One of the most spectacular electric car projects in Europe is hidden behind the name Piëch Automotive. Anton Piëch (43), son of the car patriarch Ferdinand Piëch, wants to launch a puristic high-end electric sports car with a “miracle battery” on the market in 2024. He had gathered an all-star team around him: Former Volkswagen boss Matthias Müller was there, Tesla’s former European boss Jochen Rudat, long-time Porsche manager Andreas Henke and even Silicon Valley legend Peter Thiel as an investor. Hardly anyone is left of the group now. Müller left last autumn, and according to our research, Rudat and Henke are now completely out. The star managers run away from Toni Piëch. Isn’t it going to be that spectacular?
For VW it was the most important model launch of the year. On Wednesday evening, the group presented the electric Bulli ID.Buzz – and was not stingy with big words: People raved about a “new icon”, about the car “that VW is bringing into the future” and of course about “love and happiness”. Sales begin in the fall. An “important pillar in the electric offensive” is the E-Bulli, said CEO Herbert Diess (63). He didn’t reveal how important it was. Insiders tell us that 130,000 ID.Buzz should be sold in the first full year of production in 2023; the orders almost gave reason to expect even more. VW’s electric bestseller in 2021 was the ID.4 – with almost 120,000 cars sold.
The Chinese-American start-up Pony.ai, which wants to build up an autonomous car fleet with the support of Toyota, will, after another round of financing now valued at $8.5 billion. Especially in the USA not everything went smoothly in recent tests. But that doesn’t seem to be holding investors back.
The bus and train company Flixmobility is just starting the next phase. Conversion to an SE, new management structures, offensive in the USA. In the podcast, founder and CEO André Schwämmlein tells my colleague Christian Kyriasoglou what he is up to. Listen in.
Gogoro, a multi-billion dollar micro-mobility company from Taiwan, is famous for its removable batteries for scooters or e-bikes. Now CEO Horace Luke (51) has had the first prototype for a solid-state battery produced – with allegedly 40 percent more power and range.
Deep Drive: A researcher and his theses
The physicist Patrick Plötz heads the Energy Management business area at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI. He is considered one of the leading experts in the field of electromobility. He recently caused a sensation around the world with his theses. We spoke with him: He expects a dip in the growth of electric cars, essentially considers the fuel cell to be a historical relic and he definitely doesn’t believe in a miracle battery. But to “Freedom Cars” in times of war.
Number of the week: 3966
That’s how many patents the world’s largest automotive supplier Bosch registered in 2021 – more than any other company in Germany. They are followed by: BMW (1860), Schaeffler (1806), Daimler and ZF (1315 each) and Volkswagen (1243), with the group subsidiaries Audi (747) and Porsche (651) being managed individually. The top ten are all car manufacturers and suppliers, which shows the inventive power of the industry. The traces of the transformation are clear: the number of patents relating to the combustion engine fell by a good 15 percent in 2021 – while they rose by a good 20 percent for batteries and fuel cells.
Tesla boss Elon Musk (50) has been dealing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for years. The supervisors suspect that the Dogecoin-to-the-moon influencer, which currently has 77.1 million Twitter followers, is making misleading statements. In 2018, they ordered Musk to have his tweets checked in advance. He feels increasingly harassed and now wants to have the rule overturned in court: The whole thing is not feasible in reality. He might even be right there, because how he wrote himself on Twitter in November: “At least 50 percent of my tweets are created on a porcelain throne.”
I wish you an eventful week!
Sincerely yours, Lukas Heiny