WCA January 2019

From the Americas

confirm the bleak outlook for EC makers suggested by the report, BMW’s CEO Bernhard Kuhnt told Bloomberg News on 5 th October, “Tesla is now ramping up their volumes, and it’s putting pressure on that [EC] market segment.”  That is not to say AlixPartners expects electric cars to be unsuccessful. Its forecast is that, by 2030, ECs will make up 20 per cent of the USA market, 30 per cent of European car sales, and 35 per cent of car sales in China. In a consumer survey conducted in conjunction with its study, AlixPartners found that 22.5 per cent of Americans plan to stipulate plug-in capability for their next car purchase. Away since 1991, a French automaker is attracted back to the USA by a car- sharing programme in Washington DC “All will not be as it seems,” according to contributing writer Brian León in The Car Connection , in reference to the return of PSA, the maker of Peugeot and Citroën, to the USA market after decades away. (“French Automaker Returns to USA With Car-Sharing Chevrolets, Not Peugeots and Citroëns,” 4 th October). Reuters had reported that PSA would launch a car-sharing programme in Washington DC, at the end of October. The “catch”, wrote Mr León, who took note of the French automaker’s ambitions to become a world leader in car-sharing, is that all 600 vehicles used in the service were to be Chevrolet Equinoxes and Cruzes.The programme falls under PSA’s Free2Move mobility solutions umbrella, a car and bike sharing service available as of 2017 in several countries across Europe and in Seattle, in the USA. The app enables comparison of the location, characteristics, operating costs, and more of offerings from other car-sharing providers like Car2Go, Zipcar and TravelCar. The Car Connection reported that the DC programme will be the largest of its kind within Free2Move to have a stand-alone fleet. Having pointed out the anomaly of PSA’s choice to use vehicles from a different automaker, Mr León pointed out that getting Peugeots and Citroëns approved for US roads would be costly. He also observed that neither Peugeot nor Citroën has sold a new vehicle in the USA since Peugeot departed the market in 1991 after exceptionally slow sales and rising prices from import tariffs. With the exception of a handful of Bugattis, no new French cars have been sold in the USA since then – although PSA has signalled its long-term intention to sell its own cars in the USA again. As to the Chevrolet models fielded by PSA in DC, Mr León recalled that Louis Chevrolet, who founded his eponymous automaker in the USA, was from French-speaking Switzerland. So the brand, Mr León wrote, “is about as French as any American car company gets.”

The spiders were also found to show potential for fostering coral biodiversity. Forty-two different coral species were found growing on the spiders themselves; 58 different species were found growing in the surrounding rubble. And, as coral continued to grow, researchers observed an influx of reef fish of various species.  Nucor (Charlotte, North Carolina), the largest “mini-mill” steelmaker in the USA, notified customers that it was raising its sheet steel prices by $40 a ton, marking the first formal price increase since the first quarter of 2018, Platts reported on 10 th October. According to news editor Carl Surran, the move makes Nucor the first US steel producer to announce an increase since sheet prices began falling from ten-year highs in July, when the Platts hot-rolled coil index hit a peak of $920 per ton. The increase reportedly covers flat-rolled sheet products including hot-rolled coil, cold-rolled coil, and coated material. The challenge for makers of the 200-plus new electric models expected to hit the global market by 2022: selling the cars at a profit “Industry players are sort of caught between a rock and a hard place. If they don’t participate in some way in the ‘new-mobility’ revolution that’s coming, they stand to lose out on what might be the biggest thing ever in this industry.” As quoted in Green Car Reports , Shiv Shivaraman, co-head of AlixPartners’ American automotive and industrial practice, identified the dilemma facing automakers as new electric (EC) car models flood the market in the coming year: “If they do participate, as so many are, they have the chance of benefiting from first-mover advantages. But they also face the possibility of going broke in the process.” AlixPartners, a worldwide business consulting firm, shows in a new report that a transition to electric cars comes at a steep cost to the automaker. The company puts the cost of building a new EC at almost $9,000 more than that of a conventional car, and a plug-in hybrid tacks on $5,700. Even so, the report says, established and startup automakers worldwide are spending $255 billion to develop more than 200 new electric models that are expected to hit the market by 2022. In his review of the AlixPartners findings, Eric C Evarts of Green Car Reports noted that those automakers are scrambling to meet regulatory demands for ECs — “not to mention scrambling to compete with Tesla,” the California-based pacesetter for the industry. As with Tesla, he wrote, the challenge is to sell those cars at a profit. (“Electric Cars Are Clean, But Can They Be Profitable? New Report Casts Doubt,” 5 th October) The number of new models is likely to exceed customer demand, AlixPartners says, creating intense competition among automakers and forcing them to sell these new ECs at a discount. Profits could be further dented by ride-sharing and autonomous car fleets, which would buy cars at fleet prices. At the same time, the overall car market in the USA is beginning a cyclical downturn from its record sales of 17.2 million new cars and trucks in 2017. As if to Automotive

Employment

‘Anecdotal signs’ suggest that the shortage of drivers threatening America’s trucking industry may have eased As reported by Sarah Foster of Bloomberg News , the largest trucking company in the USA is combatting the

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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2019