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Shanghai's Automotive Metamorphosis

82 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

underlipton 2y ago
They're going to eat our lunch because we let our legacy ICE vehicle manufacturers dictate the terms of the shift to electric. We have to be better about identifying economic developments that are likely to be concerns for domestic stability and national security, and not let greed and fear in the corporate class stop us from making the necessary changes. Another arena where we've already lost, in a sense, and will need to play hardball catch-up is healthcare: other countries have a more stable and hour-for-hour productive workforce because their workers can get preventative care and treatment for illnesses quickly and without a fuss. If we have to trash the medical insurance industry to reach parity with our peers, so be it.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Where are you seeing the US is a laggard in hour by hour productivity? The US is the best large country at this, coming in at #6 or #13 depending on the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity#List_(Our_World_in_Data) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_pr...
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    Hm, that's measuring everyone against the same dollar; Americans are productive by this measure because everything is expensive. I wonder if there are other benchmarks for productivity, adjusted for local market basket.
    - gottorf 2y ago
      The source claims that the figures are measured in the "international dollar", which is adjusted for purchasing power in different countries.
    - toberoni 2y ago
      The numbers are in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) USD so they already measure how many goods in the local market basket can be bought per working hour (on average, as these GDP numbers don’t account for income or wealth distribution).
      - roenxi 2y ago
        For healthcare it might be getting to the point where the numbers are nearly incomparable. PPP seems like it'd be more inappropriate than usual for measuring a particular industry. US healthcare is known to be quirky. Although there doesn't seem to be any obvious evidence here that the US could be lagging behind. Per-person the US is still a bit of a productivity outlier to the upside. When they aren't legislatively restrained they tend to work hard and in an organised way.
  - rich_sasha 2y ago
    I guess that's measured off the entire GDP, divided by the whole working population? I would imagine most of US's GDP comes from services and finance, not manufacturing. Also if the US makes very expensive widgets, but can't make cars cheaply, it would still show up as high worker productivity. It's not really the same as engineering efficiency per (PPP) dollar.
- gottorf 2y ago
  > we let our legacy ICE vehicle manufacturers dictate the terms of the shift to electric Is that true? There was a policy push here to sell EVs, though there of course is continuing debate about what the magnitude of that push should be. The market so far in the US has spoken against greater adoption of EVs, for various reasons. OP's article doesn't mention or discuss two very salient factors: one, that EV use in Shanghai is massively subsidized, both at the point of sale (EVs are free to register, whereas ICE vehicle registration starts at $15k) as well as to the producers; and two, whether such a subsidy is in fact for the long-term benefit of the public. > other countries have a more stable and hour-for-hour productive workforce because their workers can get preventative care and treatment for illnesses quickly and without a fuss No one would argue that healthcare in the US couldn't be improved, but I disagree that the payment model is the biggest issue. The way I see it, the biggest issue by far is that people are just very, very unhealthy! A full three quarters of adults are either overweight or obese. No country can have a cost-effective healthcare system with this kind of population. And the distribution of healthcare spending is extremely lopsided, with the top 5% of spenders accounting for over half of all healthcare expenditure, and the bottom half of spenders comprising a mere 3% of spending[0]. (A few countries with socialized healthcare are starting to toy with the idea of just letting those high spenders die, with assisted suicide.) I don't know that a better system can be achieved without first promulgating a culture that values being healthy. [0]: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-expenditures-vary-across-population/#Share%20of%20total%20health%20spending,%20by%20percentile,%202021 https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
  - socksy 2y ago
    In a system where healthcare is socialized, you also get strong incentives to introduce policies that can reduce that cost. Examples would include the UK's ban on cigarette branding, introducing a tax on sugar in soft drinks, and banning smoking in public spaces. Where I live in Germany we have a system I would characterise as somewhere in-between a fully socialized single payer system and the American system (you have insurance companies you choose between, but you're required to have some kind of insurance, and there are a set of "public" insurances that must meet a certain standard at a certain price). But here I can't buy a sugar free Fritz Limo, nor go to a popular bar or club without inhaling smoke. Obviously countries can enact such policies without socialized health care, and things are not all sunshine and rainbows in the NHS. But I reckon that waiting around until there's a healthy populace before bringing in a better health system might not necessarily be the best strategy.
