AD #3990 - Tesla Stock Drops as Investors Wonder What Elon Is Doing; Lyft Posts First Time Profit; Lucid Predicts 1 Million Sales/Year

Speaker 1: This is outderligned daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Tesla stock shot up ninety percent

after last November's election. Investors figured that Elon Musk's role

in the Trump administration would benefit the company, and that raised his net worth by more than two hundred billion dollars, giving him a total of four hundred and forty two billion dollars according to Business Insider. But since Trump's inauguration

last month, Tesla's stock is down twenty three percent, wiping out more than forty two billion dollars of the fifty three year old South African's wealth. Some say that's because

of the controversial work Musk is doing with DOGE or the Department of Government Efficiency. Others say it's because Tesla's

sales are tanking as evie buyers turned off by musk politics are going to other brands. Others point to weak

Q four earnings, But the real reason the stock is fallen in five straight trading sessions seems to be that investors think that Musk is trying to do too many things instead of paying more attention to what's going on at Tesla. Elon also announced that he wants to buy

open AI for ninety seven point four billion dollars. The

Inflation Reduction Act helped spur tens of billions of dollars in investment in the US to build out the EV infrastructure, but last month President Trump pause funding given out by the legislation, which is putting that investment, along with thousands of jobs, at risk, and according to an Automotive News analysis of ATLAS public policy data, the overwhelming amount of that investment one hundred and five billion dollars, which is expected to create eighty four thousand jobs, is earmarked for

Republican leaning states, So some Republicans in Congress are calling on Trump to reform the legislation and not get rid of it altogether. The auto industry is also worried they'll

get stuck with excess capacity and stranded capital. Since just

a fraction of the EV manufacturing investments are operational, more than ninety percent of the projects are currently under construction or still in the planning phase. And one of those

automakers that's concerned is Ford. CEO Jim Farley said that

even though Trump has good intentions to help the auto industry, his plans to roll back EV subsidies and threats to increase tariffs on Canada and Mexico is creating quote a lot of cost and a lot of chaos. Farley says

the tariffs will benefit Korea, in, Japanese and European companies since they'll be less impacted by them. Democrats are also

pushing back against Trump suspending all EV charging infrastructure spending that's part of the five billion dollars NEV program. Nine

Democratic senators say the administration is illegally withholding three billion dollars of those funds that have already been appropriate, but so far they haven't taken any further action. And with

all this unpredictability regarding evs, it's no surprise to learn that JD powers forecasting that EV sales will remain flat this year. In the US, it predicts that one point

two million evs will be sold this year, accounting for nine point one percent of the overall new car market, or the same as it was last year. An intriguing

report from Done Insights says that Europe should learn from the Inflation Reduction Act and launch its own effort to build EV batteries or risk losing it all to China.

Michael Dunn, a well known China expert, says Europe should partner with Japanese and South Korean battery makers and ads that should copy China by demanding that any Chinese automaker that wants to sell cars in Europe needs to partner with the European automaker and that European automaker should be the majority owner. He also calls for higher tariffs on

finished battery cells and components, with a goal that Europe manufactures all of its own cells within three years. The

forty four page report titled Europe's Auto and Battery Industry Revolutionary Change or Extinction has a lot more insight and analysis, and we've got a link to it in the description box and transcript for today's show.

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Speaker 1: Peter Rollinson, the CEO of Lucid, thinks that by the early twenty thirties, the automaker will be making a million vehicles a year. One way it could get there is

with an expanded lineup. Lucid launched the Gravity Suv at

the end of last year, and by the end of next year it plans to start making vehicles off a new midsize platform. The automaker already produces the most efficient

EV powertrain on the market, which allows it to cut cost, and it says that approach will have cascading effect on its new mid sized vehicles, which will start around fifty thousand dollars. Rolinson says that's when Lucid can start competing

directly with Tesla. He also thinks that at about ten years, people,

especially those that live in cities, will start to realize they don't need as much EV range for daily driving, and he expects to offer vehicles that can travel roughly one hundred and eighty miles on a charge The other way Lucid will reach a million vehicles a year is by working with other automakers. It already has a deal

to supply Aston Martin with its EV powertrain, and Rollinson says it's in talks with several other companies about similar deals.

Last week, Nissan shocked the industry by calling off a possible merger with Honda. Nissan says it's still looking for

a new partner and prefers to team up with a tech company that's based in the US. But Taiwan Ees

electronic contract manufacturer fox Con has been interested in a partnership with Menissan since last year, and fox CON's chairman just came out and said that it's interested in cooperating with Nissan. He said that the tech company could take

a stake in Nissan and that it would be open to acquiring Renault's thirty six percent stake in the automaker.

Both Nissan and Renault declined to comment. Lift the ride

haling company looks like it finally achieved an important milestone.

It was fully profitable last year, the first time the company posted a full year gap profit. The company only

made twenty two point eight million dollars in net profits, but that compares to a loss of three hundred and forty million dollars the year before. It provided eight hundred

and twenty eight million rides, up nearly seventeen percent. Revenue

shot up thirty one percent to five point seven billion, and it generated seven hundred and sixty six million dollars in free cash flow, which gives management a lot of money to play around with. Even so ins were not

very impressed. The stock dropped nearly five percent after the

earnings report. How do you brag that you've got the

best sports car of all? One way is to show

that it's faster than anyone else. Chevrolet took the Corvette

ZR one to different racetracks in the US and started smashing production car lap records. It now holds the top

time at Roade America and Roade Atlanta, on one of the courses at Watkins Glen, and at two of the courses at the Virginia International Speedway, and Chevy says it used four different drivers to set those records. The ZR

one is currently the top version of the Corvette, and it starts at just under one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars and Speaking of cars on the track, Portia and Michelin have developed a new wet weather racing tire.

The new Michelin Pilot sport S five has been tailored for the nine nine to two generation of the Portcha nine to eleven GT three RS, specifically for track use in wet conditions. Rain can sometimes spell the end of

a track day event, but with the right set of tires, it doesn't necessarily have to. And that brings us to

the end of today's show. Thanks for making autoline a

part of your day.

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AD #3990 - Tesla Stock Drops as Investors Wonder What Elon Is Doing; Lyft Posts First Time Profit; Lucid Predicts 1 Million Sales/Year

Lucid Gravity

Chevrolet Corvette

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