These are our topics of the week:
How Wang Chuanfu wants to make BYD the largest car manufacturer in the world
Why the future IG Metall boss Christiane Benner also sees herself as a co-head of industrial companies
Why ATU is secretly stopping servicing bicycles
I hope you enjoy the new edition of our weekly mobility newsletter.
At the IAA in September, corporate bosses and politicians made a pilgrimage to BYD, the absolute number 1 in China, now the world’s largest electric car manufacturer ahead of Tesla, and in the future perhaps the largest car company in the world. My colleague Margret Hucko went to China and describes how Empire works
, whose founder Wang Chuanfu (57) sometimes scratches a Mercedes S-Class in passing.
Maybe you suspected that there is still good money being made in the mobility sector. Now you know how much: the average employee of the shipping company Hapag-Lloyd earned 1.2 million euros in profit in 2022; First place in the profitability ranking of the 100 most valuable European companies. The car manufacturer with the highest profits per capita is Ferrari in seventh place with 270,000 euros, followed by Porsche and BMW with almost 180,000 euros each. Journo Research and the fintech company Plus500 did the calculations.
In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt invited striking coal miners to the White House, a unique breach of taboo in American history. US unions had to wait until 2023 until a president took their side again in a collective bargaining dispute: Joe Biden (80) demonstratively joined strikers from the “United Automobile Workers” and reiterated their demand for a 36 percent increase in wages.
Anyone else like e-scooter rental companies? It doesn’t seem like it. As soon as Bird took over the weak US business from its Berlin competitor Tier, the US company became a stock market zombie: As of this week, the shares have been banned from the New York Stock Exchange. In free trading, the company suddenly lost 30 percent of its value and only made up a little of it. A year ago the share was worth ten times as much as it is today.
I wish you an eventful week!
Kind regards, Henning Hinze