April 3, 2025 • 31 mins
There is a lot happening in the world of EVs. In the US, Teslas are being hawked from the White House lawn, while in China, BYD has announced a battery that can be charged to go 400km in just 5 minutes. All the while a rearrangement of global trade and tariffs is sending shockwaves through the system. This week on Zero, Bloomberg’s global automotive editor Craig Trudell unpacks the latest twists and turns in the EV revolution.
Explore further:
- BYD Is Winning the Global Race to Make Cheaper EVs
- Chinese EVs Make Inroads in Nigeria as Gasoline Prices Rise
- Sign up to the Hyperdrive newsletter.
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to: Mythili Rao, Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Blake Maples and Siobhan Wagner. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. This week the global
battle for EV supremacy. There is a lot happening in
(00:20):
the EV world at the moment. In the US, teslas
are being hawked on the White House lawn while President
Donald Trump mults weather to cut EV subsidies. In Europe,
leading auto manufacturers continue to lobby against stricter CO two targets,
even as EV sales continue to grow at pace. Meanwhile,
in China, electric vehicle technology continues to improve by leaps
(00:44):
and bounds. Electric car giant Bid just launched two models
that can add four hundred kilometers of range about two
hundred and fifty miles in a mere five minutes, as
quick as taking a stop at a gas station. Keeping
up with all the latest twists in terms of the
EV industry is a full time job, and luckily we
(01:05):
have a person whose full time job it is to
help us unpick the latest EV trends. I sat down
with Craig Trudell, who is Bloomberg's Global Automotive editor and
sits a few desks down from me in our offices
here in London. Before that, Craig ran the automotives team
in Europe, the US, and Asia, so he has a
unique global insight of the EV market as it stands today.
(01:28):
Craig also writes the Hyperdrive newsletter for Bloomberg, one of
my favorite places for all the latest developments in the
world of EV's. We discussed the state of the global
EV industry, why Japan seems so hesitant to embrace the transition,
and whether Elon Musk is now derailing the adoption of
electric cars. Craig, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So I think a lot about electric cars, but I
know for a fact I don't think about them as
much as you do. And so I want to understand
this moment because there's just so much happening in pretty
much every auto market in the world. It's not just
about Elon Muskin Tesla. So we'll come to that big
(02:17):
dark elephant. But before that, let's start in America, and
let's start with the big automakers, you know, Ford, General Motors.
These companies had committed to go down the path of electrification.
They were getting all this money from the Inflation Reduction
Act under Biden to subsidize making battery plans, to try
and get more domestic manufacturing of all sorts in the
(02:41):
supply chain happening, and now they have in the Trump
administration push back against all forms of ebs. Many of
them seem completely dumb, like having charging stations that are
perfectly fine and working being shut down. But others which
you know, can make some rational argument for which is
cutting the subsidies for the sale of electric cars or
(03:04):
cutting the subsidies for battery making because that's a Biden
thing and Trump doesn't want to do it. So with
all this mess happening, how is Ford doing?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I mean to speak to your point that these companies
really took this seriously the last few years. Ford went
so far as to completely switch up how it was
organized as a company to where it started actually its
own EV business within the parent right. And so they
had you know, Model E separate from Ford Blue for
(03:36):
Blue being you know, the gas guzzling F series pickups,
this sort of you know, conventional business and Model E
being you know, Mustang Machi, the F one fifty Lightning.
They lost more than five billion dollars last year just
in the EV business. And that's a heck of a
lot of money, period, But it's a heck of a
lot of money for you know, just the size of
(03:58):
that business for them, because much as it is growing,
it is still quite small. GM, I think has put
quite a bit more effort, and investment into electric vehicles
is further along. I think, you know, Ford kind of
freaked out a little bit by you know, how Tesla
was bringing a pickup to market. Trucks are so important
(04:19):
for the Detroit companies. I think they've freaked out a
little bit because of Tesla. They freaked out a little
bit because of Chevy and GM. They rushed to pick
up to market. That was sort of Frankenstein pick up
a little bit with you know, some holdover of the
way they've been making the f one fifty and some
new stuff. I think they will come back to the
(04:42):
market with something that is much more concerted and you know,
more attractive to consumers. But for the time being, they're
really pumping the brakes.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
In America, there's the third big one, which used to
be Chrysler, but it's been since taken over by a
European company, and now you don't know whether it's American
area being but Stilentis has gone through the same transition.
What kind of price are company is starting to pay
if they get the transition wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I think this is a huge story to watch in
twenty twenty five, Stalantis's attempt to sort of clean up
after the mess of the fact that they were so
far behind everybody else, and in this transition, all of
Detroit is very much relying on big pickups and SUVs.
But I think Fiat Chrysler, you know, the sort of
(05:32):
predecessor to Stalantis, was particularly so when you think about
RAM trucks and gpsuvs, you almost don't have anything left
of Chrysler and some of these other brands right Chrysler
literally the only thing they manufacture in that market anymore
is a minivan. They made this big attempt under the
(05:52):
CEO who just left late last year to try and
play some ketchup and electrify a lineup that was in
dire and dire need of some electrification. It didn't go
well at all. There was resistance internally, I think with
their dealers, with their suppliers that they have long worked
(06:13):
with that have not been in this in this realm.
So this is a company that just a year prior
was doing fabulously, you know, roughly twelve billion euros of
free cash flow generated to last year a six billion
euro burn so in the course of a year it
(06:34):
was something on the order of eighteen nineteen billion euros swing.
I think it speaks to just how much this is
an industry where you know, you make some bad bets
or they go against you, and you pay a price
that you just don't see in other industries.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And then the doc elephant in the room Tesla. Now
let's keep the politics of Musk apart for a bit
and talk about just the company and it's performance.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Tonight, more turmoil for Tesla CEO elon Musk live streaming
and all hands meeting Thursday, trying to reassure his employees
as Tesla stock tumbles, and then a Tesla take down
protest movement against the company.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I understand if you don't want buy our product, but
you don't have to burn it down, that's a bet unreasonable.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Tesla's shares from its beacon December are drastically down and
they don't look like a car company that is growing.
