While Germany rolls out, finally, the necessary infrastructure for electric mobility, is deleted in China, the government support for E-cars. Following a Plan, says Frank Sieren.
Infrastructure to Charge electric cars is in China for years, of course
The so-called car summit in the Chancellery in Berlin on Monday, a “master plan, it was agreed” to secure the future of the German automotive industry. With a comprehensive charging network is finally ready to be the Foundation created to bring up to 2030, seven to ten and a half million E-cars on German streets.
So far, there are only about 16,000 charging stations. 2018 drove all the 83.000 E-cars in Germany – with a total of 47.1 million Cars in total. This is modest in comparison to what is happening in China already, with Around 2.6 million E-cars are already on the road. Vehicles with E-Motor, hybrid cars and fuel cell by the year 2025, one-fifth of the total car sales in China. So far, there are only five percent.
“A powerful centre of the car industry”
“Only when we develop vehicles with alternative energies, we create it to be a great Autoland a powerful centre of the car industry”, declared China’s state and party chief Xi Jinping as early as 2014. In the past 15 years, Beijing has invested about 50 billion Euro in the promotion of electric mobility. With strict emission standards, Beijing is favored particularly in the metropolises of E-cars compared to cars with internal combustion engine, you get easier approval and have to be subsidized with state of purchase premiums. There’s a lot of air is still to the top.
DW-columnist Frank Sieren
Tech companies such as Alibaba and Tencent were the investors and developers early on in the Boot. The digital Know-how is in China, the market entry threshold so low that even the industry were newcomers to dare to established foreign companies such as Tesla, Daimler and Ford challenge. All of this together has triggered a true founder of boom. Today, there are in China’s Startup Ecosystem around 490 E-car manufacturer.
The Chinese car market is dominated to about 95 percent of domestic manufacturers. Really from the E-car Boom, most of the foreign companies were able to benefit there with your electric models, so far, so good as not. Because it has proven itself, especially in the premium segment, sets about the German car industry is still on progress through technology, while more and more customers appreciate in Asia lead by networking and entertainment: touch screen in China is more important than engine displacement, a networked music system in the duration of a traffic jam is more important than the absolutely safe crumple zone.
The Chinese auto market is shrinking at present
In 2018, the Chinese car market contracted after 30 years of steady growth to 3.8 percent. Sales of E-cars is still in the Plus, but here, too, a downward trend is seen. Approvals for Hybrid, fuel-cell and electric cars were in April, with a plus of 18 percent. In the previous year it was 62 percent. Even when hopefuls such as Nio, the “Chinese Tesla”, which was passed in September in New York at the stock exchange, shrinking of the paragraph. The share price of the group dropped this year to 60 percent.
The Nio EP9, an electric super slide with 313 km/h top speed, will probably never be a mass-produced car
Not only because of the trade dispute with the USA uncertainty for customers and investors there. There are too many questions are still open: Which company will prevail? How fluid is the Transition of attractive prototypes to mass production? Could hydrogen drives are coming soon as a serious Alternative? Until mid-June, China’s E-car can collect companies only 783 million dollars of investment. In the same period of the previous year, there were six billion dollars, for the full year was 7.7 billion dollars.
Radical reduction of subsidies
It actually runs according to Plan. China’s E-car market is the founder of Boom in a consolidation phase. Beijing sweeps successively the funding for E-cars. As of the end of June, only about half of the existing subsidies for E-cars with a minimum of 250 kilometres of range available. In 2020, they will be phased out by then. It is a controlled mass is going to die, at the end of which should be borne by the market itself, and only the best survive. This is a good mix of state and market economy: The company can get water wings for you to dare into the deep water. There, the state forces to keep them without water wings upper water.
For the auto industry, it now goes into deep water. And this also means that Chinese manufacturers are forced to expand internationally. In this respect, the elimination of Chinese subsidies brings no relief for the German car industry. The pressure on Chinese manufacturers to the test, for example, in the German market, is larger. More and more Chinese electric cars need to be sold to Germany.
Our columnist Frank Sieren has lived for over twenty years in Beijing.