AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)10/08 Report--

On October 4, the European Commission officially announced its decision to launch a countervailing investigation into pure electric vehicles imported from China. On the same day, the Ministry of Commerce said that the countervailing investigation launched by the European side was only based on subjective assumptions about the so-called subsidy programs and threats of damage, lacked sufficient evidence to support it, and did not comply with the relevant WTO rules. China expressed strong dissatisfaction with this. The European side asked China to conduct consultations within a very short period of time and failed to provide effective consultation materials, which seriously damaged the rights of the Chinese side.

On October 7th BYD, a carmaker, responded.

According to media reports, Li Ke, executive vice president of BYD and president of BYD for the Americas, said in an interview that although the European Union has launched a countervailing investigation into Chinese electric vehicles, BYD will continue to promote strong growth in Europe. It further explained: "We are a listed company and need to be managed in a transparent and open way of sharing information." Therefore, we are not worried about any ongoing investigation in Europe. " At the same time, BYD will share all the information it has requested with the EU to remove any confusion about its car production, and BYD will continue to drive strong growth in Europe. "the growth of electric vehicles is a revolution. Many people don't understand, so they are worried, "Li Ke said." but once you share the data and let them know the actual situation, I think they will find that there is nothing to question. "

In addition, the countervailing investigation launched by the EU affects not only Chinese electric car companies, but also multinational carmakers that make electric cars in China and export them to the European Union, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and Tesla.

According to foreign media reports, BMW, which is also the subject of the EU countervailing investigation, is currently filling out the EU questionnaire and is asked to provide information about BMW iX3 models produced in Chinese factories and exported to foreign countries. This is part of a countervailing investigation launched by the European Union on electric cars imported from China, the report said.

Walter Mertl, chief financial officer of BMW Group, said that not only BMW faces losses, but all international carmakers operating in China will be affected, and the EU investigation will do more harm than good. And warned that China could take retaliatory measures against European carmakers. "this counterattack is like a boomerang, which may be bigger than people think."

In addition, Oliver Blume, chief executive of Germany's Volkswagen Group, also said: "We advocate fair competition, but it should not lead to protectionism." Obermu believes that instead of launching countervailing investigations against China, it is better to enhance their competitiveness to deal with external competition.

Earlier, Kang Songlin, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group, said in a television interview that open markets are the driver of growth and wealth creation. "Let's keep the market open and let market participants fight for it. We learned from the epidemic that the supply chain can be fragile. It is a complete illusion to think that we can divide the car world into individual regions that are independent of each other. "

The industry believes that the launch of the EU countervailing investigation is related to the rapid increase in the number of Chinese car exports. China has now become the world's largest electric vehicle market. According to the China Automobile Association, domestic car exports in the first eight months of this year were 2.941 million, an increase of 61.9 percent over the same period last year. Among them, new energy vehicles played a huge incremental role in automobile exports. The export volume of new energy vehicles in the first eight months was 727000, an increase of 1.1% over the same period last year.

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