China Opens Door For Tesla and Other Foreign Automakers To Produce Electric Vehicles

Despite its strong protectionism laws in place that require any automaker wanting to establish production capacity in the country to partner and share its technology with a local manufacturer, China is proposing to relax laws. In an attempt to accelerate electric vehicle production in the country and fight its air pollution problem, China is now proposing to relax those laws for what they call "new energy vehicles," a.k.a. electric vehicles, in order to attract more foreign investments. From a report: The new rules are expected to open the door to Tesla and other automakers who recently expressed desires to establish manufacturing capacity in China to produce electric vehicles. The National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce released the new policy last week, and it is seeking public comment until next month. The new rules could go into effect soon after.

Partner and Share = Give up IP

[sinij]

China wants free IP, and even next quarter myopic CEOs no longer falling for "partner and share" scam.

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[theArtificial]

But but but you'll have access to a huge market!

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[WillAffleckUW]

Exactly. Just look at what happens to all the tech we sell and install there. Within a year, a copy shows up and the Chinese firm sues the original inventors for "stealing Chinese IP".

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[DickBreath]

It is nice if China relaxes the laws requiring Tesla to share with a local manufacturer. However, they will still have to share. If not directly, then through spying by employees planted within the manufacturer.

Re: Partner and Share = Give up

[WindBourne]

Musk has given up IP/patents pertaining to EVs. He is not giving up manufacturing IP, which is what he is loaded with.

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[WindBourne]

and yet, tesla is the top rated car going according to CR.

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[Yvan256]

You mean the other car companies? Like the one that built electric cars two decades ago [wikipedia.org] and then crushed them instead of selling them? [ev1.org]

Re:For once pragmatism trumps policy

[PCM2]

Have they seriously tried anything as far as legislative remedies? You'd think a totalitarian government could force people to comply with whatever regulations it wants.

California had a terrible smog problem in the 1970s and early 1980s. The entire Los Angeles area (including Disneyland, for example) had air that was smothered with a visible brown haze. Even the Bay Area was getting bad. We passed a bunch of laws, force people to comply with them e.g. by requiring catalytic converters in all new vehicles and refusing to register vehicles that haven't had their emissions checked. Today the air quality has improved immensely.

If any government can do the same, it's China. They just lack the will. Moreover, it may turn out that vehicles aren't even their biggest problem -- their crony-capitalist industries may be just as much to blame, and who wants to regulate them?

No, this move is far more likely to be about getting their hands on the technology so they can steal it.

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[haruchai]

"California had a terrible smog problem in the 1970s and early 1980s"

With such a low UID, one would think you could remember that CA smog problems went back much, much further.
https://www.arb.ca.gov/html/br... [ca.gov]

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[Cyberax]

Most of the pollution in China is from coal powerplants and various industrial plants. They can't really do much about them in the near future even if they are willing to take a hit on the economy growth (which they are not). In more distant future, China is expanding renewable power generation, nuclear power and natural gas power plants.

Cars are not really a big problem in cities right now, most of them have effective emission control systems. But in future they are going to become more significant. Inte

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[HornWumpus]

Northern China uses coal for local heat. Just like people in London did when they had killing 'fogs'.

Coal burning stoves are dirty as fuck.

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[haruchai]

Northern China uses coal for local heat. Just like people in London did when they had killing 'fogs'.

Coal burning stoves are dirty as fuck.

Some years ago, I was mentoring a student from Northern China and he did mention that coal was the primary fuel source in households.

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[HornWumpus]

It's easy, low hanging fruit. Electric resistive heat is a terrible solution, but it's much better than a coal burning stove. N. China's city cores have enough density they should be using common steam loops and waste heat from nearby power plants.

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[AmiMoJo]

Combustion engines are a big problem in cities. While their emissions in terms of greenhouse gasses and some harmful particles have improved a lot, they still do a lot of damage to people's health.

Even if all the electricity is from dirty old coal plants, it's still better to move it away from densely populated areas.

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[haruchai]

China has been taking action against coal plant emissions for a few years, passed laws roughly as stringent as any to be found in the West that went into enforcement in Fall 2014 and, most importantly, were not grandfathering ANY plants. I don't know if they've backed on on that since the law went into effect.
But even for their heavy handed government, enforcement isn't easy and local officials typically have quite a bit of power.
But if there's a death or disaster, those same officials quickly find themselv

Wrong

[WindBourne]

The pollution is from electricity plants since they run 85-88% coal ( and not 75 like one part of gov claims ). EVs are actually going to make things worse on pollution, but allow them to massively oil imports.

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[WindBourne]

coal plants ARE more efficient. However, China does not turn on the pollution controls on their plants (it would cost them 5% of the energy). ALL of The coal plants are built close to cities to minimize the energy losses. The gov does not care about the citizens. As such, by China switching to EVs, things are going to get WORSE, NOT BETTER.

Now, as to America, we currently buy the majority of EVs made in the west. We buy more than Europe. In addition, when Model 3 hits the market, the majority will go t

Trump! Trump!

[Joe_Dragon]

China does not want to be locked out so they are dropping the partner and share its technology and are willing to be open to more out side stuff. They don't want an trade war.

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[hyades1]

Hilarious!

Communist China knows Trump will roll over and turn a blind eye while they steal all the technology they can get their hands on. If Tesla sets up any kind of manufacturing facility over there, it will be so riddled with surveillance equipment and "employees" who check in with the Party before they clock in at work that there won't be any proprietary tech left to steal after the first few months.

