News on China's scientific and technological development.

By pouring cash into science and technology faster than its economy has expanded, China has for the first time overtaken Europe on a key measure of innovation: the share of its economy devoted to research and development (R&D).

In 2012, China invested 1.98% of its gross domestic product (GDP) into R&D — just edging out the 28 member states of the European Union (EU), which together managed 1.96%, according to the latest estimates of research intensity, to be released this month by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The figures show that China’s research intensity has tripled since 1998, whereas Europe’s has barely increased (see ‘Shooting star’). The numbers are dominated by business spending, reflecting China’s push in the manufacturing and information- and communication-technology industries.



James Wilsdon, a science-policy analyst at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, says that China’s R&D juggernaut is “astonishing”, considering that the entire system emerged only after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. In absolute terms, China’s R&D spending is still almost one-third lower than that of Europe, but the new figures are “a significant milestone”, says Wilsdon.

The reorientation of China’s economy displays its soaring ambition. However, money does not buy innovation. Despite success in some areas, notably high-speed rail, solar energy, supercomputing and space exploration, leaders in China are concerned that innovation is lacking, say science-policy analysts. “Chinese leaders would like something equivalent to a Nobel prize, or a world-class product similar to an iPhone,” says Denis Simon, an expert on Chinese science and innovation at Arizona State University in Tempe. “But there is a lot of risk aversion within the Chinese R&D system that doesn’t allow for entrepreneurial behaviour.”

China’s leaders recognize the issues: the govern*ment is now reviewing a 2006 long-term plan on science and technology, and will be taking advice from international experts in Beijing this month. Lan Xue, director of the China Institute of Science and Technology Policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, expects some changes at the level of academic science. “I’m relatively optimistic that there will be improvement in how R&D programmes are managed and peer-reviewed.”

In contrast to China’s rapid rise, Europe’s R&D spending has remained stagnant. The continent has made little headway in the past decade on a long-term target to reach 3% of GDP by 2020. “The European Commission has long warned that China is catching up in terms of R&D intensity,” says Michael Jennings, a spokesman for research at the commission. “The EU needs a real push now to increase R&D spending in the public sector, but especially in the private sector.”

One problem is that the commission cannot dictate business spending for individual member states. Another is the expansion of the EU, which has brought down average research intensity. OECD figures show the stark contrast between nations such as Germany, at 2.92% of GDP, and newer EU members such as Croatia, at 0.75%. Jennings adds, however, that an almost 30% boost to Horizon 2020, the EU research programme, is a good sign.

Some analysts argue that Europe does not need to be too worried by the stasis in research intensity. The number is an increasingly poor indicator of innovative activity, argues Kieron Flanagan, a science-policy analyst at the University of Manchester, UK. For example, it fails to pick up on innovation in the service-oriented industries that dominate many Western economies. An architectural or advertising firm could innovate while meeting the demands of a contract — making advances that could be widely copied and meaningfully affect an economy. Yet they would not count as R&D spending.

In China, meanwhile, “a great stodgy mass” of state-owned enterprises dominates commercial R&D spending — and they might actually suppress innovation, says Wilsdon. According to a study co-authored by Wilsdon and published in October 2013 by the innovation charity Nesta, based in London, the state companies might block more-inventive small and medium-sized enterprises. China, the study argues, is an “absorptive state”: one that adopts and adapts incoming technologies from overseas but does little breakthrough research. However, Wilsdon points to a few eye-catching bright spots: privately held, globally minded companies that include the tele*communications firms Huawei Technologies and ZTE, the e-commerce giant Alibaba and the computer firm Lenovo.

China’s emphasis on applied and product-development research means that funding for basic science remains low: only 5% of the country’s total R&D is devoted to this, compared with 15–20% in other major OECD nations. That money has to support a larger number of researchers who are already poorly paid, says Xue. Many academics, he says, complement their salaries by taking on short-term projects for industry — work that can distract their focus from fundamental science problems.

