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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/26/mercedes-electric-car-market-brutal-manufacturers-price>
"Mercedes-Benz has said the electric car market is “brutal” for carmakers as
heavy competition forces them to cut prices.
Sales of electric cars are soaring in Europe and China, with the US further
behind, but the rush of new launches is putting pressure on European
manufacturers in particular, who are struggling to compete with cheap models
coming from China.
Harald Wilhelm, the chief financial officer of Mercedes-Benz, said the electric
car industry was “a pretty brutal space”, on an analyst call on Thursday,
Reuters reported, after the German carmaker reported a fall in profits.
Wilhelm said some manufacturers were pricing battery electric vehicles (BEVs)
similarly to petrol variants despite higher costs of production, amid “intense
price competition”. “I can hardly imagine the current status quo is fully
sustainable for everybody,” he added.
Established carmakers are at various stages of the transition from petrol and
diesel to electric cars. JLR, Britain’s biggest carmaker, said on Thursday that
it would build the electric version of its bestselling Land Rover Defender at
its plant in Nitra, Slovakia. The company, owned by India’s Tata, chose
Slovakia for Defender production in 2019, in a blow to the British industry,
although it has since said it will build at least six electric Jaguar and Land
Rover models in the UK.
Barbara Bergmeier, JLR’s executive director of industrial operations, said the
factory would build electric Defenders “this decade”.
Much of the pressure on European carmakers to switch to electric is coming from
China, whose government has heavily subsidised the industry. Chinese
manufacturers had never managed to export large numbers of petrol and diesel
cars to Europe or the US, but now brands such as BYD, Nio, Xpeng and the
Chinese-owned MG are gaining market share rapidly, to the alarm of traditional
carmakers in Europe and the US.
The pressure on the European industry led to the EU last month launching an
investigation into Chinese electric vehicle subsidies, a move that could
eventually lead to tariffs on imports in an effort to protect its home
industry.
Not every car company agrees with the Mercedes-Benz view on the market for
electric vehicles. The Swedish manufacturer Volvo, which is owned by the
Chinese automotive conglomerate Geely, has plans to sell only electric cars by
2030, one of the quickest transitions away from petrol and diesel internal
combustion engines (ICEs) for a large, established brand."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
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
