China is imposing a government mandate on its car industry. It is a top-down solution that is reminiscence of the Soviet Union. If you actually looked closely, you'll that there is a mountain of question businesses tried to extract subsidies from the government.
In reality, China's BEV strategy is going to be disrupted and will be wiped out. It is pursuing a dead end technology that few people want. It will only take a zero emissions technology that costs a lot less to finish off their BEV strategy.
You also broke the site guidelines repeatedly and egregiously in this thread. As you can see, we ban accounts that do that. I'm not going to ban you because it doesn't look like you've been making a habit of it, but I did notice your account breaking the site guidelines recently in other threads, and that's bad:
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, we'd appreciate it. Commenters here need to stick to the rules regardless of how badly other commenters are behaving or it feels like they are.
And you're just a brainwashed BEV fanatic. Time to give up on Chinese Communist propaganda. The whole thing is a giant scam and it is destined to fail.
BEVs are a dead end technology because they are far more expensive than the cars they are replacing. There is no way this market is going to survive once the subsidies and government support ends. People with brains are finally realizing that it is time to move on and towards some other technology.
I think we will end up pulling back towards PHEVs (or range extended EVs). You can have literally 1/4 of the battery and still never use fossil fuels for 90% of journeys. You don't get to have as much power, but EVs are more powerful than necessary anyway.
You are just being brainwashed by BEV propaganda. Not only do people with a brain still believe in hydrogen for cars, that includes the majority of automotive engineers. BEVs are the weird, government mandated BS cars that few people want. If the car industry was given a democratic choice, it will pivot to hydrogen as the future.
I've banned this account for two reasons. First, you've continued to break the site guidelines after we asked you to stop—often egregiously, as in these cases:
Second, you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is not allowed here, and almost always on the same topic, which is especially not allowed here. This is a rule regardless of your ideology and regardless of your topic, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
> that includes the majority of automotive engineers
That is hilariously untrue. Even compared to your usual nonsense.
> If the car industry was given a democratic choice, it will pivot to hydrogen as the future.
In Germany the govenrment wanted to enact more pro-hydrogen polices and the car makers literally told them not to it was a waste of time.
And of course we had many periods, in the US, Europe and Japan where hydrogen was favored and pushed by the govenrment and a grand total of nothing came from it. The German government has spent 100s of millions on hydrogen cars alone, let alone other hydrogen projects. I don't even want to know how much Japan spent.
Reality is many of the subsidies world wide are not for BEV specifically but apply to lots of zero emission vehicles. You simply can't deal with the reality that hydrogen vehicles are pointless nonsense that no sane person would ever try push and BEV have trounced them in every way imaginable.
So lets see what all the hydrogen subsidies and clean vehicle subsidies have amount to:
> Sales of Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCEV) in the light vehicle sector have declined by -25 % so far and stay below 20 000 units annually. Current sales are from 5 vehicle models and most sales are in South Korea and USA. We estimate their current population to ca 60 000 units.
and
> BEVs reaching 10 million units
But I'm sure the 10 million vs 20k is totally just government subsidies.
It really takes next level delusion to think hydorgen cars are the future. Even pretty much all the former pro hydrogen car makers have given up. Its positively laughable that you keep believing in this.
The car makers are not "democratic." It is mostly a handful of out-of-touch executives forcing everyone to go their way. A lot of is driven by the PR fallout of dieselgate too. The line workers and engineers are not on-board. Also, if you listen carefully you'll realize that most executives are not on-board either. The CEO of Stellantis have repeated questioned the direction of the BEV mandate.
And of course, they are quietly sabotaging everything behind the scenes. There's a reason why there is a e-fuel exception, and why the UK sudden moved the deadline back 5 years. There is not much real support behind the scene. I expect the BEV mandates to be abandoned in due time.
Note that FCEV subsidies didn't really exist in the past, outside of tangential subsidies that targeted at all green cars. The real target would be refueling subsidies and deployment of infrastructure, which have only recently started to happen.
What you're doing is regurgitating the same anti-EV argument used against BEVs. Remember, BEVs were at nearly zero before the mid-2000s. And compared to the ICE market, it is still tiny and mostly irrelevant. The moment the government take hydrogen cars more seriously, it will take off.
