China's priorities seem to be technology leadership (to maximize global exports), independence from Mideast oil (thus the switch to EVs) and, then, third, concern for the environment.
Great question. Volvo is doing very well in Europe, okay in the US and struggling in China. That suits Geely just fine. The goal is to be competitive globally and Volvo brand gets them going in that direction.
I'm sure that many people "saw the avalanche coming." But they were close to retirement, and had golden parachutes in case things went sideways. They didn't care--because they were already going "to get theirs." Let the next guy figure it out.
What strikes me as odd, is the technology sharing. You can't manufacture in China without sharing your technology with the state [Chinese government]. Once they have enough tech, they will just run with it on their own.
Knowing that, the abruptness of this turn was also very easy to see coming.
I believe that most western share holders were lulled into believing that China was a cash cow. But they misunderstood the Chinese from the beginning. The Chinese aren't stupid. The western companies who rushed to China seeking an emerging market were easily tricked. They took on all of the developmental costs, which take years to overcome, and the Chinese just ran with the tech.
I see this as more of an, "I'm going to become rich, and I'm soon out of the game anyway. I don't care what happens. I'll make my money while I can, sell my shares, then get out."
Rinse and repeat. Welcome to the world automaker former CEO club.
Chinese nationalism isn’t the core reason why this has happened. Everyone has an affinity for the country they’re born in. However the Chinese are also intensely pragmatic. There’s a reason why all those foreign ICE cars were selling over Chinese ICE models.
I haven’t sat in a BYD until I recently moved back to China and was really impressed by it. Same for the huawei cars at a showroo
This is just as an objective western born guy who recently lived in the US and Australiawho has had a family preference for toyotas. These big legacy automakers were content to sit on their brand recognition and didn’t think they had to innovate. Whoops.
Here’s a test, bring a bunch of 7 year old kids who don’t have any nationalistic bias and see which car they think is the coolest. My son was raving about how much cooler the Chinese minivan we sat in was over our Honda odyssey.
I only realised, once I moved to Asia 13+ years ago, how faster Chinese companies could iterate and innovate. A speed that very few people in the western world can understand.
The 996 culture and the hunger for success is a big contributor, and interesting to live and watch.
It's shocking that after decades in China, with top executives earning millions, global automakers failed to see the avalanche coming. Did none of them notice the market shifting towards local tastes and rising nationalism? It seems like these highly-paid executives were too busy enjoying easy afternoons to understand the real China, making this disaster almost inevitable.
For years, Chinese consumers have been leaning more towards local brands in sectors like fashion, clothes, shoes, and mobile phones. The trend was clear: Western brands were losing their appeal, and even Japanese brands like UNIQLO weren't immune. Yet, the Western business community still seems to think that Western superiority will carry them through, without truly understanding or respecting Chinese culture.
The rapid rise of electric vehicles (EVs) in China is a prime example. While foreign brands were caught off guard, Chinese automakers took the lead, supported by government initiatives and a keen understanding of local preferences. Now, Chinese brands like BYD dominate the EV market.
Nationalism has played a huge role here. The 'buy Chinese' sentiment has made foreign brands less attractive. This isn't just a consumer trend; many Chinese manufacturers are now independent of Western technology and equipment. This shift has been brewing for years, but Western automakers, perhaps too confident in their past successes, didn't adapt in time.
It's high time for Western businesses to rethink their strategies in China. The assumption that Western products are inherently superior is outdated. To succeed in China, businesses need a deeper, more respectful understanding of the local market and culture.
You are a bit behind the times, China reached 51% EV market share in July. Probably 50% or higher by December, as Chinese PHEVs are now cost competitive with ICE vehicles. 2025 will be an absolute wipeout for the foreign manufacturers in China, even Tesla is losing market share.
Interesting about GM supplying Mexico from China, such is the utter hypocrisy of the US raising tariffs to 100% on Chinese imports and bullying Mexico not to help China export Mexico-made cars to the US!
