Trump Pours Cold Water On Industry, Tesla Falls Ahead Of Earnings Week, Ford's Step-back In EV Plans And More: Biggest EV Stories Of The Week

Electric vehicle stocks fell across the board, with the decline mostly due to the broader market pullback this week. Tesla, Inc. TSLA extended its weekly declines ahead of next week’s earnings release.

Here’s a run down on what happened in the EV space during the week:

Tesla Raises Prices: The not-so-successful price-cutting strategy has been discontinued at least for now, with Tesla announcing $2,000 price increases for all variants of the Model S and Model X EVs in U.S. this week. The prices of these models were also hiked in Canada. The company, however, is persisting with its incentives and liberal financing options. Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt reported that Tesla has begun offering a loan rate of 1.99% APR for all new Model Y finance orders in the U.S.

Despite analyst upping their estimates for Tesla, the stock fell for a second straight week. The company is scheduled to report its quarterly results after the market close on Tuesday. Analysts, on average, expect Tesla to report earnings per share of 57 cents per share and revenue of $22.6 billion. This is in contrast with the year-ago numbers of 91 cents and $24.93 billion, respectively.

Tesla Energy, which is supposed to be one of the most promising segments, announced this week it has committed an additional 15.3 gigawatt-hour of Megapacks to Intersect Power. “The agreement adds to Intersect's 2.4 GWh of Megapacks under operation or construction, including 966 MWh at three Texas sites, set to move from concept to commissioned within 12 months,” Tesla said in a post.

Trump’s EV Stance: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump dealt a blow to the EV industry by announcing at the the party’s national convention this week that he “will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one.” The move, according to the former president, will save the U.S. auto industry from “complete obliteration,” and saves U.S. consumers “thousands and thousands” of dollars per car.

Incidentally, the Biden administration has set a goal for 50% of all new vehicles sold to be electric by 2030. His predecessor, however, opined that EVs will only benefit China and Mexico, while hurting American auto workers.

See Also: Best EV Stocks

Ford Struggles With EV Transition: Legacy automaker Ford Motor Co. F said it would repurpose the  Oakville, Ontario plant it had set aside to make EVs to build its ICE F-series Super-Duty pickup truck. Ford said it plans to invest approximately $3 billion to expand the Super Duty production, including $2.3 billion to install assembly and integrated stamping operations at the Oakville Assembly Complex.

The company sees the assembly providing 1,800 Canadian jobs, 400 more than would initially have been needed to produce the three-row electric vehicle. 

Hyzon Plunges On Stock Offering: Shares of Hyzon Motors Inc. HYZN fell nearly 50% on Friday after the company announced a registered directing offering of shares. The manufacturer of heavy-duty commercial Class 8 trucks has entered into a securities purchase agreement with certain institutional investors for the purchase and sale of 22.50 million shares of its Class A Common Stock and warrants to purchase 22.50 million shares of its common stock, at a combined offering price of 20 cents per share and accompanying warrants. The warrants, with an exercise price of 30 cents per share, are immediately exercisable and will expire five years following the date of issuance.

The closing of the offering is expected to occur on or about July 22. The company said it intends to use the net proceeds from this offering primarily to fund working capital and other general corporate purposes.

BYD’s Vietnam Expansion: Chinese EV startup BYD Co. Ltd. BYDDY BYDDF said it plans to aggressively expand its dealership network in Vietnam, with 13 dealership opening this week, Reuters reported. The company plans to increase the number to about 100 by 2026. Vo Minh Luc, the chief operations officer of BYD Vietnam, told Reuters that the company plans to launch three models initially in the country, including the compact crossover Atto 3. The number of models on the road in the Southeast Asian nation will increase to six by October.

The KraneShares Electric Vehicles and Future Mobility Index ETF KARS ended Friday’s session down 0.59% at $20.08 according to Benzinga Pro data. For the week, the ETF fell 4.88%.

Check out more of Benzinga’s Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link.

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