Chinese cars

[Mysterae_]

Here's an interesting video, not just because of all the latest Chinese cars but also how their ADAS handle the various hazards.

I'm not a fan of ADAS but with the dumbing down of driving, the proliferation of self-driving and ever increasing regulations things like these systems will be in all new cars.

 

[jpaul]

fascinating video thanks - so the teslas did well with their basic straight braking strategy for obstacle (like the old ice mercedes) as opposed to any obstacle evasion/swerving
exhibited in many of chinese competition, seemed poor that none avoided the poor boar, crossing, and could react fast enough to determine its trajectory.
I watched a bit of another video from same team showing urban avoidance of pedestrians/mopeds making erratic movements where they fared better,
tesla didn't seem debilitated without radar/lidar.

NCAP should have these kind of published tests.

 

[Glanza]

Warford cars put this up yesterday, gets to look around most of the new popular ones and speaks to a sales guy who moved from Skoda.

The amount of kit as standard for the money can't be grumbled at even if you don't like the look of the cars

 

[Terminal_Boy]

There is a huge propaganda campaign going on in the West against the BEVs - funded mostly by oil companies and some established car manufacturers. This is the reason PHEVs are selling so well currently. But IMHO that won't last as technically they are a poor compromise. They have the disadvantages of both ICE and BEV cars combined.

Charging an EV at home with a tariff like Octopus Intelligent Go is at least 4 times cheaper than the most efficient petrol or diesel car. As there are more and more public EV chargers I think the competition will lower the price and BEVs will become cheaper to run, even for people without the possibility to install a home charger. E.g. recently BE EV opened the Manchester Charging Oasis - where from 7pm to 7am the price is 25p per kwh. And they have something like 12x 300kW chargers there.

If one can cheaply charge a BEV and the BEV itself is same price as PHEV (with the new government grant) - why carry that heavy petrol engine around, why pay for oil changes and expensive annual service.

The problem is that 50% of British motorists don’t have a driveway to park their BEV/PHEV on to charge it overnight so they’re never going to see the running cost savings that justify the purchase price of a BEV/PHEV.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

The problem is that 50% of British motorists don’t have a driveway to park their BEV/PHEV on to charge it overnight so they’re never going to see the running cost savings that justify the purchase price of a BEV/PHEV.

Most measures suggest 40%-50% of households, rather than motorists.

Likewise then you need to factor in if you don’t have off street parking, you are less likely to own a car. Those who live in larger suburban properties are more likely to have multiple cars.

No one knows what the actual number is but it’s probably less than 50%.

In any case, BEV prices have dropped so much, they are not far off price parity these days so you don’t need lower running prices and it’s more of a question of convenience.

BEV market penetration is still only a single digit % of all cars, we’ve got some time to go before we even start getting to harder to serve people.

 

[Journey]

The problem is that 50% of British motorists don’t have a driveway to park their BEV/PHEV on to charge it overnight

I think that random statistic you just pulled from thin air is incorrect. Almost every house on the estate nearest to where I live has a driveway and most of them have more than one vehicle, some have 3 or 4 on one driveway. My total guess would be people with off-street parking also own more cars so there will be many more vehicles that have access than don't, after all if you struggle to park one car on terraced street you wouldn't want to own 3 or 4, even more so if you are in a permitted area.

On topic, the Chinese car sales so far this year just from BYD/Jaecoo/Omoda are at 40k+ and climbing like and S-curve with 33% of the year to go, I can see them taking over 10% of total sales in 2025 alone, add in MG/Leap/Ora/Nio/Xpeng/others and in 2026 I wouldn't be surprised it they breached 20%

 

[Conscript]

Plus there are some circumstances where you don't even necessarily need a driveway to be able to make it work. A friend of mine works for UKPN, and they said his next company car has to be PHEV/BEV. He lives in a flat with allocated underground parking, and no way to charge. But there's a charging station less than a mile from his home, he can charge at work - and he got an EV fuel card, so he doesn't have to pay a penny.
So he's just got a new BMW i4 GC, and he loves it. And we are loving watching him eat humble pie, given that he's spent the last few years turning his nose up at EVs

I know that's a very edge case; relying on public chargers would in no way be worth it without his employer footing the bill, but make hay and all that.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Not to mention there is already cognisant grant funding available to support installations in the car parks of flats.

