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Runtime: 10:40
0:00 U.S. Hybrid Sales Surging
1:24 BMW’s BEV Sales Up 74% Last Year
2:11 CATL Earnings Show Warning Signs
3:21 NTSB Opens Investigation into Ford BlueCruise
4:44 VinFast Expands Automotive Empire
5:50 Xpeng, BYD & Xiaomi Launch New Vehicles in China
7:20 India Cuts EV Import Taxes to Help Lure Tesla
8:19 Negative EV News Not Having an Impact on Consumers
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
U.S. HYBRID SALES SURGING
While the growth of EV sales are down in the U.S., hybrids are surging. Morgan Stanley says hybrid sales grew five times faster than EVs in February. And according to AutoForecast Solutions hybrids will account for as much as 20% of light-vehicle production in North America by 2025, compared to 14% for EVs. AutoForecast says the outlook for EVs has dropped by a million units in the last year, while hybrids have grown by about the same amount. Part of the reason for the surge is that there’s no longer a premium price for hybrids in some cases. For example, Ford is now charging the same price for a F-150 hybrid as gas-only models equipped with a 3.5L EcoBoost engine. Because of that Ford expects to double the share of F-150 hybrids to 20% of sales this year. Meanwhile, Toyota says there’s only a $1,500 to $2,000 price gap between its hybrids and gas models, while in the past, it was as much as $6,000-$7,000. And because they’re more affordable, Toyota expects hybrids to account for 45% of its sales in the U.S. this year.
BMW’S BEV SALES UP 74% LAST YEAR
Two days from now, BMW will report its full earnings for last year, but in the meantime, it released some interesting figures on its sales of electrified cars. It sold almost 376,000 BEVs in 2023, up an astonishing 74% and they accounted for 15% of all the vehicles the company sold globally. It also sold over 190,000 PHEVs, and so its total electrified sales combined were up a solid 30%. Not bad for a legacy automaker which has yet to come out with an EV built on a dedicated EV platform, and who’s CEO Oliver Zipse was an EV skeptic.
CATL EARNINGS SHOW WARNING SIGNS
CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker, reported its earnings for last year, and while the numbers are impressive, there’s also some warning signs that are starting to flash. It posted revenues of $55.6 billion, up a strong 22%, and net profits of $6.1 billion, up an impressive 43%. And it announced a dividend of $7 a share. That growth came from strong NEV sales in China, but one third of CATL’s sales also came from overseas markets. It supplies batteries to Tesla, Ford, BMW, Daimler, Stellantis, Volkswagen Group, Hyundai, and Honda. But CATL’s fourth quarter didn’t look all that great. Revenue dropped 1% and its factory utilization fell from 83% down to 70%. Even so, CATL continues to add more capacity. So it’s either going to be beautifully placed for more EV sales, or it’s going to find itself with more factories than it needed.
NTSB OPENS INVESTIGATION INTO FORD BLUECRUISE
The National Transportation Safety Board announced it has opened an investigation into a fatal crash involving a Ford Mustang Mach-E. It wants to determine if the automaker’s driver assistance-system, BlueCruise, was activated during the accident. The Mach-E struck a Honda CR-V that had stopped in a lane on Interstate 10 in San Antonio, Texas. The driver in the CR-V died from their injuries in the crash. A Ford spokesperson said they informed the NTSB as soon as it learned about the crash and that it will cooperate with the investigation. The NTSB should release a preliminary report within 30 days. Here’s one thing we’d love to see the NTSB do. We always get a ton of media coverage when these hands-free systems are involved in a crash. What we never hear about are the accidents they prevent from happening. It would be great if the NTSB made that kind of info available as well.
