8 ms·

In China, an electric car lifestyle

66 points by prostoalex 8y ago

piokoch 8y ago
This might really catch-up. From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position. This, in turn, is partly caused by the imbalance between man and woman in China strongly in favor of man (so woman can be more choosy - times has changed and it seems a baby girl is no longer a burden). Plus, the market is huge and probably Chinese government will make sure that Tesla or whatever foreign Nio's competitor will be in a much weaker position. Social network restricted only to Nio's owner strangely resembles Facebook in the early days - a social network for students from top universities - being able to join was also a marker of "high social status".
- baybal2 8y ago
  > This might really catch-up. From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position. The deemed "big problem" these days in China is that millennials are "not buying more than 1 house." And even bigger "tragedy" is said to be that richer millenials prefer to rent fancy apartments over buying... That used to be a very, very, big thing in the past, but then the phenomenon reversed almost overnight. I'd say that happened in 2017-2018. That "status marketing" is actually being counted as something very cheap these days. People begin to ridicule ones who buy huge chauffeured cars with small engines, and so on. That's something more for more inept middle aged people - the demographic niche that has been squeezed dry by everybody over the course of last 10 years.
- helen___keller 8y ago
  >From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position. As far as homes go, it's more like homeownership is culturally considered a prerequisite to marriage. Maybe the closest equivalent in the west would be having a job, you wouldn't want your daughter to get married to a guy without a job or the means to get one, because working is part of growing up. Many well-to-do parents buy second properties to gift their children for when they are ready to get married.
- dzhiurgis 8y ago
  Strange. I'm no expert in the field, but I always considered China to be good with money and save a lot. Meanwhile west race to who spends more, not who makes more. /shrug
mmjaa 8y ago
Just a bit of anecdotal side-data: I've recently switched to a full electric transportation lifestyle, having replaced my much-loved Vespa with an Unu Motoros electric moped .. and nothing will ever make me go back to a combustion engine ever again. Electric transportation is just so, so good. Sure, the Unu is under-powered by comparison with its gas-guzzling ancestors, but this is regulatory not technical (Unu's are soft-limited to 45km/h here in Europe, alas) but electric is really the wave of the future. I get home and back again on my Unu with just as much comfort as I did with the Vespa - only I'm completely silent, and not woofing fumes at every stop. Plus, its incredibly cheap to charge the batteries. I think, once a few more people experience life on electric wheels, there is going to be a turning point where the archaic gas-guzzlers rapidly get replaced with green alternatives. We already see this here in middle-Europe (Vienna) - electric vehicles are becoming more and more common, and in a very eco-/green- centric market such as Vienna, not a week goes by without seeing more and more of these vehicles on the road. If anyone is on the fence about it, consider switching. It may not quite have the revs and torque of the gas-guzzlers, but the benefits - clean and efficient travel - are worth the effort by far. I'll ride my Unu another year or two, and then upgrade to something with a bit more speed, maybe a Čezeta if I can get one in a year or two. Electric is just so much fun, even at the lower-grade Unu level .. and even though it was cheaper to go from gas-Vespa to Unu, I still get a bump on the lifestyle credentials. My friends and family are envious of the electric aspect, even though the thing is nowhere near as performant as the old Vespa GTS was. (Yes, I know Vespa have an electric variant now too - I'm gonna upgrade to Čezeta though .. nicer style!)
- baybal2 8y ago
  I'm ready to give away a really solid chunk of cash if Shenzhen will let me drive a moped here again (mopeds and motorcycles are officially banned in Shenzhen.) People buy Nius here and there, and have them confiscated regularly every few months. Niu is not ok for me, not as comfy as maxi scooters, nor fast as 150cc. If I will commit to buying a proper electric moped, I would like not to have it being seized every few months.
  - Tepix 8y ago
    Interesting. eBikes are ok?
baybal2 8y ago
I've been meeting William on all kinds of industry events for a very very long time. For 2 or 3 years, the guy was running around every car expo, begging for money, claiming to have a "production ready car" on podium, despite it being visible that it was just a poorly done fibreglass mockup. When I took a look underneath it, I saw that it had a live axle and a motor similar to one in Chinese electric tricycles. When he was challenged on that once, he allowed the guy to have a "test drive," for which he had him sign a few pages long NDA, but everybody can hear the fibreglass squeaking. For the few, "fake it until you make it" actually works. Some people with Nios around say that it is "not as bad as they originally expected it." Though, how he markets Nio is cheap...
- taneq 8y ago
  They seem to have pulled it together recently... the Niu EP9 holds the Nurburgring lap record for an EV at 6:45.9 which is a ridiculous pace for any vehicle.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    NIO had more than half of its engineering staffed by unpaid interns at one point (sounds unreal, but just google it.) People should expect more from somebody who wants to have that "serious man" image. Yes, they barely made it after burning through 150m cash and years of "almost happened" launches, trying to manufacture it themselves or third tier garbage OEMs, all thanks to that shocking naivety of their CEO (a yet another Steve Jobs wannabe type) It only happened when they got enough money to show to JAC for a joint venture making ES6 and ES8. Before that, they had no chances really P.S. NIO and Niu are different companies fyi
