AD #3780 - Wall Street Worried About Tesla Q1 Sales; Stellantis U.S. Could Drop To #6; Plenty of EV Demand If the Price Is Right

This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to all of you enthusiasts of the global automotive in district. Shoun's out today, so I'm filling in and Wow.

Wall Street has itself in a tizzy over Tesla's first quarter sales. Analysts

are sure that Tesla is going to report a drop in sales in the forecast range anywhere from a drop of two percent to six percent compared to the fourth quarter of last year. The key is going to be to see if sales

drop below last year's first quarter. A year ago, Tesla sold four hundred

and twenty two thousand, eight hundred and seventy five cars. Anything below that

could trigger another drop in the stock price, which is down twenty nine percent this year. But Tesla could also prove all those analysts wrong. It started

offering free full self driving for the first month of ownership, as well as one thousand dollars discounts and free charging. Even so, sale Agina slowed dramatically

along with the rest of the market there so far this year, and that eco attack on the plant in Berlin stopped production there for nearly two weeks, so Tesla can always blame outside factors if sales do drop below where they were a year ago, but part of the problem with sales of Tesla's may have to do with Elon Musk himself. Reuters talked to five marketing polling in car

experts who say substantial numbers of the public are turned off by Musk's right wing politics and his controversial public statements, and if they're in the market for an ev many of them have crossed Tesla off their shopping list. In a US

survey by a company called Civic Science, forty three percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of Musk, and that's up from thirty four percent two years ago. Even so, the brand has the highest lawyer in the industry.

Sixty eight percent of people who buy at Tesla buy another one when they're in the market for a new car. Wow. There's been a lot of

management changes at Stalantis North America ever since former COO Mark Stewart left to become the CEO of Goodyear a month ago. Stella shuffled the top executives handling retail

sales, commercial sales, and Stalantis Canada. And now we've got some insight

into why this is happening. Cox Automotive reports that the Hyundai Group, which

of course includes Hundai, Kia, and Genesis the Honda Group, could outsell Stalantis in the first quarter in the US market. In fact, Cox Automotive

says Honda might even out sell Stella by the end of the year, and if that happens, Stalantis could drop to being the number six automaker behind General Motors, Ford, Toyota, the Hyundai Group, and Honda. You know,

there's a very strong buy American sentiment in the United States right now, but not when it comes to making steel. Automakers in the US are telling

the Biden administration they do not want US steel to be sold to another American company. They want it sold to a Japanese company. President Biden wants US

steel to be domestically owned, and the American steel company called Cleveland Cliffs wants to buy it. But automakers say that would give Cleveland Cliffs control of up

to ninety percent of the steel used to make cars in the US and one hundred percent of the steel used to make ev motors and electric vehicles. Automakers

believe that would give Cleveland Cliffs a monopoly, which they believe would lead to higher prices for steel, and they much prefer seeing US steel being sold to Nippon Steel from Japan, which is offering to buy it for fourteen point nine billion dollars. When the elements are working against you, being confident in your

grip on the road is what really matters. Breach through the lens of hires

improved acceleration in wet conditions. The EPA is cracking the gg whip with heavy

duty trucks and buses. It just issued the strictest emission standards for them.

The new rules are for the model years twenty twenty seven through twenty thirty two, and the EPA says they'll prevent up to one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions from being omitted over the next thirty years and that will provide thirteen billion dollars in health benefits. The rules are different for the type of vehicle and

how it's used. For example, thirty percent of heavy duty vocational trucks and

forty percent of short hauled daycabs need to be zero tailpipe emissions by twenty t two. The trucking industry is not happy, and two groups that represent it

issued statements blasting the new standards. They claim the rules are not feasible with

current EV technology and that the charging infrastructure is not adequate. The trucking groups

also argue the rules will cause supply chain failures and that smaller independent trucking companies will hold onto diesel trucks longer, hurting the EPA's goals. However, the

EPA says the rules were crafted to give owners a choice of power trains and that the new trucks will save operators three and a half billion dollars in fuel and other costs, which will help to pay for the new EV. Researchers

at the oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee say they've achieved a significant milestone for wireless ed charging. They just demonstrated the highest wireless power transfer level for a

light passenger vehicle using a pollyphase electromagnetic coupling. There is a mouthful, but

anyway, Using a polyphase electromagnetic coupling coil patented by Oakridge, the researchers wirelessly charged a Hyundai Kona EV at one hundred kilowatts with ninety six percent efficiency.

Oakridge says its system reaches power densities eight to ten times higher than conventional coil technology and can increase the battery charge state by fifty percent in under twenty minutes.

Wireless charging could help ev adoption since drivers would merely have to park their vehicle over a charging pad instead of having to get out, get a cable and plug it in. Nissan and Mitsubishi already developed many cars together for the

Japanese market, and now they're partnering to develop vehicles for the North American market for the first time ever. Nissan's first plug in hybrid for North America will

use it's Abishi components, and it's Abishi will launch an electric vehicle with Nissans tech. In addition to that, the two companies will jointly develop a pickup

truck that's going to get built in Mexico. It's a one ton pickup that

could be the replacement for the Frontier, with BEV and p HAD versions being considered, but it's still a ways off. It's not going to hit the

market until sometime between twenty twenty seven and twenty thirty one. The two companies,

which have been alliance partners since twenty sixteen, are teaming up on products in order to save on development costs. UHH. This doesn't sound very good

for Volkswagen or General Motors in China. Reuters reports that SAIC, which makes

cars for those automakers, is going to slash its workforce by thirty percent at the assembly plants that make cars for GM and ten percent for the ones that make Volkswagens. SAIC will also cut half the workers at an EV subsidi called

Rising Auto. You know, it's extremely unusual for government owned Chinese automakers to

resort to layoffs, since the main reason those companies exist is to generate jobs.

Reuter's reports the headcount reduction will come from implementing stricter performance standards and offering buyouts to lower rated employees. But Reuter's also reports that SAIC, VW,

and GM are denying that they're going to cut headcount. One thing's for sure,

VWS and GM sales in China have been falling fast. Well, one

thing's for sure. If evs aren't selling very well, shopping the price makes

a big difference. US sales of the Mustang Machi fell more than fifty percent

in January when it lost it's three thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars tax credit. That happened when the Biden administration tightened up eligibility for subsidies based on

where materials and components are sores. So Ford cut the price by more than

eight thousand dollars and the impact was immediate. Sales shot up sixty four percent

in February, and we'll see how well they did in March when Ford reports at sales this Wednesday. The data analytics firm Cloud Theory says, this shows

there's actually a lot of demand for evs as long as the price is right.

And that wraps up today's report. And you know, if you like

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AD #3780 - Wall Street Worried About Tesla Q1 Sales; Stellantis U.S. Could Drop To #6; Plenty of EV Demand If the Price Is Right

Hyundai Genesis

Hyundai Kona

Nissan Frontier

Ford Mustang

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