The Shanghai Show's EV Shakedown

I'd like to share with you my thoughts from a week in China at Auto Shanghai and some other stuff. The 'other stuff' is personally very important to me as it involves putting zero tailpipe emission commercial vehicles on the road today - so please read through to the end...

I was there courtesy of SAIC - Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation.

If you aren't familiar with them at this time I'll give you the top line. It's the Number 1 Auto Group in China with sales of almost 6.5 million in 2016 - a market share of 22.6% within the country. The business is ranked Number 46 in The Fortune 500.

Big doesn't always mean beautiful of course. There are epic challenges in ensuring such scale translates into success, but if any country has illustrated that it can be done - it is China and its epic enterprises. The movement of choice there is the paradigm shift...

I've been lucky enough to visit quite a bit these past few years, and in doing so, have come to admire and respect the country and its people. Whilst not without challenges and issues, the continuity that their system delivers is an undeniable commercial advantage in an era of rapid social and technological advance. I don't wish to be overtly political when I say this, but the toing and froing that our system delivers is often hugely disruptive to businesses and many other aspects of everyday life. China has been able to forge a path over recent decades relatively unencumbred by the cost, confusion and conflict that much of 'the west' has been distracted by - it is that reality that in part continues to deliver stunning growth.

As my associates at Gao Feng Advisory Edward Tse and Bill Russo often suggest - we have more to learn from China than we have to fear from it.

And so to new energy vehicles - aka electric vehicles.

The 17th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition was epic - featuring 1,400 display vehicles - including 113 global debuts, 159 new energy vehicles, 56 concepts and a host of new players exhibiting for the very first time. To put a few things in context, China is the biggest market for EV's in the world - new energy vehicle sales jumped 53% last year to 507,000 units (fuelled in part by government incentives)

As necessity is the mother of invention - the twin imperatives of mitigating pollution and alleviating congestion - are now driving rapid progress. Coupling connectivity, autonomy, and shared platforms with electron powered transportation models is now well underway in many locations in the country, and the ubiquity of the mobile phone in China may well be enabler-in-chief going forward!

Having said all that, Auto Shanghai had plenty of old energy vehicles on show, but be assured my electric loving friends - the EV is about to go mainstream! (in that regard, I have just received translation/summary of a public strategy document from my pal Melanie Zeng - see that here )

Inevitably perhaps - as I was there as a guest of the company, SAIC's MG Concept really caught my eye! It's a stunning looking car, and if concept translates into reality in a couple of years, without doubt it will be a winner to my mind.

After I grabbed the opportunity to congratulate Chief Designer Shao Jinpeng, and after I'd spent some fruitful time with both China SAIC Management and my new associates from Luxembourg, I had the opportunity to take a tour of the show...

Inevitably I missed more than I actually got to see, but I made a bee-line for a few notables. I was therefore particularly pleased to be able to bump into NIO's CEO Padmasree Warrior & Formula E Team Boss Gerry Hughes on their stunning stand - and I also passed on my best wishes to William Li of course!

Opposite NIO was Lynk & Co. There is huge interest in their business model as much as their prospective products...although I must confess in being a little disappointed in spotting a tailpipe popping out the rear of the cars on show. The initial offering is a 1.5 litre 3 cylinder petrol - hybrid and EV 'is in the pipeline'.

Plenty of other electric goodies on show...

BYD's Isbrand Ho & Mercedes CASE Boss Axel Harries

I bumped into a few EV Amigos too!

The impetus for what we saw and what's on the close horizon is the PRC production quota requirement of 8% NEV - this would equate to around 2 million vehicles thereby quadrupling what we saw last year. That's quite a hike.

The rationale being better economies of scale for both manufacturers and the required infrastructure progress. What part the connected-autonomous-shared dynamic has on it all remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, SAIC have been busy selling the Maxus EV80 3.5 GVW Van for the past 2 years in China - around 6 to 7 thousand units so far. If you're familiar with my personal EV journey it began in 2007 with the 5.5 GVW Modec commercial vehicle ( pre-dated by the Hybrid London Taxi trialled in 2004 )

Working from SAIC's Mobility Europe Operation based in Luxembourg, I will be helping the team introduce the vehicle to fleet operators across the continent. Exploiting both my current (no pun intended) EV knowledge and connections, as well as the hands-on-experience from the Modec proposition. Incidentally, many of those vehicles are still running around Europe almost 10 years on from their initial introduction!

For the record, I'm continuing my www.electricvehiclesoutlook.com proposition alongside SAIC - as that ensures I retain a broad knowledge base to benefit all parties along the way.

To conclude, and as I've consistently stated on my blogs here - dealing with tailpipe pollution from commercial vehicles should be 1st base in any clean air strategy. A diesel backlash is now well underway across most european cities and fleet managers are excercised in what to buy next.

My friends and I at SAIC are here to help!