You wouldn’t even need a full 7kw to each bay, 3.6kw is probably enough for all but one day of the year and if it’s all coming off a communal supply, you can load balance anyway.

However what they should not be is a profit centre for the freeholder, particularly if they are grant funded. They should be on a not for profit basis and have time of use tariffs available to encourage charging when the building/general grid use is low.

 

[m4rmite]

17% of households in the uk don't have access to a car, regardless of if they have a driveway or not.

With regards to the above posts, so that quoted 50% without driveways isn't a black and white scenario

 

[nam]

If you can't charge at home (i.e No Drive) then avoid any EV , having been through this prior to the pandemic it was a easy use all and as much as you wanted the Tesla's free chargers or the Public Chargers at Tesco, Sainsbury's etc which were also free. Now it's just too expensive to charge on a public network and any savings over a regular combustion, just don't materialize with the rise in inflation/Tax factored in. I don't see how any current Government will change adoption in the UK as all the EV incentives have slowly being removed or in the process of being removed before the next fiscal budget. The 2035 date will only be pushed back with this or any subsequent government's policy.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

This thread isn’t just about EVs, it’s Chinese cars. The Chinese sell plenty of ICE cars here also. There is another thread called ‘EV general discussion’.

In any case, the government just launched a new incentive last month… that’s not being removed in October.

The other main incentive for individuals (BIK) has had its roadmap set out for quite a few years at this point. It’s slow removal is not new news, the conservatives set this out in 2022 or 2023. When I took out a 4 year lease in 2023, I knew what the BIK rate would be in 2027 at the end of the lease.

There are some capital expenditure incentives for businesses, these have had an end date set in legislation for many years, set by the conservatives again. Again nothing new here.

The 2030 date isn’t getting pushed back, the government literally just reconfirmed its happening. It doesn’t man ICE cars are getting banned in 2030, you’ll still be able to drive them until any existing ICE cars get to the end of their useful life, meaning they’ll probably be around to at least 2045 and more likely 2050. That’s another 25 years away. Someone who is 12 today could conceivably buy a new ICE car on their 17th birthday and drive it until their mid 30’s. That’s got going to happen in reality but that’s the sort of time periods we are talking about here.

I don’t think anyone sensible is recommending you buy an electric car right now if you are 100% reliant on public charging. That said plenty of people do it and generally it doesn’t cost you any more overall if you buy the right car and don’t use the most expensive charger in the country as your benchmark. You just don’t benefit from the potential savings. That isn’t going to change, probably ever because someone who has to pay a 3rd party to charge is never going to get it cheaper than someone who can charge at home.

Being able to charge at home doesn’t mean you need a driveway either. There are plenty of solutions to get plugged into your own house when parking on the road like cable gullies. There is a solution for almost every problem already, it’s just going to take time.

 

[jpaul]

demographic/financial means to afford the bev of those in properties without parking would be a new element to add to that old discussion

Interesting stat on chinese bev sales in EU who imposed the high tarifs on chinese bev's,
unclear why starmer hasn't done similar, especially to help burgeoning uk manufacturers (puma) or make more space for eu friends stellantis/vag/.... (to provide better economy of scale deals)
as such expect that is why the new byd estate seems only to be coming as phev to europe & maybe uk - you know how much I like estates.

EU tariffs of up to 45.3% on Chinese-built battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) came into full effect in November to prevent a flood of cheap cars.
Facing disruption from U.S. tariffs, the EU and China are negotiating a relaxation of the European levies.
But in the meantime, EV makers such as BYD and Leapmotor (9863.HK), opens new tab have adjusted their European strategy to adapt to the EU tariffs and the slower-than-expected mass adoption of BEVs in Europe.
On Tuesday, BYD said it would introduce two more PHEV models in Germany this year.
BY THE NUMBERS
BYD pays a 27% tariff on BEVs it sells in the EU, and 10% for PHEVs. That means paying 10,257 euros ($11,656) for each Atto 3 BEV it sells in Germany, the report said. For the Seal U PHEV, it pays 3,999 euros.
The group's March BEV sales in the EU more than doubled to 4,633 from March 2024, but its PHEV sales went from none to 3,269.
Chery, which also pays a baseline 10% tariff and an additional 21.3% levy on BEVs, sold 310 BEVs and 757 PHEVs.
SAIC (600104.SS), opens new tab faces the highest BEV tariff of 35.3%. But it has not scaled up PHEV sales as much, the report said.

albeit https://www.reddit.com/r/electricve.../byd_avoids_eu_tariffs_by_exporting_evs_from/

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Putting tariffs on Chinese cars would make naff all difference in the U.K. this has been explained to you before.

