Money Talks: Peak car?
Money Talks from The Economist
The Economist
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2020
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lockdowns worldwide have brought the automobile industry to a standstill. Hakan Samuelsson, the CEO of Volvo, explains why the solution to the crisis will not be as simple as getting factories moving again. Host Rachana Shanbhogue asks Simon Wright, industry editor, and Patrick Foulis, business affairs editor, whether carmakers can still afford to invest in the cutting-edge technologies that could transport them to a greener, safer future. Has the world passed peak car?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The streets of some of the world's biggest bustling cities now lie empty. |
| 0:07.0 | The air is cleaner, the skies are clear. |
| 0:10.0 | This tranquility may appear to be one of the small silver linings of the lockdowns |
| 0:15.3 | intended to contain the coronavirus pandemic, but it heralds a grim reality for car makers. You're listening to money talks from Economist radio, our weekly show on the world |
| 0:30.2 | of business. |
| 0:31.2 | I'm Rachshanbogue, the economist finance editor, and today we're |
| 0:35.5 | looking at how to save a sputtering industry. They fear and I think rightly that |
| 0:41.0 | even once the lockdowns are over people will not be in the mood at all to buy a new car. |
| 0:47.0 | The world's car giants need to change gear. |
| 0:50.0 | We should try to transform faster to come out stronger. |
| 0:53.3 | Or else they risk getting stuck in reverse. |
| 0:55.8 | The signal from capital markets |
| 0:57.9 | is that the internal combustion business |
| 0:59.9 | is essentially in terminal decline. |
| 1:08.0 | 2020 was supposed to be a year of delivery. |
| 1:15.2 | The car industry had recognized its flaws and promised to do better, making strides towards a future that would be both safer and greener. |
| 1:17.8 | In February Mary Barra, the boss of General Motors, outlined her vision for a world free of crashes, pollution and |
| 1:24.9 | congestion. These are very real problems at very large scale, but we have the |
| 1:30.4 | technology and the expertise to solve them, and we do believe that the future looks good. |
| 1:36.6 | We see the future of transformation that is one that is all electric, self-driving, and fundamentally it is connected. |
| 1:44.1 | And at Davos in January, Herbert Deis, the head of Volkswagen, was equally confident in his company's |
| 1:49.9 | ability to accelerate into this future. |
... |
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