Electromobility in the automotive industry : a technological and geopolitical shift [2021]
Introduction
Since early 2021, major automakers around the world are forced to cut back, or worse, to shut down production lines due to a persistent shortage of semiconductors.
In a press release, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation [1], a federation of industrialists present on American soil, strongly urged the 29th March 2021 the public authorities to take into consideration strategic supplies, including critical metals and electronic components: “We offer the following specific policy recommendations to encourage and incentivize investment by manufacturers and suppliers : Promote national security and economic security enhancements through the development of U.S.-based supplies of critical minerals (extraction, processing, recycling), battery and fuel cell manufacturing, and other critical components, including semiconductors.
The real reason for this concern is the awareness that Americans, like Europeans, have become prisoners of an industrial reality profitable to the Asian powers.
The advent of electromobility is a phenomenon the acceleration of which is disrupting many players and practices in the mobility sector that have existed for many decades. It is also part of an indirect geopolitical perspective, with the supply of equipment and components, and more and more direct, with the delivery of finished products by mainly Asian private entities often benefiting from discreet state support.
The latter have been able to invest and impose their know-how, their vision and their industrial power by further weakening the former proponents of the sector, mostly European and American, obliged in order to survive to ally themselves, to merge, to transform or to disappear.
The Asian grip on the nerve cogs of large-scale electrification is one of the least visible but most active facets of the pivotal world domination from the Atlantic zone to the Pacific zone, of which Tesla is the tree that hides the forest.
Electrification has also accelerated a trend visible since the 1990s: the increasingly critical use of electronic components. Cars have thus become over the years “computers on wheels” that it is necessary to supply millions of lines of codes because of the ECUs (Electronic Control Unit) placed inside them. If we often insist on the fact that electromobiles are less demanding in mechanical parts, on the other hand they are very demanding in electronic parts. To understand its importance, we must consider the three layers of cyberspace: the electronic part is the physical layer (hardware) which allows the logical layer (software) to interact to end up in the social layer (information). For example: tire pressure is a physical element (amount of air calculated in pascal or bars in the tire), but it interacts with an air pressure sensor whose the data are sent to the ECU, which requires an interpreter (the Tire-pressure monitoring system) to signal over-inflation or under-inflation to the driver.
This trend is the result of a triple demand: more safety (active or passive); more comfort (e.g. infotainment, heating, seat position); more optimization (mobility) [2]. This demand is based on a double requirement: more raw materials and more data. And electromobility consequently reinforces this double requirement. Both for legal reasons (imposition by European lawi of security systems such as ESP, ABS, eCall), for marketing reasons (electromobility must appear modern and have the latest technology with optional options billed at the high price) and finally for maintenance reasons (access to OBD2 / EOBD).
Basically, an electric vehicle requires two key elements: the motor and the battery or the fuel cell. Because it is not enough to extract and / or assemble raw materials, it is also necessary to master the technology of electromobility. The battery and the motor are condensed technologies whose efficiency is intrinsicallylinked to the presence of electronic components. However, few international automakers have invested since the 2000s in this mobility sector, except Asian ones and the American Tesla… till 2015.
The big turning point of 2015
As a result of national incentive and / or restrictive policies (conversion aid, bonus / penalty system, traffic zones prohibited for thermal vehicles, CO2 emission thresholds, etc.), the global electromobility market is displayed in boom despite the coronavirus crisis and an overall very gloomy automotive market: according to the figures for 2020 , sales of electric vehicles thus recorded + 137% in Europe, + 12% in China and +4 % in the United States while overall sales fell by -28% according to EV-Volumes figures [3].
However, behind this success of artificially assisted electromobility, hides a less perceptible but nevertheless a reality: the great battle for the mobility of tomorrow. Because if the European and American manufacturers have outrageously dominated the world automobile market (with the notable exception of the Japanese brand Toyota) the last decades, this situation seized up after 2015 and the Dieselgate affair revealed by the EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency). The criticism was growing towards diesel in particular then against all internal combustion vehicles, known as thermal: struck by all ills, these were quickly the target of taxes and traffic restrictions for the benefit of electric or electromobile vehicles [4].
This “industrial earthquake”, on the other hand, was a boon for promoters of electromobility, very few in this niche market when the affair occurred. One of its main representatives is Tesla Inc., which had remained confidential in the segment since its creation in 2003 under the initial name of Tesla Motors.
