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

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/tesla-s-nemesis-in-china-is-a-tiny-5-000-electric-car-from-gm

by finphil • 6 years ago

246 538 6 years ago

baybal26• 6 years ago

Is still cannot comprehend how in the world Chinese fell for American cars.

One thing I noticed is that recent Chinese immigrants to the West often get a very unpleasant surprise after buying GM cars in North America. GM in China is known to be much better than American GM, but they are still known as quite a bad deal to more technically literate buyers.

I guess, some people will drive just any car for as long as it's not Japanese.

Or may it be the appeal of a an image of a product made for "rich old people" is still so irresistible to Chinese buyers.

MiroF• 6 years ago

American products are considered a luxury status symbol in much of China. There are literal "Jeep" stores in Beijing that are just selling Jeep-branded camo apparel at upscale prices.

rsynnott12• 6 years ago

Is still cannot comprehend how in the world Chinese fell for American cars.

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.

nickik5• 6 years ago

GM basically lost money in Europe for 15 years straight.

Ford does make some money in Euope thanks to their commercial vehicles mostly, they don't actually make all that much money on the personal cars either. That said, Ford did much better in Europe then GM and are actually profitable there.

kennywinker13• 6 years ago

So much of what is toxic about cars and car culture could be fixed by downsizing and slowing them. Primarily, less injuries and deaths - but also lower overall energy consumption and less pedestrian and cyclist hostility. I wish north america would fully get on board with these small EVs

grp000• 6 years ago

America has the fundamental problem of large size, little EV infrastructure and poor public transit outside metro areas.

Google2343• 6 years ago

I don’t want to drive slower so I will vote against this.

stouset2• 6 years ago

I don’t want to pay taxes for schools since I don’t have children. But I’m an adult capable of understanding that what I personally want isn’t necessarily what’s best for society at large, so I suck it up and do it anyway without complaining.

aeternum2• 6 years ago

A motorcycle is a good option then. You reduce the risk to others.

kennywinker13• 6 years ago

How badly do you want it? There are 30,000 deaths per year from cars in the USA, and many many more injuries. It's not clear what the relationship between that number and the speed/size of cars is, but I'd be willing to bet we could cut that number in half by reducing cars to a max speed of 40mph. Is your desire to drive fast worth 15,000 lives every year? Over your lifetime that could be a million lives saved.

ColanR• 6 years ago

It sounds like you speak for the half of the population that lives near and in metro areas. I think if you were used to the scale of the less-populated areas, where a 'short' drive is 30 minutes, you might realize that what you hope for is laughably out of touch with about half of the US.

thatfrenchguy• 6 years ago

Ha the typical "but think of the country side". 80% of americans live in a urban area.

bleepblorp2• 6 years ago

Only 20% of the US population lives in rural areas[0]. Pre-pandemic, the national average one-way commute time was half an hour[1]. Given typical (pre-pandemic) traffic in most cities, much of that commute time will be spent in traffic congestion and very little will be spent at high speeds.

Rural areas, and locations with severe winter weather, have special needs for which higher speeds and more robust vehicles are appropriate, but smaller, lighter, and slower vehicles are a viable option for most Americans.

It's laughably out of touch to believe the US is even half rural. That ship sailed a very long time ago.

[0] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-210... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...

TheBigSalad• 6 years ago

Half of America is still a pretty big market.

valuearb14• 6 years ago

Way more than half. Even if you live in an urban area, you occasionally need to drive out of the urban area.

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

maybe migrating dense urban areas could finance long range EV design / research ?

woah3• 6 years ago

This is obviously a larger issue than what type of car etc, but there's no good reason for Americans to live in suburbs and exurbs and drive hours every day. The entire lifestyle is stupid, but you're right that just offering small electric vehicles won't change that.

monadic2• 6 years ago

Half the us geographically, not by population. You're really exaggerating the nation's dependency and how few people half the metro areas of the US can serve. That's a massive number.

tehabe• 6 years ago

cars made especially those rural areas worse, because cars made it possible for people to travel longer distances in a short amount of time. for this reason stores, schools, and other infrastructure centralised and became mostly only accessible by car.

stefan_3• 6 years ago

I don't get it, nothing in the parent comment means getting rid of cars. You made that up entirely.

The point is simply that if a fucking 60 kW transporter can scale the alps, people can do their so necessary drives with something a whole lot less powerful, a lot less hefty than they likely are doing.

philistine• 6 years ago

I come from a very rural world, and I have to say you seem insecure about our common way of life. We are a minority of modern life, and our cars should become the exception due to their size, not the norm. Urban areas have access to deliveries up the wazoo, and their cars should become smaller and electric, to afford us the carbon footprint of our big cars.

bamboozled• 6 years ago

Yup and it’s about to get worse because many panicked and decided to abandon cities over COVID fears. Viva decentralisation!

riffraff• 6 years ago

I grew up in a town in Italy where half the population still worked in agriculture, and the FIAT Panda[0] was insanely popular in the '80s, '90s and somewhat even now.

The '80s 4x4 version was basically perfect.

This to say: you do not need a huge modern SUV for non-metropolitan area.

