Chinese Automaker Unveils First Electric Car 341
JuliusSu writes "A Chinese auto manufacturer, BYD, is introducing today the country's first electric car, a plug-in hybrid vehicle. It plans to sell at least 10,000 cars in 2009 for a price of less than $22,000. This put the company ahead of schedule against other entrants to this market, such as Toyota, due to release a similar car in late 2009; and GM, whose Chevy Volt will be launched in late 2010. The company is best known for making cellphone batteries, and hopes its expertise in ferrous battery technology will allow it to leapfrog established car manufacturers."
Charging an electric car (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a little OT but I figure someone here might know. With so many electric cars finally coming to market I thought it would be smart to plan ahead even if I'm not ready to take the leap yet...
So, I'm in the process of a remodel and have an easy opportunity to install a high-amperage electric circuit to some location in the garage. Is there any emerging standard for charging electric cars that would dictate the ideal location to put the outlet? I.e. in front of the car, driver side, passenger side, what height from ground, etc. Also amperage, type of plug etc would be good to anticipate, although initially I'd just have an empty conduit running there from the load center.
Re:Anyone can make an electric car (Score:5, Interesting)
I avoid any products made in China now because I can't trust them anymore. How much food is recalled and childrens toys? Do you want to be in an accident in one of these things and then find out that to cut costs, they used cheap air-bags?
Another reason to avoid Chinese goods (if their human rights record isn't good enough) is that their industry is ecologically harmful. Chinese industry have little incentive not to polute the environment in some of the most egregious ways.
Re:Charging an electric car (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, just like Top Gear's review of the Tesla yesterday.
Brilliant.
What, 14 hours to recharge? 55 mile range (instead of the advertised 200+).
Then they looked at Honda's hydrogen/electric car and decided that was the future. Not home-charged electric vehicles that can't recharge in under half a day. You certainly need something a lot better than 13A @ 230V - maybe a 200A circuit would help things. 400A in 110V countries ...
Re:Your "American" car is full of Chinese stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
That high quality American car is packed to the gunnels with Chinese made parts, including engines.
About the only thing that is truely american is the arrogance.
Arrogance? You obviously don't know much about chinese cars. It doesn't matter where the parts are made, but american cars aren't ENGINEERED in china. So far all the chinese cars that have been engineered in china have been terrible. I remember one example that looked like any other common car in the US or elsewhere, but it did so poorly in crash testing it couldn't even manage ONE STAR. It was a deathtrap.
Don't call people arrogant without checking your own ignorance. I'm not saying the car can't be good, but given what has come out of china so far, people have a right to be skeptical.
-Taylor
Re: I have to wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the problem is that it would be rather expensive to engineer a car to meet 50 different emission standards. Nobody, except the state's showing their control, wants that.
So why not make it meet the strictest standards? Partly because it just keeps pushing the costs higher for stuff nobody needs in the other 49 states. There is also nothing that suggests there would be one "strictest" standard.
California was allowed to set requirements that no other state had for quite a while. In the beginning it required reworking and adjusting a car that was imported into California before it could be sold there. So you would see cars selling for $3,000 to $5,000 higher in California. Should you be so silly as to buy a car in Arizona when you were a California resident you would be faced with paying that extra amount to have the car modified before it could be licensed. So in a way, we have tried this already and it was a disaster. It might have helped out air quality in California or it might not have. Nobody really knows.
I'd say the biggest problem would be conflicting requirements between states. If this was allowed, and so far the Federal Government hasn't made it clear that such state level regulation would never be allowed, you would have a different set of hardware for each state for each car. Sure, California could have their regulations but there would be nothing to prevent Nevada from having different and mutually exclusive requirements.
The only sensible way is to have one Federal standard. It works for car owners, it works for car manufacturers and it can work for everyone else as well. The problem seems to be enacting some realistic legislation at the Federal level.
