Chinese electric cars: who is Marco Loglio, Italian pioneer

Today he works with the third largest group in the world for the production of electric cars and was one of the pioneers of the electric car. But he comes neither from Silicon Valley nor from Shenzhen. Marco Loglio he started from Bergamo at the end of the 1980s with an electric car company. The first is the Torpedoan electric small car based on Seat Marbella. A pioneering project, which was distributed through the Volkswagen network in several European countries during the nineties. Then comes the China. And even there the success was born from an intelligent reconversion: he purchased the license from Fiat Multipletransforms it into electric and exploits its functional forms for the transport of passengers. With cheap but technologically advanced batteries for the time, that car in Shenzhen becomes a taxi. It was the turning point: from there came the trust of Chinese institutions, the support of the local government and a series of recognitions including a role as consultant at Jilin University in Changchun, where Loglio contributed to training a new generation of engineers. Thirty-five years after the beginning in the Bergamo area, Loglio is vice president of Lojo Eva company that has been exporting Wuling for over ten years, the cars of the joint venture between SAIC – one of the largest Chinese automotive groups – and General Motors. This group produces 1.8 million cars a year and holds the record for the best-selling electric vehicle in China: the Mini EV, a small 5,000 euro small car that can occasionally be found in Italy, approved as a quadricycle. It was possible to interview him at the Beijing show. His deep knowledge and privileged point of view on the Chinese industrial landscape today allows us to hear from the inside the opportunities and obstacles of the electric car in the most competitive market in the world.

Marco Loglio did it all start with a Seat Marbella?

“Yes, it’s true. It was not only the cheapest car on the market, but also the lightest. A light car is the best basis for the conversion to electric. The electric had to be, in my imagination, efficient and available to everyone at an affordable price for every family. So, having obtained production approval from the Volkswagen Group, the Marbella seemed the ideal choice. And today conversions with technologies similar to the Torpedo are still sold… but on a Fiat Panda basis, which is like the Marbella. The principle is the same as in 1989: remove the combustion engine and install existing components, recovered in some cases from industrial electric forklifts. With the gearbox we were able to exceed the speed limits of the forklifts and reach 80–90 km/h. The project was valid: almost all the electric Marbellas built are still in circulation.”

Speaking of lightness, the Lotus Elise also came out in the nineties. Is it true that you worked on that too?
“Yes, but that was an already expensive sports model. I had done a study on it using high-level components, but to approve it I needed the manufacturer’s consent.”

We had heard about it in Romano Artioli’s book. How did the story go?
“Unfortunately, Lotus at the time didn’t seem interested in a leap into electric. Then, in 2003, the Tesla Roadster came out, again based on the Lotus Elise. Elon Musk is not an isolated genius: he simply applied the best existing technologies to create a salable product.”

Then came China. Did you immediately have clear ideas about your plans?
“I soon realized that the future was here. When I arrived in Shenzhen in 2001, I immediately went to BYD. I spoke to the company leaders saying: «You make batteries for mobile phones and laptops. With these batteries you could also make a fantastic electric car». It was the same principle later adopted by Tesla. However, even in this case, I was told that electric cars were not yet interesting for China and that BYD was busy producing petrol cars. I therefore decided to continue on my own, trying financing that I had not been able to find in Europe”.

So was it difficult to convince the Chinese?
“If the project is good, money can be found in China. I had the opportunity to show a limousine prototype to the mayor of Shenzhen, who was impressed. The Chinese government was aware of my activities and already in 2008 I had produced electric limousines for the Beijing Olympics, for the transport of Communist Party leaders. Many Chinese officials are engineers. They understood that, with their resources and raw materials, they could become world leaders: they were facing a turning point. They invested. And the revolution started right from Shenzhen. Buses, taxis and public fleets have been electrified.”

Of course, it will have cost an infinite amount of billions…
“In China, if you demonstrate skills and ask for billions for an electric car factory or advanced batteries, the government invests. If you fail, you answer for it; if you do well, you move on.”

And how did you get the funding?

