The Chinese electric car market is a bubble ready to burst

The Morning Shift All your daily car news in one place. Isn't your time more important?

There are too many chefs in the Chinese electric car market. VW's former CEO has been charged to Dieselgate in Germany, Elon Musk admits that he has always been " crazy on Twitter " and so much more until the morning shift on Monday, April 15, 2019.

1. Gear: China's EV Bubble May Pop

China's 486 registered electric vehicle market may be on the verge of collapse, reports Bloomberg, citing a lack of demand and evidence that the market just won't grow fast enough to sustain so many automakers .

More from Bloomberg:

"We're going to see big waves sweeping away sand in the EV industry," said Thomas Fang, a partner and strategy consultant at Roland Berger in Shanghai. "It's a critical moment that determines the life or death of EV startup."

[…]

The startups promise to deliver a collective production capacity of 3.9 million vehicles per year. It is except what some of the world's largest car manufacturers are planning.

China's great, but it's not that big. Annual sales of passengers have only exceeded 1 million units for the first time last year, according to BNEF, played by the subsidies that could separate thousands of dollars from the sticker price.

Even the Chinese government's press to sell seven million electric cars a year by 2025 is unlikely to be able to maintain profitable production from all of the new EV factories that go up, causing more and more startups begin to tear in the coming years.

The Chinese market is also facing incoming competition from Volkswagen, Ford and Tesla, with a new Shanghai Gigafactory recently announced, and the potential loss of China's full $ 7,500 car subsidy subsidy program. It can be disastrous for the smaller startups who are still trying to establish themselves.

2. Gear: There are startups that are innovative EVs, though

On this note, electric vehicle innovation seems to shift to start-up companies and from the big established car manufacturers that Reuters reports.

Companies like Tesla, Nio, Rimac and Pininfarina could all produce EV with impressive performance capabilities with small layers, as opposed to the slow pace of larger and more established car manufacturers developing their first EV models.

It even took off the Rivian to introduce the first common electric truck concept in a US market where truck and off road sales are usually the largest and most profitable segments for established car manufacturers such as Ford and GM.

But Reuters focuses more on Pininfarina hires Rene -Christopher Wollmann, the guy behind Mercedes-AMG's Project One supercar program:

Wollman's move, which has not been announced, comes at a time as large car manufacturers such as Volkswagen and Mercedes have been blindsided by more stringent and costly emission tests, forcing them to focus resources on common electric models and on cleaning up internal combustion engines.

[…]

"Great compression anies take time to transform. And I'm good at hypercars. I've just done Project One, and now this opportunity has come," says 37-year-old Wollmann to Reuters why he joined Automobili Pininfarina, a Munich-based electric car manufacturer that was launched last year.

[…]

Rene Wollmann came to us because he said it was difficult to realize projects like these at a big company, "said Michael Perschke, Automobili Pininfarina's CEO Reuters.

Wollmann was also the guy behind the electric Mercedes AMG SLS, and it is a little surprising to see him have to skip ships to go find fulfilling projects. It's probably good for Pininfarina and definitely not a good look at Mercedes-AMG.

3. Gear: Former VW CEO Winterkorn and Four others charged with Dieselgate Scams

Former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn, who bailed out of the company, followed the Dieselgate revelations which he allegedly allowed his companies to scam off diesel emission tests, are being charged with fraud and violation the competition law along with four other executives as announced by prosecutors in the city of Brunswick via Automotive News.

Here's more from Auto News:

Winterkorn is accused of serious fraud because he failed to disclose the illegal manipulation of diesel engines to the responsible authorities in Europe and the US and to customers. He also failed to ban the further installation of "defeat device" software after May 25, 2014, which resulted in significantly higher fines, the statement said.

The prosecutors claim that Winterkorn approved a software update in November 2014 at a cost of 23 million euros, which was "useless and was intended to further hide the true cause of the increased levels of pollution in normal vehicle operation."

Winterkorn has already been criminally charged over Dieselgate in the United States, but has not been tried or arrested since he is not stupid enough to leave Germany right now, his homeland that will not extradite him. Of course, even Germany will eventually come around to challenge him, so we'll see what's going on next.

4. Gear: Musk Still Still Tweeting Questionable Forecast Figures

Elon Musk, the guy just doesn't teach. After having already resigned as Tesla's chairman and paying a $ 20 million fine in a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the two parties are currently reproducing the language of their settlement on behalf of an American district judge. [19659008] Musk's latest tweets are similar to those who got him in trouble in the first place, Bloomberg reports, and it may throw another wrench into his relationship with the SEC:

Musk wrote Sunday that Tesla will make more than 500,000 cars in the next 12 months. A similar tweet sent nearly two months ago, when Musk said the company would build half a million vehicles in 2019, led the US Securities and Exchange Commission to argue that he was despised by a settlement reached with the regulator last year.
[19659008] The latest forecast, given as a seemingly innocent aside in a discussion of the future value of Tesla vehicles, nevertheless negotiated with Mus's lawyers with the SEC over a deal that controls the billionaire's tweeting. An American judge gave the two pages until April 18 to meet for at least an hour and resolve their differences. If they can't, she'll control if Musk is disdain.

[…]

Musk on Saturday conflicts reports that Panasonic had increased annual battery capacity at the factory to 35 gigawatt hours, and said the company's lines were only 24 gigawatt hours and limited the production of the Tesla model 3 sedan.

He has also recently tweeted that the Wall Street Journal is "Big Oil" "" Socket Caps "and repeatedly supported other Twitter users to call out Bloomberg Reporter Dana Hull, claiming it was" embarrassingly "that the Tesla Twitter account followed her.

Sign out, Elon. Or not. I can always trust you for Morning Shift gear.

5. Gear: Boeing 737 MAX Flight Groundings is Spoiling Airlines Summer

After two fatalities forcing airlines to report all flights scheduled with their Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, the companies are now worried that they may not be able to meet demand after

Southwest Airlines Co, the world's largest MAX operator, and American Airlines Group Inc with 34 and 24 MAX jetliners, respectively, have removed the aircraft from their airplanes until August.

Southwest Airlines The decision will lead to 160 cancellations of around 4,200 daily flights between June 8 and August 5, while US removal through August 19 means about 115 daily cancellations, or 1.5 percent of the summer's flight schedule each day.

Low-cost carrier Southwest, which, unlike its competitors, only flies the Boeing 737s, had estimated $ 150 million in lost revenue between February 20 and March 31 alone due to MAX cancellations and other factors.

[…]

The timing of a long-term grounding could not be worse for northern hemisphere carriers. The planes run mostly in June, July and August, when the airlines earn the most revenue per available seatmile, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

It is still unclear exactly how much an influence the 737 MAX cancellations will have, but some airlines even consider bringing idle schedules back into commission to try to get into the problem.

Boeing is currently working on an upgrade to what is believed to be the software that is wrong in both recent crashes, Reuters reports, but the repair will take a few months to implement, and the plane must be certified to fly before it can be scheduled again .

Conversely: Second-Place Winner of the 1910 Vanderbilt Cup Race Death in the Titanic Tragedy

Source link