Tesla’s Nemesis in China Is a Tiny $5k Electric Car from GM

Whether you are commuting 40 miles each way to work, hauling large loads for work everyday, bringing your ATV to the trail, or your trash to the dump.

Being able to hit the road in your own private vehicle is a great joy of life, and an essential liberty in America. So much so it’s quintessential of the “American Dream”.

Some people look at these things, and then decide they personally don’t like them, and only see a massive opportunity to regulate or tax them out of existence. Or they see the negative first order effects (e.g. traffic fatalities or pollution) and don’t consider both the first order benefits, nor the second-order costs of eliminating the thing itself.

I doubt I’ll convince anyone, but at least here is my alternative thinking on this. It is extremely important to reduce traffic fatalities, and reduce pollution per mile. Likewise it is also extremely important to allow people to choose their preferred modes and means of transportation.

It is merely a lack of creativity to pit these two goals against each other.

We are on the cusp of a clean energy and clean vehicle revolution, as well as what will arguably be one of the greatest technological accomplishments of humanity; a self driving car.

Dreams of regulating away SUVs or the right of private car ownership are over. Preferences will not be shaped by excessive gasoline taxes much longer. And passenger vehicles will only continue to become safer and cleaner from here on out.

Ultimately the war against private passenger transport will be lost to the Robotaxi. The marginal cost per mile will be lower than public transit, so they will be left to compete on point-to-point speed, safety, and convenience. And by safety I mostly am referring to safe from crime and safe from viruses, not collisions which will be exceedingly rare. Some cities might have a public transport system that can compete, but most will not.

At any rate the US has already tried this with a national maximum speed limit of 55 and it was incredibly unpopular like prohibition.

I wanted to dismiss this saying how my suv is packed for a day at the beach. But surely they do stuff too.

most of the objections people have to giving up their car (my suburb was designed for cars...) would be perfectly solved by something like this. but the rabid defense of cars is out in force anyways.

The car is the extension of the penis. People want it big and shiny. Sure it was the US that invented SUVs and pickup trucks but they were embraced just as much in European towns as in rural Kentucky.

One is high speed death machine which needs to be isolated from humans - e.g. the average highway.

The other is a mechanical horse that you can out run if you try - e.g. how a forklift is normally used.

The problem is where those two modes meet, e.g. anywhere where people and cars share the road and cars move faster than 30km/h, which is unfortunately every city in the last 80 years.

I could see myself, my wife, two kids and the mother inlaw in something that small going to Costco. Yeah, that would be awesome....

Live in a pod, eat insects, drive the Hongguang MINI EV.

what you don't realize is that it's not about the car.

Game-theoretically, each individual does save time, but soon everyone has a car and the equilibrium shifts. It's like two income households, college degrees, or access to machine guns: Great when only you have it, bad when everyone does.

Or like commute times: It doesn't matter where you are or what the distances are; people are willing to commute about 40 minutes. Increase speeds and they just move further out.

The centralization brought by high speeds then destroys Main Street and shifts power to big box stores. Yes, the overall economy does get "more efficient", but in a way that the gains are captured by the Walton family.

If infrastructure were changed to make higher speeds more difficult -- if we could blow up the damned highways -- then the equilibrium would shift again, and, within a few years, people would be spending no more time going back and forth to the grocery store, because smaller local stores, bodegas, would have popped up.

If you go to "developing" countries you see more of this. There are villages and little shops. The roads are dirt, and you travel by moped/scooter at low speed. Sometimes cows wander on the road. The whole economy and transportation network fits together. And it's totally fine.

This is closer to how we should live in America. Yes, outright poverty is bad -- you need food to eat. But once you reach the "middle income" bracket? Once you have a moped, a (not "smart") cellphone, two molded plastic chairs, a pair of flip flops, and a t-shirt? At that point, so long as the weather is warm, you're basically fine. You can't live like that in America. But if we all did, then (in many of our climates) you could.

Now, you don't need to turn the US into Cuba to accomplish this. There are ritzy high end places that have made this trade too. There are a few suburbs built with networks of low speed paths, where everyone just drives golf carts (except to go outside the community). There are retirement communities in Florida that are basically Disney World. There are resort-town beach islands where cars are banned. People love these places.

Something like 60% (remembered stat) of Americans now live in places administered by an HoA or condo association. We're turning into a weird feudal sprawl of gated communities. Which sucks. But it may also offer an opportunity: Those communities, being more self-contained, might be able to experiment more.

And the experiment they should do is to look to the pre-industrial past, and the lower-income present. Money, cars, highways, McMansions, Whole Foods, corporations, "leaning in" -- they are a curse. They rob you of your happiness and of your grandchildren. Build villages. Grow food. Keep shops. Have families. Find better gods to worship. A civilization, a culture, a built environment -- they all fit together. They need to be conducive to life.

