Full-size pickups now surpass everything, with Nissan CEO confronting investors, coronavirus considerations in GM’s bread and butter factories, the slow economic recovery of coronavirus in Germany. All this and more in The Morning Shift on Monday, July 6, 2020.
We have now learned that, even in the midst of a global pandemic, truck sales, especially among domestic automakers, have remained solid, while the rest of the market has fallen off a cliff.
Automotive News reviewed new U.S. vehicle sales reports. In the quarter, while the truck segment was somewhat battered, it has become the best-selling car segment in the U.S., which is quite difficult to think of.
Large pickup trucks outperform sales of compact crossovers, which have been number 1 every quarter since sedans fell among consumers in recent years. Including the mid-size segment that Jeep and Ford re-established, one in four cars sold through non-luxury brands from April to June a pickup, according to the Automotive News knowledge center.
New car sales, according to the publication, fell 34% in the quarter. It’s pretty horrible But even though sales of Silverado trucks have dropped 14%, Sierra sales have dropped by 5%, Ford’s F-Series sales have fallen by 23% and Ram has sold 35% fewer pickup trucks than in the last quarter, the trucks have been discovered more shapefully than the maximum auto segments. Automotive News Matrix:
Industry sales suffered as plant closures reduced stocks and many distributors had to temporarily close or conduct full online transactions to comply with government restrictions. The volume of recovery declined less than the maximum of other segments, in part due to the 0% financing granted by automakers as the pandemic shook the economy. Many dealers reported that they were promoting most of the vans they had in stock.
The fact that a quarter of all cars sold through “non-luxury brands” are vans, a figure that represents 4% more than at the same time last year, is a bit crazy. Ford’s vice president of marketing explains why trucks do better than other vehicle segments, with Automotive News writing:
Large utility and van companies paint better because other people want to be painted, and thriving consumers who buy those cars have been less affected by the pandemic, said Mark LaNeve, Ford’s vice president of marketing, sales, and service in the United States.
It makes sense, however, to think that the best-selling cars in the U.S. They are not sedans or crossovers, but trucks with chassis.
Energized by
Nissan’s been in pain lately. I like a lot of people. A lot.
In October, the company had a new CEO, Makoto Uchida, who succeeded Yasuhiro Yamauchi, who followed Hiroto Saikawa, who arrived here after Carlos Ghosn (who went through all sorts of things, adding to escape to Lebanon after being arrested in Japan).
In February, we wrote about a “disturbed” assembly that the new CEO had with shareholders in which Uchida stated that he had a plan in place and that, if he can do things with Nissan, shareholders can simply “fire” him immediately.
Now there’s another debatable shareholder meeting, in which the CEO once again had to assure participants that he had a plan, and a smart one, for that. If you’re wondering how controversial Array is, just read this description of Automotive News:
Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida tried selling the automaker’s new revival plan to skeptical shareholders last week amid an angry showdown over everything from his management style and corporate vision to board member pay and the company’s plunging share price.
Some participants at the annual shareholders’ meeting on June 29 even spoke melancholy of the Carlos Ghosn era: one praised the defendant former president’s strong leadership and blamed his downfall of a conspiracy between Japanese prosecutors and government bureaucrats.
Uchida has made this clear: Nissan’s recovery plan is a long-term plan, and a recovery will take years, four. From Automotive News:
In his latest appeal, Uchida promised that the medium-term plan presented in May would repair the besed automaker to an expansion trajectory, but warned that there is still a full rebound.
He noted that a recovery benchmark would be a return to the positive loose money flow. He predicted that this would happen between October 2021 and March 2022. Nissan, which just recorded its first net loss of the year in 11 years, bled 641 billion yen ($5.95 billion) in money from its core automotive business during the year. But Uchida said the net money position is still enough to allow the company to weather the COVID-19 pandemic through newly secured lines of credit.
Uchida insisted that the medium-term plan chart a path to complete the recovery in four years.
We learned last week that the local union at GM’s Arlington Assembly Plant had asked GM to shut down the facility due to an apparently growing number of COVID-19 cases.
