- Volvo shares charge ahead on £13bn stock market debut – Guardian
- Elon Musk Wants to Use His Tax Bill to Pay for a Trip to Mars – Businessinsider
- Toyota Rolling Out New Electric SUV for World’s Top Car Markets – Bloomberg
- 2022 Lucid Air: At Last, a Worthy Tesla Opponent – WSJ – Wall Street Journal
- USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Should Finally Deploy Next Year – Businessinsider
- Analysis: Volkswagen gets reality check after Tesla’s week of milestones – Reuters
- GM’s $35 billion bet on electric cars hinges on its dealers’ willingness to invest – Businessinsider
- Italy’s Agnelli Family Nears Sale of Reinsurance Company in $9 Billion Deal – WSJ – Wall Street Journal
- 2022 Volkswagen ID 5: hot GTX version to be revealed next week – Autocar
Archives for October 2021
Friday Morning Auto News, Oct 29, 2021: Musk wants to use tax bill for trip to Mars; Toyota rolls out EV SUV; Volvo shares bounce; more
World’s Largest Automakers September 2021: More than a million units ahead of Volkswagen, Toyota can’t be brought down by Covid
Scouring automotive news today, you may have read that Toyota’s production “fell by more than a third in September,” because the company is “hurt by disrupted access to semiconductors and other key auto parts that’s weighing on Japan’s automakers.”
What you did not read (until this moment) is that on the global leader board, Toyota is more than a million units ahead of second-placed Volkswagen, and that year-to-date, Toyota’s worldwide sales are up 19.3%, compared to Volkswagen’s 6.9%. That simply because the supply chaos is weighing on all automakers around the world, not just the ones in Japan. In September, Volkswagen’s global deliveries were down 32.3%, while Toyota’s sales dropped 16.9%. (Toyota reports production and sales, Volkswagen only reports deliveries.)
Some people are prone to ignore auto sales other than battery-powered, and those should be impressed by Volkswagen. Year-to-date, the company more than doubled (+38.2%) its global BEV sales to nearly 300,000 units. Toyota more than tripled its BEV output – from a paltry 3,346 BEV in all of 2020 to 9,298 BEV sold worldwide Jan-Sept 2021.
The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance is found another million units further down the list, with Renault up 2.6%, Nissan up 8,7%, and Mitsubishi Motors up 24.5%. With all three contestants separated by a million units, it is safe to say that Toyota will be World’s Largest Automaker 2021, followed by Volkswagen, and the Alliance.
And now for the usual disclaimer: Daily Kanban is now ranking global automakers by sales. We used to rank them by production, because this was how the global automaker umbrella association OICA had done it in the past. OICA seems to have thrown-in the towel, and you no longer will find any recent automaker rankings on the previously authoritative OICA website, neither by production, nor by sales. Reliable production data are harder and harder to come by, forcing us to switch to sales/delivery data published by automakers. Be aware that “deliveries” can be a rather elastic term. Deliveries can be sales to end users, or cars dumped on dealer lots, or cars “delivered” to sales organizations, or combinations thereof.
Also, please note that Mitsubishi Motors does not publish global sales, only domestic sales in Japan. For that reason, we are forced to use Mitsubishi’s published global production data as a proxy. Speaking of the Alliance, their number reporting is not allied at all, and a common picture requires considerable Excel machinations. Nissan and Mitsubishi report sales and production, Renault only reports deliveries. Mitsubishi does not report global sales, Nissan does.
