I'm sorry to be that guy, but can we reintroduce a good dose of skepticism in our mental diets?
BYD was already selling a ton of cars when the oil prices were "low", of course there's some very creative accounting business moves you would expect from a Chinese company like BYD ( companies from other places have their own peculiarities too ).
Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
The concept of electric vehicle is technically superior to support the context and lifestyle a large majority of people have. It will "win" over time. There is no need to this bullshit simplistic feel-good articles.
Btw, the the market movements of people trying to get rid of their gas-guzzling SUVs when prices are high and trade them for a smaller and more economical car ( what they should have been doing in the first place.. ) already happened in the past many times, there is no news here. But these movements don't happen in a time span of a week or a couple weeks.
Sorry for the rant, but between AI's "Absolutely, you're entirely right!" and these bullshit articles.. I don't know.
To be clear: EV's will "win" and BYD has been selling a ton of cars because they are cheap and not terrible right out of the gate, also people don't have much disposable income.
> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
Have you actually seen the news and the situation? Gas prices will continue to rise and will stay high for at least 3-5 years, given the damaged infrastructure and how long it will take to rebuild. And that's if nothing else happens, so the situation could get a lot worse
This means 2 things: 1) it might be a better alternative to drive electric (depends on the numbers), and 2) if enough people start preferring EVs, prices for EVs might spike in the next 1-2 years. So buying now could be a good move depending on how things turn out
Russia has been recovering from Ukrainian drone strikes again oil industries within months. And Ukraine inflicted much serious damage than Iran on Gulf states.
Drones with 100-150kg just not capable of inflicting hard to recover damage. What they are good is striking repeatedly. But judging by numbers Iran is not capable any longer of sustained stacks with hundreds of drones per day.
Very interesting take. Not sure about the comparisons though: 1) Russia is a huge powerhouse that can do a lot on its own, I don't think Gulf states have the same capability to recover (at least that's what energy analysts are saying), 2) The US claimed they had completely maimed Iran in the first few days of the war, saying they had fully destroyed their navy and their missile launching capabilities. However, that clearly doesn't seem to be the case, and yesterday Iran even downed an F35, which until then was thought of as an almost impossible feat
I guess there's a lot up in the air right now, so I personally wouldn't bet on things getting better that quickly
The same analysts predicted that it would take years for Russia to recover from the strikes. And Russia is no longer a powerhouse. They gets most of their equipment from China including the oil and gas industries.
As for Iran just count the number of drones it uses per day. They started from hundreds but now it is below 50.
I wasn't talking about BYD in particular, nor referencing any numbers or quotes from the blog. I was responding to the above comment mocking/doubting people's decisions about EV purchases and showing how that contrasts with the current macro situation
Feel free to expand on the wholesale power market prices you are referring to though, not sure what your take is
Wholesale power market prices are responding to shocks in the natural gas market from two wars that disrupted those supply chains. Solar and batteries have been and will continue to he the cheapest source of power, and globally, deployment is accelerating.
Not so much in the US, where our braindead political culture is intent on ignoring the obvious economic advantage of renewables, but definitely everywhere else in the world.
> Solar and batteries have been and will continue to he the cheapest source of power, and globally, deployment is accelerating.
I think storage is great and solar has a place, but this is not true unless you discard reliability and other features, which should be in the price. Solar plus storage for baseload power matching requires huge overbuilds. Even in the last few years, before the AI hype, installed utility scale renewables costs went up in the US. It's not just the hardware or national politics.
And if you can't get renewables interconnected in a couple years, then the install rate won't lower the carbon of the existing grid mix charging your car.
Why would you need to “discard reliability”? What do you think storage is for?
People have been saying that solar will never work for my entire life, and my entire career in clean energy, as I have watched it grow and grow and grow and grow.
You’re right that the interconnect queue is broken. Many, many people are working on this problem. Believing that an extremely tractable bureaucratic hurdle means that solar can’t work is madness.
No, solar reliability requires overbuild and storage to compare accurately on LCOE. Hybrid and overbuild = expensive, so not "cheap/er", which you said.
A lot of people have this misconception about solar even with awareness of the duck curve.
I don’t think this is correct. You’re arguing that the industry analyses on this subject are wrong because they’re underestimating how much solar + batteries need to be deployed to be as reliable as a gas power plant. So you’re arguing that initial capex (which everyone acknowledges is higher than natural gas) is somewhat higher than existing analyses think it is.
The lifetime of solar panels is also higher than most of these analyses say it is, because both solar and batteries are frequently found to last well beyond their factory-rated lifetimes. So I think you’re wrong without any additional considerations here, so let’s leave that aside.
What you’re saying here is that the lower ongoing opex of solar and batteries is eaten up by the higher initial capex of gas, but you’re saying the prive of natural gas has no impact on this calculation.
I don’t think this makes any sense. Can you explain your thinking here? Can you cite any data on this?
> You’re arguing that the industry analyses on this subject are wrong because they’re underestimating how much solar + batteries need to be deployed to be as reliable as a gas power plant.
No, the industry knows this. Talk to any investor or developer. See the capacity market blowout in PJM because they don't have enough firm power supply to offset the flood of renewables (sans storage). Or just look at the announcements for natural gas turbine demand by datacenters, which need 24/7 power. The overbuild for renewables and storage is insane to hit the same reliability and safety margins.
> So you’re arguing that initial capex (which everyone acknowledges is higher than natural gas) is somewhat higher than existing analyses think it is
It's not just CAPEX. It's also OPEX. LCOE is a normalized ($/MWh) metric that allows for comparison. See Lazard [0] or NREL's analysis [1] on LCOE costs. Note how expensive solar plus storage becomes on an LCOE basis and realistically, you might need way more than 4h batteries to hit reliability targets.
