In the face of the global automotive new energy process in full swing, there is almost no auto industry in this country, and Saudi Arabia, which is full of “black gold”, can’t stand still. According to reports, the Saudi government has set goals for electric vehicles:It is estimated that by 2030, the proportion of electric vehicles in the capital Riyadh will reach at least 30%.
This policy surprised many netizens, because the price of gasoline in Saudi Arabia is cheaper than water, only 2.3 yuan per liter.It can be understood that, driving in Saudi Arabia, the fuel consumption of 20L per 100 kilometers, the fuel cost is comparable to ours in China. When driving in Saudi Arabia, starting floor oil is not painful. Therefore, Arab Drift has a broad market in its country.
Why Saudi Arabia wants to enter the electric vehicle market is not unrelated to its domestic industrial layout and the surge of new energy vehicles.
Recently, Tesla’s market value has broken through trillion US dollars, and the Chinese battery manufacturer Ningde Times has monopolized more than 30% of the global power battery supply. These are all stimulus factors.
In fact, Saudi Arabia is not without a layout in the era of electric vehicles. Currently, one of the hottest “new car-making forces” in the United States,The largest shareholder behind Lucid Motors is Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The highest shareholding ratio was once more than 67%, and the subsequent merger diluted it to 49.25%.
On July 26 this year, Lucid Motors successfully landed on Nasdaq through SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company). Based on the latest closing price of US$26.85, Lucid Motors’ total market value has reached US$43.5 billion (approximately RMB 277.5 billion). , Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund holds a stock market value of more than 21.4 billion U.S. dollars.
This investment also made Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth full of money.According to reports, in 2018, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund received 67% of its shares at a price of 1.3 billion U.S. dollars.According to the latest market value calculation, the floating profit of this investment by Saudi sovereign wealth fund has exceeded US$20 billion (approximately RMB 127.5 billion).
In addition, an interesting episode is that Saudi Arabia can make this money, thanks to Mr. Jia Yueting, the owner of LeTV in China.
Lucid Motors, formerly known as Atieva, fell into a financial crisis in 2013 and introduced BAIC and LeTV. Due to strategic adjustments, BAIC quickly withdrew and left. Under the leadership of LeEco, Atieva changed its name to Lucid Motors, adjusted its direction and began to develop luxury pure electric vehicles, and officially released its first mass-produced model Lucid Air in December 2016.
The new car was originally planned to be mass-produced at the end of 2018, but after LeEco’s serial thunderstorms, Lucid Motors was sold by Jia Yueting.Then it was taken over by Saudi Arabia, and after injecting 1 billion US dollars, the first factory was established in the United States, so there was a subsequent headwind, and Saudi Arabia made a fortune.
After Saudi Arabia took over Lucid Motor, the bigger calculation is to introduce the automobile industry production line in its country, and Lucid will also be put into production and construction in Saudi Arabia. However, it is still in the negotiation stage and there is no clear time node.
However, Saudi Arabia is a big oil country, that is, only oil, other industries are relatively scarce, and the automobile industry is even more bleak.
Saudi Arabia has a total population of 30 million and has 200 cars per 1,000 people. However, the country has no auto industry and almost all depends on imports. In 2019 alone, Saudi Arabia imported more than 600,000 cars.
Saudi Arabia hopes to build a car factory to attract youth employment in the country, but no car factory is willing to come to Saudi Arabia to build a factory, because the cost is too high, and Saudi Arabia’s per capita GDP is as high as more than 20,000 US dollars, and the labor cost can not be afforded by car companies.
In 2017, Saudi Arabia hoped that Toyota would build a plant here, but Toyota quickly gave up after investigations because of the high cost. There is no automobile supply chain in its own country, and even batteries, glass, and tires have to be imported. The cost is too high, and even if it is manufactured, there is no price advantage.
Saudi Arabia’s auto import market has only a 5% tariff, and localized production does not have any competitive advantage.Toyota concluded that unless it receives a 50% government subsidy, the cost can be equal to that of other countries, but there is still no guarantee of profitability.
Many factors have led to the fact that Saudi Arabia’s rich and oily country does not have its own car brand. Therefore, Saudi Arabia is also betting on the new energy vehicle market. However, objective conditions for the construction of the automobile industry do exist, and betting on whether new energy vehicles can bring about changes can only be given by time.