The thing to watch also is the auto parts. When VW/GM have millions of vehicle sales in mainland China, it means they have economy of scale to get very cheap parts and subsystem assemblies for their corresponding home operations in EU/US, with the cost of capital for the parts/subsystems carried by the Chinese domestic sales, and this then improves the value-added resulting from those components and carried by the vehicles final-assembled in their home market. Take away several million units per year, and the next generation of VW/GM auto parts made in China have to carry a bigger burden of the capital cost, and this reduces the value added of VW/GM's home market offshore operations..... Meanwhile, the still quite competent Toyota/Honda/Hyundai compete with VW/GM for shrinking markets that can't sustain all 5 of them any more
Toyota is barely competent in EVs. It can't meet demand for its few Prime plug-in hybrid models, its bZ4X is meh, it is the junior partner with BYD making the bZ3 and a new PHEV powertrain, and its solid-state battery tech that it says will be a breakthrough has been repeatedly delayed and will first appear in niche expensive models.
All while wasting billions on hydrogen (which is dead for land transportation) in a disastrous example of Japan Inc. groupthink. Toyota executives sold Tesla the NUMMI plant, invested in Tesla, saw Tesla's RAV4 EV conversion, must have seen Model S prototypes that was far better than its Avalon, yet decided to stick with cramped and slower HFCVs running on much more expensive or dirty fuel.
I mentioned them in the context of competition over the shrinking G7 share of the global ICE vehicle market - which still has a solid decade or more left in it. And Toyota is a formidable competitors, capable of holding their own in a price war, I'd argue better than its US or EU counterparts
That did not work for China, did it? Western Markets are still quite safe, as Chinese manufacturers have difficulties to adapt to the market conditions. So they better use the time and innovate the heck out of EVs.
What the article does not highlight is that China already is leading in the machines that make cells for batteries. By introducing tariffs Europe and the US will just delay a downfall - better to fight it with innovation.
China tried to succeed on the combustion engine side. They were hopeful, introduced a lot of measures, and they did not succeed. Only when they jumped on new technologies did they start to succeed.
They will simply delay the inevitable, as the Chinese crush the European makers not just in China but also Asia, MENA and Latin America before their factories in Hungary, Turkey, Belgium (Geely Volvo) and elsewhere in the EU kick into gear. And yes CATL, BYD and other Chinese battery manufacturers have about 70% of the global battery market. The Koreans and Panasonic are also rans, no European battery makers of any size.
Does anyone realize the overall pollution caused by mining materials for EVs? It is greater than ice engines and not by a little.
Also, what happens to the batteries when the vehicle comes to its inevitable demise?
I waited long and hard for the numbers. Any offset by ice total pollution during its life cycle is outweighed by the massive output of machines/technology in producing materials for ev’s.
Not correct. The Chinese do care about pollution--at least the "visible" pollution in the sky. Since my first trip to China in 2002 to my last in 2023 (mostly in Guangzhou), the pollution has gone from choking to usually beautiful clean skies. Guangzhou worked hard to remove polluting motor bikes and stinky cars. Now it's hard to see an ICE car on the streets. I'll agree that somewhere out there is a bunch of pollution and runoff from EV cars and battery production, but the skies are clean in many cities.
Do the math to realize your 35 mpg 1.5-ton gasser will burn through 10 TONS of gasoline over 120,000 miles. Most of the pollution and global warming comes from operation, not manufacturing. You didn't wait long and hard for the numbers, you just choose to be unaware of the lifecycle analyses (Exeter/Cambridge/Nijmeggen universities, Eindhoven U, ICTT, and IHS Markit), which all conclude that adding a 1/2-ton battery to make a BEV is less pollution and greenhouse gases overall than a comparable gasser., even when the current grid is primarily fossil fuel generation. The only debate is whether the BEV pulls ahead after 30,000, 15,000, or only 7,500 miles of efficient (100+ MPG equivalent!) operation. Since the majority of new generation is wind and solar everywhere in the world, every EV on the road will get cleaner still.
A dozen companies (American Battery Technology, Ascend Elements, Battery Resource, Brunp Recycling, Green Li-ion, Li-Cycle, Primobius, Redwood Materials, ReLIB, SMCC Recycling, Umicore, ...) are waiting for enough EV batteries to actually fail so they can ramp up operations. 95+% of the actually toxic lead-ACID batteries in cars are recycled; there's no reason bigger more valuable EV battery packs won't be recycled at similar rates.
You are incorrect. A study by VW showed that the CO2 breakeven point is somewhere between 75-100,000km. The batteries are forecast to last about this long. The best part about this study was that it was an ICE golf ve and eGolf. So same chasis, aero dynamics everything. We will get there eventually, maybe with silicon batteries, maybe other technologies yet to be invented or still in the development phase, of which there are many. However many car makers have already dropped lithium ion due to it's cost, complexity, CO2 footprint and fire risk - remember the car carrier that burnt for days?
