TPT September 2020

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

Work on a new assembly hall has already begun, and the first fully electric vehicles from the factory are expected to be ready for sale in early 2022. Once the works are completed the Emden facility will produce up to 300,000 EVs per year, beginning with the ID4 SUV. Volkswagen aims to launch over 20 new fully-electric vehicle models by 2025 and to reduce the carbon emissions of its annual vehicle sales by a third. After 2026 VW will no longer manufacture any vehicles that use a traditional internal combustion engine, either petrol or diesel powered. The firm’s chief executive Ralf Brandstatter said the move is “forcing the pace of system change”. Earlier this year VW announced that it had removed all petrol and diesel vehicle production lines from its Zwickau, Saxony factory at a cost of €1.2bn. The first EVs manufactured at the Zwickau location will be shipped in early 2021. Back in June the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its 2020 EV outlook, predicting that global EV sales will remain steady despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s Beidou network set to rival GPS The Chinese Beidou navigation network is complete; its final satellite was put into orbit in June. The aim is for China to have greater independence from US Air Force-owned Global Positioning System (GPS) and introduce competition into the sector. The concept behind Beidou was first explored in the 1990s. When the first Beidou satellites were launched in 2000, coverage was limited to China. The second generation of Beidou satellites, covering the Asia- Pacific, became operational in 2012, with the deployment of the third generation of satellites in 2015. Beidou has more satellites in its system than either GPS or Galileo and Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). When complete, Beidou’s location services will be accurate down to 10cm in the Asia-Pacific, compared with GPS’s 30cm range. “Beidou was obviously designed a few decades after GPS, so it has had the benefit of learning from the GPS experience,” said Andrew Dempster, director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research. “It has some signals that have higher bandwidth, giving better accuracy, [and] it has fewer orbit planes for the satellites, making constellation maintenance easier.” Beidou-related services, such as port traffic monitoring, have been exported to about 120 countries; many of those countries are involved in the Belt and Road project, initiated by President Xi Jinping, to create a so-called Silk Road of trade and investment.

Tr anspor t Just in time delivery, taking just a little longer In early June, with retail hit by the pandemic shutdown and exacerbated by cautious spending by anyone still in work, shipping lines were reducing sailing speeds and taking longer routes around Africa to avoid Suez Canal passage fees. Many were also cutting the number of voyages and, in effect, providing short-term storage for clients as the $1trn container shipping industry faced its biggest downturn since 2008. Changes within the industry saved costs, and assisted retailers coping with store closures, huge inventory surpluses, and a collapse in consumer demand. Slower shipping times also meant importers could delay payments due on delivery. Retailers in many sectors have been forced to reduce shipments of new merchandise, and some of the largest retailers have managed excess inventory by “storing” it on slow-going ships, waiting for shops around Europe and the US to reopen. But the container slow-down has not benefited everyone, and retailers such as Walmart and Amazon, committed to online selling and currently in greater demand than ever before, have found themselves jostling for space on the faster vessels. “What we are seeing is quite a mixed situation from cargo owners, some of which are resuming normal shipment of their cargoes, others are requesting routings via longer transit times,” said Marcus Leaver, chief operating officer of sea freight at Hellmann Worldwide Logistics. Importers say the lack of shipping space has led to more rollovers – where booked containers are moved from loaded vessels onto later ones, much like passengers on oversold flights. Shipping delays, and an increase in cancellations, have caused erratic supplies for retailers and with air freighters giving priority to essential medical supplies the cost of air transport has risen sharply. Analysis of the industry data shows items such as clothes, luggage and furniture comprise 15 per cent of shipped freight. Data from the logistics technology company, Descartes indicate that clothing arriving in the US by ship dropped nearly 20 per cent during the first five months of 2020, compared with the same period last year, while furniture shipments fell by 12 per cent and luggage over 34 per cent. Second Volkswagen facility to be 100 per cent electric vehicle production Volkswagen plans to convert a key production plant in Emden, Germany, to entirely electric vehicle production. The Emden plant was producing a single EV model – the Passat GTE – while the majority of its output was petrol and diesel models; it was formerly VW’s largest producer of the Passat, Aeteon and Shooting Break – all of which will be phased out.

Gill Watson Features Editor (Europe)

59

www.read-tpt.com

SEPTEMBER 2020