China is following in the steps of many European countries in announcing its intentions to one day end the sale of new vehicles powered by fossil fuels. The country is speeding up the development of its own green car market by planning stringent quotas for carmakers and setting a longer-term aim to ban the production and sale of cars that use traditional fuels. This major shift won’t be easy, however, and General Motors CEO Mary Barra believes it will require support from the state government.
As it combats air pollution, China’s objectives for NEVs include that at least a fifth of auto sales by 2025 will be comprised of electric and plug-in hybrid cars. Barra commented on this timetable at an event in Shanghai, stating that she believes that the government will need to provide plenty of backing to win over consumers, according to Reuters. Although China is the world’s largest market for electrified cars, millions of consumers still choose cars powered by fossil fuels every year.
“While we are exploring all channels to boost NEV (new energy vehicle) sales, building raw consumer acceptance of NEVs will depend on continued joint effort between the government and automakers,” Barra said at a company event in Shanghai.
Countries with long-term plans to phase out the sale of fossil-fuel powered cars include Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France.
Although GM recently withdrew from the mainstream vehicle segments in Europe by selling its European Opel-Vauxhall unit to France’s PSA Groupe, it does have a significant presence in China. Barra said that China’s upcoming plans surrounding NEVs have caused it to make large investments in the future electrification, and GM is planning for 10 new electrified cars in China by 2020.
Barra exuded caution on moving too quickly, however. “It’s best when, instead of being mandated, customers are choosing the technology because it meets their needs.”
Comments
The writing is on the wall. Electric, and possibly hydrogen, is the future. We’ll be better off if we start planning now and move forward. Otherwise, we are the laggards living in a polluted environment.
Unfortunately, oil corporations contribute tons of money with politicians until every last drop is spent. US does not lead anymore.
And forever more, soccer moms will no longer feed terrorists with a river of money directly from the spout attached to their minivans and comb-overs.
Yeah because electric vehicles are something that was just invented yesterday. You are aware that electric vehicles have been around since the late 1800’s right? It’s called choice. Not everybody can afford these super high tech all electric low range wonders and it will be many years before they are actually within reach of the masses. Even then there will still be many who prefer a gas or hybrid style vehicle. But I expect nothing less of communist China to dictate something quite impossible to there people.
America is the largest holder of oil deposits in the world, we can fuel our country like no other. Also electric is super inefficient as it looses a lot of potential over its power lines. It doesn’t help that fossil fuels are rapidly seeing efficiencies increasing. We could see gas only trucks getting 35MPG in three years, 40 if the EPA wasn’t wagging a requirements war on it. Electric will only best fossil fuels when cold fusion becomes manageable on a small scale, and we are at least 100 years from that. Batteries almost eliminated gas cars back in the early 1900’s because they were simple. The addition of electric start and better motors meant that the gas motor showed it true value, high power and range. You will have to find a new molecule that holds more power per mass than gasoline to have batteries replace gas.
Excellent but different way of saying what I also said.
Only engineers and science majors really understand this, others read a couple of articles on the web and think they got their Phd from MIT.
Barra is an engineer so she know this stuff, cover to cover.
Sounds like a load of shit to me…. Another TAX PAYER Bailout !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Government Motors reported a $12 BILLION dollar NET Profit last year… So seems as though if they can’t afford to do anything on their own, than they shouldn’t be doing it…. You [defamatory word omitted by moderators because I don’t know how to behave myself] that want electric cars so badly, need to think before you leap…. Where the Hell do you think electricity comes from????
Know matter what, from design, and manufacturing, to what it takes to make those batteries, and destroy
them, it will take oil in some form…. Cars and trucks today run cleaner than ever, use less gas, and with man made oils and longer oil changes, it kinda makes them better than ever….
Nobody is talking about a bailout, Bob. What’s being discussed here, if you read the article, is assistance from governments to implement the very own EV sales quotas that they are setting — pretty much in the form of incentives… you know, just like the federal tax incentives currently run by the U.S. government for those who purchase a plug-in vehicle.