You know, as stock prices can be vibes, but they
are also based on fundamentals, like what is Tesla's deal
right now? As a car company?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
It sort of changes by the month, by the week,
sometimes by the day. I do think that, you know,
the one thing that's been really consistent with this company
really when you go back just the last few years,
it started to become pretty apparent that they're very narrow lineup.
That was a real strength for them during the pandemic
because they only had so many mouths to feed, if
(07:57):
you will, you know, your supply chain is a little
bit easier to manage when you only have so many vehicles.
That was a real strength for them. And they had
the Model Y at a time when you know, sort
of ev hype was at its peak, and to credit them,
they were a huge driver of that hype. And you
got into the twenty twenty two timeframe when Musk goes
(08:21):
out and decides to acquire Twitter, where you know, this
company that had been promising more models wasn't actually delivering
those and the growth really started to slow down. And
so I think we're seeing them sort of feel the
ill effects of having maybe counted on this you know,
tight lineup strategy for longer than they really should have.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Right, and so this is sort of cutting down the
possibility of a cheaper car than the Model three then
sort of pivoting towards robotaxis. And now if you bring
into politics, because you have to these days, you were
seeing people actually put on advertisements about the Swasti cars
(09:02):
and Elon Musk is sitting in them doing the salute,
and it's showing up at least in correlation in sales
drops across the world. So here in the UK, electric
car sales are going up rapidly, but Tesla sales have
gone down, and that shows up in multiple countries. Is
the politics actually having an impact on these Tesla sales?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I mentioned the model why, and that was so important
because it actually became the best selling vehicle in the world,
which I think nobody saw that coming. I certainly didn't,
and I think you have to sort of take your
hat off tip to Tesla for having done that. That
being said, they sort of let that vehicle age a
bit and they're just now coming out with a redesigned
(09:46):
version of that. Anytime you change over a vehicle to
a new design, you also have to change over production lines.
That's going to cost you some output, and Tesla has
said they're going to change over all of the plants
that make that this quarter and so that's absolutely going
to have an effect and is something that we're going
to have to sort of parse as the year goes on.
(10:07):
How much of their early year struggles are sort of
a result of that very understandable changeover and how much
is it the fact that Musk, to your point, is
alienating a lot of people. And it's not just people
on the left. I think when you look at how
he's behaved online toward countries that are big EV buyers,
(10:29):
Germans in general just aren't particularly keen for Americans to
American billionaires to insert themselves in politics. Here in the UK,
you know, the Labor Party have been big proponents of
electric vehicles and that zero. He on the other hand,
is sort of throwing his lot in with Nigel Farage
and reform. And so it's not just the fact that
(10:51):
he has so emphatically gotten behind Trump. I'm sure that
doesn't help, because he too is a very divisive figure
for a lot of people. But it's more than that.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, And talking of Europe, now it's not going through
the same level of EV backlash on policy at least,
but European automakers have not done themselves any favor by
lobbying very hard to try and have as much leeway
in getting to goals that they must reach because these are,
(11:19):
at least in Europe, legally binding climate targets that require
them to reach a certain level of electric car sale.
Are there any European automakers that are showing signs of
actually making a transition from a legacy player to the
twenty first century eve car maker that you ought to
be now?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, this has been so interesting, and it's good that
we started off the conversation by talking about the state
of things in the US and touchdown the Inflation Reduction Act,
because I think a few years ago everybody in Europe
was freaking out right because Biden passed this climate bill
that was just a landmark piece of legislation. Europe was
really worried about falling behind. And so we've seen a
(12:03):
lot more take up of electric vehicles in Europe, but
it's really just been in a handful of countries for
the most part. To the extent that there's been higher
take up, it's been in some smaller markets like Norway.
You know of some of the Nordic countries where people
just don't buy a ton of cars generally. But I
think we've seen really interesting differences in strategy where a BMW,
(12:25):
I think a lot of people were doubting whether it
was going to make sense for them to sort of have,
you know, one foot in and one foot in the
combustion age. They've actually made that work, you know, pretty
nicely the last year where their electric vehicle sales really
sort of gained momentum despite some of them being built
off of combustion engine platforms, which a lot of this
(12:47):
sort of ev purists thought that that can't work, and
so they've really outperformed, I would say, on the luxury
end of the spectrum. For the rest of the industry,
I think you've really had trouble, particularly among this sort
of mass manufacturers, and I think Volkswagen is the one
you have to sort of talk about first and foremost,
(13:08):
where they put a lot of investment in this, rolled
out a lot of models, and while they are maintaining
some some momentum or at least in a decent position
relative to some other players, I think that's more a
function of the fact that they're just so big as
a group than it is that they've really done a
lot of things right.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
And then the other one that is perhaps in the
laggard territory and maybe among American and European and Japanese
was the Japanese are the biggest lag yards here and
it's not helped that they've had some serious business trouble
in recent years. Now, you lived in Tokyo for a
while and you follow the Japanese car market really closely,
(13:49):
Are they seeing any of this stuff happening in the
West affecting how they think about the transition? Now?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, there are real differences among those companies where I
think Nissan under Carlos going roughly a decade ago, really
saw a lot of promise in electric vehicles, and you
saw them bring out the Leaf, which was really sort
of ahead of its time in terms of, you know,
an affordable vehicle that was fully electric, and yet I
(14:18):
think it left, you know, a fair amount to be
desired in terms of you know, design and sort of
shape and utility for folks, and especially in markets like
the US where we like our great big vehicles that
didn't you know, hit the mark. And so I think
Nissan really sort of pulled back after missing the mark
with the Leaf, and then I think for the rest
(14:40):
of the Japanese you know, Toyota has really doubted, you know,
consistently that consumers are ready, especially where it sells an
awful lot of cars in the US and in Japan,
and much as there's been a sort of consistent questions
raised about whether that's the right strategy for them, I
(15:00):
think we have to sort of acknowledge our looking pretty
smart in terms of their ability to comply with the
rules set by regulators to lower emissions but not necessarily
get to zero because people are buying hybrids like they're
going out of style, and it's really difficult actually for
the company to keep hybrids and stock in the US.
