BMW Is Trying To Catch Tesla With EVs, Like Everyone Else
Good morning! It’s August 3, 2023, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place.
The Hype Behind Tesla Stock Success In 2023
1st Gear: BMW
BMW has a lot to worry about these days, if you believe that Tesla is here to stay, which they are. BMW has to catch up to them with EV sales, for one thing, like everyone else, but BMW also has to catch up to EV makers in China like BYD, which is kicking ass. That all means that BMW has to shell out money, and a lot more than they thought at first. It’s never a good thing when a multinational corporation says admits to doing something unexpected, for the multinational corporation.
From Bloomberg:
The level of buyer interest in EVs means BMW is “investing more than originally planned in the global ramp-up of e-mobility,” Chief Financial Officer Walter Mertl said Thursday, adding that investments in batteries for the current and next generation of EVs are “massive.”
During the second quarter, development spending jumped by nearly a fifth to €1.84 billion ($2 billion).
Battery-powered car sales made up about 13% of group deliveries during the first half led by demand for models like the i4 sedan and iX3 SUV. Next year, the proportion of EV deliveries is set to rise to at least one-fifth, BMW said.
[…]
While demand for its luxury cars remains strong, BMW warned Tuesday that increased costs for parts are reducing its cash flow while also citing logistics issues as a constraint. The company will incur higher costs from increased inventories to ensure meeting customer demand, Mertl said Thursday in speech notes.
BMW is a good barometer for a lot of things, like when people say that small cars are dead and yet the 3 Series still exists. BMW currently sells or soon will sell four all-electric models in the US, the iX, i4, i5, and i7, and BMW has high hopes for the i5 in particular, the electric 5 Series. As long as BMW is out here trying, we can all take some inspiration from that. Why buy a dumb Tesla, in any case, when you could buy a classic?
2nd Gear: Tesla
Reuters is taking a bit of a victory lap here, though they deserve it. The Canadian news service reports Thursday that Tesla is being sued by some owners who are mad about Tesla’s range games.
Three Tesla owners in California on Wednesday sued the automaker in a proposed class action that accuses the company of falsely advertising the estimated driving ranges of its electric vehicles.
The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California cites a Reuters article published last week which reported Tesla had created a “Diversion Team” in Nevada to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible after becoming inundated with owner complaints.
[…]
The directive to present the optimistic range estimates came from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, this person said. Reuters could not determine whether Tesla still uses algorithms that boost range estimates.
Neither Tesla nor Musk responded to detailed questions from Reuters for last week’s article. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit on Wednesday.
The lawsuit alleges Tesla breached vehicle warranties and engaged in fraud and unfair competition.
“Put simply, Tesla has a duty to deliver a product that performs as advertised,” Adam A. Edwards, an attorney at Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, the firm representing Tesla owners in the lawsuit, said in a statement.
It’s hard to say how this will go, but for a company like Tesla this is all merely the cost of doing business. You know, move fast, break things, get sued, battle it out to a stalemate, rinse, repeat.
3rd Gear: GM’s Cruise
GM’s Cruise, which aspires to say one day that GM is Cruise’s, has reached union agreements with janitors and electrical workers in Northern California, in what Cruise is calling, “the driverless car industry’s first labor union agreements.”
From Reuters:
The company is partnering with two local San Francisco union chapters that represent electrical workers and janitors, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 6 and Service Employees International Union Local 87. Reuters could not definitively determine if these are the driverless car industry’s first union agreements.
The agreement will employ “dozens” of workers who will construct and staff Cruise’s car-charging facilities, the company said.
“Cruise is creating new job opportunities for our members and providing valuable on-site experience for our apprentices,” said John Doherty, IBEW Local 6’s business manager.
Reuters goes on to offer some discussion about how unions are concerned that driverless cars are taking people’s jobs, but that this is possibly good because it shows that Cruise is willing to play ball or something with unions, which makes me think this is all just a marketing lay-up for Cruise. Sure, give “dozens” of workers their cure little union jobs, why not.
4th Gear: Cybertruck
In the absence of much real information about the Tesla Cybertruck, Automotive News has gone into detective mode on its dimensions. They conclude that it will be shorter than an F-150 but have a slightly longer bed. Tesla has also says that it will be roomy, which I assume will come from its width.
