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KEY POINTS
New European car registrations of Tesla vehicles totaled 8,837 in July, down 40% year-on-year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, or ACEA.
BYD recorded 13,503 new registrations in July, up 225% annually.
Elon Musk’s automaker faces a number of challenges in Europe, including intense ongoing competition and reputational damage to the brand.
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Who are the losers that still buy a Tesla in Europe?
Hopefully the people who will buy my car whenever a better car than Tesla appears. No luck so far on the latter.
What specifically is Tesla doing better than the other choices?
Simplicity, TCO, performance. Also the boot size and back seat space of the Model Y are pretty great.
Performance as in speed and torque or MPG?
My Merc will give me 88mpg. I could buy an AMG which will shit on your performance.
There are a lot of better cars than Tesla. I’m personally a big fan of the Vauxhall Mokka-e, but I’d also much rather buy a Hyundai Kona electric than any Tesla.
Okay there’s nothing wrong with the Kona Electric, but neither of these cars is “better” than Tesla.
They are cheaper though. So that’s a perfectly good reason to get them instead of Tesla. You want better than Tesla, you have to look at Germany, Sweden or… Maybe the UK? Jaguar made some pretty OK EVs, which they unfortunately cancelled, but I do believe they’re planning to revise their entire strategy to become EV-only now?
Ah actually, the Hyundai Ioniq lineup deserves a look too, if you’re looking for something “better than Tesla” (well, comparable, anyway), without paying Mercedes or Volvo prices. The Ioniq 5 I test drove was quite fine, for a Korean car. Interior was nicer than Tesla’s IMO, there was an OK amount of power for the lowest spec model. Battery is big enough to facilitate roadtrips, or to commute several days, probably over a week, without charging (so if you forget to plug it in at home you don’t have to run to a quick charger that costs more + is worse for the battery). I will however say that the 2020 Hyundai Ioniq 5 was not nearly as comfortable as the 2003 Mercedes E-Class I drove home after the test drive. That’s what sucks about EVs for now, you can’t yet get super cheap depreciated executive/luxury ones for low enough prices that they’re essentially disposable and you’re not too worried if an expensive part breaks. And if you DO get an Audi E-tron for super cheap, you’re liable for a battery replacement that costs way more than the residual value of the car itself :(
Hyundai I’ve tested, although not Kona but Ioniq. It was ok, but not better than Tesla.
lmao fucking what? There are so many better cars than Tesla
Good. May they fall another 40% in 2026. Fuck that company.
I haven’t bought anything from a USA company since Trump being his second term. I canceled Amazon prime. I sought out UK and EU suppliers for all my products and services. Installed Linux (German based distro, sorry fedora) closed my social media apart from lemmy and migrated my emails to an EU service. Oh and bought a Chinese made electric Dacia. You can do it, it wasn’t even hard.
It is an incredible self-own for the USA that won’t really be felt for a few years at least. To abandon research and future markets tech like electric vehicles and green energy, and to abandon them at the exact time China goes all in on it? Are they trying to put themselves in a position of irrelevance? Because that’s exactly what I’d do if that’s what I wanted.
I guess they really are. Much of the decisions are based on what TikTok tells people to think. Facebook allows for Russian influence, TikTok is steered from Beijing.
The idea of “USA shouldn’t make electric cars” dies come from China, and exists precisely in order to put USA into disadvantage.
Yes. Trump is Putin’s puppet and does anything he says.
Hey, gotta focus on fascism first
I mean
have you met the Chinese president for life? Feels like a really weird line you’ve drawn between acceptable and not acceptable.
Maybe, but it does feel as someone in the UK that Trump seems more like a new, clear and present danger to our way of life than the Chinese.
To the uninformed sure.
Are you based in the US? I’m curious how much the import taxes were on the EV
I’m in the UK
I won’t buy usa things because I hate fascism
Buys Chinese electric
Yeah sue me I like China and the stuff they produce, I don’t like the USA, their foreign policy or the products they make. It’s not a lot in the great scheme of things but over the last couple of months I’ve spent 10s of thousands of pounds and avoided virtually any of it going to USA linked companies, that gives me great satisfaction. I’ve even managed to quit using Visa and Mastercard. I’m still using an old iPhone but just looking at buying a pinephone running Linux to complete my personal purge.
