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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/opinion/gm-ford-electric-vehicles.html>
"It happened very quickly, so fast that you might not have noticed it. Over the
past few months, America’s Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and
Stellantis, the oddly named company that owns Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep — landed
in big trouble.
I realize this may sound silly. Ford, General Motors and Stellantis made
billions in profit last year, even after a long strike by autoworkers, and all
three companies are forecasting a big 2024. But recently, the Big Three found
themselves outmaneuvered and missing their goals for electric vehicle sales at
the same time that a crop of new affordable, electrified foreign cars appeared,
ready to flood the global market.
About a decade ago, America bailed out the Big Three and swore it wouldn’t do
that again. But the federal government is going to have to help the Big Three
and the rest of the U.S. car market again very soon. And it has to do it in the
right way — now — to avoid the next auto bailout.
The biggest threat to the Big Three comes from a new crop of Chinese
automakers, especially BYD, which specialize in producing plug-in hybrid and
fully electric vehicles. BYD’s growth is astounding: It sold three million
electrified vehicles last year, more than any other company, and it now has
enough production capacity in China to manufacture four million cars a year.
But that isn’t enough: It’s building factories in Brazil, Thailand, Hungary and
Uzbekistan, to produce even more cars, and it may soon add Indonesia and Mexico
to that list. A deluge of electric vehicles is coming.
BYD’s cars deliver great value at prices that beat anything coming out of the
West. This month BYD unveiled a plug-in hybrid that gets decent all-electric
range and will retail for just over $11,000. How can it do that? Like other
Chinese manufacturers, BYD benefits from its home country’s lower labor costs,
but this explains only some of its success. The fact is that BYD and other
Chinese automakers like Geely, which owns Volvo Cars and Polestar brands, are
very good at making cars. They have leveraged China’s dominance of the battery
industry and automated production lines to create a juggernaut.
The Chinese automakers, especially BYD, represent something new in the world.
They signal that China’s decades-long accretion of economic complexity is
almost complete: Whereas the country once made toys and clothes and then made
electronics and batteries, now it makes cars and airplanes. What’s more, BYD
and other Chinese automakers are becoming virtually global car companies,
capable of manufacturing electric cars that can compete directly with
gas-burning cars on cost."
Via Allan Davidson and Dave Farber
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
