CGTN Eurupe spoke to Prof. David Bailey, Professor of Business Economics at Birmingham Business School.
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00:00Let's bring all this together now and talk to Professor David Bailey from Birmingham Business School.
00:04David, welcome back, good to see you.
00:06Let's drill down on Tesla first of all, distributing fewer vehicles than anticipated in the fourth quarter of last year,
00:13consistently missing the mark on delivery targets throughout the year.
00:17What's going on?
00:19I think there's a couple of things going on there.
00:21One is that their model lineup is becoming pretty dated.
00:25The Model 3 was refreshed, that helped sales to some degree.
00:29The best-selling electric car, the Model Y, now actually is getting pretty old.
00:34They're awaiting an update on that.
00:36They've also said that they're not bringing to market a much cheaper model, costing around $25,000.
00:43I think that leaves the market way open, really, to the likes of BYD.
00:47And so the other thing that's happening is, as we heard just then in that brilliant piece,
00:51the Chinese players have been remarkably successful, BYD in particular bringing cars to market which consumers like.
00:57And they are starting to, I think, out-compete Tesla.
01:00OK, let's talk about BYD then, posting these record sales in 2024.
01:05What does it mean for China's EV brands and its global competition?
01:13I think what this signifies is China's brands like BYD really emerging onto the world market for the first time.
01:22So the Chinese market, auto market, has been the biggest market in the world for a long time now.
01:26Chinese firms have been making cars largely for China, but they're now really becoming global brands for the first time.
01:34We often see their brands on UK roads.
01:37What's also really important, I think, is that next year, for the very first time,
01:41electric vehicle sales in China will overtake the internal combustion engine.
01:47So China is just way ahead of anybody else in the world.
01:50They can make electric vehicles at something like 35 to 40 percent lower cost than in the West.
01:57The West has really got to catch up and quickly.
02:01Elon Musk seems to be very busy this week slagging off the UK government.
02:06What does his increasing political presence mean in the United States and in Europe for Tesla's brand and Tesla's reputation,
02:15as well as investors' sentiments?
02:19I don't think it helps Tesla at all.
02:22Yeah, I think his political views are incredibly polarizing.
02:27I saw a sticker on a Tesla only yesterday.
02:30Somebody said, I bought this car before Elon Musk went crazy.
02:35So clearly, from a marketing point of view, his increasingly extreme political views, I don't think he's going to help them at all.
02:43Used to be that Tesla was very much the darling of the liberal side of things in the US.
02:48That is no longer the case.
02:50And I think there's also going to be an issue for investors about whether they want to be associated with someone with such extreme views.
02:58Of course, the flip side to that is he's very close to Trump.
03:01He may well try and influence Trump in a way that supports Tesla. Investors in Tesla may actually like that.