More than a year after the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese BYD for the construction of several factories in Morocco, none has materialized in a definitive agreement. Is the project to develop the mobility of tomorrow already in line with the major announcements that remain a dead letter? Investigation.
Fourteen months have passed since the signing before King Mohammed VI, on December 9, 2017 in Casablanca, of a memorandum of understanding between the Moroccan State and the Chinese group BYD for the “creation of an ecosystem” which “carries on BYD’s electric transportation solutions (electric passenger vehicles, electric buses and trucks), Skyrail and batteries”. “It will occupy, from its start, an area of 50 hectares, 30 of which are covered,” said a press release from the Ministry of Industry. In off, sources close to the file affirmed that four factories were planned – the first almost under construction in Tangier, we were told. BYD was thus presented as the third car manufacturer to settle in Morocco after Renault and PSA.
It must be recognized today that by devoting its front page to the subject in December 2017 and by stating that “negotiations are starting on the basis of 100,000 vehicles per year, 400 buses and trucks, 15 kilometers of monorail beams and 100 wagons monorail”, TelQuel was carried away by the displayed optimism of the Moroccan leaders.
“The million dollar question is when electric will overtake thermal”
Because since then, with the exception of a “it’s on the way” from the Minister of Industry Moulay Hafid Elalamy, on February 6 at the Automotive Meetings Tangier-Med show, nothing more has been made public on this project. supposed to “generate 2500 direct jobs” and “put Morocco on the path of economic emergence and modernism”, according to the terms of the royal cabinet.
By comparison, only five months had passed between the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Renault in 2008 and the conclusion of a framework agreement in 2009. Production started three years later. For PSA, after signing the protocol in 2015, it took eleven months to complete an agreement.
Trade secrets
For a year, TelQuel has therefore regularly sought to know how the negotiations between Morocco and the world’s leading producer of electric cars are progressing, which sold nearly 250,000 units in 2018. “It’s in progress, it’s progressing”, we are invariably answered in Morocco, promising repeated imminent announcements.
Contacted several times, BYD did not respond to our requests. Confidentiality is understood in a sector where competitors look at each other like earthenware dogs and stand in the starting blocks to take the plunge into electric. “When will sales of electric vehicles overtake sales of conventional cars, especially in the European market? Is it 2020, 2025, 2030? The answer is worth millions of dollars, because this whole industry is based on logistics, you have to arrive at the right time to not be the one who arrives too early and wipes the plaster to lower prices. You have to come back at the right time, to control your costs and maximize your margin, ”says a source familiar with the matter.
Moreover, according to concordant sources, Renault and PSA contacted the Moroccan State after BYD’s announcement, recalling that for the first, its “dual track” factory in Tangier allowed it to switch to electricity quickly, and that the second had sufficient land reserves in Kenitra to open a new line of electric vehicles.
But the pretext of confidentiality is also used to not say clearly that Morocco has not yet managed to put in place the general framework necessary to trigger the “go” of the Chinese industrialist. A source explains: “What BYD was saying was ‘we want to settle, but there is a lot of work to be done at the level of the ecosystem to put in place’. They didn’t say ‘we only come if you buy so many buses from us’, but rather ‘there has to be favorable ground for electric mobility’. This is the work that is being done.”
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The term “ecosystem” should therefore not be understood in its industrial sense of a network of suppliers, but rather of a normative framework for sustainable mobility: “There are fewer parts in an electric car than in a thermal car, so , a priori, the industrial ecosystem of suppliers is easier to set up. On the other hand, as it is a new sector, there is a systemic approach to adopt. To run an electric vehicle, you need charging stations, knowing what the price of energy is, What are the vehicles authorized to circulate, what are the possible encouragements that will be given to users so that they choose electric, etc.
We have to review until the driving license exam, we learn from the Ministry of Equipment, where we are assured that “we do not miss any international seminar to keep up to date”. It is also Law 13-09 on renewable energies that must be amended, because what is the point of driving electric if your car is recharged by current produced by a coal-fired power station? What is the point of producing electric cars in Morocco if the national electricity production is not able to support their recharging?
