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Automakers Are Asking China To Slow Down Electric Car Quotas (electrek.co)
New submitter Kant shares a report from Electrek: The auto industry is once again attempting to slow down the rollout of electric vehicles. Virtually all automakers, except for Tesla of course, have sent a letter to the Chinese government in an attempt to have them drastically weaken their zero-emission vehicle mandate. As we previously reported, China, the world's biggest car market, has somewhat of an aggressive ZEV mandate that would force automakers to have zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) represent 8% of new car sales as soon as 2018 and quickly ramp up to 12% by 2020. Now Germany's WirtschaftsWoche magazine (via Auto News) reports that the American Automotive Policy Council (AAPC), which represents Chrysler/Fiat, Ford, and GM, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), which represents all major European automakers, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) and the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association (KAMA), have all sent a joint letter to China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology to ask for several significant changes to the mandate.
The "six recommended modifications" include slowing the rollout of the mandate by 1 to 3 years, reconsidering the penalty system if they don't meet the quota, having credits not only for all-electric cars but also plug-in hybrid cars, and basically making the whole mandate weaker so that they don't have to produce as many electric cars.
The "six recommended modifications" include slowing the rollout of the mandate by 1 to 3 years, reconsidering the penalty system if they don't meet the quota, having credits not only for all-electric cars but also plug-in hybrid cars, and basically making the whole mandate weaker so that they don't have to produce as many electric cars.
I think that China is holding all the aces here, right? Doesn't hurt China if the world's car manufacturers pull out (less competition in the market for their domestic manufacturers).
Seems to me like something the US should have done a long time ago.
China should just give them the finger.
People buying new cars in China are the more effluent class who can afford to make some contribution to the environment. Mandating ZEV quota helps push more buyers to consider ZEV.
Sell more ZEV or just get out of the market.
I think far too many people in the world are used to the Americans. They are easily hoodwinked and their legislators are easily bribed with contributions to their election campaigns or to a Foundation of some kind. Moreover their politicians, with a few exceptions, do not have their country's or people's interest in mind and instead pursue a globalist neoliberal agenda. China is a different kettle of fish altogether.
The world is in for a big fucking surprise when China simply declines to play ball. They have their country, their rules, and anyone who wants to come into their market will abide by their laws. It's going to be a big shock to a lot of people who have never before encountered such an attitude. The next 3-5 years are going to be full of this kind of thing in industry after industry. Sucking up to them like Hollywood does putting Chinese actors in their films for no reason, or like Zuckerberg did trying to speak Mandarin, doesn't work, either. They see through it a mile away. They have more respect for people who love their own countries and don't take any shit from them. It's no coincidence that the word kowtow came into English from their language.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ultimately it could be good for all of us. If China stick to their guns it will accelerate electric vehicle production and development, cleaning the air for everyone. The only caveat is that clean power production has to keep up.
n/t
Lots of typical knee-jerk reactions to this story. Most automakers do not have EV and car battery manufacturing facilities in China and China has reduced or removed subsidies making imports much less attractive. It seems, after a bit of quick basic research, that the slowdown request is to allow non-chinese car companies time to be able to ramp up the ability to product EVs on a large scale in China. It's not a plot to stay on old tech or to derail EV cars.
https://electrek.co/2017/05/08...
http://insights.globalspec.com...
https://electrek.co/2017/04/27...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/...
Coincidentally, "jama" means somethign like hindrance/obstacle/nuisance in Japanese. :)
I agree.
China is in the same place UK was in in the 1950's. For those of you too young to remember and who have not read, the famous Coloured Fogs of London (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London) killed between 4000 and 12000 people in 1952. Oddly enough, the cause of those events was the same then as it is now in China: burning of coal.
China is getting aggressive towards cleaning up their act. Car makers don't like it because it means that they must replace tooling which from their point of view is very expensive. Of course, having people sick from air so dirty that some people can't breathe is expensive also, but that's ok since the carmakers don't have to carry that particular expense on _their_ books. Pesky accountants, don't you know.
