
China may lead the electric car revolution - happy-go-lucky
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15390554/china-may-lead-the-electric-car-revolution
======
Animats
The incentives to go electric in Beijing are high. Beijing has high-pollution
days when only even or odd license plate cars are allowed to operate.
Electrics are exempt. Taxis are being forced to go electric. Electric cars are
exempt from the Beijing license plate lottery. Still, the 60,000 plates a year
reserved for electrics aren't all being used yet. Buyers want SUVs.

~~~
Theodores
An elderly relative now needs oxygen which makes journeys difficult. So,
challenged with the task of getting a machine that fits in the car and can be
carried around, to supply 15 hours of oxygen a day, what is the solution?
China! So, if you want a quiet, affordable machine that does the oxygen for
you then a Chinese supplier is exactly what you want, some British room-sized,
noisy kit costing many thousands just does not cut it on 'e-bay' compared to
what ships from China. I am sure the British supplier gets their slot in the
hospital where the taxpayer pays rather than the e-bay seller. But, the
practical solution for my relative that is far better that what the NHS is all
there on e-bay, with speedy shipping.

I can see a similar thing happening with e-cars, people will find the battery-
box-on-wheels from China is absolutely fine for enabling their lifestyle,
which could include getting about the city emission free. You don't need a
space age Tesla with extra buttons for your cup-holder if you are just going
to the shops or doing other city travel, you will just need something that
does the job.

I also think that charging 'stations' will become redux, i.e. some socket on
the lightposts that you just plug in to with no console/buttons/screen or
anything else except the plug and socket. These will just appear one day when
the utility companies get proper demand coming their way.

~~~
sjg007
I think the tech in the drive train, battery and other electric components
play a big role in the mileage equation.

------
vit05
Tencent has recently invested $1.7 billion to become one of Tesla’s largest
shareholders. They invest on Didi, who is the largest car sharing service in
China, and on WeChat, that is one of the most used money transfer plataform in
Asia. And they are investing Big in AI.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/tencent-j...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/tencent-
joins-rush-into-ai-to-keep-lead-in-social-media-gaming)

tencent may lead the electric car revolution.

~~~
CardenB
Tencent has also invested in Zoox, a self driving car startup

------
thinkcontext
Not a particularly informative article.

China already has the most PEV's on the road

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country)

And this article projects lithium battery manufacturing capacity in 2020 with
China having 62% of world capacity vs 22% for the US (with virtually all of
that being Tesla's Gigafactory)

[http://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-leading-charge-
lithium...](http://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-leading-charge-lithium-ion-
megafactories/)

~~~
sharun
I never understood why the Gigafactory is viable with China around. Does this
have to do with location of the mines?

~~~
Retric
Labor is a smaller fraction of the costs to produce batteries. Consider they
only have 850 workers, so even if moving to China saved 50k per worker it's
not actually that valuable vs much better IP protection.

~~~
azernik
And vs. low shipping costs to Tesla factories and to target markets.

------
denzil_correa
I would bet Singapore as one of the forefront runners for EVs to be tested and
accepted amongst the masses. The political structure allows for a greater deal
of control to test and deploy such a machine.

EVs are expected to be launched mid 2017 and deployed in every Housing &
Development Board (HDB) town by 2020.

[https://www.lta.gov.sg/apps/news/page.aspx?c=2&id=e030e95d-a...](https://www.lta.gov.sg/apps/news/page.aspx?c=2&id=e030e95d-a82c-49b4-953c-fc4b3fad7924)

~~~
frozenport
Also an extremely high cost of ownership for automobiles, due to a required
$50,000 certificate of entitlement. This means that the cost of the actual car
is less important. Or rather everybody buys a luxury vehicle. See [1]

[1] [https://blog-cdn.moneysmart.sg/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/tr...](https://blog-cdn.moneysmart.sg/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/truecost-revision.jpg)

------
rodionos
I think Norway has the best cards to play this game in a fully integrated way.
They have the right tax policy in place, they have consumers who are trained
to buy cars based on value-for-money as opposed to status, they have hydro
energy in excess.