I’m also unsure if they’re that much lighter once you make them safe in crashes. I’m not sure they’re better for pedestrians, either.

You save parking space, which is nice, but at the expense of a lot of utility and without any benefit of efficiency that I can tell.

Slowing them might help, but that directly impacts their utility. The utility of cars is making housing cheaper (by expanding the distance one can live from one’s job or school) and by expanding someone’s job opportunities both by expanding the area they can cover on a reasonable commute time but also as a resource for the job itself, ie as a courier or ride share driver or pizza delivery or just to haul stuff around for one’s own small business. And it’s also a sort of safety net in the case of housing insecurity in the US. Many homeless don’t sleep literally on the street but sleep in their cars. Also, flexibility in family size or ability to share the car with household members in a carpool if only one vehicle is available. You can save at least 20% on groceries by being able to buy in bulk and not have to buy at a nearby convenience store or order food delivered (and, the delivery person’s livelihood is enabled by their vehicle).

Also, while flying has become cheaper in the last few decades (if traveling alone, not needing a car at your destination, planning months ahead of time, and traveling long distance), driving still allows optionality and greater flexibility for long distance travel and is cheaper with more than one occupant (Or if you need transport at the destination) plus allows vastly more cargo. If you need to evacuate or go to a nearby city for whatever reason, a regular sized and speed car gives you that flexibility.

Cars offer a lot of agency to an individual. If you live in an area that isn’t so dense that parking is always a hassle, it’s an easy net win for almost everyone. I love the idea of more pedestrian and bike friendliness, but we shouldn’t underestimate the vast value and agency And flexibility that a car provides.

I can, at any time of the day or night, travel to another state without checking anyone’s schedule and without breaking the bank. I can bring as much stuff as I’d need. If I can’t find a place to stay, I can just sleep in the vehicle. Even if there’s a terrorist attack, a strike, or a global pandemic. Rain or shine, cold or heat wave. I don’t have to be particularly fit or able (either than being sighted), either. The agency that even a really cheap car (a couple thousand used) gives almost anyone in the US is vast.

Chinese cities may be much denser than in the US, limiting parking options, so I can see how smaller cars might be better there than here, but other than that, I don’t see why someone would voluntarily buy a much smaller & slower car.

Car was always overkill and will always be unless there are two of them or there is an ability to hire bigger car conveniently. Or there are more places to park smaller car.

In Europe speed limit within towns is 50 km/h and often smaller in residential areas. That's entirely different mode of transportation from 90 km/h outside, which is yet different from autobahns.

Waymo Firefly was just a thing you've described. Time has not come yet. Until than I'd better bet on pedestrian only zones, bike lanes, low emissions zones, congestion charge, paid parking lots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_by_country

Also, the top speed of 60mph is pittiful when an SUV can go at 90 easy. I wonder why anyone would allow something so unsafe as these vehicles on the road.

(btw, half of this post was heavy sarcasm).

A much better approach to crash safety than trying to survive a crash, is to not to crash in the first place.

Companies need to make a distinction whether they want to protect the occupant from the collision beyond his control, from protecting the occupant from himself.

European accident rates started to plummet when ADASes became a thing in mass market cars.

If you can limit the maximum crash velocities to 60km/h with ADASes, then I believe car-to-car collisions can be made much, much less lethal even in such light cars.

Vehicles like these would be much safer in countries with high driver training standards and a low rate of fatalities per distance driven (e.g. New Zealand[0]) as compared to e.g. Mexico[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

However it is a cool idea and I would think the rest of the world can learn a lot from this: Instead of filling the freeways with queues of daily commuters sitting one person in a five person car, then driving around in something smaller suitable for one or two persons.

As other have mentioned - it looks a bit like the French Citroen Ami:

https://www.citroen.com/en/Highlight/131/ami-100-electric-mo...

Which as far as I know is limited to 45 km/h.

So maybe the problem here is too rigid legislation? That if it was allowed by law to drive faster etc. these things would useful enough to be popular.

Moped? Chinese golf car larping as an EV? Construction equipment? Shouldn't matter what it is, it should be allowed. There's no reason all this stuff (and bikes and pedestrians) can't coexist in low speed areas. And there are tons of industrial facilities the world over where it does all coexist.

This will never happen though because a lot of the interest in cheap EVs comes from a subconscious desire to not have to share the roads with the poors in their '99 Taurus wagons with mismatched body panels and letting people drive whatever defeats the point of forcing them to drive something palatable to the people making the rules.