Many US cities had serious problems in the mid-20th century. One that has been in the US news lately is Youngstown, Ohio, as an example of a once great industrial center. Unfortunately selective memories neglect to include the fact that Youngstown of the mid-1940s was a poster child for industrial pollution (http://wytv.com/2014/10/27/mahoning-river-has-dirty-history/). Fixing things is always expensive yet somehow people always seem to prefer to create huge problem and then have to clean it up later.
The Chinese are trying to stave off much bigger problems. More power to them.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
At this point, you'd have to be a complete moron to be leading a car company and be against rolling out electric engines.
They're just ENGINES. Just ONE component of the entire car. That'd be like advocating to ban automatic transmissions because you make 5-speeds. The consumers are moving toward electric. Consumers are moving toward reduced pollution.
Make a product your consumer wants.
Rocket science!
1) Learn the difference between energy and power.
2) A gas-powered car is not just a few dozen liters of gasoline. The gasoline is a trivial fraction of its mass. Acting like the only thing that matters in a vehicle comparison is the weight of the energy source (gasoline vs. batteries) is absurd. Other parts of an ICE vehicle, such as the drivetrain, take up much more of the mass and are much heavier than their ev equivalents.
So great, gasoline has 50 times the energy density as good li-ions, equating to around 10-15x difference after taking into account efficiency. So that means that the gasoline car goes 10-15x further, right? Of course it doesn't, because cars are not just "gasoline" or "batteries", it's a fraction of their total weight.
What's the actual range difference? Comparing seating and 0-60 times, the Model 3 is a rough equivalent of the Ford Mustang (depending on the model of each). The baseline Model 3 does 0-60 in 5,6 sec like the newer Ecoboost Mustangs, while the 75kwh version will be faster.. They're also roughly the same on price. Now, with a 16 gallon tank and 21-28mpg highway, that's 336 to 448 miles range. The 60kwh model 3 has a highway range of 215mi (plus a small emergency reserve), while the 75kwh would scale linearly to 269mi (although screenshots of a charging model 3 suggest even more, potentially approaching 300mi. Basically, the EVs do about 2/3rds the range, maybe a bit less on average.
Now, one can cherry pick data to try and bias the comparison - say, a large tank gas car with a thrifty, powerless engine vs. a leaf. I could likewise bias the comparuson in reverse - say a 100kwh model S vs. a track car. But with a fair comparison between mass-market vehicles in the same performance/size/price range, that's what you come up with.
At an *average* speed of 65mph, 215 miles is 3,3 hours; 269 is 4.1 hours; and 300 would be 4.6 hours of driving. Given that you're *supposed* to be stopping that frequently anyways, and there's already a supercharger network on almost every major interstate in the US...
Meanwhile, in your everyday life, and unlike a gas car, your range is... infinite. Seriously, its common for ev owners to not even know their actual range, because every day when they leave their garage, it's full. You don't even need to think about it. No having to "stop to fuel up on the way home from work" 15-40 times per year regardless of the weather, and breaking down on the road if you forget to check. Since EV ranges significantly increase in city driving (at a steady 20mph the range can be tripled or more vs. highway driving - stop and start reduces it but not nearly enough to overcome the speed advantage), a typical US commuter can miss *weeks* of charging without issue.
Yeah in your fantasy. In the real world Tesla makes electric cars. They haven't revolutionized battery technology, they haven't revolutionized motor technology and they haven't revolutionized anything else. They produce luxury cars that are comparatively heavy with a limited range (as all non-hybrid electric cars). So why mention them rather than other producers of electric cars, some that _have_ made significant advances of the SOTA in the past?
They are well aware of the challenges. Handwaving about it on blogs doesn't change that. It isn't just "everybody is picking on Tesla" that has kept the company from instantly becoming the new Toyota.
It's rewarding to rage on blogs like that is the case, though.
