Electric cars are the talk of the town at the moment, with automated vehicles following closely behind. It seems as though every manufacturer on the planet wants to bring out the biggest and brightest electric car, but there is one country who is dominating more than any other. China.

Taking Over

As of April 2018, Chinese car manufacturers accounted for around 37% of all electric cars sold in the world, and a whopping 99% of their e-buses. Both Europe and North America have been trailing behind, with less than a quarter of all electric cars sold each. With growth like this, it’s estimated that China could account for nearly half of all electric cars sold in the next couple of years.

Chinese Government

The surge in electric vehicles in China has nothing to do with market economics, however, and has everything to do with the Chinese government. For the last decade, the government has been pouring money into the electric car market. Generous subsidiaries and tax incentives have been offered to both the manufacturers and drivers, and there have been restrictions put in place on the sale and use of any car that isn’t electric. The Chinese government have also been working on creating an electric car charging infrastructure that makes it easier than ever to own an EV.

Daily Lives

With all of the money and hard work the Chinese government has been putting into electric cars, it comes as no surprise to learn that EVs have become part of daily life in the country. Shenzhen, for example, is the only city in the world that runs solely on electric buses. However, North America is hot on the heels of China, particularly as it’s home to Tesla – one of the biggest electric car manufacturers in the world.

In the battle for electric vehicle dominance, it seems as though China is leading the way right now. However, will all of that change as Tesla keeps working on bigger and better models? Only time will tell.

Friendship is important and most of us have at least a few people that we can run to and confide in when needed. Unfortunately, sometimes the people we thought were our friends show their true colors in a truly upsetting display. These people had to deal with the consequences of realizing their friends weren’t who they thought they were.

It’s natural to be nervous about how a group of friends will react to a new significant other. I was personally thrilled when my new girlfriend was accepted into my social circle with open arms. Later, things completely fell apart when I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me with someone else from the group. It only got worse when everyone else in the group opted to “not take sides” rather than admitting that what their friend did was wrong.

When you run into a friend at the store, you usually hope that it will lighten up running regular errands. When I saw who I assumed were my friends, though, that’s not exactly what happened. Instead, I heard whispers between my two friends asking each other if it was really me and shushing each other as to not raise my attention. I pretended I never saw them but was heartbroken, especially since one of these “friends” had served as my maid of honor only two months before.

I was a part of a group of six friends who hung out together fairly frequently. One day, they decided to go out and play basketball. The bad news is that when they went to shoot hoops, they neglected to invite me. Even worse, they stopped near my house to use my WiFi to message someone else to join them. The only way I found out I was left out was when I ran into them during some errands.

Sometimes, friends can’t make it to everything we do and it can be frustrating when they don’t show up for us. On the other hand, there are certain times when it means a lot to have your friends there because it’s likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was planning my bachelorette party with a guest list of more than 10 people. Everyone gave their RSVP only to cancel right before the party was supposed to happen. This left me with only one attendee – my maid of honor.

It’s hard not to hear from a friend for a while but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the friendship is suffering. However, how a friend contacts you after a long absence matters. When I didn’t hear from my close friend for months, I wasn’t too worried. This changed when I finally heard back from my friend. The problem was that it was a group message with 12 other people inviting us all into a multi-level marketing project our “friend” was recruiting people into.

Questioning friendships after high school isn’t uncommon, but that doesn’t mean its easy. I realized that when I talked to my high school friends after graduation, I was always initiating the conversation – they never contacted me first. So, I decided to conduct an experiment. I stopped texting my friends to see how long it would take for them to contact me first. Unfortunately, after about three months, I realized that they weren’t going to respond and I fell out with my long-time friend group.

When you go on vacation, there are certain things you have to make sure are in order. For example, I needed to make sure that my dog was taken care of while I was away. Luckily, there was a friend around to volunteer. The bad news is that they didn’t exactly carry through on their promise. Instead of stopping by, they failed to come over to regularly let the dog out and give him water. In the end, I kept my dog but made sure to leave my unreliable friend behind.

A good friend is always there to help their friends in need. That’s what I did – every time my friend’s marriage started to struggle, I was there to pick up the phone and serve as a shoulder to cry on. One day, though, I had a realization: I never heard from this friend during good times and the friend was never concerned with how I was doing. This made me more feel like a stand-in when their husband was failing rather than a true friend they cared about.

Throwing a party takes a lot of work and planning. That’s why I was so upset when this happened after I planned a big Super Bowl party for my friends and me. However, after taking measures such as mounting a TV and buying a new grill, I got a text that ruined everything. It was my friends telling me that they decided that they were celebrating at another friend’s house and I should just bring his snacks over. Ultimately, I didn’t go and didn’t throw another party for the group after that.

