China is exporting more and more cars.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
Munich According to the management consultancy AlixPartners, the Chinese car manufacturers will be export world champions for the first time this year. Already in the first quarter China with 1.07 million cars exported overtook Japan with 954,000 cars, followed by Germany (840,000), South Korea (750,000) and Mexico (741,000).
As a production location, sales market and exporter, the People’s Republic is “well on the way to becoming an automotive superpower,” said Alix industry expert Fabian Piontek on Monday.
Domestic manufacturers are expected to produce 10.5 million of the 20.5 million cars sold in China this year – more than half. The Chinese are also pushing into the world market with e-vehicles and are increasingly putting European car manufacturers under pressure in their home markets.
The global automotive market is growing again, but much more slowly than expected. The driving force is the USA. “In the long term, sales figures in Europe will be more than 15 percent below pre-Covid values,” says the Alix study.
“The era of record profits by German automobile manufacturers will come to an end,” write the industry experts. In a cooling world market with increasing competition, the pressure on profit margins is increasing. Battery costs, which were falling too slowly, dampened the faster increase in sales of electric cars over the next three to five years.
Probably no price increase at car manufacturers
This prevents cost advantages through large quantities. Raw material costs have also risen again due to the increasing demand from China and “will not return to the pre-Covid level”. In addition, there would be rising capital costs due to the turnaround in interest rates.
Alix restructuring expert Jens Haas expects “further consolidation in the supply industry”. Debt is currently at record levels, while the cost of capital and cash requirements for operations and investments are rising. The chances of raising prices from car manufacturers are slim.
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