Well, just had my first experience in a BYD electric car.
Took an Uber Black ride down here in Rio and it turned out to be a BYD Dolphin car.
Not a bad ride at all. Was quite smooth.
Some data starting to leak about sales of the refreshed Model Y. Still maybe early to call it but it appears that sales weren’t just buyers waiting for the refresh, it looks like Europe is saying no to Tesla.
https://electrek.co/2025/05/01/tesla-tsla-sales-continue-crash-europe-despite-new-model-y/
I argued a year or two ago that the novelty of Tesla was wearing off. All their cars looked about the same, came in very few colors, and the result was you often saw identical cars following each other or lined up at the same intersection. People pick cars to say something about themselves, and no one wants to spend top dollar on something that has become so generic.
It was interesting to see the first few Cybertrucks, but those are even more uniform that combined with how hideous they are and how much they stand out just doesn’t seem like something I would want to drop 100k for.
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Bad news continues for Tesla.
Still interested in the quote below from that article. I think there will be a bit of a rebound with the Juniper Model Y now available. While I expect sales to still be poor, I’m waiting to see May data to know how things are actually looking.
“Tesla has its major gigafactory located in Berlin, which supplies the European market. Some have credited the sales drop to the retooling of Tesla factories for the new Model Y, and to consumers waiting for those new deliveries”
Australian company retrofits old diesel trucks with swappable electric batteries and has built a network of swapping stations -
Hadn’t really thought about it, but since tractor trailers aren’t really concerned as much with aesthetics, and most have a pretty similar layout, it feels like standardizing batteries is more achievable there.
They claim a $0.20/km savings, I wonder if that is the marginal savings of electricity vs diesel, or if that includes all of the battery costs. With swappable batteries, you need more batteries than trucks, and that won’t be cheap.
Interesting. It seems tractor trailers average 62K a year which translates to about 170 miles a day. So, on average, one fully charged battery a day is needed, while another one is charging. So the number of batteries needed is 2x or possibly 3x (for peak periods), where x is the number of vehicles. It would be an interesting exercise for a data scientist (or actuary) to model.
Battery prices have come down a lot and if they continue this trend will be less of a factor - according to the DOE $1,415 per kWh in 2008 to $139 per kWh in 2023.
Not sure the average is what happens on a daily basis. Variance is also needed for strategic planning.
I agree. Another complication is geographical spread, where one station may have too many charging batteries and another too many charged batteries. This was a problem with citibike when I was a cyclist in New York.
Yes, an interesting problem for what we used to call operations research that would now be called data science. For a single station and round trips less than capacity, use time to charge time ratio is k, minimum would be k+1 batteries per k trucks, right? Then more complicated structures emerge, with cost of down time vs cost of batteries for variance, complicated routes, etc.
There is short haul trucking, and long haul. Short haul basically means if you’re a driver, you sleep every night at home. Much more easily solved.
Long haul means you’re picking up freight in Long Beach and taking it to Georgia. Waking up and driving more like 600 miles in a day. That’s a tougher one.
I can see it being an issue for independent truckers. I’d guess it would be a lot easier for a large carrier. You could have batteries at each of your depots and maybe partner with a service station chain. I’d think you’d have pretty even in-out movement for each of your depots.
A little data coming out from France. At least there, the lack of Q1 demand wasn’t simply due to folks waiting on the refreshed model. Q2 sales are pretty awful, and while the overall EV market is sagging, Tesla seems to have gotten kicked hard.
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I feel like we should discuss the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra. It has 1,527hp, which presumably means that in a quarter mile drag race, the traction control is fighting to maintain grip the whole way down. But I guess the software works, see the link below. Jim Farley (the CEO of Ford, and also Chris Farley’s cousin) bought one and says he doesn’t want to stop driving it. It costs about $74k (plus a huge tariff if you want one in the US, of course).
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Looks nothing like a van down by the river.
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Well, la dee frickin’ da!
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(breaks character, giggles into hand…)
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