China is storming the world with its EVs and PHEVs. There are rave reviews about their comfort and performance. I have sat in several of them, but I have yet to drive one myself. My son-in-law, who is in the petrol pump business, understandably does not prioritize buying an EV.
However, he finally bought two: a Lexus LBX hybrid for the
family to use and a Fiat Abarth, which is totally EV, for Monica.
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| Certainly sexy, but can be silly |
We do not give high scores to either. In the case of the
Lexus LBX, my grandson was once locked inside the car when the battery failed.
And I still cannot understand why you need to pull the door lever twice to open
it. Imagine if it is an emergency and the car is new to you! It is undeniably a small car, but anyone with a normal pair of legs will
find the rear legroom absolutely torturing!
As for the Abarth, I can only conclude that it is very much
a toy. Its range is only about 250km. Two things are particularly annoying:
first, there is no gear stick; you have to bend over to press the buttons below
the middle of the dashboard to engage D, N, R, or P. Just imagine how flustered
you can be when you are trying to change course at a busy junction. The
positioning does not allow you to operate these gears intuitively, as we do
with normal systems. You literally have to look at the panel to make the
change! And unless you are buckled up, you cannot move the car at all. Imagine
the inconvenience when you need to move the car just a few feet momentarily.
All this brings me to a memory from years ago. The first car
I bought when I joined the workforce was a Toyota Corolla. It cost me around
MYR 6,600 then. It was all I could afford on hire-purchase terms. One day, a
university mate who happened to be visiting my brother-in-law (who lived next
door) decided to drop by my place. He saw my car, gave its tyre a kick, and
scornfully remarked, "Japanese car." It's an incident I have
remembered all my life.
He was an Esso scholar and was employed by the company after
graduating. I worked for MIDA (then FIDA), earning a salary of MYR 1,040 per
month, which was not too bad by the standards of the day.
(Interestingly, I had also been offered a job by Sembawang
Shipyard in Singapore at a salary of SGD 750—back when the MYR and SGD were at
parity. I declined the offer, perhaps shortsightedly, for reasons that seemed
sensible at the time.)
But Esso paid much more—something like MYR 2,500 per month,
almost double mine. He, like my brother-in-law (also an Esso scholar and then a
colleague at the company), had picked up a Fiat 127 (or a Fiat 128, I cannot
quite recall) instead. The car cost a couple of hundred ringgit more, maybe
around MYR 7,300.
Certainly, Fiat was then considered a step above Toyota.
Hence, his scorn at his poor university mate's affordability.
But Fiat today is no longer the Fiat of yesteryear. Today,
the Fiat brand, along with many other famous Italian and international marques,
is part of a massive corporation called Stellantis. Stellantis was formed in
2021 from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the French PSA
Group.
The list of car brands currently under the same corporate
umbrella is extensive. Based on Stellantis's official brand portfolio, here are
some of the other Italian and international brands you might be thinking of:
- Italian
Brands: Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and Lancia are all part of the
Stellantis group today. Abarth, Fiat's performance sub-brand, is also
included.
- International
Brands: The group also owns major American (Chrysler, Dodge,
Jeep, Ram), French (Citroën, Peugeot, DS Automobiles), and German (Opel)
brands, among others.
Ferrari's history is also deeply intertwined with Fiat. Fiat
began buying into Ferrari in 1969 and eventually held a 90% stake. However,
this is no longer the case. In 2016, Fiat spun off Ferrari, and the company
became an independent, publicly traded entity on the stock market.
Today, while no longer owned by Fiat, Ferrari's ownership
still has an Italian flavour:
- The
largest single shareholder is Exor N.V., an investment company controlled
by the Agnelli family, the founders of Fiat.
- Piero
Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari's son, also retains a significant personal stake.
- The
majority of the company is owned by public shareholders.
But while the Chinese are making huge progress in EV and
PHEV technology, the experience I had with the Abarth tells me that some
designers are not wearing their thinking caps anymore. Ditto Toyota with its
Lexus LBX.
I use a Mercedes-Benz C200. Its gear selector lever is on
the right side of the steering wheel. When I first used it, I often found
myself instinctively reaching for it whenever I wanted to signal a turn. Each
time I accidentally knocked it into reverse for left turns, I would worry that
I had just damaged the gearbox. It wasn't until I learned about the electronic
safety lockout that my anxiety faded; the system is apparently programmed to
simply ignore the command if the car is moving forward. Maybe Fiat is trying to
introduce a new concept? Well, common sense tells me that sounds like a rather
silly idea."
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| Riding in a Hong Qi in Xiamen recently |
while despite their prices, Chinese makes are generally great in terms of features, luxury and performance, I am still not entirely comfortable with the loudness of their styling and the flamboyance of their names. But this is largely a matter of personal taste and opinion.
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While the covid19 lockdown was troublesome for everyone, it helped clear the air which returned the weather cycle, especially vital for farmers. How pristine the air and how clear the sky were, then. Now El-Nino returns with a vengeance.
