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Comment by nox101 | Hacker News Reader

Will Tesla become the Android, vs say BYD? It's starting to feel more like Tesla will be the Nokia/Blackberry of cars.

Americans do not comprehend how advanced BYD and others are in EV. It's no accident that their government is fighting the import of Chinese cars

I understand the cost to the end user is much less, but in what ways is their technology more advanced?

> in what ways is their technology more advanced?

BYD's technology, not so much--they're better at manufacturing cars in degrees compared to Tesla, not an order of magnitude.

The magic is at CATL and friends. There is a Cambrian explosion of battery technology in China that doesn't get reported super well in the mainstream press.

What's going on with battery technology?

> What's going on with battery technology?

Iron [1] and now sodium [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_batte...

[2] https://www.electrive.com/2023/11/20/byd-huaihai-move-on-pla...

Mostly cost reductions, there isn’t much room in the physics for higher energy density. Eg it will always be less than chemical energy density.

Cars that change in 10 minutes?

https://ev.com/news/byd-and-catl-set-to-introduce-ev-batteri...

How would that even be supplied? Megawatt circuits are the domain of industrial factories, not "gas" stations.

> How would that even be supplied?

Capacitors.

The article states that it would need 650KW to charge at 6C rates.

Huawei has already announced 600 kW DC fast chargers: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Electric-cars-in-China/Chi...

The bottleneck is the grid not terminal hardware. If a home or small business asks for a multiple MW circuit they're going to be laughed at for preposterousness. Laying harmless gigabit fiber to a new area requires permits, construction, labor, think of what becomes necessary when it's enough electrons to kill a dinosaur.

Just one example:

https://www.drive.com.au/news/byd-to-introduce-new-second-ge...

They’re doing a lot of licensing to western companies.

Adding to the other peer reasons, staggering range of design styles and price points; executive class, cheap fun young cars, utility vehicles, etc.

The UI is _miles_ ahead. And they are preparing to release a 1000 km (620 mile) range vehicle.

Tesla is competitive (sales are not dominant, but OK, in China) but the other US automakers are truly f***.

It actually has more to do with war and realpolitik.

So far the story has been Tesla being the Apple of EVs(pioneer, small number of premium models, lots of mindshare), BYD being the Samsung(cheaper copy of Tesla), and GM/Ford etc. being the Nokia/Blackberry(legacy volume manufacturers that did not pivot to the new thing in time).

Tesla once looked futuristic, but now they're sorely lacking : automatic windscreen wipers still don't work properly (they work perfectly well on my 2005 Ford Focus, thank you), they now lack basic ergonomic features such as a turn signal lever, their "self driving" feature is horribly lagging behind most other makers (constant phantom braking still a recurring problem after years and years, no proper automatic overtaking, inferior speed control and speed limit enforcement, etc).

I've not had phantom braking for a year or so, I used to have one per week. I'm happy with the speed control. I like the display of current speed limit and use the scroll wheel to control the delta against the current speed limit.

I have FSD, but don't use it, so I don't let the car dry to automatically overtake anyone.

There are apparently two things that particularly trigger phantom braking : bright sun and dark shadows on the road, for instance roads lined with trees are pretty bad; also flashing yellow traffic lights (normally means that you can simply proceed prudently, but apparently the Tesla system often interprets it as a "yellow about to turn red" signal and stops abruptly instead).

> their "self driving" feature is horribly lagging behind most other makers (constant phantom braking still a recurring problem after years and years, no proper automatic overtaking, inferior speed control and speed limit enforcement, etc)

Who are these makers that allegedly outclass Autopilot/FSD?

From all the tests I've made recently, BMW, Mercedes, BYD and Renault all do better than Tesla. Push the left turn signal, the car switches lane, accelerates and overtakes by itself. In the EU at least Teslas can't seem to get this right.

Also Teslas are among the lasts (with X-Peng) in their price range lacking a capacitive steering wheel (doesn't require moving the wheel, a light touch from time to time is enough to keep cruise control on).

And none of them suffers from the dangerous "phantom braking" defect, which occurs almost certainly at least once for any one-hour long trip.

Haven’t used it myself but every auto journalist YouTube video I’ve seen on SuperCruise says it’s the best in the class. I had the model 3 FSD thirty day trial, it was ok, but not $7000 ok.

As for Autopilot.. almost everybody has good lane keeping/radar cruise tech now. My 18 Acura was as good as Autopilot, and maybe better than “post LiDAR” autopilot.

Haven't ridden in one, but I think Mercedes' Drive Pilot is supposed to be a contender:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/27/23892154/mercedes-benz-dr...

Drive Pilot just follows the car in front and has several limitations, it doesn't even have overtaking, so I would be surprised since the parent poster says lack of automatic overtaking is a limitation.

Drive Pilot:

Works only when behind another car, it just follows that car

Cannot change lanes

Works only under 40MPH

Works only in daylight, does not work at night

Does not work in rain

Works only in traffic jams and heavy traffic

Works only on a few pre-approved roads

How is the world is FSD "severely lagging behind" this tech when FSD has none of these limitations?

Something weird about how the Mercedes tech is hyped up in message forums.

Yes, it does have a lot of limitations, though I suppose one argument would be that if Mercedes isn't willing to do autonomy without a lot of caveats that's because they're risk averse (or at least their lawyers are).

Tesla is at least profitable, while Rivian is losing $30000 with every sold car.

Was. The Gen 2's have a very different internal cost. In theory it's much better, but i don't know if it's been said how much.

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