Battery recycling also coming. We are however asking a toddler to compete in the Olympics. The technologies are not sufficiently evolved yet to be relied upon, especially at commercial scale. Let alone the inability of most grids to support a full EV fleet.
Be careful. The world is chock a block full of virtue signaling BS'rs from people who are more interested in ideologies than science, engineering and commerciality.
The sooner these morons (starting with technologically illiterate politicians) are removed from the public sphere and we listen to engineers we will have a chance to get to a better and greener future.
Spin any facts you want. Figures don’t lie but liars figure. I stand by my assertions. The amount of pollution to get the minerals outweighs the savings in pollution of EV’s.
And, as to my ownership of a battery/ice hybrid - MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS.
You just want your preconceived notions to be true. The amount of pollution to mine, ship, spill, refine, then deliver 20x more fossil fuels dwarfs that of producing batteries. Find ANY study that concludes otherwise.
The most important thing is that EV motors are a commodity while ICEs are extremely complex engineering work.
By pushing for EV, the ability to compete with engineering prowess, the forte of Germany and the USA, basically got destroyed.
On an EV level, they can not compete because everyone (but Tesla perhaps) completely ignored the digital age for over a decade and those that did not, thought that asking for 1k - 5k — potentially per year — is a fair price to integrate stone age mobile hardware instead of building the necessary expertise and brand loyality.
Not really a surprise seeing companies acting this way that abused the covid shortages getting crushed in a market that has skipped large parts of the ‘old industrial infrastructure’ - the same will happen in most of asia and africa for the very same reason.
If it weren’t for the hillarious import taxes in europe and america, it would happen here as well as nobody is interested in paying 50k - 100k for a car that isn’t worth half that or in case of EV is basically unsellable to a secondary market.
What’s shocking is that everybody claims that they didn’t see this coming. We had the same with the internet and e-commerce which both were trivial to ‘replicate’ and limited purely by industrial production capacity.
For EV the very same holds because everyone who did RC toys is in principle capable of creating key part of an EV as Tesla has shown using mostly off the shelf production techniques and investing in productivity gains and AI. That worked until China made both fields strategic key areas for their future but empowered it further with a focus on 5G and chip independence. As is, the west has no chance of even dreaming to compete because we ensured that even the western providers we have are so insanely expensive (in large parts due to bad incentives and even worse R&D impacting legislation and taxation) that we can not do the necessary scaling to get the order of magnitude productivity gain.
The AI Robot production news from BMW might be a light in the tunnel here but an expensive light given the european energy prices and limited access to the necessary raw materials. Tesla were among the few to think ahead and investing directly into raw material miners to ensure their battery production for example and they are willing to relocate away from destructive policies to stay on track with their goals.
Also, one of the things I see that's most overlooked is the outsourcing of automobile components--and IP (intellectual property).
I saw an interview with a (probably by now) former CEO of Ford, and he was going on about how Tesla can make a change in their software and push it out whenever they want. Ford would have to go through vendors, that have to work with other vendors to make a simple software change. But it got even worse, Ford's software isn't even owned by Ford! It's all farmed out.
Tesla kept everything in-house. That was a brilliant move, because they control their product.
Everything the US automakers have done was to maximize profits--only. That requires *tons* of tax write-offs, which in-turn leads to almost everything being farmed out. There was zero motive for forward-looking decision making, because forward looking decisions require investments *now*, decreasing profits in the short-term.
That's why since COVID I've seen more Kia and Hyundai automobiles running around town than anything else. They purchased chips ahead of the global shortage, when most other automakers backed down, because of a decrease in demand. That's forward thinking.
GM farmed out the Bolt to LG. But its Ultium powertraijn is a massive in-house bet on EVs and isn't based on tax write-offs; GM is spending billions on battery plants and Ultium car models.
As I remarked elsewhere, Tesla's in-house battery tech has yet to deliver all the advances it promised four years ago.
I wasn't speaking to the battery side of the industry. I was talking more about electronic control modules. A software update to the powertrain control, ABS, or any body control module on a Ford requires an "act of congress," before it can be completed--requiring multiple vendors to work on a simple code change.
It's like having to call company (1), company (2), and company (3), to get a software update for a door control module, because a battery saver feature on a heated mirror doesn't work right. All of the modules are made by various manufacturers, and each of those manufacturers owns their own code. But all of those modules have to work together in order for the change to be completed.
