In China, It’s Already Cheaper to Buy EVs Than Gasoline Cars
In China, It’s Already Cheaper to Buy EVs Than Gasoline Cars
In China, It’s Already Cheaper to Buy EVs Than Gasoline Cars::undefined
They are far simpler with fewer parts. It is only a matter of scaling up manufacturing. The biggest cost is the battery.
BYD is closing in on Tesla as the largest EV manufacturer and most Americans have no idea they exist.
I was in China two months ago and the use of electric cars is honestly changing the feeling of big cities. Delivery motorcycles and service vehicles are all electric now, and with the number of electric cars on the road, streets are a lot quieter now barring the frequent honking. Less air pollution too.
What I love about Chinese electric car manufacturers is that they've fully embraced the cyberpunk aesthetic from the chassis design to the car sounds. Made me feel like I was walking around a cyberpunk movie set.
I just got back from a business trip to China also. The high proportion of EVs, particularly in the southern cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen really stood out to me, and many of them (particularly from BYD) looked really, really nice. They seemed less prominent in the more northern part of the country (e.g. Shenyang, Beijing), but even there I'd say they're more common than in the UK.
It was a real eye opener
What I love about Chinese electric car manufacturers is that they’ve fully embraced the cyberpunk aesthetic from the chassis design to the car sounds.
So, the Vaporwave color pallete?
What I love about Chinese electric car manufacturers is that they’ve fully embraced the cyberpunk aesthetic from the chassis design
I actually think Chinese EVs are quite ugly.
BYD has chosen not to approach the US market until at least 2030.
They're building buses in California. I drive by this plant on occasion.
I visited the BYD factory years ago. I have no idea how big it is compared to others but it absolutely blew my mind. I was up on like 5th floor and when they sounded the lunch bell it looked like ants out the window. I think they said it was about 600k employees in that building.
It’s only a matter of getting manufacturers to give the extra margin they’ve been creaming
Is BYD a China state run company?
Once your company became big, it is mandatory to have a state appointed party secretary on board.
So yes, in a sense BYD is state run.
It's not an SOE and like half of its stocks are owned by Americans. But the parent company got some government funding according to the US Congress, so the whole conglomerate is considered an SOE by America now. Sounds like trade war stuff to me lol
Are the US and EU late, or is it a deliberate business decision from EV car manufacturers to aim for bigger and luxury cars because they make more profit?
More than 80 percent of new cars sold in Norway now are EVs.
Which also means that all the talk in the US about EVs not being reliable in cold-weather states is just pure crap from politicians trying to protect oil and the gasoline car industry.
Yup. Car and Driver Debunks Cold Weather EV Myts at most you get a 20% decrease in the efficiency of your charge. And EVs are actually better at staying warm while idle/off.
They're reliable. They just expend more energy in winter time so you get worse range.
And over 90% if you count PHEVs too. Norway demonstrates electric vehicles are completely viable.
No one says they are unreliable. Thier range is just reduced in extreme temperatures. That's a much bigger problem foe the US than it is foe Norway.
China did to EVs what the US did to semiconductors.
The US and EU markets lack competition.
We're late. Our competition sucks (almost certainly on purpose). BYD is taking the slow approach to the US market - early next decade? Reuters: BYD Global EV Push
The US car manufacturers are going to take a protectionist approach to a shrinking market. They've already won this decade - everybone has a massive truck/SUV, no transit, all cars including EVs are an unaffordable luxury to Americans now after "inflation."
What are you going on about?
The US car makers (specifically GM and Ford) have been heavily pro-active on the switch to EVs. GM's Volt and Bolt were the first real entries into going electric-hybrid and then full EVs at a lower-cost mass-produced vehicles. Now GM's Ultium platform is easily one of the most advanced systems out there and will be the basis for future GM's full EV cars and trucks for the next few years. It is advanced enough where Honda/Acura are using it for their first real EVs (not counting the 1/2 hearted E which was so overpriced and limited in capabilities that it wasn't even brought to the US). Honda is so far behind, they had to have someone else design and build their upcoming EV Prolog and ZDX vehicles.
