Belgiens Häfen ertrinken unter der Flut chinesischer Elektroautos: „Manche stehen hier ein Jahr lang, manchmal länger“
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/05/04/belgium-s-ports-drowning-under-glut-of-chinese-electric-cars-some-are-parked-here-for-a-year-sometimes-a-year-and-a-half_6670373_19.html
Von LeMonde_en
13 Comments
**Due to China’s overcapacity in production – as it aims to capture a quarter of the European electric vehicle market – the ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge are inundated.**
You probably need to see it to appreciate the challenges the automobile industry faces in transitioning to electricity. You also need to come here to understand how the Chinese industry’s overcapacity has flooded the European market. That morning, as the sun unexpectedly lit up the maze of highways leading to this remote arm of the port of Antwerp, Belgium, a huge cargo ship from the Norwegian company Höegh Autoliners unloaded thousands of cars at one of the terminals of International Car Operators (ICO), a subsidiary of the Japanese group Nippon Yusen Kaisha.
Alongside Swedish-Norwegian Wallenius Wilhelmsen, it is one of the main operators of the now merged port of Antwerp-Bruges, the world’s largest automotive terminal, through which the production of some 40 brands used to transit. But that was before the emergence of their Chinese competitors.
At Calloo, near Antwerp, and Zeebrugge, on the North Sea coast, huge parking lots can accommodate some 130,000 vehicles, but they now find themselves too cramped. In 2022, 3.4 million vehicles passed through the two ports. Since then, the market has evolved further, challenges have multiplied and operators are doing their best to resolve vehicle storage issues.
In front of the carefully guarded gates of ICO in Calloo, cars of all make are lined up as far as the eye can see before being loaded onto trucks from Italy, the UK, Poland, and Germany. In the foreground are models that are often still unknown to the general public. “All Chinese. I prefer German cars,” grumbled Rinus De Vries, a Dutch truck driver waiting in his cab.
MG, BYD, Nio, XPeng, Lynk & Co, Omoda, Hongqi, etc. A dozen Chinese automakers have launched a commercial offensive to export nearly 4.1 million cars by 2023 (+ 58% in one year). They aim to conquer a European market undergoing rapid change, thanks in part to the subsidies available in several countries for the purchase of electric vehicles.
**Read the full article here:** [**https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/05/04/belgium-s-ports-drowning-under-glut-of-chinese-electric-cars-some-are-parked-here-for-a-year-sometimes-a-year-and-a-half_6670373_19.html**](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/05/04/belgium-s-ports-drowning-under-glut-of-chinese-electric-cars-some-are-parked-here-for-a-year-sometimes-a-year-and-a-half_6670373_19.html)
That’s what you get if you refused to sell your ports to them.
Just charge rent bro
Yet I am on a waitlist for the cloud blue Volvo EX30 I ordered.
So your “new” car may not be nearly as new as you think! Another good reason not to buy an EV!
I wonder how those batteries are dealing with sitting that long. If the BMS was designed correctly it will fully shut down and not draw anything.
That’s a big IF. A small phantom draw could bring the batteries below the safe minimum, at which point the batteries are scrap.
The first gen Tesla roadster could sit for a few months before killing the battery and that’s all you got. But the new systems are much better.
They should threaten to impound or simply scrap a vehicle that sits for more than 3 weeks.
Then the Chinese will handle the cars
I do not really understand these articles. Nobody ship a car from the factory without it being previously ordered or by a final customer or by a sales partner. It seems to me the problem can be of three nature: 1) custom documentation or custom related problem, which is probably behind the longest parking, 2) specialised transportation for EV that cars which has lower capacity than demand, 3) bankruptcy of some sakes partner. No hint is coming from the journalist about what are the actual bottleneck.
Just refuse entry for any more cars, and start charging china – or scrap/sell the cars and keep the money
Disgraceful, this is a Chinese attack on European ports and industry
i would make the batteries easily swappable and just send the cars without the batteries to Europe and then have an assembly plant in Europe that would just plug the batteries in the car when it was about to be sold, but i know nothing about this… since the biggest cost of EV’s is the battery, why not just put the battery in when the car is sold, the rest of the car could just be there for months on end, no problem, but the battery i think it’s more of an opportunity cost, isn’t it?
scrap them.
Everyone is saying that brands like BYD are super-cheap….yet they cost as much as Tesla.
e.g. BYD Seal costs about 45k euros and Model 3 costs 41k euros. Seal has slightly better performance, yet slightly worse software implementation.
Additionally I am not even sure what kind of support BYD has in EU….do they have service stations? Do they have fast charging networks?