Automotive Ventures Weekly Intel Report | Apr 29 2024
Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters
BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | APR 29 2024 | VIEW ONLINE
Steve is the opening keynote speaker at this week's Autonomous e-Mobility Forum in Doha, Qatar. | Doha News
What We're Reading
Automotive
Ford's battery-electric–oriented Model e division lost $1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2024: losing $130,000 per vehicle on the approximately 10,000 EVs it sold in the quarter. | Car and Driver
Hertz reported a loss that was nearly three times worse than analysts expected as it accelerated sales of electric vehicles to reduce its fleet of Tesla models that have weighed on profits for the past year. The car rental company took a $195 million charge for the depreciation of an additional 10,000 EVs that Hertz is now holding for sale. | Bloomberg ($)
Since the second quarter of 2022, Tesla’s average price has dropped by about $12,000, but the cost of manufacturing has fallen by less than $5,000. More than half the gross profit per vehicle has vanished. (All these numbers exclude greenhouse gas credits). Operating margins were crushed to 5.5%, the lowest level in three years and even lower than those of GM. The company reported its first quarter of negative free cash flow since early 2020. | Bloomberg ($)
Before there was Elon Musk, there was Billy Durant, who built one of the world’s biggest makers of horse-drawn carriages, bought control of Buick, co-founded General Motors, was forced out of General Motors, co-founded Chevrolet, regained control of General Motors, speculated on stocks, lost control of General Motors a second time, started Durant Motors, went bankrupt in the Depression, opened a bowling alley, suffered a stroke and died penniless in 1947. It’s highly unlikely that Musk, one of the world’s richest people, will die penniless, but in other respects he and Durant have a lot in common. They are, or in the case of Durant were, both brilliant, restless builders of empires and defiers of convention who experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows of business. | The New York Times ($)
Beyond their slowing automotive business, Tesla has positioned itself to be on the edge of another, perhaps more crucial part of the green transition: delivering and storing America’s power. Tesla’s EV chargers are ascendant, if not dominant, as are its huge batteries that store renewable energy for homes and even entire neighborhoods. Profits from Tesla’s energy business were up 140% compared with the same period last year, and Elon Musk asserts that the division will continue to grow “significantly faster than the car business.” | The Atlantic ($)
Even by Tesla standards, this year has been unruly. Its stock has slid more than 40% amid slumping sales, confusing product decisions and more price cuts. Musk has ordered up the company’s biggest layoffs ever and staked its future on a next-generation, self-driving vehicle concept called the robotaxi. | Bloomberg ($)
Why are U.S. roads so dangerous? Other countries with high rates of SUV ownership aren’t experiencing the same spike in pedestrian deaths. And the problem can't be attributed to how many more miles Americans drive: “Even after adjusting for distance driven, US fatality rates remain double the rich-world average. The main reasons American roads are so unsafe stem from how they drive, not how much.” | Financial Times ($)
Formula E debuted their Gen3 Evo, the fastest accelerating FIA single-seater in the world by current standards: capable of accelerating a full second faster than the Gen3 version, going from 0 to 60 mph in 1.82 seconds (0-100 kph in 1.86 seconds). It explained that that time is 30% faster than a 2024 Formula 1 car and 36% faster than the Gen3 EV currently used in races. | Engadget
️Electric Vehicles (EVs)
The latest forecasts from global technology intelligence firm ABI Research found that global EV sales are expected to grow by 21% in 2024 and 19% in 2025. This represents a significant decline from growth rates of 31% in 2023 and 60% in 2022. | The Buzz EV News
Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker told staff during an all-hands meeting on Thursday that the company was in talks with four automakers for a potential buyout. | Business Insider
Major shipping companies such as UPS and FedEx have been touting plans to electrify their fleets for years, but their PR-friendly EV transition is quickly losing steam. | The Drive
In a little more than two years, Amazon has installed more than 17,000 chargers at about 120 warehouses around the US, making the retail giant the largest operator of private electrical vehicle charging infrastructure in the country. | Bloomberg ($)
In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed — enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State’s electricity. But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” — essentially, thrown away. | The Washington Post ($)
The vast global overproduction of electric cars at a time of stalling consumer demand is likely to result in millions of zero-emission vehicles being left unsold over the next two years and hasten price wars, according to private industry research. This is likely to benefit consumers but could send parts of the industry into crisis, experts say. Regulators and legislators, meanwhile, are likely to come under renewed pressure to rein back their ambitions to reduce carbon emissions, which has fuelled the electric car production boom. | The Times ($)
China
BYD and its 58-year-old founder Wang Chuanfu have reason to feel confident. The Chinese company now rivals Elon Musk’s Tesla for the world’s most dominant EV company. In China, by far the biggest auto market, BYD’s low-cost pure battery and plug-in hybrids account for about one-third of all new electric vehicles sold. But the ambition of BYD goes far beyond cars — and China’s borders. As the world tries to ditch fossil fuels, the company has positioned itself as a manufacturing powerhouse across a suite of green technologies. This ranges from its flagship lithium batteries, solar modules, electric-powered buses, trucks and trains to complex artificial intelligence and software used to control and connect transport and power systems. | Financial Times ($)
