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AD #3559 - Q1 Global EV Sales Hit 1.8 Million; Worlds’ Biggest EV Battery Makers; Tesla Brings Back Long Range M3

AD #3559 - Q1 Global EV Sales Hit 1.8 Million; Worlds’ Biggest EV Battery Makers; Tesla Brings Back Long Range M3

Autoline Daily May 03, 2023 9 min
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Rupert Stadler avoids jail by admitting involvement in VW's diesel scandal and paying a hefty fine. Ford and Stellantis report strong Q1 earnings, with Ford showing significant profit growth despite EV losses. GM announces key management shifts, highlighting a rising star in EV engineering. Tesla reintroduces the Long Range Model 3 with reduced range and partial tax credit eligibility. China dominates global EV battery production, while Fisker aims to popularize battery swapping in the US. Fuel cell trucks gain momentum with Toyota, Paccar, and UNDE expanding efforts. Global EV sales hit 2.55 million in Q1, led by China and battery electric vehicles.

Topics: vw diesel scandal ford earnings stellantis performance gm management changes tesla model 3 long range ev battery market battery swapping fuel cell trucks global ev sales china ev market
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
Rupert Stadler, the former CEO of Audie, is getting a get out of jail card, but it wasn't free. He was up to his neck
in the diesel scandal at the VW Group, but he caught a deal with German authorities to avoid jail time. Stadler has been on trial since twenty twenty
and was accused of not preventing the company from selling vehicles with a legal omission cheating software after it was made public. Up until now, Stadler denied those
allegations, but faced with the possibility of spending two years in the slammer, he changed his tune. Stadler will now confess that he was involved and pay
a fine of one point one million euros, but he will not go to jail. Ford and Stellantis reported their first quarter earnings today and they both made
significant improvements, especially Ford. It sold just over a million vehicles worldwide,
up nine percent. Revenue grew by a solid twenty percent to forty one point
four billion dollars. Its operating profit of two point one billion was up fifty
seven percent, and it saw its bottom line swing from a three point one billion dollar loss last year to a one point seven billion dollar net profit this year. Digging into those numbers a bit deeper, Ford Pro, which makes
commercial trucks and vans, tripled its EBIT profit to one point four billion dollars.
Ford Blue, which makes ice cars, trucks, and vans, doubled its profit to two point six billion, And while the company did not break out quarterly earnings for Ford Model E, which makes evs, we'd estimate that it lost somewhere around seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Meanwhile, Stilantis,
which only reports its full earnings every six months, gave us a bit of info on how it performed over the last three months. It sold over one
and a half million vehicles, up eight percent from a year ago, and its revenues were up fourteen percent to forty seven billion euros, but we won't get a full financial report until sometime in July. General Motors announced some important
management changes yesterday. Steve Carlyle, who's sixty one years old, is retiring
as president of North America. He'll be replaced by Englishmen Rory Harvey, who's
fifty five and who had been running Cadillac and spent the earlier part of his career in Europe at Opal and Vauxhall. Cadillac will now be run by John
Roth, who's fifty four and who had been running GM's customer care and after sales and spent a good part of his career in Canada, Africa, in the Middle East. That position will be filled by Josh Tavel, who's forty
four years old and who was executive chief engineer for GM's electric trucks and SUVs.
And that's quite a promotion to go from executive engineer to global vice president.
So for those of you who like to try and spot future presidents and CEOs, keep an eye on Josh Tavill. Tesla is taking orders for the
long range version of the Model three in the US again after being gone for nine months, but it won't qualify for the full federal tax credit. It's
only eligible for half of the seventy five hundred dollars that's available, which means that its battery is coming from outside of the US. The new long range
model is also rated at three hundred and twenty five miles of range, down from three hundred and fifty eight miles which suggests the battery could be a new type of chemistry as well. Most likely it would be LFP or lithium iron
phosphate cells like the ones it uses in the Standard range and Chinese built Model three. South Korea's SNE Research ranked the top battery makers in the world by
who has the most batteries equipped in vehicles, which includes b evs, pheaves and hybrids, and not surprisingly China, c ATL tops the list. It
had a market share of thirty five percent in the first quarter of the year.
That's more than double by d which is in second place with a sixteen percent share. LG Energy is close behind at fourteen percent, then it drops
to nine percent for Panasonic, and then Skon and Samsung round out the top six at a round five percent market share. Each of the top ten battery
makers in the world, six are Chinese, three are South Korean, and one is Japanese. So the Americans and Europeans really need to pick up the
pace. Is Fisker going to be the automaker that gets battery swapping to catch
on in the US and Europe, Well, it's certainly going to try to.
It's teaming up with a company called Ample to launch versions of the all electric Ocean Suv with swappable battery packs. AMPLE and Energy Management Company is also
going to build the swapping stations. They first plan to go after fleet operators,
which makes sense to us because it's much easier to serve vehicles that operate out of a central hub rather than a broad base of regular car buyers.
Fisker says it's aiming to offer oceans with swappable batteries in the first quarter of next year, only days after California announced it would start banning new ice heavy duty trucks in twenty thirty six. Several automakers are cranking up their fuel cell
efforts in the US. Toyota and Paca announced their expanding development and production of
fuel cell semis and are planning to start customer deliveries sometime next year. Those
trucks will use Toyota's Hydrogen Kit, which goes into production late this year and includes the tanks, fuel cell stacks, batteries, electric motors, and transmission.
The kit recently received a zero emission powertrain certification from California, which means that anyone who purchases a truck equipped with the system is eligible for both state and federal incentives. UNDE also announced that it's bringing its heavy duty fuel cell
truck to the US, called Excillent. It currently operates in Switzerland, Germany,
Israel, Korea, and New Zealand, racking up more than four million miles. It has two fuel cell stacks, a three hundred and fifty kilowatt
or nearly four hundred and seventy horsepower motor and over four hundred and fifty miles of range when fully loaded, and we give an extra pad on the back to Hondai for also saying it plans on helping to build out the hydrogen infrastructure.
More and more car buyers are choosing electric vehicles. According to the China
Passenger Car Association, two point five five million new energy vehicles, which includes b evs, pehaves and fuel cells, were sold worldwide in the first quarter of this year, which is up twenty six percent from last year, and not surprisingly, China led the way and accounted for nearly sixty percent of n EV sales and b evs overwhelmingly accounted for the majority of those sales at nearly one point eight million units for seventy percent of the total, and that brings
us to the end of today show. Thanks for joining us. Autoline Daily
is brought to you by Bridgtone Solutions for your journey, Intrepid Control Systems over the year, engineering boost your game, and by Scheffler We Pioneer Motion.
At Scheffler We Pioneer Motion, electrifying mobility, manufacturing smart, reducing CO two emissions, making energy production clean. Scheffler Pioneer's Motion to advance how the world
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