Edit: I just realized there's an underlying issue: you can have more than one vehicle in a family, one larger for specific needs like long trips, and one small for daily usage. This seems to be the default in Europe these days.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Panda

publicola19902• 6 years ago

I do think that that Americans are largely choosing to use bigger cars with bigger engines that they usually require. There should be a move to small engined, smaller and more efficient autos, but I don't see that in the US.

michelb• 6 years ago

I think those rural areas might be better served with public transportation.

blueboo• 6 years ago

(Half of the US in terms of geography, not population)

83% of US population is urban

TLightful2• 6 years ago

Maybe half of the US laughably out of touch with this moment in global history.

But do you.

MuffinFlavored• 6 years ago

you might realize that what you hope for is laughably out of touch with about half of the US.

Oddly enough, that's a really good summary of our two-party political system in my opinion. 60m voters on the left, 60m voters on the right. Pretty evenly split down the middle, very little common middleground.

jasonv• 6 years ago

Seems like a strategy could address both demographic needs. But people in rural areas don’t ALL need F350s and the like...

Waterluvian2• 6 years ago

This makes me wonder what it’s like being a small car European family with three young kids trying to do something with their weekend.

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

rsynnott12• 6 years ago

A normal hatchback will accommodate two adults and three kids.

Also, of course, few families actually _have_ three kids: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Larger cars, SUVs and people carriers do exist in Europe, but the average family won't need one.

And you can take kids on the bus/train.

Xylakant2• 6 years ago

There’s not that many European families with 3 kids any more. The reproduction rate is somewhat below 2 kids per family - hence all that discussion about shrinking population. Then there’s quite a few options. I can easily hop on the train and go to the beach. It’s even faster than by car and less stressful when traveling with small kids. Or take one of the many rental or car-sharing cars . In Berlin, car owning households are actually a minority.

Someone2• 6 years ago

The law of camping/holidays: whatever your storage space, you’ll need all of it. Applies to cars, suitcases, backpacks, houses.

You don’t even need a car. In countries with decent cycling infrastructure, it is possible to go on a weekend with young kids on a bicycle. Kids go in the trailer, or if over ≈4, on the trail-a-bike or, if over ≈7, on their own bicycle.

mhh__3• 6 years ago

So either no one with a car does anything in Europe or it's possible with a smaller car.

It may be worth saying that everything in America is bigger than its European counterpart, to a first approximation. You can tell that Tesla's are designed for an American market by just how fat the back is compared to (say) a Mercedes S-class - it still fits on the road but it's very voluptuous

markwkw• 6 years ago

Real example: my family could not afford a car when I was a kid. We used 2 options: cycling (with all the gear, picnic blanket etc) or a regular bus. There were also organized summer outings in a chartered bus. Later we I also managed to go to weekend outings in a mazda 323 with 2 kids. You just take less stuff.

notauser• 6 years ago

Not hard. We have taken the whole family camping by bike-train-bike. Even a small car would be a doddle.

The four year old is towed using a follow-me, all the gear goes in a couple of panniers.

We have spent a small part of our car-money on some very high quality gear, through. Small and light equipment is much easier to pack than Walmart camping gear.

KozmoNau74• 6 years ago

I did it just fine in a Fiat Panda, for instance 3 adults, 2 French bulldogs and luggage for 2 weeks, 6 hour drive.

Going home, we added a cat, its transport box and toys/accessories/food. Not a problem.

In the Peugeot 406 (midsize sedan) I had after that, we were 5 adults going to weight lifting competitions, so you can probably guess that none of us were exactly tiny. Also not a problem.

baybal26• 6 years ago

Ego: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od2baRZA-YY

spullara2• 6 years ago

Most accidents are at low speed, especially when you are talking about hitting pedestrians and cyclists. Your suggestion is non-sensical.

ben_w8• 6 years ago

Most harm occurs with high-speed collisions.

I was hit while cycling, by a car which pulled out of a minor junction as I was turning into it. As it was an extremely low speed collision, there was no real harm to me, although the (cheap) bike was not worth repairing. The worst I can say about my injury was not having any memory between being in contact with the bonnet at 45 degrees while thinking “oh no”, and finding myself horizontal looking up to a bunch of strangers insisting I didn’t get up. I didn’t even have any grazing.

If a pedestrian is struck by a car at 40 mph, there is an 85% chance of death. This percentage drops to 45% at 30 mph and 5% at 20 mph. - https://mdot.ms.gov/safetyeducation/parents/facts-and-stats/

I was probably hit at 5-10 mph.

zozin• 6 years ago

What if I have a large family? What if I need to crate my large dog in the car? What if I want to go to Costco and buy a bunch of groceries and supplies and bring them home? What if I like visiting national parks and the speed limit en route is in excess of 70MPH?

srtjstjsj2• 6 years ago

Delivery service, rental car, and a few cases actually need all the space.

ben_w8• 6 years ago

Cars which the American market describes as “superminis” can fit five people, and if have more family than that then sure nothing shops stop you buying a bigger car, but most people don’t. Shopping can go in the passenger section if you really are bulk-buying too much for just the boot. 70 MPH is the upper limit, not the lower limit, but even if it was a lower limit I believe the suggestion is to lower the limit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Corsa

yyyuutt2• 6 years ago

This is pretty much why in Asia and Europe people dont have large families, nor large dogs, nor buy massive boxes of goods from warehouse stores. National parks you should be good.

andrepd• 6 years ago

More specifically, slowing them in zones where they share space with pedestrians (and bicycles). You can go 150kph in highway and its still safe (as safe as 120). But in a city, speed limits of 30 would slash pedestrian and cyclist fatalities. Accidents, when they happen, would be mostly nonfatal.

rtpg• 6 years ago

It’s untrue that highways are “just as safe at 150”. There are a couple studies looking at the results of various states upping the speed limit on highways.

