Electric buses: can 100% tariff pain kill China’s resolve to dominate global market?
As China’s market matures, exports hold the key to future profitability for Yutong, Foton and peers in rivalry with European electric-bus producers
In the first of a three-part series on electric vehicles (EVs), Eric Ng looks at how China’s dominant position in commercial EVs such as electric buses and coaches hold up amid rising geopolitical tension and trade protectionism.
Kent Chang, CEO of Asia-Pacific at Yutong Bus, China’s and the world’s largest bus and coaches maker, has been busy courting new customers. After a trade show in Chile in August and Australia in September, he is next bound for the Philippines and Thailand.
He is not alone. At the biennial National Coach and Bus show in Brisbane last month, Chinese peers like King Long United Automotive Industry and Foton Motor Group were also in the mix. BYD, the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker, also presented its fleet. Together, their prominence epitomises China’s leadership in the electrification of public transport.
China’s biggest self-driving tech firms pull out of US amid rising geopolitical tensions
Total distance driven by Chinese autonomous cars on public roads in California dropped almost 74 per cent in the 12 months to November 2023
China’s biggest autonomous driving tech companies, including Baidu and Didi Chuxing, have drastically scaled back road tests in the US, and in some cases have ended them altogether, according to industry reports and company sources.
The cutbacks, made over the past few years, preceded the announcement by the US Commerce Department last month that it would ban autonomous driving software from China. That means many of the Chinese players will not be affected as the regulation only applies to new models released starting from 2027.
The total distance driven by Chinese autonomous cars on public roads in California, one of the most self-driving vehicle friendly states in the US, dropped almost 74 per cent to 121,428 miles in the 12 months ending November 2023, compared with a year earlier, according to data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
That goes against the overall trend, in which DMV data shows that total autonomous mileage reached a record 9 million miles in the same period, up nearly 60 per cent year on year.
Chinese companies like Didi saw a drop of 90 per cent in self-driving test mileage in 2023, and Didi is no longer active in the autonomous-vehicle testing programme in California. QCraft, DeepRoute.ai and Inceptio, Chinese start-ups that had test driving records in 2021 and 2022, have also pulled out, DMV said in an emailed response to the Post.
For those still holding test permits, there have been sharp drops in mileage. Test vehicles from AutoX and Pony.ai, both autonomous driving start-ups founded in Silicon Valley with headquarters in China, travelled 84 per cent and 82 per cent less between December 2022 and November 2023, compared with the previous year.
Baidu, whose autonomous driving unit operates under the Apollo brand, saw its mileage decline 34.5 per cent during the period. The company, which is a leading autonomous driving player in China, still has a California permit to test cars both with and without a safety driver. Baidu’s last collision report to the DMV was in October 2023.
None of the companies immediately responded to a request for comment.
Two engineers who worked for Chinese self-driving companies in the US said that they were active in road tests in the country because it established a regulatory framework earlier, and there was a large talent pool available.
However, one said that most of the Chinese companies have cut back on their operations in the US due to growing tensions between Washington and Beijing, and because major Chinese cities have built up their road test environment in recent years.
California started its autonomous-vehicle testing programme in 2014, after 2012 state legislation allowed such operations on the road. Although companies like Baidu and Zhengzhou Yutong Bus were able to conduct one-off road tests in China as early as 2015, it was only on a small scale. Beijing and Shanghai issued their first batch of test permits to self-driving companies in December 2017 and March 2018, respectively. This year, the central Chinese city of Wuhan became the focus of attention after it allowed a fleet of around 500 Baidu robotaxis to operate on some of its busiest roads.
Amid current geopolitical tensions, Chinese autonomous driving companies that conducted research in the US were subject to scrutiny. Last year, some US lawmakers proposed a crackdown on Chinese vehicle start-ups over data privacy issues. In February, the US commerce department announced an investigation into foreign-made hardware and software in connected cars, particularly from China.
Last month, it proposed a new rule that would ban Chinese hardware and software integrated into the vehicle connectivity system, as well as its automated driving system.
Chinese scientists extract lithium from seawater, holding promise for new energy tech
Novel lithium extraction technique harnesses solar energy, offering an efficient alternative amid rising demand for the metal
The surge in production of new energy vehicles and energy storage devices has led to a robust demand for lithium. But for now, lithium is mainly sourced from hard rock ores, such as spodumene, or from natural brines, both of which involve energy-intensive and environmentally costly processes.
A study published on Friday in the peer-reviewed journal Science presents a novel seawater lithium extraction technique using solar energy.
Led by Zhu Jia, of Nanjing University, and Mi Baoxia, from the University of California, Berkeley, the research team proposed a solar transpiration-powered lithium extraction and storage (STLES) device that uses sunlight to extract and store lithium from brine.
The device consists of a solar transpirational evaporator, a lithium storage layer and a nanofiltration membrane. It uses solar energy to generate high capillary pressure within the evaporator, which drives lithium through the membrane and into the storage layer.
Lithium extraction from seawater has been an area of potential but has many challenges. There are around 230 billion tonnes of lithium in the world’s seawater, about 16,000 times the reserves of the metal that can be exploited now.
The presence of abundant magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium and lithium in seawater complicates the separation process.
According to a report last year from the Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper, industry insiders noted that the low concentration of lithium in seawater typically required desalination before extraction, making the overall cost of this method more than 10 times higher than other techniques.
