Volkswagen's Q1 profits plunged despite strong sales and revenue growth, mainly due to losses in its software division and drops in Audi and financial services profits. Lamborghini, however, hit record sales and profits. EV sales surged 34% in Germany, led by Volkswagen, Tesla, and Mercedes. GM plans a new battery plant in Indiana with Samsung SDI. China's EV market is saturated with many brands, sparking a price war and pushing some to export. New affordable Chinese EVs like Baojan's YEP are launching. Daimler updates its electric bus with better batteries, while BYD expands in Southeast Asia. Vietnam's rare earth mining is rapidly growing, challenging China's dominance.
Topics:volkswagen profitslamborghini salesgerman ev salesgm battery plantchina ev market saturationchinese ev exportsbaoan yep evdaimler electric busbyd southeast asia expansionvietnam rare earth mining
- VW’s Q1 Profits Plummet - VW Cleans House at Cariad - Lamborghini Sets All-Time Records - EV Sales Jumping in Germany - GM Sticks with Indiana For Battery Plant - China EV Market Getting Saturated - Baojun Yep Gets EV Pickup Variant - Daimler Updates EV Bus - BYD To Manufacture in Vietnam - Vietnam Massively Boosts Rare Earth Production
"...mal management system. The NMC or nickel meganese cobalt cells have a new anode cathode and electrolyte. D..."
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This is Auto Line Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Volkswagen profits shot down in the first quarter as expenses shot up in
payments from its Chinese subsidiaries dropped by twenty percent. The top line numbers all
looked good, though. The Volkswagen Group sold two million vehicles worldwide in the
first three months of the year, up by more than seven percent, and its revenue shot up twenty one percent to seventy six billion euros, but the bottom line numbers were well off where they were a year ago. VW's operating
profit of five point seven billion euros was down thirty one percent and its net profit of four point seven billion was down thirty percent. That was mainly due
to a forty eight percent drop in profits at Audie and a thirty four percent drop from financial services. Volkswagen is hiring all but one of its top executives
at its carreads software division, which has been an absolute disaster. It's run
into all kinds of development issues, which has caused new models to get delayed, and it's losing money too. In the first quarter, it lost four
hundred and twenty nine million euros Reuters reports that VW will name Bentley's head of production, Peter Bosch, as Cariad's new leader, and no doubt some of you will question, why would you put a manufacturing guy in charge of software development. VW also owns Lamborghini, which reports its own earnings, and Lambeau
is having the time of its life. It sold two thousand, six hundred
and twenty three cars and all time record revenue hit seven hundred and twenty eight million euros, and it posted an operating profit of two hundred and sixty million.
Not only are those all time records, but Lambo's operating profit margin hit almost thirty eight percent, which is a stunningly good number. And to top
it all off, Lamborghini's production is completely sold out until the end of next year. EV sales are jumping in Germany. They shot up thirty four percent
in April, with German car buyers buying nearly thirty thousand b evs, which accounted for fourteen point seven percent of all new car sales. The market leaders
where the Volkswagen brand with over five thousand evs sold. Tesla was second with
around twenty four hundred. Mercedes sold two thousand three hundred and twenty. Audi
had one thousand, eight hundred and seventy five, and BMW rounds out the top five with one thousand, eight hundred and twenty three EV sold. Meanwhile,
sales of p has dropped forty five percent to fewer than twelve thousand cars for all brands. It looks like General Motors will still build its fourth US
battery plant in New Carlisle, Indiana. GM was originally going to open the
plant with LG Energy Solution, but that deal fell apart in January, so last month GM announced it was going with Samsung SDI instead. GM had received
tax incentives to open the plant, but the city council needs to amend the incentives since GM is changing partners. The three billion dollar plant is expected to
start producing batteries in twenty twenty six. We follow the Chinese auto industry because
it has such an impact on the industry as a whole, and it's absolutely amazing to see the pace at which new vehicles come out, especially electric ones.
It's nearly every day that there's something new for consumers. That's great,
but how many more brands and models can the market support. Reuters reports that
at least twenty new electric SUVs launched in China just in April, and that's on top of the ninety three models already crowding the market. That growth has
pushed electric suv sales from about three thousand and twenty twenty to one and a half million last year. But here's the problem. The top ten brands accounted
for eighty four percent of those sales, so everyone else is fighting for the scraps, which helps explain the EV price war in China, and buyers are going for electric SUVs as the price gap narrows with ice vehicles, But it also means that profits are lower and some of the brands won't be able to survive, which probably does need to happen, and that's why we're now seeing them turn to exports. Some China experts believe that the government will subsidize exports
to relieve the pressure, and that means they could end up taking their price war with them, and that's bad news for just about any other automaker that's in the EV segment. So it seems only fitting to follow up that story
with another story about a new electric car coming out of China, Baojan, which is part of the GM Saic Wooling joint venture revealed that it's small modern electric vehicle called the YEP will also be sold as a truck, but it's so short it's more like a high riding ute or insert your own favorite comparison here. As for powertraining, the YEP features a fifty kilowatt or sixty eight
horse power electric motor, so speed tops out at one hundred kilometers an hour or sixty two miles an hour, and it also has an LFP or lithium iron phosphate battery that provides up to three hundred and three kilometers or one hundred and eighty eight miles of range. No word on pricing for the truck,
but the suv is said to go on sale this June with a starting price around fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars. Daimler is making updates to the electric
version of its large bus called the Cidero that first launched in twenty eighteen, and we think the big news here is that it gets improved battery cell chemistry and optimize pack layout and a new thermal management system. The NMC or nickel
meganese cobalt cells have a new anode cathode and electrolyte. Depending on the setup,
a pack in the ECIDO can be as big as six hundred and eighty six kilowatt hours. It says in our ticulated bus with the setup will average
two hundred and twenty kilometers or one hundred and thirty six miles of range.
The non articulated version, which has a five hundred and eighty eight kilowatt hour battery, will provide two hundred and eighty kilometers or about one hundred and seventy five miles of range on average. Charging rate of up to one hundred and
fifty kilowatts is capable out of a standard plug station, or three hundred kilowatts is capable if it uses a pantograph or charging rail. BYD is expanding its
business in Southeast Asia. The automaker was the top selling EV brand in Thailand
in April, with one thousand, seven hundred and forty four vehicles sold, which accounted for forty five percent of all the evs sold in the country.
And Reuters reports that BYD will open a factory in Vietnam to build electric vehicles, but it's not known how much it will invest. It also wants to
form a local supply chain in the country. And speaking of Vietnam, mining
of rare earth metals soared in the country, with countries and companies wanting to reduce their reliance on China for the minerals. According to the US Geological Survey,
mining of rare earths increased from four hundred metric tons in twenty twenty one to forty three hundred tons last year. That's pretty small compared to China,
which produced two hundred and ten thousand tons of rare earth in twenty twenty two.
But Vietnam is estimated to have the second largest rare earth reserves in the world, so its production is expected to keep on increasing. And that brings
us to the end of today's show. Thanks for tuning in. Autoline Daily
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