BYD's All-Electric Hypercar Hits 308 MPH, Becomes Fastest Car in Production (caranddriver.com) 109
Electric powertrains allow for "crazy fast acceleration figures," reports Car and Driver, as well as "huge power numbers." And now a Chinese luxury electric car brand owned by BYD Auto "just hit a top speed of 308.4 mph, making it not only the fastest electric car on the planet, but the fastest car. Period."
Engadget reports that the U9 Xtreme "is packed with four motors that produce just under 3,000 horsepower. The electric hypercar also runs on one of the world's first 1,200V platforms, which offers better performance and efficiency, along with some weight reduction." And Car and Driver adds that "Other changes to achieve the speed include dropping the wheel size from 21 to 20 inches, narrowing the front track, and adding wider, semi-slick track tires at the front of the car." One small caveat that doesn't lessen the impressiveness of the feat is that while the U9 Xtreme does classify as a production model, it barely does. That's because BYD is planning to limit production of the top-speed version of the U9 to no more than 30 units.
The car hit its "facemelting" top speed during a livestream at Germany's Automotive Testing Papenburg, reports Engadget.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.
Engadget reports that the U9 Xtreme "is packed with four motors that produce just under 3,000 horsepower. The electric hypercar also runs on one of the world's first 1,200V platforms, which offers better performance and efficiency, along with some weight reduction." And Car and Driver adds that "Other changes to achieve the speed include dropping the wheel size from 21 to 20 inches, narrowing the front track, and adding wider, semi-slick track tires at the front of the car." One small caveat that doesn't lessen the impressiveness of the feat is that while the U9 Xtreme does classify as a production model, it barely does. That's because BYD is planning to limit production of the top-speed version of the U9 to no more than 30 units.
The car hit its "facemelting" top speed during a livestream at Germany's Automotive Testing Papenburg, reports Engadget.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.
Update of an old joke (Score:3)
"It'll pass anything else on the road - except a charging station".
Re:Update of an old joke (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically this is the same for all cars in this performance class. A Bugatti Veyron can empty its gas tank in under 10 minutes if you put your foot down.
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Going in a straight line (Score:2)
Going in a straight line isn't impressive, let's see some lap times on the nurburgring track
Re:Going in a straight line (Score:4, Interesting)
Going this fast in a street legal car is impressive, period. I prefer handling to speed myself, but that doesn't make this not an achievement. That these cars are so crazy cheap for what they can do is a real paradigm shift. The big down sides to hypercars have always been sales price and maintenance costs, but EVs have far less maintenance. If these unprecedentedly high-speed motors don't explode or something, this is not only the fastest but probably also the lowest TCO hypercar ever.
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That these cars are so crazy cheap for what they can do is a real paradigm shift.
It is trivially easy to make an electric car very fast in a straight line, you no longer need highly engineered and expensive powertrains. Of course many EVs on the road nowadays do not have handling or brakes to match that speed, never mind also having drivers that are completely out of their league. Once they reach higher penetration levels we'll get a better idea how many find that out the hard way.
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If it was so very trivial, it seems like it would have been done by now. It's not trivial to build a car which is stable at those speeds, no matter what your powertrain looks like. On the other hand, a high voltage motor-per-wheel system with a high motor RPM can react to undesired yaw about as quickly as you can sense it, so the car can pretty much drive itself under human direction. Some of the old coots that can afford these things might pass out from the forces involved, though.
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If it was so very trivial, it seems like it would have been done by now. It's not trivial to build a car which is stable at those speeds, no matter what your powertrain looks like.
I was not referring to this specific car, rather EVs in general. 500hp used to be a fairly rare number for a car, but a 500hp EV is kind of ordinary these days. As prices decline pretty soon any 16yo with a new license can have one :-) I'm not so worried about the old coots.
Re: Going in a straight line (Score:2)
I think you are misusing the word trivial here. The level of engineering has made these sorts of speeds seem trivial but i assure you they are not.
You seem to be conflating the driver with the vehicle here. Building any car today en masse is no trivial matter. It is incredibly complex and expensive to do. Just because you can buy one at a dealership and press down on the throttle does make its manufacture trivial.
