Bloomberg TV has revealed a mystery that many images have shown since 2019: the crisis of electric car sharing has left thousands and thousands of specimens in the suburbs of the metropolis. And there is no clear vision to dispose of them
For years, videos have been arriving from China showing fields with thousands of abandoned cars, mostly electric, which arouse interest on the Internet: the curiosity is evident, on understanding why these vehicles ended up in such a place and what their fate is. Bloomberg TV wanted to investigate the mystery and with the help of satellite images and drones has provided an answer to the question. These spaces filled with electric cars are not an isolated incident, as they have been spotted in dozens of Chinese cities as early as 2019. There are large numbers of identical and often relatively modern electric vehicles parked very close to each other. Most appear to have been abandoned for a long time, the cars being covered in dust.
Crisis similar to that of bicycles
Behind the mystery is the staggering decline of China’s once booming electric car sharing market. The same thing happened a few years ago with the idea of sharing bikes according to the same principle: thousands of ride-sharing companies have been created in the last ten years, taking advantage of the generous government incentives that were cut in 2019. In the event automotive industry, the end of incentives combined with other factors, including the lack of free parking and the arrival of the new and more sophisticated generation of electric cars (the ones that have arrived and are arriving on the European market) has made the old models obsolete and bankrupted a large number of new businesses.
Many builders have gone bankrupt
There was only one silver lining to the phenomenon: the failed car pool model had a positive effect, as it accelerated the technological development of electric cars and their greater acceptance by the Chinese population. The result is there for all to see: China is becoming the largest market in the world, accounting for 60% of the global electric car fleet. This is despite the fact that the number of domestic producers of electric vehicles has decreased from almost 500 in 2019 to around 100 in 2023. This is an indication of a greater seriousness of the manufacturers, who are also aware that without greater attention to the environmental issue they would find the road barred in the Old Continent.
The invasion of batteries
However, the environmental problem of the thousands of small electric cars to be disposed of remains. Bloomberg TV (rightly) describes the abandoned cars as “a startling representation of the excesses and waste that can occur when capital flows into a booming industry, and perhaps even a strange monument to the seismic progress of electric transportation in recent years.” . According to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, the scrapping of Chinese electric car batteries that was around 200,000 tons in 2020 will rise to 780,000 tons by 2025: there will be a real invasion of spent batteries to be disposed of. And you don’t see a precise policy.
Black market
Disturbing aspects emerge from the investigation: used batteries are placed on a black market for recycling, with zero guarantees that toxic materials will not end up in the ground or in the environment. According to Chinese state media, the recycling price of lithium car batteries ranges from $1,250 to $1,563 per ton. But the official prices are much higher than those on the black market, where there is no control over what is disposed of, so it is estimated that eighty percent of these remaining batteries take dark paths. The first scandalous cases are starting to emerge, with a lead smelter in Liaoning, where 300 tons of lead deriving from these operations were seized in 2018 and workers spilled 50 tons of sulfuric acid directly into the ground. The problem is not new: in the transition from the thermal world to the electric one, the disposal of used items is essential.
August 24, 2023, 12:49 – Updated August 24, 2023, 2:22 pm
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2023-08-24 12:21:00
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