I didn’t personally experience this betrayal but I did watch it happen. The background for the story is that someone threw items like eggs and rocks at my car and even broke my windshield. To get answers, I put a poster on the car that promised a reward for information. Within a few hours, I got exactly what I asked for. The responsible party’s friends were at my house shortly, telling me exactly what happened for only $10 apiece as a reward.

It isn’t just adults that realize their friends aren’t who they thought they were. When I was in elementary school, I had a friend who I bonded with over our love of video games. One day, I got on the bus and went to sit with my friend only for them to tell me we weren’t friends. I was heartbroken, but I realized later that it was good that I wasn’t friends for long when the kid started to act more like a bully.

Throughout a friendship, certain memories build up. For instance, every friend group has its own set of inside jokes and fun memories to look back on. That’s why I was so confident during a game at a party to ask my friends to name one special or funny memory they had with me. Instead of stories, though, I got a crowd of people staring at me in silence. Eventually, someone told a fake story and everyone moved on to the next person.

When I was in middle school,I planned a sleepover for the night of the Spring Fling. The bad news for me was that all my friends told me that their parents wouldn’t let them over. This wasn’t the truth. Instead, all of my friends were having a sleepover together at someone else’s house that they didn’t invite me too. I found out when I overheard them talking about it in the parking lot one day.

While getting used to a new job, I tried to make some new friends out of some of their colleagues. It was just us sitting around one day when they asked to see a picture of their cat. So, I pulled out my phone to show my new friends. Despite immediately putting my phone away before anyone else came in and the meeting started, I was written up later that week for having my phone out. In other words, my new “friends” had reported them.

To stay in touch, our group of five friends made a weekly goal to go out and enjoy a night together. Then, we would split the bill amongst us to cover the cost. One night, I couldn’t make it to the weekly night out which didn’t cause a problem at first. What did cause a problem was when my friends started asking me to pay part of the bill for drinks I didn’t drink. They didn’t stop until I’d paid that portion either.

In a huge group gathering, many people expect that they won’t like everyone there. Yet, that doesn’t mean that we expect our true friends to act differently in reaction to being in a group. When I was photographed with a group that was made up mostly of my friends, someone made a rude comment about me being in the picture. I was then delegated to the photographer with the excuse that I was the best one but it was obvious that it was to keep me out of the picture.

Jokes between friends are one thing but cruel pranks are another. That’s the distinction I learned when my group of friends kept pulling pranks such as having people date me just to make me upset in the long run. When I talked to members of the group individually, I asked why and made it clear that it hurt me. They just said that my reactions were funny and that I should learn to take a joke. Hurt, I left the group after that and never looked back.

When I was in college, I forged a tentative relationship with my roommate. While we became friends, we did have our issues. Namely, my roommate would cause drama in a club we were in together. This didn’t seem like a problem until my roommate started spreading lies in our mutual friend group about how I was the bad guy. Then, they started to demand money and it only stopped when we stopped being roommates thanks to the offending roommate’s academic probation.

Sometimes, friendship isn’t just reliant on how people treat you. Rather, it sometimes depends on the way that your friends treat the living creatures around you – both other friends and pets. Overall, I thought my friends were fairly good to me. One day, though, I caught them throwing rocks at my dog. I ended the friendship right there and when they called a few months later, I told them to never contact me again.

When you’re younger, getting grounded can seem like the end of the world. After all, how are you going to see your friends when you aren’t allowed to leave the house? When I was a teenager, I was thrilled when my period of being grounded ended and the first thing I did was to visit my friends. My friends told me that they missed me because they had to walk everywhere. At the time, I was the only one with a car in the group.

During middle school, my friends and I were getting together to celebrate a friend’s party. Along with my three best friends, I decided that we weren’t going to swim at the party. When I showed up at the party, I saw my friends with towels and bathing suits. As it turns out, they had a phone call the night before where they all changed their mind and didn’t bother filling me in on the change of plans. This left me alone to entertain myself while everyone else spent time in the pool.

Back in the day, when AOL messaging was a popular way for people to keep in touch, I had started talking to a girl I liked online and we were really hitting it off. Then, I accidentally left my messenger window open and one of my friends took an opportunity. Unfortunately, he used the chance to send mean messages to the girl. I, the real person she’d been talking to, could never quite convince her that my friend was responsible after all and my chance with her was blown.