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I shall. If the USA continues to threaten Canadian sovereignty, I will refuse to trade with them.
When Trump (may his anus be infested with cancerous hemorrhoids) dies, I will pop open a patriotic bottle of Crown Royal and listen to the wails of his cult with delight.
if you had any real patriotism, you would not be this complaisant as your country is flushed down the toilet
damn, you really misunderstand what patriotism is don’t you
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Patriotism…
Username is Ernstrommel.
Are you wearing your kampfbinde right now?
The word you are looking for is nationalism. Völkisch is the flavor you are probably after.
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What a response. I’m impressed. Are you self aware at all? Is this just ragebait? Go back to 4chan anon.
Edit: He made it 2 days… Poor guy. I hope he wakes up to reality before it’s too late.
60% of their business used to be racists. Now its 100%
From an american billionaire to a chinese billionaire. Glory to Europe, never doing anything well themselves.
I don’t know about Europe-wide, but in Germany usually 8 of the top 10 brands (including the top 4) are European. Ford and Hyundai/Kia are the other 2.
EDIT: sales data specifically about EVs
Toyota: am l a joke to you
Good point, that data is about EVs, and Toyota doesn’t make any that sell well.
I drove a Toyota corolla hybrid. It was fantastic. I am a fan of Toyota Corollas in general.
Toyotas are great cars, but they have been dragging their heels with their EV models.
Yeah what’s up with that? They could’ve eaten the entire market twice over with their momentum.
Toyota was a pioneer in EV/gas hybrids. So perhaps they had invested too much into that tech that they couldn’t pivot fast enough.
I would rather have a European EV than a Chinese EV. But in the end of the day I will have to settle for Japanese.
So Nissan? That’s kind of European, since their alliance with Renault.
Forgot about VW, BMW, Audi, Skoda, Mercedes, Renault, Peugeot, Opel(vauxhall for some), Volvo and a ton more.
Volvo is not European anymore. It’s owned by a Chinese Holding Group.
I’ve test driven some of those you listed and no, they’re not better.
Fuck off mate.
My Mercedes is leaps and bounds better than a Tesla in quality control, attention to detail, comfort, and support / aftercare.
Starting to think you’re Elon at this point.
You can freely believe anything you want to, dude, relax.
Nah not while you shill for a fascist.
I’ve owned several and Tesla is like driving a heap of shit compared to proper cars. QC is laughably shit.
How many Teslas have you owned?
Upon hearing the news, the market sent TSLA up 490%, now Elon is a trillionaire
The stock is actually up 10% this month. The stock market is a shell game on full display at this point.
TSLA is not the stock market. It’s a cult. The valuation of that company follows no rules of Commerce.
The stock market is a cult. Company valuations have detached from any sense of use-value reality - most of the stock markets’values is derived from how much money a stock might make and not what value a company provides to society. Valuations don’t even mirror how much revenue potential companies have, but make it up based on future revenue potential, which can be easily manipulated to simply create wealth. It’s been this way for a long time, but the extent of the situation has lost nearly any attachment to reality.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the stock market is just a representation of wealth inequality and oligarch theft than it is of the economy or any companies value.
Liquidate Musk
sopanify him, all that fat can make soap, probably use a degreaser on him.
The article mentions the reputational damage with a half-sentence, but we all know the main reason no one wants to buy a swasticar is. Europeans have quite the attention span, and as long as Elon is associated with Tesla - which is pretty forever - their brand is poison. Not very truthful journalism, this is.
And Xiaomi / BYD are not really that much aggressive atm. Xiaomi built factories in Hungary which just wait to start operations. Tesla is cooked in that regard.
Not sure if Chinese EVs are improvement…
Over Tesla I’d say they are.
BYD are not the best, but they are comfortable and cheap and charge fast.
MG has probably the cheapest BEV that is actually a decent car with good range.
Xpeng has insanely well equipped luxury cars, BMW luxury at VW prices.
Nio has the battery swap that is insanely fast, a battery swap is faster then even BYD 1 GW charging.There are so many more options, and all of them beat Tesla in some way or other.
