Japanese media: China will break through the bottleneck of automobile transportation, and the European tram market will face great changes this year
As Chinese car companies represented by BYD and SAIC open the era of "self-transport of national cars" and accelerate their transoceanic going to sea, Japan's "Nikkei Asian Review" issued an article on February 12 saying that China's electric vehicles will "make greater waves" in Europe this year.
Later this month, BYD's "offshore fleet" with more than 5,000 electric vehicles will dock at ports in the Netherlands and Germany, the first Ro-Ro ship will be reported.
German automotive industry analysts believe that the lack of ocean capacity has previously been "one of the biggest obstacles" to the growth of China's overseas car market share, but this obstacle will be broken this year, and "the market environment will also change dramatically." ”
Nikkei Asia believes that 2024 could be a "symbolic year" for Europe as the first large car carriers from Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers arrive in Europe.
On January 10, 2024, in Yantai, Shandong, the "BYD Pioneer No. 1" loaded with new energy vehicles set sail from Yantai Port.
At the beginning of the new year, a transport ship named "BYD EXPLORER No.1" (BYD EXPLORER No.1) was delivered and departed from Longkou, Yantai, Shandong, and on the morning of January 16, the ship loaded with 5,449 BYD new energy vehicles slowly sailed out of the Shenshan Xiaomo International Logistics Port and set off for Europe on its maiden voyage.
This is the first car carrier built by a domestic shipyard specifically for the export of domestic cars. According to Yantai CIMC Raffles Marine Technology Group Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of CIMC, the ship has a total length of 199.9 meters, a width of 38 meters, a design draft of 8.6 meters, a design speed of 19 knots, a loading capacity of 7,000 vehicles, and a maximum cruising range of 15,800 nautical miles.
Source: CIMC Raffles
The transport ship is emblazoned with a large BYD logo. According to CIMC's WeChat official account, BYD chartered the ship through Zodiac Maritime.
Source: CIMC Raffles
As soon as the news came out, the Japanese media and German media, which also came from a major automobile manufacturing country, paid attention to the movement of the "BYD Explorer 1".
Nikkei Asia said in a document on the 12th that the "BYD Explorer 1" left southern China in mid-January and made a detour to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope, marking a "groundbreaking step" for BYD and China's electric vehicle industry.
According to the report, before this, China's electric vehicle industry had limited capacity to transport vehicles in the ocean. In 2023, China will become the world's largest exporter of automobiles, with exports reaching 4.91 million units, and the market share of Chinese automakers in Europe is gradually increasing, reaching 3%, but it is still relatively small, lagging behind Japan's Toyota Motor and South Korea's Hyundai Motor.
According to Japanese media, compared with China's growing automobile export situation, China's automobile transportation capacity accounts for only 3% of the world's total, and transportation bottlenecks hinder the development of Chinese car companies.
The report mentions that China's major electric vehicle manufacturers are mostly start-ups and do not have enough dedicated charter ships like Toyota, so Chinese companies need to fight for loading space for their vehicles on the routes and compete to fill the limited space for transport vessels. This demand has pushed the average rental of car carriers to a record 115,000 US dollars per day (about 827,000 yuan per day) in 2023, seven times that of 2019 before the pandemic.
Nikkei Asia said that in order to avoid this competition, BYD plans to acquire eight 7,000-space ro-ro ships within two years to form its own exclusive overseas fleet. The large car carrier previously ordered by SAIC also sailed to Europe in January this year.
According to the CCTV news client, the 7,600-space LNG dual-fuel ro-ro ocean-going vessel named "SAIC Anji Shencheng" carried nearly 5,000 new cars of SAIC, Dongfeng and Yutong's own brands on its maiden voyage, of which about half were new energy vehicles. In the next three years, a total of 14 ocean-going carriers in the 7600, 7800 and 9000 vehicle classes will successively join SAIC Anji Logistics' ocean-going fleet to actively support China's independent brands to accelerate their cross-sea expansion.
Regarding the changes at the beginning of the year, German automotive industry analyst Matthias Schmidt said that the growth of Chinese cars in 2024 is expected to break one of its "biggest obstacles" so far - the lack of capacity, and "the market environment will also change dramatically." ”
Germany's "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" has also recently paid attention to this matter, and the newspaper reported on January 11 under the title "China's car wave flocks to Europe" that BYD ordered eight car carriers from a shipyard in Yantai, with a total price of nearly 5 billion yuan. In addition to BYD, several major Chinese automakers have established their own transportation capabilities.
BYD's first ro-ro carrier arrived at Xiaomo Port in Shenzhen, and sailed to Europe after completing the loading. (Source: Visual China)
In addition, Nikkei Asia said that the European auto industry was already feeling China's influence before the boom in Chinese car carrier construction.
China's BAIC Group and Geely Group are the largest and second largest shareholders of Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler, with a combined stake of nearly 20 percent. Volvo has become a sub-brand of Geely.
At the same time, Chinese companies are also a key link in Europe's electric vehicle supply chain, and European companies rely on China's battery industry. Chinese companies account for about 60% of the global automotive battery market.
Nikkei Asia said the situation has put policymakers in Europe in a "dilemma." The EU has launched a countervailing investigation into China's electric vehicles, a move that could lead to import restrictions on Chinese electric vehicles, and on the other hand, reducing prices will be crucial for the EU to achieve its goal of promoting electric vehicles.
In response to the EU's practice of selecting only three Chinese local companies as the targets of the investigation, He Yadong, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, previously said that the European Commission independently launched a countervailing investigation under the clear opposition of the EU industry, falsely claiming that China's electric vehicles pose a threat of damage to the EU electric vehicle industry, completely ignoring the close cooperation between China's auto industry. The Chinese industry has expressed strong disappointment and dissatisfaction with the European Commission's practice of pre-setting the results of the investigation and operating in the dark. China urges the EU to strictly abide by WTO rules and EU law, correct its wrong practices as soon as possible, ensure that the investigation is open, fair, fair and compliant, and fully protect the legitimate rights and interests of relevant enterprises.
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