China’s Abandoned, Obsolete Electric Cars Are Piling Up in Cities
bloomberg.com
A subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles.
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"No frills" might be a bit gentle.
Judging by other companies with similar outcomes, these are likely products made to meet the minimum legal definition of "vehicle," and usually nonfunctional or minimally functional. The companies that built the "vehicles" often sell them to themselves (or rideshare subsidiaries), cashed in the Chinese tax credit, and immediately discard them. For an example of this in action, see the SEC filings and investigative articles around Kandi's fake sales figures. Also see Out of Spec's Kandi K27 review for what I mean when I say "nonfunctional."
The silver lining is that since the discarded EVs are basically made of tin foil with tiny batteries, it's not as bad of a waste of natural resources as you might expect.
The cars the article is talking about were clearly used in service at some point, as it would seem a bit strange to put up makeshift covid mask warnings in the windows of cars that weren’t functional and at least in so far as our primary source identified them tended to have a minimum range of 100km.
Manufacturers identified included Chongqing Changan and Nessan’s Chinese subsidiary, I didn’t see any mention of Kandi.
Correct, Kandi wasn't involved in this article, it's just another documented example of this kind of behavior.
Except your alleging that these cars were obviously built solely to defend the government simply becuse a different unrelated company did defrauded the government even though by all accounts these were legitimate, if poorly thought out, companies.