Megawatt flash charging is a way to charge electric cars really fast by sending a huge amount of electricity, so your car battery fills up much quicker than usual.
The Tesla Model Y is a small electric car that looks like a family SUV. It doesn’t use gas and can drive a long way on a single charge. People like it because it has cool tech features and can get updates like a smartphone.
The Xiaomi SU7 is a new electric car that looks like a small SUV. It’s made by Xiaomi, a company that usually makes phones, and it’s meant to compete with other electric cars like the Tesla Model Y.
A price war is when companies keep lowering the price of their cars to beat each other. This can make cars cheaper but also means companies make less money.
A zero percent interest deal means you can borrow money to buy a car without paying extra fees for borrowing. It makes buying a car easier because you only pay back what you borrowed.
The Chevrolet C10 is an old-style pickup truck that was made a long time ago. It’s known for being tough and easy to fix, so many people like to keep them running or make them look new again.
The Alpina B10 is a fancy and fast car that’s based on a BMW but made even better by a company called Alpina. It’s like a special version that’s more powerful and comfortable than usual BMW cars.
Making a car involves several steps: shaping metal parts (stamping), joining them (welding), painting the car, and then putting everything together (final assembly).
The Cupra Tavascan is a type of electric car made by a company called Cupra, which is part of Volkswagen. It's built in China so it can be sold there without extra taxes.
A trade-in scheme is when you give your old car to help pay for a new one, sometimes with extra benefits from the government or dealer.
LIVE
Welcome back to EV News China, today NIO swaps 2 million, BYD teases 2.1 megawatt charging
and the Hongguang mini refresh plus they tuned later in the show, I'll tell you which 3 Chinese
car makers break into the global top 10.
Welcome to EV News China, the podcast dedicated to the world's largest EV market every day.
You get the latest headlines, insights and analysis from the heart of China's booming
EV industry and I decode how fast moving developments in the east shape of the global
EV landscape.
NIO pushed battery swapping hard over China's official new year holiday travel rush between
February 10th and 23rd, it's 3,750 swap stations logged 2 million and 73,000 swaps, that's above
2 million for the first time in that period, average daily swaps climbed 30% year on year
versus last year with daily record set on five straight days from the 18th to the 22nd.
Swapping sat inside a wider energy push, NIO operates almost 7,000 combined energy
facilities across China, including swapping and charging.
Those sites handled 3.2 million charging events over the holiday period, daily average services
up almost 27%, NIO's expressway network dispensed 25 million kilowatt hours of electricity,
it said 15% of all EV energy consumed on China's motorways during the period.
Now Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has published the Spring Festival Travel Report for the
nine-day holiday period from the 15th to the 23rd.
Xiaomi EV owners drove more than 405 million kilometers, 252 million miles across 369 cities
nationwide, in fact one vehicle logged the longest single trip one Xiaomi driver did 10,700 kilometers
and 6,660 miles. Hangzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou took the top three destinations by volume of
Xiaomi's on the move and drivers used their intelligent driving assistance for about 100
million kilometers, 25% of all kilometers driven. There's some really fascinating data in here,
let me go on and tell you that the system hit a single day peak of 1,820 kilometers per vehicle
for using their intelligent driver assistance. Auto Park was used 3.6 million times over the
holidays and their in-car voice assistant, Xiao AI, activated 147 million times. In fact,
the karaoke feature recorded almost 400,000 sessions over the holidays.
Away from the cabin, owners used vehicle to load 16,500 times delivering 4,000 kilowatts
hours of power and Xiaomi's service team handled 111,000 supporting queries and over 3,000
tire repairs. The longest single rescue mission was almost three and a half thousand kilometers
transporting a vehicle to be fixed. What's fascinating about that is Xiaomi know all of that.
