Earnings shrink at 5 European automakers, spurring cost-saving tie-ups with China

https://archive.is/dDxHw

-Volkswagen intends to shorten the time between development and launch to 36 months from 54 months, Thomas Schafer, CEO of the company’s passenger car brand, told reporters last week. The German group hopes to achieve the faster turnaround by working closer with Chinese EV maker Xpeng Motors.

-Renault, whose profit sank 66%, revealed in January that it opened a research and development center for EVs in Shanghai.

-Stellantis is partnering with Leapmotor Technology to sell compact EVs from the Chinese startup in Europe.

-Mercedes-Benz will reduce annual production capacity of its German factories from 1 million vehicles to 900,000. Volkswagen will cease production at two German factories and cut 35,000 jobs by 2030.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    Yup, in North America, the outsourcing of R&D to China has already begun in some areas like pharmaceuticals. There’s nothing magical about R&D that will keep it here. It’s just labor. If you have a well educated working population, you can do R&D. The more educated people, the more R&D you can do. China had 50 million college students in 2024 and growing. Meanwhile there were 18M in the US and the number has been on the decline since the Great Recession. Think about that the next time someone tells you that China can’t innovate. They either don’t know any better, or are lying so you don’t get suspicious while they’re outsourcing.

    I’m not saying this to mean that us individuals don’t work and study hard enough. I’m also not implying that China is doing something wrong in this regard. I’m saying this to highlight what the neoliberal capitalist system we live in is doing. Feeding us anti-socialist, China-bad* propaganda, while outsourcing everything to the bad commies that “can’t innovate” in China (and increasingly Vietnam). Then we’re asked to find money from somewhere to buy the product. How about a 0% loan from Volkswagen Financial?

    Sorry for the NA-centric view but that’s where my knowledge is from and we also have autos that have joint ventures in China, Stellantis being a NA firm too. I think it reasonably translates to Europe.

    * This is not to say China isn’t bad in certain regards

    • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.orgEnglish
      4·
      23 hours ago

      Same thing here really. And I mean China still doesn’t give a rat’s ass about patent laws but they’re mostly stealing each other’s ideas these days. European funding of early stage technologies is a joke. We need to fix that if we want a competitive economy.