The Electric vehicle car crash is a warning for Europe’s industrial transition China is so far ahead in the electric vehicles market that its competitors are trailing in the dust

Financial times ^ | 13th September 2023 | Helen Thomas

[Cronos]

At an event last week, a businessman suddenly pulled out his phone to show me his experience in a driverless taxi in downtown Beijing. In the video, a robotaxi impressively navigated a turn across several lanes of a busy road. Needless to say, the autonomous fleets roaming around an increasing number of Chinese cities are electric. The lasting impression, for him at least, was how far China has pulled ahead in the future of transport.

Those at the Munich motor show last week came to a similar conclusion. Germany’s biennial celebration of its own automotive prowess was dominated by Chinese brands, who were there in double the numbers seen in 2021. While European manufacturers showed electric vehicles coming to market in 2026 or 2027, the Chinese had cars ready for the forecourts. Gone were the shoddy motors of years past; these were quality vehicles for the European market. The sense was of an industry left behind. “It took too long to get the new reality,” says Ferdinand Dudenhöffer at the Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg. “There was a long time when carmakers said, ‘We see the issue of battery electric vehicles but we don’t believe in it.’”

The market is changing at speed. Almost one in five cars sold in Europe is electric. The International Energy Agency raised its forecast for EV share to 35 per cent of global sales in 2030, from less than 25 per cent in last year’s projection. The Chinese market, by far the world’s largest, is already there.

...

[Lean-Right]

Be honest and tell us what
setting you live in. Rural
or urban. Your answer may
explain a few things.

[cba123]

Urban.

Definately. Urban.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

We've a gasoline-powered sedan, and a diesel-powered truck. Older and regularly and well maintained.

Whatever is happening with "electric" transportation in the governemt-regulating halls has yet to land at our door.

Whatever is roiling the headlines to do with "electric" transportation is wholly without importance to us.

Whatever is going on in terms of marketing competition between brands and whole nations is not coming to us, yet.

I personally suspect that the whole "green" theme as regards electric vehicles will run its course long before the local constabulary comes knocking to confiscate our HVs. Hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles.

There is not enough infrastructure to power a nation of EVs in any nation. But there is MARKETING enough to make some people think there is. Rather like "blue hydrogen" which is acquired by burning other energy to capture it.

Everyone's got a breakthrough, selling venture capital on a "this" and especially a breakthrough "that." I think we'll top up the sedan at Costco this afternoon. And not read the Financial Times.

[Cronos]

I think electric vehicles have their place.

Not a complete replacement, but for drives within a city, they can be a better choice.

[Cronos]

AFAIK for long distances the Chinese prefer to use trains.

They have a population distribution completely unlike the USA - and more similar to Europe in the sense that they have a very densely populated east coast.

EVs (as I said above), are create for densely populated areas. For rural areas not so much.

[IamConservative]

Not a complete replacement, but for drives within a city, they can be a better choice.

Absolutely. My wife and I are retired and have two gas burners. I am seriously considering having one EV and one over the road traveler as part of my overall energy plan for my place. I'm also looking at solar for my all electric home.

[Lean-Right]

Thanks for your honesty.
Rual residents will
overwhelmingly reject the
thought of purchasing an EV.
There are ranches where I reside
that are 100 miles from the
nearest conveniences. Their
pickups are dented, under
maintained, rode hard and put
away, wet. But with a 100 year
olds fuel source, keep on chugging.
A Ford Lightning under heavy load
wouldn’t make it to the nearest
highway.
Besides all seriousness....
cows learn to recognise motor
sounds and equate that with food
and being fed. Throw a silent
EV in the mix and they’re gonna
starve to death.

[rlmorel]

What Lean-Right stated wasn’t a screed. A screed is generally (in current use) a derogatory term to describe a statement that is wholly based in emotion, negative in nature, and not based in fact.

Synonyms for screed are: rant, tirade, diatribe, harangue, polemic, speech, passage, philippic, condemnation, invective, fulmination, jeremiad, criticism, admonishment, denunciation, admonition, lecture, vituperation, broadside, reproval, tongue-lashing, reprimand, castigation, rebuke, censure, upbraiding, reproof, berating, obloquy, abuse.

