“Technological progress is like putting an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” – Albert Einstein
Below is some news related the Auto industry new in 2018, What do these say to us?
- TESLA is building Car in parking lot under the tent
- VW to invest $50B in electric and autonomous tech & General Motors will cut as many as 14,000 workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure.
- Chinese automakers churned out more EV, more than the rest of the world combined.
- Driverless tech will add $7 trillion to the global economy and the clear leader of driverless techs are from USA.
1. TESLA is building Car in parking lot under the tent:
Tesla designed a car that is so simple that they can build it in a tent. When TESLA’s current production line was unable to churn out the vehicles in time, they put a tent in the parking lot and developed an assembly line where it took three weeks to make Tesla Model 3.
Remark :
In near future, our cars become more like a personal computer. You can acquire a hard disk drive, CPU, memory or DRAM, key board, monitor and make your own computer. The auto industry will be like that. In near future, anybody in any country will be able to make their car. It will be more like who can provide parts cheaper and also who make the software or operating system like Windows, iOS or Android.
2. Volkswagen to invest $50B in electric and autonomous tech & General Motors will cut as many as 14,000 workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure:
After the emissions scandal AKA diesel gate, Volkswagen (VW) transformation plan to shift from being Europe’s largest maker of combustion engine vehicles into a mass producer of electric cars in response to answer to ban diesel engine vehicles , Europe tough emission control target and phase out from combustion engine vehicles. This year VW stated that they’ll invest $50B in electric and autonomous tech, with goals of making 50 million EV.
However, EVs are less complex to manufacture than internal combustion-powered vehicles, and battery production would be handled by VW’s suppliers. This large switch to electric vehicle production could cost thousands of jobs. VW CEO warns against possible auto industry crash due to EVs, that he’s going so far as to try to convince us the entire automotive industry could crash, and 100,000 jobs may be lost.
In addition, General Motors in USA will cut as many as 14,000 workers or 15% of workforce in North America and put five plants up for possible closure in order to cost cut and put concentration on EV.
Remark:
Moving to EV, is and will be devastating to present auto industry, present supplier industry, and auto repair industry. An electric car is more modular, needs fewer moving parts and will not need moving or mechanical parts. Also, electric cars need less maintenance especially since the parts are more like electronics, those parts will be controlled by software. The future car mechanic will be like an IT tech support expert who is also car enthusiast.
3. Chinese automakers churned out more EV, more than the rest of the world combined:
Chinese automakers churned out 680,000 all-electric cars, busses and trucks in 2017, more than the rest of the world combined. China’s output is growing faster than the rest of the world’s. China produced more than 200,000 all-electric commercial vehicles in 2017, amounting to nearly 5% of total output. In 2017, southern China’s tech hub of Shenzhen completed the conversion of its entire bus fleet to battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Other cities are following the suit. Read the article in Bloomberg (The First Quieter Megacity, Thanks to Electric Vehicles)
China does not only make most EV’s, but it also has pioneered the mass development of public charging piles, with 214,000 already in place at the end of 2017. These are places where anyone can charge up their cars and are in addition to the 232,000 private charging piles installed Chinese electric car owners’ own homes. It plans to have total 500,000 public charging piles by 2020.
Remark:
China’s lead in EV’s is warning to traditional automaker. China is leading the world in making EV’s, EV batteries and EV infrastructure. As we are observing the driving range from EV’s, it has been improving year by year that China will have the capabilities to make EV’s, provide EV parts and infrastructure at cheaper prices compared to USA, Japan, Europe or S. Korea. It could do same thing what it did with electronics product.
4. Driverless tech will add $7 trillion to the global economy and the clear leader of driverless techs are from USA”
As cars has more and more electronics, and those electronics run by software, autonomous driving which was only can be watched in science fiction movie, will now be a reality. By one account, driverless tech will add $7 trillion to the global economy and save hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few decades. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts that robo-taxis will help the ride-hailing and ride-sharing business grow from $5 billion in revenue today to $285 billion by 2030.
In this 21st-century gold rush provides both opportunity and loss. The clear leaders in this field are Tesla, Waymo (a Goggle start-up), GM’s Cruise LLC, as well as UBER, Apple, Mercedes-Benz, VW and Nissan.
.Remark:
What is seen from this list of car companies is that majority of them are from Silicon Valley. These companies has vast data, machine learning, artificial intelligence infrastructure resource to analyze the data, improve algorithm and experience outstanding human resources in machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer science, data mining. This is stern warning to automotive industry. If the automotive industry does not move fast enough like start-up, it will be like the electronics industry in Japan which was at its pinnacle in 1980s and early 1990s but has now become irrelevant after the iPod and iPhone revolution.