Dear reader,
Electric car stocks have been among the losers on the stock markets so far this year. Tesla has lost about a third of its value since the beginning of the year. Chinese leader BYD is almost happy about a loss of around 5 percent, and some start-ups have been hit hard: Fisker was recently excluded from trading and is fighting against bankruptcy.
Has investors’ euphoria about electric cars completely disappeared? Xiaomi shows that there is still imagination. The smartphone manufacturer has just presented its first vehicle. The SU7 came with starting prices under 30,000 euros so well that the shares rose by up to 16 percent. Xiaomi overtook autodinos like GM and Ford with a market value of $55 billion. Xiaomi collected almost 90,000 pre-orders for its car in the first 24 hours. Let’s see if the hype creates a viable business model.
Since Britta Seeger (54) announced in mid-January that she wanted to sell the Mercedes-owned car dealerships in Germany, the sales director has been under the storm. Employees at the branches received the latest bitter news by email: they will receive an extra 1,000 euros gross for their “outstanding performance” in 2023. That would be fine if Daimler factory employees didn’t get up to 7,300 euros. Britta Seeger needs an agreement with employee representatives before she can sell the car dealerships. The board should prepare for “very tough arguments”.
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There are more and more electric cars on the road in Germany – However, the pace of growth is slowing. On January 1, 2024, the Federal Motor Transport Authority counted 1.41 million pure electric vehicles in its fleet, 396,000 or 39 percent more than a year earlier. In 2022 the number had increased by 64 percent, and in 2021 by 100 percent. If the increase remained at 39 percent year after year, which it doesn’t even look like at the moment, around 7.95 million electric cars would be registered in 2030. The traffic light dream of 15 million electric cars seems increasingly unrealistic.
Deep Drive: Prices are plummeting
The result of the lower demand for electric cars is, sometimes the rules of economics apply, falling prices. This currently particularly applies to used cars. At Autoscout24, used electric cars were offered for an average of 29,549 euros in March. This meant they fell below the 30,000 euro mark for the first time. A year ago the average was 40,239 euros, more than 10,000 euros higher. What makes prospective buyers happy is likely to cause headaches for those who have relied on stable residual values.
Bizarre scenes are taking place at the Swiss bicycle and sporting goods manufacturer Scott Sports. Last Friday, the Korean majority owner Youngone announced that it would remove long-time patron Beat Zaugg (66) as CEO. But he also holds 47 percent of the shares in the company. Can someone like that be pushed out? Zaugg doesn’t even think about it. On Monday he explained
, he is still in office. Others used the power struggle for April Fools’ jokes: the Transalpes bike manufacturer joked LinkedIn
, Zaugg will be your new managing director and majority owner.
Have a good week.
Yours, Christoph Seyerlein
Do you have any wishes, suggestions or information that we should take care of journalistically? You can reach my colleagues in the Mobility team and me at manage.mobility@manager-magazin.de
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