A new Detroit Free Press story mentions cases of coronavirus only at the giant SUV plant discussed above, but also in Wentzville, a Missouri facility that pumps pickup trucks. From the news site:
According to corporate documents received through Free Press, there have been 22 cases of coronavirus in Arlington since the plant resumed production last May. This figure was shown through a user close to the UAW, who refused to be named because there was no authorization to speak.
In Wentzville, there have been 12 instances shown since it restarted in mid-May, compared to five instances less than a month ago, a factory official familiar with union control said that has access to the data. The user refused to be named because he is not allowed to speak to the media.
The total number of cases, Says Free Press, is less than 1 consistent with the penny of the total at any of the plants, however, the UAW will pay specific attention to them. Here’s what “consistent with those familiar with UAW” told the news site:
“If we continue to see an accumulation in the number of cases, the union will have to request the closure of the plant so that it can be cleaned and the staff can be tested,” the user said. “It’s a concern.”
GM’s policy is to verify the number of coronavirus instances in your plants. But one spokesman said production had stopped at any GM plant due to the virus.
Of course, GM is taking a number of steps to protect its workers, including:
This is a big problem. Sales of trucks and GM SUVs.
Germany, a country whose economy is largely supported by the automotive sector, is recovering from the economic struggles resulting from the COVID-19 blockades, although the first symptoms involve a slow (i.e. slow) return to “normality.”
Reuters breaks it down:
But the knowledge that trade orders increased through a record 10.4% in a month when restrictions were lifted, nearly one-third less than expected in a Reuters survey, dashed hopes for an immediate return to pre-crisis trade.
“Knowledge of order implies that the production recession has triumphed over its lowest point,” the Ministry of Economy said. “But the low point of the orders also shows that the recovery procedure is far from over.”
[…]
Fears of a slow recovery have been compounded by a survey by the Ifo Economic Institute, which shows that 21% of the companies that the pandemic will force them to close, increasing expectations that mass insolvencies in the coming months will hamper the economy.
The service industry is suffering, especially agencies, restaurants and hotels. And the automotive industry and other export-dependent industries aren’t where they want to be either. From history:
This is no greater for German export-oriented manufacturers, who had faced a drop in demand before the pandemic resulting from industry disputes between the United States and China, uncertainties similar to Britain’s exit from the European Union, and an automotive sector undergoing costly changes. . electric vehicles.
Reuters writes that the German “expects the economy to shrink by 6.3% this year, which would be its biggest recession since World War II.” Yikes
Electric cars are a massive business now, and will only be more vital when emissions regulations are tighter. Batteries are a primary bottleneck in the world of electric vehicles, and perhaps one that has the potential to provide the highest competitive merit to an automaker capable of solving it intelligently. It is therefore not surprising that we continue to see links between the automaker and the battery manufacturer.
An example of considerations is Stuttgart-based car manufacturer Daimler, which buys a 3% status from Chinese mobile battery manufacturer Farasis. From the Financial Times:
The Stuttgart-based company said it would invest the issue of “several million euros” for regulatory approvals, and will appoint Markus Schofer, its executive leader of the Mercedes brand, to the Farasis supervisory board. Daimler’s investment in Farasis, which plans to float, occurs when European car manufacturers, who rely heavily on Asian battery brands for their electric car ambitions, must take hold in the new automotive chain of origin.
Daimler described how important the new investment is for the company’s future electric vehicle plans:
“By taking a stake in a Chinese mobile battery manufacturer for the first time, we will take greater credit for the perspective of complex generation partners in the market, which will allow us to continue our global electricity strategy,” said Hubertus Troska, Daimler’s guilty board member. for China. Matrix “In the future, we will continue our development, production and procurement studies and activities in China,” he added.
From the telegraph:
1952: London’s last tram ends its adventure by ending almost a hundred years of trams in London. After the last of those electric trams, the rails will be reassembled and some of the tunnels will be changed to increase car traffic in London.
Some other people hate the fuel-hungry nature of a pickup truck, but even though I recently got 13 miles per gallon on an adventure of more than 3,000 miles down the road in my Jeep J10, I still can’t love the charm. I recently ate ice cream with an old friend at the tailgate and went on a date to go to the movies at the bank. These were wonderful and captivating experiences. It’s not wonderful for the environment, but it’s awesome.
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