If you want a better Tesla than a Tesla, you can get a VW instead of model 3 and model Y, or BMW or Mercedes instead of model S.And none of the above cars will nearly as likely kill you as a Tesla might.
are we just ignoring the glaring fact that these are rolling internet connected computers with cameras and who the heck knows how many other sensors, inside and outside?
I wouldn’t want such a “car” from a European company even. but I guess ignorance is bliss, and we have nothing to hide.
Unless it has escaped your attention, USA is not an ally of EU anymore except on paper. USA vs China is about the same to us now.
Traditionally EU has allowed USA a lot of leeway to spy on us through their technologies, under the assumption that USA was an ally, but it’s actually USA we are trying to prevent from continuing that spying we know for sure they do.
We do not have evidence of similar Chinese spying.So there you go, it’s OK you don’t want either Chinese or European cars as an American, but to be honest, the American cars have already been documented to spy on Americans, passing data on to American authorities, which for instance resulted in the destruction of a Waymo car at a demonstration.
So for Americans everything OTHER than an American car might actually be preferable in that regard!!!So as I see it, you are the one who is naive and ignorant.
They may all spy, but the only ones we know do it for sure are the Americans, and then the question is who is the biggest threat, and right now that too is the US government, that shows a complete disregard for both law, human rights and humanitarian issues and allies and agreements and democracy.Unless it has escaped your attention, USA is not an ally of EU a
it has not escaped my attention, both are equally bad.
Traditionally EU has allowed USA a lot of leeway to spy on us through their technologies, under the assumption that USA was an ally,
and now they’ll keep allowing it for the chinese out of fear that it would significantly worsen chinese relations.
We do not have evidence of similar Chinese spying.
how, don’t those have a cellular connection too?
in this article the byd boss doubles down on this by saying they use google cloud services to store and process the information… now, do you think that somehow that protect us from the usa?
then its another thing what type of data they collect. facebook does most of its business in a GDPR compliant way, and that means nothing as users just sign away their consent for all kinds of data to be collected, otherwise they can’t use the service.
Unfortunately, the mozilla privacy not included team did not review byd, but maybe you are not surprised that I doubt they are better than any of the European brands.
as an American,
I’m not an american. I live in the EU, and I think this is the least bad place when looking at digital rights.
that however does not make me trust volkswagen, renault, or whoever other EU car companies either for nearly the same reasons as chinese car companies.
we could say I’m allergic to any car that can be remote controlled and interrogated over a network.for instance, this is how renaults fare: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/renault/
They do, like the rest of the car brands, collect a lot of personal information about you like your name, address, and your vehicle’s VIN number. They also collect data about your driving and what you do in your car: When you accelerate, pump the brakes, or use multimedia. They also record all your interactions and conversations with them. Again, for car companies, this level of data collection seems pretty standard.
So for example, Renault collects “Data related to your personal and/or professional situation (family situation, socio-professional category, etc.)”
how do they even get access about any of these two?? if we are fortunate, only by a question on the registration form or shortly after registration.
More on those commitments, Renault sometimes shares your personal information in ways that don’t seem totally necessary, or in their words, for “explicit, legitimate and determined purposes.” For example, they say then can share it with “[a]ny associated or connected motor manufacturer from whom we purchase or hire goods (and their group companies)” and “partners.” It’s also not clear to us whether they will only share your personal data with law enforcement when they are legally obligated to, according to the language they use in their UK Privacy Notice.
It’s not looking amazing for one of the “good ones,” we know. Yet we still have one last beef (or should we say beouf?) with Renault. They’re part of a strategic alliance with privacy-monster Nissan, one of the worst car companies we reviewed a privacy. What does that mean exactly for the fate of your personal data? Well, probably not much thanks to the strong legal protections in place. Still, given these companies’ cozy relationship, we’ll take it as a cautionary tale for what Renault might do if they could.
and then remember what they said about data sharing with partners: “[a]ny associated or connected motor manufacturer from whom we purchase or hire goods (and their group companies)” and “partners.”
their conclusion? that it’s standard levels. and that even in the EU, they are among the better ones! but that does not make it acceptable.
and you could say that “but you can just remove the entertainment system’s fuse!”, and that would be right. kind of.
until the car gets to the service, where even the diagnostic tool that uses always online DRM will be able to transfer whatever information it just wants, or if I sell the car, the next owner replaces the fuse and all the recorded information gets uploaded.with byd, it also does not happen to help in ignoring chinese spying that my government leans to china (besides russia), they are installating face recognition capable chinese camera systems against EU law, and installing huawei network equipment for important infrastructure left and right.