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I think you're underselling it.
It's a lot easier than it was, but it isn't trivial.
It is certainly much easier to design a high power and crucially, small electric motor than it is too build such a piston engine, and the transmission is much easier too. And modern silicon carbide FETs have made 1200V systems cheaper, easier and higher performing.
So it's easier, but not easy. Plus there's the problem of making the thing stable at that speed and tyres that don't self destruct etc etc etc. And frankly, a multi
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It's a lot easier than it was, but it isn't trivial.
OK, maybe trivial was not the right word. In the case of this 3000 HP car I'm sure it was definitely not. But 500HP is indeed trivial compared to doing that with an ICE.
Plus there's the problem of making the thing stable at that speed and tyres that don't self destruct etc etc etc.
This was actually my point. 500HP is plenty enough to test the absolute limits of your brakes and chassis. I don't think the average 500HP EV is engineered to the same spec in that regard as a previously typical ICE car in that range would have been. In the old days the solution to everything was drop a small block in it. Want your Mi
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"The U9 crossed the Nordschleife in 6:59, but the GT3 did it in 6:56"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Having just watched that clip, the Porsche opened up a substantial lead before they got to the long straight stretch. Then the U9 almost caught it up.
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Another Chinese EV is also the fastest EV around the ring. https://www.topgear.com/car-ne... [topgear.com]
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Re:Going in a straight line (Score:5, Interesting)
Going in a straight line isn't impressive, let's see some lap times on the nurburgring track
Firstly the track wasn't straight, which is why they spent so much time driving a 300km/h before setting the straight run record. Secondly the *previous* and far slower version of this car set the Nürburgring lap records for EVs, and was about the same speed as the Ferrari 296 record, but that was the previous car with a far lower top speed and lower power motors, this one hasn't done the lap yet.
If you're trying to diss this car because you think it isn't sporty, you're doing a poor job of it.
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Watch the video. The guy is going around a banked corner at 400kph, and hits 500kph on a straightaway. Honestly, this thing is fucking terrifying, but based on what I could see from the video handling isn't an issue.
Not kph! (Score:2)
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Looked like it could go faster with more room, and enough guts.
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The problem comes down to tires. Michelin won’t say what the top speed of the tires really is. They don’t want to be liable.
Re:Not kph! (Score:5, Informative)
it looks like the car is barely struggling to get to those speeds
One of the interesting problems with electric cars is how to control the motor speed and what ratio you have between motor rotation and wheel rotations. For a system that can switch the motors at the top speed struggles to control the motor at a slow rotation. It's fundamentally an electrical / rotational problem, with power not actually being a limiting factor. There's been a few interesting ways of solving it, add multiple motors and do torque vectoring (what this car does), adding a gearbox (Porsche's approach), have multiple motors provide power at different levels in a fixed way (e.g. front vs back, I think Tesla played with this on the Roadster)
Every normal passenger electric car I've ever driven has lurched into its top speed with guts to spare. In fact in my own I still have so much acceleration going into the top speed that it overshoots its actual top speed by about 10km/h, unlike gasoline cars which have their top speed defined by when they run out of spare torque (and as such different uphill and downhill top speeds). Electric cars feel like gasoline cars hitting a speed limiter, because in a way they usually are.
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I drove an original Leaf recently and was reminded how far EV drivetrains have come. The connection to the road is so much better than the early ones.
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Oh absolutely. I remember driving a Leaf back in the day and thinking the only benefit was that it was quiet when creeping up the driveway at night and literally everything else was a downside.
Heck back then I would say the Leaf exhibited something that felt a lot like turbo lag (to use a description that may apply to normal cars) as well, except without the performance to go with it. You felt detached from the control of your car. Nowadays I won't go back to regular cars unless I can't avoid it.
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I actually really enjoyed driving a Leaf back in the day. It was hilarious sailing past BMWs and Audis in relatively silence, and their poor engines made strained grinding noises trying to accelerate hard enough to keep up. It was a bit floaty though.
Re: Not kph! (Score:2)
I think around 1990, top sports cars could normally reach 400km/h on the straight during the 24 Hours of Le Mans race with the old race track configuration. This was a normal race pace. Chicanes were added later to slow them down.
