Tariffs on vehicles and parts from Mexico and Canada have triggered a sharp decline in North American auto stocks, with Toyota and Honda expected to feel the impact first due to low inventory. Tesla faces challenges with falling sales in China and insider stock sales, while BYD is surging with record sales and developing a new 1,000-volt EV architecture. The episode also covers mixed sales results from other automakers, challenges for Chinese EVs in Southeast Asia, and innovations like Neo's aluminum casting and battery swapping technology.
Topics:tariffs impactauto stock markettoyota and honda inventorytesla sales chinabyd sales growthev high voltage architecturechinese evs southeast asiaautomaker sales trendsneo aluminum castingbattery swapping technology
- Auto Stocks Tumble on Trump Tariffs - U.S. Tariffs Will Hurt Honda and Toyota First - Tesla Sales Plummet 49% in China - Tesla Chairperson Selling Off Stock - U.S. Car Sales Down in February - Volvo's Global EV Sales Fall 15% - GM Hires New Chief AI Officer - Ford's Lawler Joins ACEA Board - Chinese EV Sales Stall in SE Asia - BYD Raises $5.6 Billion in Stock Sale - BYD Develops 1,000 Volt Architecture - VW Charges Same for LFP ID.3 as NMC - NIO Develops Own Aluminum for Gigacastings
"...tastic February of the US, with Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis all setting monthly sales records. Mazda posted a..."
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Speaker 1: This is Autoline Gaily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. President Trump's tariffs on cars and
components imported from Mexico and Canada went into effect today and the impact was immediate. The stock prices of every
single automotive related company in North America fell. Overall, they
were down around three percent, and that includes all the automakers, all the suppliers, all the EV charging companies, and all the retailers. The Anderson Economic Group expects prices of new
vehicles coming into the US from Canada and Mexico to go up by four thousand dollars for passenger cars and up to ten grand for full size pickups and SUVs.
Automakers and dealers will likely pass those costs along to the customers, and that will almost certainly trigger a drop off in sales because customers with lower credit scores can't qualify for low and leases, and others are simply priced right out of the market. Here's our Auto Line insight.
This is why investors headed for the exits as soon as the terrace became official. But we're probably not going
to see the full impact of the terrace in the US for a few more months. Car dealers have two
point nine million vehicles in inventory right now, and until those are sold off, which will take months, prices will likely hold steady. But some automakers operate on very low inventory,
like Toyota with only twenty two days and Honda at thirty nine days. Both of them import hundreds of thousands
of cars into the US from Canada and Mexico, and so they'll be the first to feel the pain in about a month. But make no mistake about it, this
is going to financially hurt every North American company that has anything to do with the auto industry. On top
of sales falling twelve percent in California and fifty percent in the EU last month, there's more bad news for Tesla.
Now comes word that deliveries also fell forty nine percent in China. Tesla Shanghai shipped about thirty thou seven hundred
cars last month, which are wholesale numbers including exports. The
company reported its first drop in sales for the entire year in China in twenty twenty four, and it's still not showing any signs of recovering. Tesla really needs the
updated model. Why to be a smash hit and to
get training approval for FSD in China, or it's going to keep losing ground to automakers like BYD, which reported its sales shot up one hundred and sixty one percent.
Tesla's chairperson, Robin Denholm, has been selling off big chunks of her stockholdings in the company. She sold thirty three
point seven million dollars worth a stock this month, forty three point two million last month, and has sold over one hundred million dollars in the last three months, according to filings with the Securities in Exchange Commission. Tesla stock
had a big jump after Trump's successful run for the White House, but it's now down forty percent from that peak and is back to the same price it was on election day. More automakers are reporting sales for last month,
and it's a bit of a mixed bag. As we
reported yesterday, the Hundai Group had a fantastic February of the US, with Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis all setting monthly sales records. Mazda posted a two and a half percent
increase and Subaru's sales were up four percent last month. However,
it was a tough month for some of the larger automakers.
