Electric and Hybrid Car Thread

[JDMDreams]

We are so fucked after seeing what's in China. Given the rise in cost of everything here, and the trump games. Our cost of building a car will only continue to go up, which means as the Chinese continue to perfect their craft= lower costs we are even more fucked. Think of the average buyer. A civic is like what $50k now after all the taxes if you can afford it at what 5% financing? Why would you buy it if you can get a Camry size EV for $40000. Let's say it's $20000 + 100% white people tariffs. The Chinese has man power, land, technology to do it all in house. Meanwhile we're here bickering about the price of steel, aluminum, unions, protecting jobs, environment. Btw their interest rates are half of ours, so everything also is cheaper to finance.

[EvoFire]

It's not all sunshine and rainbows in China either.

People are tightening their purses just as much as they are here, and their online buy and dispose culture is 10x worst, to the point where I really think it's not sustainable in the long time. You think Temu is bad, wait till you see China.

Their retail sector is crumbling as the combo of people buying less, and buying more online means lots of stores are closing.

What Hehe saw isn't wrong, but he most likely didn't see the flip side of the coin where the car runs only half the time. It's confirmation bias that you get into a taxi or didi and the owner is happy about it. You won't see someone who's not happy about it because it's either in the shop or they are driving something else.

Perhaps VinFast isn't a great example, but I got one as an Uber and I couldn't help but ask the guy about it. He said it's a piece of shit. He's had it for 6 months and it's been down for 2. So that's 66% up time. When he's not driving his not making money. I haven't asked any drivers about using Teslas though, haven't encountered one cause I'm too cheap.

[bcrdukes]

Pardon my ignorance but what are the issues with Vinfast?

[EvoFire]

He said the car bricked multiple times throughout the 6 months he's owned it, some of the time they can get it going, but it's been towed back as well. He can't exactly get out of it either, so he's just waiting for the lease to run it's course. Going back to a Prius once he was done with it.

[bcrdukes]

Going back to a Toyota? Oh, the horror!

Sarcasm aside, I am seeing less and less Vinfast here on the road in the GTA. They almost do not exist. I guess this explains it.

Funny enough, there is a Vinfast dealership across from Porsche Centre Oakville. The Vinfast dealership really stands out.

[roastpuff]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

Pardon my ignorance but what are the issues with Vinfast?

The control arms self destruct after 30k miles.

No, not joking: https://www.reddit.com/r/VinFastComm...infast_ask_me/

Copied and pasted from someone who asked this already…

See my other response to a question…

The front strut to knuckle connections do not last very long 15 to 25k depending on how you drive….in a jaguar Land Rover vehicle they are designed to last 150,000 with a safety factor of 2…so 300,000 miles for the average user…

The bushes that connect the LCA to the body are made by a supplier in china that never ever produced bushes before…they last about 10% of the life of the vehicle…

The knuckle snaps off in an extreme event, like hitting a pothole at 55mph under full lock breaking scenario…

Chairman wanted the cheapest suspensions that was designed in record time…we designed and simulated the suspensions over a few months without any real world testing and kicked off manufacturing…

Jaguar Land Rover or Mercedes take 5 years to design, simulate, test, fix any issues and then retest for validation before production…they also use 20-30 engineers just for a suspension in that time, that team did it with 4 people…

Vinfast skipped the last 3 steps to save money and do it in time…you get what you paid for…

[bcrdukes]

TATA technologies - say no more.

RIP

[AstulzerRZD]

I love that bro got fired twice because of his reddit posting and still posts on reddit on the same account!

[GLOW]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

TATA technologies - say no more.

RIP

[AstulzerRZD]

Jaguar Land Rover or Mercedes take 5 years to design, simulate, test, fix any issues and then retest for validation before production…they also use 20-30 engineers just for a suspension in that time, that team did it with 4 people…

This is how Stellantis operates right now - there's ONE guy who does all the battery validation for all North America market.

They ALSO rushed programs a ton.
Giulia brand new platform taking only 3 years was insane.
EV Charger/Wagoneer program given like 12 months was even more insane.

[bcrdukes]

So, if this guy wins the lottery, or dies, then what?

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by AstulzerRZD

This is how Stellantis operates right now - there's ONE guy who does all the battery validation for all North America market.

They ALSO rushed programs a ton.
Giulia brand new platform taking only 3 years was insane.
EV Charger/Wagoneer program given like 12 months was even more insane.

