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GM Canada Announces Moving from Monthly to Quarterly Sales Reporting

GM Canada Announces Moving from Monthly to Quarterly Sales Reporting 2019-03-19 OSHAWA, Ontario (March 19, 2019) — GM Canada has made the strategic decision to move to quarterly sales reporting to be consistent with GM in the U.S. As GM previously communicated in the U.S., thirty days is not enough time to separate real sales trends… Continue reading GM Canada Announces Moving from Monthly to Quarterly Sales Reporting

Chevrolet Onix Compact Sedan to Make Its Global Debut in China

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Crash tests slam some popular pickup trucks

Jeff Kowalsky | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A Ford Explorer XLT during a head on 30 mile per hour crash test at the company's Crash Barrier Facility in Dearborn, Michigan.

New crash tests show pickups with some of the oldest designs could struggle to protect passengers riding in the front seat.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested eleven mid-size and full-size pickups and found mixed results.

“In general, the pickup truck class of vehicles is not doing as good a job protecting right front passengers as other classes of vehicles,” said David Zuby, IIHS chief research officer.

Among the the full-size pickups, the Ford F-150, the Ram 1500 and Nissan's Titan received the best possible rating of “good” — one grade above the Honda Ridgeline which was rated “acceptable.”

By comparison, the IIHS says the Chevy Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra provided “marginal” protection for passengers in the front seat when the right front corner of their truck slams into another vehicle or an object at 40 miles per hour.

Dan Flores, a spokesperson for General Motors says the automaker is continually working to improve the safety of it trucks. “GM designs our vehicles to protect the occupants in a broad range of crashes including front, offset, angle, side and rear impacts,” he said.

The IIHS gave a “poor” rating — the lowest possible — to the Toyota Tundra.

A spokesperson for Toyota told CNBC that “safety and reliability of its vehicles is a top priority.” He added: “We'll continue to look for ways to improve in an effort to exceed customers' expectations — particularly in new testing such as IIHS' passenger-side front small overlap (tests) for pickup trucks.”

Why might some of the most popular pickups struggle with protecting passengers in some of the most common front-end collisions?

The IIHS said part of the problem is that some pickups have older designs that did not emphasize front seat passenger protection to the degree it's expected today.

“We are reasonably confident that when those pickup trucks are redesigned, they will incorporate better protection for the front passenger,” said Zuby.

It's hard to know how much the tests will impact the decisions of truck buyers.

Pickup sales have been surging over the last five years, as more Americans have opted for a truck instead of driving a car. Last year, pickup sales in the U.S. climbed 4.3 percent, according to the auto website Edmunds, while auto sales overall were only fractionally higher.

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At IPO road show, Lyft executives look to lower insurance costs

FILE PHOTO: A car with a Lyft logo in its window drives down a street as the company prepares for its upcoming IPO in New York, U.S., March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo BOSTON (Reuters) – Lyft Inc executives are focused on cutting insurance costs and will phase in self-driving vehicles on simple routes first,… Continue reading At IPO road show, Lyft executives look to lower insurance costs

Audi Sales, Mercedes Sales, Toyota Sales, Infiniti Sales, Acura Car Sales, BMW Car Sales, Honda Car Sales, & Lexus Car Sales Down In February In USA

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Published on March 19th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Audi Sales, Mercedes Sales, Toyota Sales, Infiniti Sales, Acura Car Sales, BMW Car Sales, Honda Car Sales, & Lexus Car Sales Down In February In USA

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March 19th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

Here on CleanTechnica, we keep a close eye on electric vehicle news and sales. However, it’s important to watch competing areas of the market to get a sense of the full dynamic. As part of that, I track the monthly US sales of all the automakers that publish monthly figures. The story lately has been a downtrend in sales at major automakers other than Tesla, and especially those automakers’ car sales.

In the month of February, the following luxury auto companies and car divisions had the following sales drops:

Acura Cars: −12%
Audi: −12%
Audi Cars: −12%
BMW Cars: −12%
Infiniti: −17%
Infiniti Cars: −46%
Lexus Cars: −2%
Mercedes-Benz: −13%
Mercedes-Benz Cars: −4%
Volvo Cars: −77%

On the flip side, these luxury auto companies had the following sales increases:

Acura: 11%
Jaguar Land Rover: 29%
Lexus: 4%
Volvo: 6%

Overall, luxury auto sales from all of those companies were down 2,099 in February and car sales from those companies were down 10,775. No car division saw increased sales.

A few luxury brands are missing here — Buick, Cadillac, Lincoln, and Tesla — because they only report sales on a quarterly basis, and Jaguar doesn’t break out sales by model or class, so its car sales are estimated.

Regarding Tesla, our estimate is that Tesla Model 3 sales were somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 in the United States in February, which would close the gap in 2019 versus 2018 premium-class auto sales, but wouldn’t quite close the gap in premium-class car sales. As has been written many times across the auto world, consumers have been moving from cars to SUVs & crossovers, so that is surely part of the story here as well.

However, as we’ve noted many times in many ways, the Tesla Model 3 actually competes with mass-market cars like the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry in terms of 5 or 6 year total cost of ownership, while being a much better forming, better driving, safer, higher tech car. So, I’ve also been curiously looking at mass-market brands. The following are the mass-market auto companies and car divisions that saw their sales drop in February 2019 versus February 2018 (and by how much):

Honda: −1.6%
Honda Cars: −5.5%
Toyota: −6.3%
Toyota Cars: −10.6%
Nissan: −11.4%
Nissan Cars: −9.4%
Kia Cars: −2.6%
Hyundai Cars: −22.3%

Hmm, among the Big 3*, sales are crap.