I’m not an american. I live in the EU, and I think this is the least bad place when looking at digital rights.
Why then do you call Europe “they” instead of we? “and now they’ll keep allowing it for the chinese”
If you think car cameras are used for surveillance, it’s not just electric cars, but is in ALL new cars from all countries.
So what was the point really of you previous comment???Why then do you call Europe “they” instead of we?
Because in my mind it’s not a social decision but a political decision, and politicians are “they”.
If you think car cameras are used for surveillance, it’s not just electric cars, but is in ALL new cars from all countries.
I did not intend to limit my criticism to electric cars.
That is all new cars, regardless of propulsion method or manufacturer. Your data will be sold, traded, aggregated, deanonymized and sold again as long as world goverments don’t put a stop to the current surveillance economy.
Ok but one way to make an EV charge faster and cost less is to put in a smaller battery.
A small battery charges relatively slower, think of the small battery as only 1 element, and the larger battery consisting of 2 elements charging in parallel.
The best the small battery can ever achieve is to charge equally fast to 100%, but 100% is only half the power. But the big battery can charge the same amount of power in half the time.
It’s because people are waiting for the new model Y. 🤣🤣🤣
t’s not only Tesla feeling the heat from Chinese competition. Jeep owner Stellantis, South Korea’s Hyundai Group and Japan’s Toyota and Suzuki, all posted year-on-year declines in European new car registrations in July.
Japan has generally been really underwhelming in the EV market, offering mostly Hybrids. While I hear Hyundai is cheap in USA, that is not really the case in EU, a Huyndai is as expensive as a VW. Stellantis is a crap show, they continuously offer too little too late and overcharge for it.
By contrast, Volkswagen, BMW and Renault Group, were among those that logged increases in new European car registrations across the month.
VW group is really killing it here in Denmark 7 out of top 10 most sold models are from VW group here, and I think in most of EU it’s mostly similar, because they offer cars with a very strong combination of range quality and attractive price.
VW has the lowest rate of errors at German mandatory biannual safety check published by TÜV, with for instance Tesla failing 7 times more often, With nearly 15% failure rate!!
In Denmark it’s even worse for Tesla with 30% of model 3 failing after 4 years!!! (first mandatory check) And Tesla even rejecting repair under warranty.
The faults aren’t minor either, they are serious faults in brakes, suspension and steering! No other brand is nearly is bad as Tesla in safety checks! The average rate is 11% so Tesla is about 3 times worse than average!!https://fdm.dk/nyheder/nyt-om-biler/2025-01-populaer-tesla-model-dumper-med-et-brag-til-syn
All true, but North America does not have mandated safety inspections for cars. They are used until they fall apart and kill people.
VW has been getting some flak for being more expensive to maintain than for instance Tesla, but clearly it makes a difference, VW is doing better in checks than Toyota, that many Americans consider the most reliable car brand.
It depends, some states in the USA do have safety inspections, but most don’t. I can’t speak for any of the other north American countries though.
Tesla’s high failure rate is primarily due to rust on the brakes from people using regen. Rust will form on all brakes if left unused, it’s just a matter of using them. There was also an issue with the front suspension that required a service bulletin at the time that was legit, but wasn’t a saftey thing.
There’s a few things that could lead to Tesla having higher rust rates over other EVs
- Tesla might have stronger regen so people use the brakes less.
- Tesla has a strong 1 pedal driving option which further reduces braking if enabled [0 brake pedal usage needed to come to complete stop, it will blend in brakes for the last few km/h]
- For cars that use blended braking anywhere, they may initiate it sooner than later.
Either way on an EV, you need to use your brakes on occasion or rust will form. Using the brakes clears the rust.
