by Avner Mandelman

The Canadian Zenn car costs too much for the little it does; the Volt is made by the UAW (enough said); and the American Tesla has made big claims but has mostly taken deposits. Yes, you could order a Tesla today; it would cost you $100,000, run smoothly and fast, and could be charged off your home socket. But of the $100,000 price tag, $60,000 covers the battery - which lasts only three to four years, and the company makes fewer than a hundred Teslas a year. So not only is it not cheap, it's also not available.

The Tesla's problems reflect the three common problems of most Western electric cars: the need for a cheap battery that lasts; the need to produce lots of cars; and the need for a big company to back it all up. Let's take these in order.

To make an inexpensive battery ($10,000, say), you need really cheap lithium deposits, billions of dollars for a huge production line of Model T-like proportions, and super know-how. In all these the West is deficient. Yes, lithium is everywhere, but the cheapest deposits are in Australia (small), Chile (okay), and Tibet - best and large, and controlled by China (one reason Tibet will likely never be free). As for billions of dollars needed for a production line, China is among the world leaders in batteries. (BYD is also the world's biggest maker of cellphone batteries.)
 
One day we might see a big production line of lithium batteries close to Tibet, to power all those BYD electric cars. (Incidentally, could electric motor production be why China has been buying copper massively?)

China doesn't have a major stake in traditional car manufacturing, but the Japanese, South Koreans, Americans and Canadians have lots of jobs and pensions (and car dealerships) tied to existing cars, so politically things can't change quickly. (Witness Detroit and Windsor.) In particular, car companies have little interest in pure electrics. This isn't a question of a conspiracy, but of commerce. If they made a really inexpensive electric car, it would drive down the value of all their used (gasoline) cars, and would dissuade buyers of new (gasoline) cars. The Chinese don't mind wrecking the old automotive system - matter of fact, the Chinese government is 100 per cent behind the pure-electric effort. So a $20,000 to $25,000 Chinese pure electric car is likely to be sold here in three to five years, in my opinion.

First off, over time, oil could become somewhat less of a factor in civilian economies. Since there would be alternatives, its competitive price would hinge on marginal cost of production. Oil's marginal production cost is $20 [U.S.] to $25 a barrel on average - half its current price.

Cars could use electricity, so repair and spare parts would be a smaller business (aside from battery handling - lithium can be tricky stuff), so more of the manufacturing base could move offshore. And the car you'd be driving 10 years hence would likely be Chinese, with BYD nearly as big as Toyota.

As BYD's Mr. Wang said: I cannot compete with Toyota in cars whose engines have 1,500 moving parts. But my electric engines have only 45 moving parts. There I can compete.