廢棄工廠顯示中國電動汽車熱潮如何超出合理的限度 (1 of 2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

Deserted Factories Show How China Electric Car Boom Went Too Far (1 of 2)

Bloomberg News

Mon., September 20, 2021, 2:00 p.m.

(Bloomberg) -- Visitors to Byton Ltd.’s website are greeted with color-saturated images of shiny electric cars gliding along manicured streets. Those paying a visit to the automaker’s factory in Nanjing, eastern China may be less impressed. The plant is modern and huge, gleaming under the hot summer sun. But there’s total silence. Production has been suspended since the pandemic began and there’s no one around except for a lone security guard.

It’s a similar situation across town at Bordrin Motors. Weeds dot the factory’s perimeter and there’s a court notice pasted to the main gate announcing the electric carmaker’s bankruptcy.

Bordrin and Byton represent the flip side of China’s EV success. While home-grown stars like Nio Inc. and Xpeng Inc. have gone on to raise billions of dollars and are now selling cars in numbers that rival Tesla Inc., scores more have fallen by the wayside, unable to raise the crazy amounts of capital needed to make automobiles at scale.

In many cases, they were lured into existence by provincial governments dangling cash and other incentives to make Beijing’s dream of turning China into an EV powerhouse a reality. Local authorities helped manufacturers set up factories that promised jobs and development -- if they succeeded. But the tide began to turn in November, when regulators asked regional governments to review and report back on the scale of their support for the auto industry.

Alarmed by unbridled investment in the sector -- and the bankruptcies and zombified factories that came with it -- Beijing is applying the brakes.

“We have too many EV firms,” Xiao Yaqing, China’s minister for industry and information technology, told reporters Sept. 13. Mergers and acquisitions will be encouraged as the market needs to be further concentrated, he said. The government is also looking at setting production limits for the EV sector, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News this month, with provinces unable to green-light new projects until surplus capacity comes online. Resources will also be channeled into a few select EV hubs.

The moves are a potential warning sign for investors who have poured money into electric carmakers and the technologies that support them over the past year.

Chinese EV Maker Once Worth More Than Ford Wipes Out $80 Billion

There are some 846 registered automobile manufacturers in China, and more than 300 of them churn out new-energy cars, loosely defined as electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. The vast majority are names unrecognizable elsewhere. In 2020 alone, the country added new production capacity of around 5 million units, about four times the actual number of EVs sold in China that year. According to regulators, almost half that capacity wasn’t in use.

Bordrin, founded by former Ford executive Huang Ximing in 2016, was targeting annual output of 700,000 cars across three factories. But it ran out of money and folded before making even one. Huang didn’t reply to messages seeking comment sent via WeChat.

China doesn’t have a public dossier of bankruptcies, but since last year, at least a dozen EV makers are known to have gone under or have had to be restructured to avoid insolvency.

“This is kind of the classic capitalist competitive shakeout,” said Gary Dvorchak, a Beijing-based managing director at investment advisory Blueshirt Group LLC. “You get a zillion companies and then you have an oversupply situation. The process of failing is typically a lot slower in China because companies get government support. But eventually, some have to die and the pain inflicted to get those deaths to happen can be high.”

Byton at least still exists. The carmaker, co-founded by former BMW AG and Nissan Motor Co. executives, suspended all domestic operations and furloughed staff in July last year as the pandemic made it tougher to get its business off the ground. Even before Covid, the company had encountered difficulties meeting announced deadlines on producing and delivering its first model, although its website still accepts reservations for cars.

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Translation

（彭博社）— 登入拜騰有限公司(Byton Ltd.) 網站的訪問者會看到豐富色彩的圖像，閃亮的電動汽車沿著修剪整齊的街道滑動。那些參觀過這家汽車製造商在中國東部南京工廠的人可能沒有那麼好的印象。該廠房現代而巨大，在炎熱的夏日陽光下閃閃發光。但全場一片寂靜。自病毒大流行開始以來，生產一直暫停，除了一名孤獨的保安外，沒有人在場。

鎮上在另一邊的博骏公司(Bordrin Motors)情況也類似。工廠周圍雜草叢生，大門上貼著一張法庭通知，宣布這家電動汽車製造商破產。

Bordrin 和 Byton 代表了中國電動汽車成功的反面。雖然 Nio Inc. 和 Xpeng Inc. 等本土成功的公司已經籌集了數十億美元，並且現在銷售的汽車數量可與特斯拉公司相媲美，但幾十個有公司卻半途而廢，無法籌集到需要大規模製造汽車的荒謬及不太可能的資金額。

在許多情況下，它們是被省級政府吊著現金和其他激勵措施引誘而成立的，目的是讓北京將中國變成電動汽車強國的夢想成為現實。地方當局幫助製造商建立會帶來就業和發展的工廠- 如果他們成功的話。但這一趨勢在 11 月開始轉變，當時監管機構要求地方政府審查並報告他們對汽車行業的支持規模。

北京對該行業肆無忌憚的投資 - 以及隨之而來的破產和殭屍化工廠感到震驚 -正在剎車。

中國工業和信息化部部長肖亞慶 (Xiao Yaqing ) 9 月 13 日告訴記者說,“我們有太多的電動汽車公司”。又說由於市場需要進一步集中，將鼓勵併購。知情人士本月告訴彭博新聞社，政府也在考慮為電動汽車行業設定生產限制，在過剩產能上線之前，各省無法批准新項目。資源也將被引導到幾個選定的電動汽車中心。

對於過去一年向電動汽車製造商及其支持技術投入大量資金的投資者而言，這些舉措是一個潛在的警告信號。

價值曾經超過福特的中國電動汽車製造商蒸發了 800 億美元

中國約有 846 家註冊汽車製造商，其中有 300 多家生產新能源汽車，大致定義為電動汽車或插電式混合動力汽車。絕大多數的名字是其他地方無法辨認出。僅2020年，中國新增產能約500萬輛，約為當年中國電動汽車實際銷量的四倍。據監管機構稱，幾乎有一半的產能沒有被使用。

 博骏公司由前福特高管黃錫明 (Huang Ximing) 於 2016 年創立，目標是在三間工廠年產 70 萬輛汽車。但它用完了錢，甚至在賺到錢之前就倒閉了。黃沒有回覆通過微信發送的尋求評論的訊息。

中國沒有公開的破產檔案，但自去年以來，已知至少有十幾家電動汽車製造商破產或不得不進行重組以避免破產。

投資諮詢公司 Blueshirt Group LLC 駐北京的董事總經理Gary Dvorchak表示, “這是一種典型的資本主義競爭性洗牌”。 “你擁有數以萬計的公司，然後就會出現供過於求的情況。在中國，失敗的過程通常要慢得多，因為公司得到了政府的支持。但最終，有些公司不得不倒閉，而讓這些倒閉發生所造成的痛苦可能會很大。”

至少拜騰還存在。這家由前寶馬公司和日產汽車公司高管共同創立的汽車製造商於去年 7 月暫停了所有國內業務，並讓員工休假，因為病毒大流行使其業務更加難以開展。甚至在 Covid 之前，該公司就其宣布死線日期前, 會生產和交付它的第一款車已經遇到了困難，儘管其網站仍接受汽車預訂。

(未完待續)