Edit: Essentially, this is a case of the facts are true, but the facts don’t always tell the whole truth. If you walk away from reading about this report thinking Tesla is the least reliable car, you’ve been mislead, unintentionally or not.
Tesla’s high failure rate is primarily due to rust
This is not true, although it is a common point of failure for Electric vehicles, it is not the primary fault, slack in the steering is.
Rust on the brakes is a very well known issue for all electric cars. Problem for Tesla is that the first security check coincide with the last service check under warranty.
Regulation regarding rust on the brake discs is very clear, and trivial to fix. So why wasn’t it fixed?
There was also a common issue with suspension.No matter what or why a 30% failure rate is insane. The best cars (from VW) have only just above 2% failure rate!!
Either way on an EV, you need to use your brakes on occasion
This is true, and has been widely publicized here in all newspapers, so mostly any owner of an electric car should know that.
But more obviously the Tesla service should absolutely have known, and fixed the issue before the mandatory safety check.
Again no other car is even close to as bad as Tesla.Regulation regarding rust on the brake discs is very clear, and trivial to fix. So why wasn’t it fixed?
It’s not something to “fix” like that.
It’s there one day and its not the next. If it’s there, you fail.
It just depends on if you’re using them or not and the weather at the time. If you take the time to go to a shop for a pre-inspection (not everyone will), and they see rust, they’ll just tell you to go use your brakes. That’s the fix.
Tesla wasn’t going to be last if not for this rust issue.
Edit: Just to be more clear - If you drive your car in the rain, park it for a few days or even overnight and check it, you’ll have rust. You don’t fix that in any way other than using them. OEMs don’t just fix that.
Tesla wasn’t going to be last if not for this rust issue.
First that is simply wrong, did you not see the biggest point of failure is in the steering? The brakes are not what makes Tesla worst, it’s the general shitty quality and service.
Tesla wouldn’t be last if they didn’t have any faults… duh.
Tesla is so much worse than everybody else in several regards, remove the brake problem and they would still be worst. Also it’s completely irrelevant, if Tesla has this issue more than other cars it makes them worse. You might as well say they aren’t bad except for the wheels falling off all the time.
Other brands exist under the same physical laws, but don’t have as many issues as Tesla, also these issue for Tesla are not isolated to Denmark, in Germany we see a similar picture, Tesla has higher failure rate than any other brand.Oh shit, I didn’t realize this was Denmark, i was thinking of the German one. In the German one, Tesla was only 1-2% above the next worst one which wasn’t an EV. And the reason Tesla would have more issues with rust is the reasons I listed above.
Where do you see the actual numbers/ranking the article you posted doesn’t show that, but the first thing it calls out is brakes (among all the others)
Edit this is the quote from the article
It is especially the fault groups “brake equipment”, “lamping equipment”, “axles, wheels and tires” and “controlldom” that the cars fail
I tried to find an article with better info, but I couldn’t, the info was available a couple of months ago. Search engines just wont give me those articles.
But IMO it doesn’t really matter if it’s rust on the brakes, the brakes need to work in emergencies where regenerative braking is not enough.
You don’t get a pass for not using your brakes much in your daily driving. It’s a serious safety issue and not just some minor thing that isn’t important.
Tesla not having this under control shows that Tesla is not a good brand for safety.It’s not a serious saftey issue at the level that would fail the car.
If you are gung ho on regen and never use/clear your brakes, you could definitely get to the point of it being legitimately dangerous, and that 100% needs to be found during an inspection and resolved, but that’s not what’s happening here in a lot of cases. This isn’t a OEM problem, it’s driver education around something entirely new problem. (edit: There are a lot of signs that something is wrong before it gets dangerous.)
The Kia EV3 and Picanto are pretty popular in the Netherlands nowadays, which are basically just a Hyundai in disguise.
The KIA EV3 was very well received by the press here, and won car of the year first price with Skoda Elroq as #2.
But in sales the Skoda Elroq beat the KIA EV3 with the Elroq as #1 and the EV3 as #3.
KIA Picanto is a model that has been reasonably popular here, is that available as BEV now?
