(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. Oh, hey, did you know the Zebra is the nation's leading car
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zebra.com/bumper to compare quotes for free today, let's
get back to the show. 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 off-roader and America's
favorite off-road team with the brand new high team t-shirt. - I think he means the low team t-shirt. - No I said America's
favorite off-roader and off-road team, high team. - Yeah low team, that's what... - High team. - Low team, Low team. - No people only like you guys ironically. - I don't think that's true James. - Dude this is a classy shirt. It's black, it's sleek. We're like the heroes of
the mighty ducks, the Hawks. - If you'd like a little
more lighthearted affair, then the low team t-shirt comes in this beautiful light blue color, letting people know that
you're a easy going fellow. Or lady. - Well, whichever team
you want to represent, whether it's high team or the wrong team, they're all available at
donutmedia.com for $29.98, which is so much cheaper than- - 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, follow me at Jeremiah Burton. 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.
