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China's electric cars
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| Magnetonium |
A Chinese company in 13 years of its existence managed to achieve what the gas-guzzling Detroit Three ******s couldn't in a lifetime. While there's all this talk about rescuing Detroit's main automakers, who have long scorned environmentally friendly and sustainable technologies, including buying out and subsequently closing competitive technologies - as GM did well with electric cars in Who Killed The Electric Car?, the Chinese are smarter.
There better be no dam bailout - because the taxpayers are going to pay for something which will barely make a difference. GM and others for long have cared less about electric cars (f-ck hybrids). And besides, the unions are against the restructuring plan because the workers like the ridiculously high wages, and the companies have been from time to time very successful and profitable, as they are here today.
This electric car is truly magnificent. Sadly the big brains in USA couldn't get this, and as usual its up to oil-dependent authoritarian regimes to come up on top. Dang! :eek
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programm...ent/7779261.stm
Revving China's auto industry
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Cars leave me cold, but not the BYD F3DM. I drove it the other day, and it really is remarkable.
In one way, it is a rather ordinary compact saloon car, though it did have exceptional acceleration when I put my foot down zooming round the factory grounds in Shenzhen, the vast new Chinese city just north of Hong Kong.
This is a plug-in electric car, hence the acceleration, but when the electric battery runs out after 80 miles (128km), the petrol engine switches in seamlessly.
"Oh, just like one of those new eco-friendly hybrid cars," you may think.
But the makers argue that hybrids are more gas-guzzler than battery driven, whereas this model tries to be half and half.
And the makers? Well they are called BYD, a Chinese company which has been in existence for a bare 13 years, and which only recently started making any kind of car at all.
This new dual mode rechargeable car makes its launch appearance in China on 15 December, but BYD's Paul Lin let me have my test drive the other day.
And then when he showed me the company museum, he really set me thinking.
What is a business only 13 years old doing with a museum anyway?
Because the company has such enormous ambitions it wants to tell the world how far it has come and how much further it intends to go.
Rapid growth
Paul Lin showed me how BYD has evolved, starting with rechargeable batteries that soon became standard parts for one third of all the world's mobile phones, following the research speciality of the founder and chairman Wang Chuanfu.
And the modest battery making company grew and grew.
Wang Chuanfu soon saw that battery powered cars might be the future.
BYD knew a lot about batteries, and it was not daunted by the complexities of car-making either.
Six years ago, it bought two established Chinese car firms, and now BYD has seven huge plants with 130,000 employees.
The car I drove is made at the new headquarters factory - a giant one in Shenzhen, a city which was just a fishing town 30 years ago, with some 70,000 inhabitants.
Thanks to China's rush to modernise, Shenzhen is now part of the global manufacturing powerhouse in the Pearl River Delta, with an estimated population of 14m.
Wheel of modernisation
BYD's vast new factory did not exist 15 months ago, and they had to level several hills and fill in several lakes to create the site.
The workers mostly live in vast dormitories close by.
Like most of the Shenzhen workforce, they have migrated into the city from distant country places, moving from poverty in search of the fabled better life, spinning the great wheel of China's modernisation.
The size and scale of what BYD has already achieved is breathtaking, but that is nothing compared to its ambition.
This company has already made public its aim to be the number one car firm in China by the year 2015, and then - deep breath - number one in the whole world in 2025.
Despite my scepticism, Paul Lin had no doubt about this. The current fate of the American car industry suggests there may be room at the top some time before that date.
But to Paul Lin and the company he is part of, this ambition is entirely natural.
Car making is less difficult than high technology, they argue, and many of the techniques they have learned in high tech can now be applied to the automobile.
Remarkable endorsement
I put my foot down and revved almost silently across the factory campus in my (sample) new car, and wondered about the future.
As an exporter, China is going to be badly hit by the global recession, but already the best factories are evolving up the technology chain in much the same way as BYD has transformed itself from a supplier of other people's mobile phone batteries into a car maker with its own name on the front.
Critics say this is a copycat car, but that is how the Japanese auto industry started.
And in September there was a remarkable endorsement of BYD when even as global stock markets were plunging, the canniest American investor of them all, Warren Buffet of Omaha, Nebraska, paid $230m (£155m) for a 10% stake in the Chinese company.
Mr Buffett is a quite notorious investor for the long-term, not the quick buck, so he must recognise something in those initials BYD.