We can conjecture that this confidentiality allowed this young manufacturer to avoid the fate of the ambitious but unfortunate entrepreneur of the 1940s that was Preston Tucker [5], target of the Detroit Big Three (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) well aware the danger of a large-scale fourth American brand.
This turnaround in mobility can be considered as a revenge more than a hundred years apart where the heat engine definitely took the upper hand technically and economically over its electric counterpart in the 1920s [6].
We have to remind that at the turn of the 1900s, almost all of New York's taxi fleet was powered by electricity fairy as evidenced by the dynamism of the Electric Vehicle Company.
Be that as it may, in 2021, it is the automaker Tesla with more than $ 580 billion in market valuation that dominates the market, far ahead of Toyota with its 244 billion or General Motors with its 78 billion.
We still have to be careful about this craze for electromobility which sometimes precedes a sudden contraction of the market concomitant with the reduction, or even elimination, of certain aids to electromobility (like China or France which have decided to reduce the related tax benefits in stages in 2021 and 2022): the example of the return of the vehicle registration tax to Hong Kong in April 2017, which caused the collapse of purchases of electromobile vehicles previously exempted by this measure, is to be contemplated.
A technological shift accompanied by a new deal in raw materials
If electromobility is not recent, on the other hand the use of new technologies makes its return to favor more plausible. The real technological evolution does not lie in the engine but in the energy supplier. It is the lithium-ion revolution, liquid for the moment and solid in a more or less near future. This electrochemical accumulator thus makes it possible compared to its lead acid counterpart [7] to have 100% of the power available (50% for the lead acid battery), to offer a longer service life with a minimum of 2 000 cycles (vs 500 for the lead acid battery) and with faster charging process.
The principle : two electrodes immersed in a conductive element (electrolyte) and isolated from each other by a separator allowing only ions to pass to one side or the other as the battery charges or discharges . There is a negative electrode (anode) and a positive electrode (cathode). The materials used in the composition of the anode, cathode and electrolyte influence the potential of the battery, at equal volume, to deliver energy with more or less power.
While the risk of thermal runaway was real on lithium-cobalt-oxide batteries, the predominance of lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminum batteries and especially lithium-iron-phosphate ones has reinforced electrochemical safety.
Electromobility makes it necessary to understand the phenomenon from another angle: the needs for raw materials [8]. Of course, the first essential material (for the electrolyte) is lithium. For the cathode, cobalt or nickel are used and for the anode, graphite is usually used, which can be replaced by silicon.
The future could belong to solid (composed of odium, zirconium and phosphorus) and sodium-ion batteries. This will depend both on technological maturity but also on cost (extraction and refinement).
The success of the new generation of different battery models and their alternatives must be based on five criteria: Availability of elements, Cost of elements, Durability, Energy efficiency and Security (cf figure 1).
Fuel cell vehicles are evolving just like battery vehicles, but their low distribution (937 units sold in the United States market amongst 322 422 electric vehicles in 2020) does not facilitate economies of scale. This aspect slows down the development of more efficient and less expensive technical solutions.
The great shift towards electromobility : the benefit of the Asian powers
If we consider that the automobiles of tomorrow will be 3.0, that is to say electric, autonomous and connected, then we must recognize the predominance of Asian technologies in this area. The massive investments in disruptive technologies since the years 2000-2010 have been evident for several years: whether in the field of 5G or batteries, the reality is ruthless, American and European manufacturers are either lagging behind or forced to cooperate so as not to be left behind in the technological race. In the field of mobility, and unlike thermal vehicles, the engine is less critical in electric vehicles than batteries (mostly lithium-ion).
This is all the more so as the mechanical elements making up an electromobile are extremely small (the reduction being up to ten times their number compared to a so-called "conventional" automobile). In return for this limitation of parts, certain elements become all the more essential for electromobility, this is primarily the case of lithium-ion battery cells. We can also add the fuel cell for hydrogen vehicles which are also electromobiles.
However, the top three suppliers of vehicle batteries in the world are, in order, the Chinese CATL (24.2% market share), the South Korean LG Chem (22.6%) and the Japanese Panasonic (19.2%) according to SNE Research. Next on the list, the fourth and fifth positions are occupied by South Koreans Samsung SDI and SK Innovation and not Western structures (cf figure 2).
As for the hydrogen car, although projects are popping up in Europe and the United States, only the Toyota Mirai (Japan) and Hyundai Nexo (South Korea) models have exceeded, to date of publication, the concept stage to become an industrial reality. Once again, Asian entities have taken a step ahead of their Western counterparts.
