New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China

BMW announced it will collaborate with Huawei as well. Audi, Dongfeng Nissan, and Honda also announced collaborations a while back. Stellantis acquired a stake in Leapmotor, and Volkswagen is collaborating with XPeng.

BMW Group (BMWG.DE), will integrate Huawei (HWT.UL) HiCar, the Chinese tech conglomerate's car mobile app connecting devices with vehicles, into its locally produced new models in 2026, the German automaker said on Monday.

BMW is teaming up with Huawei to develop smart applications based on the Harmony operating system for drivers of its vehicles using the tech conglomerate's devices in China, according to a company statement.

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The weird thing is XPeng is collaborating with Huawei despite being competitors, while Li Auto uses Huawei parts. Xiaomi is a shareholder of XPeng, and XPeng founder He Xiaopeng is an investor of Nio. Li Auto and Lei Jun are shareholders of Nio, so there's a lot of incest going on.

Legume7 said:

There's a lot of controversy going on with the USA LiDAR company Luminar recently. A former NASA engineer uploaded a video claiming that a car equipped with LiDAR from Luminar outperformed Tesla FSD. Luminar claimed the tests were conducted without financial compensation, and then shared this video all over their social media networks to pump up their stock price. The video has 14M+ views at the time of writing.

There's many levels of this scam to unravel. First, I'm 100% the video was paid for by Luminar. Luminar's bleeding cash and only have 1% market share. At one point they were worth over $2B+, which shows how big of a scam they are. On a technical level, they are behind Chinese brands Huawei, Hesai, and Robosense and cost way more. Chinese brands have roughly 70% global EV market share, and that will grow in the future. No Chinese car company will buy LiDAR from an American company when cheaper, better performing domestic alternatives are available. Even non-Chinese automakers like Mercedes (Hesai), BMW (Huawei), and Audi (Huawei) are using Chinese LiDAR, which leaves barely any customers for Luminar, hence their, let me emphasize again, 1% market share. Also, an analysis last July showed that they had 14 months before bankruptcy. They've gotten more investment since then, but it's only a matter of time before they are dead. Thus, I'm sure they released this video to pump up their stock prices ahead of their earnings call in 2 days, which will surely disappoint.


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Also, comparing to Tesla FSD is rather pointless, given that FSD is worse than literally all Chinese self-driving platforms. It looks impressive to uninformed investors, but it says nothing that we don't know already. We've known for ages that LiDAR + cameras beats cameras alone.

The funny thing is that we've seen this play out many times before. Even in clean energy, Solyndra and Northvolt come to mind as Western companies that were hailed as future leaders only to go bankrupt after being exposed as scams. I'm sure Luminar will be the next example, and there will be many more in fields such as hydrogen energy and solid state batteries.

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It's unfortunate people are attacking the messenger instead of the message. The problems with vision-only solution are well known and the Youtuber just provide a real world demonstration of them.

Legume7 said:

There's a lot of controversy going on with the USA LiDAR company Luminar recently. A former NASA engineer uploaded a video claiming that a car equipped with LiDAR from Luminar outperformed Tesla FSD. Luminar claimed the tests were conducted without financial compensation, and then shared this video all over their social media networks to pump up their stock price. The video has 14M+ views at the time of writing.

There's many levels of this scam to unravel. First, I'm 100% the video was paid for by Luminar. Luminar's bleeding cash and only have 1% market share. At one point they were worth over $2B+, which shows how big of a scam they are. On a technical level, they are behind Chinese brands Huawei, Hesai, and Robosense and cost way more. Chinese brands have roughly 70% global EV market share, and that will grow in the future. No Chinese car company will buy LiDAR from an American company when cheaper, better performing domestic alternatives are available. Even non-Chinese automakers like Mercedes (Hesai), BMW (Huawei), and Audi (Huawei) are using Chinese LiDAR, which leaves barely any customers for Luminar, hence their, let me emphasize again, 1% market share. Also, an analysis last July showed that they had 14 months before bankruptcy. They've gotten more investment since then, but it's only a matter of time before they are dead. Thus, I'm sure they released this video to pump up their stock prices ahead of their earnings call in 2 days, which will surely disappoint.


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Also, comparing to Tesla FSD is rather pointless, given that FSD is worse than literally all Chinese self-driving platforms. It looks impressive to uninformed investors, but it says nothing that we don't know already. We've known for ages that LiDAR + cameras beats cameras alone.

The funny thing is that we've seen this play out many times before. Even in clean energy, Solyndra and Northvolt come to mind as Western companies that were hailed as future leaders only to go bankrupt after being exposed as scams. I'm sure Luminar will be the next example, and there will be many more in fields such as hydrogen energy and solid state batteries.

