What is the intention of Europe and the United States to suddenly abandon and slow down the development of electric vehicles?
The last few days can be described as very lively, and there is a lot of sexual news. For example, it is embarrassing that Apple has abandoned a ten-year plan to build a car. In fact, as early as last year, there were some signs in the West.
In September 2023, the United Kingdom announced that it would postpone the implementation of the "2030 ban on the sale of gasoline vehicles" to 2035. Audi has also said it will not significantly increase EV production.
A few days ago, Mercedes-Benz CEO Kang Linsong said at the annual general meeting that Mercedes-Benz would adjust its original target and no longer seek to fully switch to electric vehicles by 2030, but to achieve 50% of electric vehicle sales, including hybrid models, because the popularity of electric vehicles has not reached expectations. In the next ten years, the internal combustion engine technology will be updated, and it is planned to launch new internal combustion engine models by 2027 to ensure that internal combustion engine vehicles can last until 2030.
In addition, there is news that the European Union has revoked the plan for all trams in 2035, and I have not found the original source for this, which is somewhat exaggerated, and I will talk about this later.
So as soon as the above news came out, many people who were not optimistic about electric vehicles began to cheer, with a look of "you see that everyone has given up, I said no", in fact, I want to say, don't be happy too early.
So why are Europe and the United States delaying the development of electric vehicles? Let's still follow the previous line of thought and analyze it from multiple angles.
1. Technology. In the field of electric vehicles, it is not an exaggeration to describe our China as overtaking in corners, and we have things that can be used all over the world for the core batteries, motors, and electronic controls. In contrast, those car giants with decades or even hundreds of years of history have difficulty even building an ordinary electric car. It can be said that apart from Tesla, there is no brand that can hit in the West. So they really don't want to do it? Definitely not, but we can't get it now, so we can only postpone it for a while, and use this time to find a way, one of which is to cooperate with Chinese manufacturers.
For example, Volkswagen announced that it would form a joint venture with Horizon Robotics and invest 2.4 billion euros in 60% of the shares. This move is also Volkswagen's largest single investment in China since it entered China 40 years ago.
In addition, Volkswagen acquired Xpeng 4. for about $700 million99% equity and a board observer seat. At the same time, based on Xpeng's G9 platform, intelligent cockpit and advanced driver assistance system software, the company will jointly develop two B-segment electric vehicles and sell them in the Chinese market under the Volkswagen brand, and the relevant models are expected to start mass production in 2026.
In addition, Audi and SAIC Motor have signed a cooperation agreement to develop electric vehicles through the Zhiji platform.
In addition, Geely and Renault have also signed a framework agreement to establish a new company, each holding 50% of the shares, to jointly develop, manufacture and improve hybrid and gasoline powertrains on a global scale.
In addition, Stellantis signed up for Leapmotor for 1.5 billion euros and will establish a joint venture with a 49% and 51% stake. Recently, Stellantis said that it is considering producing pure electric models of the Leapmotor brand at the Mirafiori plant in Italy, with a planned annual production capacity of 150,000 units, which will be put into production in 2026 or 2027 at the earliest.
So the above further shows that European and American car companies definitely do not want to build electric vehicles, but they are a little lacking in ability, so they actively seek cooperation with Chinese manufacturers, borrow chickens and eggs, and take a shortcut.
2. Industrial chain.
We are not only leading in technology, but also the world's best new energy vehicle industry chain, it is no exaggeration to say that in the Yangtze River Delta region, you may be able to make a car parts. The industrial chain is the foundation of the development of the entire industry, whether it is in terms of cost or efficiency, who can compare with us in the current world.
Therefore, the cost of building electric vehicles in Europe is bound to be the same as ours. So from the perspective of corporate profits, there is no need to increase investment if you can't make money, and put more energy into the field of traditional fuel vehicles with higher profits, and making more money is the king. Make good use of the delayed period to seek opportunities to build an industrial chain on your own land.
For example, major domestic battery manufacturers such as China Innovation Airlines, Honeycomb Energy, and Sunwoda have gone overseas and plan to build battery factories in Europe, which is not only the needs of their own development, but also part of the local industrial chain in Europe.
In addition, the upgrading of China's electric vehicles is like a common thing, and the iterative upgrade speed is beyond the reach of European, American, Japanese and South Korean car companies. In other words, apart from brands, it is difficult for them to compete with Chinese manufacturers. And all of this is based on a perfect industrial chain.
Then in terms of the cost of making cars, Europe is obviously still at a disadvantage, and the efficiency is not high. Therefore, they need to wait until a more complete electric vehicle industry chain emerges.
3. Profit. For example, in 2023, Toyota expects a net profit of 29.9 billion US dollars, equivalent to 215.2 billion yuan. Mercedes-Benz's net profit also reached 157 US dollars, equivalent to 113 billion yuan. BYD's net profit in 2023 is expected to be 29 billion to 31 billion yuan, which is still a big gap. There are also many domestic new energy manufacturers that are still losing money every year. Although the hard ratio is not suitable, after all, how many years they have been doing, and China's new energy vehicle industry has just risen. But it is obviously unreasonable not to do a profitable business.
In recent years, the penetration rate of electric vehicles in Europe has been hovering a little more than 20%, and the momentum is not too strong. And according to publicly available data, the sales of electric vehicles in the European Union in January this year fell by 42 percent compared to December 20233%。A number of well-known institutions have also ** that the increase in electric vehicle sales in the EU in 2024 will not be too large.
