Popular EV in China

I'd buy one of these, I find it considerably more attractive than the Rivian:

A Hongguang Mini convertible electric vehicle.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

From Bloomberg Hyperdrive, 1-31-2022:

In a market where many people are still only buying their first car, price sensitivity is a key issue. That’s helped make entry level rides like the $4,500 Hongguang Mini wildly popular, and driven the uptake of EVs, which accounted for one of every five cars sold in China in December.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P5it7U0C1g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11ExTYIEJm0

By starting cheap like this then evolving the design and manufacture for improved quality on top of low cost, I think China could eat the rest of the world's lunch.

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On another front:

The 30% per month exponential growth that is apparent in the below chart indicates China would be selling 2 million EV heavy trucks per month just two years from now.

China’s heavy truck market is the largest in the world and the chart above shows sales of heavy trucks classified as ‘new-energy vehicles’ by month in 2021. New-energy vehicles include battery electrics, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles.

more from the Bloomberg Hyperdrive email sent out 2-1-2022:

That’s a dramatic growth story throughout 2021, and my colleagues in our Beijing office are confident that the trend will continue through 2022 and beyond. There are a few caveats: first, the starting point in the first quarter was low due to a policy change at the beginning of the year. Second, despite the growth, new-energy trucks were still a small share of the heavy truck market, representing about 1% of sales in China in 2021.

The growth is one interesting angle, but the mix of drivetrain technologies that are being deployed in this segment might be even more important. Of the just over 10,000 new-energy heavy truck sales last year, 62% were normal battery-electric vehicles, 31% were EVs with swappable batteries, and 7% were fuel cell vehicles.

Truck usage patterns vary widely and it’s not clear yet exactly which technology will win in each sub segment and duty cycle. Most of the new-energy trucks deployed to date in China are logistics and sanitation vehicles.

The point is China is experimenting, and once it finds the right solutions for the right segments, it will adjust policy support and push hard to accelerate deployment. When that happens, the speed of the transition could be dramatic. BNEF’s analysis indicates that electric trucks are already approaching cost competitiveness in urban applications and should get there for long-haul applications around 2030.