There are certain things that friends can tease each other over. At the same time, there are other topics that should never be brought up. These friends found that their favorite thing to tease me about was my weight. I told them how hurtful it was more than once, only for them to tell me that I was being too sensitive. I dumped my friends but their hurtful comments still stick with me.

A trip to a cabin in the woods is usually a lot more fun than certain scary movies would have us believe. That’s why I begged my friends for years to make a trip to a cabin I found with me. Each time, everyone said no. Then, someone slipped up during conversation and mentioned they were going there for one of the group’s boyfriend’s birthday. He didn’t like me and banned everyone from inviting me to make sure I wasn’t there. Worse, I lived with some of the friends in the group at the time.

When people plan their wedding, it can take on many forms. A common theme, however, his friends and family coming together to celebrate the couple’s serious union. As the groom, I invited all of my friends to our wedding but on the big day, my worst fear came true. Except for my best man and one other person, none of the friends I’d invited showed up. I don’t think it was an intentional snub since many came from different social circles but it still hurt all the same.

The death of a loved one is one of the hardest things a person can go through. As such, it’s a time where they need their friends’ support. When I lost my father, I needed my friends’ support but they didn’t even show up to the funeral. Instead, I was accompanied by two neighbors that I didn’t know very well, but who eventually replaced the friends who failed to help me in my time of need.

For this story, we’ll nickname my old friend “Charlie”. At first, Charlie was a great friend. Then, they started asking for more including measures like moving in with my parents. Charlie gradually started calling my pets their own and even wearing my clothes and staying in my childhood room. One day, Charlie even went out with my my ex-boyfriend and “forgot” to tell me. Eventually, Charlie continued to ask for more, even encroaching on current relationships and I realized that I had to finally cut the cord.

I was very excited when my birthday was right around the corner. I had big plans but eventually, my friends dropped out one-by-one only days in advance. One such person was my best friend, who didn’t like the movie we were supposed to go see but made her boyfriend make the call to cancel. Later on, we got into an argument about it and no one else in the friend group bothered to call me again, effectively ruining our relationships.

There are plenty of people that have a poor sense of time. For instance, they show up to gatherings late or linger too long. I had to deal with a friend like this. I warned my friend that they had to be out by 10 a.m. the next morning because I had to work but they lingered far too long. When they finally did leave, they left without a word. This meant no thank you for letting them spend the night, for breakfast, or an apology for the inconvenience their tardiness caused.

When you’re shy in class, it isn’t rare to lean towards a friend rather than raising a hand. This is how I felt when I leaned to a friend to ask if someone was drawing a refraction diagram incorrectly. I quickly realized otherwise and said forget it but the teacher caught the conversation and demanded an explanation. The other student knew that the teacher didn’t like me very well and told them what happened. This ended up in the teacher calling me up to the front of the class to embarrass me about the mistake.

When Jurassic World came out, I was thrilled to see it with all of my friends. About 16 of us were set to go and all the tickets were purchased. The friend buying the tickets contacted me a day before the show to tell them they forgot to buy my ticket. After a while of arguing and excuses, the truth came out. He had given my ticket away to his new girlfriend, effectively kicking me out of a night that I’d been looking forward to and already paid for.

I had a group of friends in college that they hung out with regularly. However, as friends, these individuals did the bare minimum for me. We frequently hung out on campus together, but the other friends would make plans to hang out outside of school that they never included me in on. Even worse, they’d make the plans right in front of me. They didn’t even bother to ask me if I wanted to come along.

I threw the party of a lifetime for a group of kids when I was younger. This included a group of 15 kids with access to dodgeball, a pool, kickball, Nerf gun wars, video games, and plenty of food. In the middle of the night, the guests wanted to sneak out. I said no because I knew my parents would be mad but they ended up making an excuse and leaving anyway. Not only was the party soured, but the child who stayed also got in trouble for letting the partygoers leave. Not only that, I got in trouble the next day for letting them go.

Sometimes it isn’t the action of one friend that ruins a bond. Rather, it’s the action of a group of friends that changes the dynamic of a relationship. Being a part of a group is an important social distinction for people. So, when I kept inviting their friends out only to be turned down, I was disappointed. The situation only went further downhill when I found out the group was going on a yearly trip and purposefully excluding me.

If a friend puts your life in danger, it’s pretty widely expected that they should have a good reason. When I was younger, I had a friend who did just this, but he didn’t have a good reason. I was driving when I heard a loud noise and realized there was suddenly a hole in the windshield in front of me. It turns out that my friend had accidentally fired a gun they were unwisely fiddling within the backseat. He even swore me to secrecy so he wouldn’t get in trouble.