This article is about the Chinese car industry, but relevant to the Indian auto industry also IMHO. This innovative Chinese company has come up with a business model that may be very relevant for India (if we can get our labour laws reformed):
He started BYD with a modest goal: to edge in on the Japanese-dominated battery business. "Importing batteries from Japan was very expensive," Wang says. "There were import duties, and delivery times were long." He studied Sony and Sanyo patents and took apart batteries to understand how they were made, a "process that involved much trial and error," he says. (Sony and Sanyo later sued BYD, unsuccessfully, for infringing on their patents.)
BYD's breakthrough came when Wang decided to substitute migrant workers for machines. In place of the robotic arms used on Japanese assembly lines, which cost $100,000 or more apiece, BYD actually cut costs by hiring hundreds, then thousands, of people.
"When I first visited the BYD factory, I was shocked," says Daniel Kim, a Merrill Lynch technology analyst based in Hong Kong, who has been to the fully automated production lines in Japan and Korea. "It's a completely different business model." To control quality, BYD broke every job down into basic tasks and applied strict testing protocols. By 2002, BYD had become one of the top four manufacturers worldwide - and the largest Chinese manufacturer - in each of the three rechargeable battery technologies (Li-Ion, NiCad, and NiMH), according to a Harvard Business School case study of the company. And Wang stresses that BYD, unlike Sony and Sanyo, has never faced a recall of its batteries.
Deploying the armies of laborers at BYD is an officer corps of managers and engineers who invent and design the products. Today the company employs about 10,000 engineers who have graduated from the company's training programs - some 40% of those who enter either drop out or are dismissed - and another 7,000 new college graduates are being trained. Wang says the engineers come from China's best schools. "They are the top of the top," he says. "They are very hard-working, and they can compete with anyone." BYD can afford to hire lots of them because their salaries are only about $600 to $700 a month; they also get subsidized housing in company-owned apartment complexes and low-cost meals in BYD canteens. "They're basically breathing, eating, thinking, and working at the company 24/7," says a U.S. executive who has studied BYD.
This "human resource advantage" is "the most important part" of BYD's strategy, Wang says. His engineers investigate a wide array of technologies, from automobile air-conditioning systems that can run on batteries to the design of solar-powered streetlights. Unlike most automakers, BYD manufactures nearly all its cars by itself - not just the engines and body but air conditioning, lamps, seatbelts, airbags, and electronics. "It is difficult for others to compete," Wang says. "If we put our staff in Japan or the U.S., we could not afford to do anything like this."
Shortly after BYD went public, Wang did something extraordinary: He took approximately 15% of his holdings in BYD and distributed the shares to about 20 other executives and engineers at the company. He still owns roughly 28% of the shares, worth about $1 billion.
The company itself is frugal. Until recently, executives always flew coach. One told me he was appalled when he learned that Ford, which lost billions last year, had staged a gala at the Hotel George V during the Paris auto show. By contrast, the last time BYD executives traveled to the Detroit auto show they rented a suburban house to save the cost of hotel rooms.
This attention to costs is one reason that BYD has made money consistently even as it has expanded into new businesses. Each of BYD's business units - batteries, mobile-phone components, and autos - was profitable in 2008, albeit on a small scale. Overall, net profits were around $187 million. BYD, which is traded on the Hong Kong exchange, has a market value of about $3.8 billion. That's less than Ford (F, Fortune 500) ($7 billion at the beginning of April), but more than General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) ($1.3 billion).
When David Sokol toured BYD's operations last summer, Wang took him to a battery factory and explained that BYD wants to make its batteries 100% recyclable. To that end, the company has developed a nontoxic electrolyte fluid. To underscore the point, Wang poured battery fluid into a glass and drank it. "Doesn't taste good," he said, making a face and offering a sip to Sokol.
Sokol declined politely. But he got the message. "His focus there was that if we're going to help solve environmental problems, we can't create new environmental problems with our technology," Sokol says.
