Shentucar original
Author | Liu Dandan Zhou Jifeng
Edit | dawn
Due to environmental protection issues, BYD has recently been pushed to the forefront of public opinion.
On May 7, the topic of "bydir factory pollution is suspected of causing nosebleeds to many children" appeared on Weibo hot search, and many residents of Yuhua District in Changsha, Hunan Province, said that the exhaust gas emitted by BYD factories near the community smelled pungent, and many children in the community had nosebleeds.
In response to this situation, BYD responded through Weibo that night: the discharge of the park complies with the relevant national laws and regulations and standards, and "excessive emissions cause nosebleeds" is a malicious fabrication of the association; on May 8, the Changsha Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government set up an investigation team to organize government functional departments, third-party testing agencies and relevant experts to enter the BYD Yuhua District factory to carry out investigations.
But the online discussion of BYD pollution has not subsided, and there have even been pictures of residents pulling banners.
For new energy vehicles, one of the recognized labels is - green environmental protection, why do new energy vehicle companies that have always been known for environmental protection now have pollution problems? Why is the Changsha BYD plant, which was put into operation in 2012, accused of emitting polluting gases 10 years later?
Who is the source of pollution?
"The smell of dung is the feeling of growing vegetables and applying farm manure." After brushing the relevant microblog of the BYD factory in Changsha, Xiao Song, who lives in changsha's Yuhua District, realized that he was not the only one who smelled this smell.
"I usually don't pay much attention to work during the day, but when I come home from work, the smell starts to appear at seven or eight o'clock in the evening, and then continues until midnight." Xiao Song told Shen Tu that she thought that there was a problem with the facilities of the community, but she did not expect that it might be caused by the factory next door.
The factory next door to Xiao Song's mouth, Changsha BYD, is only 306 meters away from the Baitian Jiayuan where she lives, which is also the center of this public opinion storm.
According to the information of Tianyancha, Changsha BYD Automobile Co., Ltd. was established on August 11, 2009, and its business scope includes automobile vehicles, automobile body, trailer manufacturing, etc., located in Changsha Yuhua Economic Development Zone (formerly Hunan Environmental Protection Science and Technology Industrial Park), which was one of the largest automobile projects in Hunan at that time.
After several capital increases and expansions, at present, the BYD factory in Changsha, which covers an area of about 4,000 acres, has become the most complete central China HEADQUARTERS base with the most complete industrial chain such as BYD vehicles, three electric core technologies and intelligent terminals, and can produce Dynasty Network models Qin PLUS DM-i, Song MAX DM-i, YuanPro, Ocean Network Models Dolphin, Destroyer 05, e2, e3 and other passenger cars, K series, C series pure electric buses and core supporting components.
Such a behemoth has created tens of thousands of jobs for Changsha in the past decade, but it has brought unexpected trouble to residents living near Bydy's factory in Changsha.
"Since the beginning of May this year, every night there has been a strange smell like paint, especially until four o'clock in the morning, and this smell can be smelled in every room in my house." The pomegranate mother who lives in China Aviation City said that she did not associate the strange smell with the factory before, until the taste has become more and more serious recently, and everyone found that it was from the factory.
Generally speaking, the automobile manufacturing process includes stamping, welding, painting, assembly and powertrain, etc., of which painting is a more serious link that produces exhaust gases. An engineer from a car company told Shentu that the pungent smell smell of pomegranate mothers may be substances emitted in the painting process, mainly total hydrocarbons, methane, benzene, toluene, xylene, non-methane total hydrocarbons, etc., collectively known as volatile organic compounds (VOCS).
At the beginning of 2022, the Changsha Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment issued the "Changsha Key Enterprises (Units) Comprehensive Improvement Of Volatile Organic Compounds Publicity Table" also pointed to the problem to volatile organic compounds. According to the announcement data, before the rectification, the volatile organic compound production volume (t/a) of Changsha BYD Co., Ltd. was 1264.202, the organized emission of volatile organic compounds (t/a) was 708.355, and the fugitive emission of volatile organic compounds (t/a) was 87.381, all of which were problematic.
According to the announcement, BYD will complete the rectification of the painting process, recycling and VOCS monitoring by October this year. This means that as of now, the volatile organic compound emissions of the BYD plant in Changsha are still within the rectification period.
Source / official website file
In addition, the "Environmental Impact Report of The Stamping, Welding and Painting Technology Transformation Project of Changsha BYD Automobile Co., Ltd." released by the official website of Changsha Yuhua Economic Development Zone in December last year also clearly mentioned that BYD's existing environmental protection problem - volatile organic compounds (VOCS) has not taken measures.
For online public opinion, BYD's official Weibo responded on May 7 that "nosebleeds caused by excessive emissions" are malicious fabrications, have been reported to the police, and will be held legally responsible for relevant personnel.