“The necessary speed”
In fact, dozens of ministries, administrations, public establishments and agencies are actively working, with the private sector, to give coherence to a whole that should therefore be called “the mobility ecosystem”. sustainable”. To defend BYD’s interests with all these players, their Moroccan partner is having more meetings. This is Rageci, a small subsidiary of the Gelacom group chaired by Mehdi Laraki, which has held the exclusive rights to distribute BYD products in Morocco for three years and is negotiating a percentage stake in the Chinese giant’s future industrial project.
“Electric mobility is the topic of the moment”, explains a government source, adding that two logics oppose each other in the debates of public actors. The one who sees the subject through the prism of BYD’s industrial project, and the one who sees the problem in a broader way, almost falling under the development model, while “Morocco’s commitment to sustainable development now constitutes an inseparable pillar of the Moroccan economic model and participates in achieving the international commitments made by the kingdom in terms of decarbonization of transport”, decided the royal cabinet in December 2017.
At the end of a ministerial meeting on December 14, 2018 devoted to the examination of the project to promote “green cars”, the Head of Government, Saâd-Eddine El Othmani, sums up this ambiguity by declaring that the evolution towards electric mobility takes place “at the speed necessary to support the changes experienced by the sectors concerned”. Understand: BYD will wait.
The first positive signals have nevertheless been sent: 30% of the State’s car fleet should be made up of electric and hybrid vehicles by 2021. On the other hand, the Moroccan market alone cannot justify a factory in Morocco. It is export to European and even African markets that BYD is aiming for.
However, it is only in China that the transition to sustainable mobility has been lightning fast. More than thirty cities have agreed that 100% of their public transport will be electric by 2020, with state subsidies. The first announcements from European capitals set this threshold at 2040. BYD is therefore focused on its domestic growth, where it is making heavy investments to be, by 2021, the world’s third largest producer of electric batteries in terms of capacity (34,000 megawatt hours ). The sinews of war in terms of electric mobility.
From concrete to science fiction
Are BYD’s Moroccan factories therefore sent back indefinitely? Not all. By modeling BYD’s development model in Europe and the United States in Morocco, a first bus factory would be the most likely. Our interlocutors are also closely following the case between M’dina Bus and the Casablanca city council. If BYD won a call for tenders to renew Casablanca’s dilapidated bus fleet, wouldn’t that be a good reason to open a factory capable of producing 300 buses a year in the economic capital, especially since the Tangier plan is delayed by the Cité Mohammed VI Tanger Tech fiasco?
As for a factory to produce equipment for an aerial metro, there too, Casablanca has several advantages. On January 16, during a study day organized by Casa Transports to launch the debate on the Urban Travel Plan (PDU) 2030, the possibility of an aerial metro resurfaced. Perhaps a coincidence, but in December 2017, BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu did not fail to extol the merits of his Skytrain when he crossed the streets of the economic capital towards the royal palace.
“An electric car factory in 2023 would not be bad”
For cars, it will at least be necessary to wait a few more years for the European and African markets to reach maturity to justify a Moroccan factory. “A factory in 2023 would not be bad,” blows a source struggling with the Chinese. As for the batteries, “they could come depending on the ramp-up of the previous factories”. A BYD battery factory at home, it will be the jackpot for Morocco. In China, BYD locates its factories near mineral mines for complete vertical integration.
However, among these components, phosphate and cobalt are needed. Never mind, the kingdom is one of the countries with the largest reserves in the world. Managem currently operates the largest pure cobalt mine in the world in Bou-Azzer, 120 kilometers from Ouarzazate. However, these batteries are subject to valuable patents jealously guarded by BYD, which currently has no overseas battery factories. Quoting BYD’s brand manager, Reuters wrote in March 2018 that BYD currently has “no plans for battery factories outside of China.” Science fiction, until proven otherwise.
Source: https://telquel.ma/2019/02/08/byd-la-lente-fabrique-dun-reve_1627623