Sokol, author of a slim volume on management principles called Pleased but Not Satisfied, sized up Wang during that visit and decided he was an unusually purposeful executive. Sokol says, "Many good entrepreneurs can go from zero to a couple of million in revenues and a couple of hundred people. He's got over 100,000 people. Few can do that." When he got back to the U.S., Sokol told Buffett, "This guy's amazing. You want to meet him."
Even before visiting BYD, Sokol believed in electric cars. His people at MidAmerican have studied clean technologies like batteries and wind power for years because of the threat of climate change. One way or another, Sokol says, energy companies will need to produce more energy while emitting less carbon dioxide.
Electric cars will be one answer. They generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions than cars that burn gasoline, and they have lower fuel costs, even when oil is cheap. That's because electric engines are more efficient than internal-combustion engines, and because generating energy on a large scale (in coal or nuclear plants) is less wasteful than doing it on a small scale (by burning gasoline in an internal-combustion engine).
The numbers look something like this: Assume you drive 12,000 miles a year, gas costs $2 a gallon, and electricity is priced at 12¢ per kilowatt, about what most Americans pay. A gasoline-powered car that gets 20 miles to the gallon - say, a Chevy Impala or a BMW X3 - will have annual fuel costs of $1,200 and generate about 6.6 tons of carbon dioxide. Equip those cars with electric motors, and fuel costs drop to $400 a year and emissions are reduced to about 1.5 tons.
The big problem is that they are expensive to make, and the single largest cost is the battery. Manufacturing a safe, reliable, long-lasting, and fast-charging battery for a car is a complex and costly undertaking. BYD claims to have achieved a breakthrough with its lithium ion ferrous phosphate technology, but no one can be sure whether it will work as promised.
Skeptics say that BYD's battery cannot be both more powerful and cheaper than those made by competitors, and the U.S. Department of Energy has purchased an F3DM to take the battery apart. Chitra Gopal, an analyst with Nomura Securities in Singapore who follows the company closely, says BYD is betting on "entirely new technology, and the ability to produce it at scale and at a low cost remains unproven." William Moore, publisher and editor-in-chief of EV World, an electric car website, says, "They need to persuade people that they are selling a reliable, durable, quality automobile."
Even BYD's admirers say the fit and finish of the company's cars leave much to be desired. "Their cars are way behind Toyota, for sure," Sokol admits. BYD currently exports gasoline-powered cars to Africa, South America, and the Middle East, but they compete on price, not quality.
BYD's first plug-in hybrid, called a dual-mode car, is designed to run primarily on electricity, with an internal- combustion engine for backup. Two all-electric cars - the E3 and the E6 - will follow later this year. Both will be sold first in China, primarily to fleet users: the government, post office, utilities, and taxi companies, all of which will build central fast-charging facilities. Europe, with its high gas prices, is the most promising export market for BYD's electric cars. Wang signed an agreement last year with Autobinck, a Dutch dealer group, to distribute its cars in the Netherlands and five Eastern European countries.
Meanwhile, BYD researchers are on to their next big idea, a product they call a Home Clean Power Solution. It's essentially a set of rooftop solar photovoltaic panels with batteries built in to store power for use when the sun's not out, all to be designed and manufactured by BYD. "Solar is an endless source of energy," Wang says. "With better technology, we can reduce the costs."
"How did BYD get so far ahead?" Warren Buffett asked Wang, speaking through a translator. "Our company is built on technological know-how," Wang answered. Wary as always of a technology play, Buffett asked how BYD would sustain its lead. "We'll never, never rest," Wang replied.
awaiting to drive one....
. I made sure the kid used the car seat from the day she was born. She came home from the hospital safely strapped in a child seat. Mother in law was aghast, she wanted to sit in the car with the new born baby in her arms. Sorry, put my foot down on that. And I make sure that anyone who rides in my car is belted up if they are in the front passenger seat. Point is, the kid will obey you and wear the belt only if you insist everyone in the car does so. It simply wont be the case if mom and dad are not wearing belts and you insist the kid be belted up in the car seat!