~~~
chvid
Sell oil. Become so expensive no other industry exists. Buy electric cars.
Live off government welfare?!

~~~
Reason077
Norway's super secret masterplan(?):

1\. Lead electric vehicle revolution, increasing demand for renewable energy
in Europe

2\. Sell abundant, clean hydro-electricity to Denmark, Germany, and the UK via
new HVDC interconnectors

3\. $$ Profit $$

~~~
jansho
I have my tin hat on so here's an upvote!

------
kleiba
Whenever I see a headline that has the verb "may" in it, in my mind, I add
"...or not" at the end.

~~~
Eyght
I think your idea works out in most cases. Examples:

"Theresa May promises 'No snap election'"

"James May to stay sober for entire season of shooting The Grand Tour"

~~~
Namrog84
To be fair. He did say the verb "may" not the word or noun "may".

~~~
stcredzero
Both of the example famous people could become "verbified" quite easily.

~~~
Baeocystin
Verbing weirds language.

[http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25)

------
austenallred
Tesla tripled its sales to china in 2016, which means it was about 1/4 of
total Tesla sales [https://electrek.co/2017/03/03/tesla-triple-sales-
china-2016...](https://electrek.co/2017/03/03/tesla-triple-sales-china-2016/)

(Tesla represents about 4/7 of the total electric car market)

~~~
eddieplan9
China taxes automobile imports by emission. This makes Tesla cheaper than
other cars similarly priced in the western markets. (However, the price does
not matter to the target audience though.)

------
jansho
Interesting brochure coming from Southampton University today: _" Please don't
buy an Electric car."_ The brochure is for their Electronic and Electrical
Engineering programme.

"Did you know that if 1/3 of us charged our current petrol cars for comparable
electric vehicles and plugged them in to charge overnight, then the
electricity supply network couldn't cope and we'd either have power cuts or
may be told to switch everything off?"

Then it explains: "Currently all our power stations (UK), working flat out,
can generate about 70 GW electricity and this figure is dropping as older and
less efficient stations are closed down.

"Imagine 10 million cars all charging at the same time - that's already 80,000
million watts - more than we can generate. We'd have to switch off everything
in our houses and keep the power stations all on full power!"

Edit typo.

~~~
hawkice
I mean, I'm not entirely sure that moving from millions of small gas/diesel
generators (which is, functionally, what modern cars are) to using the grid
should be bashed because the current grid can't support it. That seems like a
fully general argument against change.

For instance, no one claims you shouldn't vote because, if everyone voted,
then Americans would have intolerable wait times at polling places (they
wouldn't handle that volume). It's true, but I think the expectation is that
we'd expand capacity. At least power generation (unlike voting) is done for
profit, so I don't see the concern.

~~~
jansho
> the expectation is that we'd expand capacity

Yes but electric cars are often touted to be the "green solution". What's the
point if we're just going to have more - and we're talking about _lots more_
\- power stations? They still eat resources, and spout pollution. There's the
nuclear option but hey..

~~~
derefr
The thing you have to keep in mind is that, almost always, the bigger a
generator is, the more efficient it is.

Even if everyone's petrol-burning cars were swapped out for electric ones that
were just as energy-intensive (i.e. required the same amount of joules of
converted energy, to go the same distance, that petrol vehicles do) and then
we took all that petrol, and burned it in a few big power-plants to _generate_
that electricity... we'd _still_ end up using less petrol. Because the big
power plant would be far more efficient, in almost every sense, than the small
ones in our cars. (Including senses like "sequesters more CO2.")

And that's a pessimized case; in reality, electric cars get far better "miles
per gallon" (more literally, miles _per megajoule of stored energy_ ) than
petrol cars do. Look at
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equivalent#Examples)):
if you converted one gallon of gasoline into electricity using a regular,
inefficient petrol car engine, and then charged an electric car's batteries
using that generated power, the electric car would go quite a bit further than
the same amount of _stored energy_ would have taken the petrol car. (This
being what hybrid cars do: use a regular petrol engine to charge batteries,
and then run off those batteries.)

