Time for a little light-hearted amusement……
One of my favourite sports shows has a question every week – Who would you rather be? There are two possible answers and they usually pose an upside and a downside.
e.g Who would you rather be?
- Prince Charles, or
- Prince Harry?
It sounds easy at first, but think about it.
One’s going to be King, probably sooner rather than later. And let’s face it, it’s good to be King. The other is loved by the people and will still have a pretty good life. But he’s unlikely to ever be the King and that’s a place in history that he’ll miss out on forever. Does history give places to likeable knock-about brothers or sons of kings? Not that often. And the Windsors are an historical bunch, let’s face it.
Upside. Downside.
This isn’t exactly a “who would you rather be?” scenario – although that would be interesting, too – but hopefully it’ll make you think just as much.
The question?
Which car do you think we’ll see available for sale first?
- The Spyker B6 Venator, or
- An electric Saab?
Spyker have released both the hardtop and Spyder versions of the B6 Venator in concept form. Just this week, they’ve released images of the production hardtop model. You can’t help thinking, though, that production versions might be hard to come by in the real world. When a company’s pressed to offer bonds that can be converted into cars, presumably in order to finance the actual build, then you have to wonder.
Victor Muller took a pretty big financial hit from the whole Saab affair. He’s had no luck with his court case against GM and the Swedes are still looking at his dealings from the Saab days. Victor’s the ultimate survivor, though. He’s still got Spyker and he’s managed to wrangle enough cash together to produce these new concepts. He even managed to get one sitting dockside at the Monaco GP last weekend. But has he got the cash to release them by their expected due date, in 2015?
Saab?
Well, one of their major shareholders hasn’t come through with the cash they promised. The boss has had to try and liquidate assets in China to pay the bills and he’s a few months behind. The company’s had to stop production for 4 weeks and that’s right before the usual summer break, so don’t be surprised if it turns out to be more like a 12-week break. Investors are said to be on the verge, but who’s going to invest in a crippled company when they could wait and get the bits they want at a knock-down price?
And then there’s the whole electric car thing. Are they actually close to building a viable electric vehicle for consumers? Right now they’re courting investors to complete the Phoenix platform, which makes me wonder how much work they’ve actually done on it since buying the company. They reportedly started sending electric test vehicles to China but are they ready for consumers?
I think it’s a legitimate question – which car will we see available for sale first? An electric Saab or the Spyker B6 Venator?
Have your say in the poll below:
[poll id=”21″]
Given no one has seen what an electric Saab looks like, (not counting the adapted 9-3 sc’s that were done before) but the Spyker Venator does exist in concept form, then you have to conclude that the Spyker is at least closer to the goal of reaching some sort of production form.
Given the financial weakness of both brands, whether either make it over the finish line is somewhat dubious, and I’m really skeptical that Spyker can sell the Venator in anything approaching the numbers he seems to think he is going to do, if for no other reason that it would require tooling up and production processes that are very capital intensive, plus developing a sales distribution network that also doesn’t really exist at the moment.
The Venator sure is a pretty car- the prettiest Spyker by far … and that helps a lot !
Great, thought provoking question. I don’t like the chances of either. However, if I had to pick one, I would choose the B6.
When I first glanced at BAIC’s new electric car, a few weeks ago, I thought I was looking at a NEVS SAAB 93.
You have nicely brought your opinion on the question: results in votes should then be a matter of logic in your reader’s mind. 😉
But I have resisted to the hypnosis! 😀 and have voted for the EV first on the market for some reasons.
– Not because I find ideal to launch an EV and a “new” brand (what is Saab in China) with an old platform;
– Not because I don’t like the Venator. I certainly like this car a lot;
– Not because I have doubts about VM getting loans and bonds or being able to do what he wants to do. He is a leader. Therefore, the 1st Venator serie could be unveilled but I find hard to believe that rich consumers will be enthousiastic to have faith in Spyker’s future.
So why the EV of NEVS first? Mainly because I do a simple reasoning with a practical approach:
– fact: investors of NEVS have already put CASH, money real coins in the “Saab Trollhättan start up” (NEVS) over 600 millions Euro (which is far far far more than the previous shareholder). No loan, no bond, no unpaied debts, etc. up to now for instance.
– reasoning: I do not authorize myself to think that this kind of investors who use their own pockets to bet on a business plan have not considered the eventuality of their chinese shareholder Qingdao not fullfilling their commitment. They might have even considered that EV market in China could be the dream-market they think it could be. Over 600 millions euros… I think we would definitly insult them to think that they live a day-to-day business like before. I cannot think that, sorry.
– fact 2 EV 9-3OG has already been tested and do not ask for many further development (for China)
Finaly, what has made me hesitating to answer “EV, first” is that I do not think that there is already a strong market for EV in China: Q1 2014 sales figures in China are scary… NEVS is changing their business plan, I have no doubt about this even if they don’t “speak out about this in public”.
I definitly have more confidence in NEVS than in SPYKER to get where they wanted to be with their millions invested. As far as the Phoenix platform, I guess that with 400 consultants and nearly 500 people employed by NEVS, that was not for the 6 cars per day to be produced, was it?…
That said, I could be wrong of course but then I would need very serious explanations on why Mr Kai Johan Jiang put money in the restart of the production (which was a non-sense if he knew that he would sell the assets later on)? It does not make sense to me and I am pretty sure that there are more to learn behind the curtains then in the NEVS communications!
The old 9-3 converted to EV could basically be ready for production. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few already have been built for testing. So the step to put it on the market is not that big since it is “just” a change of drivetrain. Spykers track record of actually putting something into production is probably even worse than that of Saab. Remember D12? The SUV? Announced in 2006 – production starts in…?