- apsec112 2y ago
  I mean, the ultimate reason why the US doesn't have China's electric vehicle policy is that the US is a democracy, and it would be massively unpopular. The median US voter is, like, a 40-something mother in a random suburb of Pennsylvania, who doesn't have a college degree, has a house with a mortgage, and is moderate but doesn't pay much attention to politics. To get Chinese policies enacted in the US, people like that would have to be convinced that mass-producing electric cars was more important than preserving local forests (need 'em for a factory site), paying workers prevailing wage (drives up production costs), keeping gas and ICE car registration cheap (makes electric less competitive), having cheap goods on sale at Walmart (strong currency makes imports cheap but exports expensive), avoiding noise and dust from construction (have to put the power lines somewhere), running a low government deficit (manufacturing subsidies aren't free), etc. There's a lot of trade-offs that people don't want to make.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Sprawl is the major difference and a major reason behind range anxiety. Chinese cities are very very dense, and very new due to urban redevelopment projects in the 2000s-2021. For example, the urban core of Shanghai is around 20 miles end-to-end, so the same size as Wichita end-to-end, yet has a population of around 20mil compared to 350k. This helps sustain both public transit as well as EVs with minimal range anxiety. The industrial policy aspect of EVs also helps ofc, but big picture it works with the range and size of Chinese metropolitan areas. The issue is the sprawl factor simply can't be solved in a country as spread out as the US, so long range batteries (looking at you Idemetsu Kosan and Toyota) or hybrids are the best solution in a sprawly semi-urban environment.
    - ZoomerCretin 2y ago
      Who drives more than 200 miles in a day?
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        Most people don't, but the perception of distances are different in the US versus China. The average round trip commute in the US is 42 miles [0] versus 11 miles in China [1]. This means the average American needs to charge almost 4x more often. Alternatively, imagine the range anxiety a Chinese driver might have with an EV with a range of 80 km/50 mi. When you purchase a vehicle, you also take into account edge cases like interregional or intercity travel like roadtrips, family, or business. Charging infra can get spotty very fast outside of dense regions. With the sheer density that most of China has, you don't have to worry about dead zones as much. Furthermore, that density also means you have alternative options for inter-city transit (eg. Sleeper Buses, Trains) that don't really exist at the frequency needed in the US. The differences in expected distances also plays a major role in EV design - a number of Chinese EVs at the lower price range (eg. BYD Seagull, Wuling EV) have much smaller trunk sizes compared to Western oriented hatchback EVs like the Nissan Leaf, because there isn't the need or the expectation to do almost all your shopping with your car when high density urban environments allow you to have various options downstairs or rapid delivery (like 1 hour delivery). Consumer Habits for Chinese are different from Americans, and the model that worked for China doesn't necessarily work for the US. That said, the Chinese style model would work well in similarly dense Western+Central Europe and Japan. [0] - https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us-map https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us... [1] - http://service.shanghai.gov.cn/sheninfo/specialdetail.aspx?Id=01de1f87-936d-4999-ba8c-0dffaa397ffb http://service.shanghai.gov.cn/sheninfo/specialdetail.aspx?I...
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- nba456_ 2y ago
  One person's IP theft is another's free market. We could use weaker IP laws in the west.
  - klipt 2y ago
    Arguably the US for where it is today by being too far away for European powers to enforce IP laws!
  - jimz 2y ago
    And the IP does not belong to the American government, why are taxpayers forced to subsidize such an expensive and potentially dangerous endeavor anyway? Not to mention that IP theft hs two metaphors in it - property, and theft, as the equating of intellectual property - a statutory creation - and real property - which exists unless you don't believe in your lying eyes - is ultimately the bad faith muddling of legal fiction and reality. America would absolutely know the difference, as one of the most prolific thieves of real property in recent memory (see: why and how the state of Georgia exists in the first place, or 'manifest destiny', or 'civil asset forfeiture'). Since there is no private property in anything close to the way the west conceptualizes it in China, nor anything resembling rule of law, what even gives America the right, beyond realpolitik, to even assert not just equivocation but effective