Good morning! It’s Tuesday, May 23, 2023 and that is it morning shiftYour daily report of the most important automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
First gear: Ford only
Ford Capital Markets Day held an event in Dearborn yesterday for analysts and the media as decision makers In the company some wide-ranging statements. First, CEO Jim Farley believes car prices in general will fall through the rest of 2023 — which he tracks, Looking at the latest headlines —and he admitted that Ford still sells gas-powered cars and should consider marketing them, because that’s what at least nine of the ten shoppers still buy. from bloomberg:
Ford Motor Co. expects auto prices to drop more than 5% this year and next as dealer inventories grow, and competitive pressure will affect Tesla Inc.’s dominance. on the electric vehicle market.
“They had the market to themselves, and they had a great head start,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said of Tesla in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “Now they see more pressure.”
Farley said Ford plans to increase marketing spending on its conventional internal combustion engine vehicles in response to lower prices. The automaker relies on gasoline-powered models like the F-Series pickup truck and Bronco sport utility vehicle to fund its $50 billion electric vehicle rollout plan.
“We’re going to have to spend more this year and prices will go down,” Farley said. On fuel-powered models, “we invested less in advertising.”
However, Kumar Galhotra, who leads Ford’s internal combustion division, believes that today’s high profit margins on gas cars are here to stay, and will only increase over the next few years, Auto News:
Galhotra said…combustion vehicle profit margins will grow from 7.2 percent today to at least 10 percent by 2026. These growth plans are driven by the company’s focus on profitable automotive segments and low-margin, low-cost derivatives.
“The truck, off-road and performance segments have a long runway,” Galhotra said.
However, he said Ford Blue’s size and margins are likely to shrink after 2025 as electric vehicles gain popularity. Despite the eventual business downturn, Galhotra noted that Ford sees “strong ICE sales in the US and hybrid sales well into the next decade.”
… while CFO John Lawler wants Wall Street to know stronghold He knows it failed last yearwhen it missed its expected pre-tax earnings About $1 billion thanks to a very large number of recoveriesCertainly more than the normal amount. politeness Reuters:
“You won’t believe us until we start delivering it,” John Lawler, Ford’s chief financial officer, said in a presentation for Investor Day. “Because we told you this before. This is the truth. We have it and we haven’t been given it. So we have to prove it. We can talk about it, but we have to prove it.”
Prices will go down but Ford will be more profitable – actually this time not like it said it would go down and didn’t in 2022. Also, It’ll dump all its junk, build high-quality cars, and run its cash-bleeding electric business in three years. Ford can’t necessarily prove that all of these things will happen, but investors just have to believe it. He’s confused because he cares.
Second gear: Tesla cars that export to China
Tesla has begun exporting its lower-cost models from China for sale in Canada. Reuters It reported on Tuesday, citing information on Tesla’s Canadian website:
Tesla’s website showed both a rear-wheel-drive Model Y and a long-range all-wheel-drive version of the Model 3 available for immediate delivery in British Columbia, with codes showing it was built at Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai.
Both models are eligible for a C$5,000 ($3,700) federal incentive in Canada, which, unlike the United States, does not tie electric vehicle subsidies to the location of the factory that made the vehicle.
Tesla representatives in China and at the company’s US headquarters did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The company and other electric vehicle manufacturers have a cost advantage in China as exports from this market boom. The Chinese-made version of the Model Y is listed for $61,990 in Canada. That’s about 22% more than an equivalent car costs in China before incentives.
Reuters believes that since Canada allows foreign cars to qualify for incentives – because Canada understands that The original purpose of these incentives in the first place – Tesla could allocate all of its North American production to the United States, where these cars would get discounts. The move also makes sense because the Shanghai factory alone accounts for more than half of Tesla’s worldwide production right now, so product save.
