Good morning! It’s Wednesday, November 8, 2023, and that is The Morning Shift, your day by day roundup of the highest automotive headlines from around the globe, in a single place. Here are the vital tales it is advisable know.
1st Gear: Biden’s Bold EV Push
President Joe Biden has taken a number of steps to try to result in America’s pivot to electrical vehicles. He’s freed up funding to enhance charging networks throughout the nation, inspired federal fleets to change to EVs and rolled out a raft of tax credit accessible to anybody shopping for an American-made electrical automotive. Steps like these seem like making a distinction, because the variety of U.S.-built EV continues to rising.
Biden’s 2022 local weather regulation introduced in a wave of funding and innovation throughout America’s electrical automobile market, studies the New York Times. Automakers pledged to ramp up EV manufacturing and firms together with BMW and Hyundai now have battery crops within the works to spice up future EV capability. While it’s nice that automakers have caused this alteration in business attitudes in the direction of EVs, the Times warns that the identical change hasn’t occurred amongst most American automotive consumers simply but. The website studies:
For now, the local weather regulation has not drastically affected developments in electrical automobile gross sales. Americans are poised to purchase a million electrical vehicles and vans for the primary time this 12 months, persevering with a gentle development of elevated market share for electrical automobiles that started years in the past.
The regulation’s most pronounced rapid impact on the buyer market seems to be unintended: driving many electrical automotive consumers to lease automobiles as a substitute of shopping for them. That’s as a result of a Treasury Department regulation allows auto sellers to keep away from the regulation’s made-in-America necessities for vehicles that they purchase after which lease to clients. That permits consumers to successfully reap the total advantages of the federal tax break for fashions that in any other case wouldn’t qualify.
This lukewarm reception to EVs has been significantly apparent in latest months, as Ford instructed that it would minimize manufacturing on the plant constructing its F-150 Lightning EV and GM pushed again its personal electrical automobile targets.
Despite the struggles with demand that some automakers are dealing with, the Times argues that “…electric vehicle sales are projected to jump sharply under the right conditions.” Those circumstances together with charging factors positioned each 50 miles on main U.S. roadways and simply accessible tax credit for anybody trying to purchase an EV. If that occurs, the Congressional Budget Office instructed that electrical automobiles might make up “42 percent of all vehicles sold in America in less than a decade.”
2nd Gear: Rivian Might Actually Be Doing OK
After EV startups Fisker and Lucid slash supply targets as they posted decrease than anticipated gross sales figures, fellow EV maker Rivian is feeling extra constructive in regards to the electrical automotive market. The electrical truck maker simply elevated its manufacturing targets for the 12 months, claiming that it’ll produce 54,000 items by the top of 2023.
Rivian, which builds its R1S and R1T electrical vehicles in Illinois, has confronted quite a few provide chain points in latest months, which hampered its manufacturing in line with Reuters. Now, the EV maker seems to be by means of the worst of it and is able to improve its output forward of a long-rumored launch of a extra reasonably priced mannequin.
The transfer is in stark distinction to bulletins made by market chief Tesla and fellow EV startup Lucid, which minimize its output for the 12 months from 10,000 items right down to round 8,000. Reuters studies:
“I’m actually surprised to be honest at how much we’ve seen others pull back,” Rivian Chief Executive RJ Scaringe mentioned in an interview with Reuters. “I think it’s going to create, unfortunately, somewhat of a vacuum of products in the market.”
He mentioned that “shifts in buying behavior beyond the tail end of 2023″ were not influencing Rivian’s investment strategy for cheaper R2 vehicles that the company expects to launch in 2026.
In another boost for the company, Rivian ended its exclusivity deal with Amazon for the use of its electric delivery trucks. Amazon, which is one of the company’s biggest shareholders, order for 100,000 electric delivery vans before the end of 2030. On top of that mammoth order, Rivian is now also “speaking with other customers that are interested in the Rivian Commercial Vehicle platform,” Reuters studies.
3rd Gear: Hyundai Wants To Build Flying Taxis
While Rivian is getting the hang of building electric cars, Hyundai wants to take things up a notch and is preparing to start building electric flying taxis. The Korean automaker confirmed that it plans to build a U.S. plant for its Supernal flying taxi arm, which hopes to have eVTOL craft ready for commercial use by 2028.
Hyundai’s air mobility division Supernal is eyeing locations in the U.S. at which to build its first plant, where it will assemble an eVTOL taxi that can travel at speeds of up to 120 miles an hour while carrying one pilot and four passengers, according to Bloomberg. While the company has not yet outlined the size or capacity for the factory, it will follow the opening of an engineering center for the company in California. Bloomberg reports:
Racing to catch up, Supernal opened a new engineering headquarters in Irvine, California, in July and a new R&D facility in Fremont two months later. Its workforce has doubled from last year to nearly 600, with many coming from Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Tesla Inc., according to [Supernal Chief Executive Officer] Shin Jaiwon.
In the two years since Supernal was founded, Hyundai, Kia and Hyundai Mobis Co. have invested about 1.2 trillion won ($920 million) into the company, filings show. With funding coming from Hyundai, Supernal doesn’t plan an initial public offering, Shin said.
As well as announcing plans for a stateside factory, Supernal also recently announced a deal with Korean Air to begin offering its services to the South Korean market. The deal follows similar tie-ins with eVTOL manufacturers and major airlines, including one between United and startup company Archer Aviation.
4th Gear: GM Targets Low Cost EV Motors
In a move to try and make its future EVs more affordable, General Motors has partnered with an American company investigating new motor tech. The U.S automaker has partnered with Niron Magnetics of Minneapolis to develop new magnets that could be used in EV motors of the future.
The deal, which was shared by the Detroit Free Press, will see GM and Niron Magnetics develop something they call “Clean Earth Magnet motor technology,” which could be used in future GM electric models. The tech uses more affordable and readily available materials to create components needed in EV motors. As the Free Press explains:
Niron’s proprietary Clean Earth Magnet technology is based on iron nitride, an abundant and affordable material with great potential for commercial use in future EVs, [Jonathan Rowntree, the company’s CEO] said.
The permanent magnets used now in EV motor rotors are typically made from rare earth minerals that are expensive and currently processed almost entirely overseas, GM said in a statement.
If EV makers like GM can uncover new technology that brings the cost and environmental impact of EVs down, it could be key to a future market filled with electric cars that people can actually afford.
So far, GM has not revealed how much it’s invested in the new deal with Niron Magnetics. However, the company did reveal earlier this week that it had “raised $33 million in additional funding,” reports the Free Press.
Reverse: Farewell Ford Rotunda
On The Radio: The White Stripes – “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues”
Source: jalopnik.com