New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China
- Thread starter supercat
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CATL built a factory in Germany. It has a major partnership recently announced in Indonesia. BYD has quite a few overseas (US, Canada, Brazil, Thailand and Hungary among them) and is apparently building a really large one in Poland also. CATL is also exploring building factory in Poland.
We will see what happens in terms of market access. Countries will start to ask for technology for market access. As CATL and BYD get larger, these things are not really avoidable. You can't expect everyone just buying your stuff without creating local jobs.
We will see what happens in terms of market access. Countries will start to ask for technology for market access. As CATL and BYD get larger, these things are not really avoidable. You can't expect everyone just buying your stuff without creating local jobs.
why will they built battery plant in Germany with super expensive labor/utilities and declining auto market. I doubt most Europeans can afford German built cars unless they are majority built in Eastern EU with global parts. and seeing where world is heading. Europe will be the last place for industrial investment.
Only large markets/countries like the US and China have the luxury of demanding for tech transfer
Poland, Indonesia and even India are minions and have to contend with assembly until they build sufficient leverage.
Apparently this is not really going as planned. Due to supply issues and higher price tags, the operators have not ripped out the equipment until more money is given (obviously, otherwise the alternative is no service). It is going through the government channels.
Japanese YES, Honda and Toyota still have nothing. Korean, disagree, they have a few EVs (Ioniq/EV6 and Soul/Kona EV). This is about average for the big volume makers (GM - Bolt only, Ford - Mach-E only, VW Brand - ID.4 only).
BYD has a bus factory in Canada
They are having some reliability issues here, also reported elsewhere.
That being said, it does not seem that Proterra is much better in terms of reliability
It remains to be seen if they will win any part of a tender for Toronto. However, they might be able to capture sales because other EV bus companies are not scaling.
Poland, they need a factory for the European market. Indonesia and India are large markets of the future.
CATL does not need to do tech transfers with any of these countries or it can transfer old technology. At this point, I think it's important to get as many countries relying on Chinese technology as possible.
Tech transfer is not nearly as easy and simple as politics or propaganda portrays. Basically all non-tech people were talking. Cases in point:
(1) SAIC is an abject failure of China auto JV strategy.
SAIC helps VW and GM dominate the markets as well as helps those companies achieve efficiencies they could only dream. SAIC never mastered ICE technologies. It is basically a merchant and an assembler. But Shanghai has wasted enormous resources and opportunities because of SAIC JVs. It would have been a lot better if SAIC went a self-sufficient hard way.
(2) FAW was the cradle of China auto industry.
But FAW lost its independent importance after its JVs. FAW has never learned what it supposed to learn from its JV partners.
(3) SAW a.k.a. Dong Feng became nobody
Worse than FAW, it went with JVs and never focused on its own development. Where is Dong Feng nowadays?
(4) BYD
BYD is a "土生土长" Chinese auto company by an "安徽老土". I guess Wang Chuan Fu is laughing all the way to the bank while laughing his ass off of JVs and SOEs.
(5) Great Wall
Great Wall found its niche and established its brand while surrounded by a bunch of JV wolfs.
Technology transfer is way more overrated than most think.
Even more poignant: Huahong NEC was a semiconductor JV with Japanese NEC back in the 1990s. When Japanese semiconductor companies went down, Huahong NEC also went down and stayed down. Only recently has their foundry subsidiary Huali Semiconductor achieved 22 nm.
They were completely surpassed by SMIC which started production in 2001 and was not a JV but went at it alone.