Chris Welch

European carmakers will lose market share of battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales in Europe to Chinese-owned competitors unless the EU imposes planned CO2 targets alongside tariffs, according to lobby group Transport & Environment (T&E).The European Commission announced today that it will go ahead with provisional tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.T&E forecasts that imports of Chinese-owned brands will account for over 12pc of the EU BEV market this year, up from 8pc last year, while imports of non-Ch...

US carmaker Tesla remained the largest maker of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the most recent quarter, ahead of Chinese EV maker BYD, while General Motors (GM) replaced Ford as the second-largest BEV brand in the US.Tesla reported 462,890 global sales in the third quarter, up to about 1.29mn BEVs so far this year, slightly down on sales of 1.32mn a year earlier, after sluggish sales in the first half of this year.BYD has recorded year-to-date sales of about 1.17mn units of BEVs. The compan...

Chinese firms have started building three major roads in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) following an agreement to raise investment to $7bn, from $3bn, under a new contract with state-owned mining firm Gecamines.Under a joint venture (JV), two Chinese firms — Sinohydro and China Railway Group — will invest a further $3bn in developing a copper and cobalt mine in exchange for a 68pc stake in a JV with Gecamines, called Sicomines, as per the original agreement.The firms have started on...

US carmaker Ford has decided to hold back the release of new battery electric vehicle (BEV) models after heavy costs for its existing BEV models forced it to restructure its sales programme.Ford will open up its range of BEVs to all dealerships in the US on 1 July, ending a programme it started in 2022 under which only "certified" dealerships could exclusively sell its EVs.Under programme, which included vehicles such as the Mustang Mach-E sport utility vehicle (SUV), the F-150 Lightning pick-up...

Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) will continue to grow in most major markets this year, but at a slower rate, according to the latest Global EV Outlook report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).Global EV sales this year are set to top 17mn, more than a fifth of total global vehicle sales, but growth is expected to slow in major markets compared with 2023.Almost 14mn new EVs were registered last year, up by 35pc compared with 2022, with almost 95pc of EV sales coming from China, Europe an...

UK electric vehicle (EV) sales rose in March on firms' resurging demand for fleet cars, despite a drop in private car sales on the year earlier, data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show.Sales of hybrid EVs (HEVs), plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs) and battery EVs (BEVs) all rose last month (see table), although demand for cars across the board continues to be driven by firms' fleet sales — up by 29.6pc on the year — while consumer sales fell by 7.7pc.But several market parti...

German gas consumption slipped year on year in February for the third year in a row, driven by mild, windy weather.

German consumption was 2.96 TWh/d in February, down from the three-year average of 3.82 TWh/d.

The average German temperature was at an all-time February high of 6.6°C, far above the 1990-2020 average of 1.5°C, according to German meteorological agency DWD. This weighed particularly on demand from households and small businesses, which fell to 1.38 TWh/d in February from 1.77 TWh/d a year earlier (see graph).

And gas demand from industry fell to 1.16 TWh/d in February from 1.28 TWh/d a year earlier, according to Argus estimates. Mild weather curbed demand from industrial users too, while manufacturing output has maintained a downward trend. It is unclear to what extent industrial activity will recover in the coming months on the back of lower gas and power prices.

Gas demand for power generation also fell, to just over 420 GWh/d in February from just under 470 GWh/d a year earlier, according to Argus estimates. But this was higher than 330 GWh/d over the month in 2022. Wind power generation was 24GW in February, up from 18GW a year earlier but down from a particularly strong 31GW over the month in 2022.

Argus estimates German power sector gas burn using electricity generation data published by Entso-E and an estimated efficiency rate based on monthly fuel use data published by Destatis. Market area manager THE only publishes combined demand from the power and industrial sector.

Power sector gas use may rise in future
The phase-out of coal-fired power plants by 2030 coupled with a slowdown in renewables additions could support Germany's power sector gas demand later in the decade.

BMWK said last month that it would "shortly" tender for a combined 10GW of hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants, although this was down from plans to tender 23.8GW in August last year.

While the coal phase-out may lift the call on gas-fired plants, renewables raising their share in the power mix will cut into overall thermal generation. German wind generation was 24GW in November 2023-February 2024, up from 16GW over November 2020-February 2021.

But German net onshore wind additions were muted at 2.9GW in 2023, bringing onshore capacity to 60.9GW. Despite an 80pc increase in permits issued in 2023, 8GW of capacity is approved and waiting to be implemented.

German power demand remained level on the year at 56.7GW in February, but was far below 63GW in February 2021. The installation of heat pumps and electric vehicles should boost power demand in the coming years, according to German regulator Bnetza.

By Chris Welch

In August 1991, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland, set up a server for networked computers to share information on. A network with no central hub, it was designed so information could pass from any point in the network to another through a number of ‘switching stations’, or routers. But what began as a tool for academics was rapidly adopted by businesses and ordinary people wanting to communicate. Just two decades later, the world wide web n

Since 1942, when Spanish dictator General Franco moved all Spanish clocks one hour forward onto Central European Time (CET), Spain has been living in the wrong time zone. The change was made in a gesture of solidarity to Spain’s ally, Nazi Germany, as well as helping to ease communication difficulties between the two. 71 years on though, the call to roll back the clocks is gaining momentum.

First geographically, Spain lies further west than London and yet runs on the same time zone as the Serbi

In its great economic miracle between 1960 and 1990, Japan clocked an average GDP growth at over 6% as the rest of the OECD nations mustered an average of just 3.86%. But the numbers didn’t come cheap. Average annual working hours exceeded 2,000, far above 1,828 hours in the US and 1,702 in France.

In 1988, at the height of its ‘bubble years’, a group of doctors and lawyers decided to start telephone hotlines, dedicated to curbing the phenomenon known as ‘karōshi’ – death from overwork. It aime

That investment in so-called ‘intangible assets’ now exceeds investment in ‘tangible assets’ is cause enough for reflection. But that such a dramatic shift in our economy has gone largely unnoticed is ever more unnerving.

Haskel and Westlake’s book, ‘Capitalism without Capital: The rise of the intangible economy’, starts by addressing the alarming paradox we see in our society. For decades now we’ve been told the principal role of technology is to cut costs and with it productivity will rise. I

H ow many monthly payment services do you subscribe to? It’s probably more than a mobile phone contract. Now what used to sit on the shelves of your living room is more likely to be found on an app on your phone. Whether it’s DVDs you now rent from Netflix, music from Spotify, or books on your Kindle, firms are fast turning their once one-time buys into services.

You’d be forgiven for thinking at this stage that this was unworthy of the ‘subscription economy’ tag. But this trend of ‘demateriali