Seems like a good plan. Canada has the third largest hydroelectric power production in the world, and quite a bit of nuclear, so let's use it properly. People talk about transmission infrastructure like it's difficult, but we're the ones who made the ~5,000 KM HVDC system that feeds the northern US from James Bay! I don't see why we can't quickly electrify transportation, it's the kind of project Canada seems to be pretty good at.
They're now quite popular in the UK, along with Jaecoo, although not a huge number of them are pure-EV. Since I have been in the market for a car recently, I've been carspotting to see what's actually on the roads, and looking out for green-flash plates. VW and Tesla seem to be the carspotting winners so far. Autocar (and other reviewers) are mad about the Renault 5, which does look extremely good. I have an Abarth(!) 600E on lease-order, which I will review for HN eventually.
It is very funny that the Seagull had to be renamed Surf because Brits hate seagulls, though.
I don't know that there is. It takes ages to develop an EV-focused platform, and the lines to manufacture it. Tesla is the only American manufacturer that has already done that work, and they're circling the drain. Aside from them, there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt. All of the top-of-the-line EVs are Korean or Chinese, and the 2nd tiers are all European. America's EVs aren't even on the horizon, they'll be playing catchup for decades.
> there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt.
I drive a Chevrolet Blazer EV. Test drove a Equinox EV as well. There is the silverado EV as well. Chrysler and Ford are mostly working on plug in hybrids which is 90% of the advantages of an EV for those who charge at home (if people will is debated).
Which is to say the big-3 car makers all have EV or close enough EV cars and are making more.
A major problem is that dealers hate carrying and selling EVs. If you want to get these vehicles you either have to special order them or you have to buy used.
I think a big portion of why Tesla is so prominent is because it's relatively easy to get a Tesla almost anywhere.
It’ll happen eventually, it’s an economic certainty. And when it finally does it probably won’t be that bad for the American consumer buying a car.
The real loss is the international trade and the effect that’ll have on the overall economy. Mexico and Canada will already be dominated by Chinese cars and it’ll be too late to compete.
While America is slow, the transition is happening. There are a fair number of electric cars on the road. Some like the cybertruck are obvious, but there are a lot of cars that come in ICE or EV variants that you can't tell and people are talking. Don't lose hope.
I see parallels with the failed metric system transition: a voluntary shift with inconsistent policy, the impression that it's all just an elitist/foreign conspiracy, cultural/political resistance, and so on. Of the major developed economies, only Japan is lower on BEV market share. Realistically the transition will probably happen in pockets, for instance California has similar EV sales share as Germany right now.
It will happen. My guess is that Canada is BYD’s pilot into the US. They have very similar buyer characteristics and the Canadian tariff deal allows them to enter the market without taking the risks of local factories.
It won’t take much to get BYD access to the US. It’s a two-step process:
- Toss a million bucks at Trump or wait for a Democratic administration
- Build a plant in Alabama/Tennessee/South Carolina/Georgia
A million? 100M only gets you an ev advertisement on the Whitehouse lawn. It will need to be something more like Saudi Arabia's investment in ivanka, i mean the affinity group. 25M a year to his son in law gets your phone calls answered when you feel like Iran is acting up too much.
I am not as optimistic. If that doesn't happen the only candidate likely to let china do as they wilt is aoc. Vance would happily start ww3 with them. Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
> Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
I sincerely doubt the US is capable of this. Trump has lit your soft power on fire. Trying to get people to give up a superior and cheaper product is an extremely large ask.
The leaders there know that China isn't exactly a friend of liberal western democracy. They have won the current round of propoganda, but that doesn't mean they are anyone's friend either.
No, they have won the current round of foreign relations. Threats to invade numerous allies. Blatant war crimes like murdering random people on boats. Violating established and signed trade deals left right and centre. Openly soliciting and accepting bribes. Kidnapping foreign countries citizens and holding them in inhumane camps. None of this is a matter of "propaganda" - it's a matter of actual actions the US is taking.