That's always how the Chrysler group operated. The Viper, PT Cruiser, original minivan were all super rushed jobs. Granted, the PT Cruiser and minivan all used a lot of existing engineering. The PT Cruiser was built on the same platform as the Neon, and the minivans were just another permutation of the K car.

Throw enough resources on to a project and skip enough steps you too can shorten the time to delivery.

[AstulzerRZD]

They've gotten good at selecting the right interior materials, design, etc in the last 5-10 years.

PSA Group really brought their insanely toxic euro-centric management & software outsourcing to fuck it all up.

UConnect 5 was super fast, reliable, and feature rich in 2015. UConnect 6 blew it hardware AND software wise.

[EvoFire]

^ Arguably, no one is getting infotainment right these days. Even iDrive9 is a POS and BMW knows how to do infotainment.

The product cycles as they stand right now do not stand up to real world use cases well. They need to bring in semi mobile device like cycle to keep up with things. But that brings in a whole different issue of too many SKUs and too much variable hardware, which is very much a French problem.

[AstulzerRZD]

what's wrong with idrive 9 ?

i thought it was mostly ok in the X5 I drove, didn't really use my phone for carplay.

[noclue]

I have idrive 8.5 and everything is buried in a fucking app. I have to use the search function or dig deep to find what I want.

[Badhobz]

i hate to say it, but i really like my hitlerbox's UI.

Probably because i just press auto for climate and let it do whatever the it wants, and then the apple car pray starts up without any issue and is wireless. So everything is nicely integrated and works easily.

Mode switching for performance, sport, etc is also easy, just a touch of a button.

[noclue]

Originally Posted by Hehe

The idea with EVs is that you no longer treat a car like it used to. Not in term of expected life, at least.

Taxis and full time Ubers in China are now exclusively EVs with maybe some PHEV in between. But I actually had a chat with several of them during my last trip, and they all say the same thing. They put like 150-200k a year (2 ppl driving 12hr each and car runs 24/7), and after 2-3yrs, they just sell it to someone who specialize in buying these high-mileage EVs for parts and shit.

And if you think how this make any sense, just think about how much cars used to cost in China. A decent sedan/small SUV in China used to cost 300k RMB or more with entry-level 3/5 series bimmers in the 600k+ RMB range. Then these EVs are being sold for 130-250k for comparable size/interior

To put it into Canadian perspective, a Camry or Rav4 is what? 40k in Canada, entry level bimmer in 60k range. If suddenly a car that's comparable coming in at 10k, but the catch is that instead of with a Camry, you might expect it to last 20yrs if you drive it to the ground, now it's 10yrs.

It would still sell like hotcakes. The idea is purely math. If they need to spend 2*10k to get the same 20yr life, it's still cheaper than buying a Rav4 at 40k.

So, they don't need "testing in place". They were never meant to do a 1:1 replacement of your old car, but rather something that does the same job, but more disposable.

yay we are celebrating disposable cars, great for the environment. Oh wait wasnt that the purpose of EV?

[AstulzerRZD]

China’s only doing LFP batts which don’t have a lot of heavy metals.
They’re so devoid of them that their recycle value is basically 0.

NMC batteries have all the expensive/environmentally bad shit.

[roastpuff]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

TATA technologies - say no more.

RIP

I mean this has nothing with TATA and more with the VF management cutting every single corner they can - TATA is simply the consulting engineering company

[bcrdukes]

Blame it on the vendor.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by AstulzerRZD

what's wrong with idrive 9 ?

i thought it was mostly ok in the X5 I drove, didn't really use my phone for carplay.

It's android based now. In the X1 I drove it was laggy as shit, not helped by BMW's now always online BS.

[AstulzerRZD]

Speaking of batteries, a THIRD COROLLA died on me today.
The weather gets a little cold and every Zipcar rental stops starting.

Who the fuck at Toyota specced a 290CCA battery?
Jail.

[AstulzerRZD]

Even Honda, king of undersized batteries specs 400 CCA on R18 Civic.
Mazda specs 500 for Skyactiv 2.0.
Toyota specs 360 for L/LE 2.0 and 550 XLE/XSE.

Cheap fucks.

[EvoFire]

The Toyota battery isn't built to handle the blackbox that runs the car share shit. I worked at Evo so I dealt with this first hand. You have maybe like 1-3 days of standby time depending if the car gets woken up or not. If the car sits then you are guaranteed a dead battery.

We would take the test cars out for lunch every other day so we can make sure it stays alive. Then Ops would get in our face for taking the cars to lunch. The whole thing was dumb.