Meanwhile in Japan I can't buy a 4WD mini van that's fully electric, one of the most common petrol car form factors in Japan. They can't even do the basics in their own home market. Good luck Toyota, you will need it.
The Japanese auto industry deliberately decided to put the emphasis on hybrid technologies before EVs.
- the overwhelming amount of the world does not and will not have infrastructure to support that many EVs for quite some time. Energy-starved countries such as most of Europe bar some like Scotland or Norway are already unable to cope with the current electricity demand. Japan itself has a grid that's isolated from the rest of the world and even internally it has several design issues (east and south grids run at different frequencies, 50 vs 60hz) that prevents them from scaling
- for the aforementioned reasons, demand for petrol cars is going to be still high for decades to come in most of the world.. Not only most, if virtually all, automakers already have EVs out there, but the technology evolves at such a rapid pace, that waiting before converting is quite sensible. Don't forget that the investments required in EV world are much smaller in comparison to producing ICE-powered machines. There's lots of know how involved in those, and developing an ICE costs multiple billions. E.g. The OM654 Mercedes diesel engine costed more than 3 billions in R&D and benefitted from lots of know-how Mercedes possessed by decades. Thinking that legacy automakers will struggle in the transition is a rather blind take. Yes, many won't enjoy such a market dominance as they did, but that's mostly related to how relatively easy (compared to ICEs) it is to create an EV startup and offer something that others don't. On a much smaller scale the auto industry will see the same disruption that the gaming one saw with indie video games.
Your country is also increasing its coal output and the output of energy produced by coal in double digits and out wiping villages such as Lutzerah to create some of the biggest coal mines in the world.
Yes, you are energy starved too.
Also, how there's no EVs? From all WV brands including Skoda to luxury makers from Mercedes to Porsche, *all* of your automakers have multiple EVs sitting in your dealerships.
That's only true if you look at the data from 2020 onwards. In reality coal usage for electricity, regardless of type, peaked years ago and never recovered:
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
And it won't get better with the numbers of EVs on the roads going up. Germany burns around 50M tons of gasoline per year. If you want to replace that with electricity, you need to install tens of gigawatts of additional powerplant capacity - and that's not "peak capacity" renewable plants advertise. Real, 24h-capacity.
And that's not looking good, either. Thanks to all the NIMBYs, the actual number of megawatt turbines being built is shameful.
> The absolute bottom rate for electricity taxation is €0.5 per Megawatt-hour (MWh) compared to today’s rate of €20.5 per MWh – meaning the envisaged reduction could reach about 95%.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ber...
Solar is intermittent at best and a bunch of your energy is still reliant on natural gas. But it seems that the German government is doing the smart thing and subsidising local solar installations.
There's already a price war going on there, so the question isn't how long western manufacturers will be able to produce combustion cars, but will they survive the deluge of competitively priced Chinese EVs.
The solar panel market did not and is now almost fully controlled by China.
Western governments are still kind of dumb but they're wisening up.
The US for example does it through incentives: if the car AND the batteries have been built in the US, the car is cheaper. Just the car was built in the US? Lower subsidy, more expensive car. Nothing built in the US? 0 subsidy, much more expensive car.
The EU will probably do the same within max 5 years, European car brands are about to be wiped up if they don't, just like:
* Nokia
* Siemens
* Ericsson
* Alcatel
* Sagem
* ...
etc were wiped out by Asian phone manufacturers.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/feb/09/noki...
However, the big issue is that those companies don't see much growth or sensible profit margins anymore compared to what US tech companies are raking in, fact reflected in their sweatshop salaries as well (I interviewed for Nokia and Ericsson a few years back).
In a sad way they're a direct reflection of the EU economy: stagnation and lack of future prospects. Yes I know of ASML and German mittle-stand but they alone can't competitively support the entire EU economy the same way US tech companies do.
So, like 90% of the income and profits for a hardware company?
Currently chinese cars are perceived as super low quality and the only strong selling point they have is the price, as they had when Huawei, Xiaomi and other brands entered the smartphone market.
If I look at BYD catalogue in the italian website I can see:
- the Dolphin starting from about 36k€ when there's the Peugeot e2008 starting from 31k€ and FIAT 600 starting from 31k€ as well
- the Atto 3 starting from about 42k€ when rumors say the Peugeot e3008 will start from about 46k€
- two higher end models which are perfectly matched by BMW offerings at the same price and with comparable performance, not even looking at other premium brands such as Audi or Mercedes
I specifically made the comparison with BYD but I'm happy to give a look at other brands you could suggest.