Third gear: Lotus / Alpine snowboard partnership
Lotus and Alpine had to work together on a joint sports car that would replace the A110. That engagement was announced in 2021, but two years later, one side seems to have cooled off the idea and it’s no longer meant to be. from Auto News:
“We decided not to make progress on the joint development of an Alpine sports car. We decided not to make progress,” Lotus said in a statement emailed to Automotive News Europe on Monday, and an Alpine spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that Renault is considering using its own technology to develop future Alpine models rather than working with Lotus. However, Lotus, which is majority owned by China’s Geely, hinted that the two companies could collaborate on other future models. “We have built a strong relationship between the two companies and will continue to discuss further opportunities,” Lotus said Monday in its statement. Renault and Geely collaborate on other projects, including a combustion engine company called Horse and vehicle production at Renault’s plant in Busan, South Korea.
Renault and Geely are both big companies that could probably figure out these challenges on their own if they really wanted to. But sports cars are inherently low-volume, and at a time when not even Toyota was going it alone, a collaboration like this made a lot of sense. Alps is determined to go into electricity and Come on either way. Unfortunately by the time this happens, the A110 likely won’t be on the market anymore, or Alpine won’t see the point in adjusting it to US regulations.
Gear Four: Lordstown is fighting to stay listed
Lordstown announced its inevitable reverse stock split Tuesday morning, done for The purpose is to raise stock prices above $1 so that the company can stay on the NASDAQ. from Reuters:
Lordstown Motors Corp. on Tuesday announced a reverse stock split to meet Nasdaq listing criteria and appease investor Foxconn, who has threatened to cancel crucial $170 million in financing for the ailing electric car maker.
The company said the 1:15 split was scheduled for May 24, but added that there was no guarantee the Foxconn deal would close.
Shares of Lordstown Motors fell 10% in pre-market trading to $0.26, falling further below the minimum $1 listing requirement on Nasdaq.
The company had warned earlier this month that it may have to file for bankruptcy due to uncertainty about the investment from Foxconn.
A year ago, the startup completed a deal to sell its Ohio factory for $230 million to Foxconn, minus some assets.
It’s getting harder to see what the electric pickup truck can do Make it out this one.
Fifth Gear: Link & Co., Europe
Lynk & Co, a Geely brand with a strange name but cool-looking electric cars, wants to insert itself into Europe’s luxury luxury brand family. While the company currently sells and leases its cars to customers on the continent, it’s still very much in the growth stages – eyeing a showroom in France early next year and continuing to expand across the rest of Europe, including the UK from Reuters:
The automaker, which both sells and rents cars, has what it calls clubs, which look like bars or lifestyle shops, in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy. […]
“We have plans to enter other European markets in the short term: Norway, Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom,” said Visser, who worked at General Motors, Ford and Volvo before Link.
Visser said Link has the “ambition” to also expand into the US market at some point. […]
In 2022, Chinese-made electric vehicles accounted for 9% of the market share in Europe, almost double the previous year, according to consultancy Inovev, and the pace is picking up.
Link says it had 200,000 monthly memberships in Europe as of April, of which about 25,000 were in France, up from 180,000 and 21,000, respectively, the previous month.
200,000 subscriptions sounds pretty good for a brand from China outside of China. And Gili may be able to bring Lynk to these shores one day, Current headwinds aside. It did manage to maintain a Volvo presence in the US, after all.
Rear: Land Rover Ranger
On this day in the year 2000, 23 years ago, BMW has ended its sale of Land Rover to Ford For $2.73 billion (about $4.8 billion in today’s money). Ford held the Land Rover for seven years – about a year longer than BMW had with the Rover group – before spinning it off to Tata where it has been around ever since.
Neutral: Shooting Brake Syndrome
I feel like this thing looks good and the entire auto world is drooling because it’s a shooting brake (read: enthusiastic bait) and somewhat catchy, which is more than anything an unfaithful person has said about a new BMW in the past four years. what you say?
#Ford #Wall #Street