BYD slashes the price of its Dolphin EV

 

The BYD Dolphin

BYD has just cut the price of its cheapest Dolphin hatchback EV to A$29,990.  This compares with the cheapest Toyota Corolla at A$29,880.  

This is it, folks:  EVs now have a "sticker price" equal to petrol cars. (They've been much cheaper to run for ages)    This is before any tax incentives (if you lease a car through your company in Australia, you can save a minimum 30% off the price).  And remember, you can (or soon will be able to) run your house from your EV: while a single 13.5 kWh Tesla Powerwall costs $A13,500, you get a car and a battery with 45 kWh of storage for $A30,000.  

Right now, about half the electricity my solar panels generate is fed into the grid, but the feed-in tariff is negligible.  However, when I draw power from the grid in the evening, I pay peak rates.  20% of a Dolphin BYD's battery will produce enough electricity to run my house from 5 pm to 10 pm, and then I can charge the battery up using late night low price electricity.  My electricity bill will be negligible.  Not only will I be able to drive for zero cost, I will also save a few hundred dollars a year on my electricity.  In fact, it will pay me to put more panels on my roof.  Many commentators ignore the benefits for the grid of EVs with V2H capacity.  (V2H and V2G have just been introduced in Australia, and I don't know whether the BYD Dolphin is yet capable of this)

Even if you don't have solar panels, electricity utilities will soon see the sense of allowing EV owners to charge up their cars when there is excess supply of electricity (at midday and between midnight and 5 am), when wholesale prices are negative.

The decline in EV prices is just going to continue.   There is fierce competition between car makers in China.  Battery manufacturers are competing to cut battery prices, increase energy density, and make charging quicker, and their competition is driving battery prices down.  And the Chinese Yuan is falling because the Chinese economy is so weak.

Does anybody still think it's going to take until 2035 for EV sales to make up 100% of car sales?  They're currently stagnating in Australia because Tesla sales are falling so fast.  But in 2025, BYD will more than make up for that.

(I'll talk about BYD's luscious new PHEV ute (bakkie/pick-up) in my next piece.)