60 Minutes piece on EVs in China

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cwerdna

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Piece was decent but obviously meant for a layperson. Looks like it's available for free at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electric-cars-chinas-drive-to-dominate-the-industry-60-minutes/. I'm guessing it'll end up behind a CBS paywall after a few weeks.

Some interesting pieces included Nio's charging trucks (coming up and DC FCing your Nio), the battery swapping (yes, Better Place tried this and imploded and yes Tesla had 1 station but closed that down) and the EV monitoring center they showed. That last part was interesting but also scary from Big Brotherish POV.
In Shanghai, China has built the largest EV database in the world.

Holly Williams: This is a map of all the electric cars in Shanghai?

Ding Xiaohua: Yeah.

Ding Xiaohua is deputy manager of the Shanghai Electric Vehicle Data Center, which collects millions of bits of information every day on nearly 200,000 electric cars on this city's streets.

Holly Williams: So let's find a Tesla.

Ding Xiaohua: So this is only Tesla brands.

Holly Williams: These are all Teslas?

Ding Xiaohua: Yeah. All Teslas.

Inside every electric vehicle in the city is a black box, automatically transmitting data to the center every 30 seconds.

Ding Xiaohua: For example, the speeds, the mileage, the battery temperature.

Holly Williams: And does that help the government plan for the future?

Ding Xiaohua: Yes, public charging points, how many public charging points? And where it is best place for the public charger.

There is nothing like this in the U.S. or anywhere else. China is paving the way for the electric cars of the 21st century.
 
I watched it live last night. As you say, more for the lay person, but I think the take away is that China is ahead of the US, and the lead is growing. We may be left in the dust.
 
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