Further to this, you can buy a an EV city car in China for $5,000. But it’s tiny, it tops out at just over 60mph and it would never meet US crash regulations:
What amazing is that in China there are many companies with popular EVs just driving around merrily, many of which are barely heard of outside the country. BYD obviously, but also Aion, Leap, Nio, XPeng, it goes on, plus the "old" car companies like Chery, Geely, SAIC, etc. Even Volvo has an electric minivan now in China.
You can have a completely fine EV for maybe 10 thousand US dollars, and a pretty great one for 20. And they're
often car-shaped cars or people carriers rather than a blobby crossover or fake-macho SUV (though the rather compensatory Tank, no really, that's the name, hybrids kind of balance it out)
There are <$5k EVs in China (when bought new). They're not super luxurious but they exist. The west just hasn't caught up yet, but it will if there's political will.
There's more to the world than the US. You can get an EV for $4500 in China, and surprise surprise, sales are going gangbusters: they sold more than the rest of the world combined last year.
This is ignorant of the facts. China has many very cheap EVs for from scooters to bikes to trikes to small carts to small cars all the way to buses, and they are used across the entire economic spectrum.
People responding really don't know the state of Chinese electric right now.
For 2023, China's BYD has globally outsold Telsa by over 50% and 8 out of the top 10 brands for global electric car sales for Oct 2023 are from China.
The BYD qin plus, for instance, is about $20k, the Wuling Mini-ev is about ~$10k, Aion Y is $20k. They're eating everyone's lunch and expanding into Central America, Africa and Europe.
Cars like the Cherry QQ, which are $5,000 aren't meant to be compete with new cars but instead, to the vast majority of price-sensitive buyers who normally purchase used cars. Introduce a used-price new car, however ...
They're poised to do to the American auto market what Japan did 40 years ago and just like then, American auto seems to be asleep at the wheel.
This is a classic Clayton Christensen innovators dilemma formula.
Edit: Apparently factual statements are unpopular once again. The internet is so cool.
Most of Chinese electric cars are badly built electric golf carts, around $1000, that is driven around traffic with disregard for traffic rules, that is driven by people with monthly income of $800 or less ( majority of urban population).
"The tiny Wuling Hongguang Mini EV unveiled by the SAIC-GM-Wuling joint venture in China a few months ago has been very well received by the local market.
Measuring just 2,917 mm (114.8-in) long, 1,493 mm (58.8-in) wide, and 1,621 mm (63.8-in) high, and with a 1,940 mm (76.4-in) wheelbase, the Hongguang Mini EV is incredibly compact. It is also very cheap and starts at just 28,800 Chinese Yuan, the equivalent of $4,164.
According to Gasgoo, more than 50,000 orders have been placed for the Mini EV since its unveiling, a very impressive figure when you consider that China’s New Energy Vehicle (NEV) market has been struggling recently."
No. Teslas, all of them, are exponentially more expensive than the average EV in china. These aren't what we would even call cars. The average Chinese electric car is more akin to a really fast three-wheeled golf cart. I'm talking about the sub-$5000 market, price points that wouldn't cover the doors on a tesla.
In China, a lot of EVs are being sold, something like 50% of all cars. The vast majority of them are very small, similar to the Japanese kei cars.
They are used in "3rd tier" cities, not the cities you might have heard of such as Beijing and Wuhan.
Crucially, these cars are affordable. Well under USD 10k. Not street legal in Western countries, of course.
Back in the West, it appears that the pool of wealthy people who wish to virtue-signal by buying a car for $70K or more is finite.
I haven't yet seen any stories about the experiences of rental car companies with electric cars, and why they are not snapping them up. Those stories would be very interesting. So would the stories of companies that operate their own fleets.
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