I mean, why not? They're connected vehicles. There may be some in the audience that feel
just a little bit creepy. The car company you bought your car from logging literally everything
about how you use your car, even down to whether you used vehicle to load or belted out your
karaoke favorite. Now BYD will stage a tech launch on the 5th of March. Four items sit at the center,
megawatt flash charging 2.0, the next generation blade battery, their hybrid DMI system and God's
or dipilot 5.0. That's our intelligent driving. BYD's also started seeding the story. This week
it's been rolling out the next generation charging stations. These haven't been official pictures
that I've seen personally. They've been online on Chinese social media. One particular one on
Weibo showed their new generation megawatt flash charging systems in a T shaped frame,
a central column, and then two dispenser cables or four dispensers actually to each side
coming hanging down from a sliding rail. They say it cuts things like the cables
dragging on the ground and reduces strain on users because the cables can get really heavy
these days. It's a great piece of design, but it's the numbers that actually do the heavy lifting,
not their customers picking up the heavy cables. Megawatt flash charging will push peak capacity
to 2.1 megawatts with a single gun output of 1.5 megawatts. That's 1500 kilowatts through a single
cable. And if you want the full 2.1 or 2100 kilowatts of charging power and bearing in mind,
most EVs, if you're charging a couple of hundred kilowatts, you probably consider yourself having
a pretty good EV. That's described as 250 miles added in five minutes. BYD say that they have a
target of having 4,000 of these flash charging stations by the end of the year. The second
generation blade battery provides the other half of the pitch, 1,000 volt architecture
and charge rates of 10C. BYD will talk hybrids, their new DMI system, DMI 6.0, delivering almost
200 miles of pure electric range. And that's just for a hybrid system, either in a plug-in
hybrid or an e-rev. And their ADAS system, which is already in 2.56 million vehicles,
will get an improvement. Now, the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV has a new launch,
Wuling calling it the fifth generation, though the change is more like a gentle refresh. The
second generation five-door city car arrived last February at about US$6,000 equivalent,
about US$45,000. It went on to record 61,500 registrations, but it has fallen recently,
so they're going to refresh the model to perhaps steady the numbers a little bit.
For a period of time, back in the early 2020s, the original Hongguang Mini EV was always China's
best-selling car every month, but it's lost that position. The refresh brings circular headlights
linked by an LED strip. The front end looks like Geely's Panda Mini. The revised five-door
is 12mm longer, 10mm wider, and 3mm slightly smaller, so they're playing around with the
dimensions of it. It's a wheelbase of 2.2m. They say that the size change comes from revised
bumpers. Nothing structural. Buyers get grey, green, or beige. A two-door variant has been
filed for a sales license in China, and pricing, we think, should still land in the same price.
That would be $44,500 to $51,000. That is about $6,000 to about $7,000.
Now, China has seen Tesla delivery times fluctuate, but now you can get yourself a Model 3 or a Model
Y in as little as one week. Buyers have been facing waits for several months in the past,
as Tesla has lost some popularity with Chinese buyers. This shift suggests Giga Shanghai has now
cleared any kind of order backlog, and if you order a Tesla, there really is no waiting. If you
simply cannot wait for the competition, maybe the Xiaomi YU7, the direct competitor to the Model Y,
or the newly refreshed SU7, we'll get more details on that in coming weeks,
but no doubt that'll be popular. There'll be a wait list if you simply must have a car straight
away. Well, for Chinese buyers, you can walk into a Tesla store or go online and have one,
at least within a week. So Tesla hasn't leaned on price cuts because really, they're not able to.
Rather, they've been following the orders from Beijing, which is don't cut prices and get into
price wars again, find other things to do. So Tesla's been extending their seven-year ultra
low interest. That's not interest free, but they do do a five-year zero percent interest deal,
and that's continued through to the 31st of March, but they've been extending that
on a month-by-month basis. I would presume that just continues indefinitely until
demand improves. Tesla's extended the promotion twice this year, started in the first week of
January. Now, Stellantis is considering a plan to use Leap Motor technology in mass-market European
cars that they make, like their own brand Fiat, Opel Vauxhall, and Peugeot. It would adopt Leap
Motor's batteries and powertrain. If Stellantis were to go ahead, it would mark the first time
a major Western car maker uses wholesale lock, stock, and barrel, a Chinese platform and software
for its European model base. That step would push the group beyond distribution and Leap Motor,
we'd be part of the product design. Stellantis, of course, works with Leap Motor. They invested
1.5 billion euros for 20 percent of the company three years ago. In May 2024, Leap Motor International
was formed, a joint venture which Stellantis owns 51 percent to sell Leap Motors in Europe,
and through Leap Motor International they sell the big SUV, the C10. Also, I've seen some great
prices on all of those Leap Motors, by the way, but for a large SUV, some very good monthly pricing.
The C10 production is launched in Malaysia, and Leap Motor vehicles enter showrooms in South
Africa soon too. They also sell now the B10 and the T03 at lower price points. They have something
in the mid-10s, mid-20s, and early 30s to sell Europeans. Now, Stellantis is evaluating an expansion
of the joint venture to reach Leap Motor's more advanced EV technology. If they did sign a deal
this year, the talks they say are a very early stage though, but it could be done.
The obstacles are plenty. They sit in law, and politics, just as much as engineering,
you see EU data protection rules could limit how Stellantis uses things like Chinese software,
and US restrictions on connected vehicles with Chinese ties add a layer of complication for
those vehicles. There, Europe has infamously tight privacy laws with GDPR and personal data,
ensuring that software doesn't overly share our personal data. It's why, as an aside,
many people are starting to look at what they consider American overreach into things like
forcing Microsoft or Meta or Google to hand over data on its users without warrant.
