Tesla Admits Huge Losses on First Cars, Boosts "Option" Prices to Recoup

http://thenews.choate.edu/2009/01/23/Nation/China_Could_Charge_Ahead_i.php">China Could Charge Ahead in the U.S. Car Market

By Warren Brown

The Washington Post 1-23-09


DETROIT — This is what the North American International Auto Show, which opens to the public this weekend, ought to be — less glitz, less glam, substantially more substance.

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But BYD and Brilliance this year are showing their stuff on the main floor, largely because hard times have forced some manufacturers — Mitsubishi, Nissan, Rolls-Royce and Ferrari, for example — to opt out of the Detroit show.

It’s not so much that those companies were too broke to bring their cars to Detroit. It’s that a tough economy is forcing them to be more selective. Rolls-Royce and Nissan, for example, are likely to be on exhibit at the upcoming shows in Geneva and New York and, because of its recession-resistant economy, in Washington.

But to BYD and Brilliance, an opportunity is an opportunity, and the two Chinese companies have taken advantage of the prime floor space given them by the absence of better-known car companies. Both are serving notice that when they enter the U.S. market in or about 2012, they will come as high-end, high-technology automobile manufacturers.

BYD’s exhibit is instructive and should be taken as a warning by any automobile manufacturer or government inclined not to take the Chinese seriously in matters of advanced engineering. BYD is displaying a range of gas-electric and plug-in electric models, such as its E6 DM (six-cylinder, dual-mode) sedan, which BYD representatives said will be able to drive 156 miles on a single battery charge.

Are BYD and Brilliance bluffing? I don’t think so. Their exhibits constituted a poignant reminder of something a Chinese university student told me two years ago in Shanghai: “You in the West own the old automobile industry. We are going to own the new one — the one powered by batteries.”

It’s a good thing that the North American International Auto Show has been forced to divest itself of its glitzy, wasteful silliness. Here’s hoping that its functional austerity lasts. These are hard times. But, more than that, the competition for the future of the automobile industry is getting serious. We in the United States don’t have time to fool around.