Even considering chinese carmakers pricing power and old school carmakers lagging behind, I honestly can't see anything disrupting here.
ps: Asian phone manufacturers is much different from China phone manufacturers given that in EU all put together they barely reach Samsung market share. On the same note, let's not forget there are many established asian carmakers outside China ready to take their slice of the cake.
Huawei was taking off like a rocket in Europe before the US kneecapped them.
> Currently chinese cars are perceived as super low quality and the only strong selling point they have is the price, as they had when Huawei, Xiaomi and other brands entered the smartphone market.
That's always step 1, exactly what Japan (60s, 80s) and Korea (90s, 00s) did. They all move up after a while. Japan, especially, smashed US car companies.
Severely lagging behind Apple and Samsung and price-to-quality ratio it's kinda meh, completely different evolution.
Huawei was taking off mostly in China -- after the CCP forced Samsung out of China after 2013 under Xie's state industrial policy to protect their domestic industry. Samsung's China market share went from 20% to 1% in a span of a few years. (the same can be said for LG Chem's EV battery business in China and Hyundia/Kia's auto business). It's difficulty to say what would have happened in the EU though.
I didn't ignore China, or US, I stated that on average most cars in the world sold globally will still be ICE-powered for a long time to come due to electricity constraints (and quite high EV costs that aren't gonna fall anytime soon). This is especially true about Japan which the comment was speaking of.
> The solar panel market did not and is now almost fully controlled by China.
Another take that misses the forest for the trees: China controls large parts of manufacturing globally regardless of sector, that's true for advanced electronics (80% of the components and assembly of your Apple stuff is made there) to the toys you buy your kids to the apparel you wear (e.g. 70% of Nike apparel is produced in China).
They have low labor cost, insanely good infrastructure and logistics, cheap energy and weak labor rights. You're not gonna outcompete them on manufacturing.
Sorry to bust your bubble but that has slowly been changing. Mexico and India is the new China, or at least they will be very soon.
For years, wages in China were much lower than Mexico's. Now, Mexico's manufacturing labor costs are 20% lower than in China. When adjusted for worker productivity, the gap is even wider. And India is getting there, too.
China isn't pushing for EVs because they care about the planet or whatnot, but because it's much easier for them to increase electricity production than import more oil.
In 2022 they added around 87GW worth of solar panels, the annual electricity production of which would be enough to charge 36mln EVs.
And that's just solar, which may or may not be utilized fully. The additions in coal alone are enough to power a 100% EV fleet of new cars.
> China controls large parts of manufacturing globally regardless of sector, that's true for advanced electronics
That wasn't the case for solar panels as recently as in 2003, when it was Germany and Japan that combined controlled most of the market - both in sales and production capacity:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Largest_Producers_of_So...
Cars will follow the same trajectory unless western manufacturers get their heads out of their asses and do something. So far only Tesla seems to be.
America is pretty bad, but at least you have split-phase.
I can also charge at 2.7kW from a regular Schuko outlet.
The single-phase thing is why electric kettles aren't a thing in the US, you just can't provide enough power for them to be usable. IIRC the maximum for US outlets is around 1.5kW, (most?) European plugs can provide around 2.3-2.7kW.
The article is titled:
Toyota to triple EV output as it chases Tesla, BYD, is this not an omission they slept on the starting line? Then:
It is also jointly developing EV versions of mini commercial vehicles with Suzuki Motor and subsidiary Daihatsu Motor.
Which is exactly the type of car I've been interested in buying, so I guess they too see the gap in the market now, but have done little too fill it. BYD will likely enter this space before Toyota. The only thing that will stop that is protectionism, which Japan is good at, so it might work out for Toyota.
The only one who is blind here is Toyota, they fucked up good and now they have to "chase" the competition.
Also the power grid isn't Toyota's problem, it's the Japanese governments problem, and Toyota and all the other major Japanese car manufacturers should've had the foresight to work with the government to address this issue 5-10 years ago, not now. Now it's too late. They will likely be destroyed by Tesla and BYD because of their unwillingness to adapt.
Toyota are dinosaurs now and the fact the government didn't work to update the grid means the entire Japanese economy will be at the mercy of oil prices, or will lose crazy amounts of money subsidizing the prices because the price of oil will only continue to increase as economies of scale start to shift towards EVs and away from ICE and petroleum.
Imported vans has been a joke for Japanese passengers, but I'd like to see how Chinese minivans does well (or not, maybe too big for Japan).
We've been ripped off as consumers for way too long.