America Is Missing Out on the Best Electric Cars
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
The article itself acknowledges this briefly: "one of the biggest challenges that EVs face here is not the cars; it’s the chargers. In America, charging stations are still too hard to find, and they are too unreliable. China’s charging network is much more extensive than America’s, even in rural areas. Ash Sutcliffe, of the massive Chinese carmaker Geely, told me that in the eastern part of the country, you’re generally never more than a kilometer away from a charging station".
I like the look of the 2024 Fiat 500e but that $34000 MSRP is difficult to justify for a practical little town errand car.
Here in New Zealand you can get a GWM Ora for 43k (26k USD) or MG4 for 47k (29k USD). These both include 15% GST.
If they could export to the US without penalties, I'd expect the prices to be even lower due to economies of scale in a much larger market.
- all golf cars
- all ATVs
- all mopeds
- all motorcycles
agreed, also, what is with all these articles written/submitted in favor of Chinese EVs in US? do they not know we are currently fighting an indirect war with China, with China supplying Russia's invasion against Europe being supplied by US? do they not know China is basically the backer for Houthi, Iran, North Korea, and Russia?
I am frustrated by it because I feel like we could be doing better. I mean, the best thing would be to invest in public transport but I would also be happy with more cheap car offerings.
Remember PV and EV are technology, getting smaller, cheaper, better as it iterates.
Collision with 3-ton concrete motorway barrier will be deathly in any country.
30mph collision with a barrier is probably quite survivable in one of these things. Obviously 70mph not so.
Unsafe depends on your environment. I'm perfectly safe biking about 3/4ths of the way to work. As soon as I get off the protected bikeway, it's a deathtrap.
I'm quite convinced that China is going to dominate the EV market in the next decade. I've been strolling around Shenzen for the last 2 weeks. By my estimation, roughly 50%-70% of cars on the road are already EVs. 100% of my Didi (China's Uber) rides have been EVs. I could be wrong but Shenzen might have banned new ICE cars already.
I went into a mall in Shenzen and noticed that Huawei had a store and they made electric cars.[0] This was a shock to me because I always thought that Huawei was a phone and networking company. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of the interior and the build quality of the Huawei cars. The build quality felt better than Teslas.
The shock factor is that a phone/networking company is capable of pushing out decent quality EVs already. It seems like there is a huge build up of EV talent here along with an unmatched supply chain to mass manufacture EV cars.
So while Tesla is struggling to mass produce the cybertruck, China doesn't seem like it's having any issues mass producing EVs. Heck, US media made me think that mass manufacturing EVs is as hard as building the large hadron collider. But in China, every random company and grandma seem to be designing and producing EVs.
PS. It's not just Shenzen. I also went to more rural places in Guangdong and there were still around 20-30% EVs on the road. Guangzhou, another Tier 1 city next to Shenzen was probably around 30 - 40% EVs by my estimation.
[0]It seems like Huawei makes the platform of the car I saw (Aito M7) but the brand of the car is Aito.
but not (yet, that I know of) the new old Land Cruiser (1984) (2024) rerelease https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46001237/toyota-land-crui...
If the Land Cruiser 70 is your idea of a "real" Land Cruiser then you'll need a friend in Japan, Australia, or South Africa (for now).
The new Land Cruiser would never be an option for me but I am strongly considering the new GX for a commuter while keeping the 100 Series for recreation.
Yes the 70 is what I would love to have.
When I ran an import repair shop, we had plenty of clients with the LX but myself and 2 other clients were the only ones with Land Cruisers.
Part of the issue is that the US, G7, and other developed countries do not want China to become a service/tech export company, which would greatly improve living conditions for the middle and lower class that you mentioned. They want China to continue to be the world's manufacturer so that they have less competition. The public smearing, anti-China propaganda is part of this strategy in my opinion. Hence, this article about how Chinese EVs can't come to the US despite how good they've become.
Especially the Zoe became a cult car for early EV adapters.
https://www.politico.eu/article/china-us-europe-electric-car...
Buying Twitter, the primary location for political disagreements and communications, is a sort of cover bet to negotiate later.
Interesting to note Trump staying away from Twitter altogether. He likely doesn’t want to give anyone, including Musk, and leverage or perceived leverage over him.
What is interesting is he has likely secured the nomination and may be able to win without Twitter, which would be a major signal that he is uncontrollable
Sorry, what? SpaceX is a generation ahead of any other launch vehicle in use or development the world around.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1QF2AR/
They want to hinder competition
It's moving very fast, yet you don't hear about them attempts here in the west
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ARxkXFp3Li8R0JgXBHy-Sw
Without subsidies, it's impossible to achieve, it's just like with nuclear power plants, if the public is not involved, nobody will want to invest, Musk knows that very well, he love them subsidies
He also wouldn't be able to be competitive if the government didn't offer grants/benefits for EVs
Of course. Everyone does. If you don’t, you’re an idiot or a non-participant in our market economy.
Very different from SpaceX “need[ing] trade barriers.”
> here in the west
ArianeSpace is French/EU.
> wouldn't be able to be competitive if the government didn't offer grants/benefits for EVs
SpaceX would. They wouldn’t exist without them. But their marginal economics don’t depend on them.
Having an entire nation state level effort, with far more capital and far better trained workforce, which China has, and the ability to copy the leader.
China will surpass SpaceX in a handful of years. The process is already underway.
In the whole it might be a good thing because it will probably force the United States to actually give a sh*t about competing in space, and subsidize SpaceX heavily.