(15:22):
Here in Europe, you know, it's getting pretty close to
hybrid only for them, and in Japan I can say too,
you know, it's just sort of what you expect to
see on the roads is priuses, but also the rest
of the lineup is you know, predominantly hybridized.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
At this point.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
After the break the panda in the room, has China
beaten all others at EV technology and cracked the developing
world's EV market. And by the way, if you've been
enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate and
review the show on Apple podcasts and Spotify helps other
listeners find the show. So I want to talk about
(16:13):
China's global view of the ev pucket because it's starting
to expand really quite quickly outside of China. But before
we go there, given what BVID just announced, I feel
like we need to spend a few minutes. So BID
is launching two new models that they say can go
from seven percent to fifty percent charge roughly four hundred
(16:36):
kilometers of range in a mere five minutes. Now you
need a few things there. It's not just these two cars,
but you also need a one megawat charger, which is
like ten times the amount of power that a Tesla
supercharger has, for example. But if you have that, now
you can get a car charged in the same amount
(16:56):
of time that you would spend at a gas station.
It feels like it's a deep Seek moment for EV batteries.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I think that's right because I think with deep Seek,
the sort of parallel here is that everybody thought that
everyone was going to have to spend a ton of
money and there was sort of no way around it.
And alone and behold some company in China that people
you know, for the most part, in the West hadn't
heard of, sort of came out of nowhere and sort
(17:27):
of blew every everybody's mind with you know, you know what,
there's a better way, a cheaper way, and I think
we've sort of seen by D they were sort of
deep seek before there was deep seek in the idea
that you know, they were offering a much cheaper solution
for electric vehicles and weren't particularly well known until the
last few years. I think, even still after the remarkable
(17:49):
run they've been on, I think a lot of consumers
would only sort of vaguely be aware of what this
company is, and you know, would have a hard time
being able to tell you a specific model that by
ID makes right. And yet they are absolutely setting the
car world on fire. And with this announcement, you know,
the sort of immediate question that it raises is, you know,
(18:10):
is range anxiety dead?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
So I started writing about electric cars like in twenty seventeen,
and that's when the thing that everybody thought about was batteries.
Because if you could make the battery cheaper and have
more energy density, does lots of range, then you're going
to make this device price parity and eventually you'll get
to this point which is making charging be as quick
(18:36):
as a gas station stop. But all the battery people
also said temper your expectations because batteries are complicated, the
chemistry is complicated, it will take a while. And so
I went on this wild goose chase about finding these
new types of battery technologies like silicon anodes or solid
state batteries that would eventually get us to this point.
(18:58):
And lo and behold, Uid has come out with this
technology with what would be classed as an old school
lithium ion battery as far as we know, and this
is where we have to rely on what the company
has told us. BID's battery is a lithium ion phosphate battery.
It's one of the cheapest lithium ion batteries you can make,
but it is very good because it can handle a
(19:20):
lot of power, which is, it can take a lot
of electricity in a very short amount of time, and
that's exactly what you need for a quick charge. And so,
because the technology is not a fundamental chemical breakthrough, it
might be something that becomes accessible to other battery companies
in a few years time. So this could be a
(19:40):
technology that's available to everybody. The catch, of course, is
you need a one mega or charger and that you
can't build very many of I mean, UID is telling
us they'll build four thousand of these in China. China,
as we know, is a huge electric giant, not just
in making electric cars but also deploying all this electricity generation.
And so you could perhaps believe that there are one
(20:02):
mega charges coming in China. Hard to see getting those
here in Europe in the US in near term. The
question that I'm left with is if this is real
and we do see these commercial models being sold in
April as they are supposed to, how does that change
the global ev landscape.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, I think assuming all of what BYD has told us,
we can take it to the bank, and you know
there isn't a sort of fine print, a sort of
catch to all this, it does actually put battery electric
vehicles on a much more you know, sort of competitive
pedestal where you know, even in China, I think it's
it's gone sort of underappreciated as we've seen this, you know,
(20:42):
more global slow down in the momentum for fully electric
vehicles China. You know, the plug in hybrid part of
what they call new energy vehicles has really been what's
sort of driving you know, the growth for them in
the last call it year plus and if that is
you know, in no small part because of this very
issue of how long it takes to recharge, the concern
(21:05):
about whether or not you're going to run out of
juice and need to you know, stop for thirty minutes,
an hour, an hour and a half, and you know,
and sometimes you know, wait for for aligne for for chargers.
It's not, of course, just the idea of you know,
the charge itself. You know, oftentimes you're you're competing with
other drivers who also need a charge. So if we
(21:27):
can so speed up this process to where it's only
five minutes to give you, you know, plenty of range to
get you to where you need to go and continue
on in your journey, that eliminates a huge sort of
knock against battery electric vehicles that you know, maybe plug
in hybrids, what's the sort of you know, real need
for that it's going to be sort of considered an
(21:50):
engine that you don't actually need. And so I think
that of course will have big ramifications as well for emissions,
because while plugging hybrids are much cleaner than full ice vehicles,
they also are not quite where BEVs are in terms
of how clean they are.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Well, I saved China for the end because when I
look at electric car stories and I like to see
what's happening outside of the big markets, because the big
markets are something that are very well covered and for
a good reason. They're big markets. But then you add
those up, and then you add the rest of the world,
and the rest of the world is larger. And what
(22:28):
China is doing now is it's become the largest exporter
of cars and they're going into this rest of the
world market in a strong way. Just recently, there was
a headline from Bloomberg reporters looking at Nigeria. Now, Nigeria
had cut diesel subsidies. I was aware of that. Realize
a lot on diesel generators, so it was moving to solar.
