As future gazers like me have been predicting, in China they are already abandoning the useless dangerous very inconvenient dirty pollution spewing electric toy cars.China’s Electric Vehicle Industry Hit Hard by Policy Shift as Beijing Turns Toward Hydrogen FuelBY OLIVIA LI, EPOCH TIMES April 12, 2019 Updated: April 16, 2019Share

Electric cars charge at a Sinopec service station in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on Jan. 14, 2019. The service station is one of the first in the country to offer petrol, compressed natural gas (CNG) and electric car charging service. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry has been booming for nearly a decade, with generous subsidies from the Chinese government and state-sponsored marketing efforts.However, the research and development (R&D) subsidies are now shifting to vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells, a new technology that, according to industry, is cleaner and more efficient than lithium battery-run cars. Current EV automakers in China will have to face the cruel reality: The EV industry will soon suffer financial losses with the disappearance of state support.
Chinese Regime Shifting SubsidiesOn March 26, China’s Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Science and Technology, and other agencies jointly announced changes to the subsidy program for lithium battery-powered electric cars, slashing subsidies by 67 percent.
Electric cars with driving ranges of 400 kilometers (250 miles) and above will be cut by half, to 25,000 yuan ($3,700) per vehicle, from 50,000 yuan. And to qualify for any subsidy, electric cars need to have a range of at least 250 kilometers, compared with 150 kilometers previously.
In addition, subsidies for EV vehicles will be phased out completely after 2020.
The Trigger: Li’s Trip to JapanChinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Japan in 2018 fundamentally changed his thinking about electric vehicles.
Li visited Toyota Motor Corp.’s factory for manufacturing EV auto parts in Hokkaido on May 11, 2018, and saw a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle called “MIRAI.” He learned that the MIRAI, which takes only three to four minutes to fuel, has a 650 kilometer (404 miles) driving range.
According to several Chinese media reports, upon Li’s return to China, several ministries and commissions in China quickly assembled a team to develop hydrogen fuel-cell technology, the first signal that China’s policymakers would make the fuel cells a major R&D project.
A lithium battery has several drawbacks when compared with a hydrogen fuel cell, which uses hydrogen gas as power.
Lithium batteries contain heavy metals such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese, and the mining process to extract such metals can cause pollution to nearby water sources. Meanwhile, processing of copper, lithium, and other metals create toxic waste that, if not treated and recycled properly, can cause serious environmental problems.
On March 15, China’s cabinet-like State Council publicized 83 amendments to its annual Government Work Report delivered before its rubber-stamp legislature. Among them was a provision to promote the construction of infrastructure related to electric and hydrogen fuel-cell technology. At the time, there were no additional policy details, but it was the first time that hydrogen fuel was included in the report.
Eleven days later, the Chinese government announced the new EV subsidy policies.
On April 11, the state-run, English-language newspaper China Daily reported that the central authorities’ development plan for hydrogen fuel technology set targets of getting 5,000 hydrogen energy vehicles on the road by 2020, 50,000 by 2025, and 1 million by 2030.
Subsidy ReductionsChina’s EV automakers are already losing money.
For example, Chinese automaker BYD is a star brand in the domestic market. BYD started new energy vehicle (NEV) R&D 10 years ago.
According to Chinese news portal Sohu, citing information from BYD’s financial reports, in the past five years, the company has received a total of 6.93 billion yuan ($1.03 billion) in electric vehicle subsidies from the Chinese regime.
But the industry’s profitability was already falling. In BYD’s 2018 annual report released on March 27, the company’s net profit attributable to shareholders was 2.78 billion yuan, down 31.6 percent from the previous year. BYD explained that decline was mainly due to the reduction in subsidies and increases in R&D costs.
In early March, NIO (known as Shanghai Weilai Automobile in Chinese), which specializes in making electric autonomous vehicles and became publicly listed only half a year ago, reported revenue of 4.951 billion yuan ($738 million) in 2018 while net losses were 9.639 billion yuan ($1.44 billion). In addition, NIO also announced that it would cancel plans to build a new plant in Shanghai.
Read the rest of the closing down of the useless electric toy junk cars herehttps://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-electric-vehicle-industry-hit-hard-by-sudde...