CTP (Cell To Pack)/CTC (Cell To Chassis)/Structural battery pack are similar and important technologies.
I listened to that clip on Tesla/CATL version of CTC. It's interesting how CATL started to talk about this 2 years ago, whereas BYD just directly came out with it a week before they started pre-sale of Seal. I guess CATL has to promote its products to get automakers to buy its batteries, but BYD just keeps thing really silent and keep surprising markets when they do promote new things. Which is why I'm wondering when BYD will come out with its own Sodium ion battery. Given how lithium is getting so expensive now, the next holy grail for mass market cars is sodium ion batteries.
LG Energy Solution's LFP battery plan is pretty underwhelming. First, these batteries probably will not be available for EV use until 2025. Second, "LG Energy Solution is still heavily betting on pouch cells instead of adopting the prismatic format, to allow its battery packs to become module-less." In other words, these batteries probably cannot fully exploit the advantages of the CTP/CTC technologies.
Yeah, LG Chem is going way down. BYD's battery technology will allow them to poach many customers in the next few years from LG and Panasonic and even CATL.
In comparison, the efficiency of ICEs is only 40%. Furthermore, electric motors have less parts than ICEs and are probably more reliable and less maintenance intensive. However, currently the overall reliability of EV has not completely caught up with ICE cars yet, mainly due software problems, according to one study.
Yeah, there is a lot of room for improvement still. FSD feature on Tesla, I don't dare to use it at all even though I paid for it, lol. But seeing BYD CTB structure in action, I'd be very comfortable driving one. And I think by partnering up Horizon Robotics, BYD's AV features will get a lot better soon. If things go well, BYD should probably buy out Horizon.
Not sure if it's a pre production variant but I saw a video of the interior and it wasn't that impressive compared to competitors. Too many different styling patterns and colours.
Still, I think it's going to massively sell. BYD is extremely popular right now.
I saw rumours it got 23k preorders in just a few hours after preorder started
The recent videos to me all look pretty impressive. I believe they hit 22,623 sold after 6.5 hours. It's not a bad figure for a medium to higher end sedan, but I was expecting a little more. Maybe BYD has come out with too many models recently. I believe Han DM-i/p got 12k orders in the first 10 hours. D9 got 7k+ after a day and half. New Tang EV is coming out on Sunday. Frigate 07 is coming out a week from now. There maybe too many product launches in a row even For BYD. I'm sure they will have a huge backlog, but I think Seal could've probably hit 40k on the 24 hours if it didn't come in the middle of several other product launches.
fyi, people were doing some comparison of the 4WD version of Seal vs basic version of model 3 (they are about the same price). 4WD Seal beat Model 3 pretty much everywhere. This is where the stronger brand of Model 3 really helps them. Even the long range version of model 3 has short range in CLTC (675 km) than long range version of Seal (700 km).
Also, given the news about CTB increasing volumetric utilization by 66%, it's pretty easy to see how a high/high end SUV from BYD can just be super awesome. They'd be able to probably put a 100 kWh battery in there without making it more heavy than a pre-CTB Sedan like BYD Han. And if they can use more expensive and lighter material, they might get a performant version that can do 0 to 100 in 2.9 s with 900 km range in CLTC or a long range version that can do 1000 km range in CLTC. If BYD is making a super luxurious car, I'd want them to create something that completely removes any range anxiety from passengers. Seal already looks really great inside. I don' see how they can create a luxury version that doubles the price without significantly increasing range, power and acceleration.