> The leaders there know that China isn't exactly a friend of liberal western democracy.
Indeed, but this has never been a prerequisite for trade with liberal western democracies. See for example the gulf monarchies we trade with.
It is pretty much a prerequisite for extraordinary actions like successfully asking liberal western democracies to restrict trade though, and the US no longer meets it...
> Which is to say Trump failed at the current round of propaganda.
No, it really isn't. "Propaganda" merely refers to communication intended to influence. Trump failed when it came down to actual actions, not just communication. And when he failed in communication it was actual diplomacy meant to come to agreements, not merely the words meant to influence minds.
Propaganda is the least of the USes problems right now.
I suspect America will continue to be weird about China until one of three things happens:
- a new Great Power enemy is selected; it would make sense for this to be Russia, but India is also a candidate
- some sort of face-saving moral victory is achieved which allows the US to continue feeling superior and not threatened by China's capability (unclear what this might look like)
- Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
> Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
Among all Chinese leaders from the past and likely to the near future, Xi Jinping is the warmest towards US. He cherished his short stay in Iowa and his daughter graduated from Harvard.
I dont think future leaders will share that feeling.
So if China attacks Taiwan and NATO intervenes, how Canada will ensure BYD will not remotely brick the charging infrastructure or will not make cars suddenly speed up and crash into oncoming traffic?
Same question, but for Tesla and the proposed US invasion of Canada.
(one of those things which the POTUS says that we're all told shouldn't be taken as serious or real, as if that wasn't a massive disqualification for him)
I read an article recently that said something along the lines of “China is pausing on the idea of a BYD Mexico factory over fears of US stealing their technology.”
Both countries have been accusing each other of stealing technologies since forever, nothing here is new. No tables have been turned, unless you've been sleeping under a rock for the last three decades.
In the context of automotive technology, the tables have absolutely turned. There was nobody anywhere interested in Chinese automotive technology 10 years ago.
Western media has been overwhelmingly one sided regarding state led IP theft for the last three decades. China steals western IP has been the story, and it hasn't been even a little balanced until reading this.
> This will be a logistical challenge for the grid but absolutely fantastic for BYD owners in particular.
Interestingly BYD actually puts batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak" to minimise the strain on the grid. So often times cars will actually charge from that battery instead of directly from the grid.
> batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak"
I don't think that's what they'll do. Charging off peak means being able to store the entirety of the energy demand for the power station in a battery, which is going to be very expensive (assuming 20 cars charge during peak hours every day, that'd mean having to swallow the cost of 20 cars worth of battery per charging station. Good luck getting a good ROI with that).
Instead I think they'll just use the battery so that they never drain the full power of a charge when a car is charging. Drawing a megawatt of current 5% of the time is putting lots of pressure on the local grid, and it can be mitigated by having a battery with the capacity of a car battery that you charge slowly during the whole day (including during peak hour) and discharge fast when a car is charging (for instance, if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption).
> if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption)
You definitely need to have that to not load the grid with 1MW, but the question still remains what the capacity of the battery is. A charger that promises a 5 minute 1MW charge BUT which can only do it once per hour and then falls back to 200kW doesn't seem as special as a charger that actually charges a car every five minutes.
Generally fast charging has been a much harder nut to crack than fast discharge. If you have fast charging you necessarily have fast discharge in my experience.
> And this is fantastic for EV owners in general, assuming the charging network is open to all.
Given that the job descriptions seem to include working with local subsidy programs, I sure hope the Canadian government is going to require an open standard or adding more DC chargers under existing standards.
Does anyone know if they have looked at how charging quickly impacts the longevity of the battery? Can the cells be damaged by the rapid increase in temperature and current?
Significant work has been done on the "dendritic" failure mode of electrodes, where crystals grow from one electrode to another and may punch through separator membranes. This has gradually increased cell lifetimes. Now it's all down to temperature. Control-loop monitoring has got a lot better than "shove X amps in there and hope for the best".