The two factors combined mean that there is every reason to centralize the
generation of electricity. Even if we still burn petrol to generate all that
electricity (unlikely), we'd still be burning _far less_ petrol.

~~~
jansho
Thanks for this.

I do like the idea of centralising the generation of electricity. But while I
understand the economies of scale aspect, I still think that we may be over-
simplifying the whole picture. Sure, we may have greener cars. But what are
the costs of this? You know we're talking about changing the whole
infrastructure - and that's messy, and painful, and can take many years. And
there's a few other questions which are too loosely connected for now but
nevertheless still quite nagging, like nuclear as a resource and the growing
global population which inevitably means more drivers..

~~~
danans
> You know we're talking about changing the whole infrastructure - and that's
> messy, and painful, and can take many years.

Not as painful as you might think, and it's already happening. At the home
level, it's very straightforward to add a charging station to your house, and
at the grid level utilities have​ been preparing for this for a while now,
evidenced by the fact that they offer EV-specific rate plans to their
customers.

The harder part is public charging infrastructure, which is still too sparse,
but it is less critical than gas stations because of home charging.

------
yourapostasy
As far as I could tell on a trip last year, China already leads, but not with
electric cars. Instead, their masses are leading the way by huge adoption
rates of electric scooters/bikes. There are way more Chinese who are buying
these than cars, and will be for the short-term future at least. It will be
ironic if Tesla's Gigafactories end up spewing out more battery cells for
scooters/bikes in the developing world than cars in the developed world. I was
really surprised because I would have expected really old and refined ICE tech
to be cheap enough to beat electric drive tech, but nearly every two-wheeler I
saw was battery-driven.

There is an interesting confluence of factors that seem to be attributed to
the explosion of e-bike popularity in China [1].

Can someone who lives there comment upon what seemed to be a mass adoption
trend to a tourist? Is this isolated only to the Tier 1-3 cities, or just the
CBD's of the Tier 1-3 cities, or is this really widespread even into the small
villages? Are the recharging costs lower than equivalent fuel costs of
comparable scooters, even after accounting for battery replacement?

[1]
[http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/perrot1/](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/perrot1/)

~~~
lvturner
No longer live there, but did for a couple of years - e-bikes there are dirt
cheap, require no tax, no insurance and no licence and in Beijing at least,
there is pretty decent cycling infrastructure that the e-bikes share.

Car ownership is comparatively expensive and most foreign cars have (I think)
a 50% tax markup on purchasing them, there is also (at least in Beijing, and I
believe Shanghai) a lottery system for getting a license plate on your car.

E-Bikes are basically the new bicycle, and are treated as such. However, I
think they are starting to clamp down on them and treat them more like
motorbikes, but the enforcement is still very lax (rumoured because it will
enrage the residents of the cities who can't afford a car)

When I was there, I owned one that cost around $300USD, took six lead acid
batteries (could upgrade it to lithium-ion) had about a 100km range and an
alleged top speed of 60km/h. Disk brakes, remote ignition and alarm. It wasn't
super fast, but fast enough to cause trouble (as it's silent) and would
certainly outperform 50-60cc mopeds/scooters.

I can't comment on the villages, but I'd expect you would find less of them
there, as the rules on vehicle ownership in generally are likely to be more
lax as well. It's also absolutely not restricted to the CBDs, in the more
suburban areas of the cities there are still plenty of them!

------
omarforgotpwd
I think Tesla will have a lot of success in China. Chinese carmakers will
probably also produce some great electric cars due to how much capital is
available there.

~~~
thinkcontext
The Chinese government generally requires that foreign companies have a local
partner that has the controlling interest in the venture and that key
technologies be transferred for local manufacture. Would Tesla agree to this
and would it be considered a success if it did?

~~~
mrhlee
The government is looking to relax those rules. This article suggests Tesla is
waiting for the changes to come into effect.

[https://electrek.co/2016/12/21/tesla-china-other-foreign-
aut...](https://electrek.co/2016/12/21/tesla-china-other-foreign-automakers-
electric-vehicles-production/)

------
jbbarth
It seems there's an assumption in the article and in the comments here that
"more EVs == net positive impact on pollution / greenhouse gases". This is not
obvious at all. It depends on the way you produce electricity, and when 75% of
it comes from coal, you may end up worsening the problem. This could be a
smart move if the automobile market had a bigger inertia than the energy one,
but I doubt it's the case...

------
colordrops
They've been having basically zero success exporting plain old internal
combustion based vehicles. Let's see how they do with electrics.

