Tag: Automobiles

Tesla Cuts Prices in China in Sign of Slowing Demand

Chin@Strategy

Tesla on Monday cut prices for its cars in China, a sign of intensifying competition in the world’s largest car market that provoked a slump in the company’s shares. Tesla’s Chinese website was offering the Model 3 sedan on Monday for a starting price of 265,900 renminbi, or $36,600, including government subsidies, a 5 percent reduction. The Model Y sport utility vehicle was advertised at 288,900 renminbi, a 9 percent cut. Tesla shares fell more than 6 percent before recovering a little as the price cuts reinforced fears among investors…

For China’s Auto Market, Electric Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present.

Chin@Strategy

Zhang Youping, a Chinese retiree, purchased an all-electric, small sport-utility vehicle from BYD — China’s largest electric vehicle maker — at an auto show for around $20,000 last month. Her family has bought three gas-powered cars in the last decade, but she recently grew concerned about gas prices and decided to go electric “to save money.” A few months earlier, her son had also bought an E.V. It was a $10,000 hatchback from Leapmotor, another Chinese manufacturer. This year, a quarter of all new cars purchased in China will be…

India’s Electric Vehicle Push Is Riding on Mopeds and Rickshaws

Chin@Strategy

In the United States, luxury-car buyers are snapping up Teslas and other electric cars that cost more than $60,000, and even relatively cheap models cost more than $25,000. Here in India, those are all out of reach of the vast majority of families, whose median income is just $2,400. But an electric vehicle movement is taking place nonetheless, not on four wheels, but on two and three. Electric mopeds and three-wheeled rickshaw taxis that sell for as little as $1,000 are zipping along India’s congested urban thoroughfares, cheered on by…

Biden Administration Begins $3 Billion Plan for Electric Car Batteries

Chin@Strategy

The Biden administration plans to begin a $3.1 billion effort on Monday to spur the domestic production of advanced batteries, which are essential to its plan to speed the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. President Biden has prodded automakers to churn out electric vehicles and utilities to switch to solar, wind and other clean energy, saying the transitions are critical to eliminating the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. In the wake of surging energy prices caused largely by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, administration officials also have…

How Tesla Helps China’s Firms Compete With the U.S.

Chin@Strategy

Forty-two years ago, Liu Siong Song built machines to help factories make cheap toys and watches. Then he made them for motorcycle companies. Now he helps Tesla, in the words of Elon Musk, “make full-size cars in the same way that toy cars are made.” Mr. Liu, 69, may have come full circle, in a sense, but he also may play a role in the future of driving. His company is one of the emerging Chinese manufacturers competing aggressively and competently with traditional players in the United States, Japan and…

How the U.S. Lost Ground to China in the Contest for Clean Energy

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — Tom Perriello saw it coming but could do nothing to stop it. André Kapanga too. Despite urgent emails, phone calls and personal pleas, they watched helplessly as a company backed by the Chinese government took ownership from the Americans of one of the world’s largest cobalt mines. It was 2016, and a deal had been struck by the Arizona-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to sell the site, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which now figures prominently in China’s grip on the global cobalt supply. The metal has…

China’s Popular Electric Vehicles Have Put Europe’s Automakers on Notice

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FRANKFURT — The name MG used to be synonymous with spirited but finicky sports cars from Britain. Nowadays the iconic octagonal badge serves a different kind of motoring ambition: China’s push to become a big player in the global auto market. SAIC Motor, one of China’s Big Four automakers, bought the MG brand in 2007 and is stamping it on a line of electric sport utility vehicles on sale in Germany and other European markets. MG is an example of how Chinese carmakers are exploiting the shift to electric cars…

A Strange Voice on the Phone

Chin@Strategy

Angela Merkel’s party comes up short in Germany. In yesterday’s election, the center-left Social Democratic Party led by Olaf Scholz won 1.6 percentage points more of the vote than Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party. But with only around 26 percent of the vote, the Social Democrats will have to form a coalition to govern, which could get messy. The Transition to Electric Cars Britain struggles with fuel shortages and other supply disruptions. Panic buying led to long lines at gas stations over the weekend, with many saying that they are now…