[AnonymousPlanet]

That is a very popular opinion and I've held it too for a very long time. Until I read an issue [1] of The Economist in 2020 and did some digging afterwards.

Turns out, the real moat of any successful car industry so far wasn't brand recognition, lobbyists, tariffs, or the pleasing sound of a shutting car door. It's the combustion engine itself. Or rather the industry you're embedded in that provides the metallurgy and chemistry to reliably produce high quality engine blocks and seals. Because your engine needs to withstand high pressures and temperatures that go from below freezing all the way up to way over 2000K. And you also need the know how and experience to build all of that together.

None of that can be exfiltrated as a zip file or wished into existence by party officials.

The EV sidesteps all of that in one go. Now it's all down to who has the best batteries and who can do high quality assembly real cheap. Both points go to China.

Why? The same reason: The surrounding industry. It's what you get from doing (even simple) electronics for decades, cultivating a competitive industry for assembly and high quality battery cells.

The only hope for the incumbents was hydrogen instead of batteries because this again is engineering and seals.

The alternative would have been to become really good at batteries themselves. However, Europe's best chance to get there, Bosch, decided in 2018 not to go that way [2].

Once you let all of that sink in, you realise the inevitability of the current situation.

And they knew. All this time they knew. The rest was song and dance for politicians and shareholders.

[1] https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2020/01/02/ch...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/business/bosch-shuns-battery...

[Grimeton]

At the beginning of 2010s Germany boosted a battery plant with 10 billion euros.

Three years later the car manufacturers sold the plant to China for another 10 billion...

[twoodfin]

If the platform, power train, manufacturing is commoditized, shouldn’t that in theory be great news for existing brands with consumer trust and design competence?

[AnonymousPlanet]

That's the current hope. But do you know who also had consumer trust and design competence? Telefunken, AEG, Braun, Grundig, Blaupunkt, Loewe ... How many products of those brands are produced in Europe today, if at all? None of them had a moat as deep as the combustion engine.

[menaerus]

I agree with some of your points, they make sense, but China has been building combustion engines too, for a very long time which is why I don't think that sidestepping the technology with EV was the main reason for their success

[AnonymousPlanet]

They had been trying to for decades but were never able to make even remotely competitive combustion engines. Nothing that would get VW, Toyota or Ford in trouble. The article I posted is sadly paywalled, but it's basically about exactly that.

[menaerus]

What does it mean "remotely competitive combustion engines"?

China has been building ICEs for decades, that's for sure, and if they had not been anywhere to remotely competitive people wouldn't be buying them and therefore OEMs wouldn't be producing them, no? But they do. And still do.

The last notable example is [1] twin turbo-charged 4.0 V8 from GWM reportedly delivering 450kW and 800Nm of torque. You can't build such an engine without the very deep expertise in materials, mechanics, chemistry, and everything it takes to manufacture such a beast.

GWM builds traditional gasoline and diesel engines too but then you have other similar OEMs like Geely, BYD, MG, Chery which have been doing the same.

And then you find out that China builds their own diesel engines too but for heavy machinery like trucks, vessels, tractors, ... [2]

So, I see no evidence that they are not capable in manufacturing ICEs. Quite the contrary. Reason why we don't see it in European or American markets, or have not so far, is of a different kind and not competitiveness.

[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/758255/china-twin-turbo-v8-engin...

[2] https://sdec-engine.com/

[healthy_throw]

The article is outdated. Horse Powertrain is already one of the largest ICE manufacturers in the world.

[nebula8804]

Their wikipedia lists many engine models, all of which seem to be either small industrial engines or engines for range extenders only. This does not sound like a portfolio that can compete with the legacy OEMs but it does explain how they ship so many units.

[whiteboardr]

They didn’t know.

The reasonable approach to EVs becoming economically feasible would have been to cut through the noise and treat it as an add-on to the existing portfolio without compromising the core competence: internal combustion engines.

This they knew.

Dieselgate put them in a hopeless position in the discussion around all encompassing electrification demanded by the governent plus the greedy, short sited pressure from markets.

This led to massive (and forced) investments rushing out electric models nobody asked for by the dozens.

Compromising quality and a sound growth strategy along the way.

The worst possible timing for Dieselgate to hit - steering a whole country and all industry-related countries into an existential crisis.

It is delusional to think german car manufacturers will be anywhere near competitive in the much simpler EV mass(!)market - so thinking to order a whole industry, which is built around a way different technolocal foundation, to just make electric cars from now on without really looking into a viable charging infrastructure is still beyond me.

Plus ICE cars won’t be going away anytime soon and very few have the balls to call this out.

[joe_mamba]

>The worst possible timing for Dieselgate to hit

WHY?! Dieselgate would have been the perfect time for VW to justify abandoning ICE, especially diesel, and shift to fully electric. But no, they just doubled down on ICE and diesel engines. You can't fix stupid.

Of course, in practice, VW couldn't have done that due to it being run by ICE unions who want to keep their jobs at all cost. Maybe they could have spun off the EV business into a new car brand without the shackles of the unions tying them down to dated tech.

[whiteboardr]

It's not just the unions wanting to keep ICEs which are far from dated plus absolutely necessary to keep and further develop.

A monolithic EV-only approach simply isn't feasible since not everyone can switch to an EV - above all, the current state of charging infrastructure is lightyears behind.

Ditching ICEs is the worst thing that could happen. It's really just common sense that happens to be unpopular.