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>China went from making cars with 3 gears and lawn mower engines (practically speaking) to mass EVs in like 15 years. The history is a bit different. China is

>China went from making cars with 3 gears and lawn mower engines (practically speaking) to mass EVs in like 15 years. The history is a bit different. China is still making three gear lawn mowers compared to their ICE competition. The EV market opened an enormous opportunity, where suddenly every single manufacturer had to start propulsion from zero, the advantage of decades of ICE research instantly vanished. This combined with Chinas long push in manufacturing and somewhat recent push in high tech manufacturing made for a very good environment. >Meanwhile here the big automakers are crying about unfair competition and Chinese subsidizes. Not in Europe. The car makers are opposing the tarifs, the EU leadership wants them.

rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
> The EV market opened an enormous opportunity, where suddenly every single manufacturer had to start propulsion from zero, the advantage of decades of ICE research instantly vanished. That's not true though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 U.S. automakers refused to invest and plan for the future while they could continue to profit off their cash cow. Now they are behind because of their negligence.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >That's not true though. It is. Or do you think that any of the engineers at GM knew how to make EVs, because 25 years ago they designed one once? The advantage of that was completely negligible and easily outweighed by Chinese companies being in direct contact with e.g. battery manufacturers. >U.S. automakers refused to invest and plan for the future while they could continue to profit off their cash cow. Which contradicts what I said how?
  - rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
    My point was that U.S. automakers did not have to start from scratch with regards to propulsion as you claimed.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      But they had to start from scratch. How many engineers who know how to build EV motors do you think where sitting around at GM between 1996 and 2020 doing nothing? Exactly zero. Do you think GM has been developing EV motors and batteries since 1996 and just never used them for anything? That is ridiculous. All of the people there had to start from zero when designing EVs. There is no advantage of having had an idea but abandoning it 25 years ago. If anything Chinese EV companies had an advantage as getting specialist in producing batteries and motors is surely easier if your country is one of the biggest manufacturers. What of course is true is that GM could have had 25 years of development advantage, but chose to abandon that idea. This does not conflict at all with my point that they did not have that advantage, as they did not continue to make EVs.
      - rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
        You're forgetting about HEV and PHEV that were/are in development in the interim. So yes, U.S. automakers did have electric propulsion and battery engineers for some time. Again, the U.S. automakers were negligent in planning for the future and are now laughably behind.
        constantcrying 2y ago
        >Again, the U.S. automakers were negligent in planning for the future and are now laughably behind. That was my original point though?
        rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
        You disagreed on the history of events by saying automakers globally started at the same point with regarding EVs and that's why in part China is so far ahead. I corrected you, that's it's worse than that because the U.S. automakers weren't even starting at 0 in comparison (which you doubled-down on that they were for whatever reason). They had the advantage to be ahead.
        datavirtue 2y ago
- xiphias2 2y ago
  It was all creative disruption, Kodak again. It's easier to act as EVs are not coming than change the old investor base.
piva00 2y ago
China doesn't have oil like the USA, one of their main weaknesses is the potential to be cut from their oil supply if there's a blockade on the Strait of Malacca. I think that explains a lot why ICE cars were never that attractive for indigenous development, seeing the writing on the wall and investing in EVs is a quite ingenious move. That and their solar/nuclear capacity being rapidly developed is putting them on path to depend for oil only on very specific purposes, looking like in the next decades the main one will be for their military but if they can cut away from oil dependency for most other uses... They will be happy with being supplied by Russia, even better if the oil is kept cheap by price caps. The USA is really looking to be deciding to get stuck on an increasingly stagnating path if it keeps getting more and more conservative and inwards-looking.
- johnea 2y ago
  This sure doesn't seem to have stopped Japan from basically refusing to scale EV production. With the Nissan Leaf as the first major production EV in the world, and the Prius the first major hybrid, They have basically refused to proceed. I feel, to appease US financial and military interests. The Prius, by simply scaling the battery capacity, and adding a plug-in charger could be a very affordable plug-in hybrid. The Leaf with a little battery capacity increase could compete as a low cost EV against the typical $80K models entering the market.. Instead both of those manufacturers have cancelled those product lines.
  - jdlshore 2y ago
    Did I miss something? The Prius Prime (Toyota’s plug-in hybrid) still seems to be on the market: https://www.toyota.com/priuspluginhybrid/ https://www.toyota.com/priuspluginhybrid/

rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago

> The EV market opened an enormous opportunity, where suddenly every single manufacturer had to start propulsion from zero, the advantage of decades of ICE research instantly vanished. That's not true though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 U.S. automakers refused to invest and plan for the future while they could continue to profit off their cash cow. Now they are behind because of their negligence.

constantcrying 2y ago
>That's not true though. It is. Or do you think that any of the engineers at GM knew how to make EVs, because 25 years ago they designed one once? The advantage of that was completely negligible and easily outweighed by Chinese companies being in direct contact with e.g. battery manufacturers. >U.S. automakers refused to invest and plan for the future while they could continue to profit off their cash cow. Which contradicts what I said how?
- rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
  My point was that U.S. automakers did not have to start from scratch with regards to propulsion as you claimed.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    But they had to start from scratch. How many engineers who know how to build EV motors do you think where sitting around at GM between 1996 and 2020 doing nothing? Exactly zero. Do you think GM has been developing EV motors and batteries since 1996 and just never used them for anything? That is ridiculous. All of the people there had to start from zero when designing EVs. There is no advantage of having had an idea but abandoning it 25 years ago. If anything Chinese EV companies had an advantage as getting specialist in producing batteries and motors is surely easier if your country is one of the biggest manufacturers. What of course is true is that GM could have had 25 years of development advantage, but chose to abandon that idea. This does not conflict at all with my point that they did not have that advantage, as they did not continue to make EVs.
    - rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
      You're forgetting about HEV and PHEV that were/are in development in the interim. So yes, U.S. automakers did have electric propulsion and battery engineers for some time. Again, the U.S. automakers were negligent in planning for the future and are now laughably behind.
      - constantcrying 2y ago
        >Again, the U.S. automakers were negligent in planning for the future and are now laughably behind. That was my original point though?
        rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
        You disagreed on the history of events by saying automakers globally started at the same point with regarding EVs and that's why in part China is so far ahead. I corrected you, that's it's worse than that because the U.S. automakers weren't even starting at 0 in comparison (which you doubled-down on that they were for whatever reason). They had the advantage to be ahead.
      - datavirtue 2y ago
xiphias2 2y ago
It was all creative disruption, Kodak again. It's easier to act as EVs are not coming than change the old investor base.

piva00 2y ago

China doesn't have oil like the USA, one of their main weaknesses is the potential to be cut from their oil supply if there's a blockade on the Strait of Malacca. I think that explains a lot why ICE cars were never that attractive for indigenous development, seeing the writing on the wall and investing in EVs is a quite ingenious move. That and their solar/nuclear capacity being rapidly developed is putting them on path to depend for oil only on very specific purposes, looking like in the next decades the main one will be for their military but if they can cut away from oil dependency for most other uses... They will be happy with being supplied by Russia, even better if the oil is kept cheap by price caps. The USA is really looking to be deciding to get stuck on an increasingly stagnating path if it keeps getting more and more conservative and inwards-looking.

johnea 2y ago
This sure doesn't seem to have stopped Japan from basically refusing to scale EV production. With the Nissan Leaf as the first major production EV in the world, and the Prius the first major hybrid, They have basically refused to proceed. I feel, to appease US financial and military interests. The Prius, by simply scaling the battery capacity, and adding a plug-in charger could be a very affordable plug-in hybrid. The Leaf with a little battery capacity increase could compete as a low cost EV against the typical $80K models entering the market.. Instead both of those manufacturers have cancelled those product lines.
- jdlshore 2y ago
  Did I miss something? The Prius Prime (Toyota’s plug-in hybrid) still seems to be on the market: https://www.toyota.com/priuspluginhybrid/ https://www.toyota.com/priuspluginhybrid/