To EV or not to EV: The China question

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

edatoakrun

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 11, 2010
Messages
5,222
Location
Shasta County, North California
The worlds largest Car market seems to have the world's largest BEV sales, but it has been largely out of the EV news (and often, literally, off the EV sales charts) IMO largely due to the problems of translation of market results in an economy within a state which exerts control (or at least, attempts to) over all information flows.

Some recent reports from Shanghai offer a clearer picture, of the confusing situation.

IMO, the Chinese government seems to have gotten at least one thing right:

To EV or not to EV: The China question

Automakers mixed over how to plan for world's No. 1 market


SHANGHAI -- China, with its central planning and government mandates, could be the world's biggest driving force behind the adoption of electric vehicles.

But as automakers race to comply with its increasingly stringent emissions rules, they are divided over what constitutes the best EV strategy in the world's largest auto market, and over whether the nation's government is sufficiently supporting its goal of more EV sales.

The mixed messages struck a discordant note at the Shanghai auto show.

General Motors and Audi were among those voicing high hopes for EVs in China. In contrast, Nissan Motor Corp. CEO Carlos Ghosn, a longtime EV champion, groused that Beijing's professed love of EVs has not been matched by consumers.

EV skeptic Toyota Motor Corp. raised eyebrows by announcing it would launch an EV in China this year. But executives conceded it was a mainly a compliance car; Toyota's main thrust for the rest of the decade would remain its hybrid technology.

Incentives

With massive pollution problems and scant domestic oil reserves, China has made going electric a top priority. It encourages EVs with subsidies of up to 55,000 yuan (about $9,000) per vehicle, and eliminated a 10 percent sales tax on some EVs last fall.

An even greater incentive is that EVs are excluded by the registration plate quota applied in China's eight largest cities...

David Lake, GM's director of public policy in China, said the government aims to install 140,000 charging stations this year, vs. just 20,000 in place last year. And Audi CEO Rupert Stadler said the government's plan calls for covering 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) of highways with fast-charger stations every 50 kilometers (31 miles) by 2020...
http://www.autonews.com/article/20150427/OEM05/304279963/to-ev-or-not-to-ev-the-china-question" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bertel Schmitt posted two reports on the Shanghai Auto show, both on his blog and at Bloomberg, giving you an ideas of just how strange conditions are in the world's largest car market, where the government's efforts to control information flows seems to have the effect of emphasizing brand appeal:

I typed most of this in the lounge at the Seoul airport, flying back to Tokyo on the cheap from the Shanghai Auto Show. Serious work from Shanghai was impossible, due to a Chinese firewall that is higher and sturdier than ever. And that was just one of the problems. Be warned that that this review of the Shanghai Auto Show has a lot about the latest rice cookers, and very little about the latest cars. For a more serious version, click here:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-24/china-gets-left-out-at-shanghai-auto-show" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

...The distrust of Made in China products runs so deep that well-to-do Chinese raise their babies on foreign milkpowder, brought in from Hong Kong. For their family, groceries bought at the City Shop imported foods chain are put on the kitchen table from Ikea. The appetite for imported good is so ravenous that Hong Kong had to limit milk powder exports to four pounds per person and day.

China’s tastes for cars reflect this. The roads are firmly occupied by foreign makes. Custom duties, and pornographic mark-ups, make true imports very expensive. Grudgingly, a foreign car is bought that is Made in China, but by one of the many foreign joint ventures. Eight out of ten sedans sold in China carry a foreign brand. With an indigenous make, you out yourself as a pauper...
http://dailykanban.com/2015/04/shanghai-auto-show-2015-no-babes-more-chaos/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What is the overview of Nissan-Renault Alliance's China plans, and what may have went wrong with the LEAF (Venucia) roll out in China?

The Frustation Ghosn has expressed with unimpressive LEAF (Venucia) sales in China may be in the contradictions between the Chinese governments directive that it be sold as Chinese BEV, while many Chinese BEV buyers might just see the Venucia nameplate as branding you as "a pauper":

The four brands within the Nissan-Renault Alliance are all converged in China and with a new factory opening its doors this year, CEO Ghosn says that the Alliance is expecting the Chinese market to be its biggest growth sector...

In the video below, which was shot at the unveiling of the new China-based Nissan Lannia at the Shanghai Auto Show, CEO Ghosn talked about the importance of China to the Renault-Nissan Alliance...