If there is an issue on a Tesla, they control nearly all of the software in-house.
Simple changes don't require 3-weeks worth of meetings and coordinating the required vendors to achieve a simple code change.
Ahh, right. Probably why VW is investing up to $5 billion in Rivian "as part of a new, equally controlled joint venture to share EV architecture and software."
You exaggerate the lack of demand for expensive EVs. At $100,000 Porsche Taycan and Rivians sell well. Meanwhile everyone and his dog hoped to sell $50,000 me-too EV crossovers; it's a large segment but few stand out against the Model Y and Chinese EVs.
EV motors are a commodity, but there's still value in better powertrain engineering. When buyers see past the "It recharges from 10-80% in only 25 minutes" to realize that some cars go much further with a smaller battery, they'll want the better tech. And batteries are critical tech where BYD and CATL appear to be well in the lead. The impressive set of battery advancements that Tesla announced on "Battery Day" was impressive four years ago, but the whole promise remains unfulfilled. Maybe Toyota will one day actually deliver on solid-state batteries.
"batteries are critical tech where BYD and CATL appear to be well in the lead", until that tech changes. The Chinese lead is based on current battery tech, and they are vastly improving it. But, there may be a quantum leap with batteries that don't use the current technology or the rare earths that the Chinese discount to their own manufacturers. Things could change very fast.
To your point, here's Mao Zedong on Army Day 1971, "In another 50 years China will be very strong, and by that time the Chinese Communist Party will be a hundred years old. America will most likely be very envious and restless, but it doesn’t dare attack China, not even with a single bullet. It will research germ contamination instead. That is very unconscionable. After it finishes with this unconscionable deed, imperialism will self-destruct”. Selected Works. 1971.7.1
Chairman Mao never cared much for foreigners, either?
Au contraire, mon brave! Mao wrote Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, offering to come to Washington to talk personally, “China must industrialize. This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict”. All ignored him. [Barbara Tuchman].
Who would have thought that threatening them, siding with Taiwan, arming Japan, imposing sanctions to any country the US doesn't like and thus getting China to worry in advance about being cut off themselves, would ever backfire?
I’m really not sure that’s the problem, here. The problem in the US has been short-termism, which meant that OEMs, dealers etc have all pushed hard to build a culture and policy environment that discouraged a shift to EVs and made as much money in the next quarter as possible. It would have been totally inconceivable for the US government to have funded hundreds of companies to invest in battery and EV motor tech for the last two decades, but that’s exactly what the Chinese government did, and it has paid off massively for them, not least because Chinese consumers aren’t emotionally invested in ICE vehicles over EVs (their culture wars focus on other topics…)
To be frank I think EVs are stupid stop gap (environmentally) and not really practical to replace ICE (anywhere in the proposed time-frames), and reducing cars should be the actual goal. Investment in rebuilding public transport, rail, walkable cities and suburbs.
The order has always been active transport > public transport > EVs >>>> ICE. The dramatically reduced noise, completely absent tailpipe emissions, massively cut carbon intensity over the lifecycle, reusability and then recyclability of the battery all make EVs transformatively better for health and wellbeing than ICE. But public transport is better still (and can be electrified too), and active transport is better than public transport (and some of that can be electrified too). But I will say that if you think it’s not practical to replace ICE with EVs in the proposed time frames, it’s… bold to think you’ll be able to build out the infrastructure to support active and public transport at scale in the US. For a start, you’d really need a second national rail system focused on passengers not freight.
(The point about practicality just always strikes me as really odd. Even in the US, the average daily driven distance is 40 miles, so a typical EV can go a week between charges (280 miles is well within the capability of a typical new EV). Here in the UK, we do half that distance on average, which is why I plug the car in about once a fortnight.)
China's priorities seem to be technology leadership (to maximize global exports), independence from Mideast oil (thus the switch to EVs) and, then, third, concern for the environment.
Great question. Volvo is doing very well in Europe, okay in the US and struggling in China. That suits Geely just fine. The goal is to be competitive globally and Volvo brand gets them going in that direction.
I'm sure that many people "saw the avalanche coming." But they were close to retirement, and had golden parachutes in case things went sideways. They didn't care--because they were already going "to get theirs." Let the next guy figure it out.
