China Sales Double US Car Sales Therefore Million Model 3s Per Year Eventually in China

China car sales for BMW and Mercedes are double their US Car sales. This would mean Tesla has room to expand China production up to 700,000 to 1 million model 3s each year and maybe 2 million model Ys.

China will have about 25.5 million car sales in 2019.

China’s electric vehicles sales are 934K from Jan-October, 2019. This is 25% more than Jan-Oct 2018. October 2019 was down 46% from October 2018 because of a drop in subsidies.

Tesla is able to sell electric cars in the USA with only $1850 per car in subsidies.

China wants to reach 7 million electric cars per year by 2025.

Nextbigfuture predicts that Tesla will complete an additional production line in the China factory before September 2019.

23 thoughts on “China Sales Double US Car Sales Therefore Million Model 3s Per Year Eventually in China”

  1. But people didn’t mothball incandescent bulbs. The bulbs only last a couple of years and so they died.
    We didn’t change over to 95% land line phones in 10 years, It’s been about 30 years since mobile phones were a viable alternative and there are still huge land line phone networks in daily use, especially in business.
    And the average vehicle on the road today is about a decade old. That’s average, so about half are older than that. To change to 95% in 10 years we would have to start buying mostly EVs starting in 2020.

  2. Yah, but the graph shows that all car sales are tanking in China, so it seems more indicative of a diving economy — though I don’t doubt the trade war greased the skids. If the US keeps its current path of bringing manufaturing back home, It stands to see 20 yrs of growth just as China did since WJC facilitated sending all our industry over there in 95′.

  3. If consumers quickly vote with their dollar to mothball the Internal Combustion (ICE) fleets as they have already done in the last decade to the incandescent bulb and the land line telephones, then Petrol may be doomed to be the whale oil of the future.

    The electrification of the international light fleets is coming and EVs are already affordably and increasingly in wide use all throughout Asia.

    And now with China manufacturing cars to Western standards, and their economy rapidly tanking, it stands to reason that a glut of vehicles completely manufactured and assembled in China will begin to flood the US and Western markets over the next decade just as Japanese cars competitively displaced US models in the 1980s.

    Factor into this that EVs require hundreds of less parts than their ICE counterparts and that electric vehicle carriages, motors and drive-trains are being produced with increasing levels of automation; therefore, EVs could be sold at a retail price that is proportionally less than petroburners.

    Further benefits of EVs is their ability to: self pilot, platoon in caravans, climb grades at higher speeds (due to higher torque of E-motors), have zero emissions when charged from abundant renewable energy sources, etc. All this will all provide for more efficient use of existing infrastructure (thus reducing cost and the need for more capacity on roadways.

    It’s disrupting and you can fight it, but it is coming.

  4. Petroleum based motor vehicle fuels are pretty darn inexpensive, given how much value they add to modern civilization. My “fairly new” small SUV UTE regularly delivers 35 MPG (14.9 km/L). Not bad! And the remarkable thing is, that tho’ crude oil is selling for what, $45 to $55 a barrel (42 gallon or 159ℓ barrel, at that), and here in Texas, we buy gallons (liters) for around $2.10 (55¢) ea. Magic.  

    From a cost-per-distance perspective, 55¢/15 km = 3.7¢/km. Or if you prefer imperial, 5.9¢/mile.  

    Again, “in Texas”, electricity runs about 12¢/kWh.  And electric cars deliver around 3.5 miles per kWh, so, 12¢/3.5 = 3.4¢/mile. 2.1¢/km.  

    While that is DEFINITELY cheaper, there is no roadway-use tax imposed on electricity, which is also DEFINITELY coming. The road maintenance is a must-have. I’d expect that the price of either will auto-magically coalesce on exactly the same price per km/mile. In the near future. 

    Just Saying,
    -= GoatGuy ✓ =-

  5. Petro-clout has unfettered access to shape both industrial and government decisions in venal democratic societies. With so many automakers in the Western world having floundering in the last decade or so, it would make sense that the cash rich Gulf States worked through hedge funds to buy up the Western auto-industries in order to keep their food supply alive for the next century. And since China’s political system, and subsequent social consumer policies, are not readily accessible to foreign lobbies; therefore China can (and has) determined their energy future, opting to partner with industries that reduce foreign energy dependence, instead of being subservient to interests of foreign energy brokers.

  6. Hilarious, that’s right in there with all the great minds who can quickly recollect past events… and then there’s the even greater minds that can recall events that never happened.

  7. We could speculate about a tech breakthrough leading to a collapse in battery prices, maybe another middle east war sending the oil price up again, possibly a widespread CO2 tax that would drive us to 95% of light vehicle SALES being electric by 2030.

    I don’t think so, but it’s not ridiculous.

    95% of light vehicle MILES assumes a changeover many times more complete than that.

  8. Nextbigfuture predicts that Tesla will complete an additional production line in the China factory before September 2019.

    Predictions are difficult, especially about the past.

