Stephen Wilmot

That's one of the reasons why Detroit focuses on these large vehicles.

Absolutely.

It's a real challenge for global automakers, including the American ones, in places like South America, in emerging markets, also in Europe, where GM pulled out many years ago, but Ford is still there.

And that's going to be a real challenge for Ford.

They are talking about partnerships to solve this problem.

They announced a partnership with Renault, the French carmaker, in December.

And we've reported that they're in talks with Geely, a Chinese automaker, also to explore options in Europe and potentially elsewhere.

Absolutely.

I think Detroit is very concerned that in the long run, they need to be competitive and that actually their home market isn't a great training ground for them.

The Volkswagen CEO in Beijing spoke to us and called China the fitness center for the automotive industry.

It's where the global players go to work out.

They need to be competitive in China so they can be competitive elsewhere.

That's particularly relevant for Volkswagen because the Chinese players are coming to his home turf in Europe now.

But it will also be true eventually the American players assume for them that they need to be competitive with Chinese technology or in the long run they won't survive.

There have been two waves, essentially, of Chinese car exports.

And the first wave was centered on emerging markets and combustion engines a few years ago.

Russia was a big target market.

Then last year, we got a much more interesting wave of exports, and BYD is very much the lead in that, and that's much more high-tech, focused on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

And they've been appealing to Western European consumers, for example.

Also emerging markets, places like Mexico and Brazil, Australia, they're highly attractive products, and they've pitched them at quite affordable prices, and consumers are lapping them up where they can.