Foreign car JVS face bleak future
Many firms respond slow to EV game
SHANGHAI: A slow rollout of electric cars and continued adherence to internal combustion engine models is putting some of the world’s biggest automakers on the back foot in China, the largest market for cleaner vehicles.
Among the joint ventures (JVS) of major international players, 10 are at the bottom, ranking worst in terms of combustion-engine sales, according to CMB International Capital Corp and using data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
As consumer appetite in China for electric vehicles (EVS) grows, the glory days for foreign automakers that continue to cling to gasoline-fuelled models may be numbered.
Stellantis NV’S announcement in July that it was shutting its only Jeep plant in the nation raised some unsettling questions about what the future holds for international manufacturers.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re local or foreign, whoever has more resolve in going electric, whoever moves faster will have a better market share,” said Yale Zhang, the managing director of Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight.
“If their EV rollout is quick, JVS will still have a chance. If they continue at this pace, they’re not going to make it in time for the explosive growth window in the next few years.”
Most global automakers have been far too slow with their electrification efforts, according to Zhang. While over half of the cars sold by Chinese brands in October were electric, EVS made up a paltry 4.6% of mainstream JV brands’ sales.
Volkswagen AG (VW), China’s best-performing foreign marque, only sold around 130,000 EVS in China from January through September, amounting to 7.6% of its total sales in the country, far behind the pace of EV uptake more broadly.
Close to one-third of new cars purchased last month were new-energy vehicles (NEVS),
which includes plug-in hybrids and pure battery-electric cars, up from fewer than one in six a year ago.
Buyers in China are instead increasingly plumping for local EV brands that have competitive pricing, snazzy designs, and smart features such as in-car entertainment and autonomous driving.
Homegrown marques – led by BYD Co – accounted for almost 80% of EV sales in the first seven months of 2022, according to China’s Passenger Car Association.
To be sure, there is still a large market for internal combustion engine cars in China and not all foreign automaker JVS are struggling.
VW and Toyota Motor Corp have seen a rebound in combustion-engine sales since June, driven by 60 billion yuan (Us$8.4bil or Rm38.3bil) of government tax rebates. October car sales for Faw-volkswagen rose almost 10% from a year earlier, while GAC Toyota’s increased by 45.4% year-on-year.
And two-thirds of China’s 15 best-selling carmakers this year are still foreign-local ventures.
“There are still JVS that have built strong brand images and accumulated large cash balances for reinvestment in China, such as luxury brands, leading Japanese brands and German brands,” said Jing Yang, a Shanghaibased research director at Fitch Ratings Inc.
“Conservative consumers will wait longer” before going electric due to range anxiety, a lack of charging facilities in some regions and because they want to hold out for more lasting technological breakthroughs, she noted.
International producers also still stand to benefit from having a domestic partner.