    - taneq 8y ago
      Wow, that sounds pretty sketchy. I guess it just goes to show how important persistence is. The game's not over til you admit it's over! (Or get thrown in jail or kicked out onto the street, I guess.)
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
Proven 8y ago
State subsidies to local and electric manufacturers by way of taxation and unjust redistribution, check. Formal and informal import barriers to better quality foreign IAC and other cars, check. Cheap coal without environmental protections with healt tax on nearby population, check. All of the above is unavoidable. One might as well throw in the towel and buy a frikkin China-made electric car. Clueless MSM celebration of central planning, command economy and statewide coercion, check.
syntaxing 8y ago
I wish I can test drive one of these in the US. Competition is always good for capitalism but I fear for Tesla and the implications for manufacturing their cars in China soon with many of these Chinese government backed EV companies. That being said, I find it interesting how there's a couple Chinese companies that are on the US stock exchange. A couple of my friends was raving about the NIO IPO a couple months back about how a Chinese government funded "Tesla" cannot fail. It's weird how it's acceptable to buy a "stock" of a company without really owning part of it, similar to Alibaba. The stocks on the exchange is just a subsidy of the company that contracts to share the profit among the holders.
- mruts 8y ago
  I mean stock literally gives you a fraction of shareholder equity, which in total, is Assets - Liabilities. So maybe you don’t own the assets before the liabilities, but stock is very literally giving you ownership in the company.
  - syntaxing 8y ago
    Not most (if not all) Chinese owned companies on the US stock exchange. Chinese laws prevents the ownership of foreign entities on companies. To circumvent this, most of the "stocks" on the exchange is for a subsidiary and the stock holders has zero ownership over the company, similar to a C stock for Alphabet. Alibaba for example, you are owning a subsidiary that shares the profit in the Cayman Islands. You are not owning any part of the company.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
This article and the accompanying video are embarassingly bereft of important details. Has reporting falling so far to having a pretty blonde face present bland, undetailed content on what is an essential electrification movement in a massive economy? In that 4 minute video, what percentage of the time features the reporter's face vs. an actual electric car?
- youeseh 8y ago
  I only watched the video. Seemed like it it hit the major points well. I've seen videos where a reporter is trying to make a story all about them and this wasn't one of them.
- jshevek 8y ago
  60 minutes has become worse over time, I'm not surprised. Articles/videos like this are good for putting topics on our radars, to investigate further on our own. The Wikipedia article isn't bad: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_(car_company) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_(car_company)
dev_dull 8y ago
I’m most excited not about the cars, but about all of the battery factories (hopefully) being spun up to meet the demand. 18650s are still relatively pricy and challenging to get cheaply without risk of a scam. Once the price-per-cell drops we can see all kinds of great innovations with batteries. There’s some really cool easyEDA projects being designed that will let anyone build a power wall for their home. The biggest cost factor is always the batteries.
- walrus01 8y ago
  As a low quantity benchmark, for building small to mid size UAV battery packs, I am seeing the Panasonic NCR18650GA in small quantities for between $4.50 to $5.00 per cell. From battery vendors I can trust to not be shipping counterfeits. It's a 3500mAh 10A discharge rated cell. https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-Panasonic-NCR18650GA-3500mah.pdf https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-Pana... I have seen unsubstantiated claims that Tesla now has the cost for the Model 3 battery pack below $100 per kWh. The details of which they're obviously not going to give out for competitive reasons, though some rough estimates might find their way into quarterly and yearly SEC reports, earnings phone calls with investors, etc. The interesting thing for me about electric cars is that a lot of the "car" part is sort of a solved problem. A Tesla Model 3 or a Bolt or equivalent are a totally acceptable small to mid size car. The manufacturers of these don't need to do a lot of further development of the car to make it a good product. What they need, and are counting on, is global economies of scale to bring down the cost of building the battery pack of the car, so that they can incorporate those lower costs (and greater mAh stored per cell) advancements into their product, and then sell it to the consumer. I have no doubt that in ten years from now 21700 format cells will be significantly less costly in $ per kWh stored, and will have a greater Wh per kilogram and Wh per cubic cm/volume ratio.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    On that front no small cylindrical cells can beat "brick" prismatic cells, they are the only ones which can be realistically expected to beat $100 without material costs going down, in fact, they do so already. Though... manufacturing of big prismatic cells never took off anywhere except for China.
__m 8y ago
You could increase adoption drastically with the restrictions for example of Beijing. You aren’t allowed to enter the city unless the car is registered in Beijing. You aren’t allowed to drive on certain days depending on your license plate. You can’t just register a car, but it enters a lottery and you wait until you are one of the chosen ones. Though a lot of people buy two cars to be able to drive on any day of the week, an electric car is probably cheaper.

