Posted on 09/12/2017 9:10:52 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
FRANKFURT - European car bosses are beginning to address the realities of mass vehicle electrification, and its consequences for jobs and profit, their minds focused by government pledges to outlaw the combustion engine.
As the latest such announcement on Monday by China added momentum to a push for zero-emissions motoring, Daimler, Volkswagen and PSA Group gave details about their electric programs that could give policymakers some pause.
Planned electric Mercedes models will initially be just half as profitable as conventional alternatives, Daimler warned - forcing the group to find savings by outsourcing more component manufacturing, which may in turn threaten German jobs.
“In-house production is almost irrelevant to the consumer,” Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche told reporters in the midst of a German election campaign in which automotive jobs have loomed large.
A phase-out of combustion engines by 2030 could cost 600,000 jobs in Germany alone, the country’s Ifo economic institute has warned.
Since the battery is the single biggest-value item in an electric car, however, experts point out that mass adoption would shift business and jobs from European suppliers to China, which already dominates the automotive power-pack market.
Independent analyst Richard Windsor warned that far from boosting the industry, a shift to electric cars - which are expected to last longer than combustion-engined equivalents and require less maintenance - could inflict long-term damage.
“Vehicle makers are queuing up to announce their commitment to electric vehicles but at the same time they may be cheering for their own demise,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
“...Planned electric Mercedes models will initially be just half as profitable as conventional alternatives, Daimler warned - forcing the group to find savings by outsourcing more component manufacturing, which may in turn threaten German jobs....”
Given that my hanger queen new Mercedes had one electrical problem per month, some of which required towing to the dealer, I really think that EE is not one of Germany’s current talents.
Setting-up the argument so that when electric vehicles inevitably fail it will all be the fault of EEEEEEEVIL GRRRRREEEEDY Capitalists.
This means the Chinese think they have a lock on battery production. They probably have a corner on the market for some of the raw resources.
LOL!! Fools and tools. Just think of all that coal it will take to charge their toy cars up! Good for Kentucky.
European car bosses...
And oil gets cheaper and cheaper.
The standard liberal/leftist ploy. Demonize something, then take it down. These totalitarian Marxists have no answer for the fact that there is no replacement for the internal combustion engine...that is beside the point.
Someday the Enviro-weenies may have to pay full price for their electric vehicles rather than use tax money give aways.
There’s nothing bad that more government power cannot make worse.
Before people get all excited...especially Germans under the law drafted that requires no new gas or diesel cars sold after 2030...one might want to ask if the public will have finally bought off on the battery-car concept. The simple answer in 2017 from Germans? No.
By the fall of 2016, there were roughly 68k battery cars registered in Germany. Over the past year, I’d take a guess that no more than 20,000 were added. It’s not drawing a lot of interest like the environmentalists and political folks think.
At the present pace, unless a game-changer design occurs, the Germans won’t cross the 500k car point until the end of 2023.
The speed-bump? Range. The Tesla S will give you 335 miles. The bulk of the rest of the cars give you around 150 to 250 miles. Toss in charging time, which gets up to around an hour minimum.
I noticed a new German car coming out in the spring of 2018...E-Go. Basic model is two person...around $17,000 in cost, with 100 miles of range. Recharge time off a regular home connection is near six hours. Cheap on price but no one is going buy a car that takes that much time to recharge.
If you ask me...the hybrid is the better way to go, and the battery technology is probably twenty to thirty years from some real range.
They [China] probably have a corner on the market for some of the raw resources.
= = =
Didn’t I just read that 4-year olds are picking through mine tailings (in South Africa?) looking for minerals used in battery production?
For batteries to be ‘sustainable’, SA better keep up its birth rate.
What? A.. I can barely keep my phone charged. B. Electricity is expensive.
Other than the super charged Tessa, which is wholly unaffordable, There is no substitute.
Our nations ability to produce enough electricity before the masses of electric car.
Europe has a.. very little miles to drive daily. Many nuclear power plants.
Unfortunately legislators don’t have to consider reality....or physics....or mathematics....or the laws of thermodynamics before they start sitting around and passing legislation.
Dieter Zetsche almost single-handedly destroyed Chrysler. They came in with a supposed “merger of equals”, but in reality they came in and gutted Chrysler, took their capital and bought out a large chunk of the domestic medium and heavy truck market, and dumped the corpse on some private equity firm to chew on the bones.
In the 1990’s Chrysler was making money hand over fist, with unheard of margins for an automaker, and they were sitting on a lot of cash.
All Daimler-Benz was interested in was using all of that capital to break into the north american diesel truck market. And man did they.
All of the environmental costs of making electric cars vs. internal combustion engine cars need to be considered. According to this article, the environmental impact of producing batteries is substantial:
90% of the people who buy these electric toys have no idea as to the source of electricity. Furthermore, almost no one realizes that the charge in batteries decays, thus pissing away energy.
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