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Haha, are you ranting about LAZR?
It's funny because they have their own reddit forum that I happened to be on the other day. 90% of it is basically crying and crapping on Hesai/China. The worst sense of western entitlement...

I wouldn't say they are a scam (at least at the time of conception). Luminar received investment from Volvo/Geely. It's just that things did not really turn out the way they were expected...

One of the first production cars with LIDAR was the 2017 Audi A8 (Valeo-supplied LIDAR). They claimed it would offer hands-free
highway driving especially during traffic jams. In the end the feature was never released...
Luminar and Volvo first showed the Volvo 360c concept car in 2018.
So this is all nearly 10 years ago...
Guess what? The first production Volvo with Luminar will be the EX90 which is only expected on the road in a couple months. So basically burning cash the whole time.

What else happened during this time? Musk famously declared that LIDAR was unnecessary and won't be a part of Tesla's plans. Although other manufacturers did not share his beliefs, it did dent the popularity of the technology in consumer's minds, especially as Tesla was the EV leader at the time.

Ouster from the chart above used to be Velodyne, which was also an early leader in LIDAR. Hesai has been eating their lunch even in non-automotive applications such as surveying tools.

The most important shift of course is the centre of EV manufacturing shifting from the West into China. Basically completely shattered the prospects of these companies. There was some hope that the US' new cold war might create new opportunities for LAZR and others, but now EV adoption has hit a brick wall. All the western manufacturers have rethought their plans. Conversely, the massive adoption of EVs in China has basically created a positive snowball effect.

I posted about this aspect a bit before. LIDAR was closely coupled with EVs. I am not an automotive engineer, but as I understand there are a few reasons...

1. EVs have more software defined functions. This means the LIDAR can talk to the steering directly, whereas in traditional "domain control", the steering is a segregated system.

2. Usually in ICE cars the electrical system is only 12V, this leaves a limited amount of power to provide to a automated driving system.

So all this in mind, it is not fair to say Luminar is a scam, just that a lot of things did not go their way. Even looking at that chart you can see Robosense is not making money. They are selling at a loss. I saw an internet comment (so take it with a grain of salt) that Hesai salespeople make a point of that.

mossen said:

As BYD unveiled 10C charging, NIO is doubling down on swapping batteries.

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We´ll see which approach works best. I suspect swapping is the wrong bet given the speed of charging improvements.

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Nio needs to get its house in order to tap the full benefit of such an alliance. Currently, Nio hasn't standardized its own battery swapping stations. As a result, some types of battery need a specific type/generation of swapping station. Hopefully, they can set up the battery swapping standards ASAP.

iewgnem said:

There is no "best approach" and China never "bets" on winners, in practice China always build them all, because China can, and it's not just swapping, its also hydrogen.

In NIO's case as far as users are concerned their swapping system is just a fast charger, it's more a business play on defered battery cost than anything.

For EV in general heavy vehicles benefit a lot from swapping as it'll take tens of megawatts of charging power to achieve swapping speed, and if 10MW chargers comes online, there will be applications that require 100MW chargers, then gigawatt chargers etc.

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I think one of the major benefits of battery swapping is that it can be used in areas that don't have a robust electricity grid. Supercharging, especially the ultra-fast type unveiled by BYD, requires a strong grid which may not be available in all locations, especially overseas.

BYD's Super e-Platform (e.g. Han L and Tang L) has the following features:

• Flash-charging blade battery (compatible with the 1000 KW/1 MW ultra-fast charger)
• 30,000 RPM electric motor
• 1500V automotive-grade silicon carbide power chip

Here is some safety tests of the Super e-Platform:

How to shoot yourself in the foot/why the US won't catch up China in EV tech anytime soon:

How to circumvent the EU tariff - assembling Chinese EVs in an EU country:

Magna to build EVs for Xpeng, GAC in Austria with Chinese kits, report says

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"CHINA DELAYS APPROVAL OF BYD’S MEXICO PLANT.
Beijing is delaying approval for BYD to build a plant in Mexico due to concerns that the company's advanced car technology could leak to the US. BYD announced plans for the Mexican plant in 2023, aiming to create 10,000 jobs and produce 150,000 vehicles annually. However, approval from China’s commerce ministry is still pending. Authorities worry that Mexico's proximity to the US could give the latter access to BYD’s technology.[...]"

