Comment by felipe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by felipe | Hacker News Reader

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> "The Chinese have a hundred million people on electric bikes," says Jamerson. "That means a hundred million potential customers" for electric cars.

That's the kind of absurd and ill-informed thinking that brought GM to bankruptcy (and yes, this guy is a former GM employee). I moved to China a month ago, and I was astonished to see the number of e-bikes here. There are a lot of cars too, but they are clearly not practical. While US is designed for cars (highways, suburbia life, big stores with parking, etc...) in China owning a car seems extremely inconvenient: No places to park, horrendous traffic jams, stress, narrow streets, not even mentioning the cost of the car itself and maintenance.

In the city I live (Shenyang) a bus ride is 1 yuan (US$0.14). A taxi ride is between 8 to 20 yuan (US$3). Plenty of streets have bike lanes and every store has free bike / e-bike parking. The ROI in owning a car must be ridiculous, and it is very inconvenient.

To believe that every e-bike owner one day will be a electric car owner is totally naive IMO.

I live in Beijing. You would have to pay me to own a car here. The traffic absolutely terrifies me.

I'm aso pretty certain renting (i.e. using a taxi here all the time) is cheaper than owning in this case. And who doesn't like being chauffered around?

All that said, I don't think people buy cars here so much for convenience as for status.

Actually me and my wife worked it out for suburban Canada for one person. It turned out its significantly cheaper monthly to use taxi's for all work travel than owning even a cheap vehicle (not including tax, fuel, maintenance etc, we did solely the 0% finance price for the duration of the warrenty). Assuming the number of trips double after work, I think it just broke the 0% finance price for monthly travel, again not including anything at all.

However, bus prices are at least 1/3 as that for a taxi; her work is approximately $10 a trip, bus is $2.75 per trip. It works out to $20 a day for taxi ($25 on a bad day), $5.50 a day for bus.

I'd say almost everywhere, people buy cars for status and not convenience. I'd say it's a different matter when rural, but in the city it's certainly a status symbol. I frequently see people driving a $50,000 SUV on their own, yet I've been quoted $75 a day for a 7 seat SUV, which is pricey monthly, but dirt cheap in the long run if your vehicle is regularly a 1 person car.

I've been living in Beijing for the last two months and the situation is basically identical here except that taxis are more expensive and there's a well-developed subway.

The real trick though is that most people just have normal bikes. The people I see most on e-bikes either work as delivery people (McDonald's is notorious for this: they wear a red uniform and zoom around on major streets) or seem to have to carry some weight for other purposes.

"The real trick though is that most people just have normal bikes."

And as long as you're not traveling too far, it's a good source of exercise.

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