> because both solar and batteries are frequently found to last well beyond their factory-rated lifetimes.
BTW, this is like saying you can still use laptops past their 5 year warranty. Yes, but that's not how depreciation, financing, and service levels work. These assets are getting pushed to their limits and not everyone's buying tier 1 suppliers.
That little (sans storage) is some load-bearing sleight of hand. Yes, solar is intermittent, and needs to be paired with storage.
You’re saying the overbuild is “insane”. Do you have an actual cite for this? I’m assuming there’s some percent over capacity you need to build that would allow people to reason about this.
I’m still not seeing an answer here re: the cost of natural gas, it seems like that has a huge impact on all of these assumptions.
I can't take your comments seriously, though, I don't think you're trying act in bad faith.
> You’re saying the overbuild is “insane”. Do you have an actual cite for this? I’m assuming there’s some percent over capacity you need to build that would allow people to reason about this.
If you have zero intuition about storage overbuild or underbuild to firm up intermittent capacity or why PJM has an undersupply of storage, then on what basis are you calling my comments on storage "sleight of hand"? My assumption, though, and seriously not trying to be mean, but based on your bio and paradoxical comments, you don't really know how to defend your argument or read these primary sources you requested.
> I’m still not seeing an answer here re: the cost of natural gas, it seems like that has a huge impact on all of these assumptions.
Taking one step at a time, you still haven't acknowledged you were incorrect about LCOE comparisons to date. These are provided in the sources that you asked for.
As for the future, you can run sensitivities. My primary sources included price shock sensitivities. You probably overlooked or can't process them as it appears.
Very true. It's not like EV owners were feeling regret when gas hit the (mythical ) $2/gallon. Honestly, while it's fun to know I've "saved" $5k or so in gas costs during the 4 years I've owned my EV, if saving money was my only goal, I would have paid cash for a slightly used efficient four cylinder gas car.
It's not like EV owners were feeling regret when gas hit the (mythical ) $2/gallon.
Gas could be free, and I'd still have no regrets. Because an EV is simply the better vehicle. And I think after over a decade of mass-produced EVs that maybe it's time to get away from "saves on gas" or "good for the environment", and maybe start marketing as "full every time you pull out of the garage", or something. Kind of like Mazda's old commercials for their Wankel engine cars: "piston engine goes 'boing', but the Mazda goes 'hmmmmm'".
I'd be more interested in EVs if they didn't come with significant privacy and complexity trade-offs.
I don't want a door handle that can't open in an emergency. I don't want my vehicle constantly phoning home to the mothership (sadly I have to deal with that today, I really need to go disable that functionality). I certainly don't want a touchscreen through which all controls are routed.
I have a 20-year-old Jeep with significant mechanical problems; I should really convert it to a BEV.
I'd be more interested in EVs if they didn't come with significant privacy and complexity trade-offs.
You're going to be really disappointed when you go to look at new ICE vehicles. This "EVs are a privacy nightmare!" trope needs to die, all cars do that now.
I don't want a door handle that can't open in an emergency.
Only one car manufacturer to my knowledge has that problem, just don't buy one of those. Again, nothing to do with electric cars.
I certainly don't want a touchscreen through which all controls are routed.
So far, other than the poorly-designed door handles of one manufacturer, nothing you've listed is unique to EVs. All you've done is describe "most new cars".
> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
The situation is something that makes people pause for a second.
Like everyone knows that EVs are the future, but when gas is fine, status quo fine, that future can be a fuzzy thing in the distance and it's really easy to shut off your brain, live in the present, and not really do any thinking and just go through the motions.
A sudden oil shock puts the issue of EVs on the front burner and gives people reason to think about things for a moment.
> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD?
Or, America's "No War" candidate is starting wars in the middle east with no plan. It's co-belligerant is targeting oil production facilities, and the defender is responding by taking out refinery capacity in the area. Markets are predicting higher fuel costs for years.
That seems a reasonable time for a bump in EV sales interest.
Just be aware of journalists relating 2 unrelated things happening at the same time using "among" and "as" and discount the article accordingly. If you didn't pay money for the article, they will utilize click and engagement bait. Of course a week of increased oil prices hasn't changed any measurable purchasing patterns as the title implies.
This article is anecdotal with quotes from a BYD salesman about their product, and it doesn't mention that BYD's sales are down in Jan-Feb. 2026 (-36% y/y).
At any one time I would assume there are thousands of people in the world who are replacing their existing vehicle right at this very moment for normal reasons.
> I'm sorry to be that guy, but can we reintroduce a good dose of skepticism in our mental diets?
Of headlines? Always. Of the content of the article? Not without you providing counterevidence.
Speaking of the content:
* BYD has seen an uptick in demand for EVs
* "At one [BYD] dealership in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, demand is so high that it booked a month’s worth of orders in just the past two weeks"
* another dealership nearby had to hire more salespeople
* small uptick from Edmunds for people researching EVs in relevant period[1]
BYD was already selling a ton of cars when the oil prices were "low", of course there's some very creative accounting business moves you would expect from a Chinese company like BYD ( companies from other places have their own peculiarities too ).
Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
The concept of electric vehicle is technically superior to support the context and lifestyle a large majority of people have. It will "win" over time. There is no need to this bullshit simplistic feel-good articles.
Btw, the the market movements of people trying to get rid of their gas-guzzling SUVs when prices are high and trade them for a smaller and more economical car ( what they should have been doing in the first place.. ) already happened in the past many times, there is no news here. But these movements don't happen in a time span of a week or a couple weeks.
Sorry for the rant, but between AI's "Absolutely, you're entirely right!" and these bullshit articles.. I don't know.
To be clear: EV's will "win" and BYD has been selling a ton of cars because they are cheap and not terrible right out of the gate, also people don't have much disposable income.