AD #3733 - Battery Plants Need 90% Yield to Make Profit; Tesla's Growth Slowed in 2023; Should Polestar Go Private Again?

This was Autoligned Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.

Tesla reported its financial numbers for last year, and on the surface, the numbers looked really good. It delivered one point eight million cars to customers.

Total revenues came to ninety six point seven billion dollars, up nineteen percent, and its net profit came up three dollars shy of fifteen billion dollars, which is up nineteen percent, But there's an asterisk that goes along with that profit number. The company was able to book a massive one time tax benefit

called a release of valuation allowance that put over five point seven billion dollars on the bottom line for the fourth quarter. Take that one time tax benefit out,

and profits were actually down twenty six percent, and things really slowed down for Tesla in the fourth quarter. Deliveries were up twenty percent, but automotive

revenue was only up one percent, and operating income plummeted forty seven percent compared to a year earlier. Elon Musk told analysts that Tesla's growth would slow even

more this year, and investors were clearly spooked by that news. Tesla shares

fell eight point six percent in after hours trading. Here's our auto line insight.

Tesla is still growing and solidly profitable, but it's not growing anywhere near its previous rates, so it needs a new strategy to get back to the growth that supports its massive stock valuation. One thing's clear, though, cost

cutting is not going to do it, because you can't cost cut your way to prosperity. Pollstar, Gilian Volvo's premium EV brand, is feeling the effects

of the slow down in EV demand. It's not hitting its sales target and

its stock is slumping. That's why Bernstein says Pollstar should be rolled back into

the group and made private because it's quote on a road to nowhere. Poll

Star, which listed in twenty twenty two, has seen its stock fall eighty two percent in the last year. It closed at two dollars and ten cents

a share yesterday on the NASDAC. The company delivered fifty four thousand, six

hundred vehicles last year, which was actually up six percent, but it was below its target of selling sixty to seventy thousand vehicles, and that was even a downgrade from an original target of eighty thousand deliveries. In twenty twenty three.

The fourth quarter of last year was especially bad, with deliveries dropping nearly forty percent. If the rotary engine ever goes away, it won't be for

lack of trying on Mazda's part. The automaker teased with talk of a new

rotary for years, and it finally started selling a rotary range extender in the electric MX thirty in Japan and Europe last year and sold twenty seven hundred in a little over a month. But even though it has this current model on

sale, Mazda doesn't have a standalone team working on rotary engines, which was disbanded in twenty eighteen. However, that's about to change. It created a

new R and D team of about thirty people that start on February first, working to develop rotaries that support its electrification efforts. It sounds like the main

effort is to clean up the carbon emissions of the engine, which could also include rotaries that run on hydrogen. Porsche revealed the all new all electric Macan.

It will initially be offered in two versions, the Macon four and the Macon Turbo. Both are all wheel drive and offer a battery pack with ninety

five kilowatt hours of usable space, which provides up to six hundred and thirteen kilometers or about three hundred and eighty miles of range on the WLTP test cycle.

The Macan four generates up to three hundred kilowats or four hundred and two horse power, and will do zero to one hundred kilometers an hour in five point two seconds. The Macon Turbo has up to four hundred and seventy kilowatts

or six hundred and thirty horse power, and will do zero to one hundred and three point three seconds. Porsche says the Macon can tow up to two

thousand kilograms or just over forty four hundred pounds, and it will also offer rear wheel steering for the first time. Thanks to its new eight hundred volt

electronic architecture, the Macon can charge add up to two hundred and seventy kilowats, which will take the battery from ten to eighty percent in as little as twenty one minutes. Those are the main highlights, but we'll provide a link

if you'd like to dig into more of the details. Customers can expect deliveries

to start in the second half of this year. Stillantis just made a purchase

that will help it accelerate its in vehicle software development. It bought the technology

and IP of AI company cloud Made, and forty four engineers and software developers will also be joining the company from cloud Made. Its technology collects and analyzes

data to provide personalized and predictive features to customers. But don't just think of

junk you don't want. It will enable a Stalantis specific personal assistant that can

also provide maintenance and diagnostic info, adapt to individual seat and temperature settings, offer more advanced navigation as well as pre trip planning, and even more.

Stillantis will use the technology to develop its smart cockpit for future vehicles. In

sticking with Stillantis for just a quick second. For the first time ever,

Jeep customers will be able to buy a two door Wrangler with thirty fives from the factory. It was first offered on the four door in twenty twenty one.

The tire package includes seventeen inch bedlock wheels wrapped in BF Goodrich all terrain tires, a four point five six to one axle ratio, and a one and a half in suspension lift. Price comes in just under forty five hundred

bucks. You know just about every single battery maker launching a new battery plant

goes through production Hell. Tall shoal Clopper, the CEO of Voltaic, a

company that does battery diagnosis, says getting battery production to scale is as difficult as getting there with microprocessors. In fact, he says battery makers should study

how microprocessor manufacturers went through production Hell thirty years ago and learn how they solved it. He says a big problem is that most companies don't budget enough money

to get through that production help even though they all go through it. Battery

plants only get a ten percent yield at launch, but they need a ninety percent yield to be profitable, and it typically takes four years and billions of dollars to get there. But after that, even a few percentage points of

improvement yields hundreds of millions more in profits. Shoal Clopper also predicts that lithium

ion will be the dominant ev chemistry for a long time. It's hit a

scale that will not be taught for years to come, and lithium ion batteries just keep improving. And one example of how they keep getting better is an

announcement from Itcheon National University in South Korea that improves the safety of separators in a battery. The separators keep the cathode and anode from touching so they don't

short out, but they can melt at high temperatures, so researchers figured out a way to coat the separators with silicon dioxide to prevent that from happening.

Before this development, researchers were working on ways to cover the separators with a ceramic coating, but that made the separator thicker and reduce the battery's performance.

So they developed the way to graft a uniform layer of silicon dioxide and other unnamed functional molecules onto a film of polypropylene. And its improvements like these that

are going to make EV batteries even better all the time. Earlier this week,

the US Postal Service kicked off its EV transition by opening its first charging station at a sorting and delivery center in Georgia, and it revealed new ford E transit delivery vans. Now it's adding even more evs to its fleet and

announced it will purchase six delivery vehicles from EV startup Canoe. The fully electric

models will be handed over to the Post office in the first quarter of this year. General Motors is bolstering its operations in Brazil and is investing one point

four billion dollars to upgrade its plans to build a new generation of ice vehicles.

GM also plans to import other models, including EVS, from North America to Brazil. The automaker says Brazil is a critical market and sees great opportunities

in the future for not only its vehicles, but also other businesses like on Star. Next year, GM will celebrate one hundred years of operating in Brazil.

Last week, Honda announced it's going to start building fuel cell versions of the CRV, and those fuel cells will be manufactured by GM. So are

fuel cells really going to catch on? Or will they always just be right

around the corner. We've got Charlie Freeze, the head of all fuel cell

development at GM, coming on Autoline after Hours this afternoon and we'll get to the bottom of whether or not the auto industry is going to play a significant roll in a hydrogen future. So join John and Gary and their colleague Lindsay

Brook when the action gets going at three pm Eastern times. But that brings

us to the end of this show. Thanks for tuning in Auto Line Daily

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AD #3733 - Battery Plants Need 90% Yield to Make Profit; Tesla's Growth Slowed in 2023; Should Polestar Go Private Again?

Porsche Macan

Ford E Transit

Honda Crv

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