(The pics: "VW New Beetle" EVs)

As today’s China can tell, EVs are not all high-tech, high-priced products gaining favors from governments everywhere. Pure-electric cars can be cheaper and easier to make, and many Chinese officials, especially those in big cities, just cannot tolerate them–even though the general public often find them useful.

Workshops have been mushrooming around the country churning out low-speed battery cars with unsophisticated technology. In the eastern province of Shandong alone, some estimate that there are over one hundred such small plants, each making a few dozen to a few thousand units a year. Often imitating the look of some popular small gasoline-powered cars like Chery QQ, Chevrolet Spark, Smart Fortwo, and VW New Beetle, they sell for 2 to 5 thousand US dollars each, and can run no faster than 60 km/h or more than 150km on one charge.

"Smart Fortwo" EV

Unlike in some developed countries where low-speed or neighborhood EVs can get special permits for use in limited circumstances, in China they should be unseen on any public road–if the law is followed strictly. They were born illegally, not counted as "motor cars" at all, and are uninsurable. Why so? Why have policy makers so stubbornly refused to legalize low-speed EVs when there is a strong demand for them?

(Spy shots of an underground EV workshop in Shandong)

Besides the issue of protecting intellectual property in auto designing, there seem to be five basic reasons; some of them are ideological biases and others are legitimate concerns–to a point.

(1) Considering themselves social engineers, many Chinese policy makers love making neat distinctions, and low-speed EVs do not fit in their categorization. Just as people are grouped–and treated very differently–as city dwellers versus farmers, officials versus the masses, all vehicles come in two modes: motorized and human or animal powered; public roads are accordingly separated into two parts or kinds. Due to their low speed and special powertrains, neighborhood EVs are not counted as motorized vehicles and not allowed on motor lanes; and yet they are too fast and dangerous on bicycle lanes. On a similar ground, some cities, like Guangzhou and Dongguan, even banned electric bikes/scooters and gasoline-powered motorcycles from city traffic.

Chevy Spark (right upper) and Copycat Chevy Spark EV (left lower)

(2) Their love for uniformity and nation-wide standardization makes them averse to the idea of allowing those battery cars in selected areas and under specific conditions.

(3) They tend to look down on neighborhood EVs as low-tech products, which mostly use lead-acid batteries invented a century and a half ago and stand for no technological innovation or progress. Those cars are simply not the real thing–although there is no evidence that they are less green than high-speed EVs.

(4) As ardent believers in progress and modernity on a superficial level, most of these officials are enthusiastic about building glittering new cities served by fast cars and high-speed trains. Low-speed EVs, often looking cheap and flimsy, are out of place in their new cities.

(5) They are the regulatory authority that decides who can make cars in China, and benefit enormously from being so. Treating low-speed EVs as cars could undermine their power, since it would amount to letting the market determine car-making qualifications, and could open the door for hundreds of underground motor vehicle producers. The existing, above-ground automakers, already numbered over one hundred, have been lobbying hard against letting in any new players.

Yet, as more less well-off Chinese embrace low-speed EVs, even the mainstream companies are eager to profit from it. Chery has already started marketing QQ3EV, which has a top speed of 60 km/h and range of 100 km. Several now work with government agencies on formulating new industry standards and regulations, which, they hope, would get some low-speed EVs out of the gray zone and at the same time keep those guerrilla carmakers out of the market.

The only hope of those guerilla carmakers is to gain the support of regional governments, which sometimes refuse to follow the central government’s policies for local economic interests. One company that has successfully enlisted local help and grown big is Shifeng Group from Shandong. Having no official permission to build passenger cars, it has somehow managed to make and market low-speed EVs besides agricultural machineries for years.

Policy makers may continue to frown upon those cars, but they should know that no one can, or want to, move against the market for long.

Below: Chery QQ3EV