extraterritoriality considering that American courts have a presumption against extraterritoriality as part of its doctrines. This is not to endorse the CCP in any of its actions, but it is really not the business of the American government to impose its definitions and legislations upon the world in such a cavalier fashion. The jingoistic stench is the free prize, and it creates an artificial unifying point for the CCP to rally its citizens, who all go through indoctrination in nationalism but certainly by no means all buy into it, to focus on something that, probably thanks to the lack of cultural and historical competence amongst government officials in general, reinforces the primary raison d'etre of the CCP in the first place. After all, it's effectively the last country to take Westphalian Sovereignty at face value, however insincere it might be. I would categorize American policy as neo-imperialist, but are Americans even bothered by the idea that they are the evil empire? Are we the baddies?
blondie9x 2y ago
I think the author forgot to see this. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  China sold 6 million EVs last year. A few thousand obsolete models from bust startups rotting in a field is a rounding error.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    Not to mention a lot of these fields are worn fleet cars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD8qqEx4G18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD8qqEx4G18
posnet 2y ago
I was in Shanghai this year, and in the city center, it is actually unsettling how quiet it is. Every motorbike is electric and probably 70% of the cars (at least in the CBD). It's not silent by any means, but the background hum of motors is mostly absent, it took me a while to even realise that is what felt off. Like watching a movie with the sound effects removed.
- presentation 2y ago
  It’s an amazing boost to quality of living that most urban Americans don’t even realize they’re suffering from.
  - ZoomerCretin 2y ago
    And suburban. At least in Texas, the road noise is inescapable, even in the early hours of the morning. It's never really silent.
  - meyum33 2y ago
    In reality the noise is mostly from tyres anyway. You don’t feel your neighborhood is actually quieter when most cars are EV. For me the really nice thing is kids that are barely taller than exhaust pipes or being carted are exposed to absolute ZERO emission. As a parent in a parking lot you feel much less stress.
    - presentation 2y ago
      Not sure where you’ve experienced but when I was in Shanghai it was definitely noticeable, nowadays I’m in Tokyo and I can’t wait for all the mopeds and motorcycles in particular to get electrified.
      - meyum33 2y ago
        Could be related to speed and asphalt and macadams. I travelled to Guangzhou a few months ago, the noise on the road is comparable to Beijing, despite having significantly higher proportion of EVs.
canjobear 2y ago
I’m sitting in an electric car in a large Chinese city right now. Looking around I count 7/10 cars are electric, easily recognizable by green license plates, all from brands I’ve never seen in the US. The electric cars are cheap and I don’t see any evidence that they are poor quality. It feels like there’s absolutely something transformative happening here which the US is missing out on.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  This level of production at a high level of quality also means military capability too. They can build way more drones, bombs , whatever at scale now.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    Ok? Weirdly off topic comment.
    - aaomidi 2y ago
      Not really honestly. It is a reality that falling behind manufacturing means America also becomes less of a military powerhouse. Something that I’m genuinely happy about anyway.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > America also becomes less of a military powerhouse. Something that I’m genuinely happy about Why so? Sure, it would be a nice world if no country was a military powerhouse, but that's not the world we live in. If the choice is between the US or China being the military powerhouse, why would you pick China?
        Aerbil313 2y ago
        Of course in practice there’ll always be war and militaries. It’s not about that, it’s about how just and fit to rule is the guy with the longest stick. There are plenty of us who will be forever bitter about this period in history of US dominance. You may not have noticed from your garden in Virginia, but entire countries have been bombed to rubbles and and entire populations killed or forced to migrate. Still continuing too. In that sense, we’d much prefer actually good and just people ruling the world, not US or Russia or China etc. Edit: Fix ambiguity.
meyum33 2y ago
Despite being massively impressed by those EVs I can’t help but wonder what the end games will be for all these EV makers that are ALL losing money. Worldwide only BYD and TESLA are actually making a profit. And leaders of the market seem to have little enduring advantage. Who remembers HTC smartphones that were all the rage? If someone comes up with actual autonomous driving, it’s gonna sweep all the net profits away just like Apple did with smartphones. And it probably will matter little if the autonomous software is run on ICE or BEV platforms.
- timomaxgalvin 2y ago