GulfLander said:

"CHINA DELAYS APPROVAL OF BYD’S MEXICO PLANT.
Beijing is delaying approval for BYD to build a plant in Mexico due to concerns that the company's advanced car technology could leak to the US. BYD announced plans for the Mexican plant in 2023, aiming to create 10,000 jobs and produce 150,000 vehicles annually. However, approval from China’s commerce ministry is still pending. Authorities worry that Mexico's proximity to the US could give the latter access to BYD’s technology.[...]"

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1902184580209340424

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Not surprising. US regime is attempting a forced takeover of Tiktok Global, and coerced Panama gov into forcing Chinese investors to give up their stake in projects. Same shit is happening in Africa..mainly mining sectors.

New clause for oversea projects has to be made with foreign states for absolute safeguarding against the predatory acts of a regime in terminal decline.

China will have to make it such that..in future when Americans travel outside to visit the ex-US world...the experience will be akin of Yeltsin grocery shopping in US back in 1989.

hullopilllw said:

Not surprising. US regime is attempting a forced takeover of Tiktok Global, and coerced Panama gov into forcing Chinese investors to give up their stake in projects. Same shit is happening in Africa..mainly mining sectors.

New clause for oversea projects has to be made with foreign states for absolute safeguarding against the predatory acts of a regime in terminal decline.

China will have to make it such that..in future when Americans travel outside to visit the ex-US world...the experience will be akin of Yeltsin grocery shopping in US back in 1989.


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The future is now.

GulfLander said:

"CHINA DELAYS APPROVAL OF BYD’S MEXICO PLANT.
Beijing is delaying approval for BYD to build a plant in Mexico due to concerns that the company's advanced car technology could leak to the US. BYD announced plans for the Mexican plant in 2023, aiming to create 10,000 jobs and produce 150,000 vehicles annually. However, approval from China’s commerce ministry is still pending. Authorities worry that Mexico's proximity to the US could give the latter access to BYD’s technology.[...]"

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1902184580209340424

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If anyone has any illusion if China will actually allow any company to build factories in the US itself, lol
Usually there'd be ever useful Americans jumping in to take the blame for blocking these, but I guess in Mexico's case China didn't expect it to get this far.

hullopilllw said:

Not surprising. US regime is attempting a forced takeover of Tiktok Global, and coerced Panama gov into forcing Chinese investors to give up their stake in projects. Same shit is happening in Africa..mainly mining sectors.

New clause for oversea projects has to be made with foreign states for absolute safeguarding against the predatory acts of a regime in terminal decline.

China will have to make it such that..in future when Americans travel outside to visit the ex-US world...the experience will be akin of Yeltsin grocery shopping in US back in 1989.


View attachment 148202

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I think it's much simpler than that.

South America should be supplied by Brazil

Mexico was only there to supply the north american market.

Now that the US made it clear they do not abide by USMCA or NAFTA when it comes to Chinese vehicles.

Coupled with the fact that Mexico has wanted to make their own vehicle parts, and suggested tariffing Chinese parts and vehicles to make a north american trade fort, it doesn't make sense for china to risk building a plant in Mexico.

Spending that much money only to supply the Mexican market is not good business. Coupled by the fact that Mexico seems to be following US lead and not fight back against US for not abiding by the USMCA deal to let Mexico made Chinese cars be imported tariff free, I can easily see how if BYD spent billions building a plant, build up.mexican suppliers, it would be easy for the US to co-opt mexico in using those suppliers for US vehicles to make US vehicles more advanced and cost effective while still banking byd from the target market. Thats just common sense.

I doubt a plant will ever be built in mexico, while mexico is still working hard to be in US good graces.

supercat said:

How to circumvent the EU tariff - assembling Chinese EVs in an EU country:

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Ha ha. EU regime always finds a way

EU probes BYD plant in Hungary over unfair Chinese subsidies​

Investigation comes as Viktor Orbán has attracted large Chinese investments to his country

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Brussels is investigating whether China provided unfair subsidies for a BYD electric car plant in Hungary, in a highly sensitive move to target the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Viktor Orbán.

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The European Commission is in the preliminary stages of a foreign subsidy probe into the BYD plant, two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times, in a step that will further raise trade tensions with Beijing.

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If Brussels finds that the Chinese company has benefited from unfair state aid, it could force it to sell some assets, reduce capacity, repay the subsidy and potentially pay a fine for non-compliance.

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János Bóka, Hungary’s Europe minister, told the FT that Budapest had not been informed about the probe, but added: “It is not surprising — and it is generally known that any investment that takes place in Hungary appears on the Commission’s radar very quickly, and the Commission follows with redoubled attention every state aid decision that takes place in Hungary.”

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A spokesperson for the Commission declined to comment. A spokesperson for BYD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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