China will destroy Toyota and GM!

[VIBGYOR]

With this....

BYD zooms past Toyota, GM in electric car race

Chinese automaker BYD Co yesterday launched the first commercial dual-mode electric car in the world, giving it an edge in the green car race over other rivals like Toyota Motors and General Motors Corp.

The new car, known as the F3DM equipped with both pure and hybrid electric driving systems, is priced at 149,800 yuan.

Toyota and GM, the two other global competitors in the electric car market, had planned to launch similar models in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

The launch of F3DM comes at a time when China is encouraging domestic companies to develop environment-friendly cars to both curb oil imports and cut carbon emissions.

Privately-held BYD, based in Shenzhen, started out as a maker of rechargeable batteries and has grown into a major player in the hybrid car market.

Its aggressiveness in developing green cars caught global attention after MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, bought a 9.9 percent stake in BYD for HK$1.8 billion in late September amid the financial crisis in the United States.

Wang Chuanfu, president of the Hong Kong-listed BYD, said the firm's expertise in batteries, especially the invention of Fe Battery is essential to the commercialization of electric cars.

"We plan to launch a pure electric car at the end of 2009," he said.

Lian Yubo, vice-president and chief engineer of BYD, said the Fe battery, which is highly safe and cheap, could support a range of 100 km for each charge of electricity, compared with 25 km of the industrial competitors.

The new car's total range could reach 500 km per charge of gasoline and electricity, which could facilitate the users to travel short distance powered by electricity and long distance powered by gasoline, he added.

Besides special charging stations, which could charge the car to 50 percent in 10 minutes, F3DM could also be charged with electricity outlets. It takes about nine hours to charge the car to full level.

Lian said the production capacity for the new electric car could reach 10,000 a month and it would share the same production platform as that of gasoline-fuelled vehicles.

The Shenzhen Municipal Government and China Construction Bank signed letters of intent with BYD to purchase the new electric cars shortly after a launching ceremony in Shenzhen.

BYD had planned to sell the electric vehicles in the United States in 2010, but Wang yesterday told reporters that it will delay it until 2011, without giving reasons, according to a Reuters report.

 

[VIBGYOR]

Revving China's auto industry
By Peter Day
Global business correspondent, BBC News

Cars leave me cold, but not the BYD F3DM. I drove it the other day, and it really is remarkable.

In one way, it is a rather ordinary compact saloon car, though it did have exceptional acceleration when I put my foot down zooming round the factory grounds in Shenzhen, the vast new Chinese city just north of Hong Kong.

This is a plug-in electric car, hence the acceleration, but when the electric battery runs out after 80 miles (128km), the petrol engine switches in seamlessly.

"Oh, just like one of those new eco-friendly hybrid cars," you may think.

But the makers argue that hybrids are more gas-guzzler than battery driven, whereas this model tries to be half and half.

And the makers? Well they are called BYD, a Chinese company which has been in existence for a bare 13 years, and which only recently started making any kind of car at all.

This new dual mode rechargeable car makes its launch appearance in China on 15 December, but BYD's Paul Lin let me have my test drive the other day.

And then when he showed me the company museum, he really set me thinking.

What is a business only 13 years old doing with a museum anyway?

Because the company has such enormous ambitions it wants to tell the world how far it has come and how much further it intends to go.

Rapid growth

Paul Lin showed me how BYD has evolved, starting with rechargeable batteries that soon became standard parts for one third of all the world's mobile phones, following the research speciality of the founder and chairman Wang Chuanfu.

And the modest battery making company grew and grew.

Wang Chuanfu soon saw that battery powered cars might be the future.


BYD knew a lot about batteries, and it was not daunted by the complexities of car-making either.

Six years ago, it bought two established Chinese car firms, and now BYD has seven huge plants with 130,000 employees.

The car I drove is made at the new headquarters factory - a giant one in Shenzhen, a city which was just a fishing town 30 years ago, with some 70,000 inhabitants.

Thanks to China's rush to modernise, Shenzhen is now part of the global manufacturing powerhouse in the Pearl River Delta, with an estimated population of 14m.

Wheel of modernisation

BYD's vast new factory did not exist 15 months ago, and they had to level several hills and fill in several lakes to create the site.

The workers mostly live in vast dormitories close by.

Like most of the Shenzhen workforce, they have migrated into the city from distant country places, moving from poverty in search of the fabled better life, spinning the great wheel of China's modernisation.

The size and scale of what BYD has already achieved is breathtaking, but that is nothing compared to its ambition.

This company has already made public its aim to be the number one car firm in China by the year 2015, and then - deep breath - number one in the whole world in 2025.

Despite my scepticism, Paul Lin had no doubt about this. The current fate of the American car industry suggests there may be room at the top some time before that date.


But to Paul Lin and the company he is part of, this ambition is entirely natural.

Car making is less difficult than high technology, they argue, and many of the techniques they have learned in high tech can now be applied to the automobile.

Remarkable endorsement

I put my foot down and revved almost silently across the factory campus in my (sample) new car, and wondered about the future.

As an exporter, China is going to be badly hit by the global recession, but already the best factories are evolving up the technology chain in much the same way as BYD has transformed itself from a supplier of other people's mobile phone batteries into a car maker with its own name on the front.

Critics say this is a copycat car, but that is how the Japanese auto industry started.

And in September there was a remarkable endorsement of BYD when even as global stock markets were plunging, the canniest American investor of them all, Warren Buffet of Omaha, Nebraska, paid $230m (£155m) for a 10% stake in the Chinese company.