VINFAST EXPANDS AUTOMOTIVE EMPIRE
The billionaire who founded Vietnamese EV startup VinFast, Pham Nhat Vuong, is trying to create what I would call his own little automotive empire. On top of VinFast he also founded his own taxi company in Vietnam, called Green SM, and now he’s going to build out a global EV charging network, called V-Green. The company will invest about $400 million over the next two years to expand its charging stations. But so far VinFast has been very reliant on these other operations. V-Green will take over the EV startup’s current charging network, it will only open new stations in key markets where VinFast sells cars and will only consider opening up the network to other brands after 5 years. Also, last year it sold nearly 35,000 EVs, but over 70% of those sales went to the founder’s Green SM taxi company. So, it’s going to need to attract some new customers in order to stick around for a long time.
XPENG, BYD & XIAOMI LAUNCH NEW VEHICLES IN CHINA
Here’s several examples of how hyper-competitive the Chinese car market is. XPeng is going to launch a new entry-level small car brand for global markets, which it says will happen soon. The vehicles will be priced between roughly $14,000 and $20,000, feature AI and varying levels of smart driving tech. But here’s the thing, despite being a well-known name, XPeng only sold a little more than 141,500 vehicles last year, which missed estimates by about 60,000 units, and experts question if it can even maintain its current sales rate and improve profitability. Yet, despite all that, it’s still trying to expand. And the pricing war has moved on from just pure electric cars. BYD has started slashing the prices of its PHEVs as well. Reuters reports it cut the starting price of its Seal DM-i sedan, which debuted as the Destroyer 07, by over 11%, which would bring its starting price down to just over $20,000. And even though we keep seeing price cuts and talk of new low-cost brands, more companies are entering the market. Phone maker turned automaker, Xiaomi is kicking off deliveries of its first EV in China. As we reported recently, it formed a joint venture to make batteries with CATL and says it will take orders for its cars at some of its existing stores.
INDIA CUTS EV IMPORT TAXES TO HELP LURE TESLA
India just approved a new policy to help lure EV manufacturers into the country, specifically Tesla. India is lowering import taxes for electric vehicles, as long as the company invests at least $500 million and starts domestic production within three years. India currently imposes a tax of 70% or 100% on imported EVs depending on their value. Under the new rule, automakers can import up to 8,000 EVs a year that cost $35,000 or more at a tax rate of 15%. Tesla wants to jump into the Indian market but the government wants a commitment for local manufacturing first. Last year, it was reported that Tesla offered to produce its upcoming entry-level model as long as India cut taxes on EV imports. And so the new policy may be all it takes to lure Tesla into India.
NEGATIVE EV NEWS NOT HAVING AN IMPACT ON CONSUMERS
There’s been a lot of negative news in the media about electric vehicles lately–that sales are falling, or that no one wants them. But is that negative news really having an impact on what the general public thinks about them? On Autoline After Hours last week, we had KC Boyce from a company called Escalent that does a lot of consumer studies, and here’s what he had to say.
“We ran a study actually at the end of last year, because as we all know, the industry press was talking all about, ‘Oh my gosh, EVs are never going to sell, the days of growth are over, the sky is falling.’ And we wanted to see if whether consumers were picking up on that, right? We’re all talking about it. And we found that consumers weren’t seeing it. 42% felt that EVs are moving in a positive direction. You had another 30 or 40% saying that they’re the same way they were, and only a small percentage saying that they’re moving in a more negative direction. Consumers were saying that automakers were selling as many as they can make; automakers are making a profit on every EV. You know we can dissect all these things a little bit in terms of whether it’s true or not. But in terms of the consumer’s psyche, they’re kind of looking at it and saying, ‘No, it’s kind of full steam ahead here.’”
That show has a ton of great insights into what consumers think about electric vehicles, which is why we titled the show “Who will buy EVs, and who will not.” And we have another great show coming up this Thursday when Mickey Bly, the head of global propulsion systems at Stellantis, will be on the show. We’ll get into a bunch of things with him, but especially that range extender that they developed for the Ram pickup. So don’t miss it!
But that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day.
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Now thay Autonews no longer considers Tesla a luxury car company, maybe now we can get back to Mercedes-Benz and BMW ruling the roost again!