“The electric Multipla, in 2012, opened the doors of large Chinese factories to me. We used a Zotye M300, an electric Fiat Multipla built under license, with 800 km of autonomy, when the alternatives were the Nissan Leaf with 150 km or the Tesla Model S with 500 km, which however cost 150,000 euros. I wanted to demonstrate that an economical car could have a Guinness World Record-worthy autonomy. The result was an economical car with sufficient autonomy for daily use, without anxiety about being left on foot. And what was the key to this success? The battery. It is 90% of the electric car. Today the electric car is an entire connected digital system, with artificial intelligence and completely new platforms, designed from the beginning be electric and built with robotic systems”.

He is now vice president of a company that distributes SGMW products in Europe, including the small Wuling Mini EV. If we want to say so, is he the heir of Torpedo?
“I have always been interested in cheap and popular cars. SGMW is the third largest electric car manufacturer in the world: it assembled 1.63 million vehicles last year. For comparison, Fiat produces 1.2 million cars worldwide. The Wuling Mini EV was the best-selling electric car in China, where it costs around 5,000 euros. For those who say they make a loss building EVs, I point out that at SGMW we make good money selling our low-cost vehicles. 40% of exports are destined for the emerging markets of Africa, South-East Asia and South America and therefore one of our proposals concerns vehicles equipped with solar panels.

And why not in Europe?
“If we wanted, we could have numerous sales points in Europe, but we have chosen another line. First of all, there is a question of duties and approvals. We don’t want to sell at too high a cost. Wuling is synonymous with solid, low-cost cars, which solve mobility problems in the most efficient way: if these conditions aren’t there, it’s difficult to invest.”

What are your thoughts on electric cars in Europe?
“Energy is very expensive, and it is a political choice. In China, a kWh for charging costs only 0.07 euros thanks to massive investments in renewable energy. If electric cars are convenient, the public has no problem changing their habits. In Europe, investments have been insufficient: the prices of energy and electric cars are too high. Europe and the United States have preferred to exploit internal combustion engines and possibly buy Chinese technology, rather than develop it. The result is that cars are expensive, while governments hesitate to switching to renewable energy, which could reduce electricity costs. Furthermore, the battery supply chain is completely missing. Even in China, investing in a battery factory costs billions, because I have opened eleven battery factories high level that generates continuous innovations. The result is that China is now decades ahead of Europe in battery production and it is a gap that is difficult for European companies to fill.”

And wouldn’t you open a factory in Italy? Grugliasco is still for sale and ready for use.
“With Sgmw (SAIC-General Motors-Wuling) we have factories in Indonesia and even in Egypt. But in addition to the energy cost, there was an employment problem. We produce with fully automated “dark factories”, without workers on the assembly line. In the factory there are only highly specialized engineers. And the government doesn’t like this, because we don’t solve the employment problem. You could think about on-site assembly, but in this case the competitive advantage is reduced”.

In China, automation has advanced, but at the same time we have seen factories that employ more workers for the same task than a European company.

“We have chosen to invest billions and automate: in the long term it is the most efficient choice. There are those who have not yet done so for social reasons, linked to the need to maintain employment. Some factories are publicly owned or owned by cities or provinces, and in that case politics can impose a certain number of workers. We have created automated factories where there was already full employment, without generating redundancies. In reality the entire automotive sector will have to align itself with these choices”.

Is it true that in China, in order to maintain employment, we go into overproduction?
“I don’t understand this overproduction. Four years ago there were 400 electric car manufacturers, today there are around 100. The 300 bankrupts represented only 2% of the market. Certainly the number will drop further, to around twenty highly competitive companies. Production will be increasingly connected to real demand. Already today there are no full yards in our plant: on the contrary, we struggle to produce enough. I don’t see an employment problem: in China there are still many sectors to be developed where needed human labor. Technological factories must produce with robots: there is no alternative to remain competitive.”

We close with a provocation: do you find that, despite the push towards electric, the Chinese still prefer petrol cars?
“Plug-in cars are very popular in China, which have up to 450 km of electric range and then a combustion engine. In big cities there is a charging station every thirty meters, so petrol is rarely used. By 2030 the combustion engine will be marginal. For me, the present and future of the automotive industry in China are electric.”