“ Chinese leaders would like something equivalent to a Nobel prize, or a world-class product similar to an iPhone.”
Funding and evaluation systems suffer other distortions, says Cong Cao, a science-policy analyst at the University of Nottingham, UK. Grant money is not disbursed transparently, and basic-research funding tends to go to eminent scientists and safe projects, he says, with academics judged mechanically on the number of publications that they author. A staggering rise in scientific output has not yet been matched by an equivalent rise in highly cited articles; swathes of patents are filed but rarely used. Wilsdon says that world-class research occurs at the country’s top 30 universities and at Chinese Academy of Science institutes. “But it is still very patchy, and a lot of it is reliant on a relatively small number of outstanding scientists lured back from overseas,” he says.

Simon adds that China’s scientists need more independence and freedom to work on risky projects. Such changes might be on the way: Cao expects that at the forthcoming review of China’s 2006 science plan, funding agencies will be told to be more transparent about their grants and grantees, and Chinese researchers will be allowed to use more of their funding to boost the salaries of research staff.

One of the plan’s paramount goals seems to be right on target, however: China, unlike Europe, looks set to boost its research spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2020.

Nature 505, 144–145 (09 January 2014) doi:10.1038/505144a

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China expects to build its new icebreaker before 2016, government officials said, as the veteran Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, remains stuck in Antarctic ice after rescuing 52 passengers from a Russian vessel.

"The new ship will surpass China's only icebreaker, the Xuelong, in scientific research and ice-breaking ability, greatly improving the country's polar research capability," Qu Tanzhou, director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration under the State Oceanic Administration, said on Sunday.

The new icebreaker will be designed mainly for field research, instead of transporting supplies, and it will have a better power system plus larger decks and laboratories, making it a "mobile research station", Qu said.

It will be shorter and have blades at the bow and a stern that will be able to break ice up to 1.5 meters thick, about 0.4 meters more than the Xuelong can handle.

The design contract, which cost more than $613 million, was signed with Aker Arctic Technology of Finland in 2012, and it will be built by a Chinese shipyard, the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration said.

According to the preliminary design, the vessel will be 100 to 120 meters long and about 24 meters wide, and it will displace 8,000 metric tons.

The ship, which will have a crew of 90, will have a cruising radius of 37,000 km, and it will be fitted with twin propeller drives.

One icebreaker cannot meet China's increasing demand for polar expeditions, scientists and experts said.

Liu Xiaohan, a polar studies expert researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said a country's polar research capabilities depend on how advanced its icebreaker is.

Russia has dozens of icebreakers, six of them nuclear-powered ones; the United States has seven icebreakers, including one under construction; and Canada has six.

[email protected]

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More efforts will be made in 2014 to support the innovation and research and development of new technologies, said Wan Gang, minister of the Science and Technology Ministry at the 2014 national conference on science and technology in Beijing on Thursday.

The conference, held by the ministry annually, was to summarize the previous year's achievements and experiences in the development of science and technology, and set goals for next year's work.

Wan said in 2014 more attention should be paid to making breakthroughs in strategic high technologies, a series of leading technologies that are the focus of researchers worldwide, such as the 5G network, supercomputer, Beidou Navigation Satellite system and 3D printing.

He said he hopes that the core technology in 20 emerging industries, including big data, intelligent robots, clean gas and biological medicine, can be mastered by Chinese researchers, and innovative projects in these fields can be put into practice and play a leading role in the world.

He also said that China's science and technology developed in leaps and bounds in 2013, with scientific breakthroughs involving the Tianhe-2 supercomputer, Chang'e-3 lunar probe and the Jiaolong deep-sea manned submersible.

According to Wan, China's expenditures on scientific research and development in 2013 may reach 1,180 billion yuan ($195 billion) and was estimated to account for 2 percent of the GDP in 2013.

