Europe is driving electric cars and this deserves to raise lithium prices, Hyundai’s new autonomous car spouse just earned a strange new name, GM’s world-leading monetary official is absent and sales in China are skyrocking. All this and more in The Morning Shift on August 11, 2020.
Lithium costs have been falling for some time, however this is about to be replaced thanks in part to the incentives for electric vehicles in Europe, as Bloomberg reports:
Despite delays and restarts of mining in some auto plants as a result of coronavirus blockages, the costs of steel used in electric vehicle batteries have remained low for several years. But the head of Albemarle’s lithium business says strong incentives for consumers to buy electric cars in Europe, as well as adjustments to inspire car manufacturers to build greener cars around the world, will contribute to the demand for lithium.
[…]
Europe outperforms regions by driving an ecological policy in reaction to Covid-19, according to BloombergNEF analyst Victoria Cuming. “Their states have approved $43 billion for renewable energy, electric cars and low-carbon technologies, plus $18 billion for carbon-intensive sectors, but with climate-related conditions,” Cuming said in a July report.
European incentives (you may have heard of Renault Zoe, which sells incredibly well in Europe and can be rented for hire in Germany) are not the only points in rising lithium prices. China also continues to inspire the adoption of electric vehicles. From Bloomberg:
“It’s a European story and a regulatory story,” Albemarle’s Eric Norris said in an interview. “And in China, they prolonged subsidies for a few years instead of the program expiring, that was the original plan, so China will be a secondary contributor.”
It was attractive to note the state of auto sales as automakers began to increase vehicle production after COVID closures, and consumers began to drive their cars more and more.
For a time, global vehicle sales stagnated, adding in China, the world’s largest automotive market. But while North America and Europe are suffering to recover, car sales in China have increased. In fact, July’s sales eclipsed last July’s sales by 16%, according to Reuters. While this is not enough for overall sales in 2020 to exceed 2019, it remains a step in the right direction.
From Reuters:
Sales reached 2.11 million cars in July, but have still fallen by 13% so far this year to 12.37 million cars, according to the wholesale knowledge of the China Automobile Manufacturers Association (CAAM).
Sales of trucks and other advertising vehicles, which account for about a quarter of the market, increased by 59%, driven by government investment in infrastructure and the stricter emissions regulations introduced this year. Sales of passenger cars increased to 8.5%.
The agreement expects car sales to fall by around 10% this year, for a moment, a wave of viral infections, which can expand the fall to about 20%.
This is consistent with last week’s forecast by the China Automobile Manufacturers Association that July’s sales figures would be particularly higher than in the same month last year.
GM has appointed interim global CFO John Stapleton to upgrade Dhivya Suryadevara, who leaves the company to pursue business.
Apparently, Stapleton, who is lately the CHIEF Financial Officer of North America, will hold the post until GM can complete his search for a successor for Suryadevara. Extract from GM Press Release:
General Motors today announced that John Stapleton, CHIEF Financial Officer of GM North America, has been appointed interim global CFO as of August 15. The appointment follows the resignation of Dhivya Suryadevara, executive vice president and CHIEF Financial Officer, who will leave the company for an external opportunity. the automotive industry. GM will conduct an internal and external search for a successor.
In the fall of 2019, Hyundai partnered with Aptiv, an auto parts supplier formerly known as Delphi, to expand autonomous vehicle technology. Specifically, the alliance’s goal is to bring Tier Four and Five SAE technologies to market, and Aptiv describes the main points of the joint venture in its press release, writing:
The joint venture will promote the design, progression and commercialization of StandE Level four and five autonomous technologies, strengthening the leadership position of partners in the global autonomous driving ecosystem. The joint venture will start with completely driverless systems in 2020 and offer a production-ready autonomous driving platform for robotaxi suppliers, fleet operators and automakers by 2022.
As a component of the agreement, Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv will have a 50% stake in the joint venture, valued at a total of four billion U.S. dollars. Aptiv will bring its autonomous driving technology, high-level assets and approximately 700 workers destined to develop scalable autonomous driving solutions. The subsidiaries of Hyundai Motor Group, Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Hyundai Mobis, will jointly make a $1.6 billion in money at the end and $0.4 billion in automotive engineering services, studies and resources of progression and access to high-level assets.
Now we have learned that the partnership between Aptiv and Hyundai has a new name: “Motional”. Aptiv President and CEO Kevin Clark breaks down the new logo in a press release, which reads:
Today, our self-driving joint venture with Hyundai Motor Group announced its new call and logo identity: Motional.
Motional connects two words: movement and emotion. Motion talks about the movement of driverless cars imaginable through the company’s technology, subsidized through decades of delight to advance the industry. Emotional evokes the company’s people-centric technique and focuses on accepting self-driving cars as true.
It’s a name, but it’s actually not the st we’ve heard recently.
German salaries, in addition to those of the automotive industry, fell last quarter due to discounts on hours of operation similar to the complications of coronavirus. Reuters breaks it down:
Gross monthly profits from full-time and part-time staff in Germany fell by an average of 2.2% in the current quarter compared to a year ago, mainly due to widespread use of part-time paintings by the coronavirus crisis, the Federal said the Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.
The sectors most affected were hotels and hotels, the sector and tour operators, he said.
If curious, the United States defines partial unemployment as “public systems that allow economically distressed businesses to temporarily reduce hours worked while offering their workers a state source of income assistance for unworked hours.”
From the Encyclopedia Britannica:
American painter Jackson Pollock, one of the leading representatives of summary expressionism that gained wonderful fame and great popularity for his radical pouring, or “dripping,” died that day in 1956 in a car accident.
Motional or Stellantis?
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