  I disagree. I doubt most people want autonomous driving. It's mostly a solution looking for a problem.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    I think both options would e nice.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    Depends what "autonomous driving" means. If it's "sit in the drivers seat responsible for any accidents but not doing anything until the system gives up or fails" for many thousands of dollars then yeah, I don't think the majority of people want that. If it's "as if someone else was driving, even in corner cases, and you don't take the risk/liability directly since you're not in control" for a couple thousand then I think the vast majority want that. Doubly so if driving yourself remains an option for enjoyment when desired.
    - gessha 2y ago
      That combined with a non-subscription-based price. You pay for the product, you take it home and you own it. If it’s a couple thousand/year, it’s a non-starter.
  - blueboo 2y ago
    Like iPhones they’re not needed but once people try it they’ll want it, approximately universally.
kkfx 2y ago
I own (formally, since it's the OEM the de-facto owner being a connected closed source device) a MG ZS EV 2022 long range and I'm happy enough, I also seen the IMMENSE price delta from the west and the rest of the world (less than 10k€ in BRICS and adjacent countries, less than 40k€ in the EU, for the very same car). My take is that: - we, the west, are failed. Chapter 11 if you are from the USA; - current BEVs ALL are national security and citizens serious threats because they are rolling surveillance stations able do create strategic disruption targeting specific people or a whole country; - Chinese EVs have even BETTER design the westerners (which are (more than) half Chinese anyway in most cases) but have a terribly crappy crapware, so to came back to the first point, we are failed but we still have some point of excellence only usable to save us IF we annihilate the current finance-focused management to came back to an industry focused one. Just as an anecdote: having a p.v. system and working from home I want an integrated system to charge "my" car. Well, first of all there is exactly NO ONE able to charge DC-to-DC directly even if cars and p.v. batteries are normally 400V lithium with similar BMS and a direct DC-to-DC charge exists since years (CCS in EU, I do not know in USA the correspondent name, ChaDeMo in JP etc). This alone means around 30% of wasted energy, much more electronics, much bigger costs for nothing. Anyway in the whole market of a gazillion of domestic charging station ONLY TWO VENDOR exists with LIMITED p.v. integration Fronius and Victron. All the others talk about green new deal in advertisement but have no p.v. integration and even worse they are cloud-bound and hyper priced for what they are. Anyway, having already a Victron battery inverter to be semi-autonomous in case of blackouts (AC coupled p.v., when I build my p.v. hybrid inverters was not a thing) I choose Victron EVC, formally a semi-FLOSS Debian based platform... Well... The EVC it's as open as a bank vault for it's customer, I can't set a gazillion of useful stuff like "hey I want to charge from p.v. as much as possible BUT I also want to charge from the grid if needed at this amount of amps", not to count all issues (not start charging from the p.v. even if power is available demanding manual actions to make it so, charge from the grid while in p.v. mode stating the contrary for a non-settable amps and hard-coded time and so on). The car itself allow for a LIMITED V2L usage, but have no integration with a home inverter, so no way to simply "plug in the big battery on wheel" and keep the home powered during an outage even if it's damn simple to do so. Anti-islandic devices (to decouple the home "microgrid" from the national grid, to avoid feeding the grid during an outage) are potentially cheap, small and simple enough anyone with p.v. should be mandate to own one with a standard protocol so it's damn simple plug in the car and being on battery and eventually available p.v. The tech is there since years, simply nobody have enforced or even sell this option. Long story sort it seems 99% of those who push electric convergence, like those who have pushed the similar all-to-IP convergence, have no damn clue on how to proper implement the green new deal and damn really going all-electric. OR maybe they have a clue but they do dislike the fact that such new deal only work if in end-user ownership, hands, not as a service...
more_corn 2y ago
What a fantastic visual representation of the progress of China over the last 20 years. Just really well done.
moandcompany 2y ago
Amongst other things, I believe one of the motor-vehicle electrification catalysts in China is the fact that China's electric grid uses 220V AC as its standard for normal receptacles/outlets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country Even though the prevalence and availability of EV Charging stations is a general issue across countries, having 220V AC makes the current state more bearable especially for residential charging use cases. For many in the US, adding a new 220V circuit, or having the option to add one, ends up being a cost-driven obstacle for adoption. Electrification in China has happened across all modalities of motor-vehicles, where all the previously hyper-prevalent gas-powered motor scooters of yesterday are also EVs.

