Git 'Er Done

[Greg.D.]

China Hastens the World Toward an Electric-Car Future

A driver waiting for his electric car to be charged at a station in Beijing. Already the world’s largest maker and buyer of electric cars, China is forcing the rest of the auto industry toward a battery-powered future. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

 

SHENZHEN, China — There is a powerful reason that automakers worldwide are speeding up their efforts to develop electric vehicles — and that reason is China.

Propelled by vast amounts of government money and visions of dominating next-generation technologies, China has become the world’s biggest supporter of electric cars. That is forcing automakers from Detroit to Yokohama and Seoul to Stuttgart to pick up the pace of transformation or risk being left behind in the world’s largest car market.

Beijing has already called for one out of every five cars sold in China to run on alternative fuel by 2025. Last month, China issued new rules that would require the world’s carmakers to sell more alternative-energy cars here if they wanted to continue selling regular ones. A Chinese official recently said the country would eventually do away with the internal combustion engine in new cars.

 

Already, China is the world’s largest maker and seller of electric cars. Chinese buyers are on track to snap up almost 300,000 of them this year, three times the number expected to be sold in the United States and more than the rest of the world combined.

The country’s market heft is considerable. China buys more General Motors-branded cars than Americans do. Even for Tesla, the still-small American maker of luxury electric sedans, China has become the second-largest market, even though China’s taxes on imported cars are 10 times as high as those in the United States. Tesla officials have said they are considering opening a factory in China.

A week ago, G.M. and Ford unveiled plans to add a combined 33 electric models to their lineups. Global manufacturers like G.M. and Volkswagen are also moving much of their research, development and production of electric cars to China. China in turn is pressuring them to share that technology with their Chinese partners.

 

 

[Randy W]

Anything that you can run an extension cord to and will get you around town will do just fine.

 

 

I don't count very often, but when I do, it seems like 9 out of every 10 scooters in Yulin is electric.

[Allon]

The country’s market heft is considerable. China buys more General Motors-branded cars than Americans do. Even for Tesla, the still-small American maker of luxury electric sedans, China has become the second-largest market, even though China’s taxes on imported cars are 10 times as high as those in the United States. Tesla officials have said they are considering opening a factory in China.

 

A week ago, G.M. and Ford unveiled plans to add a combined 33 electric models to their lineups. Global manufacturers like G.M. and Volkswagen are also moving much of their research, development and production of electric cars to China. China in turn is pressuring them to share that technology with their Chinese partners.

 

 

 

That about says it all. Put a high tariff on cars into China and use the buying power of a huge population to draw in the business, and the factories will follow. A self-propelling enterprise.

 

It all stops when that population loses its buying power and workers with the one child, one family dictum, stop buying.

[Greg.D.]

And, as far as I know, it's still a "hand over all your IP" environment. Can't believe Elon Musk would put a factory there, much less do research there.

 

I don't know if it stops only if/when they have significantly less buying power ... cheap labor and optional protection were a significantly large draw for many years.