I was aware of that, but did not realize that
(22:50):
the downstream impact is actually so big that suddenly Chinese
electric cars are now cheaper than the diesel alternative, not
just parity cheaper, and there's this rapid rise of Chinese
electric car sales in Nigeria. Are we just going to see,
at least in the electric car space, China now leapfrog
all of these other Japanese, European and American automakers.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I think this is going to be the sort of
you know, question of the next few years, because we've
seen we've seen it answered. You know, can they dominate
their own market? We've seen an emphatic yes. I think,
especially you know, with with BYD, and you know that
company has absolutely cleaned up in China and they're they're
(23:36):
really getting aggressive in some of the bigger markets that
that do get the attention. I would encourage your listeners
to read a Bloomberg Business Week cover story that our
colleagues Gabby Coppola and Danny Lee wrote. It was all
about how BYD was winning the global race to make
cheaper electric cars, and there was this sort of reference
in the opening of the story to this idea of
(23:59):
you know, when you think about like chicken bones that
you have little bits of meat left on them, that
is BYD's strategy. I thought that was so insightful that they,
you know, the lead of the story was all about
how they're they're making this big play in Malta of
all places, right, and this is in some ways a
function of the fact that these companies for all the
(24:21):
success they've had in making much better cars that are
really attractive and turn heads, they still don't have this
sort of brand recognition and brand value, and that's going
to take them some time to build up. It doesn't
happen overnight. It takes a lot of promotions and marketing,
and you're seeing them spend money in that regard to
but I think they're clear eyed about the fact that
(24:43):
it will take some convincing of people to ditch say
a Volkswagen that people have been buying that their whole
lifetime and try out a brand that they've only heard
of just in the last few years. So they're really
making a play for the developing world. And to go
back to the conversation about the Japanese manufacturers, that has
been their turf. And so we've seen this real changing
(25:06):
of the guard of China overtaking Japan in no small
part because of a lot of these markets that people overlook.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
And one other reason is they are going to these
markets because Western countries are just putting up these tariff
barriers right huge amount of money that you need to
pay if you're buying a Chinese car in the US,
which almost impossible to buy one. You could still do
that in Europe, but then pay forty five percent tariff
on top. Typically, these startiff stories tell you that, look,
(25:36):
Europeans want to save their automakers and Americans want to
save their automakers. But the reality is, no auto company
in the world in history has really become a big,
giant auto company without the domestic government playing a key
role in making it a big company. So is it
(25:57):
really fair that this tariff game is being played by
saying China is so different and it's so heavily subsidizing
it's electric cars that they must be this tariff.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I think, honestly, this is a reflection of the rest
of the world sort of you know, seeing the writing
on the wall and realizing that they are in big,
big trouble. And to your point, this is an industry
that is hugely nationalistic, right, There is a reason why
French companies that you know are not necessarily all that
(26:28):
strong globally, and you know in pockets of Europe even
aren't strong, but they still dominate the French market. The
same goes for Italy, and you know it, the same
goes for Germany, India. In India, I think this is
a function of the fact that these companies are so big,
the products that they make are so high value, they
(26:49):
require so much labor. It absolutely is the case that
this is an industry where the governments look out for
the companies. And when you make a sort of bet
on a paradigm shift, which China did years ago now
and you know, steadily organize around that be on a
(27:09):
paradigm shift, and that comes to pass and you're able
to do what the rest of the world has not
figured out, and you sort of, you know, beat them
to the punch to a substantial degree. I think we
had a sort of oh shoot moment. I know this
is a family show, and the world is not being
particularly coy about talking about needing to give their industry
(27:35):
a lift and protect them from China. China was absolutely
at the center of how IRA was crafted. Joe Manchin
and Joe Biden. The reason they were sort of able
to make the IRA work was because Manchin said, if
these automakers want these subsidies, then build me a dang
(27:55):
domestic supply chain. And there is no way to do
that and compete with China without doing something policy wise
to account for the fact that China is so far
ahead on cost and scale.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Now we have seen a shift in the American stance
since the IRA. What we don't know is how far
this stance goes. Right, we are getting an anti EV
movement in America, but also these tariff games that are
being played by the Trump administration with allies or with enemies.
(28:30):
It doesn't really matter what in twenty twenty five should
you be looking out for. If you're interested in the
auto market, without knowing the specifics of all the weird
things that are likely to happen, where are the stress
points that are worth knowing?
Speaker 2 (28:47):
I think you know, the Trump administration has made an
awful lot of noise about doing away with the quote
unquote EV mandate. There isn't in fact an EV mandate,
a hard and fast one at least, but the threat
of subsidies going away, especially incentives for consumers, I think
is a huge story to watch because the way that
(29:10):
this has played out in terms of the amount of
investment by the industry, both by car makers, by battery manufacturers,
by miners, sort of you name it. There's been an
awful lot of investment, particularly in red districts. I think
it's going to be harder than maybe the headlines have
suggested for Washington to get comfortable with taking away subsidies
(29:35):
for the companies, so maybe those get protected. The question
will be are those investments still money good if at
the end of this chain the consumer isn't incentivized to
actually buy because what we need to see as an
industry is scale, and in order to have scale make
(29:58):
any sense, you need people to buy what you're making.
And I think there's a lot of doubts about being
able to achieve what was sort of, you know, desired
under the Biden administration, given the constraints that Trump has
sort of signaled he's going to put on this industry
and his complete disinterest with wanting to see evs continue
(30:21):
to maintain momentum.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Well, this was really fun and I wish you that
you get more sleep in twenty twenty five and are
not disturbed by too many elon tweets.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I'm not counting at it, but thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Thank you for listening to zero. Sign up to the
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There's a link in the show notes. And now for
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(31:00):
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Head of podcast is Sage Bowman and head of Talk
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Special thanks to Mike Lee Rau, Samersadi Moses Andim Blake
Maples and Shawan Wagner. I'm Makshatrati back soon.