Thursday Morning Auto News, Oct 28, 2021: VW sticks to margin goal; Ford posts stronger-than-exepected profit; BYD’s profits down; more
- VW Sticks to Margin Goal After Chip Shortage Hits Output – Bloomberg
- Ford Motor posts stronger-than-expected profit, raises full-year forecast – Reuters
- Tesla is setting the bar for electric vehicles, VW CEO admits – CNBC
- The global chip shortage is continuing to wreak havoc for the car giants – CNBC
- Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD’s third-quarter profit drops 27.5% – Reuters
- VW CEO Puts Hopes for Porsche IPO on the Back Burner – Bloomberg
- Uber and Lyft’s gig-economy problems will only get worse as startups like Kaptyn and Revel threaten them with better driver retention plans, a new report predicts – Businessinsider
Wednesday Morning Auto News, Oct 27, 2021: TSLA Hertz deal a tax dodge; SpaceX battles pee-pee leak; VW labor leader attacks CEO; more
- Behind That Hertz Tesla Purchase – WSJ – Wall Street Journal
- A toilet tube on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship broke and sprayed pee under the floor during its first tourist flight – Businessinsider
- Volkswagen labour leader lashes out at CEO ahead of board meeting – Reuters
- Hertz teams with Uber, Carvana in another shift to EVs – Automotive News
- Uber to roll out 50,000 Tesla vehicles as it moves towards an all-electric fleet – Businessinsider
- GM upbeat on full-year results despite impact of chip shortage – Reuters
- Nissan, Renault CEOs Meet for First Time as Travel Rules Ease – Bloomberg
- GM Beats Estimates, Sees 2021 Profit at ‘High End’ of Guidance – Bloomberg
Tuesday Morning Auto News, Oct 26, 2021
- Tesla rents a runaway $1 trillion valuation – Reuters
- U.S. agency asks Tesla about changes to driver assistance system – Reuters
- Japan drone maker’s flying motorcycle to hit the skies next year – Nikkei
- Tesla to Get Boost From Helping Jaguar Land Rover Meet EU Rules – Bloomberg
- Here’s how much Lyft pays its employees, from software engineers to data scientists – Businessinsider
- Why the next electric battery boom may be in cargo ships – CNBC
- Americans are buying Teslas, not EVs, but experts say that’s about to change – CNBC
- Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Tesla Makes You Feel for Rivals Volvo, Ford, VW – Bloomberg
Monday Morning Auto News, Oct 25, 2021: TSLA lands giant fleet sale, opens China R&D center; Xpeng wants to mass-produce flying cars, more
- Tesla opens new China research, data centers; will store data locally – Reuters
- Hertz Orders 100,000 Teslas, TSLA Stock Soars – Bloomberg
- Chinese electric-vehicle maker Xpeng plans to mass produce flying cars by 2024 – Businessinsider
- Meet 13 power players of the electric-vehicle industry, from leading companies like Tesla, Rivian, and QuantumScape – Businessinsider
- Volvo IPO Prices Lower Than Expected Despite Ambitious EV Plans – WSJ – Wall Street Journal
- Tesla submits partial response in U.S. auto safety probe — memo – Reuters
- Tesla Sets Up First Overseas R&D Center in Shanghai – Bloomberg
Friday Morning Auto News, Oct 22, 2021: Elon Musk worried; Nissan cuts output; Tesla engineer to testify; more
- Elon Musk Sounds Worried About New NHTSA Advisor Missy Cummings – Bloomberg
- Nissan cuts planned output in October and November by 30% – Nikkei – Reuters
- Tesla Engineer Who Quit Wanted as Witness in Key Autopilot Trial – Bloomberg
- Inside the turbulent personal life of Elon Musk, who’s been divorced three times, dated Hollywood stars, and now co-parents a baby with the musician Grimes – Businessinsider
- Nissan ex-chair Ghosn set on restoring reputation – The Detroit News
- 2021 Mercedes-AMG S63 due imminently with snarling V8 hybrid – Autocar
Thursday Morning Auto News, Oct 21, 2021: Dutch gov breaks Tesla code; Greg Kelly gets powerful ally; Tesla’s Grünheide factory hits another snag; more
- Dutch forensic lab says it has decoded Tesla’s driving data – Reuters
- Former Nissan director Kelly could get powerful ally in next ambassador to Japan – Automotive News
- Tesla’s German plant hits snag as public consultation repeated – Reuters
- Goldman Sachs, Freshfields working on possible Porsche IPO -manager magazin – Reuters
- Citroen shuffles C3 line-up in the UK – Autocar
- VW Has Some Catching Up to Do to Win Over Digital Natives – Bloomberg
- U.S. auto retailer AutoNation beats profit estimates on surging car prices – Reuters
- Futures lower after Tesla, IBM quarterly results – Reuters
- Tesla earnings fail to boost the stock, but analysts are raving about one metric in the results – CNBC