Chinese Consumers Reportedly Not Welcoming Pricey EVs, Hybrids

Chinese Consumers Reportedly Not Welcoming Pricey EVs, Hybrids

By John O'Dell December 7, 2010

China's government has made electrification of personal vehicles a premier goal - and made no bones about its intent to make China the global leader in electric car technology - but authorities are finding out it's easier to make plans than to make people accept them.
It's a lesson regulators in the U.S. struggle with as well.

In China, despite sometimes hefty government subsidies and lots of propaganda aimed at winning consumers' hearts and minds, the green car revolution apparently looks a lot better on paper than in practice.

A report in the Global Times newspaper - relayed by the Chinese automotive site Gasgoo.com - says Chinese automakers are disappointed in sales of their first batch of hybrids and EVs.

• Changan Automotive said that because of poor sales - the total is zero -it has canceled production of its Jiexun hybrid-electric car for at least a year;
• Toyota has sold fewer than 4,000 Priuses a year in China for the past three year;
• BYD - maker of China's first domestically developed EV and recipient of a big capital injection from billionaire U.S. investor Warren Buffett - says that in the first 10 months this year it has sold just 54 of its E6 electric car (above) and only 290 of its F3DM hybrids. (Wonder if naming has at least a little to do with lack of appeal?)

A Chinese research company, according to the Global Times report, found that 89 percent of Chinese consumers aren't interested in the advanced technology vehicles, despite their improved fuel efficiency, because they are too expensive, there is little infrastructure to provide for EV battery charging, and the technology is too new.

What the Chinese are discovering is that most new technology takes time to worm its way into the culture - especially when trying to supplant and existing technology that works quite well.

An as consumers in the U.S.. have shown, repeatedly, pricing - in the automotive arena at least - usually trumps technological advances.

When government policy clashes with that simple truth, the only way to keep moving it ahead it to artificially improve the economics either through price subsidies or by making the old technology - internal combustion engines running on gasoline and diesel - more expensive or more difficult to obtain than the new.

The ideal solution, of course, is that automakers turn out extremely fuel efficient vehicles that look good, perform well, are profitable and cost the same as their predecessors and skip the whole process of policy forcing a technology until public demand starts pulling for it - but,of course, we live in the real world, not a fantasy land.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.