
In China, an electric car lifestyle - prostoalex
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-china-an-electric-car-lifestyle-60-minutes/
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mmjaa
Just a bit of anecdotal side-data: I've recently switched to a full electric
transportation lifestyle, having replaced my much-loved Vespa with an Unu
Motoros electric moped .. and nothing will ever make me go back to a
combustion engine ever again.

Electric transportation is just so, so good.

Sure, the Unu is under-powered by comparison with its gas-guzzling ancestors,
but this is regulatory not technical (Unu's are soft-limited to 45km/h here in
Europe, alas) but electric is really the wave of the future. I get home and
back again on my Unu with just as much comfort as I did with the Vespa - only
I'm completely silent, and not woofing fumes at every stop. Plus, its
incredibly cheap to charge the batteries.

I think, once a few more people experience life on electric wheels, there is
going to be a turning point where the archaic gas-guzzlers _rapidly_ get
replaced with green alternatives. We already see this here in middle-Europe
(Vienna) - electric vehicles are becoming more and more common, and in a very
eco-/green- centric market such as Vienna, not a week goes by without seeing
more and more of these vehicles on the road.

If anyone is on the fence about it, consider switching. It may not quite have
the revs and torque of the gas-guzzlers, but the benefits - clean and
efficient travel - are worth the effort by far.

I'll ride my Unu another year or two, and then upgrade to something with a bit
more speed, maybe a Čezeta if I can get one in a year or two. Electric is just
so much fun, even at the lower-grade Unu level .. and even though it was
_cheaper_ to go from gas-Vespa to Unu, I still get a bump on the lifestyle
credentials. My friends and family are envious of the electric aspect, even
though the thing is nowhere near as performant as the old Vespa GTS was. (Yes,
I know Vespa have an electric variant now too - I'm gonna upgrade to Čezeta
though .. nicer style!)

~~~
jseliger
_having replaced my much-loved Vespa with an Unu Motoros electric moped_

These only appear to be available in Germany, it seems:
[https://unumotors.com/en/product](https://unumotors.com/en/product).

I wonder what the U.S. equivalent is.

~~~
taneq
I'm curious why they're described as "mopeds" when no pedals are visible.
Maybe they pop out or something but with that seating position, they can't be
useful for any serious transportation. I'd call it an electric scooter or
step-through e-bike. The equivalent would just be an e-bike.

~~~
gandalfian
The language varies internationally. In the UK I would call a small step
through scooter a moped. We don't really have the pedalled equivalent. I only
know this because i read this
[http://www.mopedtrip.com/more/worldrecord.html](http://www.mopedtrip.com/more/worldrecord.html)

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dev_dull
I’m most excited not about the cars, but about all of the battery factories
(hopefully) being spun up to meet the demand. 18650s are still relatively
pricy and challenging to get cheaply without risk of a scam. Once the price-
per-cell drops we can see all kinds of great innovations with batteries.

There’s some really cool easyEDA projects being designed that will let anyone
build a power wall for their home. The biggest cost factor is always the
batteries.

~~~
walrus01
As a low quantity benchmark, for building small to mid size UAV battery packs,
I am seeing the Panasonic NCR18650GA in small quantities for between $4.50 to
$5.00 per cell. From battery vendors I can trust to not be shipping
counterfeits. It's a 3500mAh 10A discharge rated cell.

[https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-
Pana...](https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-Panasonic-
NCR18650GA-3500mah.pdf)

I have seen unsubstantiated claims that Tesla now has the cost for the Model 3
battery pack below $100 per kWh. The details of which they're obviously not
going to give out for competitive reasons, though some rough estimates might
find their way into quarterly and yearly SEC reports, earnings phone calls
with investors, etc.

The interesting thing for me about electric cars is that a lot of the "car"
part is sort of a solved problem. A Tesla Model 3 or a Bolt or equivalent are
a totally acceptable small to mid size car. The manufacturers of these don't
need to do a lot of further development of the car to make it a good product.
What they need, and are counting on, is global economies of scale to bring
down the cost of building the battery pack of the car, so that they can
incorporate those lower costs (and greater mAh stored per cell) advancements
into their product, and then sell it to the consumer.

I have no doubt that in ten years from now 21700 format cells will be
significantly less costly in $ per kWh stored, and will have a greater Wh per
kilogram and Wh per cubic cm/volume ratio.

~~~
baybal2
On that front no small cylindrical cells can beat "brick" prismatic cells,
they are the only ones which can be realistically expected to beat $100
without material costs going down, in fact, they do so already.

Though... manufacturing of big prismatic cells never took off anywhere except
for China.