The number of research staff was expected to exceed 3.6 million, creating more than 590,000 patents for invention — a 24-percent increase from the previous year.

Meanwhile, the number of international scientific theses published by Chinese researchers in 2013 ranked the second in the world, while the ranking for citations rose to fifth.

More than 200 representatives from the ministry, provincial science and technology departments, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering and Chinese Association of Science and Technology attended the conference.

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BEIJING - A new mobile phone operating system was unveiled by a Chinese tech firm on Thursday, making it the country's first smart phone system with independent intellectual property rights.

The system, named 960 OS, was developed by the Coship Electronics Co., Ltd. It is a brand new operating system following predecessors such as Android, IOS, and Windows phone, the Shenzhen-based company said.

960 OS is a native operating system based on the Linux kernel and took Coship 15 years to develop, said the company's chair, Yuan Ming, noting that the system can provide better protection for information stored in a smart phone.

As the majority of smartphones in the Chinese market use foreign operating systems such as Android and IOS, the ownership of one system with independent IPR is essential for both national and individual information security, according to Liu Yunjie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

It can boost the competitiveness of China's mobile and Internet industry, he added.

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HARBIN - Chinese researchers said they have made a significant breakthrough in the structural analysis of the viral infectivity factor (Vif) of the HIV virus, which will help in the development of new medications to treat or even cure the disease.

The new research was published on the website of science journal "Nature" on Wednesday. It was carried out by a team of Chinese researchers led by Huang Zhiwei, professor of structural molecular biology with the School of Life Science and Technology at Harbin Institute of Technology.

The research reveals the structural analysis of HIV-1 protein Vif, whose role is to subvert antiviral activity.

The results lay a foundation for the design of novel anti-HIV drugs, the paper said. The Chinese team launched the research program in March 2012.

Ever since the AIDS virus was discovered in 1981, people have had insufficient knowledge of the virus itself, including the structure of Vif, which is extremely important to virus infection and replication, said Huang.

Analyzing Vif structure is vital to the design of AIDS treatment medicines, Huang added.

The study of Vif structure has been the most important subject for scientists worldwide on AIDS in recent years.

China is the first to come out with research achievements on the subject, showing it is at the forefront of structural molecular biology study in AIDS, according to Huang.

The research team has begun cooperation with drug producers to develop new types of medicines for treating AIDS, Huang told Xinhua on Thursday.

"After medicine development succeeds, it will break a new path for treating AIDS worldwide, even hopefully curing it," Huang said, adding that it will also pave the way for Chinese-made drugs to fight HIV/AIDS.

China has about 434,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, according to government statistics. Worldwide, the number reached about 35 million at the end of 2012.

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BEIJING, January 10 (Xinhua) -- Two Chinese scientists, physical chemist Zhang Cunhao and nuclear weapons expert Cheng Kaijia, won China's top science award on Friday for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

The pair, both academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were presented with certificates by Chinese President Xi Jinping at an annual ceremony held to honor distinguished scientists and research achievements.

Winners are each entitled to an award of 5 million yuan (826,276 U.S. dollars).

Addressing the ceremony, Premier Li Keqiang said, "China has entered a new stage in which the country must rely more on sci-tech innovation to guide and support its economic development and social progress."

China's traditional growth mode, which was mainly driven by factor input, is difficult to sustain and is gradually losing its competitive edge in medium and low-end products, according to Li.

"Our country's economy is shifting from high-speed growth to a phase of medium- to high-speed growth," he said.

The premier said China must rely on scientific and technological innovation to improve the overall quality of its economy, move upward in the industrial value chain, foster a new competitive edge, overcome restraints in resources and the environment, and achieve more sustainable development.

The country needs breakthroughs in cutting-edge science and technology as well as in strategic sectors vital to the national economy and people's livelihood, he said.

The government should free innovative scientific activities from administrative intervention and "let the market speak" in terms of research orientation, resource allocation and use of funds, he urged.

