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Elon Musk Has Surprise Meeting With China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang

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ShadowSwordmaster

Banned
China Xinhua News tweeted a photo of Elon Musk meeting privately with China’s powerful Vice Premier Wang Yang on Tuesday. The meeting took place without any prior announcement. Optics are exceedingly important in Chinese life. The fact that Wang met privately with Musk was deemed to have great significance by Li Anding, Xinhua’s former automotive reporter and currently a China industry analyst.
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Li told Forbes that Wang has never met alone with any other automotive chief executive and generally prefers the dynamics of group meetings. The meeting suggests that Tesla enjoys a position of special trust and confidence within the Chinese government. China is the largest market for new cars in the world, but Tesla currently is disadvantaged by not having a factory in the country.
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That means buyers of its cars must pay a 25% import tax, making it hard to to compete with locally produced products. Most of the world’s largest car companies, including premium car manufacturers like Mercedes Benz, have joint ventures with Chinese companies that allow their products to avoid the import tax.
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Tesla says its 2016 China sales tripled to more than $1 billion in 2016. By comparison, its US sales were around $4,2 billion. Tesla has shown a strong willingness to work with the Chinese government to meet its “new energy vehicle” policies designed to reduce the amount of air pollution that afflicts its major cities, especially Beijing. The US has 10 cities with more than one million inhabitants. China has 106. Li says many of that country’s new electric car companies are experiencing problems, including long charging times and a poor ownership experience overall. Tesla has proven it has the answer to both of those concerns.

There is one other factor to consider. Vice Premier Wang is a former leader of Guangdong province, one of China’s major industrial areas. Tesla has been working hard to find a Chinese partner for the past two years. The meeting with Wang could be a sign that it will select a joint venture partner that has established links to the Guangdong region.
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https://cleantechnica.com/2017/04/27/elon-musk-surprise-meeting-chinas-vice-premier-wang-yang/
 
D

darscot

Member
I'm not surprised, China is not messing around when it comes to the environment huge market and huge demand. This will be good for everyone.
 
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subrock

Member
Getting a Chinese resources-in-cars-out Gigafactory going in China would be a really good idea. Gigafactories are a serious chunk of business that Musk is shopping around and countries are tripping over themselves to get that economic activity. China would be able to move heaven and earth to build one of those quickly.
 
Jezbollah

Jezbollah

Member
If Musk can get a Gigawatt factory into China it would be huge. Get an internal supply of Teslas, and also open the country to Solar City/Powerwall based infrastructure. That would be amazing.
 
P

PdotMichael

Banned
China is the largest market for ecars. Getting into that market is crucial for Tesla.

Though the question would be what can get China out of the deal, they are pretty much miles ahead in everything Musk does from ecars to solar energy. Catl is also on the way of becoming the largest battery factory in the world.
 
M

Madness

Member
Dan27 said:
If Musk can get a Gigawatt factory into China it would be huge. Get an internal supply of Teslas, and also open the country to Solar City/Powerwall based infrastructure. That would be amazing.
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He would need to tread carefully. Baidu is aiming to be the biggest player in autonomous vehicles and they are also heavily investing i electric vehicle tech. China has always been smart in that by allowing access to their market, conpanies like GM and GE and many other corporations have had to share or license their technology. Obviously clean energy and solar is great for China, but Tesla could be undercut by many companies. China is going to be the global leader in clean energy soon. It could've been the US but they're focused on clean 'coal'.

Can you imagine a China in 2050 where autonomous and fully electric vehicles dominate coupled with their hundreds of miles of bullet trains. Would do so much to reduce smog and pollution.
 
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Bubba_Sparks

Member
The stat about China having 106 cities with over 1 million inhabitants is mindboggling.

Trojita said:
How long until we see Tesla's designs in some of their domestic vehicles?
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This doesn't surprise me at all. Are there any reputable Chinese car brands? They still haven't managed to cross over to the west.
 
Trojita

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
Li says many of that country’s new electric car companies are experiencing problems, including long charging times and a poor ownership experience overall. Tesla has proven it has the answer to both of those concerns.
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How long until we see Tesla's designs in some of their domestic vehicles?
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
The US has 10 cities with more than one million inhabitants. China has 106.
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Holy shit. I'm not Musk and I'm already seeing dollar signs everywhere. Big opportunity to curb emissions! Best of luck to Tesla.
 
