WCA January 2009

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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2009 22
calling for pay cuts in exchange for job security. For its
part, Mitsubishi Motors North America on 4th October
agreed to impose no involuntary layoffs at the plant,
and guaranteed to keep it open through August 2012
when the new contract expires. Some 1,200 workers at
Normal were let go in 2004 as part of a global cutback
that the Tokyo-based parent company Mitsubishi Motors
Corp called its last chance at survival. The plant, which
was opened in 1988, now employs fewer than half the
workers it did at its peak about a decade ago.
Serious about electric cars, Warren
Buffett turns to China for battery expertise
The American billionaire investor Warren E Buffett has
agreed to buy a 9.89% stake in BYD Co, a Chinese battery
manufacturer that plans to sell electric cars in the US by
2010. Based in Shenzhen, the mainland China city that lies
just north of Hong Kong, BYD is one of the world’s largest
makers of rechargeable batteries for cell phones and other
uses.
The company also has a fast-growing auto-making unit, and
makes fuel-efficient compact and subcompact cars for the
Chinese market.
Mr Buffett’s investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns
87.4% of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co, which will pay
about $230 million for the BYD stake.
“If BYD were to enter the North American market,
Mr Buffett’s investment would enhance the BYD brand name,”
the president of BYD, Wang Chuanfu, said at a news con-
ference in Hong Kong on 29th September. Mr Wang added that
BYD might even, by using Berkshire’s money to accelerate
research, move up its plans for entering the US market.
Mr Buffett, whose $62 billion fortune made him the world’s
richest or second-richest individual in 2008, is indeed a
valuable connection. He is also, like JP Morgan at the time
of the Great Depression in the US, a steadying influence in
the midst of financial turmoil.
Mr Buffett now finds himself “at the centre of things,
[drawing] headlines and inspiring confidence,” said Robert
F Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the
University of Virginia and co-author of “The Panic of 1907:
Lessons from the Market’s Perfect Storm” (2007).
For its part, MidAmerican, a collection of electric utilities
in the Midwest and West, sees plug-in electric cars as
superior to hydrogen-fuelled vehicles for curbing automotive
emissions of carbon dioxide.
David Sokol, the chairman of MidAmerican, noted at
the news conference with Mr Wang that the US has the
infrastructure to supply electricity for recharging almost
anywhere. Plans for hydrogen-fuelled cars would require the
installation of many hydrogen-fuelling centres.
Dorothy Fabian
Features Editor