The Japanese carmakers are the ones dragging their feet.
The US has protectionist rules about EV grants - car must be assembled in the US to receive tax credits. It's why Teslas sold in the US are assembled in the US whereas Teslas sold in Canada are made in China. There are some comments that the Chinese manufactured cars are actually better quality. It probably also explains why Chinese brands like BYD are focussing more on other markets like Europe.
It's also because, despite subsidies, shipping costs for materials for EVs (and the necessary factory upgrades) are expensive domestically, but this infrastructure already exists, alongside a very willing market that does not have a political identity tied to ICE engines.
A little bit of Bud Light phobia, a little bit of logistics and retooling costs, and a little bit of government subsidies (of both fuel and ICE engines themselves at all steps of production) all comes together to prolong the life of the ICE in the US.
China is subsidizing EV companies crazy hard. They brought musk in with Tesla to steal all his tech and train their workers to do it too. So bonus points for exploiting Elons hubris and ego. He was going to be first American company to be a leader in the Chinese market without them stealing all his tech. Crazy it didn't work out.
The timeline doesn't add up. Chinese EV makers, including BYD, were building crazy momentum long before Musk set up shop in Shanghai (which was in 2018). It's only come to the attention of the outside world in the last couple of years when their EVs started to get exported at scale, but before they've been brewing this industry for a long time. BYD shipped its first compact EV domestically in 2009.
Meanwhile where I am in Canada, with massive amounts hydroelectric power: "bUt tHe gRiD!"
The dam electricity has to charge the damn car but the damn grid is inadequate ….
I can believe it. Massachusetts has been try to buy some of that sweet dam Canadian hydro - apparently there is plenty but no damn transmission lines to get it here. And the damn nimbies in Maine and New Hampshirite have no incentive to let us build Dam power lines
A certain amount passes through anyway, but how much water has to be let through a dam to charge a car?
The grid still has to get the electricity from the dam to the end user.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Since Tesla Inc. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. started developing the first mass-market electric cars in the late 2000s, battery vehicles have struggled with a higher cost structure that even subsidies and manufacturer losses haven’t been sufficient to surmount.
That’s come on the back of a price war, instigated by Tesla, so savage that the government last month induced automakers to sign a pact pledging to compete fairly and refrain from “abnormal pricing.” (The latter commitment was retracted two days later.)
Tesla’s Model 3, which previously retailed at twice the price of comparable premium mid-sized sedans such as the BMW AG 3 Series, is now the more affordable option.
BYD’s Dolphin, likewise, comes in about 5,000 yuan ($693) cheaper than a comparable compact sedan such as Volkswagen AG’s local Jetta variant, the 125,000-yuan Sagitar.
Just three years ago, Deloitte — in a report that was generally extremely bullish about the prospects for EVs — predicted this level wouldn’t be hit until the end of the decade.
Closing that gap has depended on falling costs for batteries, a process that’s been delayed as the commodity price inflation of the past few years pushed up expenditure on raw materials.
The original article contains 873 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
How is their infrastructure for charging?
Complicated, within the city limits is quite good, many malls have charger in their parkings and many solar charger parkings are appearing, however long distance driving is still not ideal (either no charging stations or charging stations are broken), people mainly purchase EVs as backup car.
What I question the most is how would you charge it if you live in the city. Most people, at least here, don't have a garage or a spot in an indoor parking, and just leave the car on the street or somewhere inside the blocks.
That for sure has nothing to do with state subsidies for EV manufacturers.
I wonder how this will be spun negatively against China in western media.
I'm from a country that has salty relations with China and I think it's good they're embracing EVs. It will push my own country harder to catch up and as long as it's adopted more sustainability than ICE it's good for the planet as a whole.
Lol you do not really wonder.
Oh no, capitalism does actually work and makes life better! Even in China!
