China is a world leader in making electric cars...
...and then leaving them to rot.
All over the place.
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
You know all that stuff about how China is leading the world in electric vehicle sales?
It’s a lie.
Well, actually, it’s technically true.
Which, as you’re about to see, is even worse than a lie.
Because while a ton of electric vehicles—or EVs—are being made in China, a lot of them
are ending up like this.
And the problem...
Is...
Huge.
There are so many abandoned cars that Chinese netizens call them "zombie cars".
There are so many zombie cars that even Optimus Prime would have trouble fighting them off.
This isn’t photoshopped.
Someone really did wear a Transformers costume in a Chinese car recycling plant.
Either that or Optimus Prime was imprisoned there for speaking out against the CCP.
“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings?”
Yeah, they’re not cool with that.
So why are there so many zombie cars in China?
Well, two main reasons: stupid government subsidies, and failed car-sharing programs.
Here’s how the subsidies work.
Or, I should say, don’t work.
The Chinese government has poured over $29 billion dollars into electric vehicle subsidies
and tax breaks over the years.
So a bunch of Chinese companies jumped on the bandwagon to get some of that sweet, sweet
government money.
The EV manufacturing industry has grown rapidly.
Especially since they can get government permission to build brand new factories,
and power them with cheap energy like coal!
Yay for saving the planet!
China’s green technology drive?
Definitely not a lie.
Last year, China claims to have sold 6.8 million electric vehicles.
Compare that to just 800,000 sold in the US.
But here’s the problem.
Even if those numbers are true, they’re misleading.
The subsidies were given out just for making cars.
Not for making *good* cars.
So a lot of these Chinese EVs are absolute crap.
“On Zhihu, China’s Q&A platform, users have complained about the poor experiences
of shared electric cars, with many users saying that they couldn’t start their car again
after stopping it on the road.”
And that brings us to the other reason that there are so many zombie cars in China: Failed
car-sharing programs.
A few years ago, I did an episode on China’s bike-sharing programs,
which led to this...
Well, the government eventually stepped in and cleaned some of that up...
only to make way for the car-sharing programs!
Which have led to this:
the thousands and thousands of zombie cars found in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province.
These belonged to Microcity , which described itself as a leader in car-sharing.
Although it’s actually a leader in car-dumping.
Just like many other Chinese companies.
And most tragically of all, not one of these companies are using these lots to hold the
most epic monster truck rally of all time.
That’s the real waste here.
Somehow, this particular pic of Microcity cars manufactured by Kandi Technologies Group
garnered a lot of attention in the West.
It was taken by a British-Polish photographer in China,
But people somehow misattributed the location to France instead.
Probably because they assumed everyone in France uses scooters.
The most obnoxious way to travel.
Which is why the French love it.
Anyway, the cars are actually from China.
Because if they were in France now, they’d actually look like this.
A joke you might only get if you’ve been following the France protests on our other
show, America Uncovered.
Anyway, the car-sharing industry in China is driven by cheap manufacturing and government
subsidies.
Hundreds of Chinese companies jumped on board.
And it was easy to get investors to put money into their startups, especially when there’s
been so much government support for the EVs.
But after a few years, the whole thing has become a disaster.
More after the break.
Welcome back.
Thanks to government subsidies, Chinese companies have poured huge amounts of money into making
electric cars.
But they focused on churning out numbers, not on quality.
“Due to high operating costs, insufficient users, and frequent failures of new energy
vehicles after several years of operation, more and more shared cars have been abandoned.”
On the bright side, this means some of those neglected cars are gonna make hilarious stand-up
comedians some day.
Besides the insane competition, China’s zero-Covid policies also hurt the EV industry.
Tons of businesses like EZZY, Panda Auto, GoFun, TOGO, and more have either shrunk or
gone completely out of business in recent years.
It also doesn’t help that China doesn’t actually have the infrastructure to *support*
all those electric cars.
As of 2022, China had only 1.8 million public charging stations—for 6.8 million new cars.
Keep in mind that most people in China don't have garages at home to charge their cars
in.
They often live in places like this.
So it's hard for people to charge electric cars.
Plus, as I said earlier, people don’t see them as very reliable compared to gas cars.
They don’t want to buy them, or even rent them.
So Chinese companies keep pumping out new EVs—and getting credit from the government.
But they can’t sell all of them, so they end up in places like this.
Often they’re new or barely used.
But hey, making cars still contributes to GDP!
GDP is also one of those things that even if the numbers are technically true, it’s
still basically a lie.
And one of the worst things—besides just wasting perfectly good crappy cars—is that
they all have large batteries.
Batteries use up a lot of resources that come from all over the world.
Which makes it even more of a shame that all those kids are being forced to mine cobalt
in Africa...
just to see their efforts wasted.
Just kidding.
They’ll never see their efforts wasted.
They’re too busy mining cobalt to watch YouTube.
And while a good chunk of the West’s attention on abandoned cars is in Hangzhou, zombie cars
can also be found elsewhere in China.
Look up “zombie cars” and “car graveyards” in Chinese media, and you’ll find a whole
bunch more pictures and locations.
Which is sad that A) they exist, and B)
“Zombie Cars” isn’t already the greatest movie, TV show, and/or video game of all time.
At the very least, you could save money choosing the Uber Dead-Pool option.
Here in Yantai, Shandong Province, more than a dozen shared cars were found in a small
forest in 2018.
In 2019, a bunch of cars and motorcycles piled up in Nanjing,
Later that same year, a bunch more were found Nanning, Guangxi
Once the pandemic struck, even more cars were abandoned, such as the ones seen here in Guangdong
Chongqing
And Anhui
Some come with things you probably don’t want to know, such as these cars found in
Shulin in Zhejiang Province,
which reportedly had “unidentified liquids.”
Ughhh!
That’s gross no matter where you are.
Except in San Francisco where it’s normal.
Now, to be fair, China sometimes cleans up zombie cars, but people end up doing a shoddy
job at doing even that.
In Henan province, for example, these zombie cars were found wrecked.
Later, they were taken away…
But they still left behind a bunch of pieces.
This is like when you have guests who insist on cleaning the dishes after dinner, then
they just sprinkle some water on them and say, “You’re welcome.”
Doing nothing would have somehow been more helpful.
Obviously, something needs to be done to address zombie cars, but the process for getting those
out could take a long time, especially if they’re found in parking lots, residential
areas, and rural public spaces.
This can be more than just a headache.
It can even be life-threatening if they get in the way of ambulances, firetrucks,
or Optimus Prime.
*Gasp!* Maybe Megatron is secretly behind this whole thing.
So what do you think of China’s car sharing disaster?
Let me know in the comments below.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.