There's been a lot of study into this already and the forming consensus is that fast DC charging is less of an issue on battery longevity than was first thought. In cars with decent thermal management systems it seems to have a fairly limited effect on battery lifetime as opposed to natural calendar aging.
Even if it did, this type of rapid charging only happens on long road trips.
I don’t specifically know for this type of battery but I’ve looked at pretty in-depth analysis of smartphone batteries (way less sophisticated battery management tech) and fast versus slow charging made very little lifespan difference. The best mitigations were fewer cycles and keeping the battery in its sweet spot (not discharging to 0% and charging to 100%)
Fast charging appears to damage batteries less than expected. There are lots of reports of taxis which almost exclusively used fast charging with over 200,000 miles on their battery.
Of course that is normal fast charging. Flash charging is 3x or more faster, so that's unknown.
Probably a bit but here’s the thing: if charging fast is, well….faster…then people care less if they loose a little extra battery because getting it back is less inconvenient.
There’s a graph i imagine here where slow charging, you want to retain all capacity. Faster it gets, you tolerate more battery loss.
> The automaker has built over 5,700 Flash Charging stations in China in about a year, and as we reported earlier today, it is now deploying 2.4 times more charging power per month than Tesla adds to its Supercharger network.
I'm against BYD factories unless car parts shipped from china are not heavily tariffed. You don't want to allow them to ship entire kits from china to final assemble in Europe. You want them to buy from providers in Europe. Otherwise I'm in favor of massive tariffs on their cars to avoid dumping.
That’s the exact model they follow in Brasil - they ship over the car without seats or a steering wheel, install them in Brazil with a Chinese labour force, declare it Brazilian made, pay no tariffs on the parts or the final vehicle.
There’s an aspirational goal of at least 50% Brazilian parts, but its currently 0%.
Ban them. Beyond cars is the fact that somehow its ok to buy unregulated chinese made products following no safety standards of the EU on temu, shein, aliexpress etc allowing them to skip all the costs of producing safe consumer goods in the EU. Ban all of them or put a 1000% tariff on all of the items. To long the EU has been followed the financial interests of German industry and their dealings in China. Since that phase is over we should treat China as the hostile power it is and force cuts to trade. Not a single Euro more in trade in than export to China.
Some US politicians were proposing a total ban on allowing cars of Chinese origin into the US, which is rather extreme. They don't want to risk US nationals seeing them and wanting them.
BYD's America containment policy to make Americans drool with jealousy. America will still be home to boring vanilla EVs that looked like it was stuck in the 2010s. BYD has a better chance of entering US market by offering tribute to Trump & Co over an inflexible protectionist / labor union friendly Democratic party.
This is bold considering the uncertainty in the Canadian market right now.
For those not familiar with the situation...
Before Trump 2.0:
----------------
The auto sectors of Canada, U.S. and Mexico were highly integrated with parts and vehicles crossing the border at scale. There wasn't much EV production and the NA auto sector probably wasn't up to competing with the Chinese auto sector on prices, but there were steep tariffs keeping Chinese vehicles out of NA markets and many foreign ones too. The highly integrated nature of the sector was seen, by most, as a competitive advantage.
Trump 2.0:
---------
Trump wanted vehicles to be manufactured in the U.S., not Canada or Mexico. Because... reasons. He slapped sectoral tariffs (that violate CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC) on cars and parts from Mexico and Canada. His desire seems to be to cut Canada and Mexico out of the NA auto supply chain but somehow still force Canada and Mexico to buy only American, while maintaining tariffs on Chinese autos. It's not exactly easy or quick to just pick up an auto plant and move it, nor is it clear that being inside the U.S. tariff wall is better than being outside of it. These tariffs have mostly just caused the NA auto sector to become really uncompetitive right when people are starting to notice that Chinese autos are offering a lot more bang for the buck.
