Good morning! It’s Tuesday, December 17, 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.
1st Gear: Trump Can’t Stop EV Charger Expansion
There’s finally some good news for electric vehicle owners and fans: there really isn’t anything the incoming Trump administration can do to stop the expansion of federally backed EV chargers across the U.S. It’s a rare win for the Biden administration and its push for more EV adoption. Oh, happy days. From Automotive News:
“It would take almost an act of God for Trump or Congress to overturn” the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, said Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, which recently acquired McDonald’s EV Adoption firm.
That’s because much of the $5 billion that underpins the initiative has already been doled out to the states. The remainder was preapproved. Policymakers designed the five-year program, which started in 2021, to help states create a network of public charging stations in 50-mile intervals along interstates.
Eleven states have opened more than 30 charging sites with more than 130 ports, backed by the federal funds, according to Paren.
States receive the funding and manage their own EV infrastructure programs that comply with federal requirements, like they do with roads and bridges.
They have received nearly half — about $2.4 billion — of the EV charging program’s funds, according to Atlas Public Policy. The full $5 billion was already approved as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“Congress really doesn’t need to do anything for the program to continue,” said Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy. “A lot of funding is going out the door. A lot of construction is underway, and I expect that to continue for the foreseeable future.”
Right now, the majority of states are in the early rounds of charging station approval or installation. Still, 10 have not submitted project proposals. The Trump administration could give them an excuse to continue dragging their feet.
Still, even without governmental programs, the private sector will continue its investment in public EV chargers.
Automakers, gas station and convenience store chains, EV charging companies, and others planned to install public chargers before applying for federal incentives, McDonald said.
“A lot of companies just realize that this is the future of fueling and retailing and that they have to be in this game,” he said. Incentives are “a way to reduce how many years it takes to break even. But [they were] planning to do this for strategic purposes.”
The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program is the largest single investment for the EV charging network, according to Atlas Public Policy. But combined, investments from the private sector dwarf the federal dollars, Nigro said.
[…]
“I don’t think the private sector is going to slow down,” Nigro said.
Let’s hope not.
2nd Gear: Stellantis Goes In New Direction Following Tavares Exit
It seems the ideas and direction of former Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares weren’t exactly popular within the automaker. After abruptly stepping down on the first of the month (nearly a year and a half before his contract with up), the massive company is moving quickly to get rid of his legacy and fix relations with dealers, industry partners, world governments and workers.
Stellantis is currently looking for a replacement, but until then it is being led by an interim executive committee that Chairman John Elkann leads. Here’s what Stellantis, owner of 14 different automakers, plans to do in the near future under this new leadership. From Reuters:
The new approach will be tested on Tuesday, when the automaker’s representatives meet Italian Industry Minister Adolfo Urso and local unions to try to agree a long-term plan for production in Italy.
The company – the country’s sole major automaker – may pledge to expand output and protect jobs in return for improved manufacturing conditions and government support for the industry’s electric transition, easing tensions with Rome.
[…]
Less than a week after the CEO quit, Stellantis said it would rejoin European auto lobby group ACEA. It left at the beginning of 2023 based on a decision by Tavares, who opted for an independent lobbying strategy without consulting the board, according to a second source.
The carmaker plans to align itself with the group’s proposals, Stellantis’ Europe Chief Jean-Philippe Imparato said last week.
Tavares had opposed a call by ACEA for relief on intermediate targets on the European Union’s carbon reduction targets under which carmakers risk multi-billion euro fines.
His position was not backed by associations of Stellantis European dealers, who supported the ACEA proposal.
Stellantis is also looking to repair fractured relations with other groups.
Tavares, an industry veteran who had led Stellantis since its creation in 2021 through the merger of PSA and Fiat-Chrysler, had been feted for increasing operating margins.
However, dealers on both sides of the Atlantic complained that rising prices for its mass-market marques ultimately lost it the support of inflation-hit customers.
Stellantis this month swiftly re-hired retired executive Timothy Kuniskis to lead Ram, one of its most important brands.
Industry analysts have interpreted the decision as a step to improve relations with dealers in the U.S., the group’s profit powerhouse, and reverse Ram’s U.S. sales, which were down 24% this year as of the end of the third quarter.
Kevin Farrish, leader of Stellantis’ dealer council, said Elkann met with their executive board in the U.S. in early December to discuss how the automaker could repair its relationship with the dealers.
