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A Chinese electric car is coming to the US
- hawflakes 8y ago"Qiantu (the name is Chinese for Dragonfly)" Small nit. "Qiantu" is not Chinese for "dragonfly." "Qiantu" (前途) means "future outlook", "prospects", or "journey." For the record, "qingting" (蜻蜓) is the Chinese word for "dragonfly."
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- paraditedc 8y agoWas going to comment the same thing. I don't see how or why the journalist could come up with this wrong translation. Maybe we are missing something here.
- shard972 8y agoMaybe they have a few back tattoos.
- ximeng 8y agoThis article http://www.sohu.com/a/246081485_119218 http://www.sohu.com/a/246081485_119218 says it's just because the QT is shared between the company name qiantu and the logo qingting.
- paraditedc 8y agoThat explains it. In this case Dragonfly sounds more like a nickname rather than the official name. As seen in one of photos in the sohu link, the English spelling is Qiantu, not Dragonfly or Qingting.
- btilly 8y agoAs I pointed out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632319, established ICE car companies are going to find that their electric cars are facing a headwind because it is not in their dealers' interests to sell car that require less maintenance. So they aren't a real source of competition for Tesla. However a pure electric company that has established itself in another country, THAT can potentially give Tesla a run for its money! This will be interesting to watch.
- Waterluvian 8y agoIf the future is electric and there will be electric companies not hindered by having dealerships, it'll be fascinating to watch them fight to dismantle the dealership system and start selling direct as well. Feels like consumers could win on many fronts here.
- esturk 8y agoThe dealership system will be attacked from multiple sides, not just the electrification revolution. There's also the self driving revolution and online purchasing business model.
- wyldfire 8y agoAutonomous vehicles could likely bring about a new cars-as-a-utility marketplace. Why own a car when you can subscribe to a service with service latency guarantees?
- sircastor 8y agoVehicles are provided by the manufacturer, to licensed dealers in geographically exclusive plots. Online purchasing isn't really adding anything at the moment.
- icelancer 8y ago> Feels like consumers could win on many fronts here. Consumers will win on tons of fronts and a lot of dead jobs will be cut, and it'll be spun by a large contingency of people of increasing unemployment and hating the middle class more. That's generally what happens when actual pro-consumer stuff happens, and I expect this to especially be true regarding cars.
- cauldron 8y agoAnother PR campain, then the company can brag about "Even Americans buy our cars, what are you worrying about?" "Sold overseas" is like an honor badge, Chinese really buy it. US media really should stop this aggressive fearmongering.
- ToFab123 8y agoThere probably also an aspect of annoying Donald Trump in the decision to enter the US market.
- cauldron 8y agoAnd I guess not long from now, you'd be able to buy from Aliexpress EVs made out of Chinese back yards.
- cauldron 8y agoDon't know why I'm downvoted, Chinese car joint ventures has been ran for a decade but still Chinese can't design a decent car. EVs just dramatically lowered the barriers to entry, it's just "a car with a motor and battery", will people notice and even care the difference in 0–100 km/h time between in-house design and generic parts cobbled together?
- dis-sys 8y ago> Chinese car joint ventures has been ran for a decade but still Chinese can't design a decent car. such joint ventures have been there for 3 decades, vw is the first western company that started such joint ventures back in the mid of 1980s. they are not stupid, they won't tech you the know how whatsoever. the best example here is the fact that Volkswagen Santana was the only model built and sold by that joint venture between vw and SAIC back in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.
- cauldron 8y agoWhen the vast majority of people are on bicycles and don't own a car, Santana is considered a symbol of social status.
- aphextron 8y agoA car that doesn't exist from a company with no other products.
- steve19 8y agoAnd they are attempting to compete in the luxury market. Good luck in the short term with zero brand recognition.
- izacus 8y agoSounds like a Tesla?
- kwhitefoot 8y agoIn what respect?
- beerlord 8y agoEntering at the luxury market is a waste of time. Hard-to-pronounce name, and Tesla already has it wrapped up. A cheaper EV around $20,000 to compete against the Mazda 3 would be a lot more interesting, however. These brands all lack the Tesla killer feature - the Super Charger network.
- Brajeshwar 8y agoAnother Chinese EV Company, Xiaopeng Motors, is likely to launch their EV Cars in India this coming year.