Here BEV clearly dominate the market. I think all of top 10 cars sold are BEV.I think I wrote 7 of top 10 were VW group, turns out it was actually 8 out of 10.
With KIA EV3 and Renault R5 being the only 2 that are not from VW group. And the VW T-Roc and Cupra Leon as the only non BEV.Also note that despite BEV is absolutely dominant, Tesla is completely out of top 10 now.
If you don’t have a translator in your browser, I can copy paste a translation of the article for you.
Just for fun, you might try to “decode” the Danish text, and be surprised how much you can understand. I sometimes do that with Dutch, and knowing English and German and having Danish as a native language, I can understand about 80% 😋 , but it’s slow as hell.
It’s so bizarre to me that Toyota in particular isn’t a bigger player in the EV market after they were the first to get a mass market hybrid going. They were halfway there before anyone else, why’d they stumble so badly?
Because the Japanese government 25 years ago encouraged Japanese manufacturers to develop Hydrogen cars, that never went anywhere.
Only Nissan had an early effort on BEV with the leaf, but it was underwhelming, always the battery was too small, because they thought it was more important to keep the price down, and sell it as a secondary city car, than make an actually useful battery electric car.For all their faults, Tesla did show the way, that it was possible to make good battery electric cars, instead of the flimsy comedic electric toy cars that were common at the time Tesla introduced the model S.
However the Hydrogen car may actually still be the future, that future is just not yet, because the price and loss of energy making hydrogen are too high, so hydrogen is not a good option until we have huge amounts of surplus energy from renewable sources that are otherwise wasted. At that point hydrogen may make a comeback as an excellent buffer to even out the difference in production to consumption of renewable energy.
But on the other hand, batteries may be so widespread at that point, that we may just use huge batteries to do the same.In my household we have a 7.5 kWh battery that charges from our solar panels, that can last us ½ a day, easily enough to last the night over during summer. Imagine if we used a cheap used 100 kWh battery from a car instead. That would be enough to last us a whole week! At such a point the variance of renewables will be easily compensated by battery parks.
Hydrogen will however be superior for planes. Because hydrogen cells are lighter for the same energy than batteries, and the hydrogen can even be used directly in a jet engine with no harmful emissions. But we are probably still more than a decade away from that becoming main stream, although there are already examples of using it.
So all in all Toyota arrived this year with their first attractive BEV. And they will absolutely be a major player soon.
According to owners and Consumer reports, Teslas are relatively far below industry average for reliability. While everyone is encouraged by new battery longevity, the motors fail at very high rates.
Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about all the hydrogen car experiments! There was even an actual functioning hydrogen bus system for a little while in a city not too far from me
However the Hydrogen car may actually still be the future, that future is just not yet
Hard disagree here.
Conversion always costs energy. There is no way around it. We’re talking about physical properties, not something that can be optimised away. With batteries, electricity is stored and released, but transfer through the existing infrastructure has been optimised to death and there are no conversions during the transport.
For fuel cells, you not only have exactly the same tech in the car (including a battery, as the fuel cell usually cannot deliver the peak power required to quickly accelerate) with the overhead of the conversion from electricity to hydrogen and back again, you also have an energy carrier that’s hard to store and transport, leading to even greater losses concerning the energy efficiency. To move exactly the same distance, a fuel cell car either needs a lot more electricity or it needs hydrogen from other sources such as methane, which suddenly turns the whole climate neutrality of those engines upside down. There’s fundamentally no way around this. So no, I really don’t think there’s an economically viable way to run fuel cell based cars.
Conversion always costs energy. There is no way around it.
Why try to explain something to me I already stated is the main problem?
Which is why I stated it will not be until we have huge amounts of free surplus energy to make the hydrogen from renewables .We already have such surplus pretty frequently here, where the price of electricity goes below zero. Such periods could be used to generate hydrogen at nearly zero cost. But I guess these periods aren’t frequent and predictable enough yet. It requires enormous scale to be profitable.
But as I write, it’s all probably moot, because the conditions will arrive too late, so batteries will probably have taken over everything. But maybe in planes because of the better weight energy ratio, and maybe also in trucks to be able to have higher load capacity. And as I write instead of fuel cells, the hydrogen can be used directly in jet engines, but also in an only slightly modified ICE car.