What strikes me as odd, is the technology sharing. You can't manufacture in China without sharing your technology with the state [Chinese government]. Once they have enough tech, they will just run with it on their own.
Knowing that, the abruptness of this turn was also very easy to see coming.
I believe that most western share holders were lulled into believing that China was a cash cow. But they misunderstood the Chinese from the beginning. The Chinese aren't stupid. The western companies who rushed to China seeking an emerging market were easily tricked. They took on all of the developmental costs, which take years to overcome, and the Chinese just ran with the tech.
I see this as more of an, "I'm going to become rich, and I'm soon out of the game anyway. I don't care what happens. I'll make my money while I can, sell my shares, then get out."
Rinse and repeat. Welcome to the world automaker former CEO club.
Chinese nationalism isn’t the core reason why this has happened. Everyone has an affinity for the country they’re born in. However the Chinese are also intensely pragmatic. There’s a reason why all those foreign ICE cars were selling over Chinese ICE models.
I haven’t sat in a BYD until I recently moved back to China and was really impressed by it. Same for the huawei cars at a showroo
This is just as an objective western born guy who recently lived in the US and Australiawho has had a family preference for toyotas. These big legacy automakers were content to sit on their brand recognition and didn’t think they had to innovate. Whoops.
Here’s a test, bring a bunch of 7 year old kids who don’t have any nationalistic bias and see which car they think is the coolest. My son was raving about how much cooler the Chinese minivan we sat in was over our Honda odyssey.
I only realised, once I moved to Asia 13+ years ago, how faster Chinese companies could iterate and innovate. A speed that very few people in the western world can understand.
The 996 culture and the hunger for success is a big contributor, and interesting to live and watch.
It's shocking that after decades in China, with top executives earning millions, global automakers failed to see the avalanche coming. Did none of them notice the market shifting towards local tastes and rising nationalism? It seems like these highly-paid executives were too busy enjoying easy afternoons to understand the real China, making this disaster almost inevitable.
For years, Chinese consumers have been leaning more towards local brands in sectors like fashion, clothes, shoes, and mobile phones. The trend was clear: Western brands were losing their appeal, and even Japanese brands like UNIQLO weren't immune. Yet, the Western business community still seems to think that Western superiority will carry them through, without truly understanding or respecting Chinese culture.
The rapid rise of electric vehicles (EVs) in China is a prime example. While foreign brands were caught off guard, Chinese automakers took the lead, supported by government initiatives and a keen understanding of local preferences. Now, Chinese brands like BYD dominate the EV market.
Nationalism has played a huge role here. The 'buy Chinese' sentiment has made foreign brands less attractive. This isn't just a consumer trend; many Chinese manufacturers are now independent of Western technology and equipment. This shift has been brewing for years, but Western automakers, perhaps too confident in their past successes, didn't adapt in time.
It's high time for Western businesses to rethink their strategies in China. The assumption that Western products are inherently superior is outdated. To succeed in China, businesses need a deeper, more respectful understanding of the local market and culture.
You are a bit behind the times, China reached 51% EV market share in July. Probably 50% or higher by December, as Chinese PHEVs are now cost competitive with ICE vehicles. 2025 will be an absolute wipeout for the foreign manufacturers in China, even Tesla is losing market share.
Interesting about GM supplying Mexico from China, such is the utter hypocrisy of the US raising tariffs to 100% on Chinese imports and bullying Mexico not to help China export Mexico-made cars to the US!
The thing to watch also is the auto parts. When VW/GM have millions of vehicle sales in mainland China, it means they have economy of scale to get very cheap parts and subsystem assemblies for their corresponding home operations in EU/US, with the cost of capital for the parts/subsystems carried by the Chinese domestic sales, and this then improves the value-added resulting from those components and carried by the vehicles final-assembled in their home market. Take away several million units per year, and the next generation of VW/GM auto parts made in China have to carry a bigger burden of the capital cost, and this reduces the value added of VW/GM's home market offshore operations..... Meanwhile, the still quite competent Toyota/Honda/Hyundai compete with VW/GM for shrinking markets that can't sustain all 5 of them any more
Toyota is barely competent in EVs. It can't meet demand for its few Prime plug-in hybrid models, its bZ4X is meh, it is the junior partner with BYD making the bZ3 and a new PHEV powertrain, and its solid-state battery tech that it says will be a breakthrough has been repeatedly delayed and will first appear in niche expensive models.