Canada responds:
---------------
Canada now allows in 49,000 autos to enter the country without facing the former 100% tariff rate. This was in exchange for China lifting tariffs on some Canola products. That's a small fraction of the Canadian auto market, but it's also 49,000 cars that won't be from the U.S. (or Canada). This prompted Trump to suggest that China will not allow Canada to play ice hockey anymore[1]... Hockey aside, this move has sent a message. If Trump does succeed in completely strangling the Canadian auto sector, why would Canada continue to give U.S. autos preferential access to their largest export market?
The uncertainty going forward:
-----------------------------
Is China's foothold in the Canadian market secure? Is it a bargaining chip that might be traded away, or is it permanent? Are trade talks between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico going to go so poorly that the 49,000 number gets upped significantly? China's response to this door cracking open is, evidently, to ram their foot in as fast as they can. A new EV brand or two would likely not make a huge impact in Canada, but a new rapid charging network might make itself indispensable in very short order. It's not like the U.S. has a response for this. Their main EV brand, Tesla, is poison in Canada because of Musk's links to Trump.
No, it is a marketing term relating to the chargers BYD is deploying. According to the article the chargers can charge a car with enough electricity to provide a range of 400km in around 5 minutes. Another separate, but important, factor is that these chargers apparently work very well in winter and can provide a similar charging speed at -20°C.
You must be confused with the Jeep recall where even parked cars just spotaneously catch fire.
It's insane to me how so many people bring up the idea of EVs catching fire when ICE vehicles are constantly having recalls for spontaneously catching fire.
I've had multiple recalls on multiple ICE cars advising me to not park the car near my house. I haven't with my EV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_%E2%80%93_New_England_T...
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/byd/dolphin-surf/long-t...
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/byd/atto-3/long-term-re...
They're now quite popular in the UK, along with Jaecoo, although not a huge number of them are pure-EV. Since I have been in the market for a car recently, I've been carspotting to see what's actually on the roads, and looking out for green-flash plates. VW and Tesla seem to be the carspotting winners so far. Autocar (and other reviewers) are mad about the Renault 5, which does look extremely good. I have an Abarth(!) 600E on lease-order, which I will review for HN eventually.
It is very funny that the Seagull had to be renamed Surf because Brits hate seagulls, though.
Seagulls, despite the name, aren't restricted to the sea. We have tons of them far from the sea (as well as on our rather large coasts).
I don't know that there is. It takes ages to develop an EV-focused platform, and the lines to manufacture it. Tesla is the only American manufacturer that has already done that work, and they're circling the drain. Aside from them, there's exactly one decent US-owned EV on the market, the Chevrolet Bolt. All of the top-of-the-line EVs are Korean or Chinese, and the 2nd tiers are all European. America's EVs aren't even on the horizon, they'll be playing catchup for decades.
I drive a Chevrolet Blazer EV. Test drove a Equinox EV as well. There is the silverado EV as well. Chrysler and Ford are mostly working on plug in hybrids which is 90% of the advantages of an EV for those who charge at home (if people will is debated).
Which is to say the big-3 car makers all have EV or close enough EV cars and are making more.
I think a big portion of why Tesla is so prominent is because it's relatively easy to get a Tesla almost anywhere.
The real loss is the international trade and the effect that’ll have on the overall economy. Mexico and Canada will already be dominated by Chinese cars and it’ll be too late to compete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country
It won’t take much to get BYD access to the US. It’s a two-step process:
- Toss a million bucks at Trump or wait for a Democratic administration
- Build a plant in Alabama/Tennessee/South Carolina/Georgia
That’s literally all it takes.
I am not as optimistic. If that doesn't happen the only candidate likely to let china do as they wilt is aoc. Vance would happily start ww3 with them. Rubio/newsome/shapiro etc will all keep the full pressure of all allies in them, potentially kicking them out of places they already sell.
