Good morning! It’s Tuesday, December 12, 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.
1st Gear: Ford Slashes 2024 F-150 Lighting Production
Ford is cutting its 2024 production goals for the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck in half because of slowing demand for battery-powered vehicles. It’s absolutely an ominous sign for the industry as a whole as demand for electric vehicles just isn’t where most automakers thought it would be. From Bloomberg:
The automaker now intends to build 1,600 of the trucks a week in 2024 at its plant in Dearborn, Michigan, down from a previous plan to manufacture 3,200 units of the model weekly, a company spokeswoman said Monday. The automaker has been informing suppliers of the production cuts on a model Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley once said was “a test for adoption for electric vehicles” in America.
The move comes as Ford scales back spending on electric vehicles by $12 billion and downsized by nearly half a battery factory it’s building in Michigan. Farley has said the robust EV demand the company expected hasn’t materialized because potential buyers are balking at high prices and spotty charging infrastructure. The automaker also is lowering production of its electric Mustang Mach-E in Mexico and put on hold plans for a second battery factory in Kentucky.
“We will continue to match production to customer demand,” Ford said in a statement.
Interestingly, the move comes just as the Lightning had its best sales month ever. Ford moved 4,393 of the electric trucks in November. Still, sales of the Lightning dropped 46 percent in the third quarter as the automaker shut its factory down for expansion and delayed truck delivery for “quality checks.”
It’s a weird time right now. Other than the Lightning, you’ve got the Rivian R1T, which is selling fairly well. However, GM has struggled to get its Ultium-based electric trucks off the ground, and the Tesla Cybertruck is an expensive triangle that only 10 people own.
2nd Gear: The UAW Comes For VW, Honda and Hyundai
The United Auto Workers union said it filed unfair labor practice charges against Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen. It cited aggressive anti-union campaigns at the three automakers that are meant to stop workers from organizing at their facilities. From Reuters:
The union’s filings with the National Labor Relations Board and a video address Monday evening by UAW President Shawn Fain are the latest steps by the union to draw attention to its effort to organize workers at Tesla and foreign-owned U.S. auto plants.
In his video address, Fain said UAW faces challenges organizing at employers that have successfully resisted the union for decades. The UAW wants to see support from 70% of a plant’s workforce before pushing for an organizing vote, Fain said.
Fain said he met last week with workers at Toyota Motor’s Georgetown, Ky assembly plant. The UAW president said no single company is the union’s first priority. “They’re all the target,” he said.
“We will use every tool in our tool box” to overcome company opposition to unionization efforts, Fain said.
The UAW said last month it was launching a first-of-its-kind push to publicly organize the entire nonunion auto sector in the U.S. after winning new record contracts with the Detroit Three automakers.
Last week, the union said over 1,000 factory workers at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee have signed union authorization cards. That represents over 30 percent of workers a the factory.
Since the UAW came to a contract agreement with the Big Three automakers, it has filed charges over actions by Honda and Indiana, Hyundai in Alabama and Volkswagen in Tennessee.
A Honda worker said management illegally told workers to remove union stickers from hats, the UAW said. Hyundai illegally polled employees about their support for the UAW and confiscated union materials and barred their distribution in non-work areas, the union charged.
Honda said in a statement it “encourages our associates to engage and get information on this issue. We have not and would not interfere with our associates’ right to engage in activity supporting or opposing the UAW.”
Hyundai said employees in Alabama “may choose to join a union or not as is their legal right, and this has been true since our plant opened in 2005… The union’s characterization of events in its press statement do not present an accurate picture.”
The UAW said Volkswagen threatened and coerced employees “from exercising rights to engage in protected activity by prohibiting employees from discussing unionization during working time and restricting employees from distributing union materials.”
Volkswagen said on Monday it “respects our workers’ right to determine who should represent their interests in the workplace… We take claims like this very seriously and will investigate accordingly.”
