Going for an EV Test Drive in China

Kicking the tires in the world's most competitive car market

Lonely Planet says absolutely nothing about setting up a test drive while you are in China. Trip Advisor has no list of tourist-friendly car dealers. It really is make your own adventure.

The truth is, checking out an EV (electric vehicle) was not on my list of things to do while visiting China, but here we are.

As followers of this Substack may remember, I have owned a couple of EVs back in Canada. My first, a Nissan Leaf, was the car I drove from Ottawa to the Pacific Ocean and back. Having learned something from that experience, I bought a Tesla, for its longer range and superior charging infrastructure.

So, when my brother, David, and I arrived in Shanghai last week, not surprisingly, I noticed all the green license plates, indicating electric cars (including plug-in hybrids). At some intersections it seemed like every second car was green-plated. Almost every cab we took was an EV too.

There were Teslas, of course, but many more from China’s own BYD (Build Your Dreams) which has overtaken Tesla for most EV car sales worldwide. In fact, three of the four largest EV manufacturers in the world are now Chinese.

A couple of days later, we took a high-speed train to Hangzhou—it flew along at well over 200 kilometres an hour, whizzing by cars of all sorts on adjacent roadways.

Hangzhou is the ancient capital of the Song Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) and is famous for its beautiful Westlake, which has inspired poets over the years.

A pagoda on Hangzhou’s storied Westlake

But it is also a huge, wealthy, bustling, ultramodern city which happens to be home to the car manufacturer Geely, which I had never heard of, but owns Volvo and actually sells more cars than BYD in China. Not all of them are EVs, but an increasing number are.

Stimulated in part by incentives (though they are now being cut back) the Chinese now own more than half the EVs worldwide. Since most do not have big two-car garages at home, public chargers are critical and several Chinese cities have more of them than the entirety of North America.

Row of EV chargers in Taizhou

In Hangzhou, we met up with two young Chinese friends of my brother’s who took us from Hangzhou by highway to Ningbo, a so-called “sub-provincial city” of a mere nine million people.

As we drove, I started to make a list of the EV brands I saw that I had never heard of: Zeekr, Maple, Aion, Arcfox, Lynk & Co., Leap Motor. There were many more I could list, and even more that I cannot because I could not decipher the logos or Chinese brand names. Apparently there are at least a hundred EV makers in China—and that’s after a shakeout.

There is one tiny car, the Hongguang Mini, that sells for less that $7,000 Canadian and BYD recently cut the price on its cheapest EV model, the Seagull, to just over $13,000 Canadian.

Chinese cities have grown so explosively that, as our friends explained, many of the best restaurants are in shopping malls. After a delicious dinner in Ningbo, we noticed all the car dealerships in the mall and started kicking the tires, as it were. Brother David, who lives in Hong Kong, has an ageing second-hand Tesla which he is looking to replace. He was interested to see what was already available in China and might be coming to Hong Kong.

Brother David checking out a Voyah brand EV in a mall

This whetted his appetite and by the time we got to Taizhou—our friends’ home town, a couple of hours further along the highway. David was looking to see if he could check out the NIO—that’s the car you may have heard of, even if you don’t remember the name, which allows you to swap out a depleted battery for a new one, supposedly in just three or four minutes.

The NIO showroom

The salesman drove to begin with and was able to activate the massage feature in the back seat where I was sitting. It was a little disconcerting at first, being poked randomly in the back, but after a while I began to like it.

He also triggered the car seat air conditioning feature, which cools your bum through tiny perforations in the seat cover, which I don’t mind saying is a technical triumph. The experience was a bit like that moment when you first encountered a smartphone, though with a cooler bum of course.

The salesman directed this performance by talking in Chinese to a little bobbleheady thing on the dash called Nomi, who would turn to face whoever addressed it. When asked by my brother whether it spoke English, Nomi reassured him that it did.

Nomi

When we got into calmer traffic, the salesman handed the steering wheel to one of our friends, whose driving style is, shall we say, energetic. She was not accustomed to the incredible acceleration which is a feature if most EVs and hitting the speed bumps tested even the NIO’s first-class suspension. Soon her sister, sitting in the third row of the car where the bucking was wildest, reported herself to be feeling a bit green.

After that, all went without incident and then we headed to the grand finale: the changing of the battery.

I realize that it may be somewhat difficult to understand precisely what is happening technically in the video clip below as the batteries on the NIO were exchanged, but I want you to appreciate that I got down on all fours to obtain it.

It took a few minutes longer than predicted for the whole battery exchange because the machine was being rebooted when we arrived. Even with that delay, it took less time than fast charging a Tesla would have.

NIO, it should be said, is not a particularly large player in the EV market in China. They have just a 2% share and their stock is in trouble. And yet they have an incredible 2400 of these battery exchange stations in China—190 of them in Shanghai alone.

Listening to my favourite economic guru, Adam Tooze, on his podcast the other day, I was struck by something he said. Part of the reason the world is being flooded with Chinese cars these days—both EVs and old fashioned combustion cars—is that the Chinese market is so incredibly competitive that manufacturers are pushing their excess abroad. According to Tooze, they aren’t sending the rest of the world their best products, but rather the stuff that couldn't sell domestically.

Ready or not, here they come.