China Wants To Be World Leader in Hybrid and EV Production
By John O'Dell April 3, 2009
We've posted a number of reports in recent months about Chinese automakers' plans to launch plug-in hybrid and battery-electric cars, including this one. Chongqing Changan Auto says it will launch the nation's first internally-developed hybrid-electric car (right) in May.
That follows hybrid and EV announcements by Chinese automakers BYD, Brilliance, Chery, Dongfeng and SAIC.
China's government has been encouraging development of cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles to help clean up the country's miserable air pollution problems and reduce its ravenous appetite for oil.
Now comes word of another reason for all this activity.
The New York Times reports that China has set itself the goal of becoming a world leader in hybrid and EV production -- by 2012.
Seems the Chinese figure that American automakers, once the global leaders in everything automotive (except sexy exotic cars -- the Italians have that one down pat), have ignored electric technologies for too long.
Already losing ground to Japan's automotive juggernaut and struggling to stay alive in their own country, U.S. automakers face a huge challenge keeping up with the rest of the field as the world's automakers move toward hybrid and rechargeable battery technology.
While China doesn't have a particularly good reputation for regular cars, the country's automakers and policy makers see that as an advantage.
They aren't all bound up in old internal combustion technology and can more easily abandon it and move into electric drive technology on hyperspeed.
At lest one American automaker seems to agree.
"China is well positioned to lead this," General Motors Corp.'s David Tulauskas, head of China government policy for the struggling automaker, told The Times.
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A car is not a throw away purchase like a 3 dollar trinket from Walmart, that is broken in a week. They are going to have a pretty hard time overcoming that image.
Their authoritarian government should have trouble dictating that all vehicles should be EV's.
"A car is not a throw away purchase like a 3 dollar trinket from Walmart, that is broken in a week. They are going to have a pretty hard time overcoming that image."
That's almost exactly what people said when Japan entered the car market. They've done okay, though.
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