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued a joint announcement to clearly continue and optimize the tax reduction and exemption policy for the purchase of new energy vehicles to support the development of the new energy automobile industry and promote automobile consumption. According to preliminary estimates, through the implementation of the extension policy, the total scale of vehicle purchase tax relief from 2024 to 2027 will reach 520 billion yuan.It does not need to be EV purchases. When the company I worked for went to China, it paid 0% taxes for several years. This is a subsidy. I worked there, and everything was subsidised, the steel and aluminium plants for example. If as engineer you don't pay taxes on your salary, you are subsidised.
Many countries subsidize EVs in the form of tax credits for people buying them, and some by giving very favorable loans to EV manufacturers.
The US and California have given Tesla about three times what China has given BYD. And the US doesn't have restrictions on Chinese companies?
Do some research before spewing this kind of nonsense.
The US is a relatively small market.
It's the 2nd largest automotive market in the World [0].
The other large markets like the EU and India are also looking at tariffs for EVs exported directly from China and are pushing for Chinese companies to create domestic JVs in both countries (eg. BYD in Hungary, MG in India).
[0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/269872/largest-automobil...
The US is the second largest by units sold (30M vs 15M) and the largest by value. The average selling price of a new vehicle in China is about $20K vs. US $50K.
They wouldn't respond, because Tesla doesn't make hybrid cars.
If you were looking for your first EV, you wouldn't be looking at this car because it is not an EV.
They will make the cyberhelo, a stainless steel exoskeleton helicopter that crashes in mild wind.
Toyota have been making hybrids since the 90s. How is it that BYD have managed to come out of nowhere and doubled the range of any Prius?
I'm curious what's actually been done here, because a regular hybrid is just an efficient gas powered vehicle - so you could have any range you want by sizing the tank appropriately. The Prius Gen 2 (my car) has a 45L tank, which is smaller then equivalent Toyota vehicles in that size range and good for about 800km.
I imagine that under the right test conditions, if you were using a plug-in hybrid design and have a fairly substantial battery pack, then it would be different - because then you're just using EV mode for part of the range, and the gas for the rest of it (and choose your speed for optimal ICE performance vs. drag losses).
The battery, because at the end of the day BYD is a battery manufacturer.
Most PHEVs are Hybrid ICE first and battery second. BYD's is the other way around because Japanese companies didn't ToT Hybrid engine technology in the 2000s unlike battery tech (BYD's was initially a ToT JV by Panasonic EDIT: NTT, Sony, and Sanyo. CATL was TDK and Panasonic).
How is a modest size battery going to extend highway range?
The Blade Battery used in the BYD Qin seems to have a 500-600 KM range [0].
Essentially, it's an EV that has a Hybrid ICE option instead of the other way around.
The article discussed here plainly states that the batteries in the hybrid cars are about 10 and 16 kW. The article you link is about the technology being used in buses, with capacity up to 500 kW giving buses ranges of up to 600 km...
Anyway.
This seems more like a BMW i3 than a Toyota hybrid; it's an electric car with a low power (but presumably quite efficient) petrol generator.
(In the i3 the range booster was an optional extra.)
BYD made the world's first plug-in hybrid in 2008, so they've been at this a while too.
Do we know how large the tank is?
I'll guess about 60L (https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/105488/BYD/SEAL%20U%20ES...)
I'm not sure my bladder could handle driving 2,000km without a stop!
Seems like you’re in the market for a hybrid bladder.
DPF tank will need refilling anyway.
Nobody wants to tackle the elephant in the room. I don't care if Tesla, Byd or another manufacturer give me a few kms more of range. First I want a car that doesn't send data to the manufacturer and/or third parties and do not track me.
Does that unicorn still even exist or do I have to wait for UE to do something about it?
That's nothing to do with the vehicle's type of engine
No but old ice cars did not have data collection and I can still buy one and will as long as law permit it and I cannot control where and when data is sent.
EU is your best bet here - but frist you have to wait for the decline of the German Car Complex, so the EU is not in their pocket anymore. If it guards their marked to have high privacy standards in cars, then it will be enforced.
I am fine with that kind of system if: - data is only sent to emergency services - data is only sent when required (crash detection, airbag deployment, manual call through button etc)
And it is unrelated to all the data the manufacturers collect.
How do you know? Did you set up a fake cell tower to MitM the communications? No? Then you actually don't know.
Nothing is too far out, that it wasn't actually done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40642801
I am talking about the theory. I don't have a car.
The EU does not have a great track record with regard to privacy. "Connected cars" can easily be sold to regulators as necessary for safety. When a choice has to be made between privacy and safety (or "safety") the EU chooses safety every time.
Cars will monitor driver attention, reckless driving, speeding and tattle to the manufacturer and insurance company. I expect these changes to be gradual and people will grouch about it before ultimately relenting.
It looks like you can remove the cell chip for certain toyotas at least (DCM). But I agree with you, I'd rather have a no-track-me camry than a porchse 911.
I wonder if part of the reason that there's such a resistance to chinese cars is because they wouldn't give free tracking data to the US government.
https://carnewschina.com/2024/05/28/byd-qin-l-launches-in-ch...
Looks like incredible value and fuel efficiency at the price point.
That's remarkable for a brand new vehicle to cost under $15k and having 2000km range.
Note that the cheapest BYD built to EU (crash?) standards costs a lot more than that: some €35k.
Presumably those cars also have a higher profit margin.
In any event, the EU will impose 30%-100% import tariffs to protect their inferior car industry. This will hurt the European consumer and will hurt European competitiveness in the long term, but car companies are important to Germany and France so import taxes are a forgone conclusion.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/30/chinese-ev-imports-europe-mi...
Indeed! That way the EU is just blocking my access to affordable electric mobility.
- "But think of the pain that would inflict on 'our' auto industry!", they would say.
...but the EU has no second thoughts on inflicting pain on its citizens. (austerity, inflation/interest rates, etc.)
I’m aware of that and related to that there is an legal battle ongoing in Germany between an importer and VW[1].
The imported cars fulfill the TÜV and cost less if they are even available here.
1. https://www.carscoops.com/2024/02/vw-wants-german-dealer-to-...
Wow! Yet another proof the EU just behaves like an oligarchy.
Large business interests always come first: automotive, pharma, banks/finance, etc.
So even with 100% tarrifs, it is still very very affordable.
I like the name, "2000km range? 'kinell!"