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watching the video, it looks like the car is barely struggling to get to those speeds
I wonder if you watched the same video from YangWang or BYD as the rest of the world did, or did you watched some edited version from someone else.
What's obvious was the car *has a limiter* at 500kph, i.e. the car CAN GO FASTER but did not. Why? The tires are only guaranteed for 500kph.
Yes, they used specially manufactured tires for this record, and because no other tire manufacturer is willing to guarantee their tires up to 500kph, they have to source the tires from the one willing to, and the guarantee
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Apologies to reply to my own post, but just after posting I realized GP meant opposite of what I thought (missed the "barely").
That's what one got from replying when not having enough sleep.
Not the Fastest Car Off-Planet (Score:5, Funny)
"just hit a top speed of 308.4 mph, making it not only the fastest electric car on the planet, but the fastest car. Period."
On the planet perhaps but if you remove that condition then the fastest electric car would be the Tesla that Elon Musk launched into space [wikipedia.org]. It's now in orbit around the sun and its estimated speed at perihelion is 121,000 km/h.
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Not only that, that Tesla does not need a driver!
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The unspecified condition is "under its own power".
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Also, as if we hadn't suspected it, this confirms that the car is faster than the Mars Rover.
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Even the boast of "fastest car, period" is BS. The ThrustSSC [wikipedia.org] achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph), breaking the sound barrier.
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Relative to what?
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Like, that's only 20% faster than you're going right now. Big deal. :)
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Lets be honest here (Score:3)
Fuck yeah, I'm going to the beer store, honey. I'll be back in
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For that matter why do EVs need to accelerate from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds either, shedding tires in the process? Seems to me using there are efficiencies from limiting acceleration (surely 8 to 10 seconds is more than enough). Been watching the electric trucker drive some long range trucks that are optimized for efficiency, including reducing acceleration (making it equivalent to a diesel truck) and smaller motors with an optimized gear train. But I guess EVs need to have a selling point to attract custome
Re: Lets be honest here (Score:2)
Clearly you've never had to pull out onto a busy fast highway from a standstill.
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And yet gasoline-powered cars do it all the time. I guarantee you they are not doing it in 2 seconds. Many of those are SUVs even. Gasoline SUVs are not beating 7 seconds by much and 7 seconds is really fast.
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And yet gasoline-powered cars do it all the time. I guarantee you they are not doing it in 2 seconds. Many of those are SUVs even. Gasoline SUVs are not beating 7 seconds by much and 7 seconds is really fast.
Factory stock Suburban's with a 6.2L can do 0-60 in 6.1s and the 3.0L diesel does it in 8.4s. Those things ain't exactly what most people would call "fast".
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Back then they didn't understand, or didn't see a need, for merging lanes. Freeways were going to solve all traffic problems. They thought the high speeds and free-flow would mean there would always be huge gaps between vehicles with more than enough room to merge in easily.
There may also be a holdover component to the original "yield to the right" rule. That was the overriding rule for much of early motoring, hence the term "right of way." So highway traffic may well have been expected to yield or move
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Kind of like here in Austin the 2 level 35 thru downtown. Very poorly designed. The bottom level has the short ramps, and considering it was built way after Pasadena, no excuse there, and the upper deck has no exits, so crashes mean wreckers take forever to clear. It is the problem with tunnels as well, which is what they are proposing next. Its
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Absurd acceleration is a side-effect of wanting to do as much of the braking as possible with the electric motor. Because braking often happens at much greater decelerations than 60-0 mph in ten seconds, this means you end up with a motor that is much more powerful than you need on the acceleration side of things.
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It also comes from not wanting more gearing, every stage of which costs efficiency. To have less gearing you need more motor. The efficiency cost of having a bigger electric motor is very small compared to that of having a bigger ICE.
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The top speed is merely an indication of what the vehicle is capable of. It is not something that you do regularly. My cars are all governed to 155 mph. That doesn't mean that I hit 155mph regularly, but it does mean that when I am cruising at 80 mph, I can completely trust my car to behave rationally and as expected.