66 points by prostoalex 8y ago

This might really catch-up. From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position. This, in turn, is partly caused by the imbalance between man and woman in China strongly in favor of man (so woman can be more choosy - times has changed and it seems a baby girl is no longer a burden). Plus, the market is huge and probably Chinese government will make sure that Tesla or whatever foreign Nio's competitor will be in a much weaker position. Social network restricted only to Nio's owner strangely resembles Facebook in the early days - a social network for students from top universities - being able to join was also a marker of "high social status".

baybal2 8y ago
> This might really catch-up. From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position. The deemed "big problem" these days in China is that millennials are "not buying more than 1 house." And even bigger "tragedy" is said to be that richer millenials prefer to rent fancy apartments over buying... That used to be a very, very, big thing in the past, but then the phenomenon reversed almost overnight. I'd say that happened in 2017-2018. That "status marketing" is actually being counted as something very cheap these days. People begin to ridicule ones who buy huge chauffeured cars with small engines, and so on. That's something more for more inept middle aged people - the demographic niche that has been squeezed dry by everybody over the course of last 10 years.
helen___keller 8y ago
>From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position. As far as homes go, it's more like homeownership is culturally considered a prerequisite to marriage. Maybe the closest equivalent in the west would be having a job, you wouldn't want your daughter to get married to a guy without a job or the means to get one, because working is part of growing up. Many well-to-do parents buy second properties to gift their children for when they are ready to get married.
dzhiurgis 8y ago
Strange. I'm no expert in the field, but I always considered China to be good with money and save a lot. Meanwhile west race to who spends more, not who makes more. /shrug

