MOTORING NEWS - Quick trivia question: how many plants are there in the United States currently building electric cars?
To be generous, we'll allow both battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models. The answer turns out to be four.
Meanwhile, China - which has a long-term goal of dominating the world's electric-car sector - has now licensed nine separate electric-car plants.
This information is from Nevs, the Chinese company that uses some remnants of the old Saab brand to build electric cars.
It has just signed a deal to develop and build electric cars jointly with Iconiq, one of dozens of existing Chinese automotive manufacturers.
An important step in the deal was reached when the Chinese government granted its ninth license for an electric-car assembly plant.
Michael Dunne, of the consultancy Dunne Automotive, has more than 20 years' experience in the market.
He commented that Chinese officials love to use licenses to shape their industries and the electric-car sector seems no exception.
The government gets special powers derived from granting licenses.
Licensing creates the perception of scarcity: companies jostle frantically for approval before the "door" closes.
Until China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, China had granted only a few automotive production licenses to a handful of foreign players (Volkswagen, Jeep, General Motors (GM), Honda, Suzuki and Peugeot), which meant that officials get to decide who is allowed to participate.
Licensed players are members of a privileged circle with benefits in the form of subsidies, exemption from quotas or EV purchase mandates.
Because the government agencies and city-owned taxi fleets are major buyers of EVs, a license virtually equates to a purchase order.
In other words, the granting of electric-car assembly-plant licenses lets the government reduce the number of players to boost efficiency, and conveys official imprimatur and an incentive for other government bodies to buy the cars. It also limits external influence in this way.
Of the four electric-car assembly plants in the US, the highest-volume to date is the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, which built slightly more than 80 000 vehicles last year.
That number is expected to soar soon as the new Tesla Model 3 grows in production.
Then there's a Nissan facility in Tennessee, where the Leaf is built alongside various gasoline models, one GM plant in Michigan where the Chevy Bolt EV is assembled along with the Chevy Sonic subcompact, and the Detroit-Hamtramck plant where the Chevy Volt is one of several vehicles being built.
ARTICLE: GREEN CAR REPORT
'We bring you the latest Garden Route, Hessequa news'