ReplyDeleteOne therefore expects going greener with EVs will not only remove noise pollution in cities but also fossil fuel air pollution everywhere besides reducing the energy bill of economies as evidenced by how the Hormuz closure has brought inflation.
Governments should promote EVs as the vehicle mode to replace ICE cars, motorcycles, trucks, trains and boats. By willfully doing so to increase EV affordability and thus demand, investments in charging ports can increase more rapidly which will allay concerns about vehicle range; already this is being accelerated by rapid development of fast charge batteries.
That EVs are increasingly popular is seen by how resale prices of used ICE cars have dropped. It's a gamechanger market shift and thus should be tilting EV policy towards creating bigger demand first in order to move more investment JVs that will scale-up to protect and increase the local assembly workforce later who may even be already trained by then to use AI in production like how CAD/CAM was used in design.
It remains to say erecting import levies will only recycle the lesson not learned with trying to start the national car project by protectionism that caused the country to lose the Asean auto hub title which was for its taking on account of having the most number of car owners at that time.
Like the computer industry, the auto industry runs on constant R&D and design changes. Being heavyduty, it requires the right combination of talents, capital and tools. If even one is amiss, better to be an assembler first, parts fabricator next, then machine-tool maker, finally autonomous designer. But even this evolution of enablers is not enough. There has to be the right R&D to inject customer-gratifying value-add built on effective engineering solutions.
And total quality control is a must. We remember that Toyota ad where the technician in gloves watched a droplet trickle down a straight line on the finished product. Today his CEO and those of other Japanese brands go down on their knees to feel and appreciatingly admire the finishes of China's EVs. One said the Japanese auto industry was kaput.
Yet it wasn't that long ago that China's most popular car was the Volkswagen Santana, a guzzler taxi. Later Germany's Audi, Mercedes and BMW besides Japan's Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Nissan and the US' GM, Ford and Chrysler stormed the market. The BMW CEO was so over himself when he lapped that China's auto market and huge demand for his brand was out of the planet.
Yet every Chinese could see that while the carriages and parts were made in China, the engine and transmission blocks were designed in Germany and exported fully assembled into the country whose motorists paid premium. Every German PM admitted that China had saved Germany twice which might explain why Volkswagen relocated its domestic plant back to China on the admission 'if can't win, join back.'
Yet today, Europe is planning a trade war to exclude China's EVs, the US has effectively disbarred them from entry with a toxic tariff level, Canada is humouring with a miniscule import quota, and Japan is still hybridising in ICE dreamland while India is indifferent. Only Latin America and Mexico are showing some enthusiastic response.
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ReplyDeleteBecause the West still won't admit the Chinese can best them, they insist it's subsidized overproduction and not breakthrough achievement. Until the twelve of never, one expects when they lose, they must still win. How is that fair? But one expects too much from slaveowners, colonialists and war drummers.
It must have been decades earlier that China's planners foresaw if they want to play in the global auto industry monopolized by the Germans and Japanese, they must invent a new market - and that's EV. Back then i was asked what and where should China take a look. I answered 'batteries', 'sensors and actuators' and 'Latin America'. Alas, I missed 'big data' and thus AI statistical inferencing.
As for motorcars, allow it to be said the Ford Mustang has nice looks but it's a guzzling coupe. So also said, the best engineered was the Mercedes Benz W124 but it's chunky and parts cost a mini-condo. At one time, the BMW was designed by an American; Germans decried it appeared to have been designed with a machete. Most European makes are engineered to last to exact time specifications whereupon they duly break and leak, causing a mountain of bills to repair which is where they milk the real money. The parts prices will be more than the already unbelievable price of the spanner or seat cover of the Pentagon budget list.
What about the Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche? The original owner of the first laughed at the second, telling him to go back to tractors; neither however would have laughed at the third which had Wehrmacht industrial origin. Porsche almost came to grief until its CEO took a bet with the Macan for the US market; meanwhile BMW is tanking in China; note it had started with the Focke Wulf in WWII and that's where its propeller logo came from.
Likewise, Toyota started as a textile loom maker; proceeds went into making trucks; the Korean War saw a big contract. And that's how it grew, later with kanzen, JIT and Theory Y followed by Z and the art of japanese management etc. Nuclear engineer and ex-McKinsey Kenichi Ohmae who advised Dr M would have been able to say more.
As for the British, its only auto industry these days is making Rolls Royce engines and the flailing Aston-Martin but one remembers its Austin 1100, especially in shiny green; compact, light, fuel-saving, simple, small-wheeled, nice engine hum, and nostalgic.
The Europeans, especially the Germans, tend to design their cabin oriented towards the driver. But being left-hand drive, European imports into right-hand drive Asia ex-China require proper homologation. Since they save money by building on common platforms, they just likewise move left to right their steering wheel assembly without switching the orientation. Still a dismissive attitude towards non-whites like how when they want to sell dental appliances branded in Europe but made in Pakistan, they show you those that can't fit Asian sizes.
Lastly, one knows small Singapore like Hongkong runs a high-pressured society. But why do their nouveau riche run race cars while under influence knowing full well they won't be as skilled as a Lewis Hamilton? Lives are meant to be lived well, and long.
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