mmjaa 8y ago

Just a bit of anecdotal side-data: I've recently switched to a full electric transportation lifestyle, having replaced my much-loved Vespa with an Unu Motoros electric moped .. and nothing will ever make me go back to a combustion engine ever again. Electric transportation is just so, so good. Sure, the Unu is under-powered by comparison with its gas-guzzling ancestors, but this is regulatory not technical (Unu's are soft-limited to 45km/h here in Europe, alas) but electric is really the wave of the future. I get home and back again on my Unu with just as much comfort as I did with the Vespa - only I'm completely silent, and not woofing fumes at every stop. Plus, its incredibly cheap to charge the batteries. I think, once a few more people experience life on electric wheels, there is going to be a turning point where the archaic gas-guzzlers rapidly get replaced with green alternatives. We already see this here in middle-Europe (Vienna) - electric vehicles are becoming more and more common, and in a very eco-/green- centric market such as Vienna, not a week goes by without seeing more and more of these vehicles on the road. If anyone is on the fence about it, consider switching. It may not quite have the revs and torque of the gas-guzzlers, but the benefits - clean and efficient travel - are worth the effort by far. I'll ride my Unu another year or two, and then upgrade to something with a bit more speed, maybe a Čezeta if I can get one in a year or two. Electric is just so much fun, even at the lower-grade Unu level .. and even though it was cheaper to go from gas-Vespa to Unu, I still get a bump on the lifestyle credentials. My friends and family are envious of the electric aspect, even though the thing is nowhere near as performant as the old Vespa GTS was. (Yes, I know Vespa have an electric variant now too - I'm gonna upgrade to Čezeta though .. nicer style!)

baybal2 8y ago
I'm ready to give away a really solid chunk of cash if Shenzhen will let me drive a moped here again (mopeds and motorcycles are officially banned in Shenzhen.) People buy Nius here and there, and have them confiscated regularly every few months. Niu is not ok for me, not as comfy as maxi scooters, nor fast as 150cc. If I will commit to buying a proper electric moped, I would like not to have it being seized every few months.
- Tepix 8y ago
  Interesting. eBikes are ok?

baybal2 8y ago

I've been meeting William on all kinds of industry events for a very very long time. For 2 or 3 years, the guy was running around every car expo, begging for money, claiming to have a "production ready car" on podium, despite it being visible that it was just a poorly done fibreglass mockup. When I took a look underneath it, I saw that it had a live axle and a motor similar to one in Chinese electric tricycles. When he was challenged on that once, he allowed the guy to have a "test drive," for which he had him sign a few pages long NDA, but everybody can hear the fibreglass squeaking. For the few, "fake it until you make it" actually works. Some people with Nios around say that it is "not as bad as they originally expected it." Though, how he markets Nio is cheap...

taneq 8y ago
They seem to have pulled it together recently... the Niu EP9 holds the Nurburgring lap record for an EV at 6:45.9 which is a ridiculous pace for any vehicle.
- baybal2 8y ago
  NIO had more than half of its engineering staffed by unpaid interns at one point (sounds unreal, but just google it.) People should expect more from somebody who wants to have that "serious man" image. Yes, they barely made it after burning through 150m cash and years of "almost happened" launches, trying to manufacture it themselves or third tier garbage OEMs, all thanks to that shocking naivety of their CEO (a yet another Steve Jobs wannabe type) It only happened when they got enough money to show to JAC for a joint venture making ES6 and ES8. Before that, they had no chances really P.S. NIO and Niu are different companies fyi
  - taneq 8y ago
    Wow, that sounds pretty sketchy. I guess it just goes to show how important persistence is. The game's not over til you admit it's over! (Or get thrown in jail or kicked out onto the street, I guess.)
- WorldMaker 8y ago

Proven 8y ago

State subsidies to local and electric manufacturers by way of taxation and unjust redistribution, check. Formal and informal import barriers to better quality foreign IAC and other cars, check. Cheap coal without environmental protections with healt tax on nearby population, check. All of the above is unavoidable. One might as well throw in the towel and buy a frikkin China-made electric car. Clueless MSM celebration of central planning, command economy and statewide coercion, check.