The conclusion is the intuitive one: more accidents and more likelihood of fatalities.

kennywinker13• 6 years ago

I hear what you're saying, but I don't actually think speed limits solve the problem. There are parts of the downtown core in my city that have 30kph speed limits, but cars regularly drive 60kph anyway. The only effective way to lower the speed of drivers in shared spaces would be electronic speed limiting, or (perhaps simultaneously) a transition to low speed vehicles.

mempko• 6 years ago

We need public transport more than anything. Much better pollution wise and much greener.

twblalock• 6 years ago

Public transit is unusable during pandemics, and natural disasters.

I like trains more than most people do, but I'm really glad I also own a car, and I'm not going to get back on a train, or any other form of public transit, until the pandemic is over.

ralph843• 6 years ago

Yet China already has these small EVs, and their traffic-related death numbers are abysmal compared to North America. Yes, even when adjusted for population.

emmelaich• 6 years ago

With the advent of self-driving, you could keep the speed or even raise it.

kennywinker13• 6 years ago

It's still unclear to me that self-driving cars will EVER arrive, much less if they'll arrive in the next 10 years. There are a lot of today's problems that will no longer be problems if some future technology arrives - but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to fix today's problems.

zaroth5• 6 years ago

So much of what is beautiful about cars is the ability to choose one that fits your needs, desires, and lifestyle.

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.

tshaddox• 6 years ago

Another way of looking at it is that no matter how beautifully you describe American car culture or how much you romanticize it, it has immense externalities. The externalities don’t depend on how much people enjoy using cars however they please.

kennywinker13• 6 years ago

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

Exactly. Lightweight, low-speed electric vehicles still allow you to hit the open road, haul a load of trash to the dump, or commute in from the burbs. There is nothing about that freedom that is dependent on being able to go from 0-60 in a specific time, or having a specific top speed.

Dumblydorr• 6 years ago

I believe in the right tool for the job. Getting people and goods from A to B is a job that's done incredibly inefficiently and unsafely. Our society would be cleaner, quieter, and safer if we right-sized our vehicles.

lexusgx• 6 years ago

These are good points, but we have to remember that the car industry is backed by a powerful lobby that makes car ownership particularly convenient. I argue that it's _too_ convenient at the current point in time.

The problem that makes vehicles incompatible with other modes of transportation (mostly cycling, but increasingly walking) is that cars are increasingly made "safer" at a social cost -- namely, visibility of pedestrians/cyclists and vehicle mass (and therefore momentum). Cars are much heavier today than before, and they have worse visibility of the road than before. This is to make the driver safer, and it comes at the cost of the safety of non-car drivers around.

Cyclists and pedestrians have (almost) no voice when it comes to regulation of automotive safety. There isn't even a notion of "whole community safety" when automotive safety is discussed. The only thing that seems to matter is whether the driver is protected, and this has created a safety imbalance. In the rare moments that something is done, we focus mostly on driving speed.

I think we can do more.

We should be asking ourselves: Is there an engineering solution to ensure that foot traffic, bike traffic, and car traffic can peacefully coexist to move people around as effectively and harmlessly (environment, other people, etc) as possible?

QuesnayJr2• 6 years ago

It's literally the case that urban living is what's regulated out of existence, and it's suburban and rural living that gets subsidized in a (very successful) scheme by politicians to buy votes. But the political realities are what they are, so voters will continue to demand those subsidies while pretending they are the ones that are being regulated.

hourislate• 6 years ago

So much of what is toxic about cars and car culture could be fixed by downsizing and slowing them

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

Mupuff2• 6 years ago

I never really thought about it, but could online shopping + delivery actually be much more environmentally friendly? i.e rather than having everyone drive do to their own shopping.

This is with the assumption that a single delivery truck can hit multiple customers on their route, and in the context of more rural\suburban areas.

chii• 6 years ago

toxic about cars and car culture

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

austincheney4• 6 years ago

That line of thinking sounds incredibly beneficial to the tiny percentage of population that lives in urban areas not dependent upon freeways or long commutes.

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

kennywinker13• 6 years ago

Instead of setting the speed limit, we could regulate the speed of cars off the production line. It's a lot more fun to drive a slow vehicle fast, than a fast vehicle slow.

TeeMassive6• 6 years ago

I get it that you don't get outside of big cities often nor did you ever drive in snow. Laughs in Canadian.

konjin• 6 years ago

A really good take on cars I saw years ago is that they have two modes.

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.