It isn't just power density, either. There is the challenge of 'refueling rate to deal with. In a way that Slashdot denizen can probably relate to, an analogy to a USB flash drive could be applied. You can get a cheap largish, i.e. 128gb flash drives that are USB 2 for not very much. It will have a slow transfer rate, so getting data onto it is a daunting challenge. It seems like a lot of storage but it takes 40 minutes to transfer 128gb of data to it.
We could call it 'refueling bandwidth.' For short daily trips, it's the equivalent of moving little files of a few hundred megabytes around. The transfer rate is dismal compared to a rotating or flash drive that connects by PCI-E or even fast IDE.
If power plants are 30% green, your car is 30% green. How do you get above 0% on diesel or petrol?
With biofuel like Butanol for gasoline-powered vehicles and biodiesel or green diesel for diesel powered-vehicles. They are carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative fuels (depending on where the energy for refining comes from) so then you just have to worry about CO, NOx, SOx, and PPM. We have mitigation strategies for all of those things except PPM.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So EVs don't 'refueling down along the side of the road' if they run out of energy?
And you say when it does happen, I can't pull the one gallon tank out of the trunk and hitch a ride a few miles to get enough fuel back to it to reach a refueling station?
And if I want to take it to the track I'm going to have to stop every 45 minutes to spend a half hour refueling it? (how long will the line at the supercharger adjacent to the track be?)
There are so many considerations the the starry eyed on a blog need to factor in and don't. I'm sorry that it seems like trolling, but it's so easy to find factors that are being actively ignored.
That's the full story. Petrol engines are really inefficient, and can't save more energy by doing things like regenerative braking. Even if your electric car is powered by 100% fossil fuel plants, you are way ahead because the power stations are much more efficient. And you can do more flue gas cleaning at a large power station than you can do on a million car's exhaust pipes. And then, with every extra bit of renewable power that hits the grids, your EV becomes even cleaner.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/...
maybe Tesla didn't complain because they will exceed the 8% quota by about 92%?
"Can't we just clad up those ugly 1970s high-rises at a low cost and make the whole city more visually attractive?"
China, the world's biggest car market, has somewhat of an aggressive ZEV mandate that would force automakers to have zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) represent 8% of new car sales as soon as 2018 and quickly ramp up to 12% by 2020.
Perhaps the issue is that auto manufacturers can't control what consumers buy, only what they offer consumers to buy?
What percentage of cars sold last year in China were electric? How will the removal of the subsidy cause more electric cars to be sold?
When Ford first came out with the Expedition, in order to comply with CAFE (Corp. Avg. Fuel Efficiency) standards they forced every dealer to take into inventory one high-mileage Ford Escort for every Expedition they took in to sell, which caused a lot of Ford Escorts to be sold (at a loss) by the Ford dealer, offset by the profits on the Excursion. I envision a similar market distortion as the only way to meet these targets.
BTW, environmental emotions aside, lets not forget that 2018 is only 6 months away, and the new models for 2018 will roll-out in about 3 months...
Ken
Huh?
You need to put batteries somewhere. And with petrol engine cars, there is simply no place for them.
Tesla hasn't found a place to put the batteries?
His point that you missed was that you can't just stick an electric motor and lithium ion batteries in an existing car and expect it to perform well.
You need an entire car platform purpose built for it, which is what Tesla (and others) have done.
That takes years, hence why they want a delay.
It's about sales longterm.
Electrical engines will dramatically increase the lifespan of a car.
Automobile industry will shrink enormously due to electrical, because there's far less maintenance, far less aftermarket (oils, gearings).
I remember decades ago a friend's father Mercedes country part supplier going bankrupt, because parts were too durable.
I remember researching later at another famous German plant limiting parts to max. amount of usage.
The sales droids have taken over longtime, exciting to see innovation and a turn of events.
