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Europe's carmakers fret over China's EV prowess at Munich car show (www.reuters.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Main points (to make up for the clickbaity title):

Challenge to bring down European EV manufacturing costs

Lower costs to close price gap with China EVs

China EV sales account for 8% of European total through July

Renault's R5 EV to be 25%-30% cheaper than Scenic/Megane

MUNICH, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Europe's carmakers have a fight on their hands to produce lower-cost electric vehicles (EVs) and erase China's lead in developing cheaper, more consumer-friendly models, executives said at Munich's IAA mobility show.

"We have to close the gap on costs with some Chinese players that started on EVs a generation earlier," Renault (RENA.PA) CEO Luca de Meo told Reuters at the car show, adding when manufacturing costs decline, prices will also go down.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's quite a bit more complicated than that. Those joint ventures were for traditional cars, and even today Chinese automakers aren't that great at making internal combustion engines. But in EVs, the Chinese didn't get significant help from joint ventures; their EV industry predates foreign involvement (Tesla only set up there in 2018, a decade after BYD already started making their own EVs).

Sure, the Chinese probably picked up a lot of general industrial know-how from foreign investors, but a lot of their EV expertise is also based on figuring things out for themselves, and seizing an opportunity to exploit a new technology and disrupt slow moving incumbents.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

EVs are easily.

They are considerably less complicated than ICE cars. And since they've been building iPhones and Playstations and TVs for a couple of decades now, they have the expertise to manufacture electrical components which is where they have learned about the E in EVs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This the real truth. Anyone can make a BEV. It implies nothing when someone does. European car makers can do so if they wanted to. The problem is that people don't want BEVs. They're just too expensive and limiting.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, it was both. The european brands avoided electric cars for a long time, while the chinese pushed hard for them. And because electric motors and car batteries were a new technology, this was a great opportunity for the chinese to pull ahead(everyone started from 0).

And the chinese also used their cooperations and acquisitions(Volvo and Lotus are owned by the chinese brand Geely), in order to improve the conventional car making part production(everything other than the electric engine and batteries). Tesla followed a similar arc. Their motors/batteries are great, the other parts started as bad but they are improving all the time.