Have you ever been in an emergency situation where you suddenly needed to swerve to avoid someone else having a problem? Let's say that situation happens at 55mph. If the car is designed to dri
How long will this record stand? (Score:2)
I recall a year or two back that Bugatti was working on an EV. Anyone have any word on how they're doing with that?
And fastest car *not* in production (Score:2)
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster [wikipedia.org]? :-)
The maximum speed of the car relative to the Sun will be approximately 121,000 km/h (75,000 mph) at perihelion.
Normal (Score:3)
"One small caveat that doesn't lessen the impressiveness of the feat is that while the U9 Xtreme does classify as a production model, it barely does. That's because BYD is planning to limit production of the top-speed version of the U9 to no more than 30 units. "
The car that previously held the record, the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+, that claimed the title of the world’s fastest production car in 2019.
Only 30 cars were made.
That's what MAKES it a production car and not one of half a dozen prototypes.
Some races INSIST on that.
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That's what MAKES ...
IIRC,once upon a time, "production" meant a minimum release of 200 units. Obviously, the goal-posts have shifted.
Can I has the option package with wings? (Score:2)
With 495 km/h, this thing should be able to lift off within a few second
Re: Can I has the option package with wings? (Score:2)
450-500km/h is a cruising speed of a typical passenger turboprop airliner, such as ATR72.
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Given the car is designed to generate downforce rather than lift, you'd have to fly upside down.
meh ... (Score:2)
OK, so it goes really fast on a track. it will go at the same speed as every other car on the road when it is stuck in a traffic jam. And I don't want to think about the insurance costs for a car that has "it goes really fast" as a major selling point.
In a EV, any car actually, I want the following, in order of importance; comfortable, range to do what I need, reasonably priced for that range, low maintenance, doesn't look like a rusty abandoned clunker.
My 2 Yen.
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I want the following, in order of importance; comfortable, range to do what I need, reasonably priced for that range, low maintenance, doesn't look like a rusty abandoned clunker.
Their normal production models have all that.
The reason they made the super fast car is so you can discover that they exist and can make a high quality car. Then they can sell you a more sensible model when you get to their dealership.
The camera car is more impressive (Score:2)
It seems to be able to literally run circles around the Y9 while it's at full speed! Or maybe there's some tricky editing...
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Camera car? Try to keep up with the times... It's 2025 already.
https://youtu.be/9pEqyr_uT-k?t... [youtu.be]
Supermarket speed (Score:2)
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America's economy is in fully schizophrenic mode. It simultaneously recognizes that corporations can be too big to fail because if their jobs went away the economy would crash, yet continually seeks to destroy jobs as rapidly as possible without any consideration of whether it's sustainable. So we're keeping out foreign automakers by any means possible (including taxes and tariffs that make them become quasi-domestic automakers) in order to preserve those jobs while also trying to automate them out of exist
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They *will* get to that point.
I can get you links to robot arms to cook you dinner and serve it to you on your robotic computer chair, and robots building yachts is a piece of cake. I'm not going to program them for you... I don't know how big your place is, but there are robots available that *can* do those things.
If a robot can weld 10,000 car frames together... I'm pretty sure it can flip a pancake or a steak.
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If a robot can weld 10,000 car frames together... I'm pretty sure it can flip a pancake or a steak.
Yes, until it fails, then they will need someone with actual skills to fix it. Or there's a Y2k bug equivalent with nobody to fix it and the back end server it depends on fails. Also, if you're talking about having to program them, you've failed already.
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*waves*Hi, buddy!
Of course, the company will have a few people on staff with 15+ years programming AI (dealing with something that's 5 years old) to solve issues that happen.
Y2K was a myth, that's it... nothing shut down, just like the next Y2K in 2038 won't be an issue (they'll have worked it out before then).
Well, I highly doubt any robot arm you find is preprogrammed to flip pancakes in specifically your kitchen... if you order it directly from Allen-Bradley, they'll probably send a technician for setup.
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*waves*Hi, buddy!
You're not useful. We know this because...
Y2K was a myth, that's it... nothing shut down
...if you were qualified to help them then you'd know that "nothing" shut down because we put immense amounts of work into preventing the problem.