Mupuff2• 6 years ago

I do wonder whether there should be laws limiting acceleration as there are speed limits.

beezle3• 6 years ago

If people here wanted to drive tiny cars they would. The only time there has been any interest is during oil shocks. Nobody enjoys or desires to drive a Yaris if they can avoid it

MrBuddyCasino• 6 years ago

SUVs don’t belong in cities, but this thing?

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

tibbydudeza3• 6 years ago

US gas prices is still very cheap though ... like the 70's oil crisis people only changed over to those smaller Honda's and Toyota's when they felt it in their pockets.

Robotbeat• 6 years ago

So I wonder how true it is that smaller cars would have better efficiency. “Smart” electric cars get about 3.3 miles per kWh compared to about 4 miles per kWh for the Tesla Model 3. The gas versions also aren’t terribly efficient versus efficient gas cars. And that’s ignoring the lower passenger count, which will tend to lower the occupancy rate on average.

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.

notatoad2• 6 years ago

i think it's pretty telling that this comment seems to have gotten the same reaction as any comment suggesting people commute by biking, walking, public transit, or any other method beyond personal vehicle.

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.

zeroimpl• 6 years ago

There are many situations where a car is infinitely more practical, such as when you need to transport goods (eg shopping).

Before I had a car, I once bought a dumbbell set. Had to carry it 5 minutes to the bus stop. Box fell apart on the way. Bus driver wasn’t particularly patient with me needing multiple trips to get all pieces into and out of bus either.

Since I own a car and pay insurance, why would I bother with other forms of transit when they are slower and bring their own set of problems?

AniseAbyss3• 6 years ago

You ignore human nature.

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.

peter303• 6 years ago

Many compact cars were discontinued in the US in 2020 due to low sales- Toyota Yaries, Honda FIT, Chevy Sonic. sUVs and trucks account for 78% of new sales. Especialy with gasoline testing $2.00 a gallon.

FooBarBizBazz• 6 years ago

Yes! Speeding things up just causes distances to increase and facilities to centralize.

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.

sudosysgen5• 6 years ago

4230$ for an EV with a 170km range is insane if you live in a city.

martin_a3• 6 years ago

Totally! This would bring me to work and back for half a month. I can also load my EV at work, so there wouldn't be any range problems. Would love to see something like this for the European market.

rsynnott12• 6 years ago

Renault Twizy probably isn't a million miles away (though for regulatory reasons, it's slower). I do think it's interesting that most if not all European equivalents have been made to look apparently as un-car-like as possible, whereas this one looks like a very small car.

harpastum• 6 years ago

You might want to take a look at the Citroën Ami. 6000 euro including VAT. Not sure which country you're in, but it seems more likely that something street legal in France would work for you.

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

baybal26• 6 years ago

Now, back to the merits of the article:

One of the biggest challenges in making EVs cheaper is the battery, which currently represents about one-quarter of a car’s cost because of the expensive metals used, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese.

No, it's such a big, massive misconception the misconception that the echo chamber keeps repeating.

The raw material cost of metals used even in the biggest batteries around is at maximum $1k-$1.5k, and usually just few hundred bucks.

What makes it expensive is the big chem, and it's stranglehold on processing them into cathode, and anode materials.

Plain graphite, while also being dominated by an oligopoly, still only costs $1 per kg, but the moment it becomes an industrial chemical, its price shoots n-fold.

Lithium is by far not the cost factor at all, with the amount used, and no scarcity prospect is in sight, despite speculations of the stock market lemmings, but the moment it is put into some chemical relevant to battery making, it too shoots up in price n-fold.

Cobalt was one of few things which really used to be pricey, but not much now. The cost was approaching $200 per kg at the top of the Cobalt bubble, but then it felt to $20, and below. And again, the moment it becomes a cathode material, it costs 10*n-times as much.

The cost advantage of LFP batteries which a lot of Chinese companies prefer to cobalt based ones is not much in the material cost, but because the chemical's supply chain is much simpler, stable, and has much, much, more domestic competition.

The cobalt based cathode materials are still a domain of LG Chem, and few much smaller Japanese companies.

mixmastamyk3• 6 years ago

What makes it expensive is the big chem, and it's stranglehold on processing them into cathode, and anode materials.

Could you expand on this?

baybal26• 6 years ago

Processed chemicals used for battery making cost many times the cost of raw materials, and it will be so until competition can weaken the big chem oligopolies currently dominating the market.

saulrh2• 6 years ago

Do you have any citations explaining this in more detail, perhaps with some argument supporting intent or collaboration? I ask because it directly conflicts with everything I've seen about the economics arising from the fundamental physics of chemical engineering. To whit:

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.

baybal26• 6 years ago

Do you have any citations explaining this in more detail, perhaps with some argument supporting intent or collaboration? I ask because it directly conflicts with everything I've seen about the economics arising from the fundamental physics of chemical engineering. To whit:

I do not, but I mingled a lot with EV engineers from BYD, with some of whom I used to spend Fridays.

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.

The cost of benzene is 50% and more tax in most Western countries.

The chemical engineering department at my university was full of extremely bright people working on incredibly complex machinery

Indeed it is, but there are far more harder to synthesize, and work with chemicals sold at single digit margins, largely thanks to Chinese factories steamrolling chem monopolies for the last 2 decades.

And battery materials are by far not that tricky to make.