We don’t have a huge domestic car industry with huge domestic players to protect like the EU has.

80 to 90% of the cars purchased in the UK are imported from outside of the U.K.

Yes some foreign manufacturers manufacturer their cars here but 80% of those are exported.

Putting tariffs on Chinese cars pushes up prices for UK consumers but almost entirely protects manufacturers based overseas. That makes no sense as a policy position.

 

[bigmike20vt]

that said the new ford puma is one of the only cars at moment to get the full government supported discount and this is partly due to being semi UK sourced components. so the government is helping encourage uk

 

[lordrobs]

Putting tariffs on Chinese cars would make naff all difference in the U.K. this has been explained to you before.

We don’t have a huge domestic car industry with huge domestic players to protect like the EU has.

80 to 90% of the cars purchased in the UK are imported from outside of the U.K.

Yes some foreign manufacturers manufacturer their cars here but 80% of those are exported.

Putting tariffs on Chinese cars pushes up prices for UK consumers but almost entirely protects manufacturers based overseas. That makes no sense as a policy position.

We export billions of pounds worth of parts to European car manufacturers each year. Factor in vehicles as well and while not 'huge' it is still an industry worth in the tens of billions each year.

Having a UK car market dominated by the Chinese isn't a particularly great long term strategy either.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

We export billions of pounds worth of parts to European car manufacturers each year. Factor in vehicles as well and while not 'huge' it is still an industry worth in the tens of billions each year.

Having a UK car market dominated by the Chinese isn't a particularly great long term strategy either.

I don't disagree.

There is some industry to protect but someone ultimately someone will have done the math and figured out the cost probably isn't worth the benefits. Particularly as much of the benefit will end up in Europe or elsewhere in the world. That seems to be the part the jpaul is missing - the UK isn't in the EU anymore and we don't have massive domestic manufactuers to protect.

Lets be realistic, Brexit isn't going to have done us any favours in this sector either and it's only a matter of time before more of the sector pulls back to the mainland. I expect that part of the decision stems from the rahter bleak long term outlook of the UK's role in the european car manufactuirng industy now we are outside of the EU.

 

[SkyTerran]

On top of that putting tariffs on Chinese cars is not free - the Chinese government will retaliate against British businesses selling in China.

UK exports a lot of high profit services and products to China.

 

[SkyTerran]

The problem is that 50% of British motorists don’t have a driveway to park their BEV/PHEV on to charge it overnight so they’re never going to see the running cost savings that justify the purchase price of a BEV/PHEV.

The public DC chargers cost a lot - £30K to £80K a piece. They are usually bought on finance. The biggest contributor to the high price of public charging is paying off the finance. Maybe with time, as these are paid off and there's more competition - the price of public charging will go down. There is a big charging station near where I live - it has 12x 300kW charging devices. The price from 7pm to 7am is 25p per kW, which for city driving is better than the current price of diesel and petrol.

 

[shifty_uk]

Seeing a huge number of these Jaecoo SUV's on the roads now, everyone cruising around like they’re Posh Spice(discount Range Rover). Had a look at the spec/price and suddenly it makes sense, hard to argue.

I seen one in the JLR dealership and for a brief moment just thought it was a quirky Velar.

 

[Nasher]

The public DC chargers cost a lot - £30K to £80K a piece. They are usually bought on finance. The biggest contributor to the high price of public charging is paying off the finance. Maybe with time, as these are paid off and there's more competition - the price of public charging will go down. There is a big charging station near where I live - it has 12x 300kW charging devices. The price from 7pm to 7am is 25p per kW, which for city driving is better than the current price of diesel and petrol.

Lets be real, it will only ever go up.