Nissan Barely Gave CCS A Shot Before Committing To Tesla's Charging Standard

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, July 19, 2023 and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.

Electric Car Charging Still Sucks, But That Might Change

1st Gear: Nissan’s On Board

On Wednesday, Nissan announced that beginning in 2025 it will start implementing Tesla’s charging port — also known as the “North American Charging Standard” by those automakers that don’t want to give Tesla too much credit — in its vehicles. This is somewhat amusing, because the Ariya was Nissan’s first EV to support the global, conventional CCS standard, after the Leaf languished with the slow and comparatively rare CHAdeMO interface for its entire existence. Seems like someone at Nissan suddenly cares a lot about the customer charging experience! From Automotive News:

“Adopting the NACS standard underlines Nissan’s commitment to making electric mobility even more accessible as we follow our Ambition 2030 long-term vision of greater electrification,” Jeremie Papin, Nissan Americas chairperson, said in a statement.

Over the past few months, Tesla has inked similar deals with Ford Motor Co., General Motors, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo. But Japan’s big brands — Honda and Toyota — remain holdouts.

Tesla has the most extensive fast-charge network in the U.S., with more than 17,000 individual chargers in the Supercharger network, according to iSeeCars. Networks using the Combined Charging System, such as Electrify America and EVgo, have about 11,500 fast chargers.

Next year, Nissan will begin providing adapters to customers who want to plug into Tesla’s Superchargers, as a stopgap until native support is included with new vehicles the following year. So far Nissan only has the Ariya to worry about, but in the “second half” of the decade, both itself and Infiniti expect to have a range of EVs on the market. Remember Infiniti?

2nd Gear: That Cruise Ad Is Really Pissing People Off

Did you happen to catch the ad for General Motors’ autonomous taxi unit Cruise that ran in The New York Times and other papers last week? “Humans are terrible drivers,” it began, writ large, peddling the same exhausted talking point the “move fast and break things” set has been repeating for years to justify technology that clearly isn’t ready for public consumption yet. Former National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Joan Claybrook lashed out at the ad in a statement on behalf of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety group. Via Auto News:

The advertisement prominently featured the number of Americans who were killed in car crashes in 2022 — a choice that didn’t sit well with former NHTSA administrator and safety advocate Joan Claybrook.

“Using the pain and suffering of those deaths for self-promotion of an unproven and unsafe product is unscrupulous,” Claybrook said in a statement distributed by the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. […]

“There are real-world accounts about the havoc Waymo and Cruise robotaxis have inflicted on San Francisco roadways and its citizens,” Claybrook said, citing local officials’ concerns about safety incidents with robotaxis on city streets. “Their collective experience highlights the dangers, which have disrupted police activity, hampered firefighting and blocked local streets and intersections.”

We’ve reported on Cruise and Waymo gumming up San Francisco traffic many, many times around these parts. Of course, GM’s ad mentioned nothing about those instances, nor the emergency responses its vehicles have obstructed, nor the unit’s unflinching obsession with expansion even in the face of a safety probe by NHTSA. Currently, Cruise is seeking deployment certification for its Origin driverless vehicle, which contains no steering wheel or pedals.

3rd Gear: Carvana Cuts Debt

Carvana’s shares may have lost 87 percent of their value since 2021, but the online used car retailer is recovering. In fact, its stock saw a significant boost to the tune of 40 percent following the announcement of a debt exchange agreement that eliminates $1.2 billion of its outstanding debt. From The New York Times:

Carvana, the troubled used-car retailer, on Wednesday announced that it had reached a debt restructuring agreement with most of its bondholders in an effort to lower interest payments over at least the next two years and put its business on more solid financial footing.

The once fast-growing company, which sells cars online and at see-through parking garages scattered around the country, thrived during the pandemic, when demand for cars surged and many people were willing to buy them sight unseen. But Carvana took on a lot of debt, made a big acquisition and was unprepared for falling used car prices and rising interest rates.

Carvana said its restructuring agreement covered more than $5 billion of senior, unsecured bonds and included the participation of Apollo Global Management, its largest bondholder. Under the terms of the deal, creditors will get new secured notes.

The interest on that new debt will be paid in kind for the next two years, meaning the principal Carvana owes will increase but the company won’t have to make about $430 million in interest payments in cash. The new debt will also come due later than the old notes.

Carvana also lost only $105 million in the second quarter of 2023, which doesn’t sound great until you consider that a year ago, that number was more like $439 million. Baby steps!

4th Gear: JLR’s Getting A Battery Plant Back Home

Tata Group, owner of Jaguar Land Rover, intends to raise a £4 billion battery plant in the United Kingdom by 2026, the company announced Wednesday. The facility will be capable of producing 40 gigawatt hours worth of batteries at peak capacity to supply as many as 500,000 vehicles annually, on average. And as these negotiations typically go, U.K. officials had to give Tata a very attractive deal to ensure its patronage. From Bloomberg:

The decision marks a significant victory for the UK government, which fended off competition from Spain for the factory. Britain’s auto industry has been struggling to compete with generous incentive packages for green technology in the US and European Union.

The UK government “fought very hard” for the plant after Tata informed ministers nine months ago that it planned to pick another country, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC on Wednesday. The financial incentive the UK gave Tata was large, he said, while refusing to give the exact size of the subsidies.

Shapps said the UK’s plan to have among the lowest energy prices in Europe helped to attract Tata, in a separate interview with Times Radio.

The facility is projected to create 4,000 jobs in the auto sector, which is a big deal as Brexit kind of destroyed the industry for the country, well before automakers were incentivized by the Inflation Reduction Act to begin looking west for their future factories.

Reverse: George Washington Carver Arrives in Dearborn

On this day in 1942, 81 years ago, George Washington Carver met with Henry Ford in Dearborn. Ford had invited Carver with an interest in developing a synthetic rubber alternative, as rubber was low in supply during the war. The two began corresponding in 1934 and had met several times previously, both in Michigan and at the Tuskegee Institute, where Carver was a professor.

On The Radio: The Entire GT Sport Soundtrack

Credit: YouTube

Yesterday I worked half the day from a coffee shop while listening to the Gran Turismo Sport menu soundtrack, which is an expertly-curated collection of lounge vibes. Highly recommend. Here’s a full playlist of them on YouTube.