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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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[–] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I worked in a big German car maker's EV division. The waste of resources put in to not actually developing a good electric vehicle was staggering.

I was part of a 100 person team who was responsible for one cog of a data ingestion pipeline which read in analytics data from each EV car. It was already about 2 years' in when I joined and it was a total failure. Why the fuck they were spending so much money on something so inconsequential to making a car was initially frustrating; now I think it's just sad.

The reality is that the leadership didn't really care. The brands are so strong that they can afford to move slowly on this. There is also a gravy train going on where money is being pumped into these projects and middle leadership are happy to sit back, do nothing, and still earn free $$$ rather than develop good tech.

Here's one of the stories from my experience (software development perspective): https://www.srcbeat.com/2023/08/sbt/

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

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@lemmy.sdf.org 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.

[–] Gsus4@feddit.nl 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the link. They kept repeating that on DW today: they think brand loyalty will save them... :/ strategic thinking, right there.

[–] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

Interesting. It sort of does save them - but for how long? Depending on who is overseeing what projects the brand loyalty could last long enough for the particular people responsible. It’s a terrible strategy but that takes a lot less work than coming up with a new one!