~~~
dev_dull
I haven’t seen a hobbyist with a large project use anything other than
cylindrical cells. Packs seem more geared towards RC etc. at least from my
perspective we’re a long ways away from packs being a better value.

~~~
walrus01
lipo are pretty much all prismatic/pouch type cells, and used for RC/UAV
applications that need high amperage draw.

nissan leaf batteries are prismatic flat type. not sure who actually makes
them.

------
__m
You could increase adoption drastically with the restrictions for example of
Beijing. You aren’t allowed to enter the city unless the car is registered in
Beijing. You aren’t allowed to drive on certain days depending on your license
plate. You can’t just register a car, but it enters a lottery and you wait
until you are one of the chosen ones. Though a lot of people buy two cars to
be able to drive on any day of the week, an electric car is probably cheaper.

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piokoch
This might really catch-up. From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as
many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is
important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the
reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with
rather high position.

This, in turn, is partly caused by the imbalance between man and woman in
China strongly in favor of man (so woman can be more choosy - times has
changed and it seems a baby girl is no longer a burden).

Plus, the market is huge and probably Chinese government will make sure that
Tesla or whatever foreign Nio's competitor will be in a much weaker position.

Social network restricted only to Nio's owner strangely resembles Facebook in
the early days - a social network for students from top universities - being
able to join was also a marker of "high social status".

~~~
helen___keller
>From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from
the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show
their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble;
having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position.

As far as homes go, it's more like homeownership is culturally considered a
prerequisite to marriage. Maybe the closest equivalent in the west would be
having a job, you wouldn't want your daughter to get married to a guy without
a job or the means to get one, because working is part of growing up.

Many well-to-do parents buy second properties to gift their children for when
they are ready to get married.

------
baybal2
I've been meeting William on all kinds of industry events for a very very long
time. For 2 or 3 years, the guy was running around every car expo, begging for
money, claiming to have a "production ready car" on podium, despite it being
visible that it was just a poorly done fibreglass mockup. When I took a look
underneath it, I saw that it had a live axle and a motor similar to one in
Chinese electric tricycles.

When he was challenged on that once, he allowed the guy to have a "test
drive," for which he had him sign a few pages long NDA, but everybody can hear
the fibreglass squeaking.

For the few, "fake it until you make it" actually works.

Some people with Nios around say that it is "not as bad as they originally
expected it."

Though, how he markets Nio is cheap...

~~~
taneq
They seem to have pulled it together recently... the Niu EP9 holds the
Nurburgring lap record for an EV at 6:45.9 which is a ridiculous pace for any
vehicle.

~~~
baybal2
NIO had more than half of its engineering staffed by unpaid interns at one
point (sounds unreal, but just google it.)

People should expect more from somebody who wants to have that "serious man"
image.

Yes, they _barely_ made it after burning through 150m cash and years of
"almost happened" launches, trying to manufacture it themselves or third tier
garbage OEMs, all thanks to that shocking naivety of their CEO (a yet another
Steve Jobs wannabe type)

It only happened when they got enough money to show to JAC for a joint venture
making ES6 and ES8. Before that, they had no chances really

P.S. NIO and Niu are different companies fyi

~~~
taneq
Wow, that sounds pretty sketchy. I guess it just goes to show how important
persistence is. The game's not over til you admit it's over! (Or get thrown in
jail or kicked out onto the street, I guess.)

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WhompingWindows
This article and the accompanying video are embarassingly bereft of important
details. Has reporting falling so far to having a pretty blonde face present
bland, undetailed content on what is an essential electrification movement in
a massive economy? In that 4 minute video, what percentage of the time
features the reporter's face vs. an actual electric car?

~~~
jshevek
60 minutes has become worse over time, I'm not surprised. Articles/videos like
this are good for putting topics on our radars, to investigate further on our
own.

The Wikipedia article isn't bad:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_(car_company)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_\(car_company\))

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syntaxing
I wish I can test drive one of these in the US. Competition is always good for
capitalism but I fear for Tesla and the implications for manufacturing their
cars in China soon with many of these Chinese government backed EV companies.
That being said, I find it interesting how there's a couple Chinese companies
that are on the US stock exchange. A couple of my friends was raving about the
NIO IPO a couple months back about how a Chinese government funded "Tesla"
cannot fail. It's weird how it's acceptable to buy a "stock" of a company
without really owning part of it, similar to Alibaba. The stocks on the
exchange is just a subsidy of the company that contracts to share the profit
among the holders.

~~~
mruts
I mean stock literally gives you a fraction of shareholder equity, which in
total, is Assets - Liabilities.

So maybe you don’t own the assets before the liabilities, but stock is very
literally giving you ownership in the company.

~~~
syntaxing
Not most (if not all) Chinese owned companies on the US stock exchange.
Chinese laws prevents the ownership of foreign entities on companies. To
circumvent this, most of the "stocks" on the exchange is for a subsidiary and
the stock holders has zero ownership over the company, similar to a C stock
for Alphabet. Alibaba for example, you are owning a subsidiary that shares the
profit in the Cayman Islands. You are not owning any part of the company.

