According to the Observer, recently, Ken Griffin, a billionaire in the United States and the founder of Citadel, said at a conference called MFA Network that my heart was broken when I saw that the sales of BYD, a Chinese electric car company, surpassed Tesla!
Now the U.S. needs to develop a strategy to deal with the onslaught of cheap electric cars in China, Griffin said. He stressed that now the United States already has a real adversary in China.
It is reported that BYD delivered more than 520,000 electric cars in the fourth quarter of last year, while Tesla's delivery did not exceed 500,000. Although Tesla's deliveries in the fourth quarter exceeded market expectations, and Tesla also achieved its full-year target, Tesla's glory was taken away by BYD.
The United States** "Business Insider" commented that when BYD finally kicked Musk's Tesla off the tram throne, it is estimated that no one was more heartbroken and disappointed than Griffin.
According to Fortune magazine, Griffin generally doesn't care about market share debates, but trams are the exception.
It is worth mentioning that Hedge Castle Investments, founded by Griffin, is one of the most profitable hedging companies in the world. As of January 1, 2023, Castle Investments has $54.5 billion in assets under management. Castle Investments has five core strategies: Commodities, Credit, Fixed Income and Macro & Quant.
According to the calculation of LCH Investments, a FOF agency under the Rothschild family, after deducting huge management expenses, the top 20 hedging** companies in 2022 generated a total of $22.4 billion in earnings, of which Castle Investments, which ranked first, made a net profit of more than $16 billion for customers last year, breaking the record of $15.6 billion in the classic "Big Short" battle of "Wall Street Sky" John Paulson in 2007, becoming the best in history.
In recent years, China has dominated the world in many industries such as solar cells, electric cars and consumer electronics, thanks to China's scale and relatively low labor costs, which have made China a serious competitor to the U.S. economy, Griffin said.
Now, Americans often overlook the fact that China's economy represents a population of 1.4 billion. So, when it comes to simple economies of scale, China has a huge advantage over the United States. This advantage is also linked to China's strong education system. China's current education system produces four times as many people as the United States, especially in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics.
Griffin said that now California hopes to completely eliminate fuel vehicles in the future, but the question now is that the ** of American trams is more expensive than Chinese trams, and California wants to achieve this goal, so does it mean that Americans need to buy Chinese trams to achieve this goal? After all, it's the most cost-effective option for American consumers.
Griffin pointed out that if California does do this in the future, it will be a difficult pill for the United States to swallow.
Now that American companies have met real competitors in China, Musk has made the right choice, and Western countries need to solve this problem, especially now in Europe.
Griffin's remark is actually a reply to Musk's recent statement that he needs to set up ** barriers for Chinese trams.
On January 24, Musk said at Tesla's financial report and ** conference that Chinese automakers are the most competitive companies in the world, and if there are no ** barriers, then Chinese car companies will eat up the vast majority of competitors.
Nowadays, in fact, Western countries have been hyping the so-called "Chinese car threat theory", believing that the rapid development of Chinese car companies has brought trouble to Western countries. Previously, the EU's choice to conduct a countervailing investigation into Chinese trams was one of them, at the behest of France.
The Financial Times has pointed out that after the high-profile entry of high-quality and low-cost Chinese trams into overseas markets, the United States and Europe** have fallen into the dilemma of protecting domestic car companies and encouraging people to consume trams. Chinese automakers have ample production capacity, and Chinese automakers also have very strong technology in the field of batteries.
Even if the United States and Europe try to weaken the competitiveness of Chinese trams by subsidizing domestic trams and raising tariffs on Chinese trams, or set up other types of barriers, it will still be difficult for American and European automakers to establish a dominant advantage over Chinese trams.