NEWYORK – BMW car CEO Oliver Zipse said companies must be careful not to become too dependent on a select few countries by focusing only on tramadded that there is still a market for cars with internal combustion engines.
“When you look at the technology that’s coming out, the push for EVs, we have to be careful because at the same time, you increase your dependence on very few countries,” Zipse said at a roundtable in New York. , emphasizing that the supply of raw materials for the battery mostly controlled by China.
Zipse said: “If someone couldn’t buy an EV for some reason and needed a car, would you suggest he keep driving his old car forever? If there’s more internal combustion, there’s someone else.”
He has long advocated against bans on the sale of combustion engine cars in the face of growing pressure from regulators on the auto industry to limit its carbon footprint. emissions and environmental impact.
Delivering more fuel-efficient internal combustion engine vehicles is key both from a profit and environmental perspective, Zipse argues, pointing to gaps in charging infrastructure and pricing. high electric car.
Companies also need to plan to keep energy and raw material prices high by making production more efficient and ramping up recycling efforts to reduce costs, he said.
“We have a peak right now, they may not stay at the top, but they won’t go back to where they were,” he said. “How much energy you need and use, and cyclicality, is important – for environmental reasons but more so for economic reasons.”
(Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo; Writing by Victoria Waldersee; Editing by Christoph Steitz and Mike Harrison)
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