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. This week the global
battle for EV supremacy. There is a lot happening in
(00:20):
the EV world at the moment. In the US, teslas
are being hawked on the White House lawn while President
Donald Trump mults weather to cut EV subsidies. In Europe,
leading auto manufacturers continue to lobby against stricter CO two targets,
even as EV sales continue to grow at pace. Meanwhile,
in China, electric vehicle technology continues to improve by leaps
(00:44):
and bounds. Electric car giant Bid just launched two models
that can add four hundred kilometers of range about two
hundred and fifty miles in a mere five minutes, as
quick as taking a stop at a gas station. Keeping
up with all the latest twists in terms of the
EV industry is a full time job, and luckily we
(01:05):
have a person whose full time job it is to
help us unpick the latest EV trends. I sat down
with Craig Trudell, who is Bloomberg's Global Automotive editor and
sits a few desks down from me in our offices
here in London. Before that, Craig ran the automotives team
in Europe, the US, and Asia, so he has a
unique global insight of the EV market as it stands today.
(01:28):
Craig also writes the Hyperdrive newsletter for Bloomberg, one of
my favorite places for all the latest developments in the
world of EV's. We discussed the state of the global
EV industry, why Japan seems so hesitant to embrace the transition,
and whether Elon Musk is now derailing the adoption of
electric cars. Craig, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So I think a lot about electric cars, but I
know for a fact I don't think about them as
much as you do. And so I want to understand
this moment because there's just so much happening in pretty
much every auto market in the world. It's not just
about Elon Muskin Tesla. So we'll come to that big
(02:17):
dark elephant. But before that, let's start in America, and
let's start with the big automakers, you know, Ford, General Motors.
These companies had committed to go down the path of electrification.
They were getting all this money from the Inflation Reduction
Act under Biden to subsidize making battery plans, to try
and get more domestic manufacturing of all sorts in the
(02:41):
supply chain happening, and now they have in the Trump
administration push back against all forms of ebs. Many of
them seem completely dumb, like having charging stations that are
perfectly fine and working being shut down. But others which
you know, can make some rational argument for which is
cutting the subsidies for the sale of electric cars or
(03:04):
cutting the subsidies for battery making because that's a Biden
thing and Trump doesn't want to do it. So with
all this mess happening, how is Ford doing?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I mean to speak to your point that these companies
really took this seriously the last few years. Ford went
so far as to completely switch up how it was
organized as a company to where it started actually its
own EV business within the parent right. And so they
had you know, Model E separate from Ford Blue for
(03:36):
Blue being you know, the gas guzzling F series pickups,
this sort of you know, conventional business and Model E
being you know, Mustang Machi, the F one fifty Lightning.
They lost more than five billion dollars last year just
in the EV business. And that's a heck of a
lot of money, period, But it's a heck of a
lot of money for you know, just the size of
(03:58):
that business for them, because much as it is growing,
it is still quite small. GM, I think has put
quite a bit more effort, and investment into electric vehicles
is further along. I think, you know, Ford kind of
freaked out a little bit by you know, how Tesla
was bringing a pickup to market. Trucks are so important
(04:19):
for the Detroit companies. I think they've freaked out a
little bit because of Tesla. They freaked out a little
bit because of Chevy and GM. They rushed to pick
up to market. That was sort of Frankenstein pick up
a little bit with you know, some holdover of the
way they've been making the f one fifty and some
new stuff. I think they will come back to the
(04:42):
market with something that is much more concerted and you know,
more attractive to consumers. But for the time being, they're
really pumping the brakes.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
In America, there's the third big one, which used to
be Chrysler, but it's been since taken over by a
European company, and now you don't know whether it's American
area being but Stilentis has gone through the same transition.
What kind of price are company is starting to pay
if they get the transition wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I think this is a huge story to watch in
twenty twenty five, Stalantis's attempt to sort of clean up
after the mess of the fact that they were so
far behind everybody else, and in this transition, all of
Detroit is very much relying on big pickups and SUVs.
But I think Fiat Chrysler, you know, the sort of
(05:32):
predecessor to Stalantis, was particularly so when you think about
RAM trucks and gpsuvs, you almost don't have anything left
of Chrysler and some of these other brands right Chrysler
literally the only thing they manufacture in that market anymore
is a minivan. They made this big attempt under the
(05:52):
CEO who just left late last year to try and
play some ketchup and electrify a lineup that was in
dire and dire need of some electrification. It didn't go
well at all. There was resistance internally, I think with
their dealers, with their suppliers that they have long worked
(06:13):
with that have not been in this in this realm.
So this is a company that just a year prior
was doing fabulously, you know, roughly twelve billion euros of
free cash flow generated to last year a six billion
euro burn so in the course of a year it
(06:34):
was something on the order of eighteen nineteen billion euros swing.
I think it speaks to just how much this is
an industry where you know, you make some bad bets
or they go against you, and you pay a price
that you just don't see in other industries.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And then the doc elephant in the room Tesla. Now
let's keep the politics of Musk apart for a bit
and talk about just the company and it's performance.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Tonight, more turmoil for Tesla CEO elon Musk live streaming
and all hands meeting Thursday, trying to reassure his employees
as Tesla stock tumbles, and then a Tesla take down
protest movement against the company.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I understand if you don't want buy our product, but
you don't have to burn it down, that's a bet unreasonable.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Tesla's shares from its beacon December are drastically down and
they don't look like a car company that is growing.
You know, as stock prices can be vibes, but they
are also based on fundamentals, like what is Tesla's deal
right now? As a car company?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
It sort of changes by the month, by the week,
sometimes by the day. I do think that, you know,
the one thing that's been really consistent with this company
really when you go back just the last few years,
it started to become pretty apparent that they're very narrow lineup.
