A brief history of the National Electric Vehicle Experimental & Demonstration Area

The story of the National Electric Vehicle Experimental & Demonstration Area (henceforth referred to as NEVEDA) begins in 1995 after the Ministry of Science and Technology made the development of electric vehicles a priority in the 9th Five-Year Plan. NEVEDA was to be an important part of  Chinas “863” Program – a government funded program with the aim of developing Chinese technologies in a wide range of fields to negate the need for dependance on foreign technologies with associated financial costs. This idea was approved by then Premier Li Peng. We first met Li Peng in my article about the Holden Commodore based BJ6490. There were 4 main objectives for the project and Five-Year Plan regarding electric vehicles:

1. The development of advanced electric vehicles.
2. The development of economically viable and practical electric vehicles.
3. The establishment and operation of an electric vehicle testing facility.
4. The development of relevant policies, regulations and technical standards for electric vehicles.

The 3rd objective was realised in 1998 with the opening of NEVEDA in Shantou. There were 4 main objectives of NEVEDA:

1. Conduct test to assess the performance of electric vehicles; namely the long-term reliability and safety of electric vehicles in a variety of climatic conditions.
2. Conduct test to assess the performance of electric vehicle components; including batteries and chargers, as well as other components.
3. Conduct economic assessments of electric vehicles, covering numerous vehicles, vehicle types and operating conditions.
4. Develop and test different possible policies related to electric vehicles. These include policies relating to infrastructure, environmental protection, power supply, business scope, taxation etc. Conduct social evaluations of the actual operation of electric vehicles.

There were 3 main operating modes for the vehicles:

1. Operate as taxis.
2. Operate as a public bus.
3. Operate as a business vehicle.

Due to the fact that NEVEDA was the first project of its kind in China, the developers had a lot of freedom in how they set it up and consequently a lot of responsibilities. 2 years after its opening, NEVEDA had gained a positive reputation both in China and abroad with numerous collaborations between Chinese and Foreign experts occurring there. Toyota, GM, Citroën and around 10 domestic manufacturers provided a total of around 30 vehicles to NEVEDA.

NEVEDA is located in the north of Shantou and was part of a project with Nan’ao island. The island was a flagship renewable energy project where electricity was to be generated almost entirely using wind turbines. Several wind installations were put in place with different companies’ turbines being used for experiments. Read more about the Nan’ao wind energy project here.

Involvement of General Motors

GM had committed in 1997 to providing 5 Chevrolet S10 EVs and 5 EV1s to the project where the cars would be charged exclusively using wind power from the turbines on Nan’ao island. It was to be the first project of its kind anywhere in the world to be totally zero emissions.

On the 11th of November, 1998 there was a meeting between 4 members of GMs electric vehicle divisions and representatives of NEVEDA. The GM employees were there to assist in the fitting of new Panasonic batteries into the S10s and EV1s, as well as to train NEVEDA personnel in the maintenance of the cars.

I have reached out to members of the GM team and will update this article with any new information they provide.

On December 17, 1998 David Bleyle, the Counselor for Environment, Science and Technology at the US embassy in Beijing paid a visit to NEVEDA. He was given a tour and introduced to the procedures at NEVEDA.

In this photo we can see the Yunshan bus, Yuehai SUV and a Chevrolet S10. These will be discussed in a moment.

Involvement of Toyota

Toyota became involved with NEVEDA on December 28, 1997 when an agreement was signed between Guangdong Province and Toyota at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou. More than 50 people were in attendance including the Deputy Governor of the Guangzhou Provincial Committee – Lu Zhonghe, Guangdong Province Science and Technology Commission director – Liang Xiang, Shantou mayor – Hong Qingyao and the president of Toyota Motors (China). Also present were other guests and media personnel.

On October 14, 1999 a group of employees from Toyota Japan paid a visit to NEVEDA to see how the RAV4 EVs were going and to further understand the testing processes at NEVEDA.

On June 15, 2001 a group of employees from Toyota once again visited NEVEDA. This time they came to check the status of the vehicles and to investigate a charging fault with car number 4.

I can’t confirm if this was the vehicle with the charging fault, but here we can see that it was used as a taxi. In fact, it seems that all the RAV4s were used as taxis because the Japanese visited once again on February 27, 2002 and by that time all of the RAV4s had driven more than 100,000 kilometers. The Japanese were apparently delighted by this are were very pleased with NEVEDA.

