Trump Offers Musk A Seat At The White House While Threatening To End EV Tax Breaks
Good morning! It’s Tuesday, August 20, 2024, 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.
Walter Isaacson On Elon Musk(s)
1st Gear: Donald Trump Threatens To End EV Tax Credits
We had a good run, there was at least a week that went by without presidential hopeful Donald Trump saying something confusing about electric cars. Now, he’s back waving his double-edged sword at EVs, threatening to end tax credits for anyone looking to go electric while simultaneously appearing to offer Tesla boss Elon Musk a job at the White House.
The felon told reporters earlier this week that there could be a job in the White House for Musk if Trump wins the U.S. election in 76 days, reports CNBC News. Trump said he would offer the Tesla and SpaceX CEO a role in his administration if he defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
However, the move wouldn’t signal a complete turn in favor towards EVs for Trump. While appearing to offer the Tesla boss a role in government, he also quipped that time may be running out for the kind of tax breaks that have contributed to Tesla’s meteoric rise in sales in recent years. As CNBC reports:
But the Republican nominee also said he would consider getting rid of a $7,500 tax credit for certain new electric vehicles. That could affect business for Tesla, which sells EVs.
“Tax credits and tax incentives are not generally a very good thing,” Trump told Reuters after a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania.
Trump has threatened this several times before, and he even went so far as to promise to scrap an EV mandate that doesn’t actually exist here in America. It’s also a move that Musk himself has previously welcomed. Earlier this year, the Tesla boss claimed that a cut in tax credits would be bad for basically every EV maker except Tesla, which he argued would be able to ride out any incentive cuts brought in by the next administration.
However, the reality may not be as rosy for Tesla should that come to fruition. The American EV Maker is currently battling against falling revenue as a result of slowing sales and massive price cuts that have been made across its lineup of electric vehicles in recent months.
2nd Gear: The Rich People Aren’t Spending As Much
The fanciest cars in the world have gathered in California this week with their fancy owners for a big celebration of everything automotive at Monterey Car Week. As well as a chance to show off your shiniest vehicle, the annual event is also packed with auctions and this year’s sales have shown a tempering of enthusiasm for high-priced motors.
The total sales from this year’s auctions in Monterey hit $371 million last week, which may sound like an awful lot of money but it also marks a sharp decline from last year’s sales, reports Bloomberg. This year’s sales were almost a $100 million down compared with last year, as Bloomberg explains:
Weeklong totals when auctions closed hit $371 million, down 8% from 2023, according to data provided by Hagerty Inc., well below the bonanza days of $469 million sold in 2022. Half of the vehicles sold failed to realize their low price estimate, a Hagerty spokesperson confirmed.
“Not great,” is how Simon Kidston, an analyst and consultant who founded the K500 Index of classic car data, described the results. He blamed the high number of vehicles for sale—most of which had already been offered in recent months—and the hectic car week schedule as much as interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty for the lackluster results.
“With auction houses trying to flood the market all at the same time and all at the same place, no matter how strong a market, it can’t absorb that kind of saturation,” Kidston says. “There were too many cars, too many similar cars, all offered at the same time during a busy weekend of lunches, dinners, launches, concours, racing and private hospitality. With so many different things going on, your head would have been spinning after 24 hours.”
The dip isn’t thought to be of concern for the super-wealthy, super-sophisticated, long-term collector, however, with Bloomberg describing the dip as “corrective, not catastrophic.” It follows years of rising prices at auctions, which have seen all kinds of records smash for high profile sales from brands like Ferrari and Mercedes.
Now, this just means you’re much more likely to find a car for sale that you could actually afford at Monterey, like the models you see here.
3rd Gear: GM Lays Off 1,000 Workers
American autoworkers aren’t out of the woods just yet as General Motors announces a wave of layoffs following similar cuts at fellow U.S. automakers such as Tesla and Stellantis. The cuts will reportedly hit the automaker’s software departments around the world.
According to a report from Reuters, the GM will cut 1,000 employees from its software and service units. The cuts will hit salaried workers around the world, but more than 50 percent of the cuts will come here in the U.S., as Reuters explains:
GM, confirming the layoffs initially reported by CNBC, said in a statement that “as we build GM’s future, we must simplify for speed and excellence, make bold choices, and prioritize the investments that will have the greatest impact.”
CNBC said the job cuts include roughly 600 jobs at GM’s tech campus near Detroit. GM, which said about half of the cuts are in the United States, said the cuts were not because of cost cuts but came after a review of operations following the departure of Mike Abbott, executive vice president of software and services in March who left due to health reasons.
The decision to cut staff in its software department comes following Abbott’s departure after just over a year in the role at GM. It also follows GM’s commitment to ditch services such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which it announced would not be offered in future EV models at it favored its own in-car software offering.
4th Gear: CDK Agrees $100 Million Payout To Dealers
Dealers across the U.S. were crippled by a computer outage earlier this year at services provider CDK Global. The outage was caused by a ransomware attack that bricked computers and left dealerships unable to sell cars or offer certain services. The aftermath of the outage is now the least of CDK Global’s worries, as it’s now facing a multi-million-dollar bill following an antitrust lawsuit that was filed against the company.
Way back in 2017, CDK Global was accused of inflating dealership management system prices in order to “stifle competition,” reports Automotive News. Now, the company has settled the lawsuit out of court and agreed to pay the dealerships that filed the case more than $100 million. As Automotive News explains:
“It’s a good day for dealers,” said Leonard Bellavia of Bellavia Blatt in Mineola, N.Y., one of the attorneys representing the dealership plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “It shows how dealers can collaborate and collectively seek redress on a nationwide scale by joining forces and working together.”
The settlement, if approved by a judge, resolves the dealership class-action lawsuit filed against CDK and rival Reynolds and Reynolds Co. in 2017 accusing both companies of federal and state antitrust violations. It also cuts off an expected September trial in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. DMS market leader CDK, which also is paying up to $250,000 for “notice and claims administration” costs, said it was glad to move ahead from the long legal dispute.
The deal will put this case to rest, but does nothing to prevent further litigation being brought against the company following the outage experienced by dealers earlier this year. In fact, Automotive News reports that “any lawsuits stemming from the June 19 cyberattacks against CDK also are not affected” by this week’s settlement.
Lawsuits brought against CDK following the attack include one that accuses the company of not doing enough to protect private personal details during the hack.
Reverse: Mission To Mars
On The Radio: Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘Death of a Martian’
Death of a Martian