The Detroit-based UAW said last month workers at 13 nonunion automakers were announcing simultaneous campaigns across the country to join the union, including at Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen, Honda, Hyundai, Rivian, Nissan, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
It’ll be an extremely uphill battle for the union, but if anything is worth fighting for, it’s workers’ rights. Solidarity, baby.
3rd Gear: Lucid’s Chief Financial Officer Peaces Out
Lucid said its chief financial officer, Sherry House, is leaving the automaker at the end of the year to “pursue new opportunities.” Sounds like a rough breakup to me, but she isn’t moving out of the apartment just yet. House will apparently be staying on in an advisory role at the struggling startup through the end of the year. From Automotive News:
The automaker said it has named an interim CFO as it looks for a permanent replacement.
“Gagan Dhingra, Lucid’s current vice president of accounting and principal accounting officer, will additionally serve as interim chief financial officer and principal financial officer, effective immediately, while Lucid’s search for a replacement CFO is underway,” the company said in its Monday statement.
House, who was a prominent speaker on the company’s quarterly earnings calls, is leaving as the California-based startup struggles with weak demand for its first vehicle, the Lucid Air sedan, and before it launches the Gravity crossover next year in hopes of boosting sales.
Last month, Lucid took a knife to its 2023 production estimates for the Air after reporting a $631 million net loss in the third quarter and only a modest sales increase over the year before.
Lucid estimated a full-year output at 8,000 to 8,500 vehicles, down from its previous estimate of over 10,000. However, it only delivered 4,267 Airs through September, and it built a little over 6,000.
According to Experian new-vehicle registration data for October, the Lucid Air had 461 new registrations for the month, down 26 percent from last October, despite aggressive sales promotions.
“I am confident in Lucid’s future and grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to its success,” House said in the press release. “There is so much exciting innovation happening at Lucid, and I look forward to watching the company continue to grow and achieve new milestones.”
[…]
Lucid became a publicly traded company in July 2021 and launched the Air at the end of that year at its new factory in Arizona. The automaker is majority owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
“I want to thank Sherry for her contributions to the company during her tenure,” said Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson. “She was a key member of our leadership team and a critical player during major corporate moments.”
Before starting at Lucid in May of 2021, House worked for nearly four years at Waymo. Her last job title at the company was treasurer and head of investor relations.
House didn’t say where she would go next, but it probably isn’t the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
4th Gear: Renault Selling Five Percent Of Nissan Stake
French automaker Renault is selling a five percent stake in Nissan back to the Japanese automaker. It’s part of the first stage of a planned reduction in its holdings as the two automakers rebalance their alliance. From Reuters:
The move, which Renault said will reflect a loss on its initial investment of up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.62 billion), will be the first tranche of a series of share sales by Renault to reduce its Nissan stake to 15% from around 43%.
To do so, it has placed a 28.4% in a trust and is expected to sell down that holding gradually. Nissan, which has a right of first offer on the shares, will buy back the 5% stake.
Renault and Nissan finalised at the end of July the terms of a restructuring of their alliance after months of negotiations, aiming for a downsized, but more pragmatic and agile partnership. Both companies aim to have cross-shareholdings of 15% as part of the alliance agreement.
The sale of shares worth an estimated 765 million euros will be carried out on Wednesday, Renault said. The 1.5 billion euro capital loss will hit the firm’s net result for the year, but will not affect its operating income.
As of end-2022, Renault valued the 43.4% Nissan stake on its books at 17.5 billion euros, while Nissan as a whole has a current market value of just over 15 billion euros.
The sale of that sliver of Nissan is reportedly part of a broader overall strategy at Renault that includes the planned market listing of its electric vehicle division Ampere sometime in 2024.
The Japanese automaker said the acquisition cost will amount to an estimated 119.95 billion yen ($824.85 million). It added it would fund the transaction by using its net cash position.
My God, I do not know how finance people do this all day.
Reverse: Neat!
Neutral: BFFR Eric Adams
An apartment building partially collapsed in the Bronx, and our intrepid mayor decided to wear a hat with his own goddamn name on it during the press conference. The dude is so corny, it’s embarrassing.