Electric vehicle policy in Thailand: Limitations of product champions

Abstract

Thailand established herself as an automobile production and export hub, partly due to industrial policy. Targeting a particular vehicle type has successfully promoted specialisation of production and exports of pickup trucks. Past success led policymakers to continue the use of this so-called production champion policy to diversify automobile production in Thailand. Analysis of subsequent generations of product champion policy show that policy was successful in terms of promoting Thailand as a production and export location but failed to establish a dominant product champion akin to pickup trucks.

Keywords:

• Automotive industry
• industrial policy
• product champion
• Thailand

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Bruce Belzowski, Hideo Kobayashi, Yasushi Ueki, and an anonymous referee for comments on different drafts of this paper and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) for research finance. The author remains solely responsible for all errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Processing generally occurs during the cell production stage: Cathode and anode are made from pre-processed materials that usually are in powder form. However, materials may also be delivered on large rolls, so that electrodes are merely cut into shape and further processed (Gordon-Bloomfield 2014). Electrolytes are produced by mixing salts containing lithium with solvents to form liquid solutions or gels.

2 Takayasu and Mori (2004, 222) refer to this as modular strategy. However, from the perspective of product engineering, it appears more appropriate to term this a platform strategy. The main difference between platform and architecture is that whereas platforms have limited scalability and can only support production of closely related models, e.g. from the same segment, architectures possess greater scalability and can support production of various models from different segments.

3 The following section focuses on established carmakers. However, it should be noted that there is a number of local and foreign start-ups that plan to produce EVs under the EV scheme in Thailand. We omit this information due to limitations in space.

4 At the time of writing, Daimler has supply contracts with three battery cell producers, namely CATL, LG Chem, and SK Innovation.

5 It is noteworthy that the EV Program is embedded into a broader EV plan that seeks to create linkages with other sectors such as smart electricity grids, i.e. there are signs that Thai policy is already shifting towards innovation policy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Schröder

Martin Schröder is Associate Professor at the Department of Automotive Science, Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan and Visiting Researcher at the Research Institute of Automobile and Parts Industries, Waseda University, Japan. His research interests are (a.) regional economic integration in ASEAN, especially its effects on automotive production networks and Vietnam; (b.) strategy of automotive suppliers towards developing countries; and recently (c.) digitalisation in the automotive industry.