Autonomous driving is just around the corner, too, which means that there is no need to waste space on parking structures, either. Here's a Tesla engineer that gave a great technical talk demonstrating their progress as of early this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7BXih7zx8

EDIT: yes, there are clear reasons why having an three-dimensional underground structure will absolutely affect the social dynamics above-ground in a city, yet it remains true that it is possible to banish cars from downtown cores in the near future (i.e., say by 2030 or so), given the present shift to electrification and autonomous driving. These issues are worthy of debate, and I'm just trying to shift the conversation to what's current. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade! I love the goal of city streets for people, as exemplified by the beautiful laneways in Melbourne (11 minutes): https://vimeo.com/131396094

Americans just don't like small cars, (for obvious reasons, as if you are driving next to F-250 and GM Silverados, your car will feel unsafe).

Also, in Cities, registration/parking/insurance cost quiet a bit, and those cars are usually charged full prices for parking.

So, even in metro areas, the difference in total cost between a 13k (super small car) and a 23k midsize/compact car are not that much. If they have to go to the hassle of owning a car, folks in metro areas in the US, prefer a size up

Now, in europe is a total difference. If you have driven in some Italian towns, you would understand that anything larger than a Toyta Corolla/Honda civic, would not fit in many streets and parking would be super hard. By necessity, you have to go down a size.

I know, when I was looking to buy a car for my parent's home in Albania, I had to choose the smallest crossover possible, otherwise it wont be comfortable to drive in the tight roads of my neighborhood. (even VW Tiguan, would be too large).

You can probably find a high end enclosed golf cart with similar specs.

It's not like they are sitting on a massive supply of cars that nobody wants to buy. They sell them all.

> I don't need a car or a truck that can go 0 to 60 in 2 seconds. I want safe car with a reasonable range that doesn't cost $100K.

That's the whole point behind battery work they are doing, to be able to make a car the price of a Honda Civic that can everything a modern car should do, including drive itself in many situations and enough range to drive it whereever you like.

It seems like you are massively underestimating how difficult it is to produce millions of EV. The whole global battery industry right can only support a few million cars a year.

The trajectory Tesla is taking is where a user buys subscription to a Tesla vehicle, all cars have the same feature set but what is available to you is based on the subscription you've bought. So if you have the autopilot option bought it will be available to you in whichever car that arrives.

In this case it makes sense to push out homogeneity amongst all of its vehicles out there.

That's not me turning my nose up at it by the way, it's that invariably everything is cut to the bone in a new car that cheap, and that goes well beyond the luxuries you might expect.

China and India have known lenient safety standards that large international companies have in the past talked about leveraging to get the price down for their domestic markets. I very much doubt this car would withstand even a modest collision, and I'd not want my kids in it.

In terms of the markets where these cars sell it's something of a necessary evil to take the risk in something that will crumple on impact in exchange for family transportation (which we did happily in the west 20-30 years ago).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_i-MiEV

The chemical engineering department at my university was full of extremely bright people working on incredibly complex machinery and wacky fluid-dynamics tricks to eke out an additional tenth of a percent yield or purity in basic chemical processes. I presume that this could only be even faintly economical if the industry is so competitive that minuscule improvements are a major advantage.

Similarly, my understanding is that putting together and running a chemical operation is an astonishingly complex and expensive proposition. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of using a tanker full of benzene is 5% the benzene itself and 95% safety measures, regulatory compliance, purpose-built equipment, and specially-trained employees.

I know for a fact that it takes decades for new chemical plants to come online, which makes the supply extremely inflexible; I'd be more surprised if new sources of demand didn't cause prices to explode.

Sand is so cheap. Why is a cpu processor so expensive?

> The cost advantage of LFP batteries which a lot of Chinese companies prefer to cobalt based

This is a kind of nonsense statement. Cathodes can't really be 'cobalt based'. The Cathodes primary part is Nickel. The Cobalt is an additive to stabilize the Nickel.

Could you expand on this?

If your emphasis is on the $5K, there's no way to make something that meets US road safety standards for that price. The cheapest new (gas-powered) car in the US is $10k, and it's really, really cheap.

It's the other car I own, a Ford Fiesta, and Ford stopped making it this year, too.

Possibly there's a market for really tiny cars where there wasn't for merely small cars, but I doubt it.

Well, because it's not an American car as such; it's a car designed for the Chinese market by an American company. Similarly, Ford is pretty popular in Europe (and so was GM until fairly recently when they sold off Opel), but their big sellers are largely cars designed for the European market.

This goes both ways; Japanese and Korean manufacturers have models that are primarily or entirely designed for the US market.

About 3 million sales in China per year. You really come off as someone talking his book, by the way.