Hybrid sales are up, though you can’t even buy a Prius or Sienna, at least where I am. Toyota needs to ramp up production of those while the market is hot.
I’d say the general public has no idea that state of EV sales. I think many are open to the idea and assume it’s still the future and that hasn’t really changed regardless of sales currently being up or down. The general public likely wont take a stance that they will or will not buy one at a future date they just wont say when that future date is.
I believe I fall into that group as I currently have very little interest in buying one but doesn’t mean I won’t down the road when some of my concerns with having an EV have been addressed. I will say I can very easily see a hybrid in my future and maybe even my next purchase. So that trend doesn’t surprise me.
Sean- NTSB isn’t going to be able to publish accidents avoided. Thats so subjective and could be skewed garbage data. Which is why they need to continue to highlight the accident free per miles driven compared to human accidents per miles driven. Thats really the only good way to track the safety of these systems and the public needs to understand they are doing extremely well considering they are self-driving alongside unpredictable humans. If it were only AV’s on the road they probably could do even better.
Reminds me of airplane crashes. They can be the safest way to travel but when they screw up, they can take 150-200 people out with one accident so it gets lots of publicity.
I read in several places that Elon Musk was open to taking at least partial ownership in Ford. Hard for me to imagine, but once Tesla gets the ‘unboxed’ process working, it might be willing to contract manufacture Mach E’s using the current Tesla 3 factory. Ford would get a Tesla based Mach E that would be more advanced and have an experienced high quality non-union labor force building them. Tesla would get more use out of a factory that would no longer be state of the art (after unboxed) Ford might even get some EV Aviators out of the deal.
Seems like Ford has been struggling with out the door quality and I know Tesla has received its fair share of complaints on fit and finish. Not sure if they have many issues with assembly quality. So building a car for Ford could be a good thing for Ford. Well, until people start saying I only want a Ford if it was built by Tesla.
That could become a problem.
About hybrids, their ‘hybridness’ remains a mixed bag. Worst were the ‘mild hybrids’ that had “HYBRID” painted on the body to compete with the Prius. The good hybrid metric is the ratio of city and highway mileage. A good hybrid operates the engine at peak engine efficiency in city driving. For example using the EPA metrics:
City / Highway ~= efficiency – Model
53 / 46 ~= 115% – Toyota Corolla Hybrid (good)
49 / 52 ~= 94% – Hyundai Elantra Hybrid (poor)
32 / 41 ~= 78% – Toyota Corolla gas only (worst)
In two weeks, 1st of April, we will get Tesla’s production and sales numbers for Q1 2024. Between now and then, there will be no end of EV trash talkers. One clue is abusing percentages by avoiding hard numbers. But the Tesla Q1 financials will be a ‘come to Jesus’ moment.
To me, the “goodness” of hybrids is the ratio of mpg of hybrids to non-hybrid versions of the same car. Here are a couple cases where the hybrids do much better than the non-hybrids, especially in city mpg.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=46741&id=47637&id=47104&id=47103
Jeep has a couple plug-in hybrids that you certainly wouldn’t want to pay $14-18K extra for, unless you will plug them in regularly, and do most of your driving on plug-in power. They get, barely, if any better mpg the the gas-only versions.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=47278&id=47378&id=47277&id=47191
Ford and Tesla both have sub-par quality, but they could learn from each other
Mach-E has much better controls/operator interface than Model Y, but the Y has significantly better efficiency, can accept higher DC charge rate.
BEV’s flat, hybrids up; seems in addition to what Sean said about pricing, people also aren’t on-board (so much) with the charging effort required to make the full switch to electric vehicles.
To me, hybrids, at least most Toyota hybrids, are a no-compromise option as a “transportation appliance” for those without home charging for an EV. They are reliable, adequately quick, and get almost twice the city mpg of similar non-hybrids. Also, with their Atkinson cycle tuning, they get substantially better highway mpg than similar size and weight non-hybrids. Yeah, there are haters because they do what is needed for maximum efficiency, which involves higher, constant rpm operation under acceleration, but it didn’t take me long to get used to, and not mind that.
