I didn't know the China gov't new agency had such an online presence (and in English).
Their "recommended reading" includes an article titles "The miracle called Communist Party of China"[1] written by the Chief Minister of Punjab Province, Pakistan.
The CPC defies conventional wisdom and logic pertaining to political outfits. This dizzying pace of transformation defies logic, for this was done in barely a few decades and only could have happened because a robust body like the Chinese Communist Party stood behind the strategy.
It is ironic that if westerners restricted themselves to just knowing about china through Chinese media, they would have a worse impression of china than if they only consumed "biased" western media.
Their progress is probably owed to authoritarianism more than anything else. South Korea. Taiwan were also basically dictatorships for much of their growth.
Whether or not communism is good or bad is basically defined by whether or not the country is US-friendly.
Look at the history of their GDP growth, and you can see it take off the moment they got political stability. You see this for a lot of countries. China floundered during the regular purges and political re-alignments. But when the government stopped infighting (at least openly) and instead started pulling in one direction (even though that included a lot of lining their own pockets too), GDP growth shot up.
It's not surprising really - if your government is predictable you can learn to work around most things. If they keep changing the way you have to relate to them, it's much harder.
The perhaps slightly more surprising thing is when you start comparing more countries and see how little internal political factors seem to matter at all. E.g. changing governments rarely produces more than a blip as long as the handover itself is not disruptive.
Communism has nothing to do with it. China is a capitalist nation. They have an authoritarian government that can muster tremendous resources and quickly set them towards it's goals.
heck look at what the Chinese gov did during 'cultural revolution' - all the stupid stuff imaginable. Stupidity only possible due to non-restricted communism. "let's kill all the birds! they're eating everything" - which resulted in...
Thing is, China does not have one dictator. The prime minister changes regularly and his ability to cling to power is limited by opaque (but apparently efficient) check and balances at the top level of the PCC.
I tried to read more about it two years ago and was surprised to see academics complaining about the lack of a political science model of the Chinese government (apart from the one provided by the PCC propaganda). In one word: we don't know how it works.
It's been a stable system since Deng stepped down but the word is that Xi Jinping is trying to mess with that. He's purging the Party of people not personally loyal to him so he might be considering staying on for a third term.
Since the 1980s only 2 Politburo members have been purged. The first was Bo Xilai in 2002, Xi Jinping's main rival for the top job. The second was Sun Zhengcai, in July. He was being groomed as a successor to Xi Jinping. This purge prompted speculation that Xi would prefer no successor at all.
Was there really suspicion that Bo Xilai trial was political? I got the impression that he could be judged despite his political influence. For murdering a British journalist nonetheless, which proved him to be at the head of a crime organization. Are there elements that indicate this is a total set-up?
Sun is Bo's successor in the same province. When you remove the leader of a crime ring, the ring still exists. I think that these accusations are pretty credible. 2 members in 15 years, in a country that's supposed to be struggling with corruption, that's nor something that looks that unusual.
Dictators need collaborators too, as far as I know. I can't imagine anyone single-handedly taking control of a country's government and operating it without help.
> A bad president needs collaborators to ruin a country
collaborators? trump seems to have a good supply of such collaborators
how trump got the Muslim ban, transgender ban, quit Paris agreement. oh, let's don't forget his ongoing efforts to build the wall, kill the public healthcare, stop global trade...
US democracy is nothing else but free Internet entertainment
He'll be gone in a few years, and those things didn't ruin the country (contrary to popular belief). It just ruins the reputation. And that regularly resets at the next election.
What really ruins the US is the large amount of apathetic people who don't actually care enough to vote or participate in civic duties.
A total of 167,000 charging piles have now been connected to the telematics platform of the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), making it the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) charging network.
This is about the billing system. That's what they mean by "the telematics platform of the SGCC". The key point here is that China's electric car charging infrastructure is being standardized.[1] Unlike in the US, the standardization includes the billing system and the system by which cars and customers identify to the charging station.[1]
Unfortunately much (> 60%) of China's electricity comes from dirty sources (largely coal). Until this is fixed, the environmental benefits of EVs there will be limited.
> Until this is fixed, the environmental benefits of EVs there will be limited.
That's largely untrue. In urban Chinese cities, the tailpipe exhaust is one of the biggest cause of the smog and air pollution. The anecdotal evidence is that I was raise in a small city that has virtually no major factories yet still have been suffered from air pollution and smog. While small factories were forced to be closed (due to environmental regulations in recent years) the number of the motor vehicles (cars, trucks and motorcycles) on the road has raised 10x. As a result, air pollution has been getting worse.
It's unrealistic to expect 100% of the power in the grid coming from green energy sources, let alone the idea of waiting till then to pushing EV adoption. Green energy transition should be gradual, one step at the time.
