Too pricey for the global market. European electric vehicle makers
are under pressure.
I can see the point coming very quickly.
You know, 2030 I think is really the critical moment
for this industry.
If they are not prepared by then, it is too late.
Time for Europe to take back the initiative?
Could this European joint venture be a model to follow?
Airbus has production split up across a number of nations, with the plants
all working in close coordination with each other.
It's a concept that secured the future of Europe's
aircraft manufacturing industry.
Does Europe's car sector now need a similar move?
An "Airbus moment"?
Well, the European industry
has been talking about a range of different solutions.
Renault have been floating the idea of a kind of a car industry
equivalent to Airbus, where everybody gets together and
produces a similar sort of vehicle.
The trouble is that already there's been a huge amount of
investment and a big investment pipeline coming in on batteries
and related technologies. And that's very much scattered.
It's scattered across Europe, it's shared amongst
different manufacturers.
There are over 120 car factories in Europe.
Turning out models for numerous manufacturers and a myriad of models
and makes. A setup that has proved very profitable... so far.
Automakers have been making various attempts to develop
their own individual solutions. But there are now a range of
major issues that require solutions very soon.
There's in-car connectivity and digitalization, and EVs too.
So even for a traditionally successful carmaker,
that's a huge task, and one that's better solved
through joint projects.
Which means cooperation. But how would that work?
Renault and Mercedes have set the precedent with the Twingo and
four-door Smart models sharing the same technical platform,
which is little surprise when you look at them.
Companies doing joint ventures
involving identical vehicle platforms also means a challenge for that model
to stay sufficiently distinct and not become interchangeable.
Brand image and awareness are priceless for companies,
although also a big hurdle for closer cooperation.
But growing cost pressures mean they have few alternatives.
We're going to have to see some fundamental sharing of
engineering, not on a piece meal basis, not between
Peugeot and Renault or between Volkswagen and Ford,
but for the industry.
In other words, an Airbus moment. The idea here is to lower
costs and maintain competitiveness by developing
a joint car construction platform.
It is a long road ahead, however.
Arriving at that sort of compromise is extremely difficult.
Something has to give. Somebody has to be prepared to allow
losses in their own manufacturing, losses in their own production bases,
losses in their countries where some of these vehicles are being produced,
because we cannot sustain the existing capacity and
this existing fragmentation of the industry for very much longer.
But that kind of collaboration is still a long way off.
In the meantime, the EU has launched an anti dumping investigation
into those unwelcome competitors from China.