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152 points voisin | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.564s | source
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latentcall ◴[] No.42173727[source]
I would love a 10-15K BYD. I was told recently desiring a BYD is un-American when I can spend 3 times the price on a Tesla. No thanks! I’ll hold out for something truly cheap. Cars in America are insanely priced.
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1. Zelphyr ◴[] No.42174694[source]
I don't remember the source so, someone please correct me if I'm wrong but, I read that no EV battery can be made for less than $50K. So, either BYD is cutting some serious corners (possibly) or they are being heavily subsidized (probably). If either are true, I can see how that would be damaging to us.
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2. hedora ◴[] No.42174851[source]
I’ve heard replacing an EV sadan’s battery is typically ~$10K (capacity matters of course).

Also, fwiw, our home batteries (sold at profit, with lots of expensive other stuff and install labor) were about $20K, and the same capacity as our small car.

3. Sohcahtoa82 ◴[] No.42175407[source]
> I don't remember the source so, someone please correct me if I'm wrong but, I read that no EV battery can be made for less than $50K.

Absolute hogwash.

The only way for this to be true is if you amortize the cost of R&D and factory building over a small number of batteries and include it in the manufacturing cost, and I think it's incredibly misleading to include the cost of R&D into the cost of a battery, simply for the fact that you can make wild claims by just including it.

So...for an incumbent manufacturer that's putting very little effort into actually selling EVs, it might be true that it's costing them $50K per battery if you include the cost of setting up the manufacturing. But for someone like Tesla, who has literally sold millions of cars, even if you include that cost, it's closer to $10K.