China's EV Difficulties

Doug_G · Jun 7, 2012

Design News - Captain Hybrid - China's Electric Cars No Better Than Ours

If you follow the electric car market, you may have noticed a curious business phenomenon taking place in China. Leaders there are said to be scaling back plans for selling 500,000 electric vehicles (EVs) per year by 2015. The problem, it seems, is that the new breed of EVs are selling sluggishly.

Same old song.

I suspect that if you canvassed engineers around the auto industry, you'd find that many agree with the Chinese belief that it's best not to rush models to market. At this point, investments in basic and applied battery research might be wiser than funding commercial products. The reason for that is the same as it has been for 100 years: If you can't build a battery that's remotely competitive with gasoline, it's going to be hard to wean consumers from their internal combustion engines.

That's bordering on FUD, IMHO.

glong1044 · Oct 19, 2012

I was at a Nike conference yesterday and Tesla sent Troy Jones to be our guest speaker. He introduced himself as the regional manager and said he works with George Blankenship. In his speech to us, he told us that Asia Pacific was Tesla's largest market and that Tesla is looking into moving some of their manufacturing to China. Does anyone have more details on this? I'm wondering which city they are considering and who they may be partnering with.

vfx · Oct 19, 2012

glong1044 said:
...he told us that Asia Pacific was Tesla's largest market and that Tesla is looking into moving some of their manufacturing to China.....

If true, this would not play well in politically.

doug · Oct 19, 2012

If Tesla actually gets to the point where they sell in volume to Asia, then it makes sense to have some local manufacturing.

markwj · Oct 19, 2012

The China domestic market, even for premium cars like BMW, Mercedes, etc, is enormous.

I've heard rumors that Tesla will open a retail presence there (probably Shanghai), but not so sure about manufacturing.

bonnie · Oct 19, 2012

A lot of global companies will localize manufacturing - you skip all the customs issues, shipping costs, etc. While selecting China would prob be for cost savings, the volume isn't there yet - and in any case, I'd be surprised if they moved any part of manufacturing to China - more likely somewhere else in Asia. Just a guess on my part. You just don't move new designs offshore, where you can't make quick changes and evaluate first hand. Stable product, not requiring a lot of interaction with the engineers ... sure. We're not there yet.

markwj · Oct 19, 2012

+1 Bonnie: it's a volume and product stability issue.

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China's EV Difficulties

Doug_G

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glong1044

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vfx

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doug

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markwj

Asia Pacific

bonnie

I play a nice person on twitter.

markwj

Asia Pacific

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