Mr Buffett is a quite notorious investor for the long-term, not the quick buck, so he must recognise something in those initials BYD.

The company says they stand for "Build Your Dream", but they could mean absolutely anything.

 

[greenpine]

Once BYD, including Nissan-Renault start mass producing electric cars, the price of crude oil will drop to rock bottom. It's also payback time to screw those OPEC countries.

Hopefully, other major car manufacturers will switch and start producing electric cars from now onwards.

The world must ween itself off from dependence on crude oil. Some of the oil revenue are used to finance terrorism by certain OPEC countries. Imagine, the money you paid for your car's petrol are being used to sponsor terrorists to kill you. Are we really that stupid??? Digging our own graves with our own money???

Beside that, the environment will be much less polluted if a high percentage of vehicles on the road are electric cars. Imagine, fresh clean air at last. The issue of global warming can be minimised and brought under control.

 

[tonychat]

Chinese are smart...

 

[tonychat]

Once BYD, including Nissan-Renault start mass producing electric cars, the price of crude oil will drop to rock bottom. It's also payback time to screw those OPEC countries.

Hopefully, other major car manufacturers will switch and start producing electric cars from now onwards.

The world must ween itself off from dependence on crude oil. Some of the oil revenue are used to finance terrorism by certain OPEC countries. Imagine, the money you paid for your car's petrol are being used to sponsor terrorists to kill you. Are we really that stupid??? Digging our own graves with our own money???

Beside that, the environment will be much less polluted if a high percentage of vehicles on the road are electric cars. Imagine, fresh clean air at last. The issue of global warming can be minimised and brought under control.

i can go jogging anywhere i want to, clean air everywhere.

 

[tonychat]

Lian Yubo, vice-president and chief engineer of BYD, said the Fe battery, which is highly safe and cheap, could support a range of 100 km for each charge of electricity, compared with 25 km of the industrial competitors.

100km is not that good. 1000 km will be better. Go for that!!! all the way CHINA chinese.

 

[VIBGYOR]

Hopefully, other major car manufacturers will switch and start producing electric cars from now onwards.

actually they are doing it now, saw Mercedes S class Hybrid car few days ago....and today...2009 Chevolet Malibu is HYBRID!!

http://www.chevrolet.com/2009malibu/

OPEC can fcuk SPiDER now..

i was hoping Temasek Holdings can really wake up their ideas...

 

[Cestbon]

Once BYD, including Nissan-Renault start mass producing electric cars, the price of crude oil will drop to rock bottom. It's also payback time to screw those OPEC countries.

Hopefully, other major car manufacturers will switch and start producing electric cars from now onwards.

The world must ween itself off from dependence on crude oil. Some of the oil revenue are used to finance terrorism by certain OPEC countries. Imagine, the money you paid for your car's petrol are being used to sponsor terrorists to kill you. Are we really that stupid??? Digging our own graves with our own money???

Beside that, the environment will be much less polluted if a high percentage of vehicles on the road are electric cars. Imagine, fresh clean air at last. The issue of global warming can be minimised and brought under control.

With more nuclear power plant completed in China and India. Oil price will drop further and OPEC will be pain in the ASS. And more country are also under planing for nuclear power plant like Thailand, Veitnam and Brazil.
If not ban by US more plant will be operation now like on North Korea, Iran.

 

[UseYourBrain]

Automobil contribute only a small percentage of the oil comsumption. Do you think giants like opec, exxon'mobil, shell, conoco, BP etc will sit with arms folded while their pie is being snatched away? Think again we are surrounded by everything oil or oil by products. Even the computer ,keyboard has oil finger print on it. My guess is, its going to take another many many years for oil to be non essential. That is when every home is lighted using candles. But again candles are also made from oil by products. There is no escape to this slavery. You like it or not Opecs are your master.

 

[Zeitgeist]

Dismiss America at your own peril! The Japanese thought they were going to own America in the 80's and as they say, the rest is history!

The bald eagle is wounded but don't treat her as a chicken!

 

[congo9]

Dismiss America at your own peril! The Japanese thought they were going to own America in the 80's and as they say, the rest is history!

The bald eagle is wounded but don't treat her as a chicken!

I must say their wings has almost been chopped offf ! It no better then a normal chicken !

 

[Zeitgeist]

I must say their wings has almost been chopped offf ! It no better then a normal chicken !

Your presumption can only be vindicated by and when they start leasing out their carriers for company parties on the water!

 

[KKC007]

Imagine, fresh clean air at last. The issue of global warming can be minimised and brought under control.

The car needs to be charged with electricity. Imagine all the cars on the road plugging in to charge ever night. There will be a huge increase in demand for electricity. Electricity is not very clean to produce either.

 

[greenpine]

The car needs to be charged with electricity. Imagine all the cars on the road plugging in to charge ever night. There will be a huge increase in demand for electricity. Electricity is not very clean to produce either.

Study in Israel has shown that it costs about 2 to 3 US Dollars and get about 170 km of mileage on a full charge.

Assuming you charge your electric car every night, 30 x USD3 = USD90 which is about S$150 per month. If you do it once every 2 days, it will cost you only S$75 per month. Which is cheaper??? Petrol or electricity???

Electricity can be produced via various methods. Currently, our gencos are using gas to generate electricity. But in the near future, we could be using nuclear or some other alternative methods to produce electricity.

 

[VIBGYOR]

i can go jogging anywhere i want to, clean air everywhere.

i dun think you can do that in Thailand....currently with one of the worse pollution in Asia..