전기차 전환에 따른 폭스바겐의 공장 도전 과제

### 전기차 전환을 위한 폭스바겐과 자동차 업계의 고군분투
* 🚗 2024년 9월, 세계에서 두 번째로 큰 자동차 제조업체인 폭스바겐 그룹이 **독일에서 공장 폐쇄 가능성**에 직면하면서 자동차 산업의 급격한 변화를 실감할 수 있었습니다.
* 📉 판매할 수 있는 것보다 더 많은 자동차를 생산해야 하는 문제는 많은 자동차 제조업체에 영향을 미치고 있으며, 업계는 **수십억 달러의 손실**과 **전기 자동차(EV)로의 전환에 어려움**을 겪고 있습니다.
* 📊 공장 가동률은 2019년 이후 급락하여 전 세계 평균이 이상적인 수익성 기준인 **80%에 훨씬 못 미치는 50%대 초반 또는 60%대 초반**으로 추정됩니다.
* 🇨🇳 중국의 전기차 과잉 생산으로 **2030년까지 수익성 있는 브랜드가 19개로 줄어들 것**으로 예상되는 가운데, 상황이 악화되어 시스템이 비대해지고 비생산적인 공장이 문을 닫을 가능성이 커지고 있습니다.
* 🔋 북미의 경우 공장 가동률이 **평균 70% 정도**이지만, 상당한 하락세를 보이고 있으며, GM과 같은 기업은 **전기차 공장이 24%만 가동**되는 등 내연기관과 전기차 공장의 성과가 극명한 대조를 보이고 있습니다.
* 📉 2023년 미국에서 **120만 대의 전기차가 판매될 것으로 예상**되지만 판매 성장세가 둔화되고 있으며, GM, 포드 등 많은 자동차 제조업체가 예측하기 어려운 시장을 반영하여 **전기차 생산 계획을 하향 조정**했습니다.
* 🛠 전기차로의 전환으로 인해 자동차 제조업체가 여러 파워트레인을 탐색하면서 복잡한 제조 문제가 발생했고, **공장 전문화와 유연성 사이에서 많은 비용이 드는 결정**을 내려야 했습니다.
* ⏳ 업계가 이러한 문제와 씨름하면서 **순수 전기차 제조로의 순조로운 전환 일정은 여전히 불확실**하며, 해결해야 할 타협점도 많이 남아 있습니다.

자동차 업계가 과잉 생산과 전기차 수요 변화로 어려움을 겪고 있는 가운데 폭스바겐은 중요한 전환점에 직면해 있습니다.

In September 2024, news broke that Volkswagen Group, the second-largest automaker in the world—with a quarter of the European market—might have to do something it previously said was off the table: shutter two factories in Germany. Things are changing rapidly. If Volkswagen is not successful in this turnaround, then the existence of the whole company is in danger. Volkswagen has its own challenges, but many automakers are having the same problem: producing more cars than they can sell. I've been at this for over 35 years. I can never remember a period like this. With so many possibilities up in the air, that could really change the trajectory of the industry. Billion-dollar losses, job cuts, and a longer, rockier transition to EVs could very well be on the way...soon. We're in new territory. No one really knows how this is going to play out. This chart shows something called factory utilization—basically how close automakers are to

producing as many cars as they can in their factories. Ideally, they want to be at or around at least 80%. That is roughly the point at which the factory is profitable. Most factories were at or near that 80% threshold in 2018 and 2019, with some companies such as Toyota and Honda doing better than others. But since then, things have changed by a lot. General Motors, Tesla, and Rivian, Stellantis, and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance are among those struggling the most. The global number is hard to calculate but is thought to be somewhere in the high 50s or low 60s. China's overproduction problem plays a big role here. There are around 140 EV brands in the country, and one analysis forecast that only about 19 of them will be profitable by the end of 2030. The country is trying to get rid of the EVs Chinese customers don't want by exporting them abroad.

By the end of the decade, China's exports are expected to be a third of the global total. And that is bloating the system right now. We're seeing a lot of potential production from these plants that will never be realized, and at some point, they'll have to be closed down and removed from the calculation. North American factories are, on average, making about 70% of the cars they are equipped to produce, placing them above the global average. But even there, you see some pretty serious drops since 2019. Here are a few examples: Nissan's Canton and Smyrna plants, GM's Fairfax plant in Kansas, the Spring Hill, Tennessee plant, and Factory Zero in Michigan. Stellantis expects to reopen its Belvidere plant, but with a smaller capacity, and its Toluca, Warren Truck, and Jefferson North plants are all underproducing. Ford's Louisville plant, which is being refit for EVs, is expected to produce far fewer cars.