For fun, manual transmissions are much better, and today’s DCTs and torque converter automatics work very well, but under most conditions, my tall, wide 4000+ pound Highlander hybrid gets better mpg than my ~2800 pound Mini, and under all conditions that I’ve experienced, the Highlander gets better mpg than my ~3100 pound manual transmission Cayman.
The Hybrid has to make sense and anyone that does a little bit of math can see even between the Corolla ICE and hybrid there is only 5mpg difference on the highway, which is the majority of my driving. So, at 15k miles a year the hybrid would save me about $140 a year in gas. Even after 5 years that’s only a $700 savings assuming gas stays around 3.50 a gallon. So, if manufacturers can get the hybrid prices very close to the non-hybrid where there is an actual savings more people will jump on-board. It just doesn’t make sense to spend $1500 more up front to break even ten years later.
The math is no different than a gas car vs an EV. The average vehicle that gets 30mpg uses about $1750 in gas a year. So, for a payback to be within 3 years the EV cant be more than $5250 more. Minus the cost to charge of about $1000 over those 3 years. I cant see paying more than $4200 more for an EV. They are getting there but then you still have the convivence part of the equation. So when those make sense I think a lot more people will consider an EV.
The ultimate hybrid for fuel economy improvement is the Camry.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=47090&id=47092
The hybrid gets 82% better city mileage, and 36% better highway mileage. The hybrid costs $2400 more, but may have a little more standard equipment than the base LE non-hybrid. I had a Camry LE hybrid for about 4 years, and in short trip and lower ~60 mph highway on two lane roads, I got ~50 real world mpg. On long trips on the interstate, going ~80 most of the time, it got ~44.
Yeah, if most driving is highway, the hybrids have less advantage, and in the case of the Corolla and Camry, a little of the improvement with the hybrids would be the tires. Both hybrids have one size narrower, and LRR tires.
I suspect with Camry, Corolla, Accord, RAV4, and other hybrids, you get all, or most of your extra $2K back in resale, if you keep them no more than 5 years or so. If you keep them 15-20 years, things could be different, as you might need a fairly expensive battery, not $20K like a BEV, but probably ~$3K.
Part, or maybe most of why people buy EVs is not to save money, but because they are quick. Even a lowly Bolt has sub-7 second 0-60, much quicker than most gas small hatchbacks. Then, if you have home charging, using an EV as a commuter is very convenient. If it doesn’t break, tires are the only maintenance. No oil changes every 7-10K miles, or whatever it is for your car.
That is true Kit. In those cases it is typically a two car household. One spouse runs the EV and the other runs the ICE. Studies have shown that to be a vast majority of the situations for EV buyers. So the market is 2 vehicle homes where it is financially allowable for the buyer to spend 30-60K on a limited use only vehicle. I am not sure of the size of that market, but it is not vast. It may be why we are seeing a saturation point in the EV market.
Yeah! my wife and I both drive over 25 miles to work in opposite directions mostly highway as we live within a mile of the interstate. But she only works a couple days a week. So having an EV with our second vehicle being an ICE would work with a home charger. I wouldn’t buy an EV for its quickness. So, for me it has to make financial sense. As Merkur pointed out I think that’s where a lot of people are at. The higher income folks that could afford and wanted to make the transition early did and now they are trying to appeal to middle America. But I see it still being a supplement to a home’s transportation needs. I would not want to give up the flexibility that I have with my ICE vehicle. So the next couple years will be interesting.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want an EV as an only car, even if I had home charging. Currently, I drive the Mini the most. It’s fun, and gets pretty good gas mileage, and has all of the room I usually need.
I love the argument that things save more than they harm unless you or someone you care about is the one harmed. AT is always going to be a huge risk because of the human factor involved. Like making sure all the sensors are working correctly and are clean from dirt or snow. The vehicle isn’t damaged in a way that misaims the sensors.