So it’s not about the companies not being able to make cars with whatever profits they have. It’s about them making cars that they are required to make, and then NOBODY BUYING THEM. To use your words, NOBODY IS LEAPING to the cars that the government is mandating they buy.
So to change the latter part, the governments will need to step in and throw in a carrot for consumers like American government is already doing. The Chinese are not (yet) doing this with EVs. Got it?
OK Alex if you say so, it must be true…. California besides having the highest sales taxes, it also has the highest DMV fees… They started out giving the poor dummies that bought into the Electric Cars crap incentives like cheaper DMV fees, and TAX breaks, free express lane use, and Now Old Jerry the CLOWN is going to go the other way and even charge more now than what the original discounts and incentives were originally…..
So one way or the other the consumers (TAX PAYERS) are PAYING for the fancy cars….
And I don’t care what you call a pig in a dress, it’s still a pig!!!!!
And Government Motors will somehow get their grubby hands on our TAX Monies using some form or another, call it a bailout, or what ever you want, a pig is still a pig….
Oh Bob — looks like you had no better material than the commonplace “if you say so, it must be true” diatribe.
Can you dispute the fact that very few people are buying EVs? No, you can not. The world is still buying vehicles that run on fossil fuels by the millions, and EVs by the thousands. There is a huge imbalance. Prove me wrong!
The subsidies you are referring to were not specific to GM, but are available to any and all automakers. The cars that these incentives go to fund are usually not “fancy” – they are mostly the Bolts, Volts, Prius PHEVs, Clarity, Leafs… the only thing that can be described as “fancy” are Teslas… and those make up a small percentage of the vehicles that receive the subsidies in question.
Facts over fiction.
Dude, cold fusion was concluded to be a hoax back in the early 90’s. It’s still a hoax to this day.
Also, the US does not have more known recoverable oil deposits than Venezuela, Russia, SA, Canada, UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, or Iran. You are completely full of crap.
At least I wasn’t proven wrong
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Has-Worlds-Largest-Oil-Reserves.html
never say never. Cold fusion will be created on day. It is hard to capture something burning as hot as the sun, but there is a way, just need to figure out how.
Electricity loses potential over lengthy lines? Er, Tesla’s AC did win that tech war and beat Edison’s DC hands-down for this exact reason, over 100 years ago. Is that why you hate anything with the word Tesla on it? More power per molecule? How about Hydrogen atoms? I hear US carriers and subs use molecules that are much more powerful than gas, even after half of their lives! Dang, the Dunning-Kruger hurts hard on this page.
Hate TESLA??????? SOLAR CITY IS OWNED AND PART OF TESLA SINCE LAST SUMMER 2016…
I don’t like his cars although they do look sporty, and I’m not to happy with their shit on my roof either…. Can’t use my spa, because it uses more energy than the panels make all day so I have to go on the grid if I do….
So plugging in an electric car would do the same damn thing, I’d rather drive using GAS than pay a higher electric bill…..
Lets not forget that there are costs involved also…
First off your over paying for the cars to make up for the research and screw ups….
Than there are maintenance costs, who the hell knows what those will be…
And with all that said, the trade in values will and are now in the cellar to boot….
I know first hand because a buddy of mine bought a new VOLT a couple of years ago, and when he went to trade it in, wow, he almost was forced to keep it because they wouldn’t give him shit for the damn thing…
Excuse was because it cost a ton to replace batteries, and some other crap in order to be able to resell it….
That’s the future folks, and the Illegals and refuges won’t be able to afford them or insure them as cheap as a regular one…. So who’s buying them, the fools that think their saving money, and for that they drive R/C cars, and lose in the end….. DRAIN THAT SWAMP !!!!
According to those lefty loonies over at Napa Auto Parts:(http://knowhow.napaonline.com/electric-car-maintenance-need-know/)
Regenerative brakes save pads, and also “As for oil changes, spark plugs and wires and air/fuel filters, these maintenance items are a thing of the past in electric cars because they don’t have these parts. Exhaust system maintenance, including the muffler and a catalytic converter, are simply not found in electric vehicles either”
Napa must be owned by Evil Al Gore, right?