It's also worth noting that diesel got to >50% of the market in Europe before rapidly dying off. It could easily happen to BEVs too. It is not a real, organic market. It is mostly due to subsidies and heavy-handed government mandates forcing companies to make them. Take that away and the market will disappear just like it did with diesel cars.
Finally, the tides are starting to turn. You are repeat claims that in direct contradiction to the OP itself. A sign you aren't even paying attention before spamming your BEV propaganda. People are starting to lose faith in BEVs, and the problems will get louder over time.
> Nickel-hydrogen batteries can run for tens of thousands of cycles, giving them a life of over 30 years. Their use of expensive platinum catalysts kept them relegated to space applications until five years ago, when Stanford materials science and engineering professor and battery entrepreneur Yi Cui’s team found an inexpensive nickel-molybdenum-cobalt alloy catalyst for the battery that costs $20/kg.
I’m really curious about this part. The reason why this technology never took off was because of the need for platinum as a catalyst. If this is solved, it makes this chemistry one of the interesting around today. It’s durability is legendary, and it will be a game changer if it could be made cheap.
The average US car is actually an SUV or pick-up truck. But the average BEV is closer to being a Corolla competitor. A like-to-like comparison will still find a $15-20k gap in price.
A dead battery cell is unfixable. At best, you have a few dead cells and a mechanic can replace them. But if replacement cells can't be found, or too many cells have died, then it is a full battery pack replacement. This is going to be a big problem for old BEVs.
Just anecdotal but: I bought a new European suv in 2017 drove 68,000 miles, very very gently. Turbo blew and sent debris into the engine, engine lost compression, needs full replacement, dealer quoted $35,000 job. Car was 6 years old, just out of warranty, was 60k new.
An ICE replacement is usually just a few thousand dollars. And that's the worse case scenario. Well maintained ICE cars can last for decades. A mandatory, $10-20k battery replacement for every BEV at some point in its lifetime is a big problem.
Consumeraffairs review of battery pack replacement costs (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...) implies that this costs $13k-$17k, so much more than engine replacements for old cars, as long as we're talking about battery packs which have appropriate capacity for full EV, not a hybrid or simply putting in a much smaller capacity than originally installed.
> Sales of EVs surpass sales of diesel models for the first time in Europe, with battery-electrics holding a 15.1% share of the market, while diesels hold 13.4%. (Audi e-tron GT pictured above.)
> Plug-in hybrids have seen gains and losses over time in different European countries, but hold 7.9% market share on the continent overall.
> The Tesla Model Y has been Europe's best-selling model in any vehicle category in the first six months of 2023.
Which proves there was no tipping point! Diesel are losing sales despite being dominant at one point. BEVs will probably go down the same route. Some newer idea will drive BEVs out of the market just like it did with diesel cars.
For ic there's the tipping point where the engine is common enough that 'enough' fuel forecourts have the fuel. There's the tipping point where the fuel is in every forecourt.
For EVs there's the tipping point where it becomes normalised, not something that just sandal wearers use. There's the TCO tipping point, there's the purchase price parity tipping point, there's the tipping point where there are 'enough' chargers, there's the tipping point where chargers are everywhere.
I don't object to all these being combined into one grand tipping point, they're all fuzzy anyway.
But I don't think you can put an exact figure on it, and I also don't think tipping point implies it will completely take over the market.
For a start, diesel and petrol both come from oil, using more of one is going to increase supply of the other so if it isn't used prices will fall.
Second petrol and diesel have different strengths and weaknesses, which is why you don't tend to see petrol lorries or diesel scooters.
I think an ev tipping point has more potential to be self reinforcing though. As less of the electorate has ic cars, it's more politically acceptable to increase taxes on it. People will become less accepting of the externalities of IC cars, and ultimately you don't have petrol / diesel piped to your house so as the market shrinks, finding fuel is going to become harder.
The moment we can make an alternative zero emissions car for less, it will probably be the end of the BEV. Cost per mile is wildly exaggerated as an argument since all vehicles will eventually face road taxes.