- echevil 8y agoSo many Chinese car makers popped up in recent years. There're already NIO, Byton, Xiaopeng. Never heard of this one before. I wonder how many there are. :)
- xvilka 8y agoHundreds.
- AzMoo_ 8y agoThere's well over 50 that operate inside of China.
- ams6110 8y agoAre there really 50? Or is it 50 different brand names on the same two or three products?
- jpatokal 8y agoThere are around 10 major car manufacturers in China, churning out products under a constellation of brands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_China
- cat199 8y ago... yes, but can I buy it on social credit?
- King-Aaron 8y agoIf it goes as well as it looks, I'll be keen. Any new competitor in the electric car space is a welcome addition in my opinion so long as it doesn't flop into vaporware.
- torgian 8y agoThe dealership model is so crappy. You can go to a website and order a car, but you’re still directed to a dealer. Like Japan, you go to a dealer, and they don’t even have cars (or a very limited amount as just ‘show cars’). You order them custom made. I think these places make money, enough to pay workers and bills, because they are essentially owned by the local factories. Not by people. But I am probably wrong about that. Dealerships should only exist for used cars, IMO.
- Pristina 8y ago>because they are essentially owned by the local factories. And who own those factories, if not people?
- taneq 8y agoIn most of the world, corporations don't count as people.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoWorks for Bentley. https://goo.gl/maps/AYy65qfXnmR2 https://goo.gl/maps/AYy65qfXnmR2
- jonnybgood 8y ago> No Chinese brand has managed to break into the US market and establish itself as one that Americans will trust. Probably for good reason. My city did a huge development project for a new rapid transit line that featured electric buses from a Chinese manufacturer. All the infrastructure is complete except the buses were absolute crap and sent back. So we have all this new multimillion dollar development on a main street of the city and no buses.
- LMYahooTFY 8y agoLink?
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoI’m guessing Albuquerque? It was in the news a few weeks ago.
- ams6110 8y agoGP is probably referring to Albuquerque. https://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/art-buses-sent-back-to-manufacturer/5160241/ https://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/art-buses-sent-back-to-...
- zachguo 8y agoReading the news it sounds like it's the city being a dick.
- neuronic 8y agoSource [1] is German, so I realize few people will be able to read this without Google Translate, but I want to post this anyway: The Hamburg public transit organization "Hochbahn" has thoroughly evaluated purchasing electric busses from Chinese manufacturer (BYD - Build Your Dream) which apparently has 400k operating e-busses around the world. Hamburg has several transit lines which serve as frontier for operating novel technologies in actual service while keeping potential negative effects limited. They have actively decided against them, although these busses are available NOW as opposed to future European alternatives. Main reasons really seem to be complete crap standards and general lack of Chinese regard for the European market. [1] https://dialog.hochbahn.de/bus-in-zukunft/warum-wir-nicht-einfach-e-busse-aus-china-kaufen/ https://dialog.hochbahn.de/bus-in-zukunft/warum-wir-nicht-ei... EDIT: Hochbahn recently received their first European E-busses.
- newnewpdro 8y agoIf they deliver on a fast and light relatively unsafe EV, free of all this pervasive surveillance/autonomous garbage, at a competitive price point, I'm buying one.
- taneq 8y agoYeah, give me a decent-handling battery electric drivetrain and chassis that I can hack and I'm in!
- bschwindHN 8y agoSo why should anyone trust the software on these things? From the same news website: https://qz.com/1490376/chinas-electric-cars-are-government-spies/ https://qz.com/1490376/chinas-electric-cars-are-government-s... I realize there's little the Chinese government can do if you're not in their country, but to what extent do they have control over the car? The same concerns go for Tesla so please don't "what about Tesla?" me. I'm all for electric cars, but perhaps foreign markets shouldn't so readily accept 2 ton computers running software straight from China. How much analysis on the software can one feasibly do to ensure nothing fishy is going on?
- freshfey 8y agoWhen I visited China a couple of months ago we saw many different electric car brands and ICE car brands. We spoke with our didi driver about his interior (ICE car) that looked very similar to BMW and he said that these are actually BMW parts but this car could never sell in another country (I assumed due to the build quality). It looked like a normal car from the outside, nothing spectacular. However there are a lot of electric cars both on the streets and showcased in the malls that look really, really good. The stores are kept similar to Tesla and Apple stores, very minimalistic, clean and comforting. I think these will be exactly the brands that will make waves, once they fix certain issues and enter the Western markets. Exciting times!