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

I ask because it directly conflicts with everything I've seen about the economics arising from the fundamental physics of chemical engineering. To w[]it:
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.

I don't understand how you think this conflicts with the parent comment. You seem to be in near-total agreement. Compare:

> The raw material cost of metals used even in the biggest batteries around is at maximum $1k-$1.5k, and usually just few hundred bucks.
> What makes it expensive is the big chem, and it's stranglehold on processing them into cathode, and anode materials.
> Plain graphite, while also being dominated by an oligopoly, still only costs $1 per kg, but the moment it becomes an industrial chemical, its price shoots n-fold.
> Lithium is by far not the cost factor at all, with the amount used, and no scarcity prospect is in sight, despite speculations of the stock market lemmings, but the moment it is put into some chemical relevant to battery making, it too shoots up in price n-fold.
> Cobalt was one of few things which really used to be pricey, but not much now. The cost was approaching $200 per kg at the top of the Cobalt bubble, but then it felt to $20, and below. And again, the moment it becomes a cathode material, it costs 10*n-times as much.

whatever1• 6 years ago

“What makes it expensive is the big chem, and it's stranglehold on processing them into cathode, and anode materials.”

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

anon73044• 6 years ago

The expensive part is when we teach sand to think!

nickik5• 6 years ago

Every battery cell itself is a little engineering miracle, that's why its 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.

vardump• 6 years ago

Precisely correct. No idea why this was downvoted.

jacquesm• 6 years ago

Raw material cost has usually very little to do with what a similar weight or volume of purified material costs. The purification process, energy input and any kind of stabilization trickery required to keep it pure are what drives the cost, the raw material costs are a footnote in that.

malwarebytess• 6 years ago

So, why can't we sell a car like this in the US at a similar price? Do we think there's no market?

cblconfederate2• 6 years ago

maybe they d be good in population-dense europe , but US sprawl practically requires huge batteries

mixmastamyk3• 6 years ago

^high speed/collisions in a tiny tin can.

lvs2• 6 years ago

80% of Americans live in an urban area.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-210...

pwinnski5• 6 years ago

I drive a Fiat 500e with what they bill as an 84-mile range, and I live in a suburb of Dallas. I actually get closer to 100 than 84, but I am rarely concerned about the range, despite the extreme sprawl. But I know people who have commutes that would make driving my car nearly impossible, or at least impossible without mid-day charging.

tyingq• 6 years ago

Safety standards would make it more than $5k.

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

jagger27• 6 years ago

A less equipped Polaris runs north of $10k.

ardit33• 6 years ago

The Smart car brand failed in the US, and the Fiat 500 will be discontinued in the US.

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).

sudosysgen5• 6 years ago

I mean, that's true, but at 4320$ I can't help but believe that there would be a sizeable market for it in the US.

bash-j• 6 years ago

Compact cars are popular in Australia, even though we have big open roads and most people live in the suburbs. I think running costs are a big factor in choosing a car, if you are comparing between 5L per 100KM and 15L per 100KM, and the price of petrol is around $1.40 per litre ($3.70 USD per gallon). Registration and insurance is also more expensive the bigger the engine. Once popular sedans like the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon have all but died out, as people no longer wanted a petrol guzzling 6 or 8 cylinder engine.

I think an electric car the size of a Toyota Yaris / Honda Jazz would be a big hit in Australia, since that category has been popular for decades. Whereas I think the only popular sedan nowadays would be the Camry, and they are mainly used for taxis. Family cars tend to be SUVs with underpowered petrol or diesel engines to try and get the fuel economy, even if it struggles to climb hills.

Another big seller I think would be a plug in hybrid ute similar to a Hilux, since they are the main vehicles used by tradies. If you could get maybe 100 - 200km of travel using electric only and then petrol for the rest, I think that would be suitable for people who mainly work in metropolitan areas. You could also use the battery instead of carrying a petrol generator.

alacombe• 6 years ago

A student in my gf class got killed during commute in a morning as he exceptionally drove an old beater instead of his pick-up. A full-size transport truck crashed into it. He would probably still be alive had he been driving his pick-up.

mhh__3• 6 years ago

Partly practicality (overblown but still true) and also My car is bigger than your car-itis

fortran77• 6 years ago

It would be nice if downtowns had zones where only local delivery and max-20 mph cars could be used, along with bicycles, etc. safer for everyone.

maxharris4• 6 years ago

Better yet, let's get rid of cars altogether from city streets. This is coming along very nicely... https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21257849/elon-musk-boring...

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

rootusrootus9• 6 years ago

I'm not going to live long enough to see autonomous cars in the hands of regular people. And I'm not particularly old yet.

Electric, I'm with you. We're at 2 out of 3 cars in our household being electric.

xkcd-sucks2• 6 years ago

If underground construction is so easy now, why not move all the people underground and leave the roads in place? It's much easier to build a lot of unconnected spaces vs a network, and being in a highrise is basically the same as being in an underground box

throwaway0a5e7• 6 years ago

Just let people drive whatever the hell they want as long as they stay off the roads where traffic flows faster than X.