Also, it isn't going to help if some states are allowed to regulate batteries for electric and hybrid cars. Not long ago California prevented sales of cars with lots and lots of lead-acid batteries in them because of the hazards of both lead and acid. I do not know what the state of things are today, but there are plenty of people doing electric car conversions using lead-acid batteries. I suspect it is not legal to buy, sell, modify or license such a car today in California. There is no reason to think that other states will be any more forgiving about toxic pollutants if each state is allowed to pass their own regulations.
economies (Score:2, Interesting)
What's wrong with you people? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have yet to see a serious, insightful post about this story. A little googling turned up pics and data although I confess that I don't know what
16 kwh / 100 KM works out to in MPG.
The pictures I saw of the car look pretty nice. Congrats to the Chinese - if this turns out to be a quality vehicle, it may force the Big Three stragglers to dump some of their guzzlers and give
us clean, efficient vehicles we can depend on
Re:Your "American" car is full of Chinese stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing I have learned is never under estimate the Chinese, this is a country that has had a incredible GDP since the days of the silk road. One could have said the same about IBM and the computer. we all know how that went. It's not hard to reverse engineer and improve upon an existing design. The only hard part is consumer confidence and brand recognition. US Automaker have done such a good job of killing consumer confidence that most Americans no longer care where it's made cept the fact of the economy
Re:good luck getting support (Score:3, Interesting)
What's so hard about supporting an electric car?
Changing wires? Replacing batteries? How about we make the Big Three assist the nimbler domestic startups.
They've shown that their size has been a liability when it comes to change.
If they want public funds, they should be serving the best interests of the public - and, increasingly that means GOING green, not play-acting green.
Re:I'll believe it when I see it (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.zapworld.com/electric-vehicles/electric-cars/xebra-sedan [zapworld.com]
For the fully electric version.
It's been available in the states for 2 years now.
People laughed about Japanese cars, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
When the first Japanese cars showed up in Europe in the 1970s, they were cheap but had a terrible reputation. That has changed. Today they are on the same quality level (and almost as expensive) as European cars. Toyota even ruled the reliability/breakdown statistics for years, only recently some European models have retaken the lead.
I expect that the same will happen with the Chinese cars. They may have not much experience in car making now, but 10 years from now things can look different.
Re:Your "American" car is full of Chinese stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:People laughed about Japanese cars, too. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:quality (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article, it'll cost $22000, have a range of 62 miles, and be available outside China in 2011.
It's a plug in hybrid; the 62 mile range is on batteries alone, then the gas engine can kick in. It's a long way from being good with batteries to making a good car, though.
I wish I could back up GM... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Your "American" car is full of Chinese stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
That explains why a fair number of my graduating ME class went to work for Toyota in the states. They still engineer stuff in Detroit. Industrial Engineers still work in Alabama, TN, Indiana, etc. And those Engineering jobs aren't in China or India. Toyota, Honda, etc are in Japan. VW, BMW, Porsche, etc are in Germany.
I don't get where ./ers are convinced that India and China are full of brilliant engineers that are going to take all of our jobs. There's an Indian at work that came over from India. If you bring this subject up to him he'll explain to you that all the jobs we 'outsource' are just a step above what we give interns to do. Running electrical lines in ProE, etc.
Re:Your "American" car is full of Chinese stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
They said the same thing when the Japanese started making cars... I have no doubt that Chinese companies could engineer cars to meet US/European safety regulations, but at the moment they mainly sell to their domestic less-regulated market, so they save money by having lower engineering standards. If there's money to be made by building to higher standards and exporting to the rest of the world, then they will do it.
Oh of course. I would never say that a people COULDN'T do it, just that so far they've very much not been making good cars, so new ones should always be looked at with a critical eye. I was mostly correcting the guy who called people arrogant for assuming they'll be crap, when actually it's a pretty reasonable assumption.
-Taylor
Re:Your "American" car is full of Chinese stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.