Hybrid vehicle sales are outpacing EV growth in the US, with Ford and Toyota making hybrids more affordable and popular. BMW reported a 74% increase in BEV sales last year, while CATL showed strong battery sales but signs of slowing factory utilization. The NTSB is investigating a fatal crash involving Ford's Blue Cruise system. VinFast is expanding its EV charging network, and China’s competitive market sees new low-cost brands and price cuts. India is cutting EV import taxes to attract Tesla, while consumer studies reveal positive public sentiment toward EVs despite negative media coverage.
Topics:hybrid sales growthford f-150 hybrid pricingbmw electric vehicle salescatl battery productionntsbs ford blue cruise investigationvinfast ev charging networkchina ev market competitionindia ev import tax policyconsumer attitudes toward evselectric vehicle market trends
- U.S. Hybrid Sales Surging - BMW’s BEV Sales Up 74% Last Year - CATL Earnings Show Warning Signs - NTSB Opens Investigation into Ford BlueCruise - VinFast Expands Automotive Empire - Xpeng, BYD and Xiaomi Launch New Vehicles in China - India Cuts EV Import Taxes to Help Lure Tesla - Negative EV News Not Having an Impact on Consumers
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While the growth of EV sales are down in the US, hybrids are surging. Morgan Stanley says hybrid sales grew five times faster than EV's in February,
and according to Autofourcast Solutions, hybrids will account for as much as twenty percent of light vehicle production in North America by twenty twenty five, compared to fourteen percent for evs. Auto Forecast says the outlook for EV's has dropped by
about a million units in the last year, while hybrids have grown by about the same amount. Part of the reason for the surge is that there's no
longer a premium price for hybrids in some cases. For example, Ford is
now charging the same price for an F one to fifty hybrid as a gas only a model equipped with a three and a half liter Eco boost engine.
Because of that, Ford expects to double the share of F one fifty hybrids to twenty percent of sales this year. Meanwhile, Toyota says there's only a
fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars price gap between its hybrids and gas models, while in the past it was as much as six to seven thousand dollars, and because they're more affordable, Toyota expects hybrids to account for forty five percent of its sales in the US this year. Two days from now, BMW
will report its full earnings for last year, but in the meantime, it released some interesting figures on its sales of electrified cars. It sold almost three
hundred and seventy six thousand BEVs in twenty twenty three, up and astonishing seventy four percent, and they accounted for fifteen percent of all the vehicles the company sold. Globally, it sold over one hundred and ninety thousand phebs and so
its total electrified sales combined were up a solid thirty percent. Not bad for
a legacy auto maker which has yet to come out with an EV built on a dedicated EV platform, and from a CEO Oliver Zipsa, who was once an EV skeptic. CTL, the world's largest EV battery maker, reported its
earnings for last year, and while the numbers are impressive, there's also some warning signs that are starting to flash. It posted revenues of fifty five point
six billion dollars, up a strong twenty two percent, and net profits of six point one billion, up an impressive forty three percent, and it announced a dividend of seven dollars a share. That growth came from strong ANYV sales
in China, but one third of CTL sales also come from overseas markets.
It supplies batteries to Tesla, Ford, BMW, Daimler, Stalantis, the Volkswagen Group, Honda, and Honda. But CTL's fourth quarter didn't look all
that great. Revenue drop one percent, and its factory utilization fell from eighty
three percent down to seventy percent. Even so, CTL continues to add more
capacity, so it's either going to be beautifully placed for more EV sales or it's going to find itself with more factories than it needed. The National Transportation
Safety Board announced its open and investigation into a fatal crash involving a Ford Mustang Machee. It wants to determine if the automaker's driver assistance system, called Blue
Cruise was activated during the accident. The machie struck a Honda CRV that had
stopped in a lane on Interstate ten in San Antonio, Texas. The driver
in the CRV died from their injuries in the crash. A Ford spokesperson said
they informed the NTSB as soon as it learned about the crash and that it will cooperate with the investigation. The NTSB show would release a preliminary report within
thirty days. But here's one thing we'd love to see the NTSB do.