That was a real strength for them during the pandemic
because they only had so many mouths to feed, if
(07:57):
you will, you know, your supply chain is a little
bit easier to manage when you only have so many vehicles.
That was a real strength for them. And they had
the Model Y at a time when you know, sort
of ev hype was at its peak, and to credit them,
they were a huge driver of that hype. And you
got into the twenty twenty two timeframe when Musk goes
(08:21):
out and decides to acquire Twitter, where you know, this
company that had been promising more models wasn't actually delivering
those and the growth really started to slow down. And
so I think we're seeing them sort of feel the
ill effects of having maybe counted on this you know,
tight lineup strategy for longer than they really should have.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Right, and so this is sort of cutting down the
possibility of a cheaper car than the Model three then
sort of pivoting towards robotaxis. And now if you bring
into politics, because you have to these days, you were
seeing people actually put on advertisements about the Swasti cars
(09:02):
and Elon Musk is sitting in them doing the salute,
and it's showing up at least in correlation in sales
drops across the world. So here in the UK, electric
car sales are going up rapidly, but Tesla sales have
gone down, and that shows up in multiple countries. Is
the politics actually having an impact on these Tesla sales?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I mentioned the model why, and that was so important
because it actually became the best selling vehicle in the world,
which I think nobody saw that coming. I certainly didn't,
and I think you have to sort of take your
hat off tip to Tesla for having done that. That
being said, they sort of let that vehicle age a
bit and they're just now coming out with a redesigned
(09:46):
version of that. Anytime you change over a vehicle to
a new design, you also have to change over production lines.
That's going to cost you some output, and Tesla has
said they're going to change over all of the plants
that make that this quarter and so that's absolutely going
to have an effect and is something that we're going
to have to sort of parse as the year goes on.
(10:07):
How much of their early year struggles are sort of
a result of that very understandable changeover and how much
is it the fact that Musk, to your point, is
alienating a lot of people. And it's not just people
on the left. I think when you look at how
he's behaved online toward countries that are big EV buyers,
(10:29):
Germans in general just aren't particularly keen for Americans to
American billionaires to insert themselves in politics. Here in the UK,
you know, the Labor Party have been big proponents of
electric vehicles and that zero. He on the other hand,
is sort of throwing his lot in with Nigel Farage
and reform. And so it's not just the fact that
(10:51):
he has so emphatically gotten behind Trump. I'm sure that
doesn't help, because he too is a very divisive figure
for a lot of people. But it's more than that.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, And talking of Europe, now it's not going through
the same level of EV backlash on policy at least,
but European automakers have not done themselves any favor by
lobbying very hard to try and have as much leeway
in getting to goals that they must reach because these are,
(11:19):
at least in Europe, legally binding climate targets that require
them to reach a certain level of electric car sale.
Are there any European automakers that are showing signs of
actually making a transition from a legacy player to the
twenty first century eve car maker that you ought to
be now?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, this has been so interesting, and it's good that
we started off the conversation by talking about the state
of things in the US and touchdown the Inflation Reduction Act,
because I think a few years ago everybody in Europe
was freaking out right because Biden passed this climate bill
that was just a landmark piece of legislation. Europe was
really worried about falling behind. And so we've seen a
(12:03):
lot more take up of electric vehicles in Europe, but
it's really just been in a handful of countries for
the most part. To the extent that there's been higher
take up, it's been in some smaller markets like Norway.
You know of some of the Nordic countries where people
just don't buy a ton of cars generally. But I
think we've seen really interesting differences in strategy where a BMW,
(12:25):
I think a lot of people were doubting whether it
was going to make sense for them to sort of have,
you know, one foot in and one foot in the
combustion age. They've actually made that work, you know, pretty
nicely the last year where their electric vehicle sales really
sort of gained momentum despite some of them being built
off of combustion engine platforms, which a lot of this
(12:47):
sort of ev purists thought that that can't work, and
so they've really outperformed, I would say, on the luxury
end of the spectrum. For the rest of the industry,
I think you've really had trouble, particularly among this sort
of mass manufacturers, and I think Volkswagen is the one
you have to sort of talk about first and foremost,
(13:08):
where they put a lot of investment in this, rolled
out a lot of models, and while they are maintaining
some some momentum or at least in a decent position
relative to some other players, I think that's more a
function of the fact that they're just so big as
a group than it is that they've really done a
lot of things right.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
And then the other one that is perhaps in the
laggard territory and maybe among American and European and Japanese
was the Japanese are the biggest lag yards here and
it's not helped that they've had some serious business trouble
in recent years. Now, you lived in Tokyo for a
while and you follow the Japanese car market really closely,
(13:49):
Are they seeing any of this stuff happening in the
West affecting how they think about the transition? Now?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, there are real differences among those companies where I
think Nissan under Carlos going roughly a decade ago, really
saw a lot of promise in electric vehicles, and you
saw them bring out the Leaf, which was really sort
of ahead of its time in terms of, you know,
an affordable vehicle that was fully electric, and yet I
(14:18):
think it left, you know, a fair amount to be
desired in terms of you know, design and sort of
shape and utility for folks, and especially in markets like
the US where we like our great big vehicles that
didn't you know, hit the mark. And so I think
Nissan really sort of pulled back after missing the mark
with the Leaf, and then I think for the rest
(14:40):
of the Japanese you know, Toyota has really doubted, you know,
consistently that consumers are ready, especially where it sells an
awful lot of cars in the US and in Japan,
and much as there's been a sort of consistent questions
raised about whether that's the right strategy for them, I
(15:00):
think we have to sort of acknowledge our looking pretty
smart in terms of their ability to comply with the
rules set by regulators to lower emissions but not necessarily
get to zero because people are buying hybrids like they're
going out of style, and it's really difficult actually for
the company to keep hybrids and stock in the US.
