Even for a foreign visitor to Shanghai, renting an electric car is easy. All thats required is a valid drivers license and a passport. And its surprisingly cheap: eHi Car Service Ltd. charges the equivalent of just $25 a day for a Chinese-built Roewe with a range of about 90 kilometers.就连外国游客都能在上海轻而易举地租辆电动汽车，只必须一张有效地驾驶执照和一张护照。而且租金还胆怯地低廉：一嗨汽车出租有限公司(eHi Car Service Ltd.)一辆续航里程90公里的国产荣威(Roewe)租金仅有相等于25美元/天。But having completed the paperwork, picked up the keys and eased silently into Shanghais chaotic traffic, the first-time electric car driver in the city quickly notices that nobody else appears to be driving one. In fact, there are at most 500 electric cars in Shanghai out of a total of about one million passenger vehicles, according to Zhang Dawei, the founder of EV Buy, a Shanghai company that sources and services electric cars for individuals and corporate users.但在填完表格、获得钥匙、悠然重新加入到上海车流之中后，你迅速就不会找到，或许别人没进电动汽车的。事实上，高瞻电动车(EV Buy)创始人张大伟说道，在上海的约100万乘用车保有量中，电动汽车不算只有500辆。

高瞻电动车是一家上海公司，面向个人和企业用户获取电动汽车经销、设施服务等业务。In fairness, electric cars have met consumer resistance everywhere, not just in China. Carmakers around the world have struggled to improve battery technology. Still, Shanghais dismal failure to popularize electric vehicles, despite a national auto policy to go electric--and generous subsidies for consumers--speaks to the immense challenges that Chinas leaders face in rolling out an ambitious program of economic overhauls approved at a Communist Party meeting this month. Those policies are intended to encourage innovation that leads to higher-quality and more sustainable growth driven by consumption--precisely the logic behind Chinas drive to build an electric car industry.平心而论，电动汽车在全球各地都遭遇了消费阻力，好比是在中国。

全球汽车制造商都在极力提升电池技术。尽管中国汽车政策的方向是推展电动汽车，而且还为消费者获取仁慈补贴，但上海普及电动汽车的希望还是遭遇了惨败，这反映出有中国领导人在秉持三中全会经济改革方面面对的极大挑战。

经济改革的目标是希望创意，并以此构建高质量的、更为可持续的消费驱动型快速增长模式，而这正是中国打造出电动汽车行业计划的想法。More than a decade ago, state industrial planners seized upon electric cars as the answer to a set of industrial, environmental and national-security dilemmas. Developing electric cars, the planners thought, would enable China to leapfrog the worlds leading manufacturers of combustion engine vehicles, who China otherwise could never hope to challenge. It would also reduce Chinas rapidly growing dependence on imported oil, which leaves the worlds second-largest economy vulnerable to destabilizing supply shocks. And it would mitigate chronic pollution in Chinese cities.十多年前，国家工业规划部门把电动汽车当作解决问题工业、环境、国家安全性等一系列问题的钥匙。规划者们指出，发展电动汽车将使中国另辟蹊径、不用再行纠结于内燃机汽车领域，中国相比之下不是国际先进设备内燃机汽车厂商的输掉。

另外，发展电动汽车还可使中国减少对进口石油日益严重的倚赖，这种倚赖令其中国很更容易受到供应波动的威胁。同时，中国城市长年污染的问题也将获得减轻。In the West, many assumed that these policy imperatives, combined with Chinas vaunted prowess at rolling out transport infrastructure--as well as government ownership of the countrys big carmakers--would assure the success of the national push for electric vehicles. China, it was widely thought, had the chance to lead the world in an emerging technology, while pioneering a more sustainable urban growth model. Even Warren Buffett took a stake in Shenzhen-based battery and electric carmaker BYD in 2008.西方国家很多人指出，考虑到中国的这些政策规定，再行再加中国在交通基础设施建设方面的高歌猛进，以及大型汽车制造商的国有性质，中国推展电动汽车发展的战略终将取得成功。

外界曾多次普遍地指出，在探寻极具可持续性的城镇化快速增长模式的同时，中国将有可能引导全球新兴科技的潮流。就连巴菲特(Warren Buffett)也在2008年大股东总部坐落于深圳的电池和电动汽车生产商比亚迪(BYD)。But Chinas electric car strategy hasnt worked out. Why?但中国的电动汽车战略未取得成效。

这是为什么呢？First, state planners badly miscalculated consumer demand. The wealthy elite have little interest in buying an electric car to flaunt their concern for the environment: For them, a car is still the prized marker of wealth and social status. The less well off, particularly first-time car buyers, who constitute the vast majority of car buyers in China, aspire to the thrill and freedom of the road--and a limited driving range is a turn-off.首先，国家规划部门相当严重误估了消费市场需求。富足阶层对出售电动汽车、标榜自己的环保意识兴趣不大：对他们来说，汽车仍是财富与社会地位的标志。