Therefore, if you want to make more money, you need to make some trade-offs.
4. Electricity price. After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Europe took the initiative to cut off Russian natural gas, spent ** imported from the United States, electricity prices rose all the way, and even Germany reopened coal-fired power plants.
According to a report by Germany**, German households with annual electricity consumption of less than 2,500 kWh pay a price of 45 per kWh36 euro cents, which is 045 euros, which translates to about 3 per kilowatt-hour5 RMB.
Of course, the price of electricity in Germany is the most expensive, if it is still in the above range, the average electricity price in the EU in the first half of the year is 029 euros, about 2$3.
Recently, some bloggers charged at charging piles in France, charging a total of 49322 degrees, it costs 2925 euros, converted to ** RMB 228, that is, 4 per kilowatt-hour of electricity62 yuan, much higher than our domestic, is really not cheap, which obviously loses the cost advantage of electric vehicles.
5. Infrastructure.
According to relevant statistics, as of June 2023, the total number of charging piles in 16 European countries is only 610,000. Moreover, the number of private charging piles is larger and the distribution is uneven. In contrast, as of January 2024, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in China has exceeded 8.86 million.
With few charging piles and expensive electricity prices, European users may have begun to gradually lose their freshness to electric vehicles, which in turn affects the overall market performance.
This falls into a dead loop, electric vehicles do not sell well, there is no need to build more charging piles, charging is inconvenient, and electric vehicles cannot be sold.
6. Electronic fuel.
In the opening chapter, many people say that the EU has withdrawn all tram plans by 2035, which is somewhat misunderstood, but this is the actual situation.
On June 29, 2022, the 27 member states of the European Union agreed to announce that from 2035, only new cars with zero CO2 emissions will be allowed to be registered, but there is no indication that they must be electric vehicles. On March 28, 2023, the European Union approved the 2035 carbon ban.
This means that cars that run on traditional fossil fuels will no longer be able to be sold in the EU from 2035, regardless of whether they are traditional fuel vehicles, hybrid or plug-in, as long as they emit carbon dioxide.
In other words, it's not a pure tram development plan, it's more like a green plan.
In addition, many friends may not know that Porsche, Siemens, ExxonMobil and other manufacturers have built a synthetic fuel plant in Italy, and it has been put into production to produce a synthetic fuel called e-fuel.
It is a liquid hydrocarbon chain fuel, also known as electronic fuel, which is synthesized by catalytic reaction of hydrogen and carbon dioxide generated by water electrolysis. The unique feature of e-fuel is that although carbon dioxide is also released during combustion, due to the combination of carbon dioxide in the production process, its production is generally neutral, and theoretically no new carbon dioxide is added, so it can be regarded as achieving zero carbon emissions.
In addition, due to pressure from some EU countries and European manufacturers, the EU has agreed that after 2035, internal combustion engine models using efuel can be marketed. This gives major European car companies a chance to breathe, with a new technical route, they are no longer in a hurry to transform electric vehicles, only need to adjust and upgrade the engine system, relatively speaking, much simpler.
In short, to say that Europe and the United States are abandoning electric vehicles is alarmist, but it is just a pause, and it will definitely not be done. Therefore, we conclude that because there is no perfect localized industrial chain, in the field of electric vehicles, it is impossible to build cars at low cost and develop new models and technologies with high efficiency, while traditional fuel vehicles have certain advantages and high profits. At the same time, through the upgrade of electronic fuel and traditional internal combustion engines, the life of traditional vehicles will be extended and continuous profits will be made. That's about it.
Finally, we have to mention hydrogen energy. For the first time, Shell announced that all of California's vehicle refueling stations were permanently closed. Of the 55 hydrogen refueling stations in California, 11 of them have been shut down, not counting the ones that are out of operation. This means that the technical route of Japanese hydrogen vehicles is likely to fail.
Although Japan has made a layout many years in advance and applied for a large number of hydrogen energy patents, the reason why it chose this path is only because of its own limited resources, which does not mean that it is the best choice. As I mentioned before, even if Japan applies hydrogen energy vehicles on a large scale, this hydrogen is also green hydrogen, and Japan cannot solve the problem of low-cost large-scale production of green hydrogen, and will have to rely on imports at that time. Therefore, it is really difficult to say what the current technical route of hydrogen energy vehicles will look like in the future.
In short, it has become a fact that Europe and the United States have slowed down the development of electric vehicles, and perhaps the next step will be to increase efforts. But this also allows us to see their trick of saying one thing and doing another, originally wanted to rely on low-carbon emission reduction to drag down us, the world's largest industrial producer, but I didn't expect us to come to the real thing, not only achieved the goal, but also achieved the lead, and they turned around and didn't want to play, it's really ridiculous.
At the same time, we should not be affected by that information, and the determination to develop the new energy industry cannot be shaken, because this is not a simple problem of the automobile market, but a problem of energy strategy. It not only involves different industries and different fields, but also relates to the present and future of each of us. So, they can do whatever they want, we do our best and keep striving for better, and there is no problem.
But everyone should also remember, don't be rhythmized by certain voices, and believe that the country is the most correct choice, you say?
Kunpeng Project