Why is there a white screen after installing vue via cli?

Question

npm

do the following install cli globally
sudo npm install --global vue-cli
install the project in a folder and configure

vue init webpack-simple testCli

Target directory exists. Continue? Yes
? Project name test-cli
? Project description test project for cli 
? Author Name <[email protected]>
? Use sass? Yes

go to the folder and initialize the project

cd testCli
npm install

here are the versions

node -v
v8.2.1
npm -v
5.3.0

system ubuntu 17.04