The American manufacturer Tesla and his systemic approach
The American entrepreneur of South African origin, Elon Musk, was crowned the richest man in the world in January 2021 thanks to the very strong stock market valuation of the company Tesla, created in 2003, granting him a personal fortune estimated at 195 billion dollars, beyond the 187 billion of Jeffrey Bezos, head of Amazon. The man is a business survivor having touched bankruptcy on several occasions due to its whimsical and expensive nature. Elon Musk has over time entered the mobility landscape as a visionary [10], both in space with SpaceX and on earth with Tesla. Yet, on closer inspection, this industrial success is more fragile than it appears due to increasingly fierce competition with Asian firms in a tense geopolitical context. The case of Tesla is emblematic of this ongoing struggle for mineral, digital and technological sovereignty, the stake of which is the monopoly of the mobility of tomorrow.
Against the backdrop of the American-Chinese economic confrontation that began under the former mandate of Donald Trump and then converted into competition under the new mandate of Joe Biden, can the American manufacturer free himself from the Asian monopoly on the new generation of mobility? At the very least, that is his ambition.
On September 22, 2020, Tesla's keynote was held, called Battery Day, where the brand's strategic perspectives for the coming years were outlined. Many commentators were disappointed by the lack of booming news. However, in detail, this communication exercise revealed Tesla's whole approach to countering its sector competitors and limiting its dependence on Asian suppliers.
First of all, Tesla presents itself as a future conglomerate where electromobiles are only part of the company's offering: this is a systemic approach. Thus, the production, conservation and distribution of energy are clearly identified as the three other pillars of a global strategy in the electrification market (as evidenced by the production and marketing of its PowerPack and PowerWall as units. storage coupled with the installation of its Solar Roof photovoltaic panels or the presence of Superchargers on the roads). Just as its investment in the mining sector in the United States is perfectly correlated with the desire to get rid of dependence on Chinese mineral resources.
Elon Musk sets its pace on the automotive industry in the process of electrification: so he no longer wishes to mention an annual battery production capacity in Gigawatts but now in Terawatts (or 1000 Gigawatts) for the next decade. To have an order of magnitude of the growth of the industrial tool that this prospect would require, a Gigafactory Tesla currently produces 0.15 Terawatts / hour.
In short, this is a truly comprehensive strategy that Tesla is putting in place for its value chain, employing gradual end-to-end internalization while pursuing vertical integration.
However, Tesla, like other emerging players (we think of the Automotive Cells Company, Verkor and Northvolt), still remain heavily dependent on raw materials and / or components of Asian origin. The very recent Taiwanese-origin semiconductors shortage from TSMC and UMC, also called the “Global Chip Crisis”, which crippled all major automakers in the first half of 2021, is a further warning after the Chinese embargo on rare earths intended for Japan in September 2010.
Because the automotive sector is terribly greedy in raw materials as in electronic components: the closure of mines in Europe and the United States as well as the industrial relocations of these forty recent years have provided the foundations of industrial might for booming Asian powers such as China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore.
This is why Tesla is part of this systemic logic although it is still obliged to deal with its foreign suppliers, in particular with its historical partner, the Japanese Panasonic, for the supply of its new generation of battery cells or even the South Korean Samsung for some microprocessors.
This is not, however, dramatic in the sense that the aim is to reduce dependence on third-party supplies and not to produce in an autarkic way. Its strategy is clearly thought out from well to wheel with a very industry 4.0 approach (i.e. scalable automation and response to demand in real time).
Which strategy for the European EV Sector ?
The Covid-19 crisis in 2020 cruelly highlighted the lack of health resources for Europeans in the face of a pandemic impacting, even paralyzing, traditional logistics circuits. The industrial land transport sector, already in a weakening phase with an electrification process imposed by the public authorities, for its part found itself severely hit with the effects of the pandemic.
However, this injunction of excessive electrification of mobility by the national and European authorities has increased dependence on non-sovereign technologies (example: connecting the batteries to the 5G electrical network [11]) and supplies of specific materials (example: silicon and germanium semiconductors) undermining traditional manufacturers, forced to rethink their production chains and make more use of crucial external elements. This imposed policy is already leading to job cuts, mergers between weakened players, skills losses and worsened dependence on third-party products and technologies (cf figure 3).
