Just-in-time auto industry news and analysis
St. Angelo in Tokyo
Steve St. Angelo, jefe of Toyota’s Latin American operations, poured more cold water on widely reported, and then strongly discounted news of building a plant in Mexico. Lunching with a small group of reporters at Toyota’s swank Kioi Club yesterday, he said that as much as he would like more capacity in South America, a plant in Mexico is “far from an approved project.” [ There is more … ]
Lexus RC F, JDM spec
Lexus launched the stylish RC and its performant brother, the RC F onto the U.S. market a while ago. Today, it came home to Japan. Compared to the lavish U.S. festivities, the Japanese “reveal” was a low=-key affair: A red RC 300h,and a blue RC F were put in the lobby of Toyota’s Tokyo HQ, a few speeches, a photo-op, arigatou gozaimas, that was it. Actually, it was a teeny bit more festive than the usual extremely frugal JDM launches. [ There is more … ]
This is how you don’t change a business… (courtesy: Opensecrets.org)
In my most recent post at Bloomberg View, I draw a connection between Michigan’s new law blocking Tesla’s direct-sales model and the interests of the automakers based there. General Motors has taken the lead among Michigan’s automakers in opposing Tesla’s state-by-state battle for direct sales, publicly pushing Governors to protect the franchise system in Ohio and now in Michigan. In both cases, GM positioned itself as defender of “an even playing field” in the car business rather than arguing against direct sales or defending the franchise model. As I point out in the column, this is nothing short of absurd: GM’s extraordinary bailout make it the auto industry’s least-qualified advocate for fair play. But it’s also strangely telling: GM may not want Tesla to sell directly to consumers in states where it has a franchise dealer network, but it is hardly settled on the issue of direct sales themselves.
The Tesla stock has been – until September – a Wall Street darling, never mind that S&P had taken a decidedly contrarian view by slapping Tesla’s debt with a junk rating. When S&P did that, the rating agency figured “that the company is less likely to successfully adapt to competitive and technological displacement risks over the medium to long term.”
Translation: Should EVs ever become the huge business Tesla stockholders hope it will be one day, it will take established carmakers all but five minutes to put upstart Tesla in its place, and out of business. The jury is still out on the huge business, but established automakers are already working on the putting out of business part. [ There is more … ]
Good God, stop the selling
Yesterday’s news that Daimler sold its 4 percent stake in Tesla weighed on the already beaten down stock of the electric carmaker. Daimler on the other hand is all smiles, having turned a $50 million initial investment into a cash flow of $780 million – not counting what it had received after selling a 40 percent chunk of its initial holdings to the Dubai government in 2009. Wall Street sources surmise that the sell was not a strategic decision, but the result of hedging. With the Tesla stock having retreated some 50 points from its September peak, options may have been exercised. According to a Daimler statement, the Stuttgart carmaker hasn’t simply cashed-in on its shares, but rather “has terminated the share-price hedge it initiated in 2013 and has sold its stake in Tesla of approximately 4%.”
Daimler isn’t the only high-profile investor that has lightened-up on TSLA stock.