We know these reports are important, but we always get a ton of media coverage when these hands free systems are involved in a crash. What we never
hear about are the accidents they prevent from happening. It would be great if
the NTSB made that kind of info available as well. We want to know
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your data. The billionaire who founded Vietnamese ev startup VinFast fam nat Voang sorry
if I mispronounced that, is trying to create what I would call his own little automotive empire. On top of VinFast, he also created his own taxi
company in Vietnam called green sm and now he's going to build out a global EV charging network called v Green. The company will invest about four hundred million
dollars over the next two years to expand its charging stations, but so far VinFast has been very reliant on these other operations. V Green will take over
the EV startups current charging network. It will only open new stations and key
markets where VinFast sells cars, and it will only consider opening up the network to other brands after five years. Also, last year, it sold nearly
thirty five thousand evs, but over seventy percent of those sales went to the founder's green sm taxi company, So it's going to need to attract some new customers in order to stick around for a long time. And here's several examples
of how hyper competitive the Chinese car market is. Xpung is going to launch
a new entry level small car brand for global marks, which it says will happen soon. The vehicles will be priced between roughly fourteen thousand and twenty thousand
dollars, feature AI and varying levels a smart driving tech. But here's the
thing. Despite being a well known name, Xpung only sold a little more
than one hundred and forty one thousand, five hundred vehicles last year, which missed estimates by about sixty thousand units, and experts question if it can even maintain its current sales rate and improve profitability. Yet despite all that, it's
still trying to expand, and the pricing war has moved on from just pure electric cars. BYD has started slashing the prices of its peehubs as well.
Writers reports it cut the starting price of its sealed Dmiidan, which debuted as the Destroyer seven, by over eleven percent, which would bring its starting price down to just over twenty thousand dollars. And even though we keep seeing price
cuts and talk of new low cost brands, more companies are entering the market.
Phone turned automaker Jomi is kicking off deliveries of its first EV in China.
As we reported recently, it formed a joint venture to make batteries with COTL, and it says it will take orders for its cars at some of its existing stores. India just approved a new policy to help lure EV manufacturers
into the country, specifically Tesla. India is lowering import taxes for electric vehicles
as long as the company invests at least five hundred million dollars and starts domestic production within three years. India currently imposes a tax of seventy or one hundred
percent on imported evs, depending on their value. Under the new rule,
automakers can import up to eight thousand evs a year that cost thirty five thousand dollars or more at a tax rate of fifteen percent. Tesla wants to jump
into the Indian market, but the government wants a commitment for local manufacturing first.
Last year, it was reported that Tesla offered to produce its upcoming entry level model as long as India cut taxes on EV imports. And so the
new policy maybe all it takes to lure Tesla into India. There's been a
ton of negative news in the media about electric vehicles lately, that sales are falling and that no one wants them. But is that negative news really having
an impact on what the general public thinks about them? On Autoline After Hours
last week, we had Ksey Boyce from a company called Escalin that does a lot of consumer studies, and here's what he had to say. We ran
a study actually at the end of last year because you know, as we all know, the industry press was talking about, oh my gosh, you know, EDI's are never going to sell the days of growth or over the sky is falling, and we wanted to see whether consumers were picking up on that right like we're all talking about it, And what we found is consumers weren't seeing it. So, you know, forty two percent felt like EV's
were moving in a positive direction. You had another thirty or forty percent that
we're saying, you know, they're kind of the same way that they were, and only a few that were saying that they're moving in a more negative direction. Consumers were saying, automakers are selling as many as they can make,
automakers are making a profit on every EV. You know, all of
these things. You know, we can dissect a little bit in terms of
whether it's true or not, but in terms of the consumer psyche, they're kind of looking at it and saying, yeah, no, it's kind of full steam ahead here. That show has a ton of great insights into what
consumers think about electric vehicles, which is why we titled the show Who Will Buy Evs and Who Will Not? And we have another great show coming up
this Thursday when Mickey Bli, the head of Global Propulsion Systems at Stalantis, will be on the show. We'll get into a bunch of things with them,
but especially that range extender that they developed for the Ram pickup, so don't miss out on it. But that brings us to the end of today's
show. Thanks for making autoline a part of your day. Auto Line Daily
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