Venucia, the Alliance's Chinese-only brand, markets small, compact vehicles to the Chinese buyer, aiming for the urbanite transportation market as a small, portable, low-cost solution. Nissan is the Japanese brand, of course, and sells in the middle range with vehicles like the new Lannia being its main staple. Infiniti, of course, is the luxury brand and sells upscale vehicles (mostly crossovers) to the Chinese buyer who prefers statement-making luxury. Finally, the Renault brand, which would be in possible cross-competition with the Nissan brand, aims largely towards buyers looking for a European nameplate in a standard and entry-level luxury feel.
http://www.torquenews.com/1080/carlos-ghosn-talks-china-and-its-importance-renault-nissan-alliance" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
The biggest holdup to Chinese acceptance of BEVs, aside from the fact that they're just getting to experience the freedom that ICE car ownership provides (think of family roadtrips in this country a few decades or more back), is that the vast majority of urban Chinese live in multi-family housing with nowhere to charge. Tesla has had to frantically build superchargers in exactly the places they'd prefer not to, dense urban areas, for just this reason. The same condition applies in most of the world's urban areas, which is why I think Toyota is (rightly) concentrating on FCVs.
 
Given the crowding and lack of charging infrastructure, it makes more sense for urban Chinese commuters to use electric bicycles and scooters than cars.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Given the crowding and lack of charging infrastructure, it makes more sense for urban Chinese commuters to use electric bicycles and scooters than cars.
It does (actually, that applies in any dense urban environment lacking extreme climatic conditions, the U.S. not excepted), but any Chinese who can afford a car buys one, for status reasons if nothing else. No different from the U.S., for most of the car's lifetime.
 
In case you missed it, the surprise currency devaluation by the PRC has produced quite a significant shock to financial markets worldwide.

The article below gives you some idea of how much the vehicle market in China has slowed down.

There has been significant deflation in vehicle prices, and in BEV prices in particular, over the last few years, and IMO, China's apparent decision to export its way out of the problems caused by the weakness of its domestic market, could signal even more of the same in the future.

Among BEV manufacturers, Tesla is likely to be the biggest loser from the prospect of the worldwide currency war entering a new phase, as it has 100% of its production in the USA, and it faces a several unique problems should it finds itself in the position of needing to match the discounts other high-priced vehicle manufactures are making, to maintain its sales worldwide.


China auto sales slump to 17-month low despite price cuts

Devalued yuan threatens foreign automakers' profits


August 11, 2015 - 6:58 am ET

BEIJING (Bloomberg) -- Chinese consumers bought the fewest passenger vehicles in 17 months in July, extending a slump in the world’s largest auto market as deeper discounts failed to revive demand.

Retail deliveries fell 2.5 percent to 1.3 million units, the lowest level since February 2014, according to the China Passenger Car Association. A separate set of figures from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed passenger-vehicle sales declined 6.6 percent, also to a 17-month low.

Foreign automakers are facing slumping demand in China because of a slowing economy and resurgent competition from lower-priced local offerings. China's move today to devalue its currency by the most in two decades adds to the challenges by reducing the value of repatriated profits for multinational carmakers.

“International automakers’ cash flow will be impacted, no doubt about it,” said Janet Lewis, an auto analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. “The U.S. automakers would stand to lose the most, because they’re the strong currency.”...

‘Shocking’ discounts

“It is stunning to see how much profit margins dealers are sacrificing in order to sell cars,” said Luo Lei, a deputy secretary-general at the state-backed dealers group. The level of discounting is “shocking,” he said...
http://www.autonews.com/article/20150811/GLOBAL03/150819985/china-auto-sales-slump-to-17-month-low-despite-price-cuts
 
GRA said:
The biggest holdup to Chinese acceptance of BEVs, aside from the fact that they're just getting to experience the freedom that ICE car ownership provides (think of family roadtrips in this country a few decades or more back), is that the vast majority of urban Chinese live in multi-family housing with nowhere to charge. Tesla has had to frantically build superchargers in exactly the places they'd prefer not to, dense urban areas, for just this reason. The same condition applies in most of the world's urban areas, which is why I think Toyota is (rightly) concentrating on FCVs.

Building hydrogen stations in dense, urban areas is not easier.

Also, Toyota specifically is offering an EV in China (the only place on planet earth for Toyota), and as we have discussed, the Type 4 hydrogen tanks are outlawed in China.

Hence, no hydrogen for Toyota to concentrate on in China.
 
TonyWilliams said:
GRA said:
The biggest holdup to Chinese acceptance of BEVs, aside from the fact that they're just getting to experience the freedom that ICE car ownership provides (think of family roadtrips in this country a few decades or more back), is that the vast majority of urban Chinese live in multi-family housing with nowhere to charge. Tesla has had to frantically build superchargers in exactly the places they'd prefer not to, dense urban areas, for just this reason. The same condition applies in most of the world's urban areas, which is why I think Toyota is (rightly) concentrating on FCVs.

Building hydrogen stations in dense, urban areas is not easier.

Also, Toyota specifically is offering an EV in China (the only place on planet earth for Toyota), and as we have discussed, the Type 4 hydrogen tanks are outlawed in China.

