BYD Seen Ditching Gasoline-Powered Cars
BYD, the company we visited in yesterday’s story might ditch conventional gasoline-powered cars and focus on electrics, Reuters says in an exclusive story,
Two senior BYD executives told Reuters that along with dropping gasoline-fueled cars, the company also might offload its solar panel business and concentrate on new greener battery technologies.
BYD will unveil its Green Hybrid Technology at the Shanghai auto show on Saturday. Reuters sees BYD focus on hybrid cars, with a smattering of all-electric and ‘plug-in’ electric hybrid cars thrown in.
The story caused raised eyebrows and snickers among the auto executives that congregate in Shanghai for the auto show that will open its doors to the press tomorrow. Currently, EVs and hybrids sell only in homeopathic quantities in China. I am in Shanghai, and we’ll see what develops.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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If a way can be found to become profitable as a (very) niche marketer in China, this might not be a bad mood. Considering the alternative is becoming a lost also-ran among the plethora of Chinese car companies; if you're going to eventually fail, you might as well go down swinging. And maybe even succeed.
BYD has had a very hard time convincing anyone to buy its electrics. I don't know how anyone either inside or outside the company could think this is a good idea. Isn't there a term limit on April Fools? Next day? First week? What?
Usually such moves aren't contemplated publicly; this just makes them look directionless. It would be much better to simply announce a decision. But if they do go all EV, they'll be able to apply more resources to one thing rather than being distributed among ICE/Hybrid/EV technologies.
is called tying 2 rocks together and pray it will float.