All while wasting billions on hydrogen (which is dead for land transportation) in a disastrous example of Japan Inc. groupthink. Toyota executives sold Tesla the NUMMI plant, invested in Tesla, saw Tesla's RAV4 EV conversion, must have seen Model S prototypes that was far better than its Avalon, yet decided to stick with cramped and slower HFCVs running on much more expensive or dirty fuel.
I mentioned them in the context of competition over the shrinking G7 share of the global ICE vehicle market - which still has a solid decade or more left in it. And Toyota is a formidable competitors, capable of holding their own in a price war, I'd argue better than its US or EU counterparts
even more a reason for western markets to reciprocate and insist on JVs, tech transfer and tariffs. EU is already down that path..
That did not work for China, did it? Western Markets are still quite safe, as Chinese manufacturers have difficulties to adapt to the market conditions. So they better use the time and innovate the heck out of EVs.
What the article does not highlight is that China already is leading in the machines that make cells for batteries. By introducing tariffs Europe and the US will just delay a downfall - better to fight it with innovation.
China tried to succeed on the combustion engine side. They were hopeful, introduced a lot of measures, and they did not succeed. Only when they jumped on new technologies did they start to succeed.
They will simply delay the inevitable, as the Chinese crush the European makers not just in China but also Asia, MENA and Latin America before their factories in Hungary, Turkey, Belgium (Geely Volvo) and elsewhere in the EU kick into gear. And yes CATL, BYD and other Chinese battery manufacturers have about 70% of the global battery market. The Koreans and Panasonic are also rans, no European battery makers of any size.
...and they'll even manufacture the rope from which they shall hang.
And complain they are being hanged with new rope.
Does anyone realize the overall pollution caused by mining materials for EVs? It is greater than ice engines and not by a little.
Also, what happens to the batteries when the vehicle comes to its inevitable demise?
I waited long and hard for the numbers. Any offset by ice total pollution during its life cycle is outweighed by the massive output of machines/technology in producing materials for ev’s.
P.S. I own a hybrid. 35 mpg.
The Chinese don’t care about the pollution. The government’s goal there is to be the number one superpower economically and militarily.
Western execs are morons, flat out. They don’t innovate, they just chase short term profits
Not correct. The Chinese do care about pollution--at least the "visible" pollution in the sky. Since my first trip to China in 2002 to my last in 2023 (mostly in Guangzhou), the pollution has gone from choking to usually beautiful clean skies. Guangzhou worked hard to remove polluting motor bikes and stinky cars. Now it's hard to see an ICE car on the streets. I'll agree that somewhere out there is a bunch of pollution and runoff from EV cars and battery production, but the skies are clean in many cities.
China do care about pollution -and they did something about it in Beijing and other Chinese cities
Do the math to realize your 35 mpg 1.5-ton gasser will burn through 10 TONS of gasoline over 120,000 miles. Most of the pollution and global warming comes from operation, not manufacturing. You didn't wait long and hard for the numbers, you just choose to be unaware of the lifecycle analyses (Exeter/Cambridge/Nijmeggen universities, Eindhoven U, ICTT, and IHS Markit), which all conclude that adding a 1/2-ton battery to make a BEV is less pollution and greenhouse gases overall than a comparable gasser., even when the current grid is primarily fossil fuel generation. The only debate is whether the BEV pulls ahead after 30,000, 15,000, or only 7,500 miles of efficient (100+ MPG equivalent!) operation. Since the majority of new generation is wind and solar everywhere in the world, every EV on the road will get cleaner still.
A dozen companies (American Battery Technology, Ascend Elements, Battery Resource, Brunp Recycling, Green Li-ion, Li-Cycle, Primobius, Redwood Materials, ReLIB, SMCC Recycling, Umicore, ...) are waiting for enough EV batteries to actually fail so they can ramp up operations. 95+% of the actually toxic lead-ACID batteries in cars are recycled; there's no reason bigger more valuable EV battery packs won't be recycled at similar rates.
You are incorrect. A study by VW showed that the CO2 breakeven point is somewhere between 75-100,000km. The batteries are forecast to last about this long. The best part about this study was that it was an ICE golf ve and eGolf. So same chasis, aero dynamics everything. We will get there eventually, maybe with silicon batteries, maybe other technologies yet to be invented or still in the development phase, of which there are many. However many car makers have already dropped lithium ion due to it's cost, complexity, CO2 footprint and fire risk - remember the car carrier that burnt for days?