Hence, no hydrogen for Toyota to concentrate on in China.
If you can put H2 stations at existing gas stations, it certainly is easier, because it doesn't take up any more space, and you don't have to expand infrastructure to get the fuel to them (although its cheaper in the long run if you do). As to China outlawing Type 4 tanks, that's certainly true now, although how much of that is due to real safety concerns and how much to the fact that Toyota is a Japanese company and the Chinese don't much care for the Japanese, I couldn't say. CHAdeMO wasn't accepted in China either. But if China won't accept Type 4 tanks, they may well accept others (at least, if built in countries other than Japan). Or, they may suddenly decide that Type 4 tanks are fine, once they can build them. But even if China is out for the moment for Toyota, that still leaves all of Europe, India, SE Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa.
 
Electric Cars Sales Booming In China

While much of the world's attention is focused on electric vehicle sales in the USA and Europe, China is quietly but quickly becoming a serious EV world with BYD leading the charge.

...the real EV line-up leader is BYD's Qin electric (plug-in) hybrid sedan with double the sales of its next competitor. The Shenzhen-based firm in which Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns a minority share, sold 30,386 units between January and November. Between the additional sales of their e6, which is used primarily as a taxi in China and South America, the company has racket up global sales of some 50,801 units. Sales figures for December weren't in yet, but these numbers clearly put it on a par with GM's Volt and Nissan's LEAF. They actually surpass Tesla by some 8,700 vehicles...

At its current pace, BYD already is on pace to become a global leader in the EV world.
http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=35069
 
China car dilemma: Beijing wants electric, buyers want SUVs
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-car-dilemma-beijing-electric-buyers-suvs-46836241 - published April 16, 2017

Automakers face a dilemma in China's huge but crowded market: Regulators are pushing them to sell electric cars, but buyers want gas-guzzling SUVs.

The industry is rattled by Beijing's proposal to require that electric cars make up 8 percent of every brand's production as early as next year. Consumers are steering the other way: First-quarter SUV sales soared 21 percent from a year earlier to 2.4 million, while electric vehicle purchases sank 4.4 percent to just 55,929.

Government plans call for China to have 100,000 public charging stations and 800,000 private stations by next year, up from a total of 50,000 at the start of 2016. Longer term, the government wants a network that can support 5 million vehicles by 2020.

I also found recent Chinese market EV/PHEV sales at https://cleantechnica.com/2017/03/29/baic-ec180-shines-back-normal-china-electric-car-sales-month-february-electric-car-sales/ and http://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2017/03/china-february-2017.html.

Last year, I posted some at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=468188#p468188.
 
Here are some sales figures of EVs and PHEVs in China:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/01/25/china-electric-car-sales-demolish-us-european-sales/

Someone posted this at work recently.
China builds world’s largest EV charging network with 167,000 stations
http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0906/c90000-9265487.html

Statistics show that SGCC has built 5,526 charging and battery swap stations and more than 40,000 charging piles since 2006,
Would be curious to know how many car battery swapping stations are actually in operation and which vehicles they work with.

In contrast, https://www.chargepoint.com/files/ChargePointFacts.pdf says they have "More than 39,000 total charging spots and more than 590 Express DC fast locations." https://www.blinknetwork.com/membership.html says they have over 4000 stations (I suspect many are broken). I don't know EVgo's size (L2 vs. DC FC).
 
777,000 Plug-In Electric Vehicles Were Sold in China in 2017, Including 600,000 Cars
https://insideevs.com/777000-plug-in-vehicles-were-sold-in-china-in-2017-including-600000-cars/

Plug-in passenger car sales amounted to 468,000 BEVs and 111,000 PHEVs – 579,000 total. The rest were commercial vehicles.
:eek:
In comparison, in the US for 2017 per http://www.hybridcars.com/december-2017-dashboard/, PHEV sales were just shy of 90K and BEV sales were just shy of 104.5K.
 
OT: Someone in a Bolt FB group posted
"60 Minutes tomorrow night (CBS, Sunday, 7 p.m.) features a segment on China’s electric car industry."

I found a 33 second teaser/preview at https://preview.msn.com/en-us/video/news/will-china-win-the-race-to-dominate-the-global-electric-car-industry/vp-BBTXs8t.
 
^^^
Piece was decent but obviously meant for a layperson. Looks like it's available for free at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electric-cars-chinas-drive-to-dominate-the-industry-60-minutes/. I'm guessing it'll end up behind a CBS paywall after a few weeks.

Some interesting pieces included Nio's charging trucks (coming up and DC FCing your Nio), the battery swapping (yes, Better Place tried this and imploded and yes Tesla had 1 station but closed that down) and the EV monitoring center they showed. That last part was interesting but also scary from Big Brotherish POV.
In Shanghai, China has built the largest EV database in the world.

