WEEK
Car collecting runs in the opposite direction to the economic crisis. The more serious the second, the better the auctions of historic cars are doing, which have become safe havens for those with money to invest. 2022 ended on a high note for the sector, according to the study “Collectibles amid heightened uncertainty and inflation” by Credit Suisse in collaboration with Deloitte: just look at the over $456 million sold at the latest Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. It is a trend that will continue in 2023, aided by digitalisation: the auction flies even if you are on the other side of the world.
DRUMS
The heart of the electric car is the soul of its costs, estimated at around 80%. Moving towards zero-emission mobility, batteries will serve as bread and so it has rushed to build new ovens called gigafactories all over the world. So much so that among the 23 words of his vocabulary for 2023, the Economist has included the Battery Belt. In the north of the United States it should take the place of the Rust Belt, the rust belt with which that area of abandoned car factories was called in the last century. $40 billion on the table, just to get started.
BARGAIN
It is the mother of all the resources that cannot be obtained through sales, as Sergio Marchionne has taught everyone by quoting Ferrari separately from Fiat Chrysler and bringing home a mountain of money. Now Porsche has done the same thing following the Geely group’s new electric Polestar brand, even in a frightening year of economic crisis. Fresh capital sought, so in 2023 it’s up to Renault to list its electric business separately, while the Volkswagen group should do it with PoweCo, a battery company. There is life beyond the factories, is the message.
CHINESE
It is the builders who scare Western and Japanese, because they have added quality, design and technology to the traditional low cost of labour. Above all, the Chinese hold most of the raw materials needed for the electrification of mobility, resulting in the knife being held by the handle. In 2023, new brands from major groups such as Great Wall and Byd will land in Europe, which consumers looking for competitive prices may no longer snub. Look at the smartphone market and tremble.
CO2
Not all of us played little chemist when we wore shorts, but as we grew up we had to expand from Flaubert to the science that studies the properties and behavior of matter. Because carbon dioxide has become the negative symbol of our era made up of climate emergency, pollution, increasingly serious health risks. The Europe of politics has decided that CO2 will have to be zeroed in automotive production in 2035: no more heat engines, only electric motors. That’s not how it’s going to be eliminated entirely, but it looks like it had to start somewhere.
AUTONOMOUS DRIVING
It will be talked about to say that it has become a big problem. As Bloomberg Businessweek headlined, after spending 100 billion the self-driving car “goes nowhere”. It all officially started in 2009 with Google and its Waymo division, but to date artificial intelligence behind the wheel fails to solve most of the problems that arise on the roads every day. Thus it happens that giants like Ford and Volkswagen throw in the towel because, they say together with other manufacturers who do so in silence, it is better to divert investments where there is profitability.
RECESSION
Forecasts indicate that we risk ending up in Europe soon, not to mention the chasm that has opened up in Britain after Brexit. And what about the car? The manufacturers arrive in 2023 with brilliant balance sheets, having sold the most profitable models at full price with the few chips available and cutting production without fault. Carlos Tavares, CEO of the Stellantis group, was the most challenging at the presentation of the first half-year stellar results: “We are ready to withstand any event. Recession included”.
SEMICONDUCTOR
It’s such a long word that it never fits in titles, better microchip or chip in practical English. It was the lack of this little heart of every electronic system that caused one of the car industry’s longest supply crises: the effects of Covid and the US-China tensions have increased the demand for chips whose production, mostly in Asia, has not been able to keep up. The result? New car deliveries have stretched by four months and up for everyone. In 2023 things will go better, but among the manufacturers only Honda and Stellantis are optimistic. For others, the crisis is not over.
TECHNOLOGY
By now everything is tech, let alone the car that for years manufacturers have been saying they want to transform into a smartphone on wheels. Everything is so techy that the auto industry takes advantage of the barrage of layoffs from tech giants, from Meta to Microsoft to Google, to hire some of these specialists. The trend had already started in the field of car design with former game designers, then moved into marketing (as the new head of the Volkswagen brand, formerly of Google) and is now transversal. Stay connected.
TWITTER
It has nothing to do with the car, only that the owner of the San Francisco social network is called Elon Musk and has his main business in Tesla, an electric car brand that rivals chase after mocking him. Bar talk will go a long way about Musk who would do well to leave the steering wheel of Twitter to someone else and focus on Tesla, or the other way around. Certainly, the social among Musk’s parigrades is a complete stranger. Compared to the over 116 million followers of the Tesla patron (data at the end of November), the new CEO of the Volkswagen group Oliver Blume has only 24. Better goes to Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, with over 232 thousand, a new collapse for the CEO of Renault Luca de Meo with 3,940. For Tavares, second place doesn’t exist: it doesn’t exist on Twitter.