Ford sales were down nearly nine percent, Toyota was down about five percent, and Honda sales slipped almost three percent in February. Remember, some automakers only report sales on a
quarterly basis, but sales of the six automakers that did report totaled about six hundred and fifty four thousand units, which which was down two point seven percent compared to a year ago. And remember this is also before those
tears kicked in vol Those sales are kind of a reflection of customer interests right now. The automaker's global sales
of fully electric vehicles dropped fifteen percent last month to just over nine thousand, three hundred units, but sales of plug in hybrids increased eight percent to more than twelve thousand vehicles. Overall, Volvo sold fifty thousand, six hundred and
sixty two vehicles in February, up one percent compared to a year ago. He also reported its global sales, which
totaled two hundred and fifty three thousand, eight hundred and fifty vehicles last month, up four and a half percent from a year ago. Kia says the new k for
Sedan and the CRO's SUV helped drive that growth.
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Speaker 1: En Romoters is trying to build up its software capabilities and has hired Barak Tarovsky for a newly created role of Chief AI Officer. Tarovsky was most recently vice president
of AI at Cisco, and prior to that, he worked at Google for ten years. He'll report to Dave Richardson,
GM Senior VP of Software and Services Engineering and in other executive news Ford's vice chairman, John Lawler was appointed to join the board of the ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, a group that represents carmakers in Europe, and that's the same group that has said European automakers faced up to fifteen billion euros in fines for missing CO two targets this year, which look like they're getting relaxed.
There's an interesting report from Bloomberg that Chinese automakers are getting a reality check in Southeast Asia. After an initial
flurry of EV sales, things have slowed considerably or have even started to drop. EV sales in Indonesia, with a
population of two hundred and eighty one million people, are coming in well below sales targets. In Thailand, sales of
evs are actually falling, and in Vietnam customers are going for locally made Vinfest evs rather than Chinese ones. This
could turn around in the future as some Chinese automakers start building cars in Thailand in Indonesia, but it's clearly not going to be the cakewalk that many thought it would be, and all that expansion is also going to cost Chinese automakers a fortune, especially byd who also wants to increase sales to five to six million vehicles this year, up from just under four point three million last year, and hire more workers, even though it already had nearly a million employees as of last September. So to help
fund all its efforts, BYD sold off nearly one hundred and thirty million shares in the company at a slight discount, which brought in almost five point six billion dollars. It
was the largest transaction related to the auto industry in the last ten years, and the biggest of any kind in Hong Kong since twenty twenty one. Some of that
money is also earmarked for research and development, which includes a new high voltage platform for its evs. Reports say
BYD's new one thousand volt architecture will start slowly rolling out in the middle of this month, first with its higher end models. The company also plans to build a
network of ultra fast chargers, which may help explain that slow rollout, but those stations will allow more customers to take full advantage of the system's capabilities, which can add three hundred kilometers or about one hundred and eighty five miles of range in just five minutes of charging. Evs
with lithium iron phosphate or LFP batteries are almost always cheaper than ones with typical lithium ion batteries, but VW is charging the same starting price for the all new LFP powered ID three in China as it is for the version with a nickel, manganese, cobalt or NMC battery, But the specs of the NMC pack aren't that great, and the new LFP battery from CTL is about the same size, offers almost exactly the same range and only
slightly slower charging. LFP batteries are also generally safer and
longer lasting than NMC, so with both starting at roughly sixteen five hundred bucks, the LFP version might be more popular.
And in one last bit of China news, Neo revealed it made its own aluminum recipe that's meant specifically for high pressure die casting like Tesla's giga castings. Neo showed
how it could use the aluminum for large castings in the ET nine suv and the L sixty sedan, and it said it's also making the recipe available to the rest of the industry, which could bring in a much needed extra source of revenue for the company. And while
it's not related at all, here's something else we found interesting from Neo. It says over eighty three percent of
its owners use battery swapping instead of plug charging when driving along the expressway. But that brings us to the
end of today's show. Thanks for making autoline a part
of your day.
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