(upbeat music)
- Do you love driving, but are so sick to your tummy
because you gotta spend all your greenbacks on a brand new
four wheel go-go machine.
Do you hate going to a dealership just to have
to look a floor salesmen in the eye and say,
I don't have any money.
I'm wasting your time.
Are you sick and tired of being treated
like an adult baby or a boy or girl.
Do I have a car for you.
Come on down to Jerry's used car auto mat.
Were I'm going to put you in a brand new 2020 Changli ZYX
for $930. Hold on what?
Stop for a second.
Frankie boy, is that the total car price or
the monthly price?
The total price.
(screaming)
- The ZYX is an electric vehicle
that you can buy online today
that costs less than a pair of Jordan One Breds.
A car that can not only haul you and your friends around,
but also has a center driver's seat.
It's basically a McLaren F1.
While it might not look all that great. It's cheap,
it works and it got me thinking,
how can you make a car so inexpensive?
Between the engineering, the development,
the manufacturing, shipping and a ton of other factors.
If the goal is to turn a profit,
how can a company do that on a sub $1,000 car?
So today we're going to dive into the world of cheap cars
and see where companies cut costs in order to make more
Franklins.
I might just buy one of these to give it away on the
doughnut underground. We'll see.
(soft music)
- Thank you to the zebra for sponsoring today's video.
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Oh shoot. Think I missed my exit. No problem.
The Chang-Li ZYX is a Chinese made rear wheel drive electric
lukewarm rod of a vehicle that you can buy without ever
leaving your house.
Surf on over to Ali-Baba.com and within a few clicks,
you'll have one of these bad boys delivered
in a box to your driveway.
With three power level options.
The ZYX has a maximum speed around 25 miles per,
with a 40 mile range.
It's got independent suspension and it has the luxury
features like a full-sized spare tire, backup camera and
a digital dashboard.
When I bought my F-150,
the dash alone costs more than this entire car,
but the cost of a car is more than just
a running list of parts.
Manufacturers have to design, research and develop that car
into its shiny new perfection
before it reaches any lot
and that's an expensive endeavor.
When it comes down to it, the research and development,
marketing costs and engineering costs of a new car,
outweigh the cost of parts alone.
But that paradigm is for big name manufacturers,
Changli, they cut costs by focusing on the parts.
And when talking EVs,
most of the costs comes from the batteries.
The four wheel electric environmental protection car,
small electric car, as it's called on Alibaba,
is powered by five 12 volt lead acid batteries
producing 60 volts of juice.
Now 60 volts. Those are rookie numbers.
You've got to pump those suckers up,
especially when you compare it to model three's, 400 volts.
But voltage aside, the real thing to focus on is
the type of battery.
All the major manufacturers in the EV market
use some sort of lithium ion technology.
Whether the chemistry is lithium nickel, cobalt, aluminum,
or if it's lithium nickel, manganese cobalt,
they're using lithium batteries.
And the reason is pretty simple.
They have more capacity, they have a higher energy density,
they're more efficient, they have a longer lifespan and
they have a larger depth of discharge.
While it's normal to use 85% or more of a lithium
ion batteries, total capacity in a single charge.
It's damaging to discharge a lead acid battery past 50%.
After that you start to shorten its lifespan.
But if lithium ion is the answer, what's the catch?
The catch is costs. You got to mine them.
And then you've got a process and convert them into high
purity versions that may quality long lasting batteries.
Lead acid. On the other hand, it's cheap.
Led is cheap. Acid is cheap.
Not only are the actual batteries cheap, so is the housing
you put them in.
The batteries are covered with a low cost cardboard sheet,
right beneath the driver's seat,
as opposed to nestled into some custom engineered casing
that for example, you see it in a Lucid or Tesla.
I mentioned a second ago, energy density,
and the better that metric is the longer range you have.
The lead acid batteries in the ZYX
gets you an average of 40 miles.
Now the median EPA estimated range for an average EV vehicle
in 2020, was 250 miles and it also
takes about six to eight hours to charge
those lead acid batteries.
Another downside of using them.
And once you spend all that time charging them
we're at full capacity and you stomp on the electricity,
you'll notice a lack of power.
That's because the ZYX has only a single 1200 watt,
1.6 horsepower DC motor.
The same type of motor in your washing machine.
Yep, it's just a washing machine on wheels.
And not all, but most EVs use motors
that run on alternating current,
but their batteries output direct current.
So how do you go from DC from the battery to turn it into AC
for the motors? Well, AC it's wiggling, DC it's straight.
So in order to get the straight to turn wiggly,
you need some electronics to do that.
Specifically, you need an inverter and
an inverter takes direct current from the battery,
switches it on and off so fast that it turns it into
alternating current,
the type of current needed by the motors.
Those inverters are extremely sophisticated.
When I met with the CEO of Lucid,
Peter Rawlinson about the lucid air,
we nerded out for 30 minutes, just on inverters.
With that sophisticated piece of equipment, comes cost.
But if you use the same type of current coming off the
batteries to power your motor,
you don't need a fancy inverter, got DC from the batteries,
DC to the motors.
