Good morning! It’s Wednesday, July 24, 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: Tesla Would Be Fine If Trump Kills EV Tax Credits
Convicted felon Donald Trump is hard at work campaigning for his return to the White House and as well as ambitions to Make America Great Again (whatever that means) he’s also waging an all-out war against electric vehicles. That seems at odds with the views of one of his ardent supporters, Elon Musk, who makes most of his money peddling the exact vehicles Trump is vehemently against.
However, Musk now claims that any measures Trump takes to cut support for EVs across America will definitely not have much impact on his company, reports Reuters. The Tesla boss this week claimed that a cut to tax credits would have minimal impact on Tesla, but “would hurt other automakers.”
“It would be devastating for our competitors, and it would hurt Tesla slightly but long term probably actually helps Tesla would be my guess,” Musk said in a post-earnings conference call after the EV maker reported its lowest profit margin in more than five years.
Former President Trump, the Republican candidate supported by Musk, has been critical of the Biden administration’s EV policies and has said that he will “end the electric vehicle mandate” if he wins office.
Trump has not explained the plan in detail.
Musk said any Trump removal of subsidies, and the resulting impact on Tesla car sales was not crucial because Tesla is an artificial intelligence company focused on self-driving technology.
Instead of selling more electric cars, which Tesla doesn’t seem to be doing very well if its latest financial results are to be believed, Tesla’s future lies in autonomy. Musk claims that “the value of Tesla overwhelmingly is autonomy,” Reuters reports, despite the rollout of the company’s advanced driver assistance tech catching the eye of U.S. regulators following a string of high-profile crashes.
Trump doesn’t seem bothered by autonomous vehicles, instead he’s an ardent opponent of electrification. In his campaign for re-election, Trump has repeatedly attacked the Biden administration’s push towards electrification, including promising to kill an EV mandate that doesn’t actually exist in America.
This battle against EVs hasn’t phased Musk, who previously threw his backing behind the Trump campaign and even donated to political organizations supporting his re-election.
2nd Gear: Rivian Head To Court Over Stolen Tesla IP Case
If Musk is to be believed, then Rivian is one such automaker set to be devastated by Trump’s war on electric cars. However, the American automaker is facing more immediate issues as it could be headed to court over a case accusing it of stealing intellectual property from Tesla.
According to a report from Bloomberg, the American automaker and a slew of ex-Tesla employees that went to work for the Amazon-baked EV maker are facing a court battle over claims that it encouraged workers to steal secrets from Tesla when defecting:
A California state judge on Tuesday issued a tentative ruling denying Rivian’s request to dismiss the claims.
Tesla presented enough evidence to warrant a trial and “persuasively argues that Rivian could have conducted a more thorough investigation with respect to some of its employees,” Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Theodore C. Zayner wrote.
The legal fight began four years ago when Elon Musk’s EV maker accused Rivian in a lawsuit of an “alarming pattern” of poaching its employees and stealing trade secrets. Tesla later said some workers were “caught red-handed” misappropriating core technology for its next-generation batteries.
The latest ruling follows a campaign from ex-Tesla employees who attempted to avoid a court case over claims that they breached confidentiality agreements at the American EV maker. However, their pleas were ignored and the chances of a trial increased.
Rivian also attempted to avoid a lengthy court battle by claiming that it had investigated allegations of trade-secret theft internally and “took some disciplinary actions,” Bloomberg reports.. This didn’t prove to be satisfactory and a California judge dismissed the company’s attempt to miss a date in court.
3rd Gear: Porsche Profits Hit By Falling Sales
The shine on Porsche’s stellar sales performance is starting to dull after the German automaker saw profits drop in the first half of 2024. The dip came as a result of falling sales in China, increased component costs and expensive new car launches, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The 911 maker saw its net profit slip to $2.33 billion for the first six months of 2024, reports the WSJ. Sales margins on every car sold this year also dipped to 15.7 percent, compared with 18.9 percent during the same period last year. As the WSJ explains:
Porsche AG’s profitability suffered in the first half of the year as sales revenue and car deliveries dropped amid a soft performance in China and the high costs of supplies and new-car launches.
The German premium carmaker said Wednesday that the sales decline hurt profit in the first half, though the second quarter proved better than the first.
The Volkswagen-owned company flagged high costs from suppliers and investments in new-model launches, and noted a tough market in China, where less expensive, locally-made electric cars are undercutting European manufacturers as trade tensions persist.
Following the revelation of poorer performance for the first half of the year, Porsche cut its financial forecasts for 2024. The automaker blamed the revision on “impending production slowdowns” due to an alloy shortage.
4th Gear: Waymo Gets Another $5 Billion To Burn
One company that definitely isn’t short on cash these days is autonomous vehicle maker Waymo, which has just been handed an additional $5 billion in funding from parent company Alphabet – the company behind Google.
The mammoth funding boost will be divided up over the next few years and it’s hoped that the extra cash will support expansion of Waymo and its autonomous taxi service, reports Automotive News. As the site explains:
“We are grateful for their immense vote of confidence in our team and recognizing the amazing progress we’ve made with our technology, product and commercialization efforts,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana wrote on X.
The investment arrives as Alphabet seeks to maximize investments in artificial-intelligence, some of which have been created in collaboration with Waymo for its self-driving systems.
Waymo has more than 600 robotaxis deployed in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is the only self-driving tech company with driverless robotaxis commercially deployed in meaningful numbers in the United States.
The $5 billion boost for Waymo follows a string of massive payouts to self-driving startups around the world. General Motors recently pledged more than $800 million to support development of Cruise while British startup Wayve raised $1.05 billion from tech giants such as Nvidia and Microsoft.