(15:22):
Here in Europe, you know, it's getting pretty close to
hybrid only for them, and in Japan I can say too,
you know, it's just sort of what you expect to
see on the roads is priuses, but also the rest
of the lineup is you know, predominantly hybridized.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
At this point.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
After the break the panda in the room, has China
beaten all others at EV technology and cracked the developing
world's EV market. And by the way, if you've been
enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate and
review the show on Apple podcasts and Spotify helps other
listeners find the show. So I want to talk about
(16:13):
China's global view of the ev pucket because it's starting
to expand really quite quickly outside of China. But before
we go there, given what BVID just announced, I feel
like we need to spend a few minutes. So BID
is launching two new models that they say can go
from seven percent to fifty percent charge roughly four hundred
(16:36):
kilometers of range in a mere five minutes. Now you
need a few things there. It's not just these two cars,
but you also need a one megawat charger, which is
like ten times the amount of power that a Tesla
supercharger has, for example. But if you have that, now
you can get a car charged in the same amount
(16:56):
of time that you would spend at a gas station.
It feels like it's a deep Seek moment for EV batteries.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I think that's right because I think with deep Seek,
the sort of parallel here is that everybody thought that
everyone was going to have to spend a ton of
money and there was sort of no way around it.
And alone and behold some company in China that people
you know, for the most part, in the West hadn't
heard of, sort of came out of nowhere and sort
(17:27):
of blew every everybody's mind with you know, you know what,
there's a better way, a cheaper way, and I think
we've sort of seen by D they were sort of
deep seek before there was deep seek in the idea
that you know, they were offering a much cheaper solution
for electric vehicles and weren't particularly well known until the
last few years. I think, even still after the remarkable
(17:49):
run they've been on, I think a lot of consumers
would only sort of vaguely be aware of what this
company is, and you know, would have a hard time
being able to tell you a specific model that by
ID makes right. And yet they are absolutely setting the
car world on fire. And with this announcement, you know,
the sort of immediate question that it raises is, you know,
(18:10):
is range anxiety dead?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
So I started writing about electric cars like in twenty seventeen,
and that's when the thing that everybody thought about was batteries.
Because if you could make the battery cheaper and have
more energy density, does lots of range, then you're going
to make this device price parity and eventually you'll get
to this point which is making charging be as quick
(18:36):
as a gas station stop. But all the battery people
also said temper your expectations because batteries are complicated, the
chemistry is complicated, it will take a while. And so
I went on this wild goose chase about finding these
new types of battery technologies like silicon anodes or solid
state batteries that would eventually get us to this point.
(18:58):
And lo and behold, Uid has come out with this
technology with what would be classed as an old school
lithium ion battery as far as we know, and this
is where we have to rely on what the company
has told us. BID's battery is a lithium ion phosphate battery.
It's one of the cheapest lithium ion batteries you can make,
but it is very good because it can handle a
(19:20):
lot of power, which is, it can take a lot
of electricity in a very short amount of time, and
that's exactly what you need for a quick charge. And so,
because the technology is not a fundamental chemical breakthrough, it
might be something that becomes accessible to other battery companies
in a few years time. So this could be a
(19:40):
technology that's available to everybody. The catch, of course, is
you need a one mega or charger and that you
can't build very many of I mean, UID is telling
us they'll build four thousand of these in China. China,
as we know, is a huge electric giant, not just
in making electric cars but also deploying all this electricity generation.
And so you could perhaps believe that there are one
(20:02):
mega charges coming in China. Hard to see getting those
here in Europe in the US in near term. The
question that I'm left with is if this is real
and we do see these commercial models being sold in
April as they are supposed to, how does that change
the global ev landscape.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, I think assuming all of what BYD has told us,
we can take it to the bank, and you know
there isn't a sort of fine print, a sort of
catch to all this, it does actually put battery electric
vehicles on a much more you know, sort of competitive
pedestal where you know, even in China, I think it's
it's gone sort of underappreciated as we've seen this, you know,
(20:42):
more global slow down in the momentum for fully electric
vehicles China. You know, the plug in hybrid part of
what they call new energy vehicles has really been what's
sort of driving you know, the growth for them in
the last call it year plus and if that is
you know, in no small part because of this very
issue of how long it takes to recharge, the concern
(21:05):
about whether or not you're going to run out of
juice and need to you know, stop for thirty minutes,
an hour, an hour and a half, and you know,
and sometimes you know, wait for for aligne for for chargers.
It's not, of course, just the idea of you know,
the charge itself. You know, oftentimes you're you're competing with
other drivers who also need a charge. So if we
(21:27):
can so speed up this process to where it's only
five minutes to give you, you know, plenty of range to
get you to where you need to go and continue
on in your journey, that eliminates a huge sort of
knock against battery electric vehicles that you know, maybe plug
in hybrids, what's the sort of you know, real need
for that it's going to be sort of considered an
(21:50):
engine that you don't actually need. And so I think
that of course will have big ramifications as well for emissions,
because while plugging hybrids are much cleaner than full ice vehicles,
they also are not quite where BEVs are in terms
of how clean they are.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Well, I saved China for the end because when I
look at electric car stories and I like to see
what's happening outside of the big markets, because the big
markets are something that are very well covered and for
a good reason. They're big markets. But then you add
those up, and then you add the rest of the world,
and the rest of the world is larger. And what
(22:28):
China is doing now is it's become the largest exporter
of cars and they're going into this rest of the
world market in a strong way. Just recently, there was
a headline from Bloomberg reporters looking at Nigeria. Now, Nigeria
had cut diesel subsidies. I was aware of that. Realize
a lot on diesel generators, so it was moving to solar.
