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Comment by Tossrock | Hacker News Reader

I had no idea getting a license plate for a vehicle in Shanghai was so expensive. Apparently they use an auction system: "Shanghai officials have put in place a complicated—and expensive—process to purchase the right to add a car to the often-gridlocked roads of this city of 23 million people. To register for the license auction, prospective car buyers must put down 2,000 yuan as good faith money. In exchange, they get a disc loaded with software they can use to bid online. After a couple of rounds of offers, the government figures out the highest price it can charge to completely sell out the year’s new allotment of licenses. Lottery participants who had bid at least that much then get to pay for their plates." [0]

0: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-25/in-china-the...

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Until now, Tesla was not considered an electric car in China for purposes of getting a license plate outside of the auction. They used this to encourage Shanghai consumers to buy domestic EVs. The law's intent at least appeared to encourage local jobs. Since Tesla found a reasonable way around this, sales should grow remarkably. Tesla is planning local production for that market, which probably explains the change in policy.

Also, most people who have cars in these markets prefer to be driven, rather than driving themselves. Vehicles for the Chinese market tend to emphasize back seat comfort and features. Tesla will likely try to make their features more back seat compatible.

> Also, most people who have cars in these markets prefer to be driven, rather than driving themselves. Vehicles for the Chinese market tend to emphasize back seat comfort and features. Tesla will likely try to make their features more back seat compatible.

This is definitely not true in Shanghai, where most people drive their Mercedes, BMWs, and Audi's by themselves (besides, hiring a driver full time in SH is at least 8K RMB/month now, the days of drivers willing to work for 1K a month are over). If Tesla is wise, they'll go after the faster "drive yourself" market than the high-official "be driven" market.

In secondary markets, drivers are more popular, but even then the market of self-driven cars is growing much faster.

I'm from Shanghai, ironically, most of the "out of town" license plates you see there are actually results Shanghai residents buying cars from nearby provinces. In order to counter this, there are rules/restrictions against out of town license plates such as during rush hour or holidays their access to highway is limited, are not allowed to park in certain areas, etc etc. It's all kind of crazy actually.

Wait till you see Singapore's COE prices... To get a car there, you first pay 50-60K USD for a certificate, then you can go to the dealership and buy your car.

Yikes that's scary: http://www.sgcarmart.com/news/writeup.php?AID=70

A car that can often cost over 100k USD.

100K USD only gets you a Toyota. Double that for an E-class.

Does the price scale linearly or is there a high barrier to just get any kind of car anyways? If Singapore puts up a high initial barrier, the cost of the car is sort of secondary, or do they also have high import duties and luxury taxes on top of that?

If its just high registration costs, you'd expect to see a lot of higher end cars since there is not much point to pay $50K just to buy a $20K car.

It's mostly the import taxes... A Ferrari 458 will run you almost 720K USD (about 3x of what it is in the US). And you see them quite frequently.

China has high taxes on luxury cars, so they really are 2 or 3X the cost of the states (especially if imported). However, at least outside of Shanghai, registration costs are low (well, in Beijing we have the lottery), so you'll still see a lot of low end Chinese brands flying around.

When I was in Singapore, I got the impression that it was very different there, all the cars were quite nice.

Yes, I knew this 10 years ago in college. And Singapore is considered a pioneer in intelligent transportation back then. Not sure if this is still the case.

Still is. In fact you don't even need a car to get around the country. People there get a car because they can.

Why would you want a car in Singapore?! how much would you pay to the occasional cab?

just checked online, if i walked from downtown to the airport it would be 2h :)

Status.

I wonder what the software on that disc does given that it just bids online.

Probably just a 2000 yuan access key

It sounds like an OpenIPO auction [1]. All the software would have to do is submit the highest price you're willing to pay into a database, which is then used to determine the highest price they can sell all the licenses at.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIPO

That's Yuan very high price...

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