Chinese-made EVs are Conquering the world’s largest Auto Market, as BEV sales Soared 87% in ’22

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – EV sales have taken off in China, the world’s largest auto market, according to Reuters. Moreover, Chinese makers of electric vehicles are outshining most of their rivals. BYD’s sales are up a startling 69% this year even though the overall market is a bit sluggish. Tesla sales are up 27%. Electric and plug-in electric vehicle sales overall are up 22% this year so far, while gasoline vehicle sales are down about 22%.

It is only at the very cheapest stratum, of entry-level vehicles, that gasoline cars were still competitive in the first quarter. Even at the $20,000 price range, BYD EVs and PHEVs beat out ICE competitors.

Last year, in 2022, about a third of the 27 million new vehicles bought in China were electric or plugin hybrids. Passenger battery EV sales alone expanded 87% year-on-year and constituted 22% of the market, up from only 5% two years ago.

In addition, China’s X-Peng, Inc., made waves Monday when it announced a new Smart Electric Platform Architecture for manufacturing electric vehicles. The SEPA 2.0 affects both manufacturing and software. It will enable the manufacture of automobile components such that 80% of them remain interchangeable among various models, now and in the future, which X-Peng estimates will allow substantial cost savings. Likewise a lot of models can share the same wheelbase (measured as the distance between the front and back axles in four-wheel vehicles). So interchangeability of key components is part of their new SEPA.

At the same time, this architecture or approach to manufacturing will allow faster software updates in the vehicles, and the software in turn will enable more efficient use of battery power. The cycle for research and development of newer models would be cut by 20%.

The new SEPA would cut the cost of power trains by at least 25%. In electric vehicles, the power train includes the battery, and in EVs cheaper batteries are everything.

The new SEPA architecture will also allow faster charging of batteries, as it

“enables 800V high voltage charging, increasing battery charging speed by 50% over the previous generation. With a standard 3C cell configuration, the battery can add 130 kilometers of range with a five-minute charge, and can charge even faster at XPENG’s S4 480kW superfast charging facilities, adding 200 km of range with a five-minute charge.

Why people can’t charge their cars and eat lunch in the meantime for half an hour is beyond me. That is, superfast charging is nice, but probably not absolutely necessary even to a road trip.

Still, getting 80 miles worth of charge in 5 minutes would matter a lot for shorter trips. With the superfast charger, getting 130 miles in 5 minutes would make charging an electric car sort of like filling up at the gas station in the old days. That would be 260 miles in 10 minutes, and most Internal Combustion (ICE) cars wouldn’t have gone more than that on a tank of gas. If X-Peng can deliver on this kind of fast charging for the average consumer, it could be a game-changer.