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.

maxharris4• 6 years ago

Here are some more headlines to help put this in context:

"Tesla still dominates electric car sales in China, over 11,000 deliveries in July" https://electrek.co/2020/08/11/tesla-dominates-electric-car-...

"Tesla Model 3 sales in China spike 7% in August" https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-china-sales-august-2...

"China now accounts for nearly one-quarter of Tesla revenue" https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/28/tesla-china-revenue/

"Tesla Model 3 Maintains Its Position as China’s Most-Sold EV Model in August" https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-09-10/tesla-model-3-mainta...

Ah, I did see this at the bottom of that caixinglobal link:

"In August, the Hongguang Mini, a two-door micro EV launched by General Motors’ Chinese joint venture, claimed the title of the second most popular electric car model in the country, with sales of 9,150 units, the CPCA statistics showed."

So I can see both perspectives on this small question about sales figures in the short-term.

The tie-breaker for me? The innovations presented at Tesla's Battery Day event. I don't think GM is going to be able to catch up to that, because they simply haven't made the investments required to do so. Tesla is ahead by a decade on battery manufacturing and software, including autonomy.

What does GM have? A legacy of fuel cells, and a failed partnership with this little fraudulent company named Nikola...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/business/nikola-trevor-mi...

I take no pleasure in this knife twisting, but if you look under the covers, legacy auto is absolutely mired in scandal after scandal: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/business/bmw-sec.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-emissions/daimler...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/uaw-indictment.h...

I wonder if GM will even exist at all in ten years.

mynameishere• 6 years ago

What does GM have?

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

maxharris4• 6 years ago

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Thanks for the tip about how others might perceive me - I'll take it under advisement.

yholio• 6 years ago

More like someone nervously talking their book, first and foremost trying to reassure themselves.

I think the GP can relax, no one interprets the "Tesla nemesis" in the title as anything else than sensationalism. The two EV markets have absolutely nothing in common except the (maybe) compatible charging stations.

maxharris4• 6 years ago

I'm a long-term investor. I got in back in March, way before the split or much of the stuff that has come to pass. I documented what I was doing back then, and I think my bets have held up pretty darn well!

When you see evidence that you've missed something, don't double down with your head in the sand...

See you in 2025! :grin:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23027366

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22958528

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22970810

You can downvote me all you want, but it won't make your value investing hypothesis true. It won't save the companies you own...

nickik5• 6 years ago

I don't know why the parent felt the need for this rant. The article itself is kind of pointless as those cars are not really comparable, might as well throw scooters in there.

If we seriously want to argue GM/Tesla. The 3M ice vehicles are pretty irrelevant, all cars will have to go electric and that is the market that matters. And selling a tiny car in China is not gone be what makes GM the big money they need to be 'General Motors'. In fact I would argue all infrastructure related to ICE will be negative value in a few years, and that includes outstanding leases on ICE cars. That will be a huge issue for GM and Ford.

nickik5• 6 years ago

Dude, I'm long Tesla as well but there is no point to this creed. The headline is just attention grabbing. Nobody believes a 5k car in China is gone help GM win over Tesla in the EV space.

lvs2• 6 years ago

They won't sell these small cars in the US because they claim the US market's only growth is in huge SUVs and trucks. Well that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you brought to market a $5k EV that fits two to a parking space, I can promise you that the market is definitely there.

rsynnott12• 6 years ago

Ford in particular has repeatedly tried to bring its Ford of Europe-designed smaller models to the US, with very little success.

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

pwinnski5• 6 years ago

I drive a Fiat 500e, but I'm one of few enough that they've stopped even selling them in the US.

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.

hristov• 6 years ago

The problem is that these are not made to crash-worthiness standards of other cars. The article hints around this when it says that in China an electric car that has top speed under 100 km/h (around 60 mph) has very little regulations attached to it.

So these are wonderful, if you do not consider that they will have to share the road with actual cars which can easily pancake them and kill the occupants.

With the advance of batteries, power electronics and electric motors, there all kinds of cool new modes of transportation coming up but they are all kind of metaphorically and sometimes physically crashing against the concept of cars and the fact that all of our streets are basically made for cars.

I think we have to start seriously rethinking cities in view of these new modes of transportation. I would suggest a city center where there are no cars and bycicles and various slow speed electric vehicles, like scooters and glorified golf carts are allowed to roam. And then you can have the suburbs where full sized cars (electric or not) can drive but will have to have full modern crash protection.

Something like this is already starting to vaguely happen in some cities in Europe. It is of course easy to do in some european cities where the streets in their centers were pre-industrial and never designed for cars to begin with. But it is something to be expanded.

And it will be very helpful if large international manufacturers created a "glorified golf cart" standard that was reasonably safe for pedestrians and bicyclists (again assuming that it does not have to share the road with cars) so that the cities around the world can start doing city planning around it.

This "$5k electric car" is a glorified golfcart pretending to be a car, which is quite dangerous, because people will treat it like a car and will all to late realize how bad it fares when it crashes with actual cars.

bleepblorp2• 6 years ago

I wonder if an acceptable level of safety could be achieved, at greater cost but without compromising weight or size, through advanced materials, active safety systems, and better driver training.

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...

baybal26• 6 years ago

So these are wonderful, if you do not consider that they will have to share the road with actual cars which can easily pancake them and kill the occupants.