All those are pretty defamatory and inflammatory in civil discourse, so, I wouldn’t agree with the characterization as a screed, I don’t see it as appropriate or useful. But that is just me.

As for EVs, I don’t doubt that an electric car is the choice you wish to make in your urban environment...and there is nothing wrong with that. It is your choice. (And it should be)

The discussions many of us have with disagreements over the utility of EVs based on performance, safety, environmental impact and such, are separate from the discussion of an “expensive source of energy from early LAST century”. That is a wholly different argument, that, even if they solve the issues with both battery safety and battery performance, DO NOT GO AWAY.

Even if they solve the battery problems of safety, weight, performance, environmental impact, availability of charging stations, and time required to charge batteries, those batteries will STILL have to be charged with electricity, and that electricity is going to have to be generated in SOME fashion.

And it won’t be with windmills or solar power.

It is going to be Gas, Oil, Coal, Nuclear, or Hydropower, all of which are “expensive sources of energy from early LAST century”. (Hydropower from even earlier, but you get the point.)

And that is only one aspect, that is, what process or substance is used to CREATE the electricity that is used to charge batteries in electric cars. The other key part is getting the electicity FROM the location it is generated in TO the area where a charger exists in the form of power lines, transformers, etc, are not even being addressed.

And THAT aspect is being wholly ignored as well.

Those two aspects, having the electricity generation capacity to handle hundreds of millions of electric cars, and a dependable power grid to deliver the electicity to charging stations, are not only not being addressed, they are being deliberately suppressed in the West.

In Communist China, the ChiComs are building scads of coal, gas, and oil plants to power industry. We are deliberately making it difficult or impossible to build ANY kind of new electricity generation, and the reliability our our energy grid is in poor shape. We won’t even spend the SMALL money (relatively speaking) to harden it even against a naturally occuring EMP event like the Carrington Event in 1859 that if it happened today, would DESTROY our society. We can protect against that to a degree, but we won’t even spend the money to do that.

Advocates of zero emission policies are setting us up to commit economic (and as a result, societal) suicide. And the real problem we have as conservatives isn’t someone like you who might rightfully have the right and the choice to select an extremely limited technology such as EV because it happens to be the right choice for you, but that governments will mandate the move to this choice due to outright lies such as “climate change” or envionmental impact.

The are herding us, using regulation and government mandates, as hunters once did swaths of buffalo, towards a cliff to force us to jump of by the force of the buffalo behind us.

[cba123]

Haha.

🙂

[LouAvul]

That headline must have been written by AI. I dislike that as much as I dislike talking to some Indian in Bombay for tech support who calls himself Roger.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”And you thought the Democrats wanted you to own a Tesla or Electric F150?

Sorry! No! 60 mile range... 35mph top speed...”

And now you have let the cat out of the bag!

You bad boy, you!

I like EVs, and loved them until bidon and his jamokes came along because they are destroying them and we will end up with clown cars; on a good day.
And ICE cars will be seen only at car shows.

My sister purchased a new Tesla last year, crazy FAST and she drives it every day even on the sub-zero days of northern Illinois.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”American workers are meanwhile, now on strike asking for 40% more in wages.”

And it takes Tesla ten hours to produce a car, just down the road also in Germany, the dominating and long-experienced VW takes a leisurely thirty hours to produce a car of lower quality.

Unions do not like electric cars.

RVN! Pomelos!... The dried/salted minnows you crumble with your fingers!!!... and use care with the sauces never the same from place to place and some are nuclear grade.

[LS]

Saying the ChiComs are “ahead” in EVs is like saying that someone is ahead in a bulimia contest. The ChiComs’ economy is on the precipice of collapse, and EVs will only make it worse.

[CapnJack]

Who care if China is “far ahead” in this electric golf cart race.

we have plenty of oil/gas to keep us going for a long time so long as we get the gov’t out of our way.