It should also create an environment that promotes fair play and encourages creativity and initiative among scientists and researchers, Li said, while encouraging the young to follow the example set by outstanding scientists and contribute their wisdom to the country and the people.

Several other scientists and scientific research programs were awarded at the ceremony, and Chinese leaders Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli were also present at the event.

Zhang, the chemist, was born in 1928 in north China's Tianjin. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1947 and went to the United States to further his studies. Zhang obtained a master's degree in 1950, when the Korean War broke out.

In 1951, he returned to serve his hometown despite the hard conditions in China, and devoted himself to scientific research at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the northeast port city.

During his 60 years of scientific research, Zhang focused on many pioneering technologies, including water gas technology, rocket propellant and the laser field.

Zhang was in charge of the National Natural Science Foundation for eight years, during which the funds for natural sciences were increased eight-fold, and a fund for outstanding youth was also set up under his request.

Nuclear weapons expert Cheng, 96, has participated in more than 30 of China's nuclear experiments, including the country's first atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, and the combination of the two bombs.

He has devoted 20 of his prime years to living in the vast Gobi in southwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region since 1963.

Cheng also participated in writing China's first academic document for atomic bomb research and experiments, designing a plan for setting off an atomic bomb at an iron tower higher than 100 meters, and planning the missions and formation of the institute of nuclear weapons experiments.

His team has established China's nuclear explosion theory, the research field of nuclear explosion effects, different kinds of nuclear experiments, and technical safety standards.

Cheng has greatly promoted the scientific development of nuclear experiments and improved the design of nuclear weapons.

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The State science and technology awards comprise five awards that recognize scientists and their contributions in special scientific aspects:

State Pre-eminent Science and Technology Award — to honor the achievements of top scientists

- no more than two winners

- award granted by the President

- 5 million yuan ($826,000) bonus

State Natural Sciences Award — to honor major breakthroughs in fundamental research

- grand prize: 1 million yuan bonus

- first prize: 200,000 yuan bonus

- second prize: 100,000 yuan bonus

State Technology Invention Award — to honor new technical achievements

- grand prize: 1 million yuan bonus

- first prize: 200,000 yuan bonus

- second prize: 100,000 yuan bonus

State Science and Technology Progress Award — to honor technologies that brings considerable economic benefits

- grand prize: 1 million yuan bonus

- first prize: 200,000 yuan bonus

- second prize: 100,000 yuan bonus

International Science and Technology Cooperation Award — to honor foreign scientists who promoted science advancement in China

- no bonus

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As China undergoes industrial upgrading, new requirements are necessary for the development of science and technology as are assessments of scientific achievements.

In 2013, the State science and technology awards, the highest honor in the field, underwent a number of changes, the award office told China Daily.

First, the National Office for Science and Technology Awards reduced the number of awards granted to scientists, said Chen Zhimin, deputy director of the?office.

Awards for State Natural Sciences, State Technology Invention and State Science and Technology Progress were reduced by 61.

The invention and progress awards focus on research breakthrough, technological advancement and direct economic benefit.

A key category saw awards slashed from 283 in 2011 to 188 in 2013.

While this category, the State Science and Technology Progress Award, saw the awards dropped they rose in other categories; the State Natural Sciences Award and State Technology Invention Award.

"The quantity and proportion adjustment is to encourage more independent innovation and significant?inventions," Chen said.

The awards also target the work and achievements of younger scientists.

"This year we opened new recommendation channels for scientists under the age of 40," Chen said.

In previous appraisals, Natural Sciences Award candidates needed recommendations from at least three members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the project had to be completed by the candidate alone.

But this year, the criteria was softened for scientists under the age of 40: the project can be carried out by a team, and only one academic’s recommendation, and two other peer recommendations, are needed.

Shi Zhangjie, a professor of the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University, and the first scientist to win the award under the new system, welcomed the changes.

"For a younger researcher, like me, my resources are not comparable to those for senior researchers, so this new appraisal rule is a great encouragement."