Involvement of Citroën

Not much can be found on a deal between NEVEDA and Citroën other than short statements about the fact that it occurred on various websites. However, I did find  a source that says “France’s Peugeot Citroen Group has agreed to help China develop mass-produced electric vehicles. The French firm, which is the partner in a joint venture with Dong Feng Motor in Shiyan, Hubei Province, will test electric vehicles at Nan’ao Island.”

The cars involved

NEVEDA still exists and on the main page of their website is this photo:

I will now introduce the cars in the photo going from left to right and top to bottom.

Hongqi Mingshi Hybrid

This Hongqi Mingshi was converted into a hybrid in October of 2000 at NEVEDA under the leadership of a technician called Ronaldo from American Electric Vehicles (Asia) and a senior engineer from FAWs Changchun Automobile Research Institute.

Hongqi Mingshi Hybrid

The Mingshi hybrid was later displayed in 2001 at the Third Beijing International Electric Vehicle Clean Fuel Vehicle Show. This was the same show where we saw the red Beilu BJ6490 in an earlier post I wrote on the Chinese Holden Commodore.

Chery SQR7160

This SQR7160 was converted to electric power using domestically produced lead-acid batteries. Voltage of the system was 72v with a 12v auxiliary battery. The car was equipped with a highly reliable DC-DC converter, high-efficiency intelligent charger, low-noise vacuum booster pump and upgraded rear suspension to cope with the extra weight of the batteries. The purpose of the conversion was to improve the technical performance of the vehicle, the ride and handling and reliability. Another aim was to reduce the environmental impact of the battery caused by leaking electrolytes and also to improve the service life of the battery pack and reduce maintenance costs. The car was tested on various roads to test its performance. At a constant (unspecified) speed the car was able to travel 308km on one charge and in an urban setting had a maximum range of 203 kilometers. Impressive even by today’s standards.

Chevrolet S10 EV

As mentioned before, GM provided a total of 10 vehicles to the demonstration zone with 5 of them being electric Chevrolet S10s. According to Clive Roberts who was part of the team from GM that went to NEVEDA, the lead-acid battery packs were swapped out for NiMH units. Whether these were the same NiMH packs as those found in later USDM models is unclear. Weirdly on NEVEDAs website they claim that the trucks were equipped with the original lead-acid battery packs, even though they clearly state in the article about their meeting with GM employees that the batteries were to be swapped out.

In this photo dated January 28, 1999 we see a former FAW factory director and Chinese automotive consultant Li Gang standing in front of the Yuahai EV6460N, 2 S10s and an unidentified car.

Hongye bus

Sadly we know almost nothing about the Hongye bus. What we do know is that it was still at NEVEDA a couple years ago but its current whereabouts are unknown. Weirdly there appear to have been 2 of these Hongye buses at NEVEDA. If you look at the very first photo in this article with the lineup of vehicles, you can see 1 Hongye bus in the lineup and then another hiding under the building behind the 1st one.

Yunshan 6600EV

The Yunshan 6600EV was based on the Yunshan 66** series of Coaster buses. The full name for Yunshan was 广东云山汽车有限公司 – Guangdong Yunshan Automobile Co. Ltd. They marketed there vehicles under the Baiyun brand. The 6600EV was powered by an air-cooled permanent magnet DC motor with lead acid batteries arranged in a 240v system.

General Motors EV1

Ok this is probably the one you are most interested in. A total of 5 EV1s were supposedly sent to NEVEDA by GM. Present at NEVEDA on the day these photos were taken were just 2 EV1s. The whereabouts of the other 3 are unknown.

The first EV1 I will discuss is this green example.

The Chinese text on the side of the car translates best as “Present from General Motors”. Based on the current ride height you could be forgiven for saying that the batteries had been removed. However, if you look at the previous photo and examine the rear left wheel of the Chery behind it you will see that it is off the ground. Therefore, it is highly likely that this EV1 is on jackstands like the Chery, meaning the batteries may well still be installed! That means this could theoretically be one of a handful of running (if the electrics still work) EV1s in the world. Better yet, if the registration is still valid, one of an even smaller handful that are road legal! This one likely had a puncture at some point so is riding on its spare wheel and tyre.

The green text on the right-rear quarter panel best translates to “Environmentally friendly vehicle”. From the outside this EV1 appears to be in decent shape.

The interior looks to be in almost perfect shape except for what appears to be tape around the base of the shifter, other than that it really is beautifully preserved.