Anyway, I found this interesting:
“This is the first truck — that we’re aware of — that will have four doors, over a six-foot bed and fit into a 20-foot garage,” [Tesla CEO Elon Musk] said. “So it’s sort of biggish on the outside, but it’s even bigger on the inside.”
A standard two-car garage size is 20-feet deep, according to J.D. Power, while one-car garages are generally shorter, and sizes can vary significantly.
Tesla said in its earnings report that the Cybertruck is less than 19 feet long.
“Both technologically and architecturally, this vehicle will break a lot of boundaries — very much in line with how we think about vehicle engineering and manufacturing,” the report said.
[…]
The Lightning is 19.4 feet long with a 5.6-foot bed, according to Ford’s website. Ford’s combustion pickups come in a wide variety of sizes and bed lengths.
The 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV, in its work-truck version, is 19.4 feet long with a 5-foot-11 inch bed. Like the Cybertruck and the Rivian R1T, the Silverado was also designed from the ground-up as an electric vehicle. The R1T is smaller at 18 feet long with a 4.5-foot bed.
If you think that automakers, even Tesla, don’t sweat over details like length and bed size and don’t constantly compare themselves to the competition, then be aware that they very much do, there are whole teams, possibly even whole divisions, at Ford and GM and Ram sweating over these very questions as we speak.
It is interesting to me, also, that Elon gives a shit about whether the Cybertruck fits into a garage, as many people with garages — especially in California, which will be the primary market for Cybertruck — simply don’t use them for car storage, because people live in old houses with garages made for a time when cars, in general, were more rationally sized.
This read, at any rate, feels right:
[Sandy Munro, founder and CEO of Munro & Associates] also suggested that the Cybertruck, F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T are different enough from one another to appeal to different buyers. The Lightning is more of a work truck, the Rivian is for serious off-roading and the Cybertruck is best for camping and lighter outdoor activities, he said.
I don’t think Sandy Munro means “best for camping and lighter outdoor activities” to be an insult but on the other hand: haha.
5th Gear: Aurora Innovation
Aurora Innovation has been around for a fair bit now, a self-driving truck startup that is still trying to start up. Automotive News said Thursday that it has $853 million more to help start up. On the other hand, it didn’t have any revenue last quarter.
The company added $853 million to its coffers in July, executives said Wednesday during a second-quarter earnings call. That’s $33 million more than they announced two weeks ago.
The increase arises from underwriters exercising an option to purchase additional shares within 30 days of the initial offering, Aurora CEO Chris Urmson said.
With the capital infusion, Aurora expects to have $1.6 billion to carry the company through its planned commercial launch at the end of 2024 and into the second half of 2025, he said.
In its report, the company said it narrowed its net loss for the second quarter to $218 million compared with a loss of $1.1 billion in the same quarter last year. It didn’t report revenue for the quarter vs. $21 million last year.
Good luck, Aurora Innovation.
Reverse: Fog
Owned by the Jordanian airline Alia and chartered to Royal Air Maroc, the 707 left LeBourget Airport in Paris at 2:20 a.m. on the morning of August 3, 1975. Apart from four Europeans, all of the passengers on board were Moroccan citizens who worked in France and were traveling home for their summer holidays. The flight disappeared from Agadir airport-control radar at 4:28 a.m.; an airport official had spoken via radio with the pilot moments earlier, with no hint of trouble. The plane was scheduled to land in Agadir just two minutes later, at 4:30 a.m., and was descending for approach in heavy fog when the right wing tip and one of the engines struck a peak at an altitude of 2,400 feet. The pilot lost control of the plane, which crashed into a ravine, exploded and burned near the small, remote village of Imzizen. All 181 passengers were killed, along with seven crew members.
Neutral: How Are You?
This week, I reserved a Tesla Model 3 from Hertz for when I go home to Ohio next month, because I hate myself and because it seemed like a good deal, which will be an even better deal when the battery dies in the middle of nowhere because the charging situation in my home state is less than stellar.
Hertz made a lot of noise about the Tesla being “guaranteed”; they say there will not be some last-minute switcheroo to a Kia Rio or some such. Still, I would love nothing more than for me to land in Cleveland and the Hertz person explains to me that they are very sorry but instead of the Model 3 they will be giving me a Kia Soul.
