SAI Weekly 12 - 25: A Tariff for EVERYONE! Not one but 3 1+MW Chargers, eVTOL Trips Are FOR REAL ...in China
Tariffs announced. Trump was generous and spread the love – to A LOT of countries.
Many in the US are dumfounded about the width and depth of Trump Admin #2 tariffs. Let’s just say that Trump is tariffing the world. Because that’s kinda sorta what these lists represent.
If this person is correct (image #3), how he’s outlined it may actually how the Trump administration actually came up with the tariff rates. Not sure how many Xmas cards Trump should think he’s getting from foreign leaders come December.
The only things I wonder now is how much is EVERYTHING I buy going to go up? I also wonder how these tariffee (is that a word?) countries will try to work together to make it even worse for us. There’s going to be a ton of pain coming and it’s going to stretch many Americans to the brink – many of them the folks that voted him in.
Just read this story about an American business owner who orders their product from China and who’s worked very closely with a particular supplier, but who now has to now reconsider how much business they can do moving forward because of the tariffs, while also trying to sort out how much of the tariff should be passed through to the American customer. These are the types of things that are happening to small business owners, we forget that there are real consequences when tariffs are so abruptly thrown on everything.
I believe it’s OVERALL: Good that we (the US) are trying to re-shore some manufacturing. What I am still unclear of is which industries should be targeted and how quickly should they be reshored.
In 15 years from now, will we look at Trump V2 as the catalyst that brought back manufacturing jobs to the US or will we look back and see a world divided by innovative, but less expensive products from China and their also innovative, yet quite more expensive US made counterparts?
Fact: We will NEVER ‘catch up’ to China in manufacturing, nor should we want to. What articles don’t drill down on is that this boils down to a simple math problem.
There are 4x more people in China. Assume that they are as hardworking and innovative as we are. If we build domestically and they build there – it will always be cheaper to manufacture there than here. In general. Are there exeptions? I am sure there are, but I can’t think of one right now.
I’ve been slammed at the day job so this’ll be a shorter one.
For those that are local in Michigan – I will be part of a fireside chat being hosted by Ann Arbor SPARK next Tuesday, 5pm ET. I look forward to those of you that are able to attend. Please do stop me and let me know you’re a reader!
QUOTED
Forbes. Lots of attention on Tesla because of the numbers and product news coming out of BYD. Had a chance to speak with Alan Ohnsman who covers advanced transportation for Forbes. We chatted about Tesla and he asked what my thoughts were on what is real and what isn’t WRT Tesla sales being down in a few major markets.
From the post below, it’s a pretty significant shrinking of sales in Q1. To read what I had to say to Alan, find the article here (it may be behind a paywall).
If it is behind the paywall – the video below does a great job of summarizing the article.
BIGGEST NEWS THIS WEEK
What was now is now three. We went from one company – BYD - announcing the fastest EV charging on the planet, 1MW to now three in the span of less than 3 weeks having three. Zeekr unveiled a 1.2MW charger and Huawei will officially unveil its 1.44MW charger in the next three weeks.
Huawei’s seems to target electric commercial vehicles, which China is starting to accumulate more and more of. Another important point to make. We are getting into territory where charging with these chargers is now FASTER than refueling your gas tank. And don’t expect these announcements to subside. My guess is that there will be an EV company or two that may announce a wireless charging partnership.
If nothing else, there will be a few that announce that they’ve also developed 1MW chargers. The path to profitability for most of these EV companies continues to get pushed out as long as the Price War continues to be unsuccessful at pushing out the weaker players. So far, not many NO MAS announcements from any that I can think of recently.
The level and speed of one upsmanship is OFF THE CHARTS, is fun to track, but must be HELL to be an engineer at these companies. The crazy thing is, the turnover is likely pretty low since this is kinda all they know - remember 9-9-6.
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Yep, Tesla sales are down. Double digits. Sales were down by 13% YoY globally. Perhaps people were waiting on the Juniper refresh? If that’s the case, then those sales should show up somewhere in the next several months. Otherwise, what seem to be self-inflicted wounds won’t ‘seem to be’ anymore.
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Tesla is already offering a non-price cut price cut (incentive) already on its Juniper refresh in China. The exact offer is 0% financing for three years. This isn’t good – it wasn’t even in the market for a quarter before it needed to do something to try and goose demand. If they see strength in sales post incentive, look for the ‘free money’ to continue for a while.
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eVTOL in China may begin to take off! Ehang, the eVTOL company based in Guangzhou was granted a commercial license to begin charging for flights. Being able to say China was the 'first' provides the Chinese govt with alot of 'face' and there's a certain amount of national pride attached to it as well.
To be clear, these eVTOLs are autonomous with only the passenger in the aircraft. And they will fly in much, much lower altitude between 1K – 2K ft to be precise. I’d imagine that they won’t be able to fly over city centers for quite a while, but let me do some research and update.
CHINA EVs & MORE
China EVs & More #204 – Bring Your Dollars, Tariffs, the Global EV Shakeup
Please join us and message me directly with any questions you may have. Otherwise, find the recorded episode as an audio podcast or as video on the China EVs & More YouTube channel.
We are live on these platforms: YouTube, Linkedin and X. See you there!
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This weekly newsletter is a collection of articles we feel best reflect the happenings of the week or important trends that have effects on the global automotive and mobility sectors. We also provide a point of view that we hope educates and sparks debate.
The Sino Auto Insights team
America is now the mouse that roared. Why would you seek Irrelevance for your shrinking uncompetitive market.....and a strategy of uniting the competition.
Insularity has consequences.