Since early 2021, major automakers around the world are forced to cut back, or worse, to shut down production lines due to a persistent shortage of semiconductors.
In a press release, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation [1], a federation of industrialists present on American soil, strongly urged the 29th March 2021 the public authorities to take into consideration strategic supplies, including critical metals and electronic components: “We offer the following specific policy recommendations to encourage and incentivize investment by manufacturers and suppliers : Promote national security and economic security enhancements through the development of U.S.-based supplies of critical minerals (extraction, processing, recycling), battery and fuel cell manufacturing, and other critical components, including semiconductors.
The real reason for this concern is the awareness that Americans, like Europeans, have become prisoners of an industrial reality profitable to the Asian powers.
The advent of electromobility is a phenomenon the acceleration of which is disrupting many players and practices in the mobility sector that have existed for many decades. It is also part of an indirect geopolitical perspective, with the supply of equipment and components, and more and more direct, with the delivery of finished products by mainly Asian private entities often benefiting from discreet state support.
The latter have been able to invest and impose their know-how, their vision and their industrial power by further weakening the former proponents of the sector, mostly European and American, obliged in order to survive to ally themselves, to merge, to transform or to disappear.
The Asian grip on the nerve cogs of large-scale electrification is one of the least visible but most active facets of the pivotal world domination from the Atlantic zone to the Pacific zone, of which Tesla is the tree that hides the forest.
Electrification has also accelerated a trend visible since the 1990s: the increasingly critical use of electronic components. Cars have thus become over the years “computers on wheels” that it is necessary to supply millions of lines of codes because of the ECUs (Electronic Control Unit) placed inside them. If we often insist on the fact that electromobiles are less demanding in mechanical parts, on the other hand they are very demanding in electronic parts. To understand its importance, we must consider the three layers of cyberspace: the electronic part is the physical layer (hardware) which allows the logical layer (software) to interact to end up in the social layer (information). For example: tire pressure is a physical element (amount of air calculated in pascal or bars in the tire), but it interacts with an air pressure sensor whose the data are sent to the ECU, which requires an interpreter (the Tire-pressure monitoring system) to signal over-inflation or under-inflation to the driver.
This trend is the result of a triple demand: more safety (active or passive); more comfort (e.g. infotainment, heating, seat position); more optimization (mobility) [2]. This demand is based on a double requirement: more raw materials and more data. And electromobility consequently reinforces this double requirement. Both for legal reasons (imposition by European lawi of security systems such as ESP, ABS, eCall), for marketing reasons (electromobility must appear modern and have the latest technology with optional options billed at the high price) and finally for maintenance reasons (access to OBD2 / EOBD).
Basically, an electric vehicle requires two key elements: the motor and the battery or the fuel cell. Because it is not enough to extract and / or assemble raw materials, it is also necessary to master the technology of electromobility. The battery and the motor are condensed technologies whose efficiency is intrinsicallylinked to the presence of electronic components. However, few international automakers have invested since the 2000s in this mobility sector, except Asian ones and the American Tesla… till 2015.
The big turning point of 2015
As a result of national incentive and / or restrictive policies (conversion aid, bonus / penalty system, traffic zones prohibited for thermal vehicles, CO2 emission thresholds, etc.), the global electromobility market is displayed in boom despite the coronavirus crisis and an overall very gloomy automotive market: according to the figures for 2020 , sales of electric vehicles thus recorded + 137% in Europe, + 12% in China and +4 % in the United States while overall sales fell by -28% according to EV-Volumes figures [3].
However, behind this success of artificially assisted electromobility, hides a less perceptible but nevertheless a reality: the great battle for the mobility of tomorrow. Because if the European and American manufacturers have outrageously dominated the world automobile market (with the notable exception of the Japanese brand Toyota) the last decades, this situation seized up after 2015 and the Dieselgate affair revealed by the EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency). The criticism was growing towards diesel in particular then against all internal combustion vehicles, known as thermal: struck by all ills, these were quickly the target of taxes and traffic restrictions for the benefit of electric or electromobile vehicles [4].
This “industrial earthquake”, on the other hand, was a boon for promoters of electromobility, very few in this niche market when the affair occurred. One of its main representatives is Tesla Inc., which had remained confidential in the segment since its creation in 2003 under the initial name of Tesla Motors.
We can conjecture that this confidentiality allowed this young manufacturer to avoid the fate of the ambitious but unfortunate entrepreneur of the 1940s that was Preston Tucker [5], target of the Detroit Big Three (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) well aware the danger of a large-scale fourth American brand.