The company says they stand for "Build Your Dream", but they could mean absolutely anything.
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| The17sss |
The big 3 aren't failing because of "gaz guzzlers". From another post of mine a few days ago----> "GM and Toyota sold roughly the same number of vehicles over the last year, but Toyota turned a $1.7 billion profit while GM lost around $9 billion. That doesn't happen by accident." It's because of cost.
Maybe in a densly populated city electric cars would get some sales here, but it's just not realistic. Buying and driving cars with a limited range of travel would never fly in the U.S. Look what's happening in Britain. From the business section of the UK Times Online last week:
| quote: | | "Sales of electric cars have fallen by more than half this year, according to figures released two days after the Government's climate change advisory body predicted a huge increase. Only 156 electric cars were sold from January to October, compared with 374 for the same period last year." |
People here buy their cars for personal reasons... nobody's out there buying cars to save the planet, except for a small minority of environmental crazies. |
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| jerZ07002 |
| 80 miles isn't enough range to be practical in the US; many people live further than 40 miles from their jobs. anyway, US automakers previously produced electric cars but consumers weren't buying. California had an electric car initiative, but it failed for want of demand. |
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| Magnetonium |
Yeah, I see the points raised. Very good ones. Electric cars are not for everyone, I agree with that. However, the same goes with hummers. But the technology is developing quickly, and where electric cars has been weak before will get better. But if there isn't enough production/availability of these electric vehicles out there, there will not be enough innovation and development.
I think the auto giants shouldn't just shut down these electric cars simply because the demand isn't as great as other vehicles. Especially if they are not losing money at it. For now they are just coming up with excuses, like GM did in their California experiment in the 1990s, to shut it down.
In the end, I think the electric car is going to win (or the solar car). Fossil fuel cars will die out one way or another - either through climate change or shortage of fossil fuels. |
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| Magnetonium |
Note to myself: Electric cars are not approved on Ontario roads. That's why I havent seen one ever. |
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| jerZ07002 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I think the auto giants shouldn't just shut down these electric cars simply because the demand isn't as great as other vehicles. Especially if they are not losing money at it. For now they are just coming up with excuses, like GM did in their California experiment in the 1990s, to shut it down. |
car manufacturers are in the business of making cars that make them money, not making social conscious decisions. to the extent they overlap that's when car manufacturers should make those decisions. you can't blame a car company for supplying the demand of the people. The fact that car manufacturers didn't foresee the sudden drop in demand for what they were producing is entirely their fault and they are paying dearly at the moment. Electric cars, however, is not something for which there has ever been a demand. To produce an electric car that doesn't satisfy the needs of their consumers would be irresponsible. With that said, if they foresee that electric cars are the future they should certainly spend some R&D funds on improving the technology. |
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| The17sss |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
car manufacturers are in the business of making cars that make them money, not making social conscious decisions. to the extent they overlap that's when car manufacturers should make those decisions. you can't blame a car company for supplying the demand of the people. The fact that car manufacturers didn't foresee the sudden drop in demand for what they were producing is entirely their fault and they are paying dearly at the moment. Electric cars, however, is not something for which there has ever been a demand. To produce an electric car that doesn't satisfy the needs of their consumers would be irresponsible. With that said, if they foresee that electric cars are the future they should certainly spend some R&D funds on improving the technology. |
+1 |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
car manufacturers are in the business of making cars that make them money, not making social conscious decisions. to the extent they overlap that's when car manufacturers should make those decisions. you can't blame a car company for supplying the demand of the people. The fact that car manufacturers didn't foresee the sudden drop in demand for what they were producing is entirely their fault and they are paying dearly at the moment. Electric cars, however, is not something for which there has ever been a demand. To produce an electric car that doesn't satisfy the needs of their consumers would be irresponsible. With that said, if they foresee that electric cars are the future they should certainly spend some R&D funds on improving the technology. |
Point taken. Sad and unfortunate that the environmental issue is ignored - fossil fuel vehicles contribute to smog, health problems and the emissions. Environmentally sustainable solutions are often not the cheapest, but as the environment quality degrades over time, they will take precedence. Just like right now the climate change is a huge threat to the way of things and the system, the environment suddenly becomes more important than before.
So whether its more expensive or not, environmentally sustainable technologies will drive out GM's and the like sooner or later, unless they adapt. |
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