But Soft! What light from yonder window breaks……? It is the East!!

The UK and European Automotive manufacturing and sales sector is shortly in for a massive Chinese electric shock.

A relatively small number of household brand names have dominated the vehicle market for decades selling an endless stream of shiny combustion engined boxes that have probably played an intrinsic part in most peoples lives. Driving a car brought us independence, carefree freedom to roam, grow businesses and families and explore the world and little did we know or care for most part about their contribution to pollution and global warming.

Now unless you’ve just landed from Mars we all know we have to stop the combustion and work towards going electric for our daily transport needs.

But why haven’t we done this already? Electric cars have been around for believe it or not for well over 150 years!

Yes in 1842 in Aberdeen Scotland Robert Davidson built a battery powered locomotive that could tow 6 tons at 4 mph for 1.5 miles, and in doing so, so angered the local railway workers that they set fire to it and destroyed it.

He was followed by a long string of illustrious scientists and engineers who created their own version of electrically powered transport names that are everyday legends such as Messrs Porsche, Ford, Edison and Studebaker. Electric transport probably reached its peak in 1971 when the $38M battery powered lunar roving vehicle landed on the moon, was driven a total of 9 times before being parked up and left at the spot it remains at today.

Most manufacturers simply then just gave up and concentrated on getting more power and latterly reduced emmissions from the good old combustion engine.

Then almost out of the blue and off their own initiative Nissan announced the serial production of the fully electric leaf in 2010 which has gone on to clock global sales of 650,000 with 270,000 built in the Uk at Nissan Sunderland.

Driven by increasing regulation, public awareness of pollution and demand for solutions to move to greener forms of transport, as the sunset on 2023 you could buy a hybrid or full electric vehicle from most of the legacy US, UK and EU brands and all including a tidy price premium – we had little choice.

But then as the sun rose on 2024 – to misquote Romeo up on the balcony – what light from yonder window breaks – it is the east!! Yes folks the Chinese are coming with ships stuffed to the gunnels with electric vehicles.

In the first few months of 2024 brands that most of us have never heard of have announced plans to launch in the Uk and EU and have signed agreements to sell and service their vehicles through well known established dealer groups such as MG with Arnold Clarke or Omoda with Greenhouse.

It was only 20 or so years ago that most people still regarded China as the bicycle economy, so what has changed?

Well in effect the Chinese gave up on trying to catch up on the combustion engine and saw the need for the transition to electric far quicker than anyone else. There followed 25 years of state driven aid into creating not only a vehicle manufacturing sector but the complete domination of the supply sector too. Today Chinese companies own @80% of cobalt mining operations and 95% of the worlds battery components supply. There are @300 established Chinese manufacturers of electric vehicles trading.

In a speech in early 2022 President Biden proclaimed the US owned the future of the automobile market and manufacturing and that American vehicle manufacture was back!

In the same year China quietly overtook Germany to take 2nd place as the worlds largest car exporter then in 2023 it overtook Japan to become the worlds number 1.

So who are these businesses that we have never heard of?

SAIC is Chinas largest and the worlds 7th largest manufacturer of cars – in the Uk they own and sell the MG brand. The MG4 was the 2nd best selling electric car in the UK in 2023 with 21K sales behind Teslas Model Y with 36K sales.

Changan Automobile is Chinas 2nd largest car manufacturer producing 2.3M vehicles in 2021. Changan means ‘lasting safety’ and they are the assembler for Ford and Mazda vehicles in China.They are also Chinas oldest car manufacturer founded in 1862 as an engineering works and producing its first serial production vehicle in 1959.

The Omoda brand is owned by Chery Automobile Co Ltd which is Chinas 3rd largest vehicle producer manufacturing 1.9M cars in 2023 and who are the assembler for Jaguar and landrover in China.

Look out for the Ora Funky cat manufactured by Great Wall Motors and the BYD ( Build your Dreams ) Atto 3 who manufacture more electric cars than each of Tesla, BMW and VW and employ 600K people. BYD have announced their aspiration to be within the top 3 manufacturers of all cars within 10 years and already have their own ship capable of carrying 5.5K cars at a time in use with another 7 on order.

But hasn’t this happened before and couldn’t this be a benefit for the UK?

At the end of the 1960s and across the 1970s Japanese vehicle manufacturers did the same, they may have ended the native manufacturers such as British Leyland but in 1986 Nissan opened their Sunderland factory and were followed by Honda and Toyota eventually employing vast numbers of people.

More choice is also good for the consumer, the legacy brands have exploited the desire to move to electric by charging a premium for the new vehicles. Without established brand strength the Chinese manufacturers will enter the market on discounts to gain volume sales. Despite having to transport the cars half way round the world there is still substantial profits left in the Chinese brands – one car ( BYD Seagull ) is currently on sale new in china for ￡8K and is rumoured to being brought to the Uk for a sale price of @ ￡15K.

So what’s to be afraid of? Well President Trump cites national security for one – electric cars are fitted with more than 100 sensors some of which are accessible through the cars cellular module gateway which is used to send out software updates wirelessly to the car. The worry is could a foreign state security network also collect the data available from these cars eg GPS locations, facial recognition etc etc and use it for nefarious purposes or in a time of conflict simply tell the cars to breakdown at various strategic locations and bring us all to a grinding halt.

Well why would they? Any misuse of data found would be commercial suicide not only for the new comers but also for those already here. Don’t forget my own electric car is a Volvo co owned Polestar 2 which sold @20K in the Uk in 2022 & 23. The London Electric vehicle Company ( LEVC ) build and sell 2500 electric black cabs per year from their factory in Coventry employing @400 people.

So if we are so concerned about data misuse then why don’t we start with regulation in the UK & EU about who owns the data generated?

As we were distracted and obsessed with perfecting combustion, we missed that we were beaten by the slow electric boat from China.

They have already listened and acted on the Confucius proverb that ‘the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago’ but we should listen to the last part of that same proverb that says ‘the second best time to plant a tree is now’.

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