BYD Is the First Ripple in a Potential Chinese Wave
By BRADLEY BERMAN
GLENDALE, Calif.
LABELS that read Made in China are long familiar to American consumers. But a car for sale in the United States bearing those words — considering what that might portend for our economy and our self-image — could deliver a jolt far sharper than discovering that our newest digital gadget was produced in the world’s largest exporting country.
Yet there was no wobble to be felt in the earth’s rotation as I drove away from Cars 911, a used car dealership in this Los Angeles suburb where BYD Autos has set up temporary North American operations. The generic-looking BYD I was testing — read what you wish into the company name, whose initials stand for Build Your Dream — is a compact sedan so bland as to completely escape the notice of fellow drivers.
Still, it could make its mark: if BYD clears the regulatory hurdles, its F3DM plug-in hybrid would be a frontrunner in the race to become the first production car in American showrooms from a Chinese automaker — arriving as soon as next spring, the company says.
Despite its potential importance, hardly anybody noticed the F3DM, not surprising given its appearance — about as trendy as a Y2K-era Toyota Corolla. Until now, the car has been unavailable for test drives in the United States. The view from behind the wheel is as proletarian as it gets: no frills, no flash, no real driving engagement. It would be easy to chuckle at the F3DM’s minor flaws — the wobbly storage compartment between the front seats, subpar floor mats, squishy handling. But the build quality and materials seem perfectly adequate for utility-oriented Americans. The exterior panels line up; audio and air-conditioning buttons are a bit big, but easy to use; seats are reasonably comfortable. Slam the door and it goes “thunk.”
BYD says that later this year it will submit the necessary filings to obtain federal safety and emissions certification. My test car was a Chinese-issue production model, visiting California on a research exemption. According to company officials, “close to 10,000” of the F3DM models have been sold in the home market.
To focus on the F3DM’s inconspicuous sheet metal and boring driving experience is to miss the audacity of BYD’s strategy. Think of the F3DM as a Chevrolet Volt with a Wal-Mart price tag, a car with a large-capacity battery — that delivered 31 miles of uninterrupted pure-electric driving for me — as well as a gasoline engine that gives it the ability to go an additional 300 miles.
General Motors, however, loaded up the Volt with a powerful electric motor, an iPod-like console and a luxury feel that help to justify a $41,000 price tag (before state and federal tax incentives). The F3DM — which does have an auxiliary audio input jack and a parking sensor — is expected to sell for less than $29,000. Incentives could drop the price closer to $20,000.
My drive of the F3DM started with the 16-kilowatt-hour battery charged to 95 percent of its usable capacity. Instead of babying it to see how close I could get to the 60 miles of E.V. range BYD claims, I punished the F3DM with a succession of pedal-to-the-floor freeway merges and herky-jerky speeding and slowing, all with the air-conditioning going full tilt.
No matter how hard I floored the accelerator or how hard I pushed to keep pace with the frenzied Los Angeles freeway traffic, the F3DM stayed in purely electric mode, as long as the battery’s state of charge was above 20 percent. Acceleration, as expected, was quick off the line — not as snappy as the Nissan Leaf, but better than electric offerings from niche E.V. makers like Smart and Think.
After 31 miles of this flogging, the battery reached its 20 percent switchover threshold and the car automatically shifted from pure E.V. operation to its hybrid mode.
The F3DM can be described as a plug-in hybrid, but dual mode — that’s what the DM stands for — is more accurate. Drivers can manually toggle between modes.
The F3DM’s E.V. button is not like the one on a regular production Toyota Prius. Those are stingy things, generally yielding a few blocks of engine-off electric driving (Toyota says it can go a mile, conditions permitting). The F3DM’s mode choices offer dozens of miles of all-electric driving, even while the switch is in hybrid mode. One day of driving didn’t begin to scratch the surface of how to finesse the modes for maximum efficiency.
That will be fun for the tech geeks, but is irrelevant for BYD’s aim of bringing a practical energy and environmental solution to a billion potential customers in China — and a truly affordable option for the growing number of American consumers who just want to get to work with cheap homegrown electricity.