I sincerely doubt the US is capable of this. Trump has lit your soft power on fire. Trying to get people to give up a superior and cheaper product is an extremely large ask.
The CCP still hasn't figured out that we'll take their money and still hate them.
Western civilization has been sneaky and duplicitous for centuries, and we're good at it.
No, they have won the current round of foreign relations. Threats to invade numerous allies. Blatant war crimes like murdering random people on boats. Violating established and signed trade deals left right and centre. Openly soliciting and accepting bribes. Kidnapping foreign countries citizens and holding them in inhumane camps. None of this is a matter of "propaganda" - it's a matter of actual actions the US is taking.
> The leaders there know that China isn't exactly a friend of liberal western democracy.
Indeed, but this has never been a prerequisite for trade with liberal western democracies. See for example the gulf monarchies we trade with.
It is pretty much a prerequisite for extraordinary actions like successfully asking liberal western democracies to restrict trade though, and the US no longer meets it...
Which is to say Trump failed at the current round of propaganda. If he had won this round you would excuse all those things.
Being a friend of liberal western democracies is not a requirement for trade. However it does influence how trade happens.
>restrict trade though, and the US no longer meets it...
Again, the US lost the current round of propaganda.
No, it really isn't. "Propaganda" merely refers to communication intended to influence. Trump failed when it came down to actual actions, not just communication. And when he failed in communication it was actual diplomacy meant to come to agreements, not merely the words meant to influence minds.
Propaganda is the least of the USes problems right now.
- a new Great Power enemy is selected; it would make sense for this to be Russia, but India is also a candidate
- some sort of face-saving moral victory is achieved which allows the US to continue feeling superior and not threatened by China's capability (unclear what this might look like)
- Xi dies and his replacement launches a relationship reset
Among all Chinese leaders from the past and likely to the near future, Xi Jinping is the warmest towards US. He cherished his short stay in Iowa and his daughter graduated from Harvard. I dont think future leaders will share that feeling.
(one of those things which the POTUS says that we're all told shouldn't be taken as serious or real, as if that wasn't a massive disqualification for him)
Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?
Update: link to the article I was reading: https://electrek.co/2025/03/19/chinese-authorities-delay-app...
Why is that ironic? The US talks about stealing/preventing others from stealing stuff from them too, not sure why this would be surprising.
Now the tables have turned and China is the country with the superior IP.
China's aviation, chip, space, and military tech are weaker than those of the West.
> it is now deploying 2.4 times more charging power per month than Tesla adds to its Supercharger network
And this is fantastic for EV owners in general, assuming the charging network is open to all.
> In short, BYD isn’t just shipping cars to Canada – it’s planning to build and operate its own charging infrastructure
They're mastering the "don't build on someone else's foundation" philosophy. Vertical integration is a very powerful tool.
Interestingly BYD actually puts batteries next to these chargers that they charge "off peak" to minimise the strain on the grid. So often times cars will actually charge from that battery instead of directly from the grid.
I don't think that's what they'll do. Charging off peak means being able to store the entirety of the energy demand for the power station in a battery, which is going to be very expensive (assuming 20 cars charge during peak hours every day, that'd mean having to swallow the cost of 20 cars worth of battery per charging station. Good luck getting a good ROI with that).
Instead I think they'll just use the battery so that they never drain the full power of a charge when a car is charging. Drawing a megawatt of current 5% of the time is putting lots of pressure on the local grid, and it can be mitigated by having a battery with the capacity of a car battery that you charge slowly during the whole day (including during peak hour) and discharge fast when a car is charging (for instance, if in average you have 2 cars charging for 5 minutes every hour, you can draw 166kW continuously instead of having bursts of 1MW consumption).
You definitely need to have that to not load the grid with 1MW, but the question still remains what the capacity of the battery is. A charger that promises a 5 minute 1MW charge BUT which can only do it once per hour and then falls back to 200kW doesn't seem as special as a charger that actually charges a car every five minutes.