82 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

They're going to eat our lunch because we let our legacy ICE vehicle manufacturers dictate the terms of the shift to electric. We have to be better about identifying economic developments that are likely to be concerns for domestic stability and national security, and not let greed and fear in the corporate class stop us from making the necessary changes. Another arena where we've already lost, in a sense, and will need to play hardball catch-up is healthcare: other countries have a more stable and hour-for-hour productive workforce because their workers can get preventative care and treatment for illnesses quickly and without a fuss. If we have to trash the medical insurance industry to reach parity with our peers, so be it.

bobthepanda 2y ago
Where are you seeing the US is a laggard in hour by hour productivity? The US is the best large country at this, coming in at #6 or #13 depending on the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity#List_(Our_World_in_Data) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_pr...
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Hm, that's measuring everyone against the same dollar; Americans are productive by this measure because everything is expensive. I wonder if there are other benchmarks for productivity, adjusted for local market basket.
  - gottorf 2y ago
    The source claims that the figures are measured in the "international dollar", which is adjusted for purchasing power in different countries.
  - toberoni 2y ago
    The numbers are in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) USD so they already measure how many goods in the local market basket can be bought per working hour (on average, as these GDP numbers don’t account for income or wealth distribution).
    - roenxi 2y ago
      For healthcare it might be getting to the point where the numbers are nearly incomparable. PPP seems like it'd be more inappropriate than usual for measuring a particular industry. US healthcare is known to be quirky. Although there doesn't seem to be any obvious evidence here that the US could be lagging behind. Per-person the US is still a bit of a productivity outlier to the upside. When they aren't legislatively restrained they tend to work hard and in an organised way.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  I guess that's measured off the entire GDP, divided by the whole working population? I would imagine most of US's GDP comes from services and finance, not manufacturing. Also if the US makes very expensive widgets, but can't make cars cheaply, it would still show up as high worker productivity. It's not really the same as engineering efficiency per (PPP) dollar.
gottorf 2y ago
> we let our legacy ICE vehicle manufacturers dictate the terms of the shift to electric Is that true? There was a policy push here to sell EVs, though there of course is continuing debate about what the magnitude of that push should be. The market so far in the US has spoken against greater adoption of EVs, for various reasons. OP's article doesn't mention or discuss two very salient factors: one, that EV use in Shanghai is massively subsidized, both at the point of sale (EVs are free to register, whereas ICE vehicle registration starts at $15k) as well as to the producers; and two, whether such a subsidy is in fact for the long-term benefit of the public. > other countries have a more stable and hour-for-hour productive workforce because their workers can get preventative care and treatment for illnesses quickly and without a fuss No one would argue that healthcare in the US couldn't be improved, but I disagree that the payment model is the biggest issue. The way I see it, the biggest issue by far is that people are just very, very unhealthy! A full three quarters of adults are either overweight or obese. No country can have a cost-effective healthcare system with this kind of population. And the distribution of healthcare spending is extremely lopsided, with the top 5% of spenders accounting for over half of all healthcare expenditure, and the bottom half of spenders comprising a mere 3% of spending[0]. (A few countries with socialized healthcare are starting to toy with the idea of just letting those high spenders die, with assisted suicide.) I don't know that a better system can be achieved without first promulgating a culture that values being healthy. [0]: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-expenditures-vary-across-population/#Share%20of%20total%20health%20spending,%20by%20percentile,%202021 https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
- socksy 2y ago
  In a system where healthcare is socialized, you also get strong incentives to introduce policies that can reduce that cost. Examples would include the UK's ban on cigarette branding, introducing a tax on sugar in soft drinks, and banning smoking in public spaces. Where I live in Germany we have a system I would characterise as somewhere in-between a fully socialized single payer system and the American system (you have insurance companies you choose between, but you're required to have some kind of insurance, and there are a set of "public" insurances that must meet a certain standard at a certain price). But here I can't buy a sugar free Fritz Limo, nor go to a popular bar or club without inhaling smoke. Obviously countries can enact such policies without socialized health care, and things are not all sunshine and rainbows in the NHS. But I reckon that waiting around until there's a healthy populace before bringing in a better health system might not necessarily be the best strategy.
apsec112 2y ago
I mean, the ultimate reason why the US doesn't have China's electric vehicle policy is that the US is a democracy, and it would be massively unpopular. The median US voter is, like, a 40-something mother in a random suburb of Pennsylvania, who doesn't have a college degree, has a house with a mortgage, and is moderate but doesn't pay much attention to politics. To get Chinese policies enacted in the US, people like that would have to be convinced that mass-producing electric cars was more important than preserving local forests (need 'em for a factory site), paying workers prevailing wage (drives up production costs), keeping gas and ICE car registration cheap (makes electric less competitive), having cheap goods on sale at Walmart (strong currency makes imports cheap but exports expensive), avoiding noise and dust from construction (have to put the power lines somewhere), running a low government deficit (manufacturing subsidies aren't free), etc. There's a lot of trade-offs that people don't want to make.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Sprawl is the major difference and a major reason behind range anxiety. Chinese cities are very very dense, and very new due to urban redevelopment projects in the 2000s-2021. For example, the urban core of Shanghai is around 20 miles end-to-end, so the same size as Wichita end-to-end, yet has a population of around 20mil compared to 350k. This helps sustain both public transit as well as EVs with minimal range anxiety. The industrial policy aspect of EVs also helps ofc, but big picture it works with the range and size of Chinese metropolitan areas. The issue is the sprawl factor simply can't be solved in a country as spread out as the US, so long range batteries (looking at you Idemetsu Kosan and Toyota) or hybrids are the best solution in a sprawly semi-urban environment.
  - ZoomerCretin 2y ago
    Who drives more than 200 miles in a day?
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Most people don't, but the perception of distances are different in the US versus China. The average round trip commute in the US is 42 miles [0] versus 11 miles in China [1]. This means the average American needs to charge almost 4x more often. Alternatively, imagine the range anxiety a Chinese driver might have with an EV with a range of 80 km/50 mi. When you purchase a vehicle, you also take into account edge cases like interregional or intercity travel like roadtrips, family, or business. Charging infra can get spotty very fast outside of dense regions. With the sheer density that most of China has, you don't have to worry about dead zones as much. Furthermore, that density also means you have alternative options for inter-city transit (eg. Sleeper Buses, Trains) that don't really exist at the frequency needed in the US. The differences in expected distances also plays a major role in EV design - a number of Chinese EVs at the lower price range (eg. BYD Seagull, Wuling EV) have much smaller trunk sizes compared to Western oriented hatchback EVs like the Nissan Leaf, because there isn't the need or the expectation to do almost all your shopping with your car when high density urban environments allow you to have various options downstairs or rapid delivery (like 1 hour delivery). Consumer Habits for Chinese are different from Americans, and the model that worked for China doesn't necessarily work for the US. That said, the Chinese style model would work well in similarly dense Western+Central Europe and Japan. [0] - https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us-map https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us... [1] - http://service.shanghai.gov.cn/sheninfo/specialdetail.aspx?Id=01de1f87-936d-4999-ba8c-0dffaa397ffb http://service.shanghai.gov.cn/sheninfo/specialdetail.aspx?I...