Taped on the inside of the windscreen was this piece of paper. Translation:

Pure electric : America GM EV1
Experimental vehicle
(Official car)
Testing from June 1998 to May 2003

It seems posible that this car hasn’t actually been operational for 15 years. It becoming inactive after May 2003 coincides with when GM decided to recall all vehicles in the US and eventually scrap the majority of them. Obviously this car hasn’t been scrapped, likely just disabled. However as I said before, this may not be the case at all.

This EV1 had a pass for the 2012 Guangzhou International Green New Energy Vehicle Equipment Technology Forum and exhibition. Sadly I have not been able to find any photographs of these cars at the exhibition.

Here is the very same car on August 12, 2000 during a visit by the attendees of the 15th Guangdong-Hong Kong- Macau Power Services Seminar.

The VIN number for the green EV1 was 4G5PX2259V0200614. I looked it up and found nothing interesting at all. The silver car came up with far juicier results. It seems likely that this green car was produced by GM with the sole intention of exporting it to China as there is no record of it ever even being registered in the US. Given the paper taped to the windscreen saying that it was used from June of 1998 and cars with similar vin numbers (this car would be V614 in the table) were delivered to US lessees in early 1998 I think my hypothesis is accurate.

The second remaining EV1 was this silver example. It seems to be in slightly better shape than the green one.

Looks like NEVEDA still washes their cars and keeps them in reasonable condition on purpose. Either that or it was raining.

The interior of the silver car was immaculate.

I looked up the vin (4G5PX2250V0200386) for the silver car and got this result:

Cars with vin numbers in the range of V386 were manufactured around January 1997 so the dates on this record make sense.

Yuehai EV6460N

The EV6460N was built by Guangdong Nanhai Yuehai Vehicle Modification Works. It has a capacity of 5 people and a maximum payload of just 200kg. The payload is so low because it uses good old fashioned lead-acid batteries with 20-6V batteries arranged in series for a system voltage of 120 volts. I say is/has because the car still exists. You can see it in the photo of the Chery electric car earlier in the article.

Toyota RAV4 EV

Unfortunately my friends weren’t able to capture all of the RAV4s, but they did get some photos of this particular car.

Judging by the ride height this car is likely on jack stands. The interesting thing about the RAV4 EVs is that they were made available to be sold to the public and indeed many continue to roam the streets of the US even today. Therefore there would be no need for NEVEDA to comply with mandatory deactivation orders like those that could potentially have come from GM with respect to their EV1s.

Her is a RAV4  with a different style of taxi sign attached on the roof, compared with the one seen when discussing the involvement of Toyota. In the first photo we see all the RAV4s in the lineup have this style of taxi sign.

Citroën Berlingo électrique

Citroën provided a Berlingo électrique to NEVEDA for testing purposes. Sadly we know nothing more than that and these are the only pictures we have. It has a payload of 516kg, 162v electrical system and by August 21, 2004 had only been driven 1,878km.

Where is NEVEDA now?

NEVEDA still exists and at least some of the cars are still on their property. I was told by my friends who visited NEVEDA that the vehicles they saw and photographed are not all the cars left and that there is another parking area somewhere where more cars are stored. For example, he told me that the Berlingo is still there but in this storage area.

My friends were very lucky to get as close to these vehicles as they did, apparently entry is very limited and only after sweet talking the employees were they able to gain access, limited though it may have been. NEVEDA does seem to have slowed down its operations given that nowadays car manufacturers are testing there own cars and technologies and the need for a place like NEVEDA is less obvious. Their website is also straight out of the 1990’s (www.cev.com.cn) Having said that I hope that one day I can visit myself and see the full extent of what could now be considered a car collection more than anything else. Hopefully they can restore all the cars to running condition.

References and acknowledgements

This article would have been a lot less interesting were it not for the generousity of my friends Mercedes560 and ZDModel. Their photos are a precious resource that they were generous enough to share with me and allowed me to share them with all of you. Acknowledgement must also be made to the Weibo users who first visited in 2014. Tychos previous article about the EV1s and references to their Weibo accounts can be found here.

A plea for information

Whilst I have given you an overview of NEVEDAs operations, I would still very much like to know more about the deals between NEVEDA and the different automakers. Therefore, if you have any information about these deals please do not hesitate to contact me by sending an email to samfaulkner@chinacarhistory.com.