By Mario Alavez – February 15, 2022,
In Mexico, service stations are scarce, but the trends towards electromobility will lead to a growth of at least 100% in electro chargers in Mexico.
According to Sergio de la Vega, CEO of Citizens Resources, a proof of this model is Tesla.
“First, Tesla set up charging stations and then developed the vehicles. If you do this the other way around, people will not feel encouraged, as they are concerned about the lack of charging stations. In this case, the industry understands this and is willing to invest,” said the CEO.
The electric charging stations will be a long-term business as we must wait for “the eggs to be hatched” so that the return is considerable.
Sergio de la Vega said that his forecast is very conservative due to the low level of benchmarking in the market.
“I believe the growth will be much more than 100%. We are part of a very new industry and the big opportunity for capital investors is to participate in this process, to lead an industry from early stages to consolidation, although the development of this market may take years,” he said.
However, the transition of the automotive sector to the exclusive manufacturing of electric vehicles may be decisive to accelerate this process.
“Some of the CEOs of top companies worldwide in the vehicle manufacturing industry have already made 10 – 15 year-commitments to stop manufacturing internal combustion vehicles to start manufacturing electric vehicles. The industry is already on that road,” according to Sergio de la Vega.
Assembly plant to be set up in Puebla
De la Vega said that Link EV, a company specializing in developing electric buses, will build an assembly plant in Puebla, with the capacity to assemble 1,400 vehicles each year in four production lines, to export around 30 % of the total.
“Total production is not enough to supply the Mexican market; but we are going to try to export 30% of the production, as we have to begin positioning in other countries and we have not been able to meet the production targets in Asia, as there is not enough transportation and supply chains are in trouble,” said the CEO.
However, the CEO said that the bottleneck of the supply of semiconductors worldwide, which has affected the automotive chain since mid-2021, will not impact the development of the Link EV plant, which will require 250 million dollars in investment and will create 400 direct jobs and 1,500 indirect jobs.
“We are less dependent on chips, as we are a newer industry. The traditional automotive industry is very consolidated and with very developed supply chains and when these are disrupted, the problems grow. We depend on less mature chains and we are still experiencing the problem, but not in the traditional automotive industry,” he said.
Link to the story: Energía A Debate (energiaadebate.com)