How’s the bottom-cushion leather part-number search going, Bob?
yea, none of those parts cost 5K every single change, unlike batteries. Ive never changed a cat, or muffler, or spark plugs for that matter. Oil, I understand, 49$ every 6 months, brake, 200$ if I get the calipers changed. Napa just wants to avoid the PR war for not coming out against electric cars.
Napa wants to avoid a PR war by giving maintenance advice? Is Hillary behind every Napa counter waiting to pizza-gate your children? Dang, you better self-investigate.
Haven’t replaced plugs and lines and exhaust? You must looooove paying those terrorists with your wasted fuel money. But paying American workers who make plugs and lines and exhausts, no you hate them, right.
Google it and you’ll see, power is really lost over lines. Its to the point that engineers are paid to figure out how to minimize this impact. FYI, AC won over DC for heat loss reasons, not potential reasons. They didn’t want the lines to melt under such high strain. US Subs are run by uranium cells. That has nothing to do with hydrogen. FYI, I did state that cold fusion was the power source of the future. It would involve hydrogen, but right now it is not a reality. Gas just gas so much more energy.
Google it. I did. Y’know, I’m so glad that the old “everybody knows this!” has become “google it!” because google is actually reliable. Here is Energy.gov: (remember, the government is run by your man now, so don’t call this triggered, ha!).
“Starting in the late 1880s, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were embroiled in a battle now known as the War of the Currents.
Edison developed direct current — current that runs continually in a single direction, like in a battery or a fuel cell. During the early years of electricity, direct current (shorthanded as DC) was the standard in the U.S.
But there was one problem. Direct current is not easily converted to higher or lower voltages.
Tesla believed that alternating current (or AC) was the solution to this problem. Alternating current reverses direction a certain number of times per second — 60 in the U.S. — and can be converted to different voltages relatively easily using a transformer.
Edison, not wanting to lose the royalties he was earning from his direct current patents, began a campaign to discredit alternating current. He spread misinformation saying that alternating current was more dangerous, even going so far as to publicly electrocute stray animals using alternating current to prove his point.
The Chicago World’s Fair — also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition — took place in 1893, at the height of the Current War.
General Electric bid to electrify the fair using Edison’s direct current for $554,000, but lost to George Westinghouse, who said he could power the fair for only $399,000 using Tesla’s alternating current.
That same year, the Niagara Falls Power Company decided to award Westinghouse — who had licensed Tesla’s polyphase AC induction motor patent — the contract to generate power from Niagara Falls. Although some doubted that the falls could power all of Buffalo, New York, Tesla was convinced it could power not only Buffalo, but also the entire Eastern United States.”
Sooooo…. Edison distributed PR lies to bolster his companies’ profits at the expense of American people. And because Tesla wasn’t American and was nuts at the end of his life, people still trigger-believe Edison even though he’s been dead for a century.
Ok, you’re right some power is lost over lines.
Also, some gas is lost over transportation lines as well:
Ship sinkings
Truck accidents
Spillage
Idiots who drive away with the spout still attached (yeah, google it)
Refinery accidents
Dead-loss of degraded gas that’s past it’s use-by date (now how long are those electron shelf-lives?)
Actually the biggest cost of getting gas to its consumers is the shipping cost itself. All the above listed is practically nothing when compared to the amount of energy needed for delivery.
Yes, but there is energy loss due to transfer. That was your point.
Barra believing in free market concepts suddenly? The GM hog is still suckling on the the government teat through non repayment ($11 billion short), and simultaneously PAYING for awards to soften the blow during the post bailout recalls and ignition switch fiasco.
Shit man my $50 grand Sierra has had over seven recalls so far, and now another one I have to waste a day for , because they say my power steering could go out and cause me to crash… Are you kidding me with this crap???? If you think about it, I have wasted over a weeks time , free time that belongs to ME, on not only the time I spent buying my truck, with road tests, and the F’N paperwork, but all the time I spent getting their crap fixed, reprogrammed, parts replaced, and it has only 30 grand on it ,even though as a long time customer at my local Junk Dealer, oops, I ment GMC dealer I usually get a loaner or a new one as a test drive to take home while I wait for my cash box to be repaired…. Good luck Dizzyland, maybe she’ll screw you and ESPN like she screwed Government Motors and the TAXPAYERS aka customers !!!!
