As in my last post promised please find my thinkings to some topics we discussed at NEV Future last week in munich. Together with Steven Van Arsdale and Lothar Schupet we had a good discussion about topics which I find crucial for an open markets and fair competition in the EV sector. Tariffs are really not beneficial for anyone. Often, industries protected by tariffs become even less competitive. With regard to Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), it's crucial to enhance competitiveness across the entire supply chain in Europe. Imposing tariffs on competitive products will only slow down the transition to affordable EVs and decarbonization. This results in less competitive products at higher prices, ultimately affecting everyone, especially consumers, who will bear the cost of this lack of competitiveness. 🚗💨 When it comes to competitiveness, consider that the cost of transporting cars from China to Europe ranges from 1.000 to 2.000 Euros – per car. This alone should provide a significant competitive advantage for any European OEM to thrive. If European manufacturers cannot compete under these conditions, it signals a serious problem. The costs of energy and labor in Europe are not significantly higher to make competitiveness unachievable. Europe must awaken its innovation spirit instead of burdening everyone due to lack of competitiveness. This applies not only to car manufacturing but to the entire supply chain, particularly in battery production. We recently heard from a leading machine tool manufacturer (GMBH SCHULER PRESSEN) about their efforts to catch up in battery manufacturing - but catching up is not enough; this industry needs to leapfrog forward. In terms of features in the car, the entire industry needs to understand what features are desirable in an EV. One standout feature of an EV that surpasses Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles is e.g. built-in acceleration. Additionally, User Experience (UX) is critical, but manufacturers must prioritize solving various small issues. These include pre-heating, achieving optimal range (not too much, not too little), fast charging, clear charging instructions, and eliminating fears of being stranded (with features like a 30km crawl mode). 🌱 I´m open for discussions and happy to get your opinions
Holger Welters
1mo
There is more behind it than your arguments regarding SC and Customer satisfaction, Alex. And you know that. China is Not playing by the rules - in many industry sectors. So the conventional arguments of micro- and macroeconomics logic doesn’t apply here. Yes, higher tariffs will unfortunately result in higher prices for consumers short term. But it may secure that a) the car industry in those countries playing by the rules survives, and b) the Chinese government nay finally rethink its approach of developing and pampering national industries with the objective to make them ‘kill’ those in other countries, and then make those countries dependent on China, resulting in further dependency on China , economically as well as politically. This approach has to.come to an end.
GreenCarLane
2mo
Dear Alexander Klose those are great points and thank you for sharing. To accelerate the decarbonisation and increase sales of EVs, why not diversify the sales channels to include digital platforms because people are fed up with sales tactics and lack of EV champions at dealerships which isn't beneficial to those looking to buy.
Thomas Damgaard
1mo
Alexander Klose why don't you talk about aiways anymore? and how can it be that their link in account is completely dead. how does it look with the survival of the company with all the rumors going around in the industry
I was there in the conference, indeed I was positively shock about your standpoint regarding the cost of production question: is it cheaper to produce in China and because of that is easier to scale sales in EU? Well, not so much Alexander Klose said. And that was very interesting, connected to later conference by Klaus Steinmann, when we talked about work culture in China of 9-9-6 (work from 9 to 9, 6 days a week)... Altogether take us to the idea of European fighting to reduce weekly work hours to 35. I just can agree, in this context, that a mix of hard work, high innovation and high investment, can only derive into a speed EV adoption.