
China’s Electric Cars Hit Some Potholes - howard941
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-20/quality-issues-plague-china-s-electric-car-industry
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zaroth
> _For example, the most common Chinese complaint about NEVs is that battery
> performance on the road doesn’t meet what’s advertised._

This was actually something I was rather shocked with on the Tesla Model 3. I
never, ever get anywhere near the EPA range on ICE vehicles I’ve driven, but
in the TM3 I can regularly beat the rated Wh/mile efficiency.

With two caveats. One, if outside temperature is below 50F and I’m running the
heater the efficiency drops a bit at higher speeds and significantly in heavy
traffic (because heating is per minute not per mile). And two, even though the
electrical efficiency is better than advertised, the MPGe conversion is not
accurate because electricity costs are artificially high in MA.

~~~
Brakenshire
Think the issue with cold weather heating will be fixed by the introduction of
better heat pumps.

~~~
londons_explore
And actually insulating the car. Cars today are almost entirely thermally
uninsulated, which was fine back when gasoline engines pumped out kilowatts of
heat for free.

Having an insulating layer between the inner and outer steel panels and maybe
making all glass out of a laminate with the inner plastic layer something
thermally insulating would help a lot.

~~~
Brakenshire
That’s a good point.

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outworlder
> More than 40 NEVs spontaneously combusted in China in 2018.

I will be the first one to complain about shoddy quality control and
questionable practices but... this doesn't seem like a high number at all.

I mean, ICE cars will catch fire pretty often, but this is not news.

"In 2003-2007, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 287,000
vehicle fires per year. "

The ICE fleet is pretty big, but this also goes to show how absolute numbers
are worthless.

~~~
davemp
Are the ICE numbers due to collisions? I think there is a significant
difference between a car catching fire as a result of a collision and during
normal operation as `spontaneously` suggests.

~~~
davidgould
I have seen at least a dozen car fires and had the car I was driving catch
fire twice (same car, different causes), and none of these fires involved a
collision. Anecdotal, I know but that’s what I have.

~~~
yial
I’ve seen at least two car fires where the person was able to pull over to the
side of the road, get out of the vehicle... and then watch it burn while they
waited for the fire department.

I also one time had a minor fire in Jeep of mine due to a mouse nest.

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mips_avatar
If I was Panasonic or Samsung I would be very nervous about losing trade
secrets. China would give anything for their IP. With the same quality of
materials Panasonic and Samsung have 30-40% higher energy capacity than
Chinese BD.

~~~
howard941
Chinese manufacturers make it sooo attractive to send it all over there. Low
to zero up front costs including development amortized across so many units as
to be lost in the parts cost. It's only when you ask for the molds and IP that
you find out your product is not your own.

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gamblor956
Not quite the same, but related: China's BYD buses are also similarly poorly
built, and every non-Chinese transit agency that has purchased BYD's electric
buses has either cancelled or downsized their order.

LA's Metro purchased a few of them, and despite being brand new, they have
worse reliability than 30-year old ICE buses.

~~~
contingencies
{{citation-needed}}

~~~
gamblor956
(literally the first search result in Google and Bing)

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-
buses-201...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-
buses-20180520-story.html)

~~~
contingencies
Describes arguments around range in one deployment. A long way from _every
non-Chinese transit agency that has purchased BYD 's electric buses has either
cancelled or downsized their order_.

~~~
gamblor956
Even though its a very long article, it helps to read the entire thing. The
article references the Phoenix, Albuquerque and Long Beach transit agencies,
all of which cancelled their BYD orders as a result of LA Metro's issues with
BYD's buses.

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wil421
China’s electric cars look like golf carts with a plastic skin wrapped around
it. The don’t look like they have much more safety features than a road legal
golf cart in my state.

~~~
etaty
Only Americans need a tank on the road. Weight is a big problem when you want
to travel far. In a perfect world, the electric car is not the solution, we
should aim for electric scooter, moped, bicycle, ... for our daily travels.

~~~
rebuilder
Weather is a bit problematic with those. When you regularly get rain, sleet,
snow and freezing temperatures, you want a cabin and heating.

~~~
Knufen
I've lived in the US and understand the long driving distances makes it hard.
That being said weather is a non issue, I bicycle everywhere all year around
no matter the weather (live in Denmark). As long as the trips are below 10 km
at least.

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stcredzero
It's hoverboards all over again.

~~~
de_watcher
More wheels though. They'll make them work eventually, just like everything
else before that.

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andygates
Start with the shape and spec, then iterate the features and quality over a
few frantic generations.

Classic catch-up engineering.

~~~
stcredzero
Not catching on fire? Leave that for the 2nd iteration!

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Tempest1981
> By one estimate, there are “as many as 500” NEV startups in China

I would have thought that the US was the home of startups and Capitalism. Can
someone explain this phenomenon? How are they funded, etc?

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mlindner
Seems a market that is ripe for Tesla's entry into it with the Model 3. That
might be why they're getting so much Chinese government sponsorship.

~~~
sandworm101
No. Teslas, all of them, are exponentially more expensive than the average EV
in china. These aren't what we would even call cars. The average Chinese
electric car is more akin to a really fast three-wheeled golf cart. I'm
talking about the sub-$5000 market, price points that wouldn't cover the doors
on a tesla.

~~~
landryraccoon
> exponentially more expensive

Just a pet peeve, but is it a trend that people like to use “exponentially” to
just mean “way more”? Exponentially doesn’t mean what you just wrote here..
Exponential implies a rate of growth, the cost of tesla’s isn’t doubling every
N years compared to other EVs..

~~~
da_chicken
It's a rhetorical device like using "literal" even when something is meant in
figurative terms. Specifically, it's hyperbole or exaggeration.

It's one of the strengths of human language that we can infer meaning from
context -- from connotation -- rather than purely relying on denotative
meaning. By exaggerating factual reality of our statements, we imply the
strength of our belief or emphasize the degree of the description we're
making.

Further, it's important to recognize that jargon does not _supercede_ the
vernacular meaning of a word. Just because you know what "exponential" is and
how it differs from, say, "geometric" when referring to mathematics, this
doesn't mean that the vernacular meanings of these words don't apply any
longer. No, it doesn't matter that mathematics is the origin of the terms.
There are still valid, accepted, vernacular meanings. Understanding jargon
means you need to understand the context that the speaker is using to
determine what meaning they're using. Here, since "exponential" in the
mathematic sense is clearly nonsense, you should conclude that that meaning is
not the intended literal meaning.

Human communication is about conveying the overall meaning _in spite of_ the
meaning of individual words. Language is imprecise because thoughts, opinions,
and arguments are more complex and nuanced than the individual words we're
forced to express them in can ever be. After all, think of diversity of the
range of devices that can accurately be described as a "computer". Or how many
different types of objects you could describe as a "cup" or a "table". These
are common nouns for real, physical objects, and their meaning is fuzzy enough
to cover dissimilar objects made of dissimilar materials that serve dissimilar
purposes. And yet if I say to you "I put the cup on the table" you have
sufficient information to know what has happened even though you and I have
never met in person, we've never shared a conversation, and you've never seen
my cup or my table (and, indeed, the cup and table you're imagining in your
head almost certainly look nothing like my actual cup and table).

So, yeah, that isn't what "exponential" means, but that sentence is not
meaningless because of it.

~~~
thfuran
>Human communication is about conveying the overall meaning in spite of the
meaning of individual words.

That _really_ ought not be your goal.

~~~
Arbalest
All the poets, songwriters and comedians would have a collective heart attack
if they were told they needed to use language like that.