The average age of Shi's research team is 34.

"I am really excited by winning the award. And I believe this appraisal rule will inspire more young researchers," Shi said.

The award office also wants to encourage enterprise innovation.

The vast majority of awards for State Science and Technology Progress in civilian technology, 75.9 percent, were granted to projects that had seen enterprise involvement.

"We also introduced more experts from the business sector to take part in the appraisals. In the preliminary assessment, 30 percent of the experts came from the business sector and this will help increase accuracy in evaluating achievements by enterprises," Chen said.

Chen also said that the principle investors in R&D were large State-owned enterprise.

More than 46 percent of first prizes in the State Science and Technology Progress Awards saw the involvement of State-owned enterprises; and State-owned enterprises won 38.81 percent of awards given to companies.

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The cloning methods may not be novel - but the application of mass production is
More from David

You hear the squeals of the pigs long before reaching a set of long buildings set in rolling hills in southern China.

Feeding time produces a frenzy as the animals strain against the railings around their pens. But this is no ordinary farm.

Run by a fast-growing company called BGI, this facility has become the world's largest centre for the cloning of pigs.

The technology involved is not particularly novel - but what is new is the application of mass production.

The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but each of them is carrying cloned embryos. Many are clones themselves.

This place produces an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year: China is exploiting science on an industrial scale.

To my surprise, we're taken to see how the work is done. A room next to the pens serves as a surgery and a sow is under anaesthetic, lying on her back on an operating table. An oxygen mask is fitted over her snout and she's breathing steadily. Blue plastic bags cover her trotters.

Two technicians have inserted a fibre-optic probe to locate the sow's uterus. A third retrieves a small test-tube from a fridge: these are the blastocysts, early stage embryos prepared in a lab. In a moment, they will be implanted.

The room is not air-conditioned; nor is it particularly clean. Flies buzz around the pig's head.

My first thought is that the operation is being conducted with an air of total routine. Even the presence of a foreign television crew seems to make little difference. The animal is comfortable but there's no sensitivity about how we might react, let alone what animal rights campaigners might make of it all.

I check the figures: the team can do two implantations a day. The success rate is about 70-80%.

Dusk is falling as we're shown into another shed where new-born piglets are lying close to their mothers to suckle. Heat lamps keep the room warm. Some of the animals are clones of clones. Most have been genetically modified.

The point of the work is to use pigs to test out new medicines. Because they are so similar genetically to humans, pigs can serve as useful "models". So modifying their genes to give them traits can aid that process.

One batch of particularly small pigs has had a growth gene removed - they stopped growing at the age of one. Others have had their DNA tinkered with to try to make them more susceptible to Alzheimer's.

Back at the company headquarters, a line of technicians is hunched over microscopes. This is a BGI innovation: replacing expensive machines with people. It's called "handmade cloning" and is designed to make everything quicker and easier.

The scientist in charge, Dr Yutao Du, explains the technique in a way that leaves me reeling.

"We can do cloning on a very large scale," she tells me, "30-50 people together doing cloning so that we can make a cloning factory here."

A cloning factory - an incredible notion borrowed straight from science fiction. But here in Shenzhen, in what was an old shoe factory, this rising power is creating a new industry.


The scale of ambition is staggering. BGI is not only the world's largest centre for cloning pigs - it's also the world's largest centre for gene sequencing.

In neighbouring buildings, there are rows of gene sequencers - machines the size of fridges operating 24 hours a day crunching through the codes for life.

To illustrate the scale of this operation, Europe's largest gene sequencing centre is the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge. It has 30 machines. BGI has 156 and has even bought an American company that makes them.

BGI's chief executive, Wang Jun, tells me how they need the technology to develop ever faster and cheaper ways of reading genes.

Again, a comparison for scale: a recently-launched UK project seeks to sequence 10,000 human genomes. BGI has ambitions to sequence the genomes of a million people, a million animals and a million plants.

