China’s GP Batteries and BYD Show They May Be Forces to be Reckoned With In US Plug-in Market
Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com
Although they received scant media attention in the U.S., two Chinese companies just made moves that may position themselves for big paydays in the rapidly-evolving plug-in electric hybrid vehicle (PHEV) industry.
BYD Company Ltd., whose stock trades in Hong Kong, just started selling the world’s first mass-produced plug-in cars, or so the New York Times said in a story buried in its automotive section. Thus is BYD now ahead of all its major competitors, in particular, General Motors, Toyota and Nissan.
BYD said it is delaying plans to sell plug-ins outside China until 2011, which might at first seem like a negative, until one looks closer at the company’s announcement and sees that in 2010 it plans to develop relations in China not just with large corporate fleet buyers but also with state power grid operators that will effectively serve as “gas” stations.
Thus in 2010, while GM and the others are just cracking the plug-in market, BYD will be formulating a strategy that could see it swoop into thousands of communities around the world, not just with new vehicles, but a complete system for keeping them charged. Investors should watch closely for any announcement between BYD and, say EDF, the French power giant, or America’s Mid-American Energy, the private electric utility owned by Warren Buffett’s company.
Oh, did we mention that Buffet has a nearly 10% stake in BYD?
As intriguing as the BYD announcement is, even more so is the announcement by a unit of GP Batteries International Ltd., which trades primarily in Singapore. As recently reported by the authoritative web site Green Car Congress – and almost nobody else – GP’s unit, Gold Peak Industries North America, has acquired a stake in a private U.S. firm that converts Toyota Prius hybrids into plug-in vehicles.
As EnergyTechStocks.com keeps noting, the importance of the plug-in conversion market cannot be overestimated. For every new plug-in vehicle sold, there could be two or three existing vehicles that get converted into plug-ins, especially if President-elect Obama decides to extend the financial incentives Congress already has in place on new plug-ins. To date, only A123 Systems Inc. has positioned itself for this potential boom market. The company GP Batteries took a stake in, Plug-in Conversion Corp., will use the cash infusion to extend its U.S network of certified installers.
The company’s conversion kits are expected to be usable on a variety of existing cars made by, among others, Toyota, GM and Ford.
What all of this means is that, in just a couple of years, these two Chinese battery companies could be in the lead for “powering up” the world’s next generation of cars and trucks, both new and retrofitted vehicles
