The ‘Godfather of EVs’ explains why China is winning the race to go electric — and why hybrids are a ‘fool’s errand’

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

The ‘Godfather of EVs’ explains why China is winning the race to go electric — and why hybrids are a ‘fool’s errand’

Former Nissan and Aston Martin executive Andy Palmer is known as the “godfather of EVs” thanks to his work on the Nissan Leaf.Courtesy of Andy Palmer

Andy Palmer, the “Godfather of EVs,” explains how China took the lead in the electric car race.

Ex-Nissan COO Palmer got the moniker after developing the Leaf, the world’s first mass-market EV.

He says ******** EVs offer “remarkable” value for money and have better battery tech than their Western rivals.

The man often known as the “Godfather of EVs” has a warning for automakers thinking of ditching electric vehicles for hybrids.

Former Aston Martin CEO and Nissan exec Andy Palmer told Business Insider that delaying transitioning to EVs in favor of selling hybrids was a “fool’s errand” and warned automakers doing so risk falling even 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Palmer’s moniker comes from his time as Chief Operating Officer at Nissan.

He led the development of the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, the world’s first mass-market electric car, which has sold

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

since it launched in 2010.

“I wish I could say that it was driven by a motivation to better the world. But actually, it was driven by the Toyota Prius kicking our ****,” Palmer told ***.

The Nissan Leaf was the first mass-market electric car.Peerapon Boonyakiat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Rather than copying the success of the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, Palmer says he pushed Nissan to build a fully electric vehicle, eventually securing the support of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Over a decade later, he’s skeptical of automakers — including

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, the company Palmer ran as CEO from 2014 to 2020 — who have taken the opposite path and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

“Hybrids are a road to hell. They are a transition strategy, and the longer you stay on that transition, the less quickly you ramp up into the new world,” said Palmer.

“If you just delay transitioning to EVs by diluting it with hybrids then you are more uncompetitive for longer, and you allow the ******** to continue to develop their market and their leadership. I honestly think it’s a fool’s errand,” he added.

Over the past few years, the auto industry has been shaken by the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, which have conquered their home market with a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and hybrids and are now rapidly expanding abroad.

“The ******** cars are bloody good. The ******** vehicles offer remarkable value for money for what they deliver,” said Palmer.

“Their battery technology’s class-leading, and they’ve concentrated very much on their software,” he said.

Palmer told *** that the success of China’s EV industry was down to the country’s long-running industrial strategy.

Story Continues

According to one study, the ******** government has 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 for electric vehicle makers since 2009.

Palmer, who

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, a joint venture between Nissan and ******** state-owned automaker Dongfeng, says he saw firsthand how aggressive China’s EV strategy was.

“The edict [from the ******** government] was to move to new energy vehicles,” he said.

“It starts with an industrial strategy. That’s the big thing to learn. For the best part of 14 years, we have not had an industrial strategy,” Palmer added.

BYD has conquered its home market with a range of affordable and high-tech EVs and hybrids.Getty Images

Both the US and Europe have responded to the rise of ******** automakers by

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, but Palmer said that tariffs would only harm Western companies’ ability to compete with their ******** rivals.

“My experience with tariffs is it just makes your indigenous industry lazy. The gap becomes even *******,” he said.

Instead, he argued that automakers should prepare for a “survival of the fittest” battle with ******** automakers, especially in Europe, where the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

“I think the ******** firms will learn from competing in Europe, because that’s the toughest market in the world. If they can do that, then they’re going to be unbeatable,” Palmer said.

The surging growth of China’s EV giants has put Palmer’s former employer Nissan and its Japanese rivals Toyota and Honda under severe pressure.

Nissan announced it would

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, while both

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

in China and slumping profits. In December, it was reported that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Palmer says while Toyota’s decision to

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, it has left it and other Japanese automakers exposed as key markets like China transition quickly to EVs.

“Toyota took the Japanese industry down a ****-de-sac, which it is going to struggle to recover from,” he said.

The former Nissan executive said his old company, meanwhile, had “shot itself in the foot” and squandered a promising lineup of electric vehicles and a 10-year lead in EV tech.

“My last board meeting in July 2014, I was under enormous attack from the bean counters who were saying; these things don’t make money, we are going too fast. I managed to win the day in that meeting, but I left the company,” said Palmer.

“Nissan finds itself now with a very poor lineup of products and without obvious leadership in EVs, and that’s the direct result of poor management,” he said.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. While sales are still growing, the pace of adoption has been slower than expected, causing automakers across the globe to

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

For Palmer, the reason some consumers have proven reluctant to go electric is simple: EVs are too expensive.

“Prices have got to align to those of internal combustion engines. And to make that happen, you’ve got to be able to offer cars with smaller batteries,” said Palmer.

The average price of an electric vehicle in the US in October was $56,902, according to

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, compared to $48,623 for gas-powered vehicles.

Palmer said that selling cheaper vehicles with smaller batteries and less range would require governments to incentivize the rollout of charging networks to alleviate range anxiety.

He added that the West could learn from China’s approach to industrial strategy — especially when it comes to batteries, an

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

“If the West wants to catch up, I would advocate copying the ********,” said Palmer.

“The alternative is everything is ******** at the moment — even if you were building your own battery cells, you’ve still gotta get all the minerals from China. The whole supply chain is stuck,” he said.

Read the original article on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Godfather #EVs #explains #China #winning #race #electric #hybrids #fools #errand

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up