Following up on Jeff's post, there have been a few recent articles in the New York Times reporting on how China plans to become the world's leading producer of electric cars. Citing air pollution and the increased importing of foreign oil as two of the primary concerns that electric vehicles would address, the idea is also promoted as a key to China's international competitiveness. While it is unclear how this will help them address the problem that they've had with meeting the safety standards of the U.S. and European countries, it seems likely that they'll be able to make inroads as a supplier of batteries to those markets as increased production reduces the manufacturing costs.
The articles mention several of the factors that will both help and hinder the process. On the positive side, commutes in China are usually intracity, and often slow due to the traffic congestion. Many consumers are buying cars for the first time, and won't necessarily notice (or care) that the cars are less powerful than gasoline powered vehicles. And Chinese law makes it difficult for consumers to sue automakers over safety issues. To help with the adoption, the government is offering subsidies to the consumers of such vehicles, up to $8800 for taxi fleets and local governments.
There are several major challenges to overcome as well. The vehicles are predicted to be twice as expensive as conventional vehicles, and still significantly more expensive even with the maximum rebate. The majority of the people in urban areas live in apartments, and thus infrastructure will need to be created to allow the vehicles to be charged. And because much of China's electricity comes from coal, it will not reduce the pollution problems as much as it might otherwise. However, as we've learned in class, it's easier to clean up pollution at a few thousand point sources than it is to clean up millions of tailpipes. It's also easier to change the generating source later on than it would be to replace millions of vehicles if they were to wait on this.
Overall, it looks like China is very interested in making rapid inroads into this market, both at home and internationally. It will be interesting to see how Detroit responds to this new challenge, and whether it will even be able to.
China Outlines Plans for Making Electric Cars
China Vies to Be World’s Leader in Electric Cars