China’s Electric Cars Hit Some Potholes

That’s a good point.

I’ve seen at least two car fires where the person was able to pull over to the side of the road, get out of the vehicle... and then watch it burn while they waited for the fire department.

I also one time had a minor fire in Jeep of mine due to a mouse nest.

Describes arguments around range in one deployment. A long way from every non-Chinese transit agency that has purchased BYD's electric buses has either cancelled or downsized their order.

Not so obvious... Best not to hastily generalise based on a single picture from a single article, then.

What? They've sold thousands of cars thus far. http://carsalesbase.com/china-car-sales-data/nio/

A friend works for NIO. They're well past "slick websites showcasing vaporware".

do you know Tesla's timeline for Model S/X/3 from announcement to production?

Confirm Australia is becoming SUV-dominant.

Too many Australians will laugh smugly at the America portrayed by Family Guy because they never look in the mirror.

Disclaimer: I have a seven-seater. I hate it, but I'm not the one that drives the kids and their friends around with startling regularity so I don't get a say, and only reap the rewards of its presence despite talking it down.

Would happily re-draw from the mortgage for a BEV to replace it once they're actually available in Oz at remotely practical prices.

I've lived in the US and understand the long driving distances makes it hard. That being said weather is a non issue, I bicycle everywhere all year around no matter the weather (live in Denmark). As long as the trips are below 10 km at least.

Not catching on fire? Leave that for the 2nd iteration!

By western standards they do. They probably still do it a lot less often than the Chinese EVs but it's not like the average Chinese buyer is rich enough to care about an edge case like that.

> Teslas don’t spontaneously burst into flames as often as cheap Chinese EVs.

It is either my calculator is bad or yours.

23 / 300000 = ~0.00001

40 / more than 1000000 = 0.000004

I'm guessing they meant "an order of magnitude higher".

A suitable interpretation would be to say that "exponentially more" means a bigger number in the floating point/scientific notation exponent, so that it's a synonym of "order of magnitude."

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/exponent... exponential definition: 1. An exponential rate of increase becomes quicker and quicker as the thing that increases becomes larger:

So, ya. Tesla's product line is exponentially more expensive. Graph them together according to range/size etc, and you will see the exponential rise in the delta between the prices, the line representing chinese product line will diverge from that of the tesla product line exponentially.

It's a rhetorical device like using "literal" even when something is meant in figurative terms. Specifically, it's hyperbole or exaggeration.

It's one of the strengths of human language that we can infer meaning from context -- from connotation -- rather than purely relying on denotative meaning. By exaggerating factual reality of our statements, we imply the strength of our belief or emphasize the degree of the description we're making.

Further, it's important to recognize that jargon does not supercede the vernacular meaning of a word. Just because you know what "exponential" is and how it differs from, say, "geometric" when referring to mathematics, this doesn't mean that the vernacular meanings of these words don't apply any longer. No, it doesn't matter that mathematics is the origin of the terms. There are still valid, accepted, vernacular meanings. Understanding jargon means you need to understand the context that the speaker is using to determine what meaning they're using. Here, since "exponential" in the mathematic sense is clearly nonsense, you should conclude that that meaning is not the intended literal meaning.

Human communication is about conveying the overall meaning in spite of the meaning of individual words. Language is imprecise because thoughts, opinions, and arguments are more complex and nuanced than the individual words we're forced to express them in can ever be. After all, think of diversity of the range of devices that can accurately be described as a "computer". Or how many different types of objects you could describe as a "cup" or a "table". These are common nouns for real, physical objects, and their meaning is fuzzy enough to cover dissimilar objects made of dissimilar materials that serve dissimilar purposes. And yet if I say to you "I put the cup on the table" you have sufficient information to know what has happened even though you and I have never met in person, we've never shared a conversation, and you've never seen my cup or my table (and, indeed, the cup and table you're imagining in your head almost certainly look nothing like my actual cup and table).

So, yeah, that isn't what "exponential" means, but that sentence is not meaningless because of it.

But when I say "supralinear" people call me a weenie

Are we talking about EVs or cars? An EV is anything that moves. A car is something that abides are the normal safety standards that a company like tesla must follow (airbags, crumple zones, ABS, firewalls etc). Lots of the stuff in china that looks like a "car" really isn't, just as how an SUV or pickup isn't a car.

In most countries, anything on three wheels isn't ever a car. They are basically classed as motorcycles and so don't have to abide any car-related safety rules. But they are still EVs.

The BYD EVs used normally as taxis are basically Hyundai Genesis bodies with an electric drive train. I’ve never seen an SUV EV in China but I left in late 2016. In richer Beijing, many private EVs (not taxis or didi rentals) were Tesla Model S’s.