If my destination had been in those first 30 to 40 miles, which the F3DM can easily achieve with sensible driving techniques, and I had the opportunity to charge the car for a full work day or overnight, the gas in the 8-gallon tank would go stale before having a chance to be burned in an engine.
Conserving a precious dwindling commodity is a fine reason to drive a plug-in hybrid, and avoiding price spikes at the pump is another strong incentive. But with the F3DM, there’s a more immediate imperative to keep the engine dormant: when the battery drops to a 20 percent charge level, the 3-cylinder engine loudly rumbles into service. No, it’s more accurate to say that it screeches like a banshee as it converts gasoline into power that can turn the motor — now acting as a generator — to bring up the battery charge to 30 percent.
Much of the recent progress in conventional gas-electric hybrids has been aimed at making a seamless transition from gas to electric and back again. Not so with the F3DM. The car’s personality shifts from a quick, nimble and silent E.V. to a revving demon. The steering wheel vibrates. The dashboard hums. You feel the vibration in your molars. As long as the battery pack’s charge is in the 20 to 25 percent range, the F3DM’s urgent priority is to fill up the batteries to about 30 percent so that electric driving can be resumed. Even at a stop, when other hybrids — and gasoline-only cars in increasing numbers — use an idle-stop feature to shut down the engine, the F3DM’s engine noisily stays on task.
After about a minute at a standstill, the car’s computer reluctantly stops the loud engine. But even a gentle toe on the accelerator brings the engine back to a roar. If you need to accelerate onto the Interstate while the engine is busy recharging the batteries, the engine power is routed directly to the wheels to assist the electric motors, for a total combined output of 168 horsepower.
But as loud as the engine roars, drivers can take comfort: allowing the engine to rev operates the system most efficiently. At a standstill, the engine backs down to about 1,800 r.p.m., just recharging the batteries. Step on the accelerator and it speeds up to about 2,700 to 3,000 r.p.m. for charging plus acceleration. The gas engine is either running hard or running harder.
With some engineering effort, better engine mounts and lots of sound damping, BYD can reduce the din. The company has nearly a year to absorb feedback from spoiled Americans and do something about it. The hardest engineering is done, and there are no showstoppers. All of the problems are fixable without adding a lot of cost.
BYD’s to-do list before bringing the F3DM to the United States next year already includes upgrading the charging system with an SAE-standard J1772 connector found on all new plug-in cars.
BYD says the current F3DM will be sold in limited numbers to corporate fleets, but a new and improved version, possibly with a new name, is in the works for individual car shoppers.
What might be harder to fix is Americans’ doubt that Chinese cars will be reliable and durable over time. Some industry analysts have suggested that nagging quality problems have cost BYD sales in its own market, even though the gas-only F3 — the basis for the F3DM — tallied more than 264,000 domestic sales last year, making it the No. 1 seller in China in 2010, according to J. D. Power & Associates.
BYD’s challenge is made more daunting because it will take years to establish a nationwide network of dealers. The company, which will base its American headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, plans to start by opening about five dealerships in early 2012, where it will also sell the e6 pure electric car (with a promised 200-mile range), as well as BYD solar panels, solar-shaded parking systems, home energy-storage systems, charging systems and LED lighting.
By the end of my day with the F3DM, I had logged 112 miles and used 2.3 gallons of gas. That comes to 48.7 m.p.g. for the day, mileage that my 2006 Prius would not have reached given my frequent stomping on the accelerator. It was once thought impossible that Japanese and Korean cars would ride alongside Fords, Chevys and Dodges on American roadways. After my day with the impressive, though imperfect, F3DM, I see that Chinese cars—electric and affordable — are not only possible, but imminent.
You don’t believe it? Then consider the view of the investor Warren E. Buffett, who was on hand in Shenzhen last year to attend the Chinese market debut of the F3DM. His Berkshire Hathaway holding company invested $230 million in BYD in 2008. The latest BYD models will be displayed at a Berkshire Hathaway meeting in May.
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