This turnaround in mobility can be considered as a revenge more than a hundred years apart where the heat engine definitely took the upper hand technically and economically over its electric counterpart in the 1920s [6].
We have to remind that at the turn of the 1900s, almost all of New York's taxi fleet was powered by electricity fairy as evidenced by the dynamism of the Electric Vehicle Company.
Be that as it may, in 2021, it is the automaker Tesla with more than $ 580 billion in market valuation that dominates the market, far ahead of Toyota with its 244 billion or General Motors with its 78 billion.
We still have to be careful about this craze for electromobility which sometimes precedes a sudden contraction of the market concomitant with the reduction, or even elimination, of certain aids to electromobility (like China or France which have decided to reduce the related tax benefits in stages in 2021 and 2022): the example of the return of the vehicle registration tax to Hong Kong in April 2017, which caused the collapse of purchases of electromobile vehicles previously exempted by this measure, is to be contemplated.
A technological shift accompanied by a new deal in raw materials
If electromobility is not recent, on the other hand the use of new technologies makes its return to favor more plausible. The real technological evolution does not lie in the engine but in the energy supplier. It is the lithium-ion revolution, liquid for the moment and solid in a more or less near future. This electrochemical accumulator thus makes it possible compared to its lead acid counterpart [7] to have 100% of the power available (50% for the lead acid battery), to offer a longer service life with a minimum of 2 000 cycles (vs 500 for the lead acid battery) and with faster charging process.
The principle : two electrodes immersed in a conductive element (electrolyte) and isolated from each other by a separator allowing only ions to pass to one side or the other as the battery charges or discharges . There is a negative electrode (anode) and a positive electrode (cathode). The materials used in the composition of the anode, cathode and electrolyte influence the potential of the battery, at equal volume, to deliver energy with more or less power.
While the risk of thermal runaway was real on lithium-cobalt-oxide batteries, the predominance of lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminum batteries and especially lithium-iron-phosphate ones has reinforced electrochemical safety.
Electromobility makes it necessary to understand the phenomenon from another angle: the needs for raw materials [8]. Of course, the first essential material (for the electrolyte) is lithium. For the cathode, cobalt or nickel are used and for the anode, graphite is usually used, which can be replaced by silicon.
The future could belong to solid (composed of odium, zirconium and phosphorus) and sodium-ion batteries. This will depend both on technological maturity but also on cost (extraction and refinement).
The success of the new generation of different battery models and their alternatives must be based on five criteria: Availability of elements, Cost of elements, Durability, Energy efficiency and Security (cf figure 1).
Figure 1 Battery Technology Radar - Credits to YH
Fuel cell vehicles are evolving just like battery vehicles, but their low distribution (937 units sold in the United States market amongst 322 422 electric vehicles in 2020) does not facilitate economies of scale. This aspect slows down the development of more efficient and less expensive technical solutions.
The great shift towards electromobility : the benefit of the Asian powers
If we consider that the automobiles of tomorrow will be 3.0, that is to say electric, autonomous and connected, then we must recognize the predominance of Asian technologies in this area. The massive investments in disruptive technologies since the years 2000-2010 have been evident for several years: whether in the field of 5G or batteries, the reality is ruthless, American and European manufacturers are either lagging behind or forced to cooperate so as not to be left behind in the technological race. In the field of mobility, and unlike thermal vehicles, the engine is less critical in electric vehicles than batteries (mostly lithium-ion).
This is all the more so as the mechanical elements making up an electromobile are extremely small (the reduction being up to ten times their number compared to a so-called "conventional" automobile). In return for this limitation of parts, certain elements become all the more essential for electromobility, this is primarily the case of lithium-ion battery cells. We can also add the fuel cell for hydrogen vehicles which are also electromobiles.
However, the top three suppliers of vehicle batteries in the world are, in order, the Chinese CATL (24.2% market share), the South Korean LG Chem (22.6%) and the Japanese Panasonic (19.2%) according to SNE Research. Next on the list, the fourth and fifth positions are occupied by South Koreans Samsung SDI and SK Innovation and not Western structures (cf figure 2).
Figure 2 Asian powers in Electromobility - Credits to YH
As for the hydrogen car, although projects are popping up in Europe and the United States, only the Toyota Mirai (Japan) and Hyundai Nexo (South Korea) models have exceeded, to date of publication, the concept stage to become an industrial reality. Once again, Asian entities have taken a step ahead of their Western counterparts.