Disregarding the problems you describe there are actually hydrogen fuel cell cars on the roads, that have been sold commercially and been available since 2021.
For instance the Toyota Mirai:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_MiraiSo kind of weird to claim a product that is actually available now, isn’t possibly feasible in a future where it can have basically free fuel!
It probably boils down to which form is cheapest to create AND store, hydrogen in containers or electricity in batteries. Batteries will always be more expensive than a container, but hydrogen has way greater loss. So it’s not an obvious calculation with one solution that fit all cases.It still won’t work.
We already need lots of hydrogen for various industrial use cases. We currently get it from methane. First thing we should do with green hydrogen is make it replace the fossil based hydrogen.
Once that’s done, we might have the abilities to expand the facilities to create more hydrogen. Those are expensive, so they won’t just run if the electricity is almost free. You don’t buy such a machine and have it idle most of the time - up hydrogen won’t ever be free, for the cost of the electrolysers alone. The tech overhead needs to be paid for. Same goes for transport.
You know what can be done with surplus electricity more easily and with the existing infrastructure? It can be put in batteries.
But as I write, it’s all probably moot, because the conditions will arrive too late, so batteries will probably have taken over everything.
It won’t be because hydrogen’s late but because batteries are - in cars - the less complex, more reliable and cheaper solution.
But maybe in planes because of the better weight energy ratio, and maybe also in trucks to be able to have higher load capacity. And as I write instead of fuel cells, the hydrogen can be used directly in jet engines, but also in an only slightly modified ICE car.
It makes sense for planes, I never argued against that. Especially because the weight is reduced while you use the fuel you’re carrying. I don’t see it for trucks simply because the infrastructure for battery electric trucks is already everywhere, but yeah, charging several hundred kWh takes time and such large batteries have a price tag attached to them - but that’s not what we were talking about, no?
Disregarding the problems you describe there are actually hydrogen fuel cell cars on the roads, that have been sold commercially and been available since 2021.
For instance the Toyota Mirai:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_MiraiSo kind of weird to claim a product that is actually available now, isn’t possibly feasible in a future where it can have basically free fuel!
It probably boils down to which form is cheapest to create AND store, hydrogen in containers or electricity in batteries. Batteries will always be more expensive than a container, but hydrogen has way greater loss. So it’s not an obvious calculation with one solution that fits all cases.I’m well aware of hydrogen cars existing. Hydrogen based cars have been around for so long that most of them got discontinued quite some time ago, such as the Mercedes GLC F-Cell. It’s not that I say that you can’t build them, I just say that there’s no economically viable use case for them. There won’t be free fuel for them because hydrogen will remain rare as manufacturing and transporting it will remain difficult. Fuel cells and tanks that withstand 400 to 800 bar pressure aren’t free either - and neither is the whole infrastructure to distribute it, which goes way beyond the transport as a fuel cell gas station is a much larger hassle to set up than hooking up a charging station to an existing energy grid. The point remains that even if electricity gets to be free at times, it’s much more efficient to just store it in batteries than to translate it to hydrogen, ship that around the country or to another continent, store that in a cryo tank for days or weeks and then translate it back to electricity to then be stored in the battery your fuel cell based car still needs to operate (albeit smaller than those in BEVs, granted). It just doesn’t make sense to assume that hydrogen, with the given overhead attached, will ever be free. Even electricity often isn’t when it seems to be (e.g. I might see a price of -2 cents at night but the bill then includes a 12 cents “network fee” per kWh), so it surely won’t be the case for hydrogen either. And then, with all the overhead attached, you still need several times the energy to move the car the same distance as a battery electric car which makes it even less of an economical use case, assuming there’s always a price attached to the energy you need (which there is - even for my own photovoltaic setup, I usually calculate about 6 cents per kWh to account for the depreciation of the modules).
