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The main change that China is driving is the shift to electric vehicles - buses, cars and bikes. They already make and buy about have of the car EVs each year.

lazyjones 8y ago
Don’t forget to mention that they are forcing foreign car manufacturers to switch to EV in order to have a chance at keeping their market shares, by imposing EV quotas. This will likely do a lot of damage to unprepared giants like VW, who are selling 20-30% of their cars in China today.
- yoz-y 8y ago
  I think that this is a good thing in the long term. It's VW's fault that they are unprepared, and the writing was on the wall for the China's switch to EV.
- sveme 8y ago
  The VW Neo is coming out this year, and that‘s a far more relevant market segment than any of Tesla‘s offerings so far.
  - lazyjones 8y ago
    The Neo is competition for the Renault Zoe and Nissan Leaf segment, only 6-7 years too late and without the learnings from several iterations. Whether they will be able to hit their announced price targets, remains to be seen. But in 2020 they will have fierce competition in every segment, from Tesla to Hyundai and BYD. Perhaps they’ll succeed in the home market, but worldwide - probably not.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  China has a horrendous smog problem. Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests for years. It's not a market they deserve to succeed in, at least not until they credibly clean up their act. China's commitment to climate change is lukewarm, but they're all-in on fixing their air pollution problem. It's abundantly clear that internal combustion has a very short future in China. Western manufacturers need to face up to the electric future in a real hurry.
  - ShorsHammer 8y ago
    > China's commitment to climate change is lukewarm They met their Paris targets early, the US pulled out last year amid being a decade behind on meeting it's commitment and threatened the entire stability of the agreement by doing so. Most of the Western world isn't on target despite having lower goals than China. I'm interested in who exactly isn't "lukewarm"?
    - lazyjones 8y ago
      > Most of the Western world isn't on target despite having lower goals than China. This isn’t really fair to say. The „Paris targets“ are just global temperature goals, the actual emission targets were nationally (i.e. individually) chosen afterwards and very different, as well as being defined as „emission reductions per unit of GDP“ for developing countries while the US‘ was absolute. As a result, China‘s emissions will peak somewhere around 2030 while the US has to reduce emissions dramatically till then. Here‘s a visualization: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...
    - adventured 8y ago
      The environmentally disastrous Paris targets were entirely meaningless as it pertains to China. Using that as a reference doesn't support your premise. Their 'commitment' allows them to perpetually increase their pollution levels with zero concern for consequences. Nothing happens to China if they fail to hit their numbers. They get to dramatically increase their pollution output over the next decade and still meet the laughable target. Which is exactly what they're doing now, by going on a massive coal power plant building spree. It's entirely a fake voluntary system meant for propaganda show, nothing more. Simultaneously there's no entity capable of enforcing anything on China nor any entity with the ability to accurately assess China's figures either direction.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      I don't mean to be unfair to China - they're taking the issue seriously and doing some excellent work in developing PV and battery production capacity, but there are some real concerns about their broader approach. The primary issue is new coal power plants, which China is building at an alarming rate despite substantial overcapacity at present. The rising domestic demand for electricity combined with the huge increase in coal generation capacity is a potential timebomb in China's energy mix. https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/10761-China-is-building-coal-power-again/en https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/10761-China-is-building-c...
- erk__ 8y ago
  What makes you think that they are not prepared, they are getting multiple electric cars out this year like an suv in the coming months.
- werbel 8y ago
  Actually because of the diesel scandal VW is the best positioned "normal" car company for a success in EV market at this point. In order to recover their image they were forced to announce and actually work on full line-up of electric vehicles and their target is 2020. Even with delays that's going to be sooner than any other company. They've been working on the technology for quite some time. Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron are to come out this year AFAIR. Also those are EVs that actually look like cars and not kitchen appliances from Axiom (Wall-e movie spaceship) which is something I also think is missing from the market. I can't comprehend what the car companies try to achieve with the designs and separate models. Right now I can choose between petrol and diesel for my Golf, Volvo V40 or Hyundai Elantra. Just add electric power train to the offering and be done with it. I want EV for the performance, cost savings, environment or whatever other reason might be but I don't want any of the dorky design cues most EV vehicles present. EDIT: typo
  - speedplane 8y ago
    > Actually because of the diesel scandal VW is the best positioned "normal" car company for a success in EV market at this point. How can you so easily come to that conclusion? One could equally conclude, that they've cheated us once, and they'll do it again.