You can get your Samsung washer on wheels and call it a day.
Changli manufacturers did find a way to save
some bucks in the break department,
by well not including them on the front wheels
They cut the cost of break installation in half,
right there. Now most cars rely pretty heavily
on front disc brakes for anywhere from 60 to 90%
of their stopping power,
but big cars are heavy and they need those breaks.
The ZYX weighs in at 323kgs. That's just over 700 pounds,
or... (drum roll)
- I'm not going to say it guys. I've matured.
I'm a better person now. And I just won't do it.
Your mom.
But in the rear you have the cheapest breaks
outside of Flintstone feet.
The mechanical drum brake.
When you press the pedal,
the pedal pivots activating a bell crank style linkage
that engages a series of lever arms, and a splined rod,
which pushes the brake shoes against a rotating cylinder.
The more costly and more common breaking systems are
hydraulic disk brakes.
The benefit of disc brakes over drum brakes is in the heat
dissipation department.
That's what they call me when I'm around the pool
in a Speedo.
(laughing)
- Drum brakes allow heat to build up inside the
drum when braking,.
But with disk brakes, the rotor is free flowing in the wind.
That flow of air around the rotor cools
the entire braking system,
preventing that hydraulic fluid from boiling and
causing brake fade.
The Changli ZYX or as it's also called on
Ali-Baba, elderly leisure commuting to pick up children car,
cut costs, not only in the battery and motor department,
but also in the steering system as well.
It uses a rack and pinion setup that was first seen
in the American automotive manufacturing way back in 1974
in the Mustang Two and Pinto.
The rack and pinion steering is not only a more
straightforward and simplistic design than the
recirculating ball steering system previously used,
it's also more cost-effective to build
due to its simplicity.
It's also cheaper than hydraulic power steering,
electric power hydraulic steering
and fully electric power steering.
Because of the low costs, along with the fact
that it's pretty easy to figure out when
something goes wrong with it,
the Changli kept it simple and used rack and pinion.
When we look in this suspension department,
there's a fun mashup of modern and relatively ancient
history happening near the steering shaft.
The front suspension is made up of a dead axle and kingpins
to let the steering knuckles rotate,
never heard of a kingpin?
Well, maybe that's because they were more commonly
spotted on the Model T.
The axle fits in between two collars on the spindle and
rests on a roller bearing and a king pin slides through the
spindle and the axle where an alignment pin locks
everything in place.
In terms of suspension setup,
this is super simple and super cheap.
And in the rear, surprisingly, you have coral springs.
And those core lowers might not be the cheaper option for
most manufacturers because they would need to buy those
parts from other factories.
But for Changli the parts are made by the same company,
manufacturing the cars themselves.
So that keeps costs lower by consolidating production of
parts and cars, into one single factory.
And they make them in bulk.
And when you buy in bulk, the price drops,
have you ever shopped at Sam's or Costco or Jerry's discount
motorcycle shop?
Because I got a bunch of motorcycles.
I'm selling them for cheap.
I'd never sell my motorcycles ever.
if you buy one of my motorcycles, it's cause I'm dead.
My girlfriends like, "Sell some of your motorcycles",
and I'm like, "never, ever,
and I'm not willing them to you either,
I'm going to will them to a museum and you'll never be able
to touch them".
"You're going to be begging the museum curator like, Hey,
can I scrape some of the seat dander off of it and
smell them? And I'm going to be like, no".
I'll will it to a member of the doughnut underground.
It's actually, if you want to see more motorcycle content,
go on the doughnut underground.
We're going to do a video on my whole motorcycle collection,
check it out.
Also click the like and subscribe button,
because that really helps me out,
lets us know that we're doing a good job.
This same paradigm applies to the frame.
The same frame where you see on the ZYX is stamped out in
mass for all kinds of other low speed delivery vehicles and
tricycles across Asia and Europe.
And it's not just the frame. It's the body, the lights,
the heater, the backup camera,
the windows and the trim and the regulators.
The truth is the Changli functions,
as basic as a car can be.
It does its job of going from A to B,
using old school engineering.
Instead of spending big bucks on development and
specialized parts, Changli uses old tech, low cost parts.
And for the money I would have killed for one of
these when I was 16. Are you kidding me?
If me and my friends had a dozen of these bad boys,
it would have been a blast.
Are they safe? Probably not.
Are they fun? Time will tell.
- Show your support for America's favorite
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- I think he means the low team t-shirt.
- No I said America's favorite off-roader and
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- Yeah low team, that's what...
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- No people only like you guys ironically.
- I don't think that's true James.
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- If you'd like a little more lighthearted affair,
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- So much cheaper, James.
- Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of B2B.
We love you. If you want to see more doughnut stuff,
follow us here on Instagram at donut media,
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Follow me on TikTok,
Silence of the Lambda.
I might be shadow banned again.
I don't know what the hell is happening.
I just want to make TikTok's.
I keep changing my name and TikTok hates it.
So if you got a better username,
put it down in the comments.
The best one, I'll send you a t-shirt, if I use it.
Only if I use it. Okay.
Till next week, bye for now.