Total bullshit. America didn't enter the war because of the hangover from WWI, yet another EuroWar. The Republicans in Congress were very anti-war and very anti foreign "entanglements" Defending democracy didn't emerge as an issue until after WWII when the U.S. realized it was the antidote to German, Italian, and Japanese Fascism and Soviet and Chinese Communism. Later, it achieved a life of its own when it was realized it kept Europe from descending again into a collection of small-minded warring states, and when it was realized dictatorships were inherently unstable.
At the time the U.S. dropped the 2 nukes, the planning on the U.S. side was for between a 250,000 to 1,000,000 man invasion of Japan. MacArthur, being about as bright as yer basic dolt, figured it could be done on the cheap. Nimitz knew better. Truman then had to decide what to do. Germany had been defeated, the will to finish the war was ebbing in the U.S. An undefeated Japan meant another war in the future when an emboldened USSR had already taken half of Europe and Mao let Chiang-Kai-shek exhaust his forces against the Japanese figuring the U.S. would defeat Japan and China could descend into the hell he had in mind for it. Given the stakes, at this point the U.S. had already suffered hundreds of thousands of dead, and now he was asked to either (1) sign up for a few more, or (2) see if he couldn't scare the Japanese into stopping. He opted for the latter, arguing for the former meant explaining to the American people how they needed to sacrifice more for maybe a few years more. Sooner or later, word of the atomic bomb would have gotten out. And then he'd have to explain why he hadn't used it to stop the war sooner. Oh, and an invasion of Japan would have resulted more than a million Japanese dead as well, they were arming their school kids with pitchforks to fight the Americans at all costs. And they would have done it for the Emperor.
They're just ENGINES. Just ONE component of the entire car.
That's an incredibly naive view. Sorry to be harsh, but you come off sounding like an expert and I don't think people should consider you one. The drivetrain is what the entire car is designed around, and the attributes (shape, weight, etc) of the drivetrain are driven by the engine technology. Toyota has been making the Camry since the early 80s, with incremental improvements over 35 years. An electric version would need to be a ground-up redesign. From a manufacturing standpoint, it would be no big deal. But from an engineering and logistics standpoint, going electric is a huge undertaking.
In simple terms, an electrified Camry would be a terrible car and would flop in the market. An electric Toyota needs to be a ground-up redesign.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They had plenty of time. They even killed the electric car market to kill the EV1.
Tesla comes out and they have special laws to prevent selling direct from the manufacturer.
Now there is a new law that THEY didn't write that THEY don't like?
If I were China I'd tell them to stuff it.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
At this point, you'd have to be a complete moron to be leading a car company and be against rolling out electric engines.
s/engines/motors/gi
That's the first I've heard of Mercedes and parts being too reliable. He probably went out of business because most people will find its just cheaper to buy a new Benz than to start getting one repaired because that's a damned money pit.
They do if you forget to or don't bother to plug in *every night for weeks on end* for the average commuter.
So, in other words, no.
Lets say however that you set out to run out of range. First off, as you get low, you will start to get warnings. When you actually hit zero, it doesn't run out - you have 10-20km left.þ, and it puts you in a power restricted mode (did you seriously plan so badly that you were more than 10-20km off? Especially given that your car knows where charging stations are?) Not enough? Slow down; unlike gasoline cars, EV ranges drastically increase with speed reduction. Still not enough? Pull into any random shop or farmhouse and ask if they could let you have an emergency charge (try that with gas). I've never heard of anyone ever being turned down on a charging request after explaining how little power is involved (under $1 an hour), and charge current can be set. You can charge from a regular 120v outlet at "5-10 miles per hour", depending. So by what massive distance did you hypothetically miss the charger by?
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
At this point, you'd have to be a complete moron to be leading a car company and be against rolling out electric engines.
They're just ENGINES. Just ONE component of the entire car.
First of all, they are not engines. They are motors. Second, the switch to an electric motor immediately implies other major design changes. No more need for a gearbox, distributor, alternator, CCV, muffler, tailpipe,... . New need for massive battery, power management system, charging control system, ...