Even if 100% of the electricity was produced by coal, anytime you reduce the sources of pollution from millions of tailpipes to a few thousand power plants, you can easily regulate and install scrubbers to reduce the pollutants.
Unfortunately, many power plants in china ignore environmental regulations and don't install scrubbers (or have them but don't turn them on when officials aren't looking). China's pollution problem is primarily one of governance and rule of law.
A power plant that don't have a scrubber is likely still less polluting that 10000 power plants that have to weigh 150kg and that have an equally low likelihood of having any environmentally friendly implements.
Actually, auto exhausts in first tier cities that implement stricter emissions standards and disallow selling low quality gasoline are not that bad. The problem are the blue trucks that come in from the provinces at night that don't have good emissions equipment and are running on crappy gas. You could actually see the air quality get WORSE in Beijing after 11 pm, when few personal cars are on the road but the Hebei trucks start coming in.
Maybe, but in the US it ended up being quicker to get 95% of cars with catalytic converters then to get scrubbers on 95% of the coal plants. It seems power plant owners have more power to push against regulation than car owners.
On another hand that point is only true if other issues of overurbanization and lack of supportive infra in cities exist. And nobody buys an unsubsidized electric car in China. Create problems so one can create a solution.. I suppose everyone has a mortgage. And then would have to look at how these cars and batteries are made with such thin margins.. it gets dark at that point
>Unfortunately much (> 60%) of China's electricity comes from dirty sources (largely coal). Until this is fixed, the environmental benefits of EVs there will be limited.
True, but with China it never helps much to look at where they are instantaneously. It's all about the rate of change. They are extremely aggressive with their renewables goals. Far beyond the US or EU.
It makes a lot of economic sense for them, even more so than other countries because they don't have that much oil resources. Same with India. Not to negate the fact that China is in general very aggressive in working towards their goals.
> They are extremely aggressive with their renewables goals.
China has no plans to reduce their dirty energy consumption. None what-so-ever (which is why they are not). All of their publicly stated plans regarding renewable energy, is for future energy consumption growth, not as a replacement for existing dirty energy production. China won't be reducing their total coal consumption over the next 20 years for example.
They build renewables out west yet don't have the grid yet to move any of that power to the east where it would be used. So the rate of renewable production is still far higher than renewable consumption.
They will probably fix that eventually, but it just goes to show about the weirdness of rapid growth.
Also, china will never have the renewable capacity of Norway, which gets almost all of its electricity from hydro.
I'm sure, the question is always grid capacity vs. production that can't be used locally. Also, some of the renewables are pretty remote and don't have grid access at all yet.
Debunks? That link reinforces the parent's argument. China's electricity is really dirty from CO2 perspective, and even worse with regards to other emissions like sulphur. The 256 grams of CO2 per km for a Nissan Leaf quoted in that article is in line with the 180g - 300g range for an American petrol-powered car.
That said, this article is way out of date. China's electricity mix is much greener today than in 2009.
It says the average is 300g, and 256<300. So it was already better in 2009, and as you note it's gotten better. New hybrids do 180, not the normal petrol cars China would otherwise be using.
True, but I believe a standard reply to this from a pro EV perspective is that it's still better to be using fossil fuel->grid->EV than fossil fuel->ICE because of the overall efficiency of the former's process over the latter's, to the extent that it results in less CO2 emitted per mile driven in an EV over an ICE vehicle.
- every electric car has no local emissions, so it has a direct impact from day one
- if the grid gets cleaner, electric cars will pic that up and get cleaner too
- even at 60% coal, the electric car has a slight advantage, as electric cars are way more efficient, especially in congested traffic, than combustion engines.
- getting all cars electric will take 30 years, from the day no more combustion engines are sold, it still takes 10-15 years, so this needs to be done in parallel with cleaning up electricity production.
Quick summary: about 34% natural gas, 30% coal, 20% nuclear, 15% renewables, 1% other. Coal is on a pretty strong downward trend so expect that number to go down, and others to go up.
Of course, it's a big country so your local power generation is probably more relevant. You can find out about your local generating mix here: https://oaspub.epa.gov/powpro/ept_pack.charts
You cannot wait until your dependencies being all available before you doing anything.
China is already the #1 investor in renewable energy and nuclear. Fully replacing coal is the final goal but it's a lengthy process (decades).
Having just purchased an EV, I can see the biggest need is at the office and at home. Even at home there are barriers: an evse is expensive to purchase and install, electricity costs are high ($0.29kwh non-peak in San Jose), so it's actually more expensive to take our Leaf than our gasoline car on most days.
Saving grace is being able to charge for free or discounted at work.
Hmm, your math is surprising. Let's suppose the leaf has the 30kwh battery. .29*30 = $8.70. You can drive 80-100, say 90 miles. California Gas Prices .com says the avg price of gas in cali is $3.15. Suppose you have a high efficiency car that gets 30 mpg. 90 miles is 3 gallons or 3x3.15 = $9.45, so pretty close. I suppose if you have a prius you get better than that, but most cars dont do that well. Also you'll have maintenance prices that are high on gas.
