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China has the world's most aggressive electric car goals. Communist leaders are promoting them to clean up smog-choked cities and in hopes of taking the lead in an emerging technology.
At the auto show, the global industry's biggest marketing event of the year, almost every global and Chinese auto brand is showing at least one electric concept vehicle, if not a market-ready model.
Heizmann said VW, which vies with GM for the title of China's top-selling automaker, expects annual sales of at least 400,000 "new energy vehicles" – the government's term for electric or gasoline-electric hybrids – by 2020 and 1.5 million by 2025.
The vast majority of Chinese get around by smog-free vehicles already. They're called bicycles.
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Volkswagen to Roll Out an Electric Car in China. Can It Help Reduce the Smog?
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For recreational use only.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by simonInOz on Friday April 28 2017, @02:58AM (1 child)
I was in Shanghai a few years ago. And yes, the pollution was terrible.
But interestingly, the major part of private transport appeared to be electric scooters. They looked like Vespa scooters, not electric bikes. They were quite zippy, and there were everywhere. Given the horrible traffic, they looked like an excellent solution, and would consume much less power than a car, not to mention road or parking space.
-- cats like plain crisps --
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Friday April 28 2017, @08:49AM
You can get electric motorbikes and mopeds quite cheaply, in comparison.
They charge quickly, have "enough" range for a commute, and often you can recharge them from a single standard socket.
I was seriously considering one recently, but I don't have a motorbike licence (they separated car and bike licences many years ago in the UK).
However, it was a no-brainer and would have cost me 1p to get to work each day, I could put it in the office, and I could fully charge it in time for the ride home.
What killed the idea more than anything, though, was seeing other people's driving every day since I got my licence. I love the *idea* of a bike, but they are completely lethal in a country where they're treated as second-class drivers.
My gf is Italian, so she was behind the idea of getting a little electric Vespa for herself but she agreed. In Italy it would be fine as they are everywhere and other drivers expect them. In the UK, especially the slower moped-like bikes, people will happily risk killing you just to squeeze past you.
But even Harley Davidson do an electric motorbike now. The little moped/scooter things would be great for popping to the shops, etc. I imagine single people living in London flats, etc. are snapping them up rather than pay the congestion charge + taxes, for a garage to store it in, for petrol to run it, etc.