I was aware of that, but did not realize that
(22:50):
the downstream impact is actually so big that suddenly Chinese
electric cars are now cheaper than the diesel alternative, not
just parity cheaper, and there's this rapid rise of Chinese
electric car sales in Nigeria. Are we just going to see,
at least in the electric car space, China now leapfrog
all of these other Japanese, European and American automakers.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I think this is going to be the sort of
you know, question of the next few years, because we've
seen we've seen it answered. You know, can they dominate
their own market? We've seen an emphatic yes. I think,
especially you know, with with BYD, and you know that
company has absolutely cleaned up in China and they're they're
(23:36):
really getting aggressive in some of the bigger markets that
that do get the attention. I would encourage your listeners
to read a Bloomberg Business Week cover story that our
colleagues Gabby Coppola and Danny Lee wrote. It was all
about how BYD was winning the global race to make
cheaper electric cars, and there was this sort of reference
in the opening of the story to this idea of
(23:59):
you know, when you think about like chicken bones that
you have little bits of meat left on them, that
is BYD's strategy. I thought that was so insightful that they,
you know, the lead of the story was all about
how they're they're making this big play in Malta of
all places, right, and this is in some ways a
function of the fact that these companies for all the
(24:21):
success they've had in making much better cars that are
really attractive and turn heads, they still don't have this
sort of brand recognition and brand value, and that's going
to take them some time to build up. It doesn't
happen overnight. It takes a lot of promotions and marketing,
and you're seeing them spend money in that regard to
but I think they're clear eyed about the fact that
(24:43):
it will take some convincing of people to ditch say
a Volkswagen that people have been buying that their whole
lifetime and try out a brand that they've only heard
of just in the last few years. So they're really
making a play for the developing world. And to go
back to the conversation about the Japanese manufacturers, that has
been their turf. And so we've seen this real changing
(25:06):
of the guard of China overtaking Japan in no small
part because of a lot of these markets that people overlook.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
And one other reason is they are going to these
markets because Western countries are just putting up these tariff
barriers right huge amount of money that you need to
pay if you're buying a Chinese car in the US,
which almost impossible to buy one. You could still do
that in Europe, but then pay forty five percent tariff
on top. Typically, these startiff stories tell you that, look,
(25:36):
Europeans want to save their automakers and Americans want to
save their automakers. But the reality is, no auto company
in the world in history has really become a big,
giant auto company without the domestic government playing a key
role in making it a big company. So is it
(25:57):
really fair that this tariff game is being played by
saying China is so different and it's so heavily subsidizing
it's electric cars that they must be this tariff.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I think, honestly, this is a reflection of the rest
of the world sort of you know, seeing the writing
on the wall and realizing that they are in big,
big trouble. And to your point, this is an industry
that is hugely nationalistic, right, There is a reason why
French companies that you know are not necessarily all that
(26:28):
strong globally, and you know in pockets of Europe even
aren't strong, but they still dominate the French market. The
same goes for Italy, and you know it, the same
goes for Germany, India. In India, I think this is
a function of the fact that these companies are so big,
the products that they make are so high value, they
(26:49):
require so much labor. It absolutely is the case that
this is an industry where the governments look out for
the companies. And when you make a sort of bet
on a paradigm shift, which China did years ago now
and you know, steadily organize around that be on a
(27:09):
paradigm shift, and that comes to pass and you're able
to do what the rest of the world has not
figured out, and you sort of, you know, beat them
to the punch to a substantial degree. I think we
had a sort of oh shoot moment. I know this
is a family show, and the world is not being
particularly coy about talking about needing to give their industry
(27:35):
a lift and protect them from China. China was absolutely
at the center of how IRA was crafted. Joe Manchin
and Joe Biden. The reason they were sort of able
to make the IRA work was because Manchin said, if
these automakers want these subsidies, then build me a dang
(27:55):
domestic supply chain. And there is no way to do
that and compete with China without doing something policy wise
to account for the fact that China is so far
ahead on cost and scale.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Now we have seen a shift in the American stance
since the IRA. What we don't know is how far
this stance goes. Right, we are getting an anti EV
movement in America, but also these tariff games that are
being played by the Trump administration with allies or with enemies.
(28:30):
It doesn't really matter what in twenty twenty five should
you be looking out for. If you're interested in the
auto market, without knowing the specifics of all the weird
things that are likely to happen, where are the stress
points that are worth knowing?
Speaker 2 (28:47):
I think you know, the Trump administration has made an
awful lot of noise about doing away with the quote
unquote EV mandate. There isn't in fact an EV mandate,
a hard and fast one at least, but the threat
of subsidies going away, especially incentives for consumers, I think
is a huge story to watch because the way that
(29:10):
this has played out in terms of the amount of
investment by the industry, both by car makers, by battery manufacturers,
by miners, sort of you name it. There's been an
awful lot of investment, particularly in red districts. I think
it's going to be harder than maybe the headlines have
suggested for Washington to get comfortable with taking away subsidies
(29:35):
for the companies, so maybe those get protected. The question
will be are those investments still money good if at
the end of this chain the consumer isn't incentivized to
actually buy because what we need to see as an
industry is scale, and in order to have scale make
(29:58):
any sense, you need people to buy what you're making.
And I think there's a lot of doubts about being
able to achieve what was sort of, you know, desired
under the Biden administration, given the constraints that Trump has
sort of signaled he's going to put on this industry
and his complete disinterest with wanting to see evs continue
(30:21):
to maintain momentum.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Well, this was really fun and I wish you that
you get more sleep in twenty twenty five and are
not disturbed by too many elon tweets.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I'm not counting at it, but thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Thank you for listening to zero. Sign up to the
Hyperdrive newsletter for all the latest in the EB world.
There's a link in the show notes. And now for
the Sound of the Week, that's the simulated ex sound
(31:00):
of the Dodge Charger electric muscle car because some people
just like to be loud. If you like this episode,
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Head of podcast is Sage Bowman and head of Talk
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Special thanks to Mike Lee Rau, Samersadi Moses Andim Blake
Maples and Shawan Wagner. I'm Makshatrati back soon.
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