But as a member of the rights defense residents, Pomegranate Mother can't figure out how it became a malicious fabrication to ask for an explanation for a child with nosebleeds?
Source / Courtesy of respondent
"Since April this year, my family's always healthy children have had nosebleeds 4 times, and we have counted more than 1,000 affected households, and today I also saw a neighbor who lives in Bochang Perfume Song sending her children nosebleeds in the group." Pomegranate's mother told Fukado: "We don't need compensation, we just don't want our children to be hurt anymore." ”
Is BYD wrong?
Judging from the completion time, the BYD plant in Changsha has been in operation for ten years, but why has it suddenly fallen into a pollution storm until recently?
In the view of Wanjin, a resident near the factory, this has a lot to do with BYD's sales, "In the past few years, BYD's production is not so much, so the emissions are not too high, but now BYD sales have soared, and in the past two months, I have seen the factory at three or four o'clock in the middle of the night and seen that the factory is still lit up, and I feel that production has not stopped." ”
This statement is also basically consistent with the feelings of the mother pomegranate. "I smelled paint twice last fall, but there was a community nearby at that time, so I wasn't sure if it was from the factory, but then after the construction of the community stopped, this year there was this smell again, and I suspected that it was a factory problem." Pomegranate mother also told Shentu that the nearest Jinghuan community has begun to defend its rights because of the peculiar smell, and the recent rights protection has been particularly fierce.
So, how much production pressure is the BYD plant facing in Changsha?
ACCORDING TOD's latest production and sales data, BYD's sales reached 106,000 units in April this year, an increase of 134.4% year-on-year; from January to April, the cumulative sales volume was 397,000 units, an increase of 166.05% year-on-year. For the whole of 2021, BYD's new car sales volume was 730,000 units. This means that in just four months this year, BYD has exceeded half of last year's total sales.
In contrast, Wei Xiaoli, a new car-making force that is optimistic about the market, has experienced a decline in delivery in April this year because of supply chain and production capacity problems, of which the delivery volume of Ideal and Weilai is almost waist-cutting.
The rapid growth of sales has brought BYD not only the expansion of the market, but also the production capacity pressure of each production base.
It is understood that ATD currently has 8 vehicle manufacturing bases in Shenzhen, Xi'an, Changsha, Hefei, Changzhou, Fuzhou, Zhengzhou and Jinan. Among them, the three major bases in Shenzhen, Xi'an and Changsha were built earlier, with production capacity of about 20,000, 60,000 and 30,000 respectively, and the remaining five bases are brand new factories built in recent years, some of which have just been put into production and some of which have not yet been built.
Among them, the Changsha plant is the only production base of BYD's DM-i power core electrical components in the country, that is to say, all BYD DM-i orders can only be produced through the Changsha factory.
It is worth noting that since BYD stopped production of fuel vehicles in March this year, DM-i has become BYD's fastest-growing model, and its contribution to sales is increasing. Data from BYD shows that in March and April this year, BYD DM-i model sales increased by 615.2% and 313.22% respectively, reaching 50,674 units and 48,072 vehicles, accounting for 48.5% and 45.5% of the total sales volume of the month.
The pressure to double the capacity of this growth fell on the Changsha plant.
In response to the surging demand in the market, BYD invested 3.7 billion yuan last year to expand its Changsha plant in two phases to produce BYD DM-i products, of which the first phase was completed and put into operation in July 2021, and the second phase is expected to be officially put into operation in May 2022.
Hunan Daily once reported that the staff of Yuhua Economic Development Zone fought "white + black" and "5 + 2" to make room for this first-phase project within two months. At present, the first phase of the project has formed a monthly production capacity of 60,000 sets of electric assemblies, fully supporting all DM-i models of BYD Automobile, and 5 production lines in the workshop are started synchronously, and a motor can be rolled off the production line every 3 minutes.
Despite this, for BYD's hot sales, production capacity still can't keep up. At the end of March, the minutes of THE BYD investor meeting revealed that BYD's cumulative undelivered orders reached 400,000 units and are still increasing month by month.
A video circulating on the Internet shows that the relevant person in charge of BYD said: "This project (referring to Changsha Yuhua Industrial Park) has invested more than 10 billion yuan before and after, and it is unrealistic to stop production." At present, BYD is making a plan to try to make a rectification plan in May to minimize the odor of the emitted gas so that the surrounding residents cannot feel it. ”
Source / Phoenix.com
Before this year, BYD had also been exposed to pollution suspicions many times.
In 2016, residents of Zhenyeluan Valley and Zhenye Tianluan in Baohe Area of Longgang District, Shenzhen, repeatedly reflected the pungent odor of BYD Baolong Industrial Park, and after on-site verification by the Fourth Central Environmental Protection Inspection Group, the source was finally confirmed to be the battery processing workshop of BYD Baolong Industrial Park. To this end, BYD invested more than 38 million yuan to solve the odor problem of Baolong Industrial Park.