Wang Jun is keen to stress that all this work must be relevant to ordinary people through better healthcare or tastier food. The BGI canteen is used as a testbed for some of the products from the labs: everything from grouper twice the normal size, to pigs, to yoghurt.

I ask Wang Jun how he chooses what to sequence. After the shock of hearing the phrase "cloning factory", out comes another bombshell:


BGI has ambitions to sequence the genomes of a million people, a million animals and a million plants
"If it tastes good you should sequence it," he tells me. "You should know what's in the genes of that species."

Species that taste good is one criterion. Another he cites is that of industrial use - raising yields, for example, or benefits for healthcare.

"A third category is if it looks cute - anything that looks cute: panda, polar bear, penguin, you should really sequence it - it's like digitalising all the wonderful species," he explains.

I wonder how he feels about acquiring such power to take control of nature but he immediately contradicts me.

"No, we're following Nature - there are lots of people dying from hunger and protein supply so we have to think about ways of dealing with that, for example exploring the potential of rice as a species," the BGI chief counters.

China is on a trajectory that will see it emerging as a giant of science: it has a robotic rover on the Moon, it holds the honour of having the world's fastest supercomputer and BGI offers a glimpse of what industrial scale could bring to the future of biology.

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BYD launches Qin plug-in hybrid in China
15 January 2014

Image
BYD Qin. Click to enlarge.

BYD has officially launched its Qin plug-in hybrid in China; the performance-based hybrid car is intended to target key world markets. European availability of a similar but probably renamed model is planned for early 2015.

The dual mode Qin can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 5.9 seconds and has a top speed of 185 km/h (115 mph) with a claimed overall fuel consumption of up to 1.6 L/100 km (147 mpgUS). The Qin can be driven in pure electric mode for up to 70 km (44 miles). For long distance journeys the car uses its 1.5TID gasoline engine.
BYD Qin Chinese market specs
Engine type BYD 476ZQA (1.5)
Engine rated power [kW @ rpm] 113 @ 5200
Engine max. torque [N·m @ rpm] 240 @ 1750-3500
Motor max. power [kW] 110
Motor max. torque [N·m] 250
Total power [kW, BHP] 217, 291
Total torque [N·m] 479
Acceleration, 0-100 km/h [sec] 5.9
Fuel consumption [l/100 km] 1.6
Top speed [km/h, mph] 185, 115
All-electric range [km, miles] 70, 44

BYD said that its first 100 Qin cars were purchased in two seconds via its online site. About 95,000 people had visited the BYD e-shopping mall, 6,000 actually registered and 23,405 were online when the sale began. 4,155 of them tried to purchase the new model, according to BYD.

The new car utilizes the technology pioneered and proven in the original BYD F3DM model, of which many tens of thousands have been sold, the company says. The Qin can be recharged at any normal household socket. When power is low or there is an on-demand need for ultimate acceleration the hybrid mode (charge sustaining) is activated; this can be programmed either automatically or manually. The Qin also generates electric recharging power during deceleration—either by means of engine braking or via the foot brake—typically contributing 2.5 to 3 kWh every 100 km (62 miles).

The Qin offers four driving functions: EV+ECO, EV+SPORT, HEV+ECO and HEV+SPORT modes. These can be selected by the driver, commanding the appropriate blend of economy and performance for any driving condition.

All models in the Qin family feature a 12.1-inch TFT instrument panel, smart key system and BYD’s remote driving facility, which allows the car to be maneuvered remotely at very low speed from the outside of the vehicle where permissible.

Standard safety features include Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS), Electric Park Brake, ISO-FIX mounting points for child safety seats, Electronic Stability Programme (ESP), Control Deceleration Parking and 12 air bags.

The Qin family includes advanced internet connectivity encompassing a Cloud-based services system, currently available only in China, which brings together the intelligence technology and interactive experiences into one driver-friendly control unit.

