Been on the “road “ these past three weeks spending a week each in Singapore Hong Kong and shanghai. Given I have been a Tesla owner and shareholder in the UK for the past 7 years I am always interested in observing what is going on elsewhere in respect to EV s and the wider sustainability developments.
It’s been quite eye opening.
Singapore very much gets the dunces hat. In one week I only saw 1 Tesla and 1 BYD. The entire city state is an energy hog with no obvious serious attempts at sustainable development and building energy conservation. Even worse there is greenwash everywhere claiming environmental progress which is not evident at all, at least to a visitor. The place really does score 0/10 for any kind of serious sustainability progress. Clearly owned and dominated by big oil.
Hong Kong ( where I used to live) surprisingly is doing much better and that was a big surprise. Lots of ev. Dominated by Tesla and BYD. Electric taxis. But no real progress on bus and trucks. Some clear and obvious efforts on energy conservation projects Overall not great but probably a 4/10 and making some genuine effort. Keep going !
The star of the show however was Shanghai. Since I last visited 5 years ago the change is dramatic. 70-80% of cars on the road are electric. All the buses are electric. Many smaller trucks and pretty much all the motor bikes. The upshot is the streets are very quiet compared with before …and the air is clear ! Wow. Well done China. This is how it should be. Huge efforts to green the grid with solar wind hydro and nuclear. Much still to do to eliminate hydro carbon generation but seems like great progress. 8/10 for sure. If only the other major cities in the world got this serious (Singapore ???).
There is an interesting thread here. China is an importer of oil. Hence big incentive to go electric. The big hang outs around the world tend to be the big oil producers. Yes you know who they are …. and that is where the ridiculous fud we see all the time seems come from.
In terms of cars there so many brands in evidence on the road in Shanghai many of which I have no idea what make they are. Most of the taxis are ev. Gone are those old bone shaker vw Passat they used to drive. Now they are Roewe. Probably wouldn’t win any EV prizes but they clearly fulfill a purpose Plenty of Tesla which given all the competition seem to have done an incredible job to protect their market share. But be careful not to diss all the Chinese EV. My friend had a NIO ES8 ( I think that was the model). Model x class suv. Was a lovely car. Quality was as good ( and probably better) than my 2017 s90d. I particularly liked the head up display and noticed things like blind spot warnings on the mirrors. All those little things that Tesla consciously chooses to ignore. There are plenty of punters out there who go for that stuff.
While many places dither and trying to push back against ev s china just continues to invest and improve its product. The US which has the only global leading EV company outside China continues to bash its own child ( makes no sense to me other than big oil being threatened) while Europe just moans that they need to protect their old tired auto brands from “cheap “ imports rather than getting on with making it happen.
Really has been an eye opener. Meanwhile back in the uk given I am denied a RHD replacement for my S, I am awaiting the performance version of the new model 3. Having checked out the long range version this will be a good replacement for my S. much as I will miss it.
Hope these observations have some value for the forum.