Many people, particularly in Europe, there's a big movement in Europe right now
to use European services, to use European things like emails and VPNs. One of the bigger ones is
called Proton, but there's many mail providers to use European AI, to use German search engines
and so there is an increased awareness right now, things like data and privacy, which could
add some complications, but we'll wait and see. We'll take a break, we'll come back,
we'll talk about BMW and Great Wall Motor and more, stick around.
Alright, welcome back to the podcast. Great Wall Motor signed an agreement with the government of
Esperito Santo in Brazil to build a second manufacturing plant in the state's Aracruz
industrial park. Great Wall Motor targets production to start in 2028. The new plant
will have a $200,000 a year vehicle annual production rate, four times that of the existing
Brazilian plant. Stamping, welding, painting and final assembly, initial investment $60 million.
BMWs opened talks with the European Commission about not paying those tariffs on Chinese-made
cars for minis, agreeing to a minimum import price scheme, according to Handelsblatt, citing
two sources. The talks target the almost 21% additional levy that the European Union imposed
on Chinese-made cars, which BMW have to pay on the mini-Aceman and Mini Cooper. Those models
face the combined tariff of almost 31%, that is the 10% base duty in the new levies as well.
Now, this new route opened up with Volkswagen doing a deal already for the Chinese-made
Cupra Tavascan to avoid those tariffs. Now, BMW are said to be close to doing a deal for the minis.
Next up, battery technology. A Chinese research team has reported
lithium battery cells reaching 700Wh per kilogram, according to a paper in Nature magazine,
published two days ago on the 25th of February. The work targets the electrolyte. Traditional
lithium battery electrolytes pair lithium salts with carbonate solvents, where a lithium oxygen
bond drives salt dissolution. Stay with me. Carbonate solvents require large volumes of
electrolyte, which caps energy density and also limits low temperature performance. It's the
chemistry that governs the reason why we get an hour EVs when it's winter and we can't drive as far.
Now, the team developed what they say is fluorinated hydrocarbon solvent molecules that
dissolve lithium salts via lithium fluorine coordination rather than a lithium oxygen bond.
Fluorinated hydrocarbon solvents wet electrode services more effectively than a carbonate
easter and reducing the amount of electrolyte needed. The weaker bond accelerates charge transfer.
What does it all mean in the real world? Well, that means that even at minus 50 degrees Celsius,
minus 50C, there are very few places on earth you're going to drive an EV, at minus 50C,
you would still get 400Wh per kilogram and that is about double a lot of EVs on the road right now
at regular temperatures. For example, let me put all of that in context. CATL's current
Kirin battery tops out at 255Wh per kilogram system level when it's all integrated into a vehicle.
Solid-state batteries have yet to breach 400, but the 700Wh per kilogram figure probably refers
to cell level. I don't know why they would add reference pack level. That'd be cell level specific
energy, but still, even before it's put into a system, real-world system density would be lower,
but still infinitely higher than what we have on the road right now. Finally, the top 20 global
automotive sales tables were locked in yesterday after Stellantis published their full-year
results and the headline is three Chinese car makers are now inside the global top 10
for the first time in history. BYD landed on 4.6 million vehicles. They sold 2.25 million pure
BEVs. SIC ranked seventh and Geely rose two places to ninth, marking five consecutive years of
growth for Geely. Policy helped China's government trade-in scheme has been generating over 358 billion
dollars equivalent in vehicle sales and driving more than 11.5 million trade-ins last year. EVs were
60% of the replacements and EV production and sales both topping 16 million units last year
and crossing over 50% of all new car sales for the first time. A sign of things to come, which you
know about already, because we do this every day on EV News China, but I think the rest of the world
have a surprise coming their way. That's your podcast for today. See you Monday when we're back on the
spinoff show.
About this episode
NIO achieved over 2 million battery swaps during China's New Year travel rush, highlighting rapid growth in battery swapping infrastructure. BYD teased a major tech launch featuring 2.1MW megawatt flash charging, a new blade battery, and advanced hybrid and ADAS systems. Xiaomi shared detailed usage data from its EVs, revealing extensive connected features and driver habits. The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV received a subtle refresh to boost sales. Tesla's delivery times in China have shortened significantly, while Stellantis explores integrating Leap Motor's Chinese EV tech for European models amid regulatory challenges. Great Wall Motor plans a major new plant in Brazil, and BMW negotiates tariff relief for Chinese-made Minis in Europe. Chinese researchers reported breakthrough lithium battery tech promising higher energy density and better low-temperature performance.