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m_shortpants

Member
I know this is probably more to do with Tesla, but I wonder what the policy will be on SpaceX taking up foreign payloads into space, like targeting satellites for missiles or other foreign defense items.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
m_shortpants said:
I know this is probably more to do with Tesla, but I wonder what the policy will be on SpaceX taking up foreign payloads into space, like targeting satellites for missiles or other foreign defense items.
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That would make it even harder for them to get DoD contracts, which they have fought with their nails to get.
 
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ZeezbruhTV

Member
m_shortpants said:
I know this is probably more to do with Tesla, but I wonder what the policy will be on SpaceX taking up foreign payloads into space, like targeting satellites for missiles or other foreign defense items.
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Will be illegal forever, ITAR I believe.

Soo....Gigafactory #3 in Europe, #4 in China (first non-JV requirement of a US company ever?) #5 in India maybe? I can't imagine how big these will be. Tesla already has the biggest (by footprint, when complete) building and the Fremont factory is also fucking massive...imagine combining them into one. Just lol.
 
S

ShadowSwordmaster

Banned
TwitchZeezbruh said:
Will be illegal forever, ITAR I believe.

Soo....Gigafactory #3 in Europe, #4 in China (first non-JV requirement of a US company ever?) #5 in India maybe? I can't imagine how big these will be. Tesla already has the biggest (by sq. foot) building and the Fremont factory is also fucking massive...imagine combining them into one. Just lol.
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I could see them going to India before Europe.
 
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4Tran

Member
Bubba_Sparks said:
This doesn't surprise me at all. Are there any reputable Chinese car brands? They still haven't managed to cross over to the west.
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Lots. All of the major car manufacturers in the world operate with a local company as a joint venture. Beijing Automotive, Chery, and Guangzhou Automotive are some of the bigger names. You've probably never heard of them because everything they make is meant for the local market. When you're already catering to the largest market in the world, there's less pressing need for a global presence.

I'd expect that these companies would start looking at global markets sometime in the next decade but that hasn't happened in other industries like software so who know when that might start happening.
 
T

turmoil

Banned
Is Tesla/Panasonic battery tech better than their competitors' or are they just cheaper because of the economy of scale of the gigafactory + supplying Tesla itself?
 
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subrock

Member
turmoil said:
Is Tesla/Panasonic battery tech better than their competitors' or are they just cheaper because of the economy of scale of the gigafactory + supplying Tesla itself?
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The chemistry and form factor is proprietary, and Tesla is pumping a huge amount of R&D dollars into improving the characteristics required for stationary storage and electric cars. Presumably Tesla could have partnered with LG to achieve the same goals, but Panasonic was the pony they picked. Panasonic also has the added benefit of being a solar cell producer which helps Tesla in its solar efforts too.
 
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Piggus

Member
Not surprising... When I went to Hong Kong last year, I saw far more Teslas than I've seen in LA or San Francisco.
 
Darkangel

Darkangel

Member
4Tran said:
Lots. All of the major car manufacturers in the world operate with a local company as a joint venture. Beijing Automotive, Chery, and Guangzhou Automotive are some of the bigger names. You've probably never heard of them because everything they make is meant for the local market. When you're already catering to the largest market in the world, there's less pressing need for a global presence.

I'd expect that these companies would start looking at global markets sometime in the next decade but that hasn't happened in other industries like software so who know when that might start happening.
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My understanding was that they couldn't be sold overseas due to blatant patent/copyright infringements.
 
K

kyser73

Member
Timbuktu said:
Tesla's are everywhere in HK. A bit strange in that they are mostly charged at shopping malls.
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Not really. Malls are about the easiest place to drop charging points into - they already have the power infrastructure in place, and it's a lot easier to install points in a car park than on streets.
 
4

4Tran

Member
Darkangel said:
My understanding was that they couldn't be sold overseas due to blatant patent/copyright infringements.
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Nah, it's a combination of Chinese cars not being competitive elsewhere, the amount of regulations that have to observed, and the extra work involved in terms of market research and what not that make it not really worth the while. It's the same reason why most Chinese companies don't try that hard to reach a global market.
 
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hamauzu kaito

Member
After reading a recent article about China's move to monopolize area of the world for natural resources. This makes me feel that the Chinese are ahead of us on the issue of sustainability and resource management. They may seem worse at it right now (partly due to their responsibility to 1.2 billion people) but I think they are going to quickly surpass all other countries.
 
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