BYD's electric supercar jumps over potholes and spikes
60 comments
·January 10, 2025shalmanese
Cumpiler69
>Americans have no idea how far advanced the Chinese car market is.
Americans have no reason to care about that. Their legacy car industry is now only a vestigial part of their economy. It's an acceptable casualty when the brunt of their economy is finance, tech and services, plus owning the printer to the world reserve currency and the largest military in the world by a long margin along with large fossil fuel reserves, giving them leverage over China and the Chinese economy in other more important areas while their car industry can coast into irrelevance letting their allies Japan, Korea, Germany race to the bottom in selling American consumer cheap cars in exchange for those sweet USD. They'll be fine.
On the other hand, countries like Germany where the legacy ICE auto sector is a large slice of the economy and don't have energy independence, don't issue the world reserve currency, don't have a strong military, don't have a leading finance and tech sector, but have a ballooning welfare deficit and unions fighting against the inevitable change to EV, will be less fine and more at the mercy of bullying from world powers along with a reduction in standard of living of their workers/citizens.
drewcoo
> Americans have no idea how far advanced the Chinese car market is.
There's a 100% tariff on Chinese cars. Of course we have no idea.
weinzierl
As everyone that watched Knight Rider knows, a jumping car solves ALL your problems. Even a heavily armed gang of thugs can easily be defeated by a jumping car without a single drop of blood being shed.
Propelloni
Haven't lowriders worked on this for years now? I think they are further concerning angle of attack and elevation but behind the whole "while driving" thing. It's not really my field of expertise.
re-lre-l
est
Bose sold the tech to ClearMotion, which now partners with NIO https://blog.clearmotion.com/clearmotion-partners-with-nio-t...
bayindirh
This came to my mind when I first saw it, but I see it as a good iteration/improvement on what we have done before (we as in humans).
I see this as hyped research, that's all, and it's good for everyone.
throwaway290
So the actual headline should be "Chinese car company overtakes American headphone maker from 8 years ago":))
Active suspension apparently quietly was in luxury cars for a while...
mog_dev
I cannot wait to jump over speed bump is school areas ! Definitely useful tech for people in a hurry like me
dvh
What are you? An influencer?
gnabgib
Comment history suggests LLM
qwertox
Just in case you're out of the loop: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1gpgzno/mkbhd_goes...
vertis
I was thinking more the getaway car of pros
Hamuko
I'd be impressed if it managed to jump the speed bumps in school areas. Those are like what, 7 cm to 10 cm in elevation over a long distance?
jgtrosh
In France, « dos d'ânes » (“donkey's backs”) are supposed to be 10cm high, with other measurements we'll defined, but about 80% are way more “violent” as a defensive tool used by municipalities.
But that's nothing compared with mexican topes.
__m
I guess they can't get away with just claiming to add rocket thrusters to their cars to hype their brand. I don't even know who the CEO is. Still a silly idea, unless your customer is batman.
rahkiin
I barely know any CEOs and I am happy when I can buy a product without knowing all political affiliations and personal opinions of the CEO that may or may not have an effect on their business decisions or on the business output.
bigcat12345678
Wow, I cannot believe how awkward to see such negative review just because it's a Chinese brand...
This is insanely cool.
Not mentioning the implied tech.
Of course you know it's a Chinese brand. The internal mindset shifting happen so naturally...
pcl
I think the OP was making a sarcastic dig at Musk’s history of promises and cult of personality, by comparing to a company that is comparatively just quietly executing.
atoav
Can the "insanely cool" thing jump over climate change induced megafires?
Forgive my cynicism, but I dislike products like that because it represents the polar opposite of what the world needs right now.
Your assessment of anti-sinoistic sentiment is on point tho.
rmbyrro
"what (I think) the world needs right now" is people who make uncomfortable sacrifices to live up to the ideas they defend, before calling for massive collective change and policing other people's personal choices and interests
nirui
> I don't even know who the CEO is
Ah, the benefit of having a Chinese CEO, they tend to want less public attention to themselves. "Man don't want to be famous, like pig don't want to grow big" as people say.
That, plus the fact BYD's founder/CEO (same guy) was not as flashy (reads "Unhinged") as Elon Musk.
hawski
When I hear Chinese CEO, I think they may be easily replaced and in the end the real CEO is Xi Jinping. I am sure it is a bit more complicated and I may have some prejudice, but how far am I? I would expect for a Chinese CEO that would behave like Elon Musk to disappear quite quickly. Am I wrong in this assessment as well?
pjc50
Thinking of Jack Ma. You don't want to get too prominent in China, billionaires there aren't above the police.
bildung
Well to be fair, he got prominent and created an illegal peer-to-peer lending business to enrich himself on the despair of lower-income people - in a country that has heavy financial regulation in place to prevent exactly these kinds of developments (same as MLM schemes etc.).
nirui
Ah... Jack Ma, My favorite example on why nobody should try to be a communist propagandist.
The man traveled to the US back in 2017 and publicly criticized how US utilized their tax incomes etc see [Link 1], then just few years later he lost half of his wealth for criticizing Xi Jinpin [Link 2].
So, apparently be a communist lapdog did very little in helping him gain political shield.
[Link 1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-...
[Link 2]: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/12/business/china-jack-ma-we...
oytis
I guess getting this car registered with this feature built in will be difficult in most countries too.
Hamuko
Why? I don't think the car inspection office will check if the car jumps. Mostly that the suspension doesn't have play in it.
pyrale
> I don't even know who the CEO is.
In 2025, this has to be a praise.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
I think it just demonstrates some new 4WD/suspension technology, that allows it to jump, and to quickly shift the weight from one wheel to another.
nhinck3
While these are probably way too heavy, can't wait for someone Mark Webber themselves doing this over a crest.
Cumpiler69
The Canberra milk kid?
figassis
Insanely cool. But I worry about the physics of this. The moment you jump, you have zero traction. And this only works if you have considerable speed. If the driver/car is unable to fully understand the environment that comes after, like a pedestrian crossing shortly after the obstacle, but far enough away that the car does not detect this before the jump decision, there may be no way to break in time.
Stevvo
It's a gimmick for marketing. No indication it will be a feature on retail vehicles.
qwertox
Probably got the "inspiration" from some European companies.
Mercedes GLE 450 4Matic bouncing itself out of sand
imhoguy
Can't stand that video mastering, looks like AI fake.
maxglute
TBH with 700k+ employees, the marketting gimmicks to engineer ratio from BYD is lacking.
nelsonic
Pre-orders immediately exhausted by criminals.
(Awesome tech! Or at least CGI ...)
Americans have no idea how far advanced the Chinese car market is.
The big feature 2 years ago was car starting to sprout LIDAR bumps but now that feature has become de rigueur enough that car brands need to figure out something new to stand out, hence the big push to advertise their active suspension.
Nio's new ET9 is showing off their car doing tricks like bouncing a soccer ball (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Ezjmz63U8), driving with a stack of glasses on it's hood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEr_sNp7XLM) and syncing the suspension to a movie (https://www.tiktok.com/@autogefuehl/video/745225999151335350...). Yangwang is showing it leap the car in the air. At the end of the day though, the more Hertz and more acceleration your active suspension system has, the smoother it can dampen movement inside the cabin and Chinese consumers are already getting very picky about how well specced the active suspension systems are.
In another 2 years time, Nio/Yuanyang style active suspension will have trickled out into enough midrange cars that it's no longer an exciting feature and Chinese car brands will figure out the latest new thing to compete. Meanwhile, American car brands will be barely half way through their model cycle refresh and just starting to think about incrementally adding a single feature or two and maybe adding a new curve to the body somewhere.