than it currently does, and Ford's large Oakville plant is supposed to make 100,000 trucks going forward. In 2016, that factory made 271,000. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, new vehicle sales in the U.S. were somewhere between 17 and 17.5 million units. In 2024, they are expected to be just under 16 million. Pandemic-induced factory shutdowns, parts and materials shortages, etc., crippled production. The pandemic is mostly over, but demand hasn't fully recovered. It feels like we're tapping out. Demand levels are not likely to greatly exceed where we're at right now over the next few years in the US, and I would argue globally because of pricing. But that is just one problem. Add to that during the Covid years, the industry started building out electric vehicle production to meet what it thought would be a massive shift toward EVs. As of September 2024, there are in North America

about $261.5 billion tied up in EV factory investments. This is how they break down. About 70% of that is invested in factories either already under construction or operational. The market of electric vehicles was supposed to bloom in the 2020s, and it just hasn't occurred to that level yet. Whether or not there is some kind of slowdown in EV sales inspires fierce debate. A record 1.2 million EVs sold in the US in 2023, and since then, EV sales have continued to grow. Still, they have grown at slower rates, and they're not on track to meet some of the more ambitious targets set for them. In 2022, GM said it planned to build 400,000 EVs by mid-2024, but later it cut that number multiple times. In January 2024, the company said it plans to bring back plug-in hybrids. A clear reversal from its earlier commitment to an all-electric portfolio.

But GM is not the only one. In August, Detroit rival Ford Motor Company reduced its annual EV capital expenditures from 40% to 30% of its total. It also scrapped a planned electric three-row SUV and a new version of its F-150 Lightning. Ford expects to lose $5 to $5.5 billion on its EV business in 2024. Drilling down into the data shows exactly where the problem is. The companies that probably have the most enviable factory utilization numbers in North America are Honda and Toyota. Those two brands, in particular, have historically been very good at capacity, managing inventory levels, and running efficiently. They tend to not overbuild, meaning build more than demand, and they also tend to run efficient plants. Toyota and Honda also have something else. They are the number one and number two sellers of hybrid vehicles, which have become extremely popular green alternatives to full electrics. Meanwhile, Toyota has a sparse EV lineup, one Lexus model, and one bearing its Toyota brand.

Full EV sales are a drop in the bucket compared with the hundreds of thousands of hybrids and plug-ins Toyota sells. Five years ago, as industry analysts, we would have said Toyota is way behind the curve here. Everybody else is pushing hard towards EVs, and Toyota is sitting back and waiting, and that's typically what they do. They're very conservative in terms of longer-range planning. It certainly has benefited them where they now have the capacity, they have the vehicle programs to launch, and have a stronger hybrid approach. In contrast, GM is only using about 67% of its factory capacity. Remember, the threshold automakers want to hit is 80%. But break down the numbers further, and things look quite different. GM's internal combustion plants are at 82% of capacity. Those are almost Toyota Honda levels. But its EV plants are at 24%. We're still selling plenty of Ford F-150s. We're still selling plenty of Chevy Silverados. They are filling their plants very well.

So the capacity utilization for a plant in Kansas City, in Flint, Michigan, these are running at optimal levels with electric vehicle plants a few miles away running at a fraction of what they can build. Until EV factories overtake those making gas-burning cars, this gap will persist, and a fair bit of GM's factory floor space will sit unused. And they are not alone. When Tesla came on the market and started doing very well, everybody anticipated that the market was ready for these modern electric vehicles. Well, Tesla was the early adopters. Tesla got the buyers who were tech-savvy and wanted to spend extra money to have those early models. Now, once everybody is ready to build electric vehicles. The rest of the market is not there yet. And that's really the root of what we call stranded capital. Stranded capital refers to all the money that is tied up in investments that aren't yielding returns. It hurts not just automakers, but the whole supply chain. S&P Global Mobility estimates that about

65% of the total value of a vehicle comes from suppliers. Every time an automaker decides to start a new vehicle program, hundreds of suppliers have to be mobilized to create all the parts that go into that vehicle. This is going to be a very, very important topic going forward because the vehicle manufacturers have spent a lot of time working with the suppliers to develop these vehicles and bring them to market and all the capital infrastructure required to do that. And if the volumes don't develop, there's a lot of people that have loaned money and or have shareholders that they have to answer to. There's a financial risk here that a lot of suppliers are making to be prepared for the full production of that vehicle, but have to make money on the actual production of that vehicle. This risk is huge, especially when it's an unknown market and you could be selling 200,000. You could be selling 50,000. That's a large gap to fill with risk.

For years, many automakers were hoping to jump directly from gas-burning cars to EVs. But the transition isn't happening as fast as they thought. Today, they're juggling up to four different powertrains, and that is extremely costly and cumbersome to survive. Some are trying to save money elsewhere. This starts with platforms. What cars and trucks are built around? They house the battery or the engine, gas tank or motors, and everything else that makes up the guts of a car. Historically, an automaker would design as few platforms as possible and use them in as many models as it could. This spreads out the cost of developing it. In general, a platform has to be used in about 500,000 vehicles before it becomes profitable. Example: the Chevrolet Silverado, Chevy Tahoe, Suburban, the GMC Sierra and Yukon, and the Cadillac Escalade in all their various sizes, including the heavy-duty trucks, are all built on the same platform.