Battery recycling also coming. We are however asking a toddler to compete in the Olympics. The technologies are not sufficiently evolved yet to be relied upon, especially at commercial scale. Let alone the inability of most grids to support a full EV fleet.
Be careful. The world is chock a block full of virtue signaling BS'rs from people who are more interested in ideologies than science, engineering and commerciality.
The sooner these morons (starting with technologically illiterate politicians) are removed from the public sphere and we listen to engineers we will have a chance to get to a better and greener future.
Spin any facts you want. Figures don’t lie but liars figure. I stand by my assertions. The amount of pollution to get the minerals outweighs the savings in pollution of EV’s.
And, as to my ownership of a battery/ice hybrid - MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS.
You just want your preconceived notions to be true. The amount of pollution to mine, ship, spill, refine, then deliver 20x more fossil fuels dwarfs that of producing batteries. Find ANY study that concludes otherwise.
You’re delusional and wrong about this.
The most important thing is that EV motors are a commodity while ICEs are extremely complex engineering work.
By pushing for EV, the ability to compete with engineering prowess, the forte of Germany and the USA, basically got destroyed.
On an EV level, they can not compete because everyone (but Tesla perhaps) completely ignored the digital age for over a decade and those that did not, thought that asking for 1k - 5k — potentially per year — is a fair price to integrate stone age mobile hardware instead of building the necessary expertise and brand loyality.
Not really a surprise seeing companies acting this way that abused the covid shortages getting crushed in a market that has skipped large parts of the ‘old industrial infrastructure’ - the same will happen in most of asia and africa for the very same reason.
If it weren’t for the hillarious import taxes in europe and america, it would happen here as well as nobody is interested in paying 50k - 100k for a car that isn’t worth half that or in case of EV is basically unsellable to a secondary market.
What’s shocking is that everybody claims that they didn’t see this coming. We had the same with the internet and e-commerce which both were trivial to ‘replicate’ and limited purely by industrial production capacity.
For EV the very same holds because everyone who did RC toys is in principle capable of creating key part of an EV as Tesla has shown using mostly off the shelf production techniques and investing in productivity gains and AI. That worked until China made both fields strategic key areas for their future but empowered it further with a focus on 5G and chip independence. As is, the west has no chance of even dreaming to compete because we ensured that even the western providers we have are so insanely expensive (in large parts due to bad incentives and even worse R&D impacting legislation and taxation) that we can not do the necessary scaling to get the order of magnitude productivity gain.
The AI Robot production news from BMW might be a light in the tunnel here but an expensive light given the european energy prices and limited access to the necessary raw materials. Tesla were among the few to think ahead and investing directly into raw material miners to ensure their battery production for example and they are willing to relocate away from destructive policies to stay on track with their goals.
You have an awesome read on this!
Also, one of the things I see that's most overlooked is the outsourcing of automobile components--and IP (intellectual property).
I saw an interview with a (probably by now) former CEO of Ford, and he was going on about how Tesla can make a change in their software and push it out whenever they want. Ford would have to go through vendors, that have to work with other vendors to make a simple software change. But it got even worse, Ford's software isn't even owned by Ford! It's all farmed out.
Tesla kept everything in-house. That was a brilliant move, because they control their product.
Everything the US automakers have done was to maximize profits--only. That requires *tons* of tax write-offs, which in-turn leads to almost everything being farmed out. There was zero motive for forward-looking decision making, because forward looking decisions require investments *now*, decreasing profits in the short-term.
That's why since COVID I've seen more Kia and Hyundai automobiles running around town than anything else. They purchased chips ahead of the global shortage, when most other automakers backed down, because of a decrease in demand. That's forward thinking.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-hyundai-bought-chips-rivals-045930085.html
GM farmed out the Bolt to LG. But its Ultium powertraijn is a massive in-house bet on EVs and isn't based on tax write-offs; GM is spending billions on battery plants and Ultium car models.
As I remarked elsewhere, Tesla's in-house battery tech has yet to deliver all the advances it promised four years ago.
I wasn't speaking to the battery side of the industry. I was talking more about electronic control modules. A software update to the powertrain control, ABS, or any body control module on a Ford requires an "act of congress," before it can be completed--requiring multiple vendors to work on a simple code change.