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
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nba456_ 2y ago
One person's IP theft is another's free market. We could use weaker IP laws in the west.
- klipt 2y ago
  Arguably the US for where it is today by being too far away for European powers to enforce IP laws!
- jimz 2y ago
  And the IP does not belong to the American government, why are taxpayers forced to subsidize such an expensive and potentially dangerous endeavor anyway? Not to mention that IP theft hs two metaphors in it - property, and theft, as the equating of intellectual property - a statutory creation - and real property - which exists unless you don't believe in your lying eyes - is ultimately the bad faith muddling of legal fiction and reality. America would absolutely know the difference, as one of the most prolific thieves of real property in recent memory (see: why and how the state of Georgia exists in the first place, or 'manifest destiny', or 'civil asset forfeiture'). Since there is no private property in anything close to the way the west conceptualizes it in China, nor anything resembling rule of law, what even gives America the right, beyond realpolitik, to even assert not just equivocation but effective extraterritoriality considering that American courts have a presumption against extraterritoriality as part of its doctrines. This is not to endorse the CCP in any of its actions, but it is really not the business of the American government to impose its definitions and legislations upon the world in such a cavalier fashion. The jingoistic stench is the free prize, and it creates an artificial unifying point for the CCP to rally its citizens, who all go through indoctrination in nationalism but certainly by no means all buy into it, to focus on something that, probably thanks to the lack of cultural and historical competence amongst government officials in general, reinforces the primary raison d'etre of the CCP in the first place. After all, it's effectively the last country to take Westphalian Sovereignty at face value, however insincere it might be. I would categorize American policy as neo-imperialist, but are Americans even bothered by the idea that they are the evil empire? Are we the baddies?

