Automakers don’t want to get into an EV price war with Tesla, for now

Every automaker wants you to know they don’t like Tesla’s gimmick, lawmakers have reintroduced legislation in hopes of making it harder to steal catalytic converters, and BYD is trying to do the impossible in Japan. All that and more in the morning shift by February 1, 2023.

1st Gear: Nobody wants to compromise

volkswagen watch the Tesla game of deep discounts, and its CEO, Oliver Blume, has wasted no time telling the world that the company wants nothing to do with it. Courtesy automotive news:

VW will not engage in a price war with Tesla, Blume told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “We have a clear pricing strategy and we are focusing on reliability. We are confident in the strength of our products and brands,” she said.

VW wants to be a world leader in electric vehicles, but this must be achieved through profitable growth, Blume said.

Ford agrees. Not Ford in the United States, of course; here, the brand has already Mustang Mach-E prices slashed, especially for models with extended range battery. No, Ford’s Europewhich told the media on Tuesday that the price of the Mach-E will remain stable in France and probably in other parts of the continent as well.

A Ford France spokesman said it had no imminent plans to cut prices in response to Tesla’s discount. The Mustang Mach E price cuts are “specific to the North American market. We have nothing to announce at this time,” the spokesperson said.

Ford can deliver the Mustang Mach E in France in a shorter time and in most configurations after a period of production limitations, the spokesperson added.

Prices for the Mustang Mach E remain unchanged in the UK and Germany, Ford’s biggest European markets.

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You know who else won’t have it? Renault. (You may wonder what battery-electric vehicles Renault offers, but it turns out that the Megane E-Tech is a hot seller in its native France, and even outsold the Tesla Model 3 last September.) This week, Renault CEO Luca de Meo warned against price cuts that are not based on real production savings:

“I think a battle over electric car prices right now, when we’re just getting started, is not the best thing that could happen to the industry,” de Meo said Tuesday at the headquarters of the industry lobby group. ACEA in Brussels.

[…]

De Meo said automakers should have a good profit margin for electric cars due to the high investments required; “otherwise this is not going to become a very healthy business for the industry.”

He said he thought the EV price cuts seen so far are not “structural” — that’s backed by genuine cost reductions being passed on to the consumer.

Reading between the lines of de Meo’s comments, the reason most of these automakers don’t effortlessly match Tesla’s discounts is because they can’t afford it, lest they want to lose their already tight profit margins on electric vehicles. Of course, Tesla could be said to play in a space that these aforementioned brands don’t. We can argue all day about whether or not Tesla deserves the “luxury” label, but it’s a bit of a coincidence that through all of this, Porsche could just raise your prices

2nd Gear: Congress keeps talking about catalytic converters

Last year, Congress introduced a bill aimed at thwarting the increasing theft of catalytic converters, a crime that the bad fit honda of our own Erik Shilling fell victim in June. The proposed legislation, which would involve VIN stamping to link catalytic converters to their original cars, appears to have legitimate bipartisan support, as well as the backing of every car dealership and service organization known to man. However, it went nowhere in 2022, so it was reintroduced to both the House and Senate this week with seemingly no change. Of automotive news:

The bill, known as the Automobile Recycling Theft Prevention Act, or PART, aims to reduce catalytic converter thefts by requiring new vehicles to have the VIN stamped on the converter, allowing order to link the stolen parts with the original vehicles.

It would also create a grant program to allow dealers, repair shops, and other eligible parties to stamp VINs on existing vehicle converters, and establish federal criminal penalties for known theft, sale, trafficking, or purchase of stolen catalytic converters.

This is in addition to bills introduced at the state level: 2021 saw 84 pieces of legislation proposed in just 29 states. The PART Act would supposedly include provisions for engraving on existing cars, which is better than nothing, though it’s hard to imagine rogue junkyards changing their ways, or thieves not reducing those numbers as soon as they can. Anything is better than nothing, I guess.

Third gear: more EV chargers on every road

Electrify America and Travel Centers of America have announced a partnership, not unlike the one General Motors and pilot publicized last year, to establish more charging stations on major highways in the United States. Of automotive news:

Electrify America and TravelCenters of America detailed a new partnership Monday to install 1,000 chargers at 200 TravelCenter locations along major highways over the next five years. The companies plan to launch the first chargers this year.

The partnership will add Electrify America charging stations to major travel corridors, with the goal of easing consumer anxiety about range on highway travel, said Rachel Moses, director of Electrify America. automotive news.

There are more chargers always good but not as good as it could be if they are as unreliable as Electrify America’s Existing Systems. Hey, what else would you expect from a business that Volkswagen was forced to start as punishment for Dieselgate?

4th Gear: Stellantis Big Into Ethanol

The automaker believes in the potential of ethanol hybrid vehicles in South America, so it is investing in its local development, for Reuters:

Stellantis NV expects to have the technologies needed to develop hybrid ethanol vehicles in Brazil by the end of this year, the automaker’s South American head said Tuesday.

The initiative comes amid a broader drive for sustainability in the region, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also saying on Tuesday that under his leadership, the country’s economy would be based on “finding alternatives for clean energy”.

Antonio Filosa said the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais would be the “epicenter” of ethanol hybrid cars for Stellantis, which has three plants in Brazil, two in Argentina and an industrial partnership in Uruguay.

“We launched the Bio-Electro project last year and now we are going to work internally to have the first technologies developed internally by the end of this year, and then bring them to market when appropriate,” he told reporters. .

For the moment, the hybrid manufacturing in Brazil is majority owned by Toyota and Chery. But Brazil has he has always liked ethanol to fuel cars thanks to its history as a sugar producer, as well as government subsidies. Toyota first introduced a prototype of a flex-fuel Prius in 2018, so the technology isn’t exactly unprecedented. Stellantis probably could have done this years ago, but that’s not typically the Stellantis way.

5th Gear: BYD’s next mission

How will a Chinese EV maker fare in a country that has yet to buy EVs? BYD is about to find out as it prepares to enter the Japanese heavy-duty hybrid market. Of Reuters:

China’s BYD Co Ltd opened its first dealership in Japan on Tuesday, taking on one of the biggest challenges in its explosive global rise as it seeks to win customers deeply loyal to its own auto industry.

BYD, an acronym that stands for Build Your Dreams, has ambitious plans to open more than 100 dealerships in Japan by the end of 2025.

But it faces a difficult task in a country where gasoline and hybrid models are far more popular than battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and nine out of 10 cars sold annually are made by domestic companies like Toyota Motor Corp.

“If customers trust us and try BYD, we will have a good chance (to succeed),” Atsuki Tofukuji, president of BYD Auto Japan Inc, told Reuters at a media event to mark the opening of its first store in Yokohama, the second in Japan. largest city.

At the store, BYD is displaying its ATTO 3 electric sport utility vehicle that has a cruising distance of 485 kilometers (301 miles) and costs 4.4 million yen ($33,744).

He ATTO 3 It basically looks like an HR-V crossed with a Venza, by the way. I can understand the appeal of claiming EVs in a territory before anyone else and before EVs become really popular. But I also didn’t know that nine out of 10 cars sold in Japan are from a domestic brand. Seems like a problem, BYD; Have you really thought about this?

Reverse: The first Ferrari

On this day, 76 years ago…