Elkann said Antonio Filosa, appointed chief of North American operations in October, would have the authority to respond to market conditions, Farrish said.
“It meant a great deal to us,” he said in a message. “We have a ton of opportunities to fix what Mr. Tavares harmed.”
Even the markets seem to be happy Tavares is no longer with the company. On December 2, Stellantis’ share price dropped to its lowest level since July of 2022. Since then, shares have rebounded by over 18 percent after falling over 40 percent since the beginning of 2024.
As a Stellantis-pilled individual, I’m just happy to see a possibly bright future for this company. We, the consumers, deserve to have Stellantis (or at least the automakers it represents) around.
3rd Gear: Trump To Stop Gov, Military From Buying EVs
Incoming president Donald Trump may not be able to stop the rollout of electric vehicle chargers across the country, but he can stop the U.S. government and military from buying battery-powered vehicles. It’s part of his wider plan to stop EV development and adoption in its tracks. Fantastic. From Ars Technica:
[T]he Trump team wants to abolish EV subsidies, claw back federal funding meant for EV charging infrastructure, block EV battery imports on national security grounds, and prevent the federal government and the US military from purchasing more EVs.
[…]
[T] he US government fleet can be expected to get more polluting, too. Currently the federal government is required to purchase more EVs as it replaces old vehicles, with a requirement for all light vehicles to be zero emissions by 2027. This will no longer be the case under Trump, who will also end any Department of Defense programs that are meant to purchase or develop electric military vehicles.
This is just part of Trump’s wider anti-EV plans, though. Here’s a bit more of the shitty stuff to come:
[T]he new regime will be far more friendly to gas guzzling, as it intends to roll back EPA fuel efficiency standards to those in effect in 2019. This would increase the allowable level of emissions from cars by about 25 percent relative to the current rule set. US new vehicle efficiency stalled between 2008 and 2019, and it was only once the Biden administration began in 2021 that the EPA started instituting stricter rules on allowable limits of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from vehicle tailpipes.
[…]
As with the first Trump administration, we can expect a sustained attack on California’s ability to set its own vehicle emissions regulations and any attempts by other states to use those regs.
Trade tariffs will evidently be a major weapon of the next Trump administration, particularly when deployed to block EV manufacturing. Even the current administration has been wary enough of China dumping cheap EVs that it instituted singeing tariffs on Chinese-made EVs and batteries, with bipartisan support from Congress.
The Biden tariffs were justified on economic grounds as a way of defending US industry against an unfair level of state support from China toward its own automakers. The Trump team plans to use national security as the justification for its own barriers to EV imports, using section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.
This is just fantastic, guys. I’d like to give a big shout-out to the over-77 million people and 31 states who thought this was all a good idea. Big ups to you all.
4th Gear: Ford Battery Joint Venture Gets $10 Billion Loan From DOE
The U.S. Department of Energy has approved a $9.63 billion loan for a joint venture between Ford and SK On, a South Korean battery maker. The money will be used to finance the construction of three new battery manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. Here I am, wishing the government would forgive the $20,000 in student loans I still owe. From the Detroit Free Press:
The low-cost government loan for the BlueOval SK joint venture is the largest ever from the government’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program. SK On is the battery unit of energy group SK Innovation.
The final award is one of a series of actions by the Biden administration to boost electric vehicle production before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.
The amount is higher than the $9.2 billion conditional commitment announced in June 2023 for the BlueOval project. Trump and his advisers have been critical of the Biden administration’s efforts to incentivize EV production.
“This program is essential to getting people to choose the United States of America,” Jigar Shah, who heads the DOE Loan Programs office, said in an interview. “When you look at the competition that we have from China, it is very clear to me that they have used low-cost debt for a very long time to promote a lot of manufacturing capacity that has hollowed out many communities in Kentucky, Tennessee and other states around the country.”
[…]
BlueOval SK said it has invested more than $11 billion to date in the construction of the three 4-million-square-foot facilities and plans to begin production at the first Kentucky plant in 2025 and will be ready to begin production in Tennessee in late 2025.
The plan is for the joint venture between Ford and SK On to enable more than 120 gigawatt hours of U.S. battery production annually at facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee. For those keeping score at home: that is a lot.