blondie9x 2y ago

I think the author forgot to see this. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/

teractiveodular 2y ago
China sold 6 million EVs last year. A few thousand obsolete models from bust startups rotting in a field is a rounding error.
- maxglute 2y ago
  Not to mention a lot of these fields are worn fleet cars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD8qqEx4G18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD8qqEx4G18

posnet 2y ago

I was in Shanghai this year, and in the city center, it is actually unsettling how quiet it is. Every motorbike is electric and probably 70% of the cars (at least in the CBD). It's not silent by any means, but the background hum of motors is mostly absent, it took me a while to even realise that is what felt off. Like watching a movie with the sound effects removed.

presentation 2y ago
It’s an amazing boost to quality of living that most urban Americans don’t even realize they’re suffering from.
- ZoomerCretin 2y ago
  And suburban. At least in Texas, the road noise is inescapable, even in the early hours of the morning. It's never really silent.
- meyum33 2y ago
  In reality the noise is mostly from tyres anyway. You don’t feel your neighborhood is actually quieter when most cars are EV. For me the really nice thing is kids that are barely taller than exhaust pipes or being carted are exposed to absolute ZERO emission. As a parent in a parking lot you feel much less stress.
  - presentation 2y ago
    Not sure where you’ve experienced but when I was in Shanghai it was definitely noticeable, nowadays I’m in Tokyo and I can’t wait for all the mopeds and motorcycles in particular to get electrified.
    - meyum33 2y ago
      Could be related to speed and asphalt and macadams. I travelled to Guangzhou a few months ago, the noise on the road is comparable to Beijing, despite having significantly higher proportion of EVs.

canjobear 2y ago

I’m sitting in an electric car in a large Chinese city right now. Looking around I count 7/10 cars are electric, easily recognizable by green license plates, all from brands I’ve never seen in the US. The electric cars are cheap and I don’t see any evidence that they are poor quality. It feels like there’s absolutely something transformative happening here which the US is missing out on.

bamboozled 2y ago
This level of production at a high level of quality also means military capability too. They can build way more drones, bombs , whatever at scale now.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Ok? Weirdly off topic comment.
  - aaomidi 2y ago
    Not really honestly. It is a reality that falling behind manufacturing means America also becomes less of a military powerhouse. Something that I’m genuinely happy about anyway.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > America also becomes less of a military powerhouse. Something that I’m genuinely happy about Why so? Sure, it would be a nice world if no country was a military powerhouse, but that's not the world we live in. If the choice is between the US or China being the military powerhouse, why would you pick China?
      - Aerbil313 2y ago
        Of course in practice there’ll always be war and militaries. It’s not about that, it’s about how just and fit to rule is the guy with the longest stick. There are plenty of us who will be forever bitter about this period in history of US dominance. You may not have noticed from your garden in Virginia, but entire countries have been bombed to rubbles and and entire populations killed or forced to migrate. Still continuing too. In that sense, we’d much prefer actually good and just people ruling the world, not US or Russia or China etc. Edit: Fix ambiguity.

meyum33 2y ago

Despite being massively impressed by those EVs I can’t help but wonder what the end games will be for all these EV makers that are ALL losing money. Worldwide only BYD and TESLA are actually making a profit. And leaders of the market seem to have little enduring advantage. Who remembers HTC smartphones that were all the rage? If someone comes up with actual autonomous driving, it’s gonna sweep all the net profits away just like Apple did with smartphones. And it probably will matter little if the autonomous software is run on ICE or BEV platforms.