syntaxing 8y ago

I wish I can test drive one of these in the US. Competition is always good for capitalism but I fear for Tesla and the implications for manufacturing their cars in China soon with many of these Chinese government backed EV companies. That being said, I find it interesting how there's a couple Chinese companies that are on the US stock exchange. A couple of my friends was raving about the NIO IPO a couple months back about how a Chinese government funded "Tesla" cannot fail. It's weird how it's acceptable to buy a "stock" of a company without really owning part of it, similar to Alibaba. The stocks on the exchange is just a subsidy of the company that contracts to share the profit among the holders.

mruts 8y ago
I mean stock literally gives you a fraction of shareholder equity, which in total, is Assets - Liabilities. So maybe you don’t own the assets before the liabilities, but stock is very literally giving you ownership in the company.
- syntaxing 8y ago
  Not most (if not all) Chinese owned companies on the US stock exchange. Chinese laws prevents the ownership of foreign entities on companies. To circumvent this, most of the "stocks" on the exchange is for a subsidiary and the stock holders has zero ownership over the company, similar to a C stock for Alphabet. Alibaba for example, you are owning a subsidiary that shares the profit in the Cayman Islands. You are not owning any part of the company.

WhompingWindows 8y ago

This article and the accompanying video are embarassingly bereft of important details. Has reporting falling so far to having a pretty blonde face present bland, undetailed content on what is an essential electrification movement in a massive economy? In that 4 minute video, what percentage of the time features the reporter's face vs. an actual electric car?

youeseh 8y ago
I only watched the video. Seemed like it it hit the major points well. I've seen videos where a reporter is trying to make a story all about them and this wasn't one of them.
jshevek 8y ago
60 minutes has become worse over time, I'm not surprised. Articles/videos like this are good for putting topics on our radars, to investigate further on our own. The Wikipedia article isn't bad: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_(car_company) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_(car_company)

dev_dull 8y ago

I’m most excited not about the cars, but about all of the battery factories (hopefully) being spun up to meet the demand. 18650s are still relatively pricy and challenging to get cheaply without risk of a scam. Once the price-per-cell drops we can see all kinds of great innovations with batteries. There’s some really cool easyEDA projects being designed that will let anyone build a power wall for their home. The biggest cost factor is always the batteries.

walrus01 8y ago
As a low quantity benchmark, for building small to mid size UAV battery packs, I am seeing the Panasonic NCR18650GA in small quantities for between $4.50 to $5.00 per cell. From battery vendors I can trust to not be shipping counterfeits. It's a 3500mAh 10A discharge rated cell. https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-Panasonic-NCR18650GA-3500mah.pdf https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-Pana... I have seen unsubstantiated claims that Tesla now has the cost for the Model 3 battery pack below $100 per kWh. The details of which they're obviously not going to give out for competitive reasons, though some rough estimates might find their way into quarterly and yearly SEC reports, earnings phone calls with investors, etc. The interesting thing for me about electric cars is that a lot of the "car" part is sort of a solved problem. A Tesla Model 3 or a Bolt or equivalent are a totally acceptable small to mid size car. The manufacturers of these don't need to do a lot of further development of the car to make it a good product. What they need, and are counting on, is global economies of scale to bring down the cost of building the battery pack of the car, so that they can incorporate those lower costs (and greater mAh stored per cell) advancements into their product, and then sell it to the consumer. I have no doubt that in ten years from now 21700 format cells will be significantly less costly in $ per kWh stored, and will have a greater Wh per kilogram and Wh per cubic cm/volume ratio.
- baybal2 8y ago
  On that front no small cylindrical cells can beat "brick" prismatic cells, they are the only ones which can be realistically expected to beat $100 without material costs going down, in fact, they do so already. Though... manufacturing of big prismatic cells never took off anywhere except for China.

__m 8y ago

You could increase adoption drastically with the restrictions for example of Beijing. You aren’t allowed to enter the city unless the car is registered in Beijing. You aren’t allowed to drive on certain days depending on your license plate. You can’t just register a car, but it enters a lottery and you wait until you are one of the chosen ones. Though a lot of people buy two cars to be able to drive on any day of the week, an electric car is probably cheaper.