As electric-vehicle adoption rates steadily rise around the world, a growing chorus of car executives are criticizing governments on the grounds that they’ve picked the winning horse…The logic here is tempting. Governments have indeed rolled out strong support for battery EVs in the form of purchase subsidies, funding for charging infrastructure and other measures. In most cases, though, governments have actually bent over backwards to make their support as technology-neutral as possible…Fuel cell vehicles, for example, are fully eligible for US federal tax credits, state subsidies and any other support that apply to battery EVs. Incentives in some other markets are now significantly more generous than those provided to battery-electric cars…A dearth of government support isn’t the issue for alternatives to battery EVs — the problem is the product. Fuel cell vehicles are failing because they’re not proving compelling enough…Consider how Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai sedan is performing in California, a state that’s offered up to $7,500 rebates toward fuel cell vehicles, on top of federal tax credits. Toyota recently offered as much as a $30,000 discount on the Mirai, plus 0% financing for up to 72 months and a $15,000 fuel card…Even with that generous incentive stack, consumers haven’t been keen on the car. Toyota sold just 1,722 Mirai sedans in the US during the first half of the year. Owner message boards are full of complaints about resale values and the cost and availability of fuel…The global picture isn’t much different. Despite largely technology-neutral support, automakers sold 15,400 fuel cell passenger vehicles in 2022, down slightly from the year before. That’s a rounding error relative to the 7.5 million battery EVs and 2.9 million plug-in hybrids sold…Policymakers are indeed pushing automakers to reduce emissions, and battery EV are on the ascendancy. But it wasn’t bureaucrats in Brussels, Washington or Sacramento that crowned them as winners. It was consumers.

Western automakers are set to lose a fifth of their global market share due to the unstoppable rise of more-affordable, cheaper-to-produce Chinese electric vehicles, according to UBS Group AG analysts. Led by BYD Co., Chinese carmakers will almost double their share of the auto market to 33% by the end of the decade, UBS analysts including Patrick Hummel and Paul Gong wrote in an Aug. 31 report. …“The global auto industry is going to undergo seismic changes over the next 10 years or so,” Gong, UBS’s head of China autos research, said in an interview…The report predicted Western automakers’ global market share will slump to 58% from 81% by 2030…Tesla Inc.’s share is likely to rise to 8% from 2%. BYD, China’s biggest-selling auto brand, has a 25% cost advantage over North American and European brands, giving the Shenzhen-based company ample firepower to undercut rivals on their home turf as it expands globally…A UBS teardown of a 2022 BYD Seal sedan found 75% of the components were manufactured in-house. The figure — double the global average — is the secret to BYD’s cost-advantage in its quest to control its own fully integrated supply chain…BYD, which also makes its own batteries and semiconductors, has a 15% cost advantage over Tesla’s Chinese-made base Model 3 sedan, and a more than 30% advantage over Volkswagen AG’s ID.3, according to the UBS report…BMW unveiled a prototype of its Neue Klasse electric car at the IAA on Saturday. The two-door coupe has a digital display projected onto the width of the windscreen, as well as software that can process voice commands and hand gestures — functions that Chinese consumers have come to expect in EVs…The shift away from a decades-old tradition of mainly advertising driving performance shows BMW’s determination to catch Chinese EV makers, said Yale Zhang, managing director of Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight.

German automakers under heavy pressure from Chinese competition are speeding up their transition to electric vehicles, enabling partnerships with the likes of EV startup Xpeng, its CEO Brian Gu said in an interview on Wednesday…Of new EVs sold in Europe in 2023, 8% were made by Chinese brands, up from 6% last year and 4% in 2021, according to autos consultancy Inovev…“It is perhaps the darkest moment for German automakers but I also feel their strongest determination ever to change at the IAA,” Gu said on the sidelines of Munich’s IAA car show…Xpeng recently struck a deal with Volkswagen to jointly build two new models in China. Others, like LeapMotor are also seeking partnerships to boost sales globally and help them survive China’s highly competitive and consolidating domestic market…The number of Chinese companies at Germany’s IAA car show has doubled and China’s largest EV conference, the World New Energy Vehicle Congress, is taking place within the IAA on Wednesday and Thursday…

A unit of South Korea's Solus Advanced Materials will build a copper foil facility in the Canadian province of Quebec, producing technology for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, Ottawa said on Tuesday…The Volta Energy Solutions project in the town of Granby is valued at C$700 million ($514.37 million) and should be at full production capacity in 2026, a spokesperson for federal Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said by email…Copper foil, needed to manufacture lithium-ion batteries for EVs, is used as an anode collector…Canada, home to a large mining sector for minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, wants to woo firms involved in all levels of the EV supply chain via a multibillion-dollar green technology fund as the world seeks to cut carbon emissions…"More projects of this sort are also coming up, solidifying our position as a green economy leader in North America," Quebec premier Francois Legault said in a statement.

Tesla's Shanghai factory achieved on Wednesday the milestone of 2 million cars produced, according to the company's WeChat account.

A global shortage of technicians and independent repair shops qualified to fix electric vehicles (EV) threatens to increase repair and warranty costs for drivers, potentially undermining upcoming deadlines to cut vehicle carbon emissions…From Milan to Melbourne to Malibu, technician training organizations, warranty providers and repairers say that independent repair shops will be vital for making EVs affordable because they are far cheaper than franchise dealers…Many garage owners balk at training and equipment costs for fixing high-voltage EVs - with 400- and 800-volt systems that could electrocute and kill unwary or untrained technicians in seconds - especially with relatively few EVs on the road…Along with electrocution risks, the risk of EV fires - which are notoriously hard to put out - also has to be taken seriously…Carmakers are scrambling to train technicians. Market leader Tesla has launched courses at U.S. community colleges to train prospective technicians. Tesla also provides EV training for independent U.S. repair shops…Daniel Brown, head of automotive product development at Germany's Lucas-Nuelle, which produces EV training course equipment, worries unqualified technicians could be pressured to fix high-voltage EVs, adding "it's just a matter of time until someone gets hurt."

The humanitarian situation in conflict-wracked eastern Congo has deteriorated alarmingly in the past 18 months with 8 million people in urgent need of assistance and women and girls subjected to sexual violence on a massive scale -- just in three provinces, a senior U.N. official said Tuesday…Edem Wosornu, the U.N. humanitarian office’s operations director who just returned from a trip to Congo with emergency directors from U.N. agencies and humanitarian organizations, said that what they saw and heard “was shocking, heartbreaking and sobering.”…She said the situation in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri provinces “is frankly the worst situation we have ever seen,” and that’s in a country where more than 26 million people are hungry and need food…Conflict has been simmering for decades in mineral-rich eastern Congo, where Wosornu said more than 130 armed groups are fighting mainly for control of land and mines though some groups are trying to protect their communities…Fighting spiked in late 2021 when M23, a rebel group linked to neighboring Rwanda which was largely dormant for nearly a decade, resurfaced and started capturing territory. M23 rose to prominence in 2012 when its fighters seized Goma, eastern Congo’s largest city on the border with Rwanda…Recently, attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces, which is believed to have ties to the Islamic State extremist group, have also spiked along with intercommunal violence…The U.N. appealed for $2.3 billion for humanitarian assistance for Congo this year but has received just one-third, $764 million, Wosornu said, and it has been able to help just 1.4 million people, “a fraction of the number of people in need.”