But with that high electricity charge it makes them closer than you'd think. In Washington state our prices avg out to 11.x cents per kwh, without any special pricing, and I get the all green power option.
Does not Leaf come with 2 years of free charging at ChargePoint locations? Specially in CA, ChargePoint has many locations so you might be able to take advantage of it.
Doesn't Nissan provide free charging for Leafs at their dealerships? Or was that a time-limited thing?
This is an honest question. I've been thinking about getting a Leaf for a while, but living in Gilroy, we're stuck with the same crazy-expensive electric tiering you are.
But there's also a dealership less than a mile from my home.
Fully agreed. We live in the Bay Area as well, and put in solar a couple years ago. Due to the shape of our roof, we were only able to put in a ~68% system (the rule of thumb is to target generation at about 80% of your average use for best ROI) but even with a slightly-undersized array, our savings have been immense, as we no longer need to pay Tier II or Tier III rates, even in the middle of summer.
AFAIC, if you own your home, it's a complete no-brainer. And our time to payoff is going to be around 4 years, tops.
I think we just got lucky. The pg&e rep pushed the TOU plans pretty hard, but we asked to stay on the tiered system, and they didn't say no. Our neighbors, who got a system just six months after we did, were required to switch. This was almost exactly two years ago.
From what I understand, the plan we're on is going to be forcibly retired in 2020. Hopefully by then powerwalls will be cheap enough to get us through the 5-9 hump during summer on the Time of Use system.
Because you get the retail value of the power you push into the grid, the TOU plans aren't that bad because you get more "money" for your excess power. You pay more when you use, but they pay you more when you produce.
The raindrop argument is like suggesting that we rebuild a beach a single grain of sand at a time. Le Bourget airport outside of Paris was packed with hundreds of private jets for the Paris conference; all those “important” people nullifying the effects of thousands of Leafs. I stop my raindrop, they start a thunderstorm, so I hardly see the point of spending extra money when the “important” people have no respect for the sacrifices of normal people.
Over 250,000 leaf's have been sold which is still a drop in the bucket but a meaningful one as there are a lot of cars on the road. Further, the poster has solar power and pays "amortized cost is approximately $0.13Kwh" making a gas powered car a far worse option.
You must have an efficient gas car! This [1] suggest the leaf uses 34 kwh per 100 miles, or about $10 at your cost per kwh. To cost less than this, with gas at, what $3/gallon? Your gas car needs better than 30 mpg.
Partly that, partly the headlights but also the performance of batteries changes with temperature. In fact, the heater is used to condition the environment for the battery pack, so if I didn't use the heating in winter the range might be even less.
For current UK driving, I estimated that we'd need 10 times more rapid chargers than we have at present, that we'd need about 1 slow charger per 8 cars, as they'd need charging for 1 hour on average per day, and that the current solar and wind power generated in UK would be enough to charge all the cars in UK if they were all electric.
Well, if we assume current usage patterns, you could plug your car in at work and at home, so most would be able to charge at almost any time of the day.
It's likely that owning a car will be a silly thing to do in the future though, so it won't really matter
If it's anything like the USA they'll all be vandalized or worn out in a few years, and no one will spend any money to fix 'em because they don't make anyone any money.
If it's anything like China, they'll be worn out in a few short months. There is not much of a culture of building maintenance in China. Source: Asian family, homeowner in China.
Profit? My city already has e-bike charging stations on just about every street of every block. They still work, no doubt because they're profitable. Also, China doesn't have the vandalism problem of America. Kids don't go out of their way to destroy things for fun.
All the superchargers I've seen have been really well maintained(in fact Centralia just got a whole new batch) but I agree that the other networks can be a bit spotty at times.
That said, if any government could make a widespread EV grid, it would be china. In prosperous times, an authoritarian outlook can be a real boon for widespread adoption.
"1 million kilowatt hours of power per day" cringe, *energy. Or 1 million kilowatt hours per day of power, but that's a mess. Just state the power in watts jesus
41.66 megawatts. Sounds much less impressive when you put it that way, because that's about 13 wind turbines' worth of power, 8% of the continuous output of the smallest nuclear plant in the US, or about one hundredth the continuous output of a large nuclear plant.
I'm not saying that 167,000 stations isn't impressive, because it is, but it's not the power output of these stations that makes it impressive really.
Their "recommended reading" includes an article titles "The miracle called Communist Party of China"[1] written by the Chief Minister of Punjab Province, Pakistan.
The CPC defies conventional wisdom and logic pertaining to political outfits. This dizzying pace of transformation defies logic, for this was done in barely a few decades and only could have happened because a robust body like the Chinese Communist Party stood behind the strategy.
[1]http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0711/c90000-9084277.html