Yes, the thread's question remains, some nine years later .... a section dedicated to new energy vehicles(NEVs), and in keeping with the times, an intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs), would be a welcome update.
There is already a section on Alternative Fuel Vehicles. How many sections does one need?
Years ago, when new energy vehicles were a blue-eyed wonder, and few and far between, separate sections might have made more sense. Nowadays, NEVs are also in many cases variants of ICE models, and having threads, in a different section, for such NEVs would lead to unnecessary duplication. Should we have one thread for the ICE Changan Eado, another for the Eado EV; one thread for the Soueast DX3, another for the DX3 EV; one thread for the ICE Geely Emgrand, another for the Emgrand EV and PHEV? Do we keep the Senova X25 in the main subforum and create another thread for the EX-Series in the NEV section? What about new NEVs from established car manufacturers: Create a separate hierarchy of subforums, mimicking the main forum, for BAIC, Changan, Chery, Dongfeng, GAC and so on, since they all have NEVs in their portfolio?
Yes, one realizes that electric vehicles have created a "new world order", a new paradigm, and most world governments' and public opinion is veering towards adoption of new energy vehicles; it is not an exaggeration to say that the future of the globe's economies hinges on how rapidly and efficiently electric and alternative modes of propulsion (not only for land transport but more importantly for shipping and aviation) are incorporated into commercial and personal aspects of peoples' lives, but as far as cars themselves are concerned, electricity is basically a different "fuel". Did we need separate sections for diesel, CNG/methane, LPG, ethanol?
"Intelligent connected vehicles" form a subset of the union of the sets of electric cars and high-end ICE/hybrid cars. These sensor-assisted semi-autonomous or "self-learning" attributes and other over-the-air communication capabilities are "features" of the cars. The cars would still be the same, albeit less expensive, even without this "intelligence".
And a section dedicated to those wild-eyed start-ups would make an exciting and attractive draw of new posters.
Startups are gearing up to produce new energy vehicles, which are already being represented in the "Alternative Fuel Vehicles" section, unless you are referring to such startups providing other services like ride-hailing, car-sharing, or used-car buying and selling platforms, or other new companies set up to make batteries, motors, controllers, electronic components or chargers for NEVs.
Finally, without the current contribution of faithful veteran posters, who in China are known as "foreign experts", the site would fade into obscurity.
In that case, one always has heaps of Chinese-language car websites to fall back on. Machine/web translation these days is pretty acceptable, and will only get better in the future!
