Some pretty important statements regarding the future of China’s New Energy Vehicle market emerged from the just-concluded ChinaEV 100 Forum in Beijing. (Full disclosure: I was not there.) But as usual, the central government made only vague statements regarding NEV policy. What it needs to do is revise its dual-credit policy, because the one it has now isn’t working. At the Forum, Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said China is sticking to its goal of having NEVs represent 25 percent passenger vehicle sales in China by 2025. No surprises there, that was in the revise ..read more

I just returned from a two-week trip to China doing research for my next report for Wards Intelligence, this one on autonomous vehicles.  I will save my insights on that sector for the report itself, which will be out in coming months. Meanwhile, I have some thoughts on the electric vehicle sector, which I wrote about my first report for Wards Intelligence, China’s New Energy Vehicle Future. BEVs charging at shopping area in Guangzhou New energy vehicle sales – and right now we are only talking about battery-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles – in China have slowed a lot. Not unex ..read more

When I read about WM Motor’s idea to launch a trading platform for second hand electric vehicles, my initial thought was that it was doomed to fail. How will WM determine residual value for those vehicles, I thought? After talking with some experts I’m still not convinced it won’t end up being a total money suck. I do think it will serve a useful purpose, however, and may end up being a success. Of course, the motivation behind launching this second-hand EV trading platform is to create a market for WM’s battery electric vehicles. The Shanghai-based startup currently offers one model, the E ..read more

Several Chinese EV makers have recently scaled back their U.S. market plans. One, Seres Automotive, at least has a Plan B, its new co-CEO Jim Taylor tells ChinaEV. It aims to be both a contract manufacturer at its U.S. plant and a supplier of electric vehicle drive train technology.  Launching an electric vehicle in the U.S. is on hold for now, he says. Seres is the new name – and brand name, it seems — for the vehicles produced by SF Motors, which is a subsidiary of Sokon Industrial Group, a large privately-owned manufacturer in China. More on Sokon later. You may be familiar with Seres, th ..read more

BYD has long been loathe to share its battery technology with other automakers. Of course, some would say that is not a huge loss as BYD doesn’t have the best battery technology around.  There have been rumblings of change at BYD of late, however. When I interviewed BYD Auto Sales Co. vice general manager Li Yunfei in Shenzhen in March for my China’s NEV Future report for Wards Intelligence (buy a copy to read the interview!), he told me BYD was going to “open our product to other automakers.”  He also predicted that BYD would have more than 20% of the EV battery market by 2020. I am still ske ..read more

I was in China the last half of February doing interviews for a comprehensive report on China’s NEV sector I am writing for Wards Intelligence. It should be out in May. Everyone buy it! One of the folks I interviewed was my old friend Freeman Shen, whom I met in the year 2000 or so when he was head of BorgWarner China. That doesn’t even come up in his list of positions nowadays it was so long ago. He went on to be a top exec at FCA and Volvo/Geely.  Now Freeman is putting those years of experience and connections to good use at WM Motor, an EV startup initially known as Weltmeister, Its Chines ..read more