timomaxgalvin 2y ago
I disagree. I doubt most people want autonomous driving. It's mostly a solution looking for a problem.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  I think both options would e nice.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Depends what "autonomous driving" means. If it's "sit in the drivers seat responsible for any accidents but not doing anything until the system gives up or fails" for many thousands of dollars then yeah, I don't think the majority of people want that. If it's "as if someone else was driving, even in corner cases, and you don't take the risk/liability directly since you're not in control" for a couple thousand then I think the vast majority want that. Doubly so if driving yourself remains an option for enjoyment when desired.
  - gessha 2y ago
    That combined with a non-subscription-based price. You pay for the product, you take it home and you own it. If it’s a couple thousand/year, it’s a non-starter.
- blueboo 2y ago
  Like iPhones they’re not needed but once people try it they’ll want it, approximately universally.

kkfx 2y ago

I own (formally, since it's the OEM the de-facto owner being a connected closed source device) a MG ZS EV 2022 long range and I'm happy enough, I also seen the IMMENSE price delta from the west and the rest of the world (less than 10k€ in BRICS and adjacent countries, less than 40k€ in the EU, for the very same car). My take is that: - we, the west, are failed. Chapter 11 if you are from the USA; - current BEVs ALL are national security and citizens serious threats because they are rolling surveillance stations able do create strategic disruption targeting specific people or a whole country; - Chinese EVs have even BETTER design the westerners (which are (more than) half Chinese anyway in most cases) but have a terribly crappy crapware, so to came back to the first point, we are failed but we still have some point of excellence only usable to save us IF we annihilate the current finance-focused management to came back to an industry focused one. Just as an anecdote: having a p.v. system and working from home I want an integrated system to charge "my" car. Well, first of all there is exactly NO ONE able to charge DC-to-DC directly even if cars and p.v. batteries are normally 400V lithium with similar BMS and a direct DC-to-DC charge exists since years (CCS in EU, I do not know in USA the correspondent name, ChaDeMo in JP etc). This alone means around 30% of wasted energy, much more electronics, much bigger costs for nothing. Anyway in the whole market of a gazillion of domestic charging station ONLY TWO VENDOR exists with LIMITED p.v. integration Fronius and Victron. All the others talk about green new deal in advertisement but have no p.v. integration and even worse they are cloud-bound and hyper priced for what they are. Anyway, having already a Victron battery inverter to be semi-autonomous in case of blackouts (AC coupled p.v., when I build my p.v. hybrid inverters was not a thing) I choose Victron EVC, formally a semi-FLOSS Debian based platform... Well... The EVC it's as open as a bank vault for it's customer, I can't set a gazillion of useful stuff like "hey I want to charge from p.v. as much as possible BUT I also want to charge from the grid if needed at this amount of amps", not to count all issues (not start charging from the p.v. even if power is available demanding manual actions to make it so, charge from the grid while in p.v. mode stating the contrary for a non-settable amps and hard-coded time and so on). The car itself allow for a LIMITED V2L usage, but have no integration with a home inverter, so no way to simply "plug in the big battery on wheel" and keep the home powered during an outage even if it's damn simple to do so. Anti-islandic devices (to decouple the home "microgrid" from the national grid, to avoid feeding the grid during an outage) are potentially cheap, small and simple enough anyone with p.v. should be mandate to own one with a standard protocol so it's damn simple plug in the car and being on battery and eventually available p.v. The tech is there since years, simply nobody have enforced or even sell this option. Long story sort it seems 99% of those who push electric convergence, like those who have pushed the similar all-to-IP convergence, have no damn clue on how to proper implement the green new deal and damn really going all-electric. OR maybe they have a clue but they do dislike the fact that such new deal only work if in end-user ownership, hands, not as a service...

more_corn 2y ago

What a fantastic visual representation of the progress of China over the last 20 years. Just really well done.

moandcompany 2y ago

Amongst other things, I believe one of the motor-vehicle electrification catalysts in China is the fact that China's electric grid uses 220V AC as its standard for normal receptacles/outlets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country Even though the prevalence and availability of EV Charging stations is a general issue across countries, having 220V AC makes the current state more bearable especially for residential charging use cases. For many in the US, adding a new 220V circuit, or having the option to add one, ends up being a cost-driven obstacle for adoption. Electrification in China has happened across all modalities of motor-vehicles, where all the previously hyper-prevalent gas-powered motor scooters of yesterday are also EVs.