What should I pay attention to when buying a new energy vehicle? Have you noticed that more and more people are buying new energy vehicles around you? But what’s interesting is that the experience of these car owners is completely different – some people praise it every day, thinking that electric cars are cheap and easy to drive, and charging only costs a few dollars a day; some people regret it, complaining that the battery life drops in winter, the battery decays quickly, and the second-hand price drops sharply after driving for a few years. Why is the difference so big for the same new energy vehicle? In fact, the reason is that many people buy the wrong car. To put it bluntly, the purchase of new energy vehicles is very different from that of gasoline vehicles. Blindly referring to past experience is likely to fall into the pit.
So how can we avoid the pit and buy a truly “high-quality” new energy vehicle? In fact, it is not difficult. Remember these points, and it is not a problem to use your car for two more years. 01 The battery life is not the higher the better, and the charging capacity is also critical. Many people buy new energy vehicles, and the first thing they do is to look at the battery life: 500km? 600km? 700km? I always think that the higher the better. It looks quite scientific, but it is actually a big misunderstanding. Because if it is commuting in the city, 500km of battery life is enough, and any higher range will only add two days between charging, and the actual experience will not be much different. As for frequent long-distance travel, battery life is indeed important, but more important than battery life is fast charging power and energy replenishment efficiency. What does it mean? Simply put, the charging speed of different models may be much different than you think. For example, some will adopt the full-domain 800V architecture + 5C fast charging technology, which can replenish 500km in 12 minutes. The power can be fully charged in almost the time of a cup of coffee! Some cars with a range of 600km+ seem to have a large battery, but the charging power is low, and the maximum can only run at 60kW. It takes at least 1 hour to charge from 20% to 90%… To put it bluntly, if you want to buy the latter car, once you charge it for a long distance, it is basically “one charge and one silence, waiting to doubt life”.
Make a comparison: the same 400km of electricity, if one car can be charged in 15 minutes, and the other has to wait for 40 minutes, which one would you choose? The answer is actually very clear! Therefore, don’t be confused by the long battery life, but look at the energy replenishment speed + charging network. Otherwise, no matter how big the battery is, you will still be anxious when driving on the highway! 02 Don’t look at the PPT for intelligent driving, experience is king. To put it bluntly, there are almost no new energy vehicles now that don’t talk about intelligent driving. Various promotional PPTs are full of concepts such as “high-level intelligent driving”, “city NOA”, and “high-speed NOA”. They sound very powerful, as if you can drive the car home with your eyes closed. But the truth is that the experience of intelligent driving is very different. For some cars, high-speed NOA can really go on the road, can change lanes and go on and off ramps autonomously, and you don’t need to worry about long-distance driving; while for some cars, the so-called “intelligent driving” is just an enhanced version of ACC, and the steering wheel “bangs” to correct the deviation in the opposite direction at any time. When you encounter a curve, you have to take over manually, and the experience is more tiring than not driving. Therefore, you can’t just listen to the propaganda about intelligent driving, you must look at the actual experience. Especially when choosing a car, these key points must be clarified: first look at the high-speed intelligent driving, is it really able to change lanes and go on and off ramps autonomously? Are there a large number of actual test cases, or is it a “PPT function”?
Let’s look at the city intelligent driving. How wide is the support range? Is it stable enough? Or can it only perform well on the test drive route? You must know these details. In addition, the hardware supporting the intelligent driving should also be paid attention to. Because some models have powerful intelligent driving, but the hardware is very poor, the computing power of the model is low, and the sensors are few – the future upgrade is definitely worrying. This is not alarmist. The popular models released by a popular brand last year cannot be upgraded to the SR interface (intelligent driving interactive interface) this year, saying that the hardware does not support it.
With this performance, can intelligent driving keep up with the times in the future? It will undoubtedly be difficult! 03 Choose a car based on the “three electrics”, and brand premium is not the focus. To put it bluntly, many people buy new energy vehicles and still choose according to the experience of the oil car era: they think that looking at the brand, the interior, and the so-called luxury is enough, and they will definitely not step on the pit. What is the result? After buying it back, I found that the battery life dived, the battery decayed quickly, the power was average, and even less than three years later, I faced the trouble of changing cars. Why is this so? Because the core of choosing a new energy vehicle is to look at the “three electrics”, and the brand is not the focus.
In the final analysis, try to choose battery brands from mainstream manufacturers such as CATL, BYD Blade, and Zhongxinhang, and don’t choose miscellaneous brands. Of course, there are traps here. In order to save costs, some car companies will buy “big-name battery cells” and then find “small workshops” to package them – this kind of battery is actually not powerful. As for the motor, don’t be fooled by the “horsepower parameters”, durability and efficiency are the key. Like some cars, they still use brushed motors and water-cooled motors – not only are they inefficient, but they are also easy to break, so be careful about this. The electronic control is even more complicated, and you can only experience it yourself. For example, some cars with good electronic control have excellent energy consumption performance, stable power output, and a smooth driving experience. However, some models have obviously poor power consumption, kinetic energy recovery fluctuates, and even has obvious frustrations… Don’t choose this type of model.
In general, don’t refer to the experience of buying oil cars when buying new energy vehicles, thinking that big brands are good. In fact, this is not the case. Electric vehicles are still in the stage of blooming. The brand is not yet stable, so you must pay special attention to these 3 points to avoid falling into the trap.
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