Photo: GAC Motor
Back when Elon Musk first talked about the Gigafactory and the billions of dollars it would cost, most people must have seen it as a very risky investment, but the CEO of Tesla knew it was needed to push things forward.
Back to our present days, everybody is talking about the world's largest factory and the trillions of battery cells that it is going to produce over the coming years. However, Tesla still feels like it's the only company that really pushes EV development further in increments that don't need a microscope to be seen.
Well, it may be so in the Western world, but China is rapidly catching up, if it isn't already ahead. Taking China's example, it seems what the Occident needs to push harder for EV adoption is cities submerged in black clouds of pollution and people dying from the unbreathable atmosphere. Luckily, that isn't the case yet, but some European metropoles are beginning to feel the fallout of selling too many diesel cars.
China, on the other hand, aided by the fact it's under communist rule, has a very clear set of rules for carmakers. Instead of offering incentives, the government is skipping the niceties and forces them to have an 8 percent ratio of EVs out of their total sales by 2018. The target increases to 10 percent in 2019 and 12 percent in 2020.
The result is a policy of heavy investments in the development and production of battery-powered vehicles, the latest of which coming from GAC Motor. The company has already unveiled its first all-electric model (the GE3), and now it's also letting us in on where it plans to build it.
Spreading over five square kilometers (1.9 square miles), the complex will house multiple facilities all adding for a total estimated expense of $6.5 billion, but if you've ever refurbished your house you know it's almost always at least 10 percent more.
The actual car factory is supposed to be completed by the end of 2018 and has a planned capacity of 200,000 vehicles per year. Apart from the GE3, GAC Motor intends to release seven new EVs over the course of the next five years. According to the company's General Manager, Yu Jun quoted by Electrek, GAC Motor aims to sell 20,000 electric vehicles by 2020. That seems a little under-ambitious for such a giant project, but we guess it's just a case of baby steps and not setting the bar too high.
Well, it may be so in the Western world, but China is rapidly catching up, if it isn't already ahead. Taking China's example, it seems what the Occident needs to push harder for EV adoption is cities submerged in black clouds of pollution and people dying from the unbreathable atmosphere. Luckily, that isn't the case yet, but some European metropoles are beginning to feel the fallout of selling too many diesel cars.
China, on the other hand, aided by the fact it's under communist rule, has a very clear set of rules for carmakers. Instead of offering incentives, the government is skipping the niceties and forces them to have an 8 percent ratio of EVs out of their total sales by 2018. The target increases to 10 percent in 2019 and 12 percent in 2020.
The result is a policy of heavy investments in the development and production of battery-powered vehicles, the latest of which coming from GAC Motor. The company has already unveiled its first all-electric model (the GE3), and now it's also letting us in on where it plans to build it.
Spreading over five square kilometers (1.9 square miles), the complex will house multiple facilities all adding for a total estimated expense of $6.5 billion, but if you've ever refurbished your house you know it's almost always at least 10 percent more.
The actual car factory is supposed to be completed by the end of 2018 and has a planned capacity of 200,000 vehicles per year. Apart from the GE3, GAC Motor intends to release seven new EVs over the course of the next five years. According to the company's General Manager, Yu Jun quoted by Electrek, GAC Motor aims to sell 20,000 electric vehicles by 2020. That seems a little under-ambitious for such a giant project, but we guess it's just a case of baby steps and not setting the bar too high.
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