For me, the math is simple: For Spyker ‘production’ means 5-10 cars. For NEVS/Saab, that amount only gets the line rolling to test the manufacturing process. For NEVS/Saab, anything less than 50-100 cars won’t move the needle to ‘production’. My money is on Spyker.
I have read that Spyker aim at 100 cars and want to begin production by Q1 2015. Still buying Spyker’s bonds? 😉
I remember hearing recently that China has built 99 Airports in its country in the last 4 years. We’ve been struggling to get ONE new airport in our most major city in Australia started for about the last decade now.
I also recall seeing photos of a freeway in China post-earthquake with a plummeting gaping hole cut across it, which was unrecognizably repaired to perfection and drivable something like a few days later.
My point is that China can get stuff done when it wants to, and quickly!
My vote goes to Saab.
It’s faster to put up a freeway bridge if you don’t install any rebar!
Maybe my joking is in bad taste, and I would hope their engineering/construction is better than that, but there is some truth wrt the popularity of shortcuts over there…
In terms of the original question. Well, if it is to produce 1, maybe I will go with Spyker. VM has a proven record of producing nice show cars. If it is to produce 100, I will go with NEVS. Not because I am overly optimistic that they will succeed, but because I’m pretty sure VM will find that much more challenging to get off the ground. I wish him luck though!
Very different styles of entrepreneur!
If the “only” problem for KJJ to keep funding NEVS is transferring cash from china to sweden, there is not an economical problem, there is a huge problem.
There shouln’t be a problem shipping money for KJJ. It should be the same amount leaving china, but tve sender is NME instead of quingdao city.
But political issues is way harder to solve than economical I guess.
I don’t know why, but I really do not feel any worry….
Is it the funding so far that gives me confidens?
Is it the interest from others?
Is it the fact that NEVS has started priductipn against all ods?
Or is it, unconsiusly, so that I in fact do not care any more?
I do not know what it is, but I do not think the fat lady even ben asked to perform yet.
And my vote is for an EV saab gets the first sale
After 18 1/2 years representing the Saab brand, I find it hard to believe Victor will get his car built. Listened to him as he kept trying to put “the deal” together. Both at Saab and Spyker, he was big on ideas and very short on funding.
Volvo has proven that it can be accomplished.
Interesting article on the Venator in MarketWatch at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/spyker-b6-venator-looks-good-coming-and-going-2014-05-31
is it just me or does the Venator look like something straight out of the “Cars” movie?
Month of June. Time for an announcement from NEVS about investors. Also, new statistics…
53 Saabs from NEVS were registered in Sweden during May. That makes it 126 for the whole of 2014. I also found out that of those 126 cars, 108 has been registered on juridical persons (mostly NEVS I would guess…) and only 18 on private persons.
I also found some other interesting statistics. For all Saab lovers out there in the world I guess it is heartwarming to know that during 2012 about 16.000 Saabs were officially scrapped in Sweden. The same year about 11.000 Opels were scrapped. despite the numer of Opels on the roads only being about half that of Saabs. Earlier Saab had about 10% market share in Sweden, and it is not many years ago I read that there were close to 400.000 Saabs registered in Sweden. December 2013 that number were down to about 290.000.
The sales numbers to private individuals are worse than I expected. NEVS started suppyling cars to private clients right at the end of April, so April’s six registrations could have been put down to that. But there were only twelve more supplies in the whole of May, so unless they ran out of parts somewhere along the line, I would guess that those 18 cars make up roughly the rest of their sales since December. The other cars were no doubt registered to either NEVS themselves or to the dealers that constitute their sales network.
I remember it was reported in media that NEVS had ten orders after the first few days of internet sales in December. If that was the early peak, it died down pretty quickly. There were six cars delivered to the Netherlands in May, you can google for example Saab Arnhem and click on “Occasions” to find two of them listed for 52.995 €. The other one has been sold, too.
All in all, the market for this particular model variant of the 9-3 is dead in the water in Sweden, and I don’t think that Dutch price is likely create an enormous buzz in the rest of Europe either. I’m sure NEVS themselves expected nothing more, so their real woes lie a few thousand miles east of Trollhättän.
Yeah, looking at it with open eyes that old 9-3 would not do anything to get NEVS going financially. I guess it was about a) getting the supply chain and the workforce up and running at a factory that had been standing still for 2 1/2 years, b) actually being able to send out press releases about something other than “next year we plan to…”, and c) they still needed to produce a test-fleet for their EV technology and why not then produce a few extra ones for the market.
I’m no expert on what can be done with the 9-3. Obviously, it has to be redesigned for newer safety regulations and that takes time. Also, they need a new drivetrain, since the current ones (as I understand it) were leftovers from the bankruptcy and that is no small task (probably a 1 1/2 years worth of work). And it is probably costly getting updated safety features and infotainment systems. So maybe it was a lost cause because the public (and the auto press) would always see it as “that old 9-3” whatever they did to it.
That said, the 9-3 is not a bad car at all. I bet it is still safer than most of the cars on the road here in Sweden. I think the design is holding up well after the 2007 face-lift. The technology is proven, and I don’t know of any major reliability issues with the later model years. I guess the main problem is the price point, though I can somewhat understand their decision not to have a sale on Saab branded cars. But… For SEK 200.000 it would be a bargain – for close to SEK 300.000 you start compare it to other brands post 2010 models and their more up-to-date safety and infotainment tech. And then you really have to be a Saab fan to go with a 10+ year old model.
I vote with my heart. Saab.