Trump won't go up against the Commies. He's a bully, not a warrior.

Re:Trump! Trump!

[JeffAtl]

If Telsa or anyone else is naive enough to go through with this type of deal, what is Trump supposed to do about it?

Trump's plans are (1) to end the asymmetrical trade deals that the last 4 four presidents have given us and (2) push to eliminate the existing tax code provisions that make it more economical to move manufacturing offshore and then import back in to the US. The US is pretty much alone in having such an inverted tax structure.

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[Yvan256]

The US is pretty much alone in having such an inverted tax structure.

Aside from Australia of course, where they do everything in an inverted position.

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[hyades1]

Call me when he actually does any of this. Talk is cheap.

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[Stinky Cheese Man]

Communist China knows Trump will roll over and turn a blind eye while they steal all the technology they can get their hands on.

That is an interesting assertion. I would like to learn more. Could you possibly provide links to supporting evidence? Thanks in advance.

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[hyades1]

We people with three-figure IQ's have this thing called "inductive reasoning". We use it to reach reasonable conclusions based on past performance.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/inductive-reasoning

You're welcome.

Is there anything else I can help you with?

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[Stinky Cheese Man]

So, no supporting evidence. That is what I thought. Thank you for confirming.

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[hyades1]

You're one of those two-figure folks who believe when you throw something up in the air, "supporting evidence" is needed to confirm that it will fall back to Earth.

Thanks for confirming.

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[Stinky Cheese Man]

Anyone who thinks that boasting of his IQ supports his argument is not as smart as he thinks he is.

"Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him."

See also Dunning-Kruger effect [wikipedia.org]: "The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive incapacity, on the part of those with low ability,

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[hyades1]

Commenting about your palpable lack of a three-figure IQ isn't boasting about my IQ. Perhaps you should read up a bit about Dunning-Kruger yourself. Try a place that doesn't use words like "metacognitive", so maybe you'll have a fighting chance of understanding what you're trying to read.

Or perhaps you could just try to improve your reading skills to Grade 5 level. That might work, too. :-)

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[Stinky Cheese Man]

I agree that metacognition can be a challenging concept to grasp. Basically, it describes the awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes, or to put it more simply, "thinking about thinking" or "knowing your mind". For example, one might analyze his own learning processes to determine the study strategies that are most successful for him and then adjust his behavior based on this knowledge. Or one might learn to recognize his own biases and preconceptions and take this into consideration whe

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[hyades1]

I'm happy that you've learned how to cut and paste definitions. This represents a real breakthrough for you! And I'm sure your employer will allow you to package fewer garbage bags and enjoy a little "you time" on the computer. It is, after all, the holiday season.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Re: Trump! Trump!

[WindBourne]

Battery and car manufacturing.

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[WindBourne]

they buy stripped cells from Panasonic. These are then assembled into various levels of packing and have loads of sensors to react to temps, heat, etc.
Obviously with Tesla have the TOP RATED CAR BY OWNERS, means that they are above and beyond other companies. Year after year, they come in tops, even though the early ratings of each model is low. Right now, they have a manufacturing that equals what GM and the rest have, only it is done differently. They are in the process of moving the final assembly line

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[currently_awake]

Republicans NEED a national enemy to motivate their supporters. Trump needs to shut down China to fix the trade balance and "bring jobs back to America". I expect Trump will do everything in his power to pick a fight with China, or do you think he's filling his government with soldiers because "politics"?

I thought protectionism doesn't work

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well, China is using protectionism quite successfully to employ their people and give an advantage to their country. I thought it didn't work! Now they're "relaxing" the law. Of course, there are no specifics, and Chinese laws are notorious for being interpreted on the spot by local officials. Five cities have five different ways of implementing the exact same law.

I guess it's just weird for me, as an American, to see a national government helping its people. Even if it's with a non-working idea like

Re:I thought protectionism doesn't work

[JeffAtl]

Protectionism works just fine - the 90 million chinese workers employed in industry as a testament to that.

Free trade only raises the standard of living of all parties if everyone is playing by the same rules - asymmetrical trade relationships don't work.

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[Cyberax]

China doesn't have that much protectionism in trade. You'll just be hard-pressed to undercut them on price.

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[JeffAtl]

How can you say that? China has implemented tarriffs on US made luxury cars and SUVs and even been ruled against by the WTO.

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[DickBreath]

Protectionism works just fine if you have a large enough domestic market.

Re: I thought protectionism doesn't work

[WindBourne]

If you look carefully, they are targeting only 1 company with this:Tesla.

Cars that spy on you

[davidwr]

How soon before China infects the firmware without Tesla even being aware of it?

Re: Tesla Open Sourced their Patents

[WindBourne]

China has over 20 EV car makers and not a one worth a damn.

Hopefully musk not stupid

[WindBourne]

where ever he builds will be sell out. No sense allowing China to wipe them out.

Well

[buss_error]

Would this be the same intelligence folks that told us during the cold war that the USSR had better and more thermonuclear bombs than the US did?

Re: Well

[WindBourne]

And those Intel ppl were correct.

Still trust CHINA?

[johnsonlam]

I wonder if anyone still trust CHINA. Lots of evidence shows CHINA government have the worse reputation in every category, protectionism is one of the small obstacle ahead, real businessmen will know CHINA government can interpret the law according to their direction, you're loser no matter how strong you're (e.g. Apple, New Balance). Apple losing the court case in China, being accused "copy" a China firm's mobile phone, it's so absurd and really tell you how ridiculous the China law.