The American manufacturer Tesla and his systemic approach
The American entrepreneur of South African origin, Elon Musk, was crowned the richest man in the world in January 2021 thanks to the very strong stock market valuation of the company Tesla, created in 2003, granting him a personal fortune estimated at 195 billion dollars, beyond the 187 billion of Jeffrey Bezos, head of Amazon. The man is a business survivor having touched bankruptcy on several occasions due to its whimsical and expensive nature. Elon Musk has over time entered the mobility landscape as a visionary [10], both in space with SpaceX and on earth with Tesla. Yet, on closer inspection, this industrial success is more fragile than it appears due to increasingly fierce competition with Asian firms in a tense geopolitical context. The case of Tesla is emblematic of this ongoing struggle for mineral, digital and technological sovereignty, the stake of which is the monopoly of the mobility of tomorrow.
Against the backdrop of the American-Chinese economic confrontation that began under the former mandate of Donald Trump and then converted into competition under the new mandate of Joe Biden, can the American manufacturer free himself from the Asian monopoly on the new generation of mobility? At the very least, that is his ambition.
On September 22, 2020, Tesla's keynote was held, called Battery Day, where the brand's strategic perspectives for the coming years were outlined. Many commentators were disappointed by the lack of booming news. However, in detail, this communication exercise revealed Tesla's whole approach to countering its sector competitors and limiting its dependence on Asian suppliers.
First of all, Tesla presents itself as a future conglomerate where electromobiles are only part of the company's offering: this is a systemic approach. Thus, the production, conservation and distribution of energy are clearly identified as the three other pillars of a global strategy in the electrification market (as evidenced by the production and marketing of its PowerPack and PowerWall as units. storage coupled with the installation of its Solar Roof photovoltaic panels or the presence of Superchargers on the roads). Just as its investment in the mining sector in the United States is perfectly correlated with the desire to get rid of dependence on Chinese mineral resources.
Elon Musk sets its pace on the automotive industry in the process of electrification: so he no longer wishes to mention an annual battery production capacity in Gigawatts but now in Terawatts (or 1000 Gigawatts) for the next decade. To have an order of magnitude of the growth of the industrial tool that this prospect would require, a Gigafactory Tesla currently produces 0.15 Terawatts / hour.
In short, this is a truly comprehensive strategy that Tesla is putting in place for its value chain, employing gradual end-to-end internalization while pursuing vertical integration.
However, Tesla, like other emerging players (we think of the Automotive Cells Company, Verkor and Northvolt), still remain heavily dependent on raw materials and / or components of Asian origin. The very recent Taiwanese-origin semiconductors shortage from TSMC and UMC, also called the “Global Chip Crisis”, which crippled all major automakers in the first half of 2021, is a further warning after the Chinese embargo on rare earths intended for Japan in September 2010.
Because the automotive sector is terribly greedy in raw materials as in electronic components: the closure of mines in Europe and the United States as well as the industrial relocations of these forty recent years have provided the foundations of industrial might for booming Asian powers such as China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore.
This is why Tesla is part of this systemic logic although it is still obliged to deal with its foreign suppliers, in particular with its historical partner, the Japanese Panasonic, for the supply of its new generation of battery cells or even the South Korean Samsung for some microprocessors.
This is not, however, dramatic in the sense that the aim is to reduce dependence on third-party supplies and not to produce in an autarkic way. Its strategy is clearly thought out from well to wheel with a very industry 4.0 approach (i.e. scalable automation and response to demand in real time).
Which strategy for the European EV Sector ?
The Covid-19 crisis in 2020 cruelly highlighted the lack of health resources for Europeans in the face of a pandemic impacting, even paralyzing, traditional logistics circuits. The industrial land transport sector, already in a weakening phase with an electrification process imposed by the public authorities, for its part found itself severely hit with the effects of the pandemic.
However, this injunction of excessive electrification of mobility by the national and European authorities has increased dependence on non-sovereign technologies (example: connecting the batteries to the 5G electrical network [11]) and supplies of specific materials (example: silicon and germanium semiconductors) undermining traditional manufacturers, forced to rethink their production chains and make more use of crucial external elements. This imposed policy is already leading to job cuts, mergers between weakened players, skills losses and worsened dependence on third-party products and technologies (cf figure 3).