BYD expects to launch Qin in Europe in early 2015. Initial prices in China prior to any EV subsidies range from €23,725 to €26,225 (US$32,452 to US$35,871).

January 15, 2014 in Hybrids, Plug-ins | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)
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Plug in Hybrid diesel with a 44 mile electric range (!) and 0-60 in 5.9 seconds and a price of e26K, what's not to like?

Remote driving !!!
What about that. What if someone hacks it ?
Cool, though.
Anyway..

Have to see what the crash test results come out like.

Posted by: mahonj | January 15, 2014 at 03:22 AM

Sorry, it is gasoline, not diesel - I was confused by the TID suffix.

Also, a minor safety mod might be to have a smaller screen in the car. A 12" screen could be quite a distraction.

Posted by: mahonj | January 15, 2014 at 03:28 AM

Specs looks good but what about build quality and safety? The price also looks good but it will be higher outside Chine of cause.

Posted by: Henrik | January 15, 2014 at 03:35 AM

Acceleration, 0-100 km/h [sec] 5.9 is nearing super car performance, if true

Weight, price, warranty, ..?

Posted by: kelly | January 15, 2014 at 04:08 AM

BYD F3DM

I remember about 5 years ago when the president of BYD was driving around INSIDE an auto show declaring that he would sell EVs in the U.S. in huge quantities soon.

Posted by: SJC | January 15, 2014 at 08:22 AM

@kelly:
That is 0-60kph, not mph.
Nothing supercar about it, although respectable.

Posted by: Davemart | January 15, 2014 at 08:29 AM

No, it is 0-100 kph or 0-62 mph.

This car has all the power required to launch it to over 100 kph in less than 6 seconds.

With enough batteries for over 70 eKm it would use very little liquid fuel in normal operation. It could be an early solution to emissions from fossil fuels.

Let's not denigrate Chinese products. Walmart, Target and many others are making a fortune selling them. The world may be driving and riding Chinese electrified vehicles much sooner than many deniers think.

Posted by: HarveyD | January 15, 2014 at 08:43 AM

It has supercar acceleration, but not supercar max speed, which is the right way round to do it.

It still goes 35 mph faster than most countries allow, which should be enough for people whose hormones have calmed down.

As GCC people have said, it depends on the final selling price in local markets, the crash test results, and the image that they can build.

Tesla managed it, but his car was built in California, designed by a genius, and looked great.

I can't say the same about this, but if the price/performance is as good as the spec suggests, maybe it can sell on that alone.
+ it is financed by a genius.

Posted by: mahonj | January 15, 2014 at 09:00 AM

I simply read kelly's comment and did not check back to the acceleration specs.
Apologies - that is where assumptions get you! ;-)

Posted by: Davemart | January 15, 2014 at 11:41 AM

The all electric range should be around 80 miles or 140 km to be truly functional , with my 3 years of electric driving experience the summers would be OK with 70 km or 40 miles range but the winter is a different story .
the battery capacity sinks with 30 to 40 % and the heater is used on top of that , taken this into account the higher range is needed to make this car 90 % fossil fuel free , they will achieve that since battery chemistry´s are getting better all the time and range increases as this happens I drive a Mitsubishi Imiev the first all electric car out and get up to 100 Miles range in summer but no more than 50 in the winter and i have to drive careful to achieve that.

Posted by: gideon goudsmit | January 16, 2014 at 04:31 AM

BTW both top speed and acceleration are not important for a car like this , this is purchased by people that are energy conscious , not for drag racers or Indy 500 races



Posted by: gideon goudsmit | January 16, 2014 at 04:33 AM

When charged twice daily, it can do 44 x 2 = 88 miles AER.
Because top speed and acceleration are not too important, the engine should be downsized to 2 cylinders and .75 liter with 56 kW in order to reduce weight and to put some battery capacity up front to realize more trunk space.

Posted by: Roger Pham | January 17, 2014 at 05:49 AM

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