Hundreds of old electric cars have been abandoned by their owners on wastelands in China, – Bloomberg

Illustrative photo from open sources

Companies that own hundreds of obsolete electric cars have abandoned them in urban wastelands across China due to the emergence of more advanced models. This reports Bloomberg agency.

Chinese automakers, encouraged by state subsidies, several years ago began to produce “a huge number of electric cars” whose autonomous range after recharging was “only about 100 km”.

Local companies that specialize in services taxi and car sharing companies, purchased these cars at favorable prices, but later the cars were allegedly “abandoned” due to “bankruptcy of carriers” and intensifying industry competition, as well as "emergence of models with better characteristics".

At the same time, Bloomberg notes that the fact of leaving the cars without their further processing “eliminates all the benefits of the country's mass transition to electric cars”.

Each such car compensates for the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that accompanied its production, “only after several years of operation”, and many abandoned electric cars contain unrecycled batteries containing such valuable components as nickel, lithium and cobalt.

China has managed to become a world leader in the field of electric car production in recent years. In 2022, almost 6 million electric cars and hybrid models were produced in China.

Almost every third new car sold domestically was electric. China now accounts for 60% of all electric cars in the world, it has the most extensive infrastructure for charging them on the planet, the agency notes. and germanium  – metals important for the production of semiconductors and other high-tech products. 

Prepared by Serhiy Daga