BMW To Move Production Of Electric Minis To China
By Paul Homewood
Terrible news, but hardly surprising:
Energy costs will close two major ‘green’ manufacturing operations
• BMW is moving manufacturing of the electric Mini from the UK to China where manufacturing is powered by cheap coal.
• Britishvolt, a major battery manufacturing startup, is on the brink of collapse.
Both companies have cited high energy prices as the reason for their problems.
Claims that the UK’s economy will be based around ‘green industries’ are clearly false.
• Manufacturing of renewables and EVs will be built in places where energy is cheap, which means places where it is derived from fossil fuels.
• European wind turbine manufacturers are financially struggling and cutting jobs, losing market share to Chinese manufacturers who are benefiting from cheap coal.
• Net Zero is driving the wholesale deindustrialisation of Britain which threatens to make the UK uninvestable.
The economic crisis can only be solved by cheap energy
• There will be no economic growth without cheap energy.
• Cheap energy can only be delivered through increased supply of fossil fuels and nuclear, and elimination of renewables.
Net Zero plans must be cancelled as a matter of urgency.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/no-growth-while-net-zero-is-in-place/
I said years ago that China would be the beneficiary of our EV policy. The European car industry has long maintained a healthy engineering advantage over China, to such an extent that the latter’s lower manufacturing costs would not be enough to make their cars competitive.
The ban on petrol cars has effectively wiped that slate clean, and China can now compete on more even terms in the electric car market. And with their virtual monopoly of the world’s battery industry, lower energy costs and cheap labour, they will come to dominate the EV market just as they have managed to do with everything else.
Mark my words- BMW won’t be the first European car to be outsourced to China.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
When is the reality of the impact of the Climate Change Act 2008 and Net Zero 2019 going to be realised and reversed. Do ordinary people realise what is going on?
“Do ordinary people realise what is going on?”
No, I’m pretty sure they don’t, really. The MSM/BBC et al make sure of that. Look at the way such a prosaic semi-documentary program as Countryfile has, more and more, become a CC propaganda vehicle. And all this is, without doubt, being pushed – and financed – by the likes of Agenda 30, WEF, OWG and the EU.
Ordinary people don’t get a look-in and are bound to suffer in ignorance. If I may, I think it’s becoming a little bit Malthusian now.
Simon Reeves , having just completed a propaganda tour down through the Americas quoting climate change in every aspect of life there, has now turned his attention to the Lake District.In addition to comments such as ” coal is the dirtiest form of fuel and solar and wind are a fraction of the cost ” (No sources , no debate , no figures), he goes on to intimidate sheep farmers for “sheep-wrecking” the landscape and advocating the total removal of sheep . This of course is “rewilding”, the latest fad, and in the Lake district would mean a wilderness of bracken – poisonous , harbours ticks leading to Lyme Disease , and in dry summers an enormous source of flammable material just waiting for a passing arsonist .( I lived near Ashdown forest for years – most summers large parts black after fires) .
This wasn’t caused by NetZero, it was caused by Brexit. The media will tell you that everything bad was caused by Brexit, only good things come from NetZero, and that has been overlaid onto the left wing right wing dichotomy so that young people can immediately know what they should think.
Are the financial problems in France, Germany,Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc. all caused by Brexit?
I think John M needs to recognise irony.
The idiocy of our mix of power generating methods is so obvious that our governments must be in league with the bad forces that seek to destroy our economy AND our way of life. (And while we are about it the same forces are trying to bring Liz Truss down) – didn’t she hint that she would look at the question of net zero?
If they were waiting for her first big blunder, they didn’t have to wait long.
Politicians endlessly talk about Net Zero, low carbon and Green Jobs…without outlining how they’ll actually be delivered.
Where’s the price advantage from renewables that are ‘9 times cheaper than fossil fuels’?
All talk, no action. Meanwhile China is rinsing the world for their battery tech and Johnson has successfully annihilated our economy with a brutal double-whammy; a £500 billion Covid squander and a suicidal Net Zero policy locked in across Parliament.
I’m afraid we’re going to have to learn the hard way. .
Indeed we are, hard and COLD.
They’re ‘nine-times cheaper’ – until we add in in the cost of renewables back-up, grid connections and grid balancing, which they do not have to pay for.
I can’t believe that so few MPs can’t see this (well, I can, because so many are just either gullible or profit-takers – aka grifters).
I did see that the new Swedish government is proposing a strong nuclear policy coupled to an end to subsidy for offshore wind. Not sure if they have enough hydro to keep balancing with Norwegian capability being in demand elsewhere. Also they have said no new interconnector to Germany until the Germans can lower their power prices. Single market? EU solidarity? Low costs and prices in Sweden come first.
Meanwhile, the new 2023 BMW M2 is going to be built in Mexico…
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-2023-bmw-m2-arrives-454bhp-and-manual-option?utm_source=sfmc&utm_term=15.10+image+BMW+M2&utm_content=14514&utm_id=cf8a1a9c-669a-4153-860a-01e7f5480670&sfmc_id=36125056&sfmc_activityid=3add6b13-7a79-4351-a450-3ea1da8b884d&utm_medium=email
Paul,
I touched on this (and other issues) at Cliscep today:
Seems some people have overlooked that one of – in fact THE – the main reason for Britain moving from wood burning to coal burning, hence initiating the Industrial Revolution, was that we had chopped down most of the trees and burnt them.