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
25 miles range is a joke. Barely over a tenth of the baseline Model 3's range. Level 2 chargers are not how you do a cross-country trip, that's what superchargers are for. But if for some reason you wanted to use level 2s, you's get about 70 miles of normal highway driving per hour of charging in a Model 3. More if you slow down (but then the driving phase is longer). In short, doable... but you really want level 3 / superchargers.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
They're just ENGINES. Just ONE component of the entire car. That'd be like advocating to ban automatic transmissions because you make 5-speeds.
There's a lot more than just the engine - in general, there isn't a transmission that shifts gears (just differentials), obviously there's no fuel tank, exhaust, and other parts.
Here's the thing: Many of the systems which have been removed (engine, shifting transmission) are the ones which require the most maintenance and repair. Many manufacturers (especially European ones) require exclusive brand (and model) specific tools to work on the cars in the first place -- the whole point being to drive customers to use the dealerships for maintenance & repair as nobody else can get the tools to work on the cars. I figure the practice is where Apple got the idea for the 'Pentalobe' screw.
The shift to electric largely removes that (major) revenue stream: The cars have a lot less to break down, and even when it does, it's less labor-intensive to repair.
Backyard mechanics will love it: Even when a major system (say, the motor controller) dies: You just unplug the box, swap it out in 20 minutes, done. Beats the hell out of fixing a broken valve stem.
Replacing the entire drivetrain will not only be practical, it'll be easy enough that a teenager can do it over a weekend. The upshot there: Suddenly a lot of older cars will have a new lease on life. Instead of replacing the car at 300,000 miles, we can be driving the same thing 3-4x longer.
Suddenly (in terms of maintenance) a car becomes less like a car (quick to replace one), and more like a house. Collisions will become the primary reason for new car sales, because it's so much cheaper to keep your car running.
So yeah... a sudden and huge increase in reliability is bad for the bottom line in many ways.
The consumers are moving toward electric. Consumers are moving toward reduced pollution.
No argument they are moving towards electric.
I'm not convinced pollution is the reason to switch. Yes, it's nice, but I care about my cost:distance ratio. Lower maintenance costs, lower energy costs are wildly skewed towards the electric side.
For a car guy, there's also a compelling reason to switch to electric: Performance. Nothing takes off at a red light like an electric car. Sit in a Tesla when the driver floors it, and you want one, end of story.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
A lot people like to assume that if you build a better mouse trap, it will win.. and for a lot of tech, that's true.. mostly because there are no political/economic forces rooting either way.
Electric vs. Gas has a LARGE political and economic cheering section (mostly on gas) because it would change the political landscape.
Look at some countries.. their entire economy depends on oil/gas production/reserves.. you don';t think that plays into things?.. Look at the amount of money oil/gas pump into politics for their preferred agenda... you don't think that has an impact.
Car manufactures in some ways, don't care either way.. Its a sale to them (oil or gas).. but they are "encouraged" to push gas/petrol powered cars.. its why Biofuels haven't taken off, or cooking oil or any of the hundreds of alternatives besides electric.. Because it cuts into the profits of the oil/gas groups and their political affiliates.
Electric theoretically would mean with improvements in solar cells, you could have car that would run indefinitely (no stopping required unless you do a LOT of night only driving) but that also means, no dependance on an industry that is fighting tooth and nail to remain in control and where they are.
I say this as someone that's worked for and with numerous petrol companies.. and if you only knew the amount of money that gets pumped into politics to keep things exactly as they are.. you would understand why things have not (and most likely won't) changed.
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
Yes, it's based on the Clio IV, which was a redesign, to the extent of a completely different wheelbase. It's a different car to the 1990 one, that's just got the same name.
The Clio IV was specifically designed to accommodate a battery powered version.
Even electric all wheel drive vehicles will have a drive shaft running the length of the car to the rear wheels.
The Model S doesn't. It uses two motors, one on each axle. There's no reason for an electric car to have a drive shaft. Electric motors are inexpensive and compact.
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