  9. LOL. Funny article. Because “BMW & Mercs are double sales in China v US, Tesla 3 will be double”. All I will say is LOL

  10. Keep dreaming your masters dreams. Tesla EV sales in the US and Europe have plateaued. Gone is the novelty effect and the market is not ready yet to fully embrace the electric car. China has cut its subsidies for Electric Vehicles and sales are falling, let’s see first where that market will stabilize. The Chinese people do not have too much sentiment personally for investing in Green Energy.

  11. Yes, because many of the mind-numbingly-stupid comment-censoring ‘bots are known to react negatively (and quietly delete comments) that violate their masters’ banal sensibilities for pölïtically correct content. 

    Hence, why I have kept my “comment preprocessor” up to date with several hundred words that cause The Bots to get all up-tight. Pölïtical is one of those words. As are many that you’d likely expect, and with much surprising research, hundreds you would NOT expect!  

    By nature I’m a goat. 

    Goats (presently owning 6, but as many as 13 of them), have a hard-programmed desire to break out of all fences and enclosures. Preprocessing comments allows “many of the gates” to be surreptitiously undermined. Smart goats ALWAYS get out.  

    -= GoatGuy ✓ =-

  12. How much time are you thinking?
    Increased consumption from newly developing countries and increased plastics consumption alone carries it forward in a roughly flat (undulating plateau) line.
    Light vehicle miles can be 100% electric with no long term reduction in oil demand.

  13. Your comment raises many questions, the most pressing one being: why the funny letters in the word “Political”..? Two dots over the “o”, two dots over the “i”.. Is there a significance?

  14. The “moral of the story” isn’t really to “ping on France”, but rather to use the story to illustrate WHY China is going gung-ho on e-cars.  

    Because China DOES have a trio of ‘natural resources’ that allows her to make as much electricity as she wants, by way of immense hydroelectric potential, enormous soft coal deposits (amongst the largest on the planet), and of course a huge investment, ongoing, in rolloing out 1 to 8 gigawatt-per-facility nuclear power plants.  

    So, China, not a nation filled with idiots by any measure!, has bright people looking at the world-politic, and she has realized that any dependency on importing oil from The Sand People is destined to immerse her in compromises, plenty. That, and having HUGE plans for more electric power generation, it becomes “obvious man” simple to pump the e-vehicle angle.  

    Especially since China herself has practially cornered the market on the “other critically important” raw materials of e-vehicle manufacture. 

    № 1 — Lithium — for batteries.
    № 2 — Rare earths — for immensely powerful compact motor magnets. 
    № 3 — Plastics forming — for … etc.
    № 4 — Aluminum — for lightening frames, reducing battery requirements.
    № 5 — Heavy industry — to produce the gazillion-odd parts for e-vehicles
    № 6 — Pölïtical Self-determinism — to MANDATE what other countries cannot.
    № 7 — Engineering know-how — obviously.

    Just Saying,
    -= GoatGuy ✓ =-

  15. Know what’s kind of ironic to me? That FRANCE hasn’t hugely embraced the e-car idea.  

    HISTORY lesson… Way back in the 1950s, France saw that the rising industrial pressure of a fast-expanding post-WW2 economy was going to require her to make a LOT of power. However, France for all her beauty and lush agricultural providence, is really quite short on ‘indigenous’ energy sources. She has some hydro, and she has a bit of coal.  

    At that time, it was envisioned that nuclear energy would rapidly scale up to gigawatt-per-reactor levels; the supply of fissile uranium looked (and remains!) bright … with the stuff secreted in ore-veins, all over the world. France made the pölïtical decision to “go deep in nuclear roll-out”, in the 1960s. And so she did.  

    At one point (and it may still be the case), France was generating over 90% of her kilowatt-hours from nuclear power. Amazing! Outstanding! And, because it hadn’t gotten regulated to oblivion, it was CHEAP power, too. 1¢/kWh or less!!!
    ________________________________________

    What France couldn’t do was electrify her fleet of cars, trucks, busses and utility vehicles (“UTs”). She had to depend on the Mideast for crude, to make petrol (and a host of petroleum-derived chemicals, plastics, fertilizers …).

    But times are a-changing!  
    Why not now, France hugely embracing e-vehicles?
    That’s what I find ironic and mysterious.

    Just Saying,
    -= GoatGuy ✓ =-

  16. Owning a few Tesla shares, I sure hope that this is a correct prediction. Contrary to Europe and the USA, Teslas job is not to appeal to young people of even environmentally conscious buyers, but rather to parents in law.

    Luxury cars like BMW and Audi – and thats where Tesla has to compete – are bought because a young man shows a prospective parents in law that he is a good future provider. We can argue about if this is sane or not, but it is apparently the reality. So Tesla can only compete on the luxury market in China if they manage to appeal to parents in law. The taste of the younger audience is of lesser importance.

    I am not 100% sure that 50+ chinese are so impressed by Teslas minimalist style of interiors, but we will find out in the near future…. I hope my (small) doubts are unfounded.

    Second, if China is dead serious about their stated electric vehicle quotas of the year 2025 [1], then Tesla has a great opportunity. If the chinese government backs off from the radical quotas then Tesla might not be in such a great position…

    (1)
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-electric/china-wants-new-energy-vehicle-sales-in-2025-to-be-25-of-all-car-sales-idUSKBN1Y70BN

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