They sure do stick together, I guess as long as you put money in the BOARD members pockets and renew Country Club Memberships, you get a pass on being a THIEF and a COO ass HO !!!!!!
Would you rather they not recall the vehicles and let people (including yourself) drive in a flawed vehicle, thereby negatively impacting your safety as well as the safety of other motorists?
All companies have recalls and GM is very stringent on this now after the ignition switch fiasco. The process that is leading to these recalls has actually been quite transformative, and has resulted in the data and experiences collected from the recalls to be applied to future product development processes so as not to repeat the same mistakes again. So in theory, we should start seeing less recalls with the next-generation vehicles. The same goes for the data collected from the OnStar Prognostics service, whose goal is to solve problems before they even happen. More info here:
http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/general-motors-technology/onstar/onstar-proactive-alerts-prognostics/
As for people being screwed. Nobody is screwing anyone. The government made the kind of deal is wanted to make to bailout GM. They wrote the deal from scratch. So if you don’t think they got their money’s worth, then they screwed themselves.
And for the sake of full disclosure and accuracy — Barra was not involved in the bankruptcy. But good try!
Barra had nothing to do with bailout… she wasn’t anywhere close to any leadership role to have prevented the bankruptcy at the time that it took place.
The supposed “non-repayment” was never required by the government, so don’t blame GM — but blame the government that didn’t require it to be payed back… which instead chose to hold on to shares.
C’mon man… it’s an entirely new organization now. Stop living in the past.
And if you do prefer to live in the past, then maybe we should talk about how EVERY OTHER automaker has taken government money at some point in history, including those from Japan, Europe, Korea… not to mention China. The fact that GM was helped once during its long and stories history to save the american auto industry and preserve millions of jobs is a drop in the bucket compared to the regular annual handouts received by Toyota, VW, or Hyundai… to name a few.
But hey, why let reality get in the way of opinions?
The emissions profile of an electric vehicle (yes, it does have one) is light years beyond the average American’s ability to understand and comprehend.
When you charge your electric car most people will be plugging into the electric grid because they will not be able to afford massive solar panels and battery banks to go off grid, at least for the foreseeable future. Plugging in depends on the generation source. If it is fossil fuel you have power plant efficiencies, step up transformer efficiencies, line losses, step down transformer efficiencies, charging system efficiencies, electric motor efficiencies and drive line efficiencies, all being less than unity so you can have a lot of emissions associated with and electric car.
Traditional Fossil plants are about 40% efficient, at best, combustion turbines with HRSG’s are ~ 65% efficient and combined heat and power can increase the efficiency of both.
Bottom line is that you can burn a lot of coal to charge that car, especially if the sun is not out and the wind is not blowing.
Nuke is a possible answer combined with other clean generation but sun and wind alone will not meet the need.
Fossil fuels provide a larger portion of our grid than you think as well. The sad thing is wind and solar is there just for show. They dont have a high enough output to have any impact. Power Mag compiled a map showing all of Americas power supplies, and renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and syngas) combines created about 3% of our entire energy grid. California runs almost entirely off natural gas. Basically these are LPG cars in that respect.
And, lets not forget about emissions and disposals issues of these huge lithium batteries and the sources/supply of lithium.
At what point will the oil companies have to get involved with owning these new companies?
They are not giving up their oil industry without a fight!
The sooner the better, it’s called infusion of venture capital.
You can own some too, lots of new technology, just get started.
China will require only emission free vehicles to be built and sold in China by 2040; this means General Motors has 20+ years to comply.. while the clock is ticking loudly in European countries where they say of making this requirement by 2025-2030 and is why BMW has said they will be spending $Billions to convert their entire fleet to EV.
