Tag: Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

How China Is Profiting From Trade With Russia

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On China’s snowy border with Russia, a dealership that sells trucks has seen its sales double in the past year thanks to Russian customers. China’s exports to its neighbor are so strong that Chinese construction workers built warehouses and 20-story office towers at the border this summer. The border town Heihe is a microcosm of China’s ever closer economic relationship with Russia. China is profiting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has led Russia to switch from the West to China for purchases of everything from cars to computer chips.…

Why Volkswagen Is Hiring 3,000 Engineers in China

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A bright orange robot, 10 feet tall, looms over Volkswagen’s new electric car assembly line in central China. It was imported from Germany. The factory’s other 1,074 robots were made in Shanghai. Volkswagen used to import shock absorbers from Central Europe for cars it makes at Chinese factories. Now it buys them from a company in China for 40 percent less. After relying for decades on engineers in Germany to design cars for the Chinese market, Volkswagen has begun hiring for a team of nearly 3,000 Chinese engineers, which will…

Tiny Electric Vehicles Pack a Bigger Climate Punch Than Cars

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In Darbhanga, a new acid-battery rickshaw, like the one Mr. Rai drives, sells for around 175,000 rupees, or $2,100. That’s half the price of a new rickshaw powered by natural gas. Charging the battery costs 20 rupees (25 cents), one-fourth of the price of filling a gas tank. The rebates seem to be working. Reliance Industries, India’s biggest company, is converting its three-wheeled cargo vehicles from gas to electric. Food delivery services are going electric as quickly as possible. Chetan Maini, whose company Sun Mobility builds charging infrastructure, said business…

China’s Electric Car Factories Are Facing a Worker Shortage

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Xing Wei graduated from a vocational high school in northeastern China in 2003 and went to work as an electrician in an auto parts factory in the country’s south. The only set of wheels he could afford was a black, three-speed bicycle. He earned $1,150 a year and shared a sweltering dormitory room with three other workers. “There was air-conditioning, but because we had to pay the electricity ourselves, we basically didn’t turn it on,” Mr. Xing said. Two decades later, Mr. Xing, 42, makes close to $60,000 a year.…

U.S. Limits China’s Ability to Benefit From Electric Vehicle Subsidies

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The Biden administration proposed new rules on Friday aimed at shifting more production of electric vehicle batteries and the materials that power them to the United States, in an attempt to build up a strategic industry now dominated by China. The rules are meant to limit the role that firms in China can play in supplying materials for electric vehicles that qualify for federal tax credits. They will also discourage companies that seek federal funding to build battery factories in the United States from sourcing materials from China or Russia.…

U.S. Debates How Much to Sever Electric Car Industry’s Ties to China

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The Biden administration has been trying to jump-start the domestic supply chain for electric vehicles so cleaner cars can be made in the United States. But the experience of one Texas company, whose plans to help make an all-American electric vehicle were upended by China, highlights the stakes involved as the administration finalizes rules governing the industry. Huntsman Corporation started construction two years ago on a $50 million plant in Texas to make ethylene carbonate, a chemical that is used in electric vehicle batteries. It would have been the only…

The Rise and Fall of the U.S.-China Economic Partnership

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For more than a quarter century, the fortunes of the United States and China were fused in a uniquely monumental joint venture. Americans treated China like the mother of all outlet stores, purchasing staggering quantities of low-priced factory goods. Major brands exploited China as the ultimate means of cutting costs, manufacturing their products in a land where wages are low and unions are banned. As Chinese industry filled American homes with electronics and furniture, factory jobs lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese from poverty. China’s leaders used the proceeds of…

A New Law Supercharged Electric Car Manufacturing, but Not Sales

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President Biden’s signature climate law has stimulated a surge of investment in electric vehicle production across the country, including tens of billions of dollars on battery plants across the South and new assembly lines near the Great Lakes. Based on early evidence, it is succeeding at a goal that economists have long considered difficult and costly: using the power of government to rapidly grow a new industry. That growth could prove crucial for the other side of the electric vehicle equation: enticing more consumers to buy them. That’s because Mr.…

Tesla’s Price Cuts Lowered Its Profit

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Tesla’s profit slumped in the third quarter after the carmaker cut prices to maintain its dominance of the market for electric vehicles. The company reported a net profit of $1.9 billion from July through September. That compared with $2.7 billion in the second quarter and $3.3 billion a year earlier. The company has slashed prices by around 25 percent in the United States during the last year, putting the priority on sales rather than profit. The least expensive version of Tesla’s best selling car, the Model Y sport utility vehicle,…

Why Trump and the Rest of the G.O.P. Won’t Stop Bashing Electric Vehicles

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Fresh off a walking tour of blighted Flint, Mich., on Wednesday, Vivek Ramaswamy spoke excitedly about a comeback for the “forgotten America” that he has made a part of his long-shot bid for the presidency. He wasn’t promising that the automakers that had largely abandoned Flint would return. “We have opportunities, though, to look to the future of a lot that we need to bring to this country,” Mr. Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, said, ticking through the industries that he’d like to see help drive a revival: semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, defense…