而对经济条件较好的人群，尤其是占到绝大多数的首度购车者来说，他们渴望的是驾车上路的那种激动、权利的感觉，电动汽车续航里程的容许是一个可怕弱点。On the supply side, state carmakers dropped the ball, says Greg Anderson, a U.S.-based auto industry consultant and the author of the book Designated Drivers: How China Plans to Dominate the Global Auto Industry. The incentive for state auto firms isnt to innovate, but to get as big as possible, as fast as possible, and make as much money as possible, he says. Thats best achieved by milking their existing joint ventures with foreign auto makers rather than sinking resources into new technologies.美国的汽车行业咨询师、《代驾司机：中国如何计划攻占全球汽车市场》(Designated Drivers: How China Plans to Dominate the Global Auto Industry)一书的作者Greg Anderson说道，在供应方面，中国国有汽车制造商罪了一个错误，它们的动机不是创意，而是尽量慢地做到大，赚到尽量多的钱。它们只想利用与海外汽车厂商重新组建的现有合资企业赚，而不是投放资源展开技术革新。

State carmakers all paid lip service to the governments electric car strategy by coming up with working models, says Mr. Anderson. But they failed to deliver breakthroughs in core technologies, including batteries and battery management systems. So today, while hundreds of combustion engine car models compete in the worlds largest car market, there are only a handful of electric vehicles in production for consumers to choose from.Anderson回应，对于中国政府发展电动汽车的战略，国有汽车厂商往往通过设计一些模型来敷衍了事。在电池和电池管理系统等核心技术方面，它们都没能获得突破。因此在中国这个全球仅次于的汽车市场，现在虽然有上百种内燃发动机汽车，却只有少数几种早已投产的电动汽车可可供消费者自由选择。For its part, the government failed to deliver the infrastructure. According to Chinas current five-year plan--a holdover strategy from the Stalinist economy--there are supposed to be more than 400,000 charging piles nationwide by 2015. But in todays Shanghai, a city of 24 million people, only 1,000-2,000 have so far been installed, says Mr. Zhang of EV Buy--far off the pace required to help China achieve its goals.从政府这方面来讲，它没做给市场发展获取完备的基础设施。

根据当前的“十二五”规划，到2015年中国将竣工多达40万个充电桩。但是高瞻电动车的张大伟说道，在享有2,400万人口的上海，目前只竣工了1,000-2,000个充电桩，相比之下约将近构建“十二五”目标的速度。

Bureaucratic infighting partly explains the inertia in developing the industry. For example, State Grid Corp, the near-monopoly grid operator, has been pushing to own the battery market by promoting a national battery swapping system for car owners, says Axel Krieger, a principal in the Beijing office of McKinsey Co. That arrangement would give it a large part of the industrial value chain, but is resisted by car manufacturers, who want to use their own batteries.官僚斗争也是导致电动汽车行业发展缓慢的一个原因。比如，麦肯锡(McKinsey Co., Inc.)北京分公司的管理人士柯明逸(Axel Krieger)就认为，国家电网公司(State Grid Corporation of China)通过前进建构覆盖全国的智能充换电服务网络，期望藉此掌控电池市场。这种模式将使国家电网占有行业价值链的一大部分，但遭了电动汽车厂商的杯葛，后者期望用于自己的电池。

In addition, local governments have been promoting their own technical standards as a protectionist measure to support local car makers. Its hard to drive an electric car from one city to another when plugs arent compatible. Every local warlord defends their own standards and technologies, says Mr. Krieger.另外，地方政府仍然在实行自己的技术标准，作为扶植本地汽车厂商的一种保护措施。在充电器插头不相容的情况下，电动汽车很难从一个城市直奔另一个城市。

柯明逸说道，每个地方政府都在维护自己的标准和技术。Finally, foreign auto makers have been scared away by government attempts to force them to hand over their intellectual property in electric vehicles in exchange for market access.最后，中国政府拒绝外国汽车厂商交还电动汽车知识产权以交换条件市场准入的作法也咬死了许多外国厂商。

The upshot of all this is that China is hopelessly behind on its target for electric car ownership. The five-year plan calls for 500,000 battery-electric and plug-in electric vehicles by 2015, and five million by 2020. But last year, Chinese consumers bought only 11,375 electric cars and 1,416 plug ins, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Thats despite subsidies that go as high as $20,000 per car.由此导致的结果是，中国电动汽车的保有量相比之下领先于目标。根据“十二五”规划，到2015年中国显电动汽车和挂电式混合动力汽车的数量将超过50万辆，并在2020年超过500万辆。

但中国汽车工业协会(China Association of Automobile Manufacturers)的数据表明，2012年中国消费者仅有出售了11,375辆显电动汽车和1,416辆挂电式混合动力汽车，尽管每辆车政府最低给与2万美元的补贴。The Chinese governments new strategy appears to be to promote plug-in hybrids as an interim technology before fully electric cars kick in. That appears to be a pragmatic response to the collapse of a key policy initiative. But its a lesson in the potholes that President Xi Jinping faces on his long road to creating an innovative economy.中国政府的新策略或许是在普及显电动汽车前，再行把挂电式混合动力汽车作为一项中间过渡性技术展开推展。这或许是对普及显电动汽车的政策倡议告终采行的稳健对策。

但是，这也是习近平在发展创新型经济的漫长道路上遇到的一个教训。

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