China can build all the EV’s they want and FORCE their people to drive them.

Companies need to build products that people WANT, not have some product we DON’T want forced down our thoats.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”There is not enough infrastructure to power a nation of EVs in any nation. “

And we didn’t have sufficient power generation when air conditioning came along in the 60’s.
Yet, it worked out.

Today and for a few years we have more than sufficient capacity, but not daytime in some areas.

The current peak capacity is twice the mean daytime load and the evening load is half daytime.

Yes, some big bumps in the road for the East and West coasts.

With networked EV charging systems, the load and your charge rate can be moderated and adjusted for time of use.

The biggest problem was just in the news.
Clearly displayed with a short road trip, like the famous one-car funeral.

“I’m from the government, and here to help”

[fireman15]

I like EVs, and loved them until bidon and his jamokes came along

You have unintentionally provoked a rant and prediction from me regarding this subject. I have been interested in alternative forms of energy and transportation since I was a child. I have tinkered around and built up electric and gasoline powered bicycles and added electric motors to four wheeled "Rhodes cars" etc... This has been a hobby.

I have also experimented with fairings and windshields for both upright and recumbent bicycles for additional speed and comfort. I purchased my first 3-D printer with the goal of designing parts to help keep the price of "velomobiles" down with the hope of eventually manufacturing and marketing them. All of my creations have been intriguing enough to others that I have been able to sell each of them and make a little money in the process.

Electric cars are typically ridiculously expensive and have limitations that prevent them from being most people's primary transportation device. Without massive government encouragement and subsidies they still are not a good solution for our society's transportation needs as compared to traditional vehicles.

At this point electric bicycles are becoming very popular. An unintended consequence of this has been a huge increase in "bicycling" injuries and fatalities in the last few years. This is partially because of a huge increase in distracted and impaired drivers, but also because adding an electric motor to a bicycle makes it possible for people with little experience to whiz around much faster than they normally would be capable of.

In my youth I was a nationally ranked champion bicycle racer. I rode approximately 10,000 miles a year and my skillset was developed from all of these miles on the road so that I was able to mix with traffic more safely than others without this level of experience. These days the roads are much more dangerous in most parts of the country and now we have lots of yahoos riding around at higher speeds paying little attention to traffic and traffic laws with predictable results.

I am not really sure where all of this is going. We are likely to see a large increase in affordable electric vehicles. I am not talking about "Teslas", or "F150 Lightings", or even fire prone Chevy Volts... The biggest increases are going to be in electric bicycles and scooters, and glorified electric golf carts and enclosed little electric clown cars. Most of them will be cheaply made Chinese devices with limited longevity and poor recyclability that will end up clogging landfills after a few years. We should also expect lots of traffic disruptions along with a rise in deaths and injuries due to poor compatibility with more traditional cars and trucks.

[sergeantdave]

The paid-off drunks at the Financial Times are well known for praising ChiComm Potemkin villages.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- "With networked EV charging systems, the load and your charge rate can be moderated and adjusted for time of use."

Please invest as you will in "green" companies. Please buy / lease EVs. We chose and remain with real estate, and drive HVs. Each to his own.

[DUMBGRUNT]

Living in an outer suburb of Chicago EVs are very popular with my neighbors, guessing about a quarter of them have one, not counting hybrids.
Most just go to the train station and locally, all are charged at home.

One I can see out my window put up undocumented solar panels for his Tesla 3. Even in the unincorporated county, a permit is required for EVERYTHING!

IMO that will be the bulk of the market if a-hole biden does not totally destroy it.

Charging is impossible in most of Chicago, many city garages do not have 110 volts, much less a 220 volt service.
Without a garage, any power cord would be gone before you get inside the house.

I really like my wife’s Prius V, she allowed me to take it for a trip last week and it averaged 58.8 MPG mostly on highways.
Guessing that the TCO is better than my sister’s Model 3 dual motor, don’t forget the added annual EV license plate charges... and going up, up and away.

[Lean-Right]

Well stated, and thanks.