U.S. and European politicians have raised alarms that their domestic auto industries could be destroyed by a wave of cheap Chinese electric vehicles. But so far, China's top EV maker, BYD, has dramatically hiked export prices compared to what it charges at home rather than undercut foreign rivals. The goal: to rake in hefty profit margins the automaker can’t get in China amid fierce competition. In some foreign showrooms, BYD charges more than double — sometimes nearly triple — the price it gets for three key models in China, according to a Reuters review of the automaker’s pricing in five of its biggest export markets. | Reuters ($)
China has a long history of auto overcapacity, with more than 100 domestic brands churning out more vehicles than the country’s drivers buy each year. Yet the government continues to support unprofitable carmakers to keep producing as officials try to boost economic growth, preserve jobs and expand China’s role in the global electric-vehicle business. Such encouragement, which also comes in the form of subsidies to automakers, is adding cars to a global market that risks becoming more oversupplied. | The Wall Street Journal ($)
The Russian auto industry is being swamped by a flood of Chinese imports. Chinese automakers are exporting increasing numbers of cars to Russia at the expense of local manufacturers. The government has raised recycling, or salvage, fees on imported vehicles, but that hasn’t deterred China from aggressively expanding into Russia. Russia predicts domestic automakers will be forced to cut car production up to 50% if large discounts on Chinese cars continue to reduce demand for Russian cars. | Wards Auto
A made-in-China electric vehicle will hit U.S. dealers this summer offering power and efficiency similar to the Tesla Model Y, the world's best-selling EV, but for about $8,000 less. The EX30 from Volvo Cars, the Swedish luxury brand owned by China's GEELY, foreshadows the fierce competitive threat U.S. automakers could face from Chinese EV manufacturers that have surged far ahead of global rivals, especially on affordability. The $35,000 window sticker of Volvo's compact SUV hits a sweet spot in the U.S. market, where most buyers cannot afford most EVs. The competitive price reflects an unusual combination of Geely's China-specific cost advantages and Volvo's ability to skirt U.S. tariffs on Chinese cars because it also has U.S. manufacturing operations. | Reuters ($)
Marine
To cut costs and carbon emissions, cargo ships are putting a new spin on an ancient technology: the sail. Modern sails look more like airplane wings, smokestacks or balloons, and they use artificial intelligence to catch the wind. Sails can reduce an existing ship’s fuel consumption — and greenhouse emissions — by something like 10% or 20%, making them an attractive option for ship owners looking to cut costs or comply with environmental regulations. | The Washington Post ($)
Micromobility
There has never been a better time than right now to buy an e-bike:
E-bike prices are at all-time lows
More incentives are stacking up
E-bikes are increasingly common commuter tools.
| Electrek
Rail
Builders have officially broken ground on a new $12 billion train that could zoom travelers between Las Vegas and Los Angeles in just under two hours by the end of the decade. The new train, which is considered the first “high-speed” rail in the United States, could cut down commute time for travelers and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise be emitted from cars and planes. Brightline Trains, the firm responsible for the project, received $3 billion in support from the federal government as part of the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure law. | Popular Science
Autonomy / Robotics
Cities around the country have long been crying out for more control over how autonomous vehicles are deployed on their streets. In California, they might finally get their wish. A handful of AV-related bills, which made progress this month in their long journey through the state legislature, could put more restrictions on companies like Cruise, Motional, Waymo and Zoox. | TechCrunch
Amazon is rapidly advancing its use of robotics, deploying over 750,000 robots to work alongside its employees. While Amazon is bringing on hundreds of thousands of robots per year, the company is slowly decreasing its employee numbers. | Yahoo! Finance
Investing
Carta is now harvesting their transaction data to provide insights to investors and entrepreneurs raising money. | Carta
Car of the Week
We have a new "Car of the Week": a 2019 Porsche 935. | Bonhams Cars
Have a great week,
Steve Greenfield
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Notable & New
Steve is presenting at the AutosBuzz conference in Amsterdam on May 14th. | AutosBuzz
Thanks to Joe Overby at the Auto Intel Summit for moderating a great EV Debate between Scott Case from Recurrent and Steve. | Auto Intel Summit
Thanks to the team at Martiz for putting on a world-class event last week in Tucson, AZ. | Maritz Automotive
Automotive Ventures is proud to be a sponsor of the AutoTech Investments Summit on June 10th in Los Angeles. | Auto Tech Investments
Andrea Amico from Automotive Ventures portfolio company Privacy4Cars was quoted in The New York Times. | The New York Times ($)
18 Wheels provides is a patented suspension system comprising 18 wheels each with an electric motor and independently sprung. Environmentally friendly, it leaves no trace on the ground and effortlessly overcomes obstacles without causing any damage. | 18 Wheels
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