Given that the job descriptions seem to include working with local subsidy programs, I sure hope the Canadian government is going to require an open standard or adding more DC chargers under existing standards.
I don’t specifically know for this type of battery but I’ve looked at pretty in-depth analysis of smartphone batteries (way less sophisticated battery management tech) and fast versus slow charging made very little lifespan difference. The best mitigations were fewer cycles and keeping the battery in its sweet spot (not discharging to 0% and charging to 100%)
Of course that is normal fast charging. Flash charging is 3x or more faster, so that's unknown.
BYD is using, among other methods, a "3D direct refrigerant cooling system", so the batteries are dipped in phase-changing coolant.
Aside from that the cells are pre-warmed and were optimised for lower internal resistance.
There’s a graph i imagine here where slow charging, you want to retain all capacity. Faster it gets, you tolerate more battery loss.
Glad to hear this!
There’s an aspirational goal of at least 50% Brazilian parts, but its currently 0%.
US Governement doesn't allow BYD imports
BUT you can lease a car from Canada for a year in US
So lease BYD a year at a time with Canadian plates, etc. to US drivers
There's just a limit to how long the car can be in the US
So lease for a year at a time from Canada
Musk himself was an illegal Canadian import so hey only fair lol
Every year you just exchange the car/lease/plate whatever
Once enough people drive $5000 electric cars they will insist politicians allow them officially
Detroit is doomed anyway once 9 out of 10 workers is replaced with "AI" controlled bots
For those not familiar with the situation...
Before Trump 2.0:
----------------
The auto sectors of Canada, U.S. and Mexico were highly integrated with parts and vehicles crossing the border at scale. There wasn't much EV production and the NA auto sector probably wasn't up to competing with the Chinese auto sector on prices, but there were steep tariffs keeping Chinese vehicles out of NA markets and many foreign ones too. The highly integrated nature of the sector was seen, by most, as a competitive advantage.
Trump 2.0:
---------
Trump wanted vehicles to be manufactured in the U.S., not Canada or Mexico. Because... reasons. He slapped sectoral tariffs (that violate CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC) on cars and parts from Mexico and Canada. His desire seems to be to cut Canada and Mexico out of the NA auto supply chain but somehow still force Canada and Mexico to buy only American, while maintaining tariffs on Chinese autos. It's not exactly easy or quick to just pick up an auto plant and move it, nor is it clear that being inside the U.S. tariff wall is better than being outside of it. These tariffs have mostly just caused the NA auto sector to become really uncompetitive right when people are starting to notice that Chinese autos are offering a lot more bang for the buck.
Canada responds:
---------------
Canada now allows in 49,000 autos to enter the country without facing the former 100% tariff rate. This was in exchange for China lifting tariffs on some Canola products. That's a small fraction of the Canadian auto market, but it's also 49,000 cars that won't be from the U.S. (or Canada). This prompted Trump to suggest that China will not allow Canada to play ice hockey anymore[1]... Hockey aside, this move has sent a message. If Trump does succeed in completely strangling the Canadian auto sector, why would Canada continue to give U.S. autos preferential access to their largest export market?
The uncertainty going forward:
-----------------------------
Is China's foothold in the Canadian market secure? Is it a bargaining chip that might be traded away, or is it permanent? Are trade talks between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico going to go so poorly that the 49,000 number gets upped significantly? China's response to this door cracking open is, evidently, to ram their foot in as fast as they can. A new EV brand or two would likely not make a huge impact in Canada, but a new rapid charging network might make itself indispensable in very short order. It's not like the U.S. has a response for this. Their main EV brand, Tesla, is poison in Canada because of Musk's links to Trump.
[1]https://globalnews.ca/video/11645943/trump-warns-canada-that...
It's insane to me how so many people bring up the idea of EVs catching fire when ICE vehicles are constantly having recalls for spontaneously catching fire.
I've had multiple recalls on multiple ICE cars advising me to not park the car near my house. I haven't with my EV.