~~~
Tade0
The reason for that is that Chinese cars are notorious for being unsafe.

Thing is, they don't really need to export anything. Car sales are already
higher in China than e.g. the US.

~~~
sharun
Agree. Also just like in India, if you are crawling around in a traffic jam
most of the time what's the point of all that safety? Local cars are designed
for local conditions.

~~~
greglindahl
China has a large, high-speed highway system similar to the ones you find in
developed countries.

------
kaftoy
China is just China even for what car making is. They copy and they have
troubles doing that too. They are struggling to implement new emission
regulations. They tried to copy something from both US and EU regulations and
ended up with an endless "draft" state of the future "CN6" emissions
standards. But they are supposed to start having effect in 2019-2020 and all
manufacturers are puzzled about what to do (because cars destined to market in
2019-2020 are in development since last year already). So can China drive any
type of development, especially EV, this way? Hell, no!

As far as the article's references to Porsche and Maserati sales go... What
does it have to do with anything? 1+ billion people, of course they have some
rich people spending money on sports cars. They do not necessarly drive new
technologies, like EV, to advance, but maybe some rare animal leather to end
up on more dashboards.

For fuck's sake, the new XXX (can't say brand name) light commercial vehicle
for 2020 in China has 2010 tech in it (except the SCR system, which will
probably be required if the Chinese decide once and for all to freeze the
regulations)! Shit old 10 years tech because, to quote a XXX manager "this is
what they want", and by they, he means the actual Chinese masses, not the rich
guys buying sports cars.

~~~
WithHighProb
RIP in your sweet dream China can't deliver anything.

It's Americans now that can't make progress

~~~
kaftoy
My bet is not on the Chinese neither on the Americans. It's on the Germans
(and other EU car makers in general).

------
hellofunk
The Netherlands passed a law last year that requires all new car sales to be
only electric cars starting 2020.

~~~
ed_balls
Source?

~~~
Taniwha
Not quite true (but not quite false either) - they have half passed such a
law:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/netherlan...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/netherlands-
parliament-electric-car-petrol-diesel-ban-by-2025)

------
JKCalhoun
Range anxiety ... any word on the hydrogen powered car revolution? Perhaps we
should move on _that_ one.

~~~
_ph_
Clean hydrogen production takes about 3x electricity for driving the same
distance, than directly charging a battery powered car. And that does not even
take the difficulties of transporting hydrogen into aspect. So hydrogen might
have a future for airplanes, but much less so for cars.

~~~
Symmetry
I agree about the infeasibility of hydrogen cars but I always imagine that if
you were going to run a hydrogen gas station you'd just manufacture the
hydrogen on-site taking advantage of the already existing water and electrical
grids.

~~~
Roritharr
Isn't most Hydrogen made from Breaking up Methane anyway?

~~~
ams6110
Fuel cells can run directly on methane, for that matter, but then there are
some CO2 emissions

------
theprop
Virginia is avoiding regulating self-driving cars to drive self-driving
vehicle innovation.

------
meri_dian
It has no choice. Kids are growing up thinking the sky is grey instead of
blue.

------
_pmf_
By all practical metrics using absolute numbers, it already does.

------
pepe_the_frog
As a potential customer - "Go China!". Competition is good.

------
youeeeeeediot
May, mostly with dependencies on who they steal the IP from.

------
godzillabrennus
Is Tesla relocating to China?

~~~
olivermarks
Very vague article.

Chinese production methods and quality - or lack of it - may be a defining
factor alongside domestic demand volume.

Getting EV's to mass production is very tricky, Tesla are striving to get to
profitability in what could be a make or break year.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-assemblyline-
idUSKBN...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-assemblyline-
idUSKBN17Q0DE)

~~~
Robotbeat
Every single year, people say it's "a make or break year" for Tesla (and
SpaceX, for that matter).

~~~
noonespecial
That's because every single year so far has been.

~~~
kalleboo
So far it hasn't been so much "make or break" as "survive or break" though