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.

srtjstjsj2• 6 years ago

60km/h is great for making current cars safer to be in, but not for the "golf carts" hit by a 60km/h regular car.

wasdfff2• 6 years ago

Should we ban motorcycles too since they also lose on a head on with an SUV? No. This golfcart would be perfect for a lot of people, myself included.

sergeykish• 6 years ago

Is safety different from a Smart car? Some people drive velomobiles, some drive regular bikes, some drive electric scooters.

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

noobermin8• 6 years ago

It's good for you to focus on the safety of a car's driver and passengers. Cars these days are so big for some reason, all the more reason to make them crash-worthy and safer by making them more robust by making them more weighty.

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).

calaphos• 6 years ago

Of course that 90mph top speed is essential for the quality of life of its driver - especially during the 80% of time it's stuck in traffic moving forward at 10% of that speed :)

haunter• 6 years ago

the EV retails for between 28,800 yuan ($4,230) and 38,800 yuan -- and its ability to run for as many as 170 kilometers (106 miles) on a single charge

I'd buy this in a heartbeat. So good

Edit: found a review, looks decent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6GjphV4DCU

bufferoverflow3• 6 years ago

Got any crash test results / videos? I'd never buy a suicide-mobile, which most really cheap cars are.

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

not far from the citroen ami

11thEarlOfMar• 6 years ago

Who is choosing this car:

A. the people who already have a car and want a 2nd for trips to the grocery store,

B. the people who only have a scooter and want to upgrade to something a little safer and weather-friendly,

C. the people who were taking public transportation, but due to the low cost, can now afford this car.

D. teenage students to drive themselves to school....

It seems to me that the low price point may enable a large volume of sales, but for the most part, it will put more vehicles on the roads by pulling people out of public transport and off of scooters.

iandanforth• 6 years ago

This looks like a car that would be popular in Japan as well. Tiny vehicles for tiny parking spaces was remarkable when I visited a couple years ago.

fomine3• 6 years ago

Mitsubishi i-MIEV was the world's first EV and very small.

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

dghughes• 6 years ago

“A lot of consumers don’t need anything fancy, a commute is all they ask from a car,”...

Tesla has lost its way with expensive cars loaded with sensors, launch control. Tesla jumped the shark when Musk mentioned gas rockets as an option. Wasn't the original philosophy of Tesla to give away EV patents to make the world a better place?

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.

ralph843• 6 years ago

Then get a Chevy Bolt. A 3-year lease is almost free once you start stacking all of the available incentives.

rootusrootus9• 6 years ago

+1 to this. I love my Tesla, but when we decided to pick up an EV for my wife to use, the Bolt was the obvious choice $6K out the door for a 3 year lease at 15K miles/year. $20K if you'd like to roll the dice and buy it outright.

For what she will save on gas compared to her previous ICE daily driver, the Bolt is practically free.

filereaper2• 6 years ago

Just a hypothesis but Telsa is a self-driving car platform that just happens to sell vehicles right now.

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.

jfoster• 6 years ago

That's more than a hypothesis; it's the plan.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux

"In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are."

wasdfff2• 6 years ago

How are these shared cars not going to be treated like crap like most other shared vehicles, such as scooters? At my old college, drunks flipped a shared smart car onto its roof for sport.

nickik5• 6 years ago

You act like Elon spends all his time on build a rocket car. The overwhelming focus at Tesla, is lowering the cost of the car, specifically the batteries. The amount of time and engineering going into that is 10000x higher then goes into Roadster. He literally called the Roadster dessert, the only reason they are making is to show that an EV is better in every possible way then a Gas car. And the SpaceX package they probably only doing because Elon want to build the most insane car in the history of humanity (and probably drive it himself).

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.

bufferoverflow3• 6 years ago

You got everything wrong. Tesla is doing it right by hitting the high-end market first, while they are ramping up the production. Once they know how to automate everything, they will go for cheaper cars.

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

judge20208• 6 years ago

Exactly. $25k car is expected in 3 years. 10 years and we might get one for $15k or less.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/22/21450916/tesla-battery-pa...

jccalhoun• 6 years ago

The car market right now is dominated by huge cars and I hate it. I grew up in a rural area in mid 70s and throughout most of the 80s and my parents had tiny Datsuns (aka Nissan) and we got along fine. My aunt and uncle had 10 kids and they managed to get around without an SUV or a minivan (of course we didn't have car seats for kids and barely seat belts back then but still)

Right now there are very few new cars for sale under $20,000 which seems crazy https://jalopnik.com/heres-all-17-cars-available-in-the-u-s-... I have an 09 Honda Fit that I guess I will be holding on to until it dies since Honda announced they will quit selling them in the USA.

dwighttk• 6 years ago

Why don’t they try to sell that here? (US)

bufferoverflow3• 6 years ago

Safety standards.

est• 6 years ago

The caveat: the $4000 version doesn't have AC nor airbags. It's road legal in China. If you only use it for commuting then it's probably fine because mostly you'd be stuck in traffic jams and moving slowly anyway.

oska• 6 years ago

The 'from GM' in the title is a little misleading. The manufacturer of this car, as described in the second paragraph, is SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. In this 3 way joint venture SAIC Motor, a state-owned Chinese company, is the majority share-holder, owning 50.1%; GM owns 44%. [1] [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM-Wuling

[2] https://www.gmchina.com/company/cn/en/gm/company/about-gm-ch...

ulfw2• 6 years ago

Everything written in the American press is from the side of America. Guess what - Pfizer isn’t inventing their Covid vaccine, it’s BioNTech. Johnson & Johnson didn’t invent theirs, it was Janssen (though at least the latter is now owned by J&J).

jszymborski2• 6 years ago

I mean, those companies do different things in those partnerships, it would be unfair to say either company in those pairs are responsible for the vaccine.

