Europe's carmakers fret over China's EV prowess at Munich car show (www.reuters.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Gsus4@feddit.nl to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Main points (to make up for the clickbaity title):

Challenge to bring down European EV manufacturing costs

Lower costs to close price gap with China EVs

China EV sales account for 8% of European total through July

Renault's R5 EV to be 25%-30% cheaper than Scenic/Megane

MUNICH, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Europe's carmakers have a fight on their hands to produce lower-cost electric vehicles (EVs) and erase China's lead in developing cheaper, more consumer-friendly models, executives said at Munich's IAA mobility show.

"We have to close the gap on costs with some Chinese players that started on EVs a generation earlier," Renault (RENA.PA) CEO Luca de Meo told Reuters at the car show, adding when manufacturing costs decline, prices will also go down.

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[-] RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The brands are so strong that they can afford to move slowly on this.

I really don't think they are strong. The car industry was basically ravaged by the 2007 financial crisis and a lot of what were companies back then are just brands owned by a few of the industry players. It's hard to believe they would survive another situation like that. I think they want to move fast, but they simply aren't able to do so.

[-] otl 10 points 1 year ago

From Audi 2022 fiscal year:

Revenue rose 16.4 percent to a record €61.8 billion while operating profit climbed nearly 40 percent to an all-time high of €7.6 billion.

The brand is strong relative to Chinese competitors but I don't think it will stay this way forever.

I think they want to move fast, but they simply aren't able to do so.

They want to move as fast as they can maintain their profits. I think major shareholders would ideally like to see more tangible results from their R&D division. But it was clear at the time that it didn't matter enough for real action. Middle management I interacted with were actively hostile to me when I spoke about, for example, making source code visible between teams. There was constant calculated behaviour to keep things the way they were and delay completion to maintain funding.

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023

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