Truth is they are years ahead of most battery manufacturers in R&D.
At least maybe we'll get to stick around as business consultants and selling mainframes to a handful of companies convinced by "nobody was ever fired for buying German".
However, germany is the most car-dependent country (because it can't go anywhere without making cars).
Companies can forget how.
Stellantis (which owns Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, and some other forgettable car brands) forgot how. The CEO was fired on December 1st, 2024. His strategy had been to crank prices way up, add on post-sale service charges, and get the biggest bonus in automotive executive pay history (not counting Musk's current litigated bonus.)
Sales went down. Way down. Chrysler now makes only minivans. Overpriced Jeeps are piling up in dealer lots. The "mild hybrid" power train, with 21 miles of electric mileage, is a dud. The brand image is in the tank. Nobody wears a Stellantis T-shirt.
The US has 3 million unsold cars sitting on dealer lots. Some have been there for over a year. How many will still start?
- Abarth
- Alfa Romeo
- Chrysler
- Citroën
- Dodge
- DS Automobiles
- Fiat
- Jeep
- Lancia
- Maserati
- Opel
- Peugeot
- Ram Trucks
- Vauxhall
Which worked so well for Japan that you had Nobel economic laureates promoting it. </s>
I'm being a bit sarcastic of course but MITA was seen as such the future in Japan--until it wasn't.
Anyway, it was wildly successful in Japan, Germany, and the US. Up until the time it stopped working. It has been arguably less successful in China, but still good enough to create massive change.
It's not very clear (at least to me) how and why. But it never seems to be a positive thing after some point, instead, it seems to have very negative impacts on more developed countries.
It's good at the initial stages and unproductive later on. The problem is that when you need to remove it is also when its recipients are most powerful.
Yes. This is what kills the US in rare earths, cobalt, gallium, etc. US mines shut down when the price goes down. Sometimes they restart when the price goes up. Sometimes they don't. All this churn makes the business unprofitable in the US.[1]
[1] https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-reports-third-...
This of course is unsustainable, and should have been stopped earlier by either Chinese or western governments with some concern for the environment as well rewarding bad self-destructive behavior.
The largest non-Chinese supply chain globally is Lynas, concentrates from toxic waste free mining in W.Australia are shipped to Malaysia for processing where pools of low level radioactive waste and associated acids are created as by product.
Texas, USA, very much wants in on having "oceans of toxic sludge left after the" processing:
The United States Department of Defence will contribute $US288 million ($442m) to develop Seadrift, with a view the construction will be finished by mid-2026. Lynas bought the southern Texas site in July last year from Dow and planned to turn first sod before the end of this year.
https://lynasrareearths.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Lynas...
The US expansion is funded by a US DoD initiative to secure critical resources for the US.
That being said, having driven my EV for a year or so I somewhat find ICE vehicles gross now. All that sputtering, poisons, jerkiness, continuous maintenance, loudness etc. just feels so primitive. The only place it still makes sense is for situations that require a lot of power like long distance hauling, heavy equipment etc.
To be able to compete with China the West would need to:
- Match generous subsidies to companies, not just through banks but at the government level by building entire towns just for battery production.
- Making large parts of land uninhabitable for the cost-effective extraction of rare earths.
- Suppress wages at factories and engineering bureaus to be able to cost compete in manufacturing.
- Dramatically lower cost of energy production (only doable without renewables in the short term).
I just don't see any Western government having a strong enough mandate for any of the policy changes required to compete with China. The simpler reaction is just imposing tariffs.
And China is hugely deploying renewables, which they happen to be able to produce very cheaply due to their industrial policy. The difference is that China is using their fossil fuel resources to make this investment, while the west is using its fossil fuel resources to shove crayons up its nose.
what a bunch of empty invective
This is how it always works, until it doesn't. Why is everyone so quick to forget that Japan was the exact same way in the 70s and 80s?
Overheard at a battery conference: western battery suppliers are actually copying (or in your words, stealing) the Chinese electrolyte formulas and other designs.
Great artists steal, the US and Europe play the same game.
The dependence on cars and the incompetence to get excellent on software are a huge problem here in Germany. But the educated part of the people here saw that coming.
The will to change is what is dragging us down in Germany.
Germany does have a giant, excellent chemistry industry.
> China's interest in batteries is not a recent trend. It has been investing in their production for many, many years. It has been attempting to dominate not just the production of cells but also of the cathodes and anodes that go inside them - not to mention the chemicals used to make those electrodes. It has been firming up the entire supply chain - all the way down to the mines. And while you can find only so much lithium and cobalt in China, Chinese firms have been buying up mines in Africa and elsewhere for years.
The fun thing is that the west saw it coming and didn't try particularly hard to forestall it. Consistent, long term industrial policy is very effective.