Tesla obviously stands to benefit from China’s electric-vehicle push, but there’s one automaker you might not guess that plans to take advantage of the scenario, too. On one hand, the automakers are signaling their willingness to take more stringent fuel-economy and environmental regulations seriously. According to the study, automakers that support dealers in this area of revenue diversification have higher satisfaction scores in their working relationship with their dealers. Ford received no incentives for keeping Lincoln MKC production in Kentucky, though the automaker never planned to close that Louisville plant, which also builds the Escape crossover that outsells the Lincoln version 12 to 1. Forecast are out there that argue for the EV market growing to 41 million in annual sales by 2040, with 35{c0ab263b3175d981033b17d6eec654a369e659a5af23b80a9510e95dedf16ccb} of all new cars being electric. Recall timeliness indicating how quickly and willing an automaker is to identify problems with its cars and initiate a recall within three years. Of course, there are bigger reasons why automakers have gone further than the government has asked. If the current global EV market doubled, it would still only be 2{c0ab263b3175d981033b17d6eec654a369e659a5af23b80a9510e95dedf16ccb} of total sales.
OpenCar developer support and App certification services keep up with automaker changes without high touch involvement from automakers. And as the Chinese market offers a big opportunity for many automakers, it’s going to be the automakers that adapt quickly to new regulations that will be best positioned going forward. The second largest automaker in Japan intends to pay out more of its net income in dividends to bolster shareholder returns that have lagged those of its closest Japanese rival, Toyota. Expected to arrive on the market as a 2018 model year vehicle, it’s unclear which model Chevrolet is actually testing. While the Nissan-Renault alliance is the segment leader in global EV sales, there are no major plans announced for North America from the automaker behind the Leaf. Japan will bail out Toyota and Honda, which have seen all their market share gains and increases implode in the last 2-quarters. Obviously, automakers have never had to contemplate anything like this in the past.
At the time of the bailout, many analysts felt that Chrysler would go bankrupt, even with a bailout, and Ford didn’t really need it. Therefore, the main impact from the bailout was to save jobs at GM. But the recession caused GM to slash its employment and production, whether it received a bailout or not.
Depending on the automaker and its goals in China, last week’s news out of Beijing could change EV strategies significantly. Nissan is now the largest shareholder of Mitsubishi and has a controlling stake in the automaker. Perhaps the most difficult part of bailing out the automakers is that it is coming on the heels of a massive $700 billion bail out of the financial industry.
That means two things have to happen: a major government, such as China’s, will have to require greatly increased EV sales; or gas prices will have to rise to the Moon, well past the $4-a-gallon level they hit in the US after the financial crisis, before the oil market tanked last year.