Earlier quoted context omitted.
EVs are not that much less complex: interior is the same (hundreds of parts), suspension, AC, heat, wiper blades, brakes, etc. The engine is certainly different but I don't think that lowers the overall complexity of the vehicle into "anyone can do it" territory.
It lowers the complexity sufficiently that traditional car makers in Germany are huffing and puffing about tens of thousands of jobs that won't be needed anymore.
The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
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Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#22There's tons of performance bike manufacturers with minimal variation. Reason is its easy - not that many parts, parts easily configured and modular, easy to build, low maintenance. Maybe EVs are similar. lower complexity than fossil engines (fewer parts and complexity moves down the supply chain). Perhaps such a large number of vehicle producers is sustainable. The real ev companies are the companies making batterie…
EVs are not that much less complex: interior is the same (hundreds of parts), suspension, AC, heat, wiper blades, brakes, etc. The engine is certainly different but I don't think that lowers the overall complexity of the vehicle into "anyone can do it" territory.
Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#23> 486 EV manufacturers registered in China That's an incredible amount. I can't imagine the complexity of managing engineering a car, manufacturing, sourcing everything needed. That's a lot of very ambitious people.
I think you’d have to be fairly naive to believe the tech was all developed in-house, especially in China.
And I think it's just as naive to think there's any merit to criticize where tech comes from
America would not have gotten its start if Samuel Slater hadn't stolen textile production from the old country
If you don't want China to copy your tech, don't hire China to copy your tech.
Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#24Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#25"EV sales make up just 4 percent of overall passenger vehicle sales of 23.7 million units, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers."
Yup, definitely sounds like a bubble.
Smog is their main problem, and EVs are the solution. Exponential growth will continue. And I'm tired of these anti-EV/anti-Tesla articles from Bloomberg.
Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#26"Electric-Car Bubble"... "EV sales make up just 4 percent of overall passenger vehicle sales of 23.7 million units, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers." Yup, definitely sounds like a bubble. Smog is their main problem, and EVs are the solution. Exponential growth will continue. And I'm tired of these anti-EV/anti-Tesla articles from Bloomberg.
However, I disagree that this is a huge problem though because I assume the likely survivors of this would be comparatively well funded meaning that the size of the investments that will be wiped out is much less than the full 18B. Also, 18B is not actually a lot in a market that is probably going to be worth hundreds of billions. Arguably it's not actually enough for China to dominate here. E.g. VW is easily matching this with their own 50B worth of investments that they announced in the last years.Finally, companies with decent in house technology or some other edge are not worthless and might end up being acquired; meaning investors get some kind of return on investment. It's the weaker players without interesting technology or enough funding that are going to be wiped out first. If you invested in those, yes you will lose your money.
I'd be more worried about the ICE bubble of manufacturers that are failing to adapt to EVs. E.g. BMW seems to have a problem here and Toyota has been dragging its heels rolling out decent EVs as well and instead continue to invest in dead ends (in my view) like hydrogen or hybrid. There's a lot of captial locked up in companies like that as well as their suppliers. That's a much bigger bubble and I think countries like Germany where I currently live are going to have a very rough decade where lot of traditional companies are either going to scale down or disappear entirely. EVs seems to have been growing more rapidly than some of these companies hoped and this is already hurting them. In Germany there are thousands of companies employing hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be affected by that.
Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
EVs are not that much less complex: interior is the same (hundreds of parts), suspension, AC, heat, wiper blades, brakes, etc. The engine is certainly different but I don't think that lowers the overall complexity of the vehicle into "anyone can do it" territory.
All those parts can be bought essentially off the shelf. It’s obviously not anyone can do it, but certainly the barrier to entry has been significantly lowered.
Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were a similar number of car manufacturers in the US in the early 1900s. Many of them were essentially assemblers, bolting together parts made by other companies; most of them didn't survive long enough to release a second model. It's a natural developmental stage in any emerging technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man...
I thought this was an interesting point even if "similar number" was an exaggeration by an order of magnitude. Then I clicked through. Holy shit. If anything it's an underestimate. Hundreds and hundreds of American car companies that lived for what looks like an average of two or three years, clustered around 1910. Seriously, worth taking a look.
Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#29Note many of these are just forced by policies to "make" EV if they want to continue making traditional vehicles, others are just making money off of policies and subsidies, buyers are mostly forced to buy it due to license plate quotas. EVs' reputation in China is going downhill ever faster, it's been called "electric daddy". Urban area is extremely dense so it's lucky to find a place to charge where it hasn't been…
They just needs the right incentives to be plugged in like being rewarded for being able to provide frequency response while plugged in. The following link supports my argument https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40565-015-0124-0
Re: The $18B Electric-Car Bubble at Risk of Bursting in China
#30In China this is common when everyone wants to do or appear to do Govt promoted ideas and schemes to get govt subsidy. [1] If they do not act in time someone else will get it. It works somewhat similar to startup world where one raise money with compelling story, just in this case instead of VC it's govt money. Some survive and become big, but most fail. Obviously some are outright fraud. [1] https://www.scmp.com/new…