China's electric car market is a bubble ready to burst

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There are too many cooks on the Chinese electric vehicle market. The former CEO of VW has been accused for Dieselgate in Germany, said Elon Musk, who has always been "crazy on Twitter, And many more for the morning passage of Monday, April 15, 2019.

1st speed: the Chinese EV Bubble May Pop

According to Bloomberg, the Chinese market of 486 registered electric vehicle companies could be on the verge of collapse, citing a lack of demand and signs that the market would not grow fast enough to support as many automakers.

More from Bloomberg:

"We are going to see big waves taking sand in the electric vehicle industry," said Thomas Fang, partner and strategy consultant at Roland Berger in Shanghai. "It's a critical moment that will decide life or death for EV startups."

[…]

Startups promise to provide a collective production capacity of 3.9 million vehicles per year. This excludes what some of the world's largest automakers expect.

China is big, but not so big. Annual sales of electric passenger vehicles have exceeded one million units for the first time last year, according to the BNEF, boosted by subsidies that could save thousands dollars on the price displayed.

Even the Chinese government's incentive to sell seven million electric cars a year by 2025 would probably not be able to maintain profitable production of all new EV plants, which would lead to more and more startups slipped into the red in the years to come.

The Chinese market is also facing growing competition from Volkswagen, Ford and Tesla. A new Shanghai Gigafactory was recently announced, along with the potential loss of China's $ 7,500 grant program. This could be catastrophic for smaller startups that are still trying to establish themselves.

2nd gear: it is the start-ups that innovate in terms of EV, although

On this note, the innovation in electric vehicles seems to be moving towards start-up companies and away from major established automakers, as reported by Reuters.

Companies such as Tesla, Nio, Rimac and Pininfarina have all been able to produce EVs with impressive performance with small teams, unlike the slowness of larger and more established automakers who are developing their first EV models.

It even took the start-up Rivian the first consumer electric van concept in a US market, where truck and all-terrain vehicle sales are generally the largest and most profitable segments for established automakers. such as Ford and GM.

But Reuters is focusing more on Pininfarina hiring René-Christopher Wollmann, the man behind the Mercedes-AMG Project One supercars program:

Wollman's decision, which has not been made public, comes at a time when major automakers, such as Volkswagen and Mercedes, have been blinded by tighter and more expensive emissions tests, forcing them to do so. to focus their resources on consumer electric models and cleaning their combustion engines. .

[…]

"Big companies take a long time to transform. And I'm good at hypercars. I just did the Project One, and now this opportunity was coming up, "Wollmann, 37, told Reuters why he joined Automobili Pininfarina, a Munich-based electric car manufacturer launched last year.

[…]

"Rene Wollmann came to see us because he had said that it was difficult to carry out such projects in a large company," Michael Perschke, CEO of Automobili Pininfarina, told Reuters.

Wollmann was also the man behind the Mercedes AMG SLS electric, and it's a little surprising to see him forced to leave the ship to find fulfilling projects. It's probably good for Pininfarina and certainly not a good look for Mercedes-AMG.

3rd gear: The former CEO of VW, Winterkorn, and four other people accused of fraud by Dieselgate

Former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn, who was released on bail following Dieselgate's revelations that he would have allowed his company to cheat with diesel emissions tests, is accused of fraud and fraud. violation of competition law with four other executives, as announced by Brunswick City prosecutors via Automotive News.

Here's more news from Auto News:

Winterkorn is accused of serious fraud because it did not disclose the illegal handling of diesel engines to responsible authorities in Europe and the United States, as well as to customers. He also failed to prohibit the subsequent installation of "defeat device" software after May 25, 2014, which would have resulted in much higher fines, the statement said.

Prosecutors allege that Winterkorn had approved a software update in November 2014 priced at 23 million euros, which was "pointless and aimed to further conceal the real reason for the increase in pollutant levels in normal operation of a vehicle ".

Winterkorn has already been prosecuted for Dieselgate in the United States, but has not been tried or arrested yet, as he is not stupid enough to leave Germany, his home country which does not will not extradite. Of course, even Germany would eventually commit to pursuing it, so we'll see what happens next.

4th gear: Musk tweet again questionable forecasts

Elon Musk, the guy just does not learn. After already having to step down as president of Tesla and pay a $ 20 million fine as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, both parties are currently reworking the language of their settlement on the order of a US District Judge.

Musk latest tweets are similar to those who put him in trouble in the first place, reports Bloomberg, and this could throw yet another key in his relationship with the SEC:

Musk wrote Sunday that Tesla will manufacture more than 500,000 cars in the next 12 months. A similar tweet was sent nearly two months ago in which Musk announced that the company would build half a million vehicles in 2019, which led the US Securities and Exchange Commission to say it was disregard of a settlement reached with the regulator last year.

The latest forecast, presented as a seemingly innocuous side in a debate over the future value of Tesla vehicles, was nonetheless published as Musk's lawyers negotiated with the SEC over an agreement setting up a billionaire tweet control. A US judge has given April 18 to both parties that they meet for at least an hour and resolve their disputes. If they can not, she will decide if Musk is an outrage.

[…]

Musk, on Saturday, challenged reports that Panasonic would have increased the plant's annualized battery cell production capacity to 35 gigawatts / hour, saying the company's lines were only 24 gigawatt hours long and limited the production of the Tesla Model 3 Sedan.

He also recently tweeted that the Wall Street Journal was "puppet socks"From" big oil ", and repeatedly supported other Twitter users calling the Bloomberg reporter, Dana Hull, claiming that it was"embarrassing"That Tesla's Twitter account was following her.

Disconnect, Elon. Or not. I can always count on you for the Morning Shift gears.

5th gear: Boeing 737 MAX flight stops spoil airline summer

Following two fatal accidents forcing airlines to land on all scheduled flights with their Boeing 737 MAX, companies are now worried that they will not be able to meet demand for the summer flying season, reports Reuters :

Southwest Airlines Co, the largest MAX operator in the world, and American Airlines Group with 34 and 24 MAX airliners respectively, removed the aircraft from their flight schedules in August.

Southwest's decision will result in 160 cancellations of approximately 4,200 daily flights between June 8 and August 5, while American's cancellation until August 19 will mean approximately 115 cancellations, or 1.5% of its summer flight schedule.

The Southwest low-cost airline, which, unlike its competitors, only uses Boeing 737s, estimated the shortfall of $ 150 million between February 20 and March 31 solely because of the cancellations of MAX and other factors.

[…]

The moment of a prolonged grounding could not be worse for porters in the northern hemisphere. Aircraft work best in June, July and August, when airlines generate the most revenue per seat / kilometer available, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The impact of the 737 MAX cancellations is still unclear, but some airlines are even considering restoring unused plans to try to fix the problem.

Boeing is currently working on an upgrade of what is believed to be the software involved in the two recent accidents, reports Reuters, but the fix will take a few months to implement and the aircraft will need to be recertified to fly before it can be used. planned again.

Reverse: The winner of the 1910 Vanderbilt Cup race dies as a result of the tragedy of the Titanic