Holly Williams: This is a map of all the electric cars in Shanghai?

Ding Xiaohua: Yeah.

Ding Xiaohua is deputy manager of the Shanghai Electric Vehicle Data Center, which collects millions of bits of information every day on nearly 200,000 electric cars on this city's streets.

Holly Williams: So let's find a Tesla.

Ding Xiaohua: So this is only Tesla brands.

Holly Williams: These are all Teslas?

Ding Xiaohua: Yeah. All Teslas.

Inside every electric vehicle in the city is a black box, automatically transmitting data to the center every 30 seconds.

Ding Xiaohua: For example, the speeds, the mileage, the battery temperature.

Holly Williams: And does that help the government plan for the future?

Ding Xiaohua: Yes, public charging points, how many public charging points? And where it is best place for the public charger.

There is nothing like this in the U.S. or anywhere else. China is paving the way for the electric cars of the 21st century.
The overtime piece, currently at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhpQ6TEGpZ8 talked about Nio's (owner only) "club houses". Interesting... seems like Tesla's partway there w/that.
 
Chinese electric car maker BYD's first-quarter profit up 632 percent, sees first-half profit up
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-electric-car-maker-byds-102852338.html
 
I posted this over at https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=30405, a thread that has been crickets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdQmiItrV4M&list=PLgawtcOBBjr8wFQ9p5mJIw-nsq_EXKBFi&index=9&t=0s was an 8.5 minute segment on EVs in China. They did mention that Shenzhen's the world's first city to rely only on electric buses. They said that city operates more electric buses than every city outside of China combined.

At 5:05 or so, they talk about BYD "greening" the city's taxi fleet.

They show this massive (LOTS of bays) charging area, presumably for taxis and the massive line. They said that almost all of the city's 22K cabs are electric. They talked to a taxi driver who said that he sometimes had to wait in line. A few months back, he waited an hour in line to charge and another 2 hours to charge.

After doing some Googling to see if I could find some pics, I found https://thedriven.io/2019/05/24/worlds-largest-charging-station-in-shenzhen-powers-all-electric-taxi-fleet/. Not sure if it's the same area.
An electric taxi charging station in China’s hi-tech city of Shenzhen has reportedly become the largest EV charging station in the world, as a second phase of construction adding 172 fast chargers to total 637 fast chargers was completed this week.
Unclear if they really are "fast" chargers, say over 20 kW. In China, they use GB/T standards for AC and DC charging. From what I've seen, their DC ports look similar to CHAdeMO but isn't. Their AC inlet resembles Mennekes Type 2 but w/the wrong gender.
 
GM venture's mini car becomes China's most sold EV, surpassing Tesla's Model 3
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-china/gm-ventures-mini-car-becomes-chinas-most-sold-ev-surpassing-teslas-model-3-idUSKBN25Z152
BEIJING (Reuters) - A micro electric vehicle (EV) by General Motors’ (GM.N) local Chinese joint venture becomes the most sold EV model in China, with 15,000 cars sold in China last month, followed by Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) 11,800 Model 3 sedans, industry data showed.

The model, the Hongguang MINI EV, is a two-door micro electric vehicle launched by the joint venture between GM, SAIC Motor Corp (600104.SS) and another partner, SGMW, in July.

The starting price for the Hongguang MINI EV is 28,800 yuan ($4,200), less than 10% of the 291,800 yuan starting price for Tesla’s China-made Model 3 vehicles before they get government subsidies.
 
Honda debuts electric SUV e concept, plug-in CR-V in China
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/honda-debuts-electric-suv-e-concept-plug-in-cr-v-in-china
The plug-in hybrid CR-V is the first Honda PHEV for the Chinese market, which doesn’t receive the Clarity sold in other markets. It’ll be exclusive to the Chinese market.

It’ll go on sale there in January 2021 and promises the “most EV-like feel” from its plug-in hybrid system, which is based on Honda’s current Sport Hybrid i-MMD system used in the CR-V and Accord.
 
Warren Buffett-backed Chinese car maker announces strong demand for its new luxury electric sedan
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/30/warren-buffett-backed-byd-strong-demand-for-luxury-han-electric-sedan.html
BEIJING — Demand for luxury electric sedans is on the rise in China.

In just over two months, orders for the “Han” line of electric cars from BYD — a Chinese automaker backed by billionaire Warren Buffett — have topped 40,000, the company disclosed at the Beijing auto show this past weekend.

The luxury sedan was announced on July 12 and will initially be sold in China. The vehicle maker said 4,000 vehicles were delivered in August.
 
I checked out the video at https://insideevs.com/news/451128/fully-charged-baojun-e300-plus/. They liked it. You can't set your expectations too high as it starts out at just under $10K USD.
 
Back
Top