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CT scans of BYD car parts

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Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#51
post #46
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think BYD would be a hit in the US as they are in Europe. It’s an entirely different market. They may be relatively successful just not to the point of taking an important market share, they would probably be like Mazda. Many of the subsides for Chinese EV ended this year too, and they are now realizing price alone is not a differentiator. So even if BYD eventually makes it to the US, they will be priced clos…

BYD only entered the Australian car market in 2022. They are now the 2nd biggest seller after Toyota ( https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/insight/byd-overtakes-rivals-... ). They are also priced much lower than KIA and Tesla. FWIW I now own a GWM Cannon Αlpha PHEV pickup. Have also owned a Jeep Wrangler - the tech, build quality and reliability is not even on the same planet. I can't imagine how the US manufacturers woul…

US manufacturers' niche is half-ton and above trucks. Even mighty Toyota's offering is playing distant #4 in that market with Nissan capitulating after 20 years of trying.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#52
post #45
post #6

Nice. Those are small parts, though. The interesting part is the E-axle. BYD builds a unit with an integrated motor, differential, axle, and wheel hubs. That, plus an electronics box and battery, is the power train. This simplifies vehicles considerably. There are E-axle teardown videos. There's no big secret about how to do this. Copying this is hard for Detroit, because they have a huge investment in "engine plants…

GM has several EVs that are ground up designs. They look just like the ICE version but that is cosmetic, everything else is different.

Now if only GM's executives could stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#53
This looks like a stealth advertisement for their CT scanning business. There is nothing educational of value for the general public here.

The only reason you would do this is for competitive analysis and I assure you the other car companies have already analyzed these parts.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This simplifies vehicles considerably. On the contrary, this much integration makes repairs nearly impossible, meaning you might have to swap the whole unit(for a lot of $$$) when something small inside it inevitably breaks. Check out the articles published by EVclinic that cover such cases. Aftermarket EV repairs are already big business due to how difficult and expensive the OEMs make it.

The eternal conflict between "design for manufacture" and "design for maintenance".

Apparently both can be done together, it's just that it takes a bunch more effort so most places don't bother.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#55

This looks like a stealth advertisement for their CT scanning business. There is nothing educational of value for the general public here. The only reason you would do this is for competitive analysis and I assure you the other car companies have already analyzed these parts.

Yes, that’s exactly what it is. On the other side of it though, so what, we get to look inside stuff with a cool scan. They’ve been doing these posts for several years now, and they’re all interesting.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#56
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason everyone calls them mobile phones with wheels. Edit: I agree with you and upvoted your comment which I feel was unfairly downvoted. But economics are going to win here, only a tiny fraction of the user base of cars (or phones) tinkers with them.

>There's a reason everyone calls them mobile phones with wheels. Which is why I'm so baffled how and why the EU has spent so much time and effort regulating batteries and charging ports for phones, but still ignores this massive issue of ease of repairability and right to repair of personal vehicles that has been plaguing car owners since the ICE days and is now only getting worse with EVs, that's costing us a lot mo…

Any electric gear with the battery as its main wear part. Ebikes. Sit-on mowers. Cars.

This is about so much more than cost. Agency, autonomy, environment, efficiency, geopolitics even.

I refuse to buy drm'ed gear. The exception is second hand where I can reliably avoid the drm with little effort. At its simplest, that means never using specific drm'ed functionality. At its most complicated, that means mitm'ing an encrypted can bus.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#57
post #34
post #21

All you need to know is that BYD cars are good enough that the US had to effectively ban them.

I don’t think BYD would be a hit in the US as they are in Europe. It’s an entirely different market. They may be relatively successful just not to the point of taking an important market share, they would probably be like Mazda. Many of the subsides for Chinese EV ended this year too, and they are now realizing price alone is not a differentiator. So even if BYD eventually makes it to the US, they will be priced clos…

> It’s an entirely different market

One without cheap cars or EV's, even though that's what people want and need now.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#58

This looks like a stealth advertisement for their CT scanning business. There is nothing educational of value for the general public here. The only reason you would do this is for competitive analysis and I assure you the other car companies have already analyzed these parts.

The part where they highlight the rippling in the lithium battery was interesting. They mention it can accelerate degradation over time. It's unclear if this specific example is within tolerances, but I have seen in other CT scans how dramatic the lithium rippling can become.

But overall, yeah, this is mostly an advertisement. They have other videos on their YouTube where they scan random items.

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#59

> The last company to vertically integrate a car from raw material to finished product at this scale was Ford. Today BYD’s system runs all the way from the lithium mine to the port. Both BYD and Tesla claim to produce around 75% of their components. Ford is at around 25%. Tesla is indeed smaller in scale (cars/year): BYD 4.6M Ford 4.4M Tesla 1.6M

So BYD for cars and Samsung for phones and consumer electronics more generally (from fab upwards).

In fact, I believe Samsung is the only company on the planet that can design & build a state of the art smartphone from scratch - silicon/fabrication, SoC, battery, baseband, camera sensor, memory, and display.

What other high tech vertically integrated producers exist in this group?

Re: CT scans of BYD car parts

#60

This was stated about the key: "Folded into the base is a mechanical backup key, a flat metal blade in a hinged housing." I own a BYD: this is not true. The key is not hinged; rather, the entire mechanical key pulls out when a small clip is unlatched near the top of the assembly (you can see it in the CT). I assume the circular hinge-looking mechanism in the CT is just a by product of the plastic/metal weld process.…

Having a mechanical key hidden in the electronic key fob is nothing new, it’s common on many cars.

I guess my intent was not to point out that it has a mechanical key, rather that the description of the key on the webpage was wrong (it is not hinged).

The mechanical key fallback pattern is standard across the industry for sure.

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