In 2021, in the "List of Public Information on the Transfer of Mass Letters and Visits and The Reform of Supervision and Reform (24th Batch)" published on the official website of the Department of Ecology and Environment of Hunan Province, the BYD manufacturing plant in Yuhua District of Changsha City was named for the serious paint smell of the painting workshop and the problem of affecting the lives of residents.
As of press time, OND has not replied to the latest progress in the improvement of the smell of the factory in Changsha Yuhua District.
Are new energy vehicles really environmentally friendly?
Since the birth of new energy vehicles have been marked with low-carbon environmental protection labels, many car companies have also used this as a selling point and gimmick.
In the process of use, the new energy vehicle has no exhaust emissions, which is indeed clean enough to be environmentally friendly. However, from the perspective of its whole life cycle, new energy vehicles are not as clean and environmentally friendly as many people think.
First of all, in terms of the fuel used, the energy that drives the electric vehicle is electricity. But electricity is a secondary energy source. Different power generation methods have different carbon emission intensities, wind power generation and hydropower generation are cleaner and more environmentally friendly, and the carbon dioxide emissions of thermal power generation are the most serious.
Unfortunately, in China, thermal power generation accounts for the majority. According to the "2020 National Electric Power Industry Statistical Express" released by the Planning and Development Department of the China Electricity Council, thermal power accounts for the largest proportion of the mainland power structure, as high as 68%. Thermal power is mainly fueled by coal, which generates a large number of environmental pollutants in the process of power generation. For every 1kWh of electrical energy used by the end user, thermal power plants emit 0.86 kg of carbon dioxide.
Specific to the production and manufacture of automobiles, stamping, welding, painting... The various production processes of automobiles cannot avoid pollution and high energy consumption, even if it is a new energy vehicle.
Taking painting as an example, this link is currently recognized as the link with the most emissions of three wastes in the global automobile manufacturing and production process. During the automotive spraying process, a large amount of waste gas, wastewater and solid waste is generated.
Source / pexels
Even Tesla, the planet's greenest-looking electric car company, continues to receive fines from environmental authorities.
In February, for example, Tesla paid a $275,000 fine to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Why was Tesla fined? The EPA said in a statement that from October 2016 to September 2019, Tesla failed to "develop or implement a work practice plan to minimize harmful air pollutant emissions from the storage and mixing of materials in car painting operations."
In China, in April 2021, the Environmental Protection Organization Public Environment Research Center and the Green Jiangnan Public Environmental Concern Center released the "Tesla Under the Halo - New Energy Vehicle Environmental Problem Research Report 1", which pointed out many problems in Tesla's supply chain environmental management in China.
In Germany, on April 11, 15,000 litres of paint mixture were leaked at the Tesla Gigafactory, according to environmental agencies and water management agencies, and the Green Alliance, a German environmental group, is preparing to launch an action aimed at revoking the factory's business license.
There is also the battery, which is the heart of an electric car. But just by extracting raw materials from the ore, pollution has already begun. We take the most mainstream power battery as an example, the core raw material of lithium battery is lithium salt.
Lithium mining requires the use of a lot of water, and in Chile's atacama province, mining activities consume 65% of the region's water. According to environmental groups, extracting lithium inevitably damages the soil and leads to air pollution.
The power battery industry also faces a thorny recycling problem. The service life of a power battery is only 5-8 years. According to the research report of Soochow Securities, it is expected that the recycling demand for lithium batteries will be 83GWh in 2022 and 1318GWh by 2035. These large number of decommissioned power batteries, if not handled properly, are prone to leakage, explosion, spontaneous combustion, and serious harm to the environment.
Wang Jingzhong, vice chairman of the China Battery Industry Association, once pointed out to the media that although lithium batteries do not contain mercury, cadmium and other toxic heavy metal elements, the electrolyte solute lithium hexafluorophosphate is a toxic substance and easy to deliquescence, and reacts with trace moisture in the air to generate hydrofluoric acid, which will cause fluorine pollution.
In China, some decommissioned batteries have flowed into informal "black workshops", which has also increased the hidden dangers of environmental pollution.
From raw materials to production and manufacturing, to scrap treatment, new energy vehicles that look environmentally friendly actually have the possibility of polluting the environment everywhere. For new energy vehicle companies like BYD, they bear a low-carbon, environmentally friendly green aura and enjoy subsidies and other preferential treatment, and now, in terms of environmental protection, it is time for them to assume corresponding responsibilities.
*The caption image is from Visual China. At the request of the interviewees, Xiao Song, Pomegranate Mother, and Wanjin were pseudonyms.
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