This is typical, and it was a lot easier to do when all cars ran solely on gasoline-powered engines. Many early EVs, like the Chevrolet Bolt, used platforms borrowed from gas cars, but since then, nearly all automakers have moved toward using platforms specifically tailored for the needs of EVs and their advantages. EVs are simpler than gas cars and easier to assemble. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids are the most complicated. They have both powertrains in the same car. The last thing an automaker wants to do is have a separate platform for its EVs, another for hybrids, another for gas, etc. This is one of the main reasons why so many companies like GM and Volkswagen went all in on EVs. Simpler is cheaper. You can spread your costs out and achieve economies of scale. Now automakers are building platforms that can be adapted to all these different powertrains. So it's giving them a little bit more leeway for the

billions of dollars they've invested in the vehicles that now they can build these same vehicles with an evolutionary platform that is more dynamic and allows them to transition better over the next 10 or 15 years. But that means plants designed to build electric vehicles will now have to find ways of adding engines, adding a gas tank, adding emissions controls, and all the pieces that were not in an electric vehicle in the first place. The number of plants producing three types of powertrains is expected to nearly double by 2029. It is possible to build plants that are ultimately very flexible, but every time you do that, it can get expensive. And it's one of the reasons why many manufacturers decided early on, if I'm going to battery electric, I'm moving a lot of my operations over there because I need to attain scale quickly and bring the cost down to be more competitive. And that flexibility strategy is positive for the customer, but not great for bringing overall costs for

the different types of vehicles down. So, automakers are left with a tough choice: either build specialized plants that are at risk of sitting idle and losing money, or try to build highly flexible plants, which could cost a lot. There are a lot of compromises that were not anticipated in this transition to electric vehicles. We just expected to go from one to the other, and now there's this middle space where we have to figure out how both can live together. It's probably not the most efficient plan—it may be for this transition period. But in the long run, if we can get through this transition, the pure EV plant will eventually be the plant that you're going to want to have. But right now, the industry doesn't know when that's going to occur. And it definitely is being delayed from where it was thought of a few years ago.

Why Automaker's EV Factory Investments Aren't Paying Off In The U.S.

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폭스바겐의 어려움과 자동차 산업의 과제

폭스바겐 그룹은 급격한 상황 변화와 자동차 판매 감소로 인해 독일 내 공장 두 곳의 폐쇄를 고려하고 있습니다.

많은 자동차 제조업체들이 비슷한 문제에 직면해 있으며, 2019년 이후 전 세계 공장 가동률이 크게 떨어짐에 따라 어려움을 겪고 있습니다.

중국의 전기차 과잉 생산으로 인해 문제가 더욱 악화되고 있으며, 이로 인해 흑자가 예상되고 공장 폐쇄 가능성도 제기되고 있습니다.

포드의 오크빌 공장은 2016년 271,000대에서 크게 감소한 100,000대의 트럭을 생산할 예정이며, 미국 자동차 판매량은 2024년까지 1,600만 대 미만으로 감소할 것으로 예상됩니다.

팬데믹으로 인해 생산에 차질이 빚어지면서 북미 전기차 공장에 2,615억 달러가 투자되었지만, 기대했던 전기차로의 전환은 예상대로 실현되지 않았습니다.

GM과 Ford는 전기차 생산 계획을 수정하고 전기차 사업에서 재정적 손실에 직면한 반면, Honda와 Toyota는 공장 가동률과 하이브리드 차량 판매에서 탁월한 성과를 거두었습니다.

전기차 전환기에 있는 자동차 제조업체의 고군분투

도요타의 순수 전기차 판매량은 하이브리드와 플러그인에 비해 미미하며, 보수적인 접근 방식 덕분에 현재 강력한 입지를 확보하고 있습니다.

GM은 전기차 공장의 가동률이 24%에 불과한 반면, 내연기관 공장은 82%에 달해 공장 가동률을 제대로 활용하지 못하고 있습니다.

전기차와 내연기관 자동차 공장 간의 가동률 격차로 인해 자동차 제조업체와 공급업체 모두 불확실한 전기차 수요를 충족하기 위해 고군분투하면서 자본과 재무적 리스크가 발생하고 있습니다.

자동차 제조업체들은 가솔린 자동차에서 전기차로 전환하는 과정에서 여러 파워트레인을 운용하고 높은 비용을 부담하며 어려움을 겪고 있습니다.

이제 자동차 제조업체들은 규모의 경제를 달성하기 위해 다양한 파워트레인에 적용할 수 있는 다목적 플랫폼을 구축하는 데 주력하고 있습니다.

전기차 전용 플랫폼으로의 전환은 하이브리드 및 가스 구동 자동차에 비해 조립이 간단하고 쉽기 때문에 일반화되고 있습니다.

자동차 제조업체들은 수십억 달러를 투자하여 동적 플랫폼에서 전기차를 생산하고 있지만, 이제 가스 구동 차량용 부품도 추가해야 합니다.

여러 파워트레인을 생산하는 공장의 수는 2029년까지 두 배로 늘어날 것으로 예상되지만, 유연한 공장을 건설하는 데는 많은 비용이 소요될 수 있습니다.

제조업체는 전문화된 공장과 유연성이 뛰어난 공장 사이에서 어려운 선택의 기로에 놓이게 되고, 이는 전기차로의 전환 과정에서 타협으로 이어집니다.