Electric vehicle stocks closed the week ending March 24 on a mixed note, despite the positive weekly performance by the broader market. Tesla, Inc. TSLA ran up strongly this week on the expectation that first-quarter deliveries will outperform.
Tesla Short-Shrifted: Tesla’s Model 3 EV may not benefit from the $7,500 tax credit vested by the “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022, Electrek reported, citing an internal memo from the company to its employees. The company reportedly expects the new guidelines to be released by the Internal Revenue Service to set "onshore manufacturing of battery packs" as a qualifying criterion. The Model 3 standard range, though manufactured in the Fremont plant, is powered by a lithium-iron-phosphate battery made in China.
Meanwhile, South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Company HYMTF is secretly using Tesla’s Model 3 for benchmarking its vehicles, Tesmanian reported. Though it initially used the Tesla vehicle to test its full-self driving capabilities, Hyundai reportedly has inspected the car's exterior and interior.
In addition, Tesla has set in motion an aggressive price war in China, threatening to put many of the country's smaller domestic rivals out of business, a Bloomberg report said. The price war that started in late October in China has left the company’s made-in-China vehicles about 14% cheaper than last year and, in some cases, even 50% cheaper than the price those models sell in the U.S. and Europe.
Lucid To Use Apple’s CarPlay: Premium EV manufacturer Lucid Group, Inc. LCID, which is among several startups facing challenges in ramping up its production, said this week that Apple, Inc. AAPL CarPlay will come standard with its Lucid Air vehicles. Apple had announced the latest iteration of its CarPlay during WWDC 2022, and it could come in late 2023. The CarPlay feature will be incorporated in Lucid’s Glass Cockpit display and can be used to provide directions, make phone calls, respond to text messages, and play music, among other things.
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Nio Reiterates 2023 Sales Target: Chinese EV startup Nio, Inc. NIO saw a small upward bounce in its shares this week after its CFO Steven Feng said he was confident of the company hitting the guidance for doubling EV sales to 250,000 units in 2023. While speaking to Bloomberg, Feng said the company hopes to achieve this goal with its new models, by expanding the charging and battery-swapping network and by unlocking autonomous driving technology.
Ford Teases Next-Gen EV Truck: Ford Motor Company F announced a new EV manufacturing complex called BlueOval City in western Tennessee, where it plans to build its next EV truck codenamed “Project T3.” The new EV truck is expected to roll out in 2025.
“BlueOval City is the blueprint for Ford’s electric future around the world,” said Bill Ford, Ford’s executive chair. Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, added, “Project T3 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revolutionize America’s truck. We are melding 100 years of Ford truck know-how with world-class electric vehicle, software and aerodynamics talent. It will be a platform for endless innovation and capability.”
On Thursday, Ford said in an update that it expects its EV business to lose $3 billion in 2023, although it is targeting a pre-tax margin of 8% by late 2026. The company expects to have global capacity to build 600,000 EVs by 2023 and ramp up to 2 million EVs by late 2026.
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Rivian: Rivian Automotive, Inc. RIVN, which recently saw a flurry of executive departures, is looking to relocate part of its manufacturing engineering team from around the country to its central Illinois plant or to its corporate headquarters in Irvine, California, to help speed up production, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company reportedly hired engineers from different parts of the country during the pandemic and allowed them to work remotely.
EV Stock Performances for The Week:
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