lazyjones 8y ago

Don’t forget to mention that they are forcing foreign car manufacturers to switch to EV in order to have a chance at keeping their market shares, by imposing EV quotas. This will likely do a lot of damage to unprepared giants like VW, who are selling 20-30% of their cars in China today.

yoz-y 8y ago
I think that this is a good thing in the long term. It's VW's fault that they are unprepared, and the writing was on the wall for the China's switch to EV.
sveme 8y ago
The VW Neo is coming out this year, and that‘s a far more relevant market segment than any of Tesla‘s offerings so far.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  The Neo is competition for the Renault Zoe and Nissan Leaf segment, only 6-7 years too late and without the learnings from several iterations. Whether they will be able to hit their announced price targets, remains to be seen. But in 2020 they will have fierce competition in every segment, from Tesla to Hyundai and BYD. Perhaps they’ll succeed in the home market, but worldwide - probably not.
jdietrich 8y ago
China has a horrendous smog problem. Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests for years. It's not a market they deserve to succeed in, at least not until they credibly clean up their act. China's commitment to climate change is lukewarm, but they're all-in on fixing their air pollution problem. It's abundantly clear that internal combustion has a very short future in China. Western manufacturers need to face up to the electric future in a real hurry.
- ShorsHammer 8y ago
  > China's commitment to climate change is lukewarm They met their Paris targets early, the US pulled out last year amid being a decade behind on meeting it's commitment and threatened the entire stability of the agreement by doing so. Most of the Western world isn't on target despite having lower goals than China. I'm interested in who exactly isn't "lukewarm"?
  - lazyjones 8y ago
    > Most of the Western world isn't on target despite having lower goals than China. This isn’t really fair to say. The „Paris targets“ are just global temperature goals, the actual emission targets were nationally (i.e. individually) chosen afterwards and very different, as well as being defined as „emission reductions per unit of GDP“ for developing countries while the US‘ was absolute. As a result, China‘s emissions will peak somewhere around 2030 while the US has to reduce emissions dramatically till then. Here‘s a visualization: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...
  - adventured 8y ago
    The environmentally disastrous Paris targets were entirely meaningless as it pertains to China. Using that as a reference doesn't support your premise. Their 'commitment' allows them to perpetually increase their pollution levels with zero concern for consequences. Nothing happens to China if they fail to hit their numbers. They get to dramatically increase their pollution output over the next decade and still meet the laughable target. Which is exactly what they're doing now, by going on a massive coal power plant building spree. It's entirely a fake voluntary system meant for propaganda show, nothing more. Simultaneously there's no entity capable of enforcing anything on China nor any entity with the ability to accurately assess China's figures either direction.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    I don't mean to be unfair to China - they're taking the issue seriously and doing some excellent work in developing PV and battery production capacity, but there are some real concerns about their broader approach. The primary issue is new coal power plants, which China is building at an alarming rate despite substantial overcapacity at present. The rising domestic demand for electricity combined with the huge increase in coal generation capacity is a potential timebomb in China's energy mix. https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/10761-China-is-building-coal-power-again/en https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/10761-China-is-building-c...
erk__ 8y ago
What makes you think that they are not prepared, they are getting multiple electric cars out this year like an suv in the coming months.
werbel 8y ago
Actually because of the diesel scandal VW is the best positioned "normal" car company for a success in EV market at this point. In order to recover their image they were forced to announce and actually work on full line-up of electric vehicles and their target is 2020. Even with delays that's going to be sooner than any other company. They've been working on the technology for quite some time. Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron are to come out this year AFAIR. Also those are EVs that actually look like cars and not kitchen appliances from Axiom (Wall-e movie spaceship) which is something I also think is missing from the market. I can't comprehend what the car companies try to achieve with the designs and separate models. Right now I can choose between petrol and diesel for my Golf, Volvo V40 or Hyundai Elantra. Just add electric power train to the offering and be done with it. I want EV for the performance, cost savings, environment or whatever other reason might be but I don't want any of the dorky design cues most EV vehicles present. EDIT: typo
- speedplane 8y ago
  > Actually because of the diesel scandal VW is the best positioned "normal" car company for a success in EV market at this point. How can you so easily come to that conclusion? One could equally conclude, that they've cheated us once, and they'll do it again.