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My old 200MHz P1 laptop running Win98SE didn't have an issue with Y2K, and it wasn't connected to the 'net (around that time), so it didn't get updates.
Who is the "them" that you mention me being qualified to help? The tech setting up the robot in your kitchen? Because, if that's what you mean, I used to work with the techs at Electrolux to tweak the robots on our production line. And, when I was working at The Geek Group, I got to operate the 10-foot tall Kuka we had and got to operate quarter-million d
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If a robot can weld 10,000 car frames together... I'm pretty sure it can flip a pancake or a steak.
But how does it look in lingerie? [outkick.com].
Re: Meh. (Score:3)
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Wait ... isn't selling consumers on features that will be available real-soon-now-trust-us-on-that the way American electric car companies sell *their* vehicles?
Once again, Chinese companies are stealing American (ish) ideas.
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
Re:What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why?"
Bragging rights.
Where could you possibly drive such a car at such a speed?
Some sort of dedicated strip or salt flats.
And why would you be in such a hurry?
You wouldn't be. You don't drive at 300mph to get somewhere specific in a hurry.
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Should I try to file "bragging rights" under Question (1)?
However in regards to your answer to one of my unnumbered opening questions, I was actually wondering if China has any roads without speed limits. Doesn't seem likely.
Or maybe it's intended for short trips on those famous German roads? But I can't imagine that the car can keep it up for a long distance...
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Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:3)
Re:What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:5, Informative)
Supercars this fast have tires that last less than fifteen minutes, perhaps eighty miles traveled on the track of you're lucky. And since the wear isn't linear, if you go just a little bit faster, you might only get a minute or two at the speeds this car goes before you have to change all the tires, which will set you back $40,000.
The point of such a thing is the same as one of those suborbital tourist space flights. The point is to *have had* the experience, which is too brief to be practically useful.
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Supercars this fast have tires that last less than fifteen minutes, perhaps eighty miles traveled on the track of you're lucky. And since the wear isn't linear, if you go just a little bit faster, you might only get a minute or two at the speeds this car goes before you have to change all the tires, which will set you back $40,000.
The point of such a thing is the same as one of those suborbital tourist space flights. The point is to *have had* the experience, which is too brief to be practically useful.
I'm not sure what you need for tires for 300mph, but your "typical" 200mph supercar uses tires not that much different from ordinary street cars, just in larger sizes. And of course if you have ever driven on racing slicks that is an entirely different world, but even those are not terribly expensive. I think about a grand apiece for an F1 car (where they do indeed last minutes, maybe even just a qualifying lap).
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Last I checked it was $40k for a set of Veyron tires.
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I don't think this car is going to get much "daily use" at any speed above the local speed limit.
So far no one has said anything about speeding tickets, but Jimmy Carr has a joke about his girlfriend going to jail for his speeding, which could be folded into my attempted joke about picking up young women.
Or maybe this car doesn't have a second seat? For such speed you want to get the weight down. Until you hit a speed bump and have a lovely flight into the next county. Does the car include a parachute? Or m
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So the tyres get tired?
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Where could you possibly drive such a car at such a speed? And why would you be in such a hurry?
What makes you think this has a practical use for transport? Where can you drive such a car at such a speed? Racetrack. Like... obviously.
Why would someone buy it? Why would someone buy a mechanical watch when literally every one on the market is outclassed by a $10 Cassio?
If you're trying to judge this car by the practicality of owning it then this car (nor any cars in this price range, or in this class) are even remotely made for you.
Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:3, Interesting)
I cycle past McLarens and other such cars in the traffic here in London all the time. Some people seem to like owning penis extensions, but it doesnâ(TM)t mean theyâ(TM)ll ever get any real pleasure.
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So still under my Question (1)?
Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:2)
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Ah, I needed a Question (0). Something like "How stupid does BYD think their customers are?" Or something along those lines?
I actually visited a "local" BYD dealer. Not favorably impressed when I disturbed the only salesman's nap.
And so far I've only spotted one BYD actually on the road, though that dealer had several of them parked in his lot.
Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:2)
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Re: Meh. (Score:3)