New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China

This is a video having a look at Huawei’s HarmonyOS in-car system. In a demo setup and in the Arcfox aS… unfortunately in Chinese only, no English sub… it looks quite good… since the Arcfox aS is on sale already, would really love to see how the production version of the self driving is like…

Mt1701d said:

This is a video having a look at Huawei’s HarmonyOS in-car system. In a demo setup and in the Arcfox aS… unfortunately in Chinese only, no English sub… it looks quite good… since the Arcfox aS is on sale already, would really love to see how the production version of the self driving is like…

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The OS is good, the car screen setup though...

Because the screen is horizontal, the guy was struggling to reach the right side of the screen. And because the screen seems embedded to the panels, the driver needs to stretch longer in order to interact with it.

From what I see here, Tesla ergonomics, for the main screen, are miles better than this one

Kaine said:

The OS is good, the car screen setup though...

Because the screen is horizontal, the guy was struggling to reach the right side of the screen. And because the screen seems embedded to the panels, the driver needs to stretch longer in order to interact with it.

From what I see here, Tesla ergonomics, for the main screen, are miles better than this one

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I think ergonomics of the central screen on the Arcfox is debatable, I myself am partial to the design and I do agree that due to the width of the screen, some parts of the screen isn’t very accessible to the driver… but unlike the Tesla where the instrument panel as well as other central functions are placed completely on the central screen, the central screen on the Arcfox, and I think true for pretty much all other brands atm, the focus and intended usage of the central screen is different, as the demo involving the passage shows… the screen was intended to cater to the independent usage of 2 people, whether that is something good or not… I think will depend on the customer…

BYD, the other big boy in China’s world of batteries, is getting rave reviews for its blade batteries. It will be interesting to see if Washington’s radar picks up BYD and CATL in the near future.

This blade battery sounds almost too good to be true. And its not even using some fancy new tech... The whole video does sound a bit too one sided. Does anyone know about some serious drawbacks to this new battery?

avatar1234 said:

This blade battery sounds almost too good to be true. And its not even using some fancy new tech... The whole video does sound a bit too one sided. Does anyone know about some serious drawbacks to this new battery?

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This is my 2 cents, so take it with a grain of salt.

The Blade battery has the same drawbacks of other LFPs apart from one aspect. It is an iterative improvement in cell design to further address the safety issues of the battery packs via the reduction of heat buildup in the battery cells, which the LFP chemistry already addressed to a certain extent. The other benefits is like the cherry on top. But the blade battery doesn’t resolve the other fundamental issues of the LFP chemistry, and the major one being energy density. Thus I believe they went for weight savings in one area and more cells as the immediate solution to maximising the potential of their current LFP chemistry.

Also allow me to speculate a little, I have a feeling that the current blade battery is a stop gap to the solid state battery or other battery chemistries BYD is working on as seen in the patent filings in 2020 and Jan of 2021. Should the solid state or other chemistries pan out the current blade battery cells can be easily removed and replaced with the new cells at a later date, allowing for instant improvements without needing to fundamentally re-design their battery packs or their new BEV offerings as a whole.

Mt1701d said:

This is my 2 cents, so take it with a grain of salt.

The Blade battery has the same drawbacks of other LFPs apart from one aspect. It is an iterative improvement in cell design to further address the safety issues of the battery packs via the reduction of heat buildup in the battery cells, which the LFP chemistry already addressed to a certain extent. The other benefits is like the cherry on top. But the blade battery doesn’t resolve the other fundamental issues of the LFP chemistry, and the major one being energy density. Thus I believe they went for weight savings in one area and more cells as the immediate solution to maximising the potential of their current LFP chemistry.

Also allow me to speculate a little, I have a feeling that the current blade battery is a stop gap to the solid state battery or other battery chemistries BYD is working on as seen in the patent filings in 2020 and Jan of 2021. Should the solid state or other chemistries pan out the current blade battery cells can be easily removed and replaced with the new cells at a later date, allowing for instant improvements without needing to fundamentally re-design their battery packs or their new BEV offerings as a whole.

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Blade does increase energy density of LFP. By making a much larger cell (around a meter long) than a AA sized cell, it reduces the packaging space and weight, it also reduces the size of cooling components such as heat sink and pipes, this increase its energy density of a full battery pack.

If other type of battery adopt the same concept (if the chemistry allows) it would make similar improvement as well. But I think BYD would use patent to restrict others adoptation.

avatar1234 said:

I guess that's the only way Chinese EV tech will enter EU. Because actually selling EVs in Europe doesn't seem like it's gonna happen, with politics and tariffs in the way. Otherwise there'd already be a bunch of Chinese EVs being on offer in EU.

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I don't think that should be the reason. If any EU car makers want to sell their EVs in China, they have to open their market to Chinese EV makers, two way road.

avatar1234 said:

This blade battery sounds almost too good to be true. And its not even using some fancy new tech... The whole video does sound a bit too one sided. Does anyone know about some serious drawbacks to this new battery?

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BYD has sent their blade batteries to skeptics to test for themselves. It's proven. Elon Musk wanted those batteries for his Teslas but apparently Elon being Elon had offended those at BYD early on so he has only CATL as an option.

taxiya said:

Blade does increase energy density of LFP. By making a much larger cell (around a meter long) than a AA sized cell, it reduces the packaging space and weight, it also reduces the size of cooling components such as heat sink and pipes, this increase its energy density of a full battery pack.

If other type of battery adopt the same concept (if the chemistry allows) it would make similar improvement as well. But I think BYD would use patent to restrict others adoptation.

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I know that blade battery saves weight by reducing the cooling needs and thus can have more cells for a given volume, thus more energy density, the video addressed it, so I thought I shouldn’t just reiterate… but what I meant was that the blade battery doesn’t address the issue of the LFP chemically, the blade battery system goes around the issue mechanically, by allowing easier heat dissipation, so on a per pack basis it is superior to other LFP system on energy density, but it still has the same/similar drawbacks on a per cell basis, so the chemistry of the cells has still has the general LFP drawbacks. It may not be clear but I am very much a fan of the blade battery and think that using mechanical design to “solve” or go around chemical limitations is a pretty ingenious.

Also others, Svolt from GWM in this case is already adopting this line of thinking from BYD…