Those who forget the lessons of history…
Please feel free to share your source for that “fact”
I think ships of The Royal Navy took a huge amount of wood to build, mainly mature oak. HMS Victory around 7,000. But charcoal usage led to the practice of coppicing in order to maintain wood stocks that had been depleted over the centuries
https://www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk/charcoal-and-its-uses/
The main reason was coals thermal density superiority over wood … The lesson of history is coal and peat had been burned for centuries before the Industrial Revolution
Once the America’s were discovered and colonized, the albeit decimated oak forests of Ireland and England were not in demand for shipbuilding anymore
“I think ships of The Royal Navy took a huge amount of wood to build, mainly mature oak.”
Correct, during the Napoleonic war it was illegal to use such new wood for any purpose other than naval shipbuilding, all such materials for other purposes had to be bought second hand from the naval scrap yards.
As it happens, I recently had to replace half my roof purlins which were such pieces of wood, the curvature of them clearly showed they had clearly been ship’s timbers.
Much of the structure was fastened together with hardwood pegs, but there were some zinc coated hand forged nails holding down the stone flags that were totally free of rust and as clean as the day they were made.
My roofer observed that the A-frame was probably recycled when the house was built- approx. 1650 – because it was constructed from cloven timber, dating it to before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, as the monks from Fountains Abbey banned the use of sawn timber in such a structural application, penalty being to force the miscreant to burn the aforesaid timber and be flogged.
See
Oops! The problem is the wankers who were voted in! I know we got bad info and there’s no MSM to catch the lies and exaggerations but man, now we are aware that we cannot trust the goobermint we need to doubly cognizant of who we vote in.
The trouble here is that those budding politicians who we would wish to vote in, wind up getting ‘a Platformed’, ‘Cancelled’, Harassed, etc. and whatever. Often enough for them to avoid a political career like the plague. Thus leaving the field open to the sort of lousy lot we are now encumbered with.
The new ones will now all have been brainwashed from the age of five and will not be able to see beyond their Woke attitudes and immediate careers.
I don’t think it matters who we vote in now. The EVIL powers at work get to them all and force their hands. I know someone who created Etherium. He made a billion dollars but had to get out for his own safety!
“BMW is moving manufacturing of the electric Mini from the UK to China where manufacturing is powered by cheap coal.”
That statement – of truth – should be a banner headline in all newspapers where truth still has a place.
I can just imagine the exploding heads should that statement be made public to the likes of Stop Oil.
There won’t be exploding heads among Stop Oil or “Ignorant Britain”. There could be imploding heads if the cranium collapses into the vacuum.
Doesn’t look like anyone will be in a position to buy anyway, given the extra expense of the forced transition to evs, credit will be more necessary than ever.
A bit surprising. BMW made a deal with the German unions that they would make electric cars in Germany, and send ICE off shore. I guess the Mini was a special case, manufacturing already committed to UK.
I read somewhere that EVs constituted 5.6% of global auto sales in 2021. That they will be 100% in countries like UK and California by 2035 is hilarious. Yet no one in the press responds with “Wut?”
2030in UK
2030? Oh my!
The interweb tells me 10.9% of new vehicle sales in UK are electric. So the market is supposed to go from 10.9% to 100% in 8 years. There really is only one way for that to happen – the collapse of new vehicle sales in UK. In 2030, you will have only about a quarter of your current sales. EV sales more than double, but ICE sales disappear.
Stock up on critical parts for your ICE chariots. You’ll be driving it for many years past the time the manufacturer goes out of business.
According to the IEA’s Global EV Outlook 2022 sales of EVs in 2021 worldwide reached a” record 6.6m” and “Most EVs will be in countries with less than 20% market share in 2030”
There are currently over 1.4 billion ICEVs worldwide. The idea that these will all be electric even by 2050 is a pipe dream.
There was an article on alternative powered tractors on Climate File, I think. We’ve seen the pathetic toy-like garden centre worthy battery versions before, but this was about a full size methane powered variant. The comments from the manufacturer and one of the farmers that did trials was that hydrogen didn’t really cut the mustard, but methane enabled them to do about a full day’s work on one fill. But the kicker, it was only really good for light duties, and the farmer would always need his diesel powered version for the hard work, ploughing etc.
As Christopher Booker said many years ago: “The Climate Change Act will go down as the most expensive economic suicide note ever written in history.”
As Christopher Booker said many years ago: “The Climate Change Act will go down as the most expensive economic suicide note ever written in history”.
Another reason for not buying BMW.
Well, you reap as you sew. Some years ago when applying for consent to erect several silos behind a manufacturing plant, my neighbour warned me that Oxford Council didn’t consider manufacturing to be an appropriate activity.
