The foremost Chinese telecommunications and smartphone giant Huawei is doubling down on selling its tech in the competitive electric car (EV) market.

The company has in recent times faced hard times doing business internationally.

The company has emphasized it doesn’t manufacture cars. Instead, it sells tech components such as its Harmony OS operating system and driver-assist product, or works with automakers to create new EV brands.

It has confirmed it is working with at least four traditional automakers in China on new car brands, after news over the weekend of a joint venture with Changan Automobile for car technology.

Changan and Huawei are already partners for the Avatr electric car brand, created in 2018 with electric car battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology.

The Avatr’s SUV and sedan sell for slightly more than the equivalent of $42,000.

Huawei is also working with Chery on the Luxeed electric car brand, which revealed details for its S7 sedan this week.

EV aficionados will tell you that electric cars are cheaper to fuel and maintain, so that means they must be cheaper to own and operate. EV skeptics will counter with the premium pricing of many EVs, something that’s quantifiable when a brand sells both a gas-powered and full EV versions of the same vehicle. So are EVs really less expensive over the long haul of ownership? Sort of. Sometimes. As they say, it’s complicated.

To investigate whether electric cars truly is cheaper than its gas counterpart to own and use as daily transportation we chose two models in the US market that are available with both powertrains: The Hyundai Kona and Kona Electric, and the Mini Cooper Hardtop two-door and Mini Electric. We compared as much about their running costs as we could dig out from credible sources. And we ignored insurance costs, which can vary widely by state, the coverage you choose, and the owner’s driving record.

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https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a32494027/ev-vs-gas-cheaper-to-own/

Nigeria’s indigenous automobile manufacturing company, Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing (IVM), has said it is preparing to set up an electric vehicle manufacturing arm in Nigeria.

Cornel Osigwe, Head of Corporate Communications at Innoson Vehicles, made this known while speaking to the Global Business Report on Arise Television about the need to boost the production of locally-made vehicles.

According to him, every major component of producing the electric car is available in Nigeria.

He said about last week or two major marketers purchased numbers of CNG enable buses that were produced and donated to the presidency. The presidency will soon commission it. So, in a nutshell, he made it clear that the company has started producing CNG vehicles.

Talking about electric vehicles, he said his team has a strategic approach. The chairman has concluded plans to set up an EV manufacturing plant in Nigeria because every major component of producing the electric car is in Nigeria.

“All the raw materials are in Nigeria. It doesn’t make sense importing battery and major components of electric car battery which is the most expensive products of EV,” he said.

“So, the Chairman has thought it wise to set up an EV manufacturing company in Nigeria so that we can be able to start producing the EV,” the statement concluded.

Surprisingly, at earnings this week, several auto execs pulled back on EV targets. Dealers have been warning of slowing EV demand for months.

Auto industry executives admitted lately that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term, there are signs of growing inventory and slowing sales these days.

It is now common to hear auto experts voice fresh unease about the electric car market’s growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.

GM announced with its quarterly results that it’s abandoning its targets to build 100,000 EVs in the second half of this year and another 400,000 by the first six months of next year.

For GM, maybe it will never hit those targets.

The Detroit car company is not alone in this new view of the EV future. Tesla’s Elon Musk warned on a recent earnings call that economic concerns would lead to waning vehicle demand, even for the long-time EV market leader.

On the other side, Mercedes-Benz — which is having to discount its EVs by several thousand dollars just to get them in customers’ hands — is also voicing some complaints.

CFO Harald Wilhelm said on an analyst call: “I can hardly imagine the current status quo is fully sustainable for everybody.”

These electric cars are taking dealers longer to sell compared with their gas counterparts as the next wave of buyers focus on cost, infrastructure challenges, and other things.

Just a few months after dealers have started coming forward to warn of slowing EV demand, manufacturers appear to be catching up to that reality. Ford was the first to fold, after dealers started turning away Mach-E allocations. In July, the company extended its self-imposed deadline to hit annual electric vehicle production of 600,000 by a year, and abandoned a 2026 target to build 2 million EVs.

In scrapping plans with GM to co-develop sub-$30,000 EVs, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe made the following statement:

“After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment we are ending development of an affordable EV.”

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