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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] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Also to add to that: a lot of the European carmakers also fought governments hard to give them more time with their fossil fuel cars and not to push/benefit EV as much as they wanted

Then Tesla came along and suddenly they had a lot of catch-up to do when they realised that people actually wanted those cars and now they are the ones behind the market since they slept to long

In Germany there's a saying: "Wer nicht mit der Zeit geht der geht mit der Zeit" - basically: "If you're not moving with the changes they will force you out eventually"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

We have a similar saying:

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

I have absolutely no love for German carmakers (at least not these days), but I do want to be fair here. The shift to electric is not as simple as people make it out to be. Yes, Tesla definitely was the one who got everything going and is still years ahead of the competition, but you have to understand that even today, EVs make up a small percent of new car sales in most countries. That percent is growing each year, but these companies have billions upon billions of dollars of tooling and know-how in how to create an ICE car, and those ICE cars still dominate the industry. On top of that most EVs are not really making anyone any money yet (except Tesla). So from I can't blame carmakers in going about this very cautiously. With all the talk about EVs online, new car buyers are still not totally flocking to them in most countries. Early adopters are, sure, but average consumers are not. And that's just the reality.