Nowadays Oxford is doing its best to cripple local business with its banning of cars. And now BMW won’t be making anything at Crowley in less than 7 years time. Strangely enough the council are yet to reconcile the consequence of their political decisions with the utter devastation to once thriving communities.
As for BMW? It beggars belief that the Germans allow themselves to become pawns in games which they should know they can not win.
I’m not convinced they are losing. BMW keeps growing their plant in Greer, South Carolina. I have read reports that they are shipping their German ICE production to Mexico. The German union accepted it, because they were promised they’d get the amazing, wonderful, going-to-replace-everything EV production. I’m cynical enough to think this is how they escape from the German work councils. I think it clever.
We don’t appreciate, or are distracted by our own problems, just how scared the Germans are. Der Spiegel remarked:
In the second quarter of 2022, the German economy grew by a paltry 0.1 percent. Economic researchers and policymakers alike are convinced that the next quarterly numbers will be negative. The question is whether politicians will manage to mitigate the consequences – or if there is a threat of an economic crisis that may last for several years with “losses of prosperity on a previously unimaginable scale,” as Peter Adrian, the president of the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) put it. In other words, a crisis that could eat away at the country’s substance, undermining social security funds and the state’s ability to act. It could also lead to the permanent disappearance of many companies. A crisis that would make Germans poorer.
Yep, that’ll teach them to scrap their nuclear kit and put all their eggs in the Green energy basket.
“Go Woke, Go Broke”.
So we are going to hand over our energy strategy (which will need a colossal amount of batteries) and transportation to China as they own all the battery resources.
Just like we handed over our energy dependency to Russia – look how well that ended.
This is nothing more than China, with their powerful friends at the UN/WEF, attempting to impose a totalitarian world government.
Basic economics, has always led me to the conclusion that net zero, will kill the European ICE car/truck industry, putting millions out of work, as the OEM’s fail, taking the tier 1 and 2 suppliers and the machine tool industries with them.
There is the crazy concept of UK being able to make BEV lithium batteries economically, when we do not have easy access to raw materials and all our existing cell batteries have been made in the far east for the last 20 years, so we have no automation experience left.
Britishvolt was a scam from day one, claiming to employ 3000 and 5000 in the support industries, do they not realise it has to be slave labour or a lights out fully automated plant employing a few hundred to be profitable.
Next the Chemical industry will fail, most of the processes need a lot of heat, now from natural gas, but it is too expensive.
We already destroyed Iron and Steel, Aluminium smelting and soon cement will be unviable.
My economics qualification is 23 one hour lectures as part of my MBA, hardly an expert, just what does the PPE degree that politicians have teach them about economics? SFA.
Geoff…please put that in a letter to whatever newspaper will publish it.
Well said!
In fact, BMW won’t be building many EVs in Europe, at all https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/bmw-starts-production-new-22-bln-china-plant-ramp-up-ev-output-2022-06-23/
It rather looks as if Europe’s electorally popular legislation to ban the production of petrol and diesel driven vehicles, is driving all vehicle maunfacture out of Europe altogether.
Tesla looks likely to pull out of the Brandenburg “giga-factory” in favour of its new, Texas-based factory.
And while Truss’s premiership is wobbling, and the Tories desperately search for a reliable replacement, please recall Boris’s outrageous promises about “net zero” and EVs made at COP26 in Glasgow last November
According to Automotive news they are making massive investments to produce EVs in Europe:
“FRANKFURT — BMW said it will retool its German factories to build electric cars and components and shift manufacturing of combustion engines to plants in England and Austria as part of a broader shift toward low-emissions cars.
“By the end of 2022 all our German factories will make at least one fully electric car,” Milan Nedeljkovic, BMW’s board member responsible for production, said in a statement on Wednesday.
BMW’s plant in Munich, Germany, which currently builds 4-, 6-, 8- and 12-cylinder combustion engines, will be retooled to make next-generation electric vehicles with a 400 million euro investment until 2026.
BMW said production of 8- and 12-cylinder engines will move from Munich to Hams Hall in England, and other engines will be made in Steyr, Austria.
Plants in Munich, Dingolfing and Regensburg in the German state of Bavaria, where BMW is based, will receive most of the investments.
The BMW i4 full-electric car will be built in Munich; a full-electric version of the 5-series and 7-series cars will be made in Dingolfing, Germany; and an electric X1 will be produced in Regensburg.
BMW said the number of staff at its Dingolfing factory making electric car powertrains, will double to 2,000 workers.
BMW’s plant in Leipzig, Germany, will start manufacturing the Mini Countryman in combustion engine and electric versions, and the Regensburg and Leipzig plants are being prepared to make battery modules.”
The lack of any EV investment in the UK, moving the e-Mini to China and the transfer of engine manufacture to the UK indicates that their plants here will produce ICE only, until they are shutdown.
So the ridiculous net zero pr0gramme passed in law is now driving our industry to China for simple economic reasons. This tragedy is sure to see many companies in this country following suit. Mrs May and her government have an awful lot to answer for in hastily passing the net zero laws before she was hastily kicked out of office.