How China Won the Electric Vehicle Race

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Motion graphics by Vincent de Langen
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster
Writing & Direction by Evan

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Select footage from the AP Archive

[xgguo]

One of top reasons EV becomes more popular in China is that the charging cost is much much lower than fuel. For example, taxi drivers prefer EV because it helps make more money. If EV cars are good enough for Taxi, it shows its reliability and quality for ordinary people.

[freespeech]

You are missing a major factor: Chinese government invests heavily in electricity grid and charging stations.

[sparkside]

13:14 "For Americans, car ownership is a way of life" 

I think it's more accurate to say it's an obligation and burden imposed by a lack of good public transit, reinforced by companies and entities fighting to keep Americans in a position where they need to buy cars to get around.

[russli-lvyc]

What? EV require low skill, low cost labor? Batteries are commodities? Batteries are high tech, R&D intensive, capital intensive products. If you have ever seen a CATL factory, all automation, and they are working to improve yield from 99.9% to 99.9999%. The amount of research, testing, manufacturing at skill improvements needed is massive. CATL's factories are essentially a huge robot, huge amount of data from machines are collected to give insights into how to improve yield by 0.0009%. They are more like semi fabs.

[nelswolf]

Difference. Most countries, EVs are seen as a luxury. Theyre seen as to help the environmental. In China, its an necessity. With its density, auto pollution is a real problem. Even if they use coal power. It at least moves the pollution to outside the city.

[---jjlf]

The byd numbers are wrong, they contain Plug in Hybrids. They are half of their production.

[quintiax]

12:10
I want to make a small note here.
Belgium is not as big of a buyer of EVs as Mexico or SA, but we are a major artery for car import and export onto/from the European market. Hence the inflated number. Most of the cars being imported are subsequently being sent to other European countries.

[kianli]

My hometown is in a small town in Zhejiang Province. Now I live in Pudong New Area, Shanghai. The distance between the two places is about 200 km. My family has a Honda Odyssey. Previously, whenever I traveled between Shanghai and Zhejiang, the gas and toll fees were around 260 yuan(roughly 36 dollars). In June this year, my father-in-law purchased a NIO ES7. I didn't think it was a good idea at first. I was very worried about the range. I thought a hybrid like Lixiang L8 would be a better choice. In July, I drove the NIO ES7 back to my hometown. To my surprise, there was also a NIO fast charging station available in my small hometown. I calculated that the charging and toll fees for driving the ES7 back home totaled just over 100 yuan(roughly 14 dollars). From an operating cost perspective, it was very affordable. My only complaint about the car now is that the body is too wide. It can be inconvenient when parking and navigating tight spaces in Puxi.

[fyd]

In the chart at 11:30, the BYD figure includes plug-in hybrids, which account for half of the sales, so "only" ~120k were actually EVs

[seraphimworms]

"EVs rely on relatively large amount of low skill, low cost labour", Lmao. It make my day.

[lijiayi]

China : bike
US : poverty !
China : cars
US : pollution !
China : EV
US : subsidies !

[BatsiraiMusuka]

When two elephants fight…it’s the grass that suffers.

Being Afrikan from Zimbabwe where we have the 4th largest lithium deposits (and the average citizen does not benefit at all from that fact)…I’m really feeling like that grass.

[alexties]

The number of chinese cars is increasing rapidly here in italy. German and local car manufacturers are increasing prices into absurdity. They are opening the gate for those foreign car makers.

[haoli]

The most impotant factor for chinese goverment to push EV, is because it has already build the world largest solar panel and wind power industry. With the EV and Energy Storage Battery industry China is working on, all the puzzle pieces are finaly come together.

[brian.z]

I'm visiting Thailand at the moment, I can barely see Tesla on the street, but can see quite a lot of BYD EV's here, including the BYD EV taxi.

[KC-vxgj]

When I heard "EVs rely on relatively large amount of low skill, low cost labour", I am convinced this video is full of BS. So tesla workers are a bunch of low skill labour compared with their counterparts in Detroilt?

[RLAZ]

Saying China's most effective policies were coersive doesn't make sense. The Chinese people want clean air, this policy helped get them there. Thats not coersion... This wouldn't work in America because not as many Americans live in big cities where air pollution is a major issue. Also most American culture dislikes government regulation because we equate freedom with lack of government intervention

[bilibiliism]

I think one reason is that unlike in europe or USA, which car manufactures need to convince gas car uses to convert to EV, in China many EV buyers are first time car buyers, so theres not transition pain.

[millevenon]

22% of new cars sold in California this July were fully electric compared to just 5% in 2019. Change is happening fast

[BensEcoAdvntr]

The US buyer’s demand of a 500 mile EV is odd considering most internal combustion vehicles don’t go that far on one tank. Plus the convenience of overnight or workplace charging means you really just need an EV that can cover your daily commute, with a bit extra for an occasional trip. I’m sure someone will comment about their 200 mile commute but those are extreme outliers.