So yes, it’s an obvious calculation. Batteries aren’t free, I get that, but neither are fuel cells, containers and smaller batteries. Just as with ICEs, the running costs will be the defining aspect of the TCO of a car and there’s just no way for hydrogen to ever meet the price of putting electricity in a battery because a fuel cell car does that, too, plus all the conversions. Its operation is literally a superset of a BEV, so the running costs will be higher, unless you use fossil hydrogen, which i hope nobody ever seriously suggests as a large scale solution to de-carbonify traffic.
OK you make a lot of good points here that I absolutely agree with.
The only difference is in the final conclusion, and I admit you may be right.
Notice I never claimed fuel cells is the future, only that they might make a comeback.
But I agree that your points show that the chance of that is slimmer than I thought.
No one stumbled at Toyota. They sell more hybrids than all the EVs combined. Toyota makes money. Most companies lost money on EVs.
Two things I think. They gambled on fuel cells because it offers an easier solution at a time when charging stations were rare. It’s Tesla becoming popular very quickly followed by VW going all out on EV that really caught them on the backfoot. The second thing is that they underestimated the level of change to battery technology. They (at the time correctly) stated that for every 10 EV’s, they could make 90 hybrids. While that is still valid, the battery technology has evolved significantly and become cheaper in the process. Even 2 years ago you couldn’t find an EV in Europe for under 30k €, now there are several cars to choose from and not only Chinese cars either.
And I would take that bet. The reality is EVs work poorly in cold weather, we have a horrible charge infrastructure in which most of those public chargers at any given time don’t work. I’ll stick to my hybrid for the foreseeable future.
The infrastructure may be a thing, depending on where you live. I’m in Central Europe and can’t confirm that over here.
The cold climate is something I can’t confirm. If anything, I prefer my BEVs over the ICEs when it’s cold, just because I don’t have to wait for the engine to get warm until the heating works. Range is reduced during winter, true, but tbh I don’t usually have to charge over the course of a day even during winter. Still, I guess the best argument against your point is Norway. That country’s cold, but BEVs have clearly taken over the market there.
Yeah, my range goes down a bit in Winter (Northeast US) but not enough to matter. It’s situational. I definitely wouldn’t say that EVs “don’t work well” in the cold.
Thanks for the link, that was interesting
Lovely, let’s keep making certain the stupid prizes he wins are worth it. He likes Tesla so much, we could collectively do the funniest thing by making sure his fortunes end.
I don’t get how US stock market pretends China isn’t bringing global competitors.
BYD is taking a huge market share on the EV, Temu takes a big market share on e-commerce but both Tesla and Amazon keep growing
You can’t buy BYD cars in the US. Out of sight, out of mind.
I’m pissed that Canada followed the US’s stupid protectionist tariffs on BYD cars.
American car manufacturers spent years lobbying against fuel efficiency and EV uptake and now that they’ve put themselves at a disadvantage they need the government to artificially prop them up so they don’t go under. I say let the fuckers rot in the grave they created.
The Canadian and US autosector are heavily intertwined. BYD destroying the US or Canadian market, will also destroy the Canadian sector which is already on edge.
Why not?
They’d destroy their car makers so the government bans the competition - simples! :)
Bbbb … but … That’s like communism! The government shouldn’t interfere with tHe frEe mARkEt!!11!
And this is on top of BYD being pieces of shit themselves. And their cars too
BYD cars are budget, but solid.
They’re covering up dozens of billions of debt, despite even more government subsidies… But the cars are solid
Yes the financial situation around electric cars in China is rumored to be very weird. Weird as in unsustainable.
We may see bankruptcies in the Chinese car manufacturing industry. The Chinese government has tried to turn it down, but AFAIK with little success.
The competition in China is insane, and they all use every possible financial trick in and off the book to survive.
Their cars really aren’t. We rented one in Scotland and it was really nice and felt like any other car I’ve driven.
A few days rental tells you nothing about the quality and reliability of a vehicle. Neither do automotive journalist reviews. They never talk about reliability. Australians are not happy with BYDs, even after only 2 years.
That’s not true, I know GM made absolutely shit cars and every time I ended up in a rental one, I was reminded why I’d never own a GM. But their SUVs are nice when I’m in one, I’ll never buy one though.
Australians are not happy with BYDs, even after only 2 years.
Source?
I’m Australian with a BYD and I still like ours.
What a fucking loser.