What will happen in the EU is the following: governments – always in need of cash – will first subsidize electric vehicles and subsequently – when the market has switched – double-tax these electric vehicles for their battery eco-footprint. They did the same with Diesel: up to 6 years ago they gave tax reductions for Diesel cars (because they were more “efficient” than gasoline ! ), now they double tax them for other eco-reasons (CO2 and NOx emissions). At the end, people in Europe will belong to one of 2 groups: the richer guys who can still afford to drive gasoline (and will pay a LOT for it), and the poorer ones stuck to electric and wondering why they ever went along with that idea.
Sure why not screw the TAXPAYERS again !!!!!!! And don’t give me that crap about being paid back with interest, we are still PAYING for that bailout…. For those of us that like buying new cars and trucks, KNOW how over priced they have become for plastics, and cheap materials, oh sure the mechanicals are much better now and the paints are eye catching, but after a hundred years, and strong competitions world wide, they are still lagging and Cheaply produced…
They had to make $12 Billion dollars NET profit on somebody somehow…
I have been pretty faithful to GM since the mid 60’s, have two new ones, a 14 Sierra All Terrain SLT, a 16 Terrain Denali , and my baby, 94 YUKON 2 Door SLE 4×4, so lets dance…. All they want seeing they own most crooks in Washington, is as they do keep SCREWING the TAX Payers, and jerking off their customers, And WE LET THEM DO IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Electric my ass !!!!!!!! You want to make things better??? BIRTH CONTROL !!!!!!!
Consider this your first warning Bob.
Stick to the topic at hand or get booted. We’re not here to talk about birth control or other acts of reproduction. Nobody wants to hear that bull.
There won’t be a second warning.
Cheers!
Alex
So Mary thinks that her company is going to need State help . We bailed out the company once to help save jobs and the economy , ok…., and now because China is holding up Buick and paying Cadillacs bills to help it re-invent itself , moving your production to Mexico and China and she wants our tax dollars again ! Nadda , Nyet . NO .
The American taxpayer isn’t going to be in the mood to spend our tax dollars to help a company that is always late to the party .
China has the cash to build a new infrastructure for all of these electric cars , we do not . Yesterday 9/14/2017 it was reported in the news ( about a minutes worth of air time ) that our National Debt reached 20 TRILLION Dollars. That money is going to have to be paid back , or as usual kicked down the road for future generations to deal with . This country needs to be re-built , to survive in the new era . We are putting bandaids on water pipes and our roads and bridges , ports of entry , air ports all 50+ years old .
Mary how about you and your executives take a pay cut to help your company survive and quit building vehicles no one wants and stop sending your manufacturing to countries taht only help them out .
GM is a big old company that I fear is going to suffer as the rest of the smaller leaner companies close in and make GM something our grandkids will read about in the papers as what happened to The biggest company in the world only a few decades ago .
““It’s best when, instead of being mandated, customers are choosing the technology because it meets their needs.”
Apparently Mary doesn’t watch the Weather Channel
Really? She has people for that. What does that have to do with anything?
The point remains that actual people do not buy EVs in the numbers they could be or should be. Your beef isn’t with Mary. it’s with the people who buy cars.
Well I can tell you right now gm is in full swing of having all electric vehicles, with a brand new dedicated chassis coming up now. Next gen Cadillac CT6 all electric coming up, and more to come.
hell they already have full hybrids, mild hybrids, and plug in hybrids in china now, and full plug in electric on dedicated chassis and more to come. no one is not even making any money on electric cars, and that’s going to be for some time.
Maybe we should further eliminate humanity until hybrids are more profitable.
My read on Barra is that she is a pretty good CEO.
but that is compared to others that and mostly self centered experts at promoting their own climb.
I’m thinking that Mary is asking for strategy for infrastructure which in china, is all government controlled. i.e. transmission and distribution for charging stations, battery manufacturers, tax policy etc.
they don’t need any help on design and development for product engineering that I an aware of.
Or, it may be intellectual property, China is good at extorting that.
Lets not get all caught up on transmission line losses, (I squared R).
These can be lowered significantly by higher voltages, bigger conductors lower amps and distributed generation.
The big losses are at the large, traditional, base load power plants that are about 40% efficient in converting fuel to electricity.
The CO2 and particulate emissions from these plants should be charged to your electric car if that is the incremental generation source when you plug in.