Disposable Electric Vehicles
This edition covers China's EV graveyards and San Franciso's struggle with autonomous vehicles
I recently came across this Bloomberg news segment covering EV graveyards in several Chinese cities. What struck me was just how easily this potentially immense problem was not only brushed off, but touted as a monument to EV development. Have a look at the video below or read the transcript. Bloomberg article here.
Paul Allen: Hundreds if not thousands of EVs have been found sitting unused in fields across at least half a dozen cities in China. How did that happen?
Linda Lew: So, China spent a lot of subsidies to try to kickstart their EV industry. And so as a result of that, a lot of ride hailing businesses were started to help bring these electric vehicles to the masses and use them for ride and taxi services. A lot of those companies relied on government subsidies to run but unfortunately a few years ago, China started slashing the subsidies, hitting the cash flow of these companies and a lot of them went under. And these cars kind of ended up in no man’s land. And a lot of them have been abandoned.
Shery Ahn: But given those subsidies, really, China has become a leader in the EV adoption. So what do these abandoned cars mean then for China?
Linda Lew: So, while these abandoned EVs do represent a waste to the industry some of the analysts have said that this period in China’s development of the EV industry was actually very crucial because these ride hailing businesses were instrumental in helping educate consumers that EVs are a safe alternative. And, at the time, China didn’t have a big consumer market for EVs. So having these businesses out there, buying these EVs and putting them on the roads actually motivated automakers to continue to invest in EV related technologies. So, while these EVs are maybe a big eyesore right now, but in some ways, they are kind of an odd monument to China’s EV development.
Paul Allen: So, what are the companies or the government doing about these EVs?
Linda Lew: For the past few years these EV graveyards, and the [?] government, where a lot of these fields are found, have said that they will try to clean up these cars. But there is a challenge because a lot of these ride hailing businesses have gone under, the ownership of these cars is not clear. Some of them are probably still entangled in court cases waiting to be auctioned off. So some of these will be taken to scrap yards and try to recycle the materials for future use. But a lot of these are left in the fields because it’s not really clear what anyone can do with them.
In short, the Chinese government’s subsidies created and artificially supported a ride hailing EV sector which was not financially viable by the time that the subsidies were withdrawn. The subsidies were presumably aimed at improving EV adoption by ‘helping educate consumers that EVs are a safe alternative’. While realizing some apparent success in educating consumers, the subsidies and their subsequent removal highlighted the economic issues which EV owners and operators may face. In essence, it may be simply too expensive for operators to use EVs.
The question that arises from the information in this news piece is Why did many ride hailing companies using EVs fail? It is unlikely that there is one answer to this question, but I could think of three factors:
EVs may be more expensive to run than traditional vehicles. If subsidies were covering for part of the EV purchase cost or for their running costs through subsidized energy rates, the ride hailing business model was likely built around these costs. Once the subsidies were withdrawn, the business model became financially unviable. This is problematic because vehicles used in ride hailing services should see the highest utilization rates possible (obviously more than a personal use vehicle). If it is too expensive to run EVs for a ride hailing service, what does that say about using EVs as personal vehicles?
Fraud. Some sources have commented that ride hailing businesses may have registered shell EVs (vehicles without the actual battery) to receive the EV subsidies without actually using the vehicles to deliver any services. The fraud amounted to US$1.3 billion as early as 2016. Should this be the case, the China EV industry narrative should be questioned. Registering vehicles shells without the batteries shouldn’t really count as the great electric vehicle revolution!
EVs may have been used and disposed of at the end of their battery life. Many of the abandoned vehicles from ride-hailing businesses are less than ten years old. This is consistent with battery degradation models which suggest that after around 8-10 years, EV batteries should be replaced, and that replacement should occur sooner if the batteries are charged using higher capacity direct current (DC). In this case, my suspicion is that when the EV batteries were spent, the battery replacement cost made operating the vehicle unfeasible. EVs were quite literally treated in the same way as disposable cups – definitely not the clean green saviors from climate change.
What is genuinely infuriating is that a graveyard of what would otherwise qualify as still usable vehicles (if they’d be powered by fossil fuels) is described as a “monument to China’s EV development”! Yes, we are wasting even more resources in the midst of a climate crisis to help the climate!
Orwell’s adage “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” can now be extended with Waste is Climate Friendly!
More EV graveyards in China from 2 years ago.
Robotaxis and Moody AI
San Franciso’s autonomous taxi saga continues with more crashes and more back and forth around who’s responsibility it is when an autonomous vehicle is involved in a crash. Most recently, cruise (one of the autonomous vehicle operators) was accused by emergency responders that it blocked the way of an ambulance, contributing to the patient’s death. The accusations were somewhat softened in subsequent weeks, but tensions seem to be running quite high. Not only autonomous vehicles stop in the middle of intersections, but there’s nobody to scream at either!
There are two fundamental problems which remain unsolved to this day:
Who is responsible when autonomous vehicles break traffic laws or play a role in injuring someone?
How do we deal with technology that may not consistently behave as expected?
I’ve written at length about responsibility in autonomous vehicles (here, here, and here) and there has been little progress in addressing these issues. The silver lining is that if you operate an autonomous vehicle and it causes injury or death you may get away with a fine – which is another way of putting a price on a human life.
The second question on the way in which technology behaves is also interesting to explore. In a car, I expect the wheels to turn when I turn the steering wheel 100% of the time. I expect the car to drive in the same direction as before, unless I turn the steering wheel. In other words, for a given input, I expect the same output and I expect it consistently. Autonomous vehicles challenge this assumption. The vehicle may continue to drive on the same path, or it may not, depending on what the algorithm detects. The vehicle may detect another vehicle stopped on the side of the road, or it may not. Given the speed at which vehicles travel, the reaction time for a driver supervising the vehicle is minimal. However, should the vehicle crash while under human supervision, it is the human’s fault.
Artificial intelligence (which stands at the basis of autonomous vehicles) requires the adaptation of expectations from our tools. I can no longer expect the steering wheel to behave 100% of the time according to my inputs but expect different result depending on what the AI detects at a particular point in time. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that AI is rather moody.
It makes me wonder, what’s the use for a moody tool?