New Scientist - USA (2019-07-13)

13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 19

thing for the market,” he says.

International firms are also

competing for a share of the

Chinese market: Volkswagen

announced plans in April to

produce 11.6 million EVs in China

by 2028, and Tesla is building a

massive factory in Shanghai.

But why aren’t overseas

consumers driving Chinese-made

EVs yet? To date, Chinese vehicle

companies have been more

comfortable exporting

commercial logistics vehicles

than passenger cars, says Wang,

because they prefer to avoid the

vagaries of consumer demand.

There are also questions over

privacy. For example, it was

claimed last year that electric

car-makers in China give the

government data from their cars,

and more than a million cars are

being tracked in real time.

Claims that companies such

as BYD will produce a car that

rivals Tesla are overblown, says

Barkenbus. “I think it’d be pretty

hard to match Tesla in terms of

its performance.” Where Chinese

vehicles may be successful, he

says, is in making mid-range

vehicles for the global market.

Although Tesla’s goal is to make

affordable EVs, the price of its

current cheapest model is close

to that of other luxury car brands.

The background in battery

manufacturing of BYD – and

another Chinese firm, CATL – may

be a boon for the Chinese industry.

Battery costs account for about

a quarter of an EV’s price, and

are consistently becoming

cheaper to make, says Korus.

“Our research suggests that

by the early 2020s, you’re going

to have an electric vehicle that is

sticker-priced cheaper than a gas

counterpart,” he says, at which

point he foresees a swing in

demand. For the sake of the planet,

that can’t come soon enough. ❚

market is already the biggest in

the world, EVs still only make up

an estimated 4 per cent of total

car sales there. The world leader

is Norway, where last year

46 per cent of cars sold were EVs.

The transition will take time,

says Wang. He calculates that

even if close to 100 per cent of

Chinese car sales are EVs by 2031,

they will still only number around

30 per cent of all cars on roads.

And government subsidies to

manufacturers, which peaked

in 2014 at 100,000 yuan per car,

are on track to be phased out by

2020, sparking concerns that sales

will plummet.

Korus says it may lead to a

reduction in the number of

Chinese EV firms. He compares it

to the US auto industry in the early

1900s, which shrunk from 250

manufacturers to less than 50 in

about a decade. “This is a good

“By the early 2020s, an
electric vehicle will be
priced cheaper than a
fossil-fuel counterpart”

The switch to EVs has been

easier in China because private

car ownership is a relatively new

phenomenon, says Isbrand Ho

at BYD Europe in the Netherlands,

so there is little brand loyalty.

“Whatever will work efficiently,

effectively and comfortably for

the consumer, they are most

likely to adopt,” he says.

Barkenbus says peak car

ownership in places like the US

and UK means that such countries

have been slower to adapt to EVs

than China. “It’s doubtful that

we will sell more cars [in these

countries] in the future than we

have been able to sell in the last

few years,” he says. “That’s not the

case in China where the per capita

ownership is much lower.”

And there is still a lot of room to

grow. Even though the Chinese EV

▲ Jodrell Bank

Not all satellite dishes

are ugly - Jodrell Bank

Observatory in Cheshire,

UK, is now a UNESCO

world heritage site.

▲ Billions of trees

Enlarging forests by a

third could lock up enough

carbon to give us 20 more

years to stupidly dither on

tackling climate change.

▼ British Airways

UK data watchdogs have

threatened BA with a

£183 million fine for

failure to protect customer

details – maybe they got

sent to the wrong airport?

▼ Uber Eats

The takeaway delivery

service has a radical new

idea – order your food,

then sit down to eat it

at a restaurant. No need

to wait at home!

▼ Space baby

SpaceLife Origins, a

Netherlands start-up, had

wanted to enable the first

birth in space. Now plans

are “on hold”, presumably

after realising they were

really, really, really bad.

Working

hypothesis

Sorting the week’s

supernovae from

the absolute zeros

More Insight online

Your guide to a rapidly changing world

newscientist.com/insight

BYD Auto sells more

electric cars than any

other firm in the world

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