zlacker

>>surpri+(OP)
They're going to eat our lunch because we let our legacy ICE vehicle manufacturers dictate the terms of the shift to electric. We have to be better about identifying economic developments that are likely to be concerns for domestic stability and national security, and not let greed and fear in the corporate class stop us from making the necessary changes. Another arena where we've already lost, in a sense, and will need to play hardball catch-up is healthcare: other countries have a more stable and hour-for-hour productive workforce because their workers can get preventative care and treatment for illnesses quickly and without a fuss. If we have to trash the medical insurance industry to reach parity with our peers, so be it.

>>underl+Bv1
I mean, the ultimate reason why the US doesn't have China's electric vehicle policy is that the US is a democracy, and it would be massively unpopular. The median US voter is, like, a 40-something mother in a random suburb of Pennsylvania, who doesn't have a college degree, has a house with a mortgage, and is moderate but doesn't pay much attention to politics. To get Chinese policies enacted in the US, people like that would have to be convinced that mass-producing electric cars was more important than preserving local forests (need 'em for a factory site), paying workers prevailing wage (drives up production costs), keeping gas and ICE car registration cheap (makes electric less competitive), having cheap goods on sale at Walmart (strong currency makes imports cheap but exports expensive), avoiding noise and dust from construction (have to put the power lines somewhere), running a low government deficit (manufacturing subsidies aren't free), etc. There's a lot of trade-offs that people don't want to make.

>>apsec1+dE1
Sprawl is the major difference and a major reason behind range anxiety.

Chinese cities are very very dense, and very new due to urban redevelopment projects in the 2000s-2021. For example, the urban core of Shanghai is around 20 miles end-to-end, so the same size as Wichita end-to-end, yet has a population of around 20mil compared to 350k.

This helps sustain both public transit as well as EVs with minimal range anxiety.

The industrial policy aspect of EVs also helps ofc, but big picture it works with the range and size of Chinese metropolitan areas.

The issue is the sprawl factor simply can't be solved in a country as spread out as the US, so long range batteries (looking at you Idemetsu Kosan and Toyota) or hybrids are the best solution in a sprawly semi-urban environment.

>>alephn+fH1
Who drives more than 200 miles in a day?

>>Zoomer+aO1
The advantage is flexibility. It is occasionally very useful to be able to drive for far longer than that. It increases competition between petrol/charging stations since people can choose to go to a cheaper one instead. They could also maximise the impact of loading up a full charge/tank at a cheap place.

And there are lots of factors that reduce the range - hilly or mountainous terrain, aircon/heating, number of passengers or load, and driving style.

Longer range also improves security since people don't necessarily have to stop in places where they feel unsafe.

A fast charging solution massively improves things for EV though - gleaning from TA, the battery packs of Chinese EVs seem to be exchanged at charging stations.

>>samus+5W1
> the battery packs of Chinese EVs seem to be exchanged at charging stations.

Nio (a Shanghai firm) is the primary battery swap EV car brand, but by market share (BYD and Tesla) most EV cars in China don't support battery swapping.

That said, Geely, Changan, JAC, and Chery are looking at battery swapping as well in order to differentiate themselves in the Chinese EV market which is dominated by BYD with secondary marketshare for SAIC and Tesla.

Given BYD's dominance in the Chinese EV space, I'm not sure how much market share secondary brands can gain, and this is influencing the mass EV export attempts by Chinese players leading to multiple trade wars as smaller players in the Chinese market who tend to be funded or owned by regional governments are subsidized by those local governments to export abroad and/or start price wars domestically in China.

> A fast charging solution

Battery Management Systems and Battery Chemistry are hard. BYD is a leader in the space because they've been manufacturing batteries for decades (ever used a cellphone in the 2000s or an iPhone before 2016? - it was using a BYD battery)

Other EV players in China not so much.

BYD is basically a battery maker who became an automotive manufacturer, but the other players in the Chinese market are automotive players who don't have the domain experience in battery technology.