By Alexander Miller, consultant in energy markets. Eurasia Business News, December 11, 2024. Article n°1330.
A groundbreaking new iron-making technology developed by Chinese researchers promises to revolutionize the global steel industry. This innovative method, known as flash iron-making, significantly enhances efficiency and reduces environmental impact, achieving a staggering 3,600-fold increase in production speed compared to traditional methods.
How the mighty have fallen! The once mighty VW are now in talks to enter into a joint venture with a yet unknown Chinese car manufacturer on German turf in one of VWs car plants slated for closure.
“It would be exactly the opposite of the situation in China, where VW had to enter into a joint venture with SAIC when it launched there in 1983. The Chinese brought in plants and labour, and VW the expertise in car manufacturing. It enabled domestic manufacturers to learn how to build combustion cars to European standards. Now, VW could learn how Chinese manufacturers build electric cars quickly and cheaply.” https://www.electrive.com/2025/01/24/vw-considers-european-joint-venture-with-chinese-manufacturer/
BYD, Geely, Tesla, SAIC & BMW are in the European court this week to fight the EU’s tariffs. Legacy will be well & truly stuffed if it goes against them.
Quite simple why Volkswagen is up the creek. The Americans want to destroy German industry well actually European industry. Thats why they invoked the sanctions on Russian gas. They then blew up the Nordstream pipe line so that Germany had no choice but to buy American LNG at five times the price.The unelected EU scum have destroyed the Americans main competitor for cars ,trucks,steel and heavy engineering. The Russians never said they would stop supplying cheap reliable energy. We are dealing with a bunch of traitors who want to turn Europe into a vassel state of the USA.
I agree with everything you say, It sticks out like a sore thumb what the septics are doing, I hope the EU grow a pair & tell them to ■■■■ off.
It gets worse for VW, they’ve just canned the id7 model as the Trump sanctions would just make it uncompetitive in the USA if he drops the $7500 EV grant, that leaves another of their plants (Emden) under utilised along with Dresden & Osnabrück, They’re now in talks with other Chinese EV manufacturers, SAIC, JAC & FAW to rent factory space to them to build electric vehicles.
It’s unprecedented what’s happening there & ripe for Herr Elon to meddle in German politics of the far right.
Well if you want to call the people “far right” who dont want to have their country swamped with rapists, child killers and terrorists so be it. They have a crumbling economy yet their “green government” expect them to support millions of unproductive aliens who hate the German people.
You seem to have missed the fact that China is the winner in this scam not the US.
The EU has long been a closed market to US imports as opposed to America being an open door for EU exports.
VW’s woes continue in their main bread & butter market China, they sold a measly 9 units of its flagship id7 in January & the rest of its models sales are down.
id3 down 65.3%
id4 down 70%
id4 Crozz down 59.3%.
The upcoming USA tariffs have killed their flagship id7 from going to North America which has now been cancelled
Their software & digital connected options are pants compared to the Chinese EV manufacturers,
Quite a few domestic electric brands have movie projectors & drop down screens to watch movies with full dolby surround sound & the seats fold down to make a flat bed.
“Young buyers in China no longer care about steering feel, chassis, driving dynamics, build quality, and other stuff at which Volkswagen is best. They want connectivity, OTA updates, watching a movie in the car (many adult people in China live with their parents and use the car as a “second living room”), connection with smartphones and home appliances, narrow bezels on screens, no lagging, perfect UX and fair enough ADAS. And Volkswagen didn’t offer any of this on ID.7 and ID. series in general.”
Many younger people in the UK also seem to be far less interested in what we (older and lorry drivers) find important. There are some car enthusiasts, and we might know some, but most don’t really care.
As said connectivity etc is more to them than driving experience.
They don’t have the fun we had of driving for the pleasure of it on open roads! TBF we don’t get much of nowadays either.
The market in China is different to the UK, and the market here is changing too.
There are a few Chinese brands Xpeng in particular with camera/lidar which drives much smoother than Teslas & picks out way more tricky road situations in every day driving. Tesla has just been given the go ahead to use it’s autonomous driving in China this week with mixed reviews, most saying it’s not as good as domestic brands with lidar.
BYD has just installed their autonomous software version called ‘God’s eye’ in all of their models for free, including their cheapest EV model under $10k. All done with their new DeepSeek AI. Tesla charges about $10k for its full autonomous driving software in the US.
Yeah, it’s cut-throat over there with every manufacturer trying to outdo the other, A lot of those EV manufacturers are going to go bust trying to keep up. There are around 10000 dealerships closed in China in the last two years including big brands like Porsche.
There are some top spec cars being exported like the new Polestar 3 that have had their expensive sound systems robbed out & inferior systems put back in by the dealership people because of bad blood that all these closures have caused.
The Tesla FSD isn’t going down too well in China, with drivers racking up fines using it. One driver has picked up 7 fines in the space of one drive because of illegal manoeuvres & driving in bus & cycle lanes.
Chinese media websites are now getting flooded with Tesla vehicles running red traffic lights, failing to recognize green lights, and driving on restricted lanes.
All that hype from electric Jesus & the FSD is still a dog.
