cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/44916164
Ah! We‘ll be less reliant on China, when we hold on to old technology and let them do the progress thing. Interesting thinking. Wouldn’t want to work in this guy’s company.
You had literally decades to develop cheap EVs.
Back in July this year, the chairman of US carmaker Ford in Germany insists on the end for combustion engines in the EU.
I only found an article in German, here is a summary in English:
The chairman of the supervisory board of the US-based car manufacturer Ford in Germany, Gunnar Herrmann, stronlgy warned against a reversal of the planned end of sales for new cars with combustion engine in 2035 in the EU. “If you believe in prosperity, growth and the future, then leave the goals as they are,” Herrmann told the “Bild” newspaper. Otherwise, the automotive industry location of Germany as a whole is also at risk.
Those who still demanded a change in the intended drive to electric cars proved above all that they “have no strategy” and “now pray to the good God that they can continue the old stuff”, said Herrmann. Anyone who wants to stop the development would endanger the site, because “then the cars will come from China”.
I watched the interview he did with Bild and his interviewer constantly tried to push him in the direction of electric vehicles bad.
Maybe BMW should use its Goebbels connections to get some batteries from Varta…
These morons never look beyond the next quarterly results. Even if the EU still allows ICE cars, they won’t be competitive on the world market. That means that the EU has its little island, where the incumbents still get to pollute the world and fleece their customers but the rest of the world market (except the US) will belong to China.
With Northvolt purportedly(!) demonstrating that even EU battery production can apparently be thwarted by a Chinese tooling company sabotaging, there’s probably some reason to panic.
I suspect though that the only way for EU-based car companies to find out how to refine battery materials and to produce battery cells, at scale, is to lure Chinese companies to the EU and learn from them for the next couple years. They should know that strategy very well — it’s exactly the way their Chinese JVs worked out.
With Northvolt purportedly(!) demonstrating that even EU battery production can apparently be thwarted by a Chinese tooling company sabotaging
Is there a source for that?
There is, but it’s a Swedish politics blog and even they threw in that they couldn’t check the claims. So not exactly a good source. See this thread: https://lemmy.world/comment/12445221
Nothing direct that I can find:
Of course there’s reason to panic. Every independent expert has been shouting from the rooftops for the last decade at least, that the EU are falling behind in battery technology. But politics and industry have been in denial and are completely incapable of long term planning. So now they wake up and start panicking.