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

Johnson & Johnson didn’t invent theirs, it was Janssen

I would 100% support a corporate renaming to Johnson & Johnson & Janssen.

mlindner• 6 years ago

They're both subsidiaries of American companies though.

throwaway4good2• 6 years ago

Yes. It is mostly a Chinese car.

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.

pjc50• 6 years ago

Usually the limit there is crash safety. It's a difficult argument to make to the public that we should allow a slightly higher rate of death and serious injury in exchange for much less co2 emissions.

sandworm101• 6 years ago

Not a car.

> "“A lot of consumers don’t need anything fancy, a commute is all they ask from a car,” said Yale Zhang, founder of AutoForesight"

I expect a great deal more than the simple commute. I expect safety. I expect crumple zones, airbags, traction control, and enough actual strength that I have a hope of surviving a serious crash. This not-a-car 5K EV doesn't have such things. It is essentially an enclosed 4-wheel motorcycle. Cheap, but not offing any degree of physical protection.

> I always feel a bit nervous in this low-speed car because it’s kind of shaky.”

Ya. Be afraid. It might seem all friendly at low speeds, but one day those tiny wheels dig into a pothole, throwing you into oncoming traffic (bad) or a tree (worse). The people praising these things are like those who call motorcycles dangerous but hop on a Vespa without hesitation.

fnord77• 6 years ago

this looks basically like an electric Kei car.

dalbasal• 6 years ago

This is tangential to the content, but what is this article?

It reads like a paid pr piece and doesn't have a named author.

ascorbic2• 6 years ago

It's a bit silly to call this "Tesla's nemesis", when the cheapest Tesla is about 10x the price. They're completely different markets.

darthrupert• 6 years ago

China is even more about outwards appearances, so Tesla will do just fine. They have enough wealthy people there.

aaronblohowiak• 6 years ago

China has 10 million 1%ers

DarthGhandi• 6 years ago

Meta: when you collapse the first top-level comment here and need to then click "more" to see anything else on page 2 it's not worth commenting anymore.

tibbydudeza3• 6 years ago

I would love a Renault Twizy (two seater microcar) in my garage for just driving around town and to my folks , all within 30km range.

acvny• 6 years ago

Wow. Waiting for this in other parts of the world.

Kosirich3• 6 years ago

This is more related to the discussions in the comments.. (eu perspective), The other day I was watching a drag race on carwow with 4 German super-estates. None of this "sport-ier versions" had bellow 2 tons*. Lot's of people in Germany drive more "sensible" versions of this cars with weights of "just" 1.8 tons. How much will the fact that people are today fatter affect the decision to buy this car? - BMW M5 has gone up in weight 200 kg or so - I heard people use "Tesla weight" downside when compared to a normal "saloon" -I would buy this car gladly here in DK. Wouldn't make the decision in lot's of other EU countries where driving awareness isn't as high

headmelted2• 6 years ago

I too would happily buy this car if I didn't own an EV already, but it's too cheap.

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).

Kosirich3• 6 years ago

I agree with you completely. That being said, there is a lot of room between 6000 dollars and 20000-ish for Smart Fortwo* (EU numbers) which I guess could be an equivalent.

aazaa• 6 years ago

The Hongguang MINI EV, made by SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., is currently the hottest EV in China, the world’s biggest automobile market. Sales of the compact four-seater beat industry giant Tesla Inc. in August, with consumers wowed by its tiny price tag -- the EV retails for between 28,800 yuan ($4,230) and 38,800 yuan -- and its ability to run for as many as 170 kilometers (106 miles) on a sin

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/tesla-s-nemesis-in-c...

The irony is that while upstart Tesla pursues the path of market incumbent (moving upmarket), incumbent GM pursues the path of upstart by moving downmarket.

I don't know how well GM will be able to stay on this path. I suspect that Tesla's current path is risky at best. I also suspect that GM can stay on its downmarket path, and build an unbeatable presence doing it, indefinitely.

breakyerself• 6 years ago

I would buy one or two of those right now.

rapjr9• 6 years ago

I would love to buy one of these, it would handle almost all my transportation needs here in rural Vermont. I've been looking for something like this for years and have been finding basically nothing in the US market. US car makers seem to only want to sell big cars (which makes sense, more profit) but big cars are bad for global warming. I believe that over the next 5 to 10 years you're going to see the US and world markets shift dramatically to small EV's like this. If it had a small trailer for hauling larger loads short distances it would be perfect. For long distance travel I could rent a larger vehicle, but that would be rare.

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

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