What percentage of European automotive manufacturing costs come from energy?
To be fair, German cars aren’t anywhere near the quality that German cars used to be, either.
EU and even USA should start doing something reasonable. Like introducing quota on how much overall can be imported/exported to protect local markets. Like lets say 40%.
Everyone gets a piece of cake.
But lets be honest, germany (my country) also never played fair. We gained quite a lot of export strength through the Euro and overall german politics.
And its not just the energy prices, it was quite clear what the energy prices going to be but no one really invested into reducing them early or fast enough at all. No one cared. BMW new factory in hungarie though does has a lot more reneablw and was able to continue production despite hungaries energy issue.
In China a person makes 500-1000 per month, in germany the same person makes a lot more.
China you have raw resources and cheap labor and cheap energy on EVERY SINGLE point of the process. From iron ore to the assembly itself.
And it doesn't matter much anyway because with the current and future grade of automatisation, a lot less money is getting directly to the people.
We need laws enforcing the rich to pay the taxes and/or invest A LOT more a lot faster and a lot broader.
We need real politics and not this garbage happening in germany or in the USA or in Russia.
Nice Jedi Hand Wave there.
That's the issue.
China invested in producing cheap energy. Most of the rest of the world did not.
At root, economics is about turning energy into goods and services. If the root industrial input of your competitor is cheaper than the cost of that same root industrial input to you, you're gonna need some incredible efficiencies elsewhere in that production pipeline to pull even.
At this point, the EU should be all about keeping the other major powers at arm's length, (economically and militarily), while pursuing renewable electrification with all deliberate speed.
That should be everyone else' strategy going forward as well by the way. Without cheap energy in the next global economic phase, your nation or bloc is dead in the water.
Especially with being well behind in the current AI arms race. You need the opposite of a "workers utopia" to do all the things the EU needs to do, and do them fast.
They either stay with the US or become a vassal of Xi Jinpeng.
You mean coal[1][2]?
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/ch...
Though coal has dropped as a percentage of their portfolio fairly dramatically, and in absolute twh has been stable since 2010, with other energy sources growing.
China dominates global clean energy investment, accounting for more than half of the $1.1 trillion invested worldwide between 2019 and 2025, while the United States contributed approximately $236 billion, representing less than a quarter of the total. - https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/china-spen...
They are 80% there for 30% the price as a consumer it’s a tremendous deal