It's like having to call company (1), company (2), and company (3), to get a software update for a door control module, because a battery saver feature on a heated mirror doesn't work right. All of the modules are made by various manufacturers, and each of those manufacturers owns their own code. But all of those modules have to work together in order for the change to be completed.
If there is an issue on a Tesla, they control nearly all of the software in-house.
Simple changes don't require 3-weeks worth of meetings and coordinating the required vendors to achieve a simple code change.
Ahh, right. Probably why VW is investing up to $5 billion in Rivian "as part of a new, equally controlled joint venture to share EV architecture and software."
You exaggerate the lack of demand for expensive EVs. At $100,000 Porsche Taycan and Rivians sell well. Meanwhile everyone and his dog hoped to sell $50,000 me-too EV crossovers; it's a large segment but few stand out against the Model Y and Chinese EVs.
EV motors are a commodity, but there's still value in better powertrain engineering. When buyers see past the "It recharges from 10-80% in only 25 minutes" to realize that some cars go much further with a smaller battery, they'll want the better tech. And batteries are critical tech where BYD and CATL appear to be well in the lead. The impressive set of battery advancements that Tesla announced on "Battery Day" was impressive four years ago, but the whole promise remains unfulfilled. Maybe Toyota will one day actually deliver on solid-state batteries.
EVs (that is Full BEV) still have a tough road to growth. And this fire was with an unplugged Mercedes! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-07/korea-ev-explosion-prompts-charging-rethink-sparks-safety-fears
Stop pushing the EV battery fire BS, the newer LFP etc. batteries have solved this issue for quite a while. ICE vehicles are gasoline tanks on wheels.
Stop pushing the EV "no growth" BS, BEV sales increase every year everywhere in the world including the lagging USA.
Is this a symptom of the rise of China or the fall of China?
"batteries are critical tech where BYD and CATL appear to be well in the lead", until that tech changes. The Chinese lead is based on current battery tech, and they are vastly improving it. But, there may be a quantum leap with batteries that don't use the current technology or the rare earths that the Chinese discount to their own manufacturers. Things could change very fast.
To your point, here's Mao Zedong on Army Day 1971, "In another 50 years China will be very strong, and by that time the Chinese Communist Party will be a hundred years old. America will most likely be very envious and restless, but it doesn’t dare attack China, not even with a single bullet. It will research germ contamination instead. That is very unconscionable. After it finishes with this unconscionable deed, imperialism will self-destruct”. Selected Works. 1971.7.1
Chairman Mao never cared much for foreigners, either?
Au contraire, mon brave! Mao wrote Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, offering to come to Washington to talk personally, “China must industrialize. This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict”. All ignored him. [Barbara Tuchman].
Who would have thought that threatening them, siding with Taiwan, arming Japan, imposing sanctions to any country the US doesn't like and thus getting China to worry in advance about being cut off themselves, would ever backfire?
I’m really not sure that’s the problem, here. The problem in the US has been short-termism, which meant that OEMs, dealers etc have all pushed hard to build a culture and policy environment that discouraged a shift to EVs and made as much money in the next quarter as possible. It would have been totally inconceivable for the US government to have funded hundreds of companies to invest in battery and EV motor tech for the last two decades, but that’s exactly what the Chinese government did, and it has paid off massively for them, not least because Chinese consumers aren’t emotionally invested in ICE vehicles over EVs (their culture wars focus on other topics…)
To be frank I think EVs are stupid stop gap (environmentally) and not really practical to replace ICE (anywhere in the proposed time-frames), and reducing cars should be the actual goal. Investment in rebuilding public transport, rail, walkable cities and suburbs.
The order has always been active transport > public transport > EVs >>>> ICE. The dramatically reduced noise, completely absent tailpipe emissions, massively cut carbon intensity over the lifecycle, reusability and then recyclability of the battery all make EVs transformatively better for health and wellbeing than ICE. But public transport is better still (and can be electrified too), and active transport is better than public transport (and some of that can be electrified too). But I will say that if you think it’s not practical to replace ICE with EVs in the proposed time frames, it’s… bold to think you’ll be able to build out the infrastructure to support active and public transport at scale in the US. For a start, you’d really need a second national rail system focused on passengers not freight.
(The point about practicality just always strikes me as really odd. Even in the US, the average daily driven distance is 40 miles, so a typical EV can go a week between charges (280 miles is well within the capability of a typical new EV). Here in the UK, we do half that distance on average, which is why I plug the car in about once a fortnight.)