Inside the world’s biggest car graveyard that houses over 100,000 vehicles
Published on Aug 31, 2023 at 6:15 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Sep 01, 2023 at 12:11 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Kate Bain
This is the world’s biggest car graveyard.
It is the resting place of over 100,000 vehicles, abandoned by their owners at one point and brought here to rot.
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The biggest car graveyard in the world is located in China, in a city named Hangzhou, not too far from Shanghai.
And there’s a very good reason for this.
Chinese motorists are buying cars at an incredible rate, and China is now an important market for just any car manufacturer.
At the same time, the Chinese government spent the last few years clamping down on emissions, targeting gas- and diesel-powered cars to favor EV adoption.
It’s a recipe we’ve seen before: hefty taxes on gas cars on one hand, and equally sizable grants and tax breaks on EVs on the other.
And it’s working.
The Chinese are getting rid of old bangers to buy new shiny cars – especially in the big cities.
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There are over 360 million cars circulating in China at the moment and the average Chinese motorist buys a new car every 5.5 years.
At that rate, car graveyards fill up pretty quickly.
In fact, this graveyard is also home to old taxis, motorcycles and scooters.
And precisely because people are buying so many new cars, old electric cars are also becoming part of the problem.
There’s another gigantic graveyard in China and this one’s reserved for unsold EVs.
Sure, this is not as big the other one, as in there aren’t 100,000+ vehicles in here.
But it’s still pretty bad, with an estimated 6,000+ vehicles resting here, waiting to be sold.
Or scrapped.
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