Chinese car tech more disruptive than US

Chinese car tech more disruptive than US:

The Chinese are ready for a scaled down, cost-effective EN-V today.

US car culture must change, now

Several years ago, it was easy to call electrification ‘disruptive’. Today, I don’t believe that electrification has lived up to that billing, and it never will.

Ultimately, electrification will be just one piece of a convergence of technologies that will fundamentally change transportation, especially personal mobility, as we know it today — an idea that was all over the news this week. For instance, Bill Ford covered this topic at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and it was also a big subject at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit (EIS).

The future isn’t just about powertrains. It’s equally about congestion, communication and auto drive – the later a favored topic of Hybridcarblog.

And today, if you compare China to the US, one would have to bet this disruptive convergence of technologies is going to be built in Asia, not North America.

Yes, I’ve gone down this road before in China might have already won the plug-in vehicle revolution. While electric cars have flopped at all levels in China so far, despite outstanding government incentives, electric bikes have flourished to the tune of more than 120 million last I heard. And all that growth has happened in just the last 10 years and most of it has been built by innovative, start-up companies.

Nevertheless, even when I wrote that headline, I wasn’t totally sure I believed the tale I was spinning, but then I read Could China redefine the car?, and I now have few doubts regarding just how easy it will be for China to win the plug-in revolution, and they’ll do it be redefining personal mobility.

China has a fresh canvass, while the US auto industry is limited by an irrational consumer culture, and possibly an unhealthy dependence upon gas-guzzler profits.

Today, China has the ability to redefine cars entirely from the ground up. To start, they can build on the success of the e-bike, and they have every reason to take this path. If everyone in China on an e-bike today were instead driving a car, the traffic would be even far worse than it is already. Ironically, China has barely tapped its market for automotive mobility, and US-like cars simply cannot drive the future.

Quite simply, the American auto just won’t work in China the way it was worked in the US. The US auto culture just isn’t functional.

And that’s great news for all these e-bike startups. Next might be 3-wheeled bikes. Then covered e-bikes. Then covered e-bikes with basic telemetrics, even relatively advanced safety software that auto-maneuvers these e-bikes out of potential crashes.

Innovation. Disruption.

No. Probably none of this would pass US safety standards, but it’ll fly in China because it will still be an improvement.

Certainly, US automakers have largely anticipated the potential for such disruptive possibilities in China, Asia and even eventually in major US urban areas. In the past few years every major automaker has shown off new forms of urban mobility that take advantage of the coming convergence of technologies, but they do so in much more expensive fashion than what’s now taking place in China.

I’ve often argued that US energy policy needs to walk before it runs. Today we’re leaving massive potential on the table waiting for things like advanced biofuels, fuel cells and batteries to simply save our auto culture without really changing it. Good luck. I hope it works out.

Instead, Id argue that GM should follow up on previous suggestions from the company itself that they develop a new urban transportation system built upon its EN-V, starting now, here in the US, in places like downtown Detroit. Now that’s innovative, disruptive thinking.

In China, however, they’re starting from the ground up. Expectations are lower. Cheap isn’t a bad word as long as its better. An e-bike is better than pedaling. This basic model can therefore be scaled up slowly in a way that keeps startups and innovation in the game.

Yes, I know. Buicks and SUVs are hot commodities in China today. But that’s an unsustainable direction. Moreover, China might soon start limiting license plates for many urban areas — creating even more demand for e-bikes, an industry China can dominate and export to the rest of Asia and other emerging markets. Besides, the average person in China can better afford an e-bike rather than an SUV.

US automakers, on the other hand, don’t want to sell cheap e-bikes. They want to sell the much more expensive, still-in-need of subsidies, fully technologically converged visions of the future. Certainly, as e-bike penetration explodes there will be a market for such advanced urban mobility vehicles, but there will be tons of domestic competition ready to undercut these foreign products. And, just putting a Buick label on an EN-V might not be enough for most Chinese to fork out the extra cash.

At the highest levels, the US auto industry seems to know its current US business model is unsustainable and too dependent upon the light duty truck segment. The problem is, they don’t really know how to break out of the rut their in, especially when consumers make it easy for them to just follow the same old tracks. Unfortunately, these tracks don’t lead to the future.