(*Let’s be honest — Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are the Big 3 in the US if you’re not talking pickup trucks.)

On the flip side, other than Tesla, the following two major automakers saw their February 2019 sales rise compared to February 2018 (despite their car sales dropping):

Kia: 6.4%
Hyundai: 2%

Those two sister companies had ~3,600 more sales, combined, compared to February 2018. Nissan sales were down more than 13,000, Honda sales were down almost 2,000, and Toyota sales were down more than 9,000.

So, what does all this mean in relation to electric vehicle sales, and more specifically Tesla sales?

Who really knows? But if Tesla’s going to deliver another 40,000 or so cars in the United States this quarter, there’s a solid chance Tesla is continuing to take sales away from these other automakers. Furthermore, based on owner satisfaction surveys from Consumer Reports and others, it’s unlikely those Tesla buyers are going to go back to those older brands. And with the Tesla Model Y coming to market in a couple of years, Model 3 owners may well abandon those other automakers completely as they convert their gasoline crossovers and SUVs to Teslas.

There’s a lot of hype among certain people who want to see Tesla fail that Tesla’s days are numbered, that it’s all a house of cards that’s about to fall down. I don’t buy that narrative, but I wonder sometimes how much the other automakers are under that exact threat.

Remember that it wasn’t a 100% collapse in auto sales that caused GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt approximately a decade ago. Overall, US auto sales dropped 11.7% from 2007 to 2008.

Scroll up again and look at those drops in US sales for numerous automakers.

Stepping back another month, in January, the following automakers saw sales down as follows:

Nissan: −20%
Toyota: −7%
Mercedes-Benz: −14%
Honda: −1.5%
BMW: −5%
Lexus: −3%
Infiniti: −3%
Audi: −2%

Nissan is already doing worse than the US auto industry as a whole in 2007–2008. Mercedes-Benz is also down worse than the auto industry as a whole in 2007–2008. Toyota is more than halfway there. Honda and BMW are holding on much better but are also down. Audi and Infiniti are down dramatically. Where will all of this lead?

Of course, I’m not implying that these companies will go bankrupt just based on huge drops in US auto sales. These automakers all have strong sales in other markets — China, Europe, and Japan, for example. Nonetheless, executives at the North America divisions must be sweating bullets. The problem is — how do you compete with Tesla?

About the Author

Zachary Shahan Zach is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species). He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He's also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession and Solar Love. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada.

Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in. But he offers no professional investment advice and would rather not be responsible for you losing money, so don't jump to conclusions.

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GM to invest nearly $3 billion to keep two Brazilian plants open

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PSA Group’s Opel to resume production in Russia in Q4 – ETAuto.com

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Lyft IPO could be ‘$1 billion or more’ windfall for California’s coffers

Margarethe Wichert | Getty Images
The “Painted Ladies,” a row of historical Victorian homes, are shown with the San Francisco skyline in the background.

California could reap a bonanza of “$1 billion or more” in new taxes from the upcoming stock offering of ride-hailing service Lyft, according to state's former treasurer.

Experts say Lyft's initial public offering and an even bigger IPO expected in April from rival Uber will create many newly-minted millionaires in the Bay region. The state stands to benefit by taxing the capital gains from stock sales.

“We need those billions for education and other areas,” said John Chiang, the state's former treasurer and controller. He said new tax collections “may not happen all at once, and could be spread over time.”

According to its regulatory filing Monday, Lyft is gearing up for an IPO that values the company at near $20 billion. Lyft itself proposes to raise more than $2 billion in proceeds from the offering.

“If you're coming with a $19 billion valuation, you're talking about [a state income tax rate of] 13.3 percent for the millionaires,” Chiang told CNBC. “Even though we're looking at all-in state budget in excess of $200 billion and a general fund budget of about $140 billion-plus, $1 billion or more is significant.”

Lyft's two founders stand to get a big payday from the IPO and keep control of just under half of the company's Class B voting stock. CEO Logan Green's stake could be worth more than $540 million and the company's president John Zimmer's, valued just under $400 million.

For Californians, the state taxes capital gains like any other income. As of 2017, about 70 percent of the the state's general fund revenues come from personal income tax collections.

“IPOs are good for California's bottom line,” said Chris Thornberg, a founding partner with Beacon Economics. The economist said a larger share of the state's general fund today comes from personal income taxes than it did back in 2000 so it makes the state's revenue volatility a concern.

The top 1 percent of the state's personal income tax earners — roughly 164,000 tax returns — generate about half of the personal income taxes in California. A good chunk of the income from the wealthy comes from capital gains and stock options from companies in tech and other industries.

Meantime, Uber is reportedly planning to kick off its offering next month in a deal valuing the San Francisco-based company at a whopping $120 billion.

“When you're talking about Uber and its massive valuation, that's billions,” said Chiang, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018.

Other Bay-area tech firms also could join the IPO parade, including Airbnb and Slack.

“A couple of years ago there were reports of over 100 unicorn companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, and how if they ever went public could create extraordinary wealth,” said Chiang.

Chiang said new wealth in the Bay region from tech IPOs could increase housing market values in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Yet he adds it also could worsen the region's affordability crisis.

“This is an incredible opportunity, and we need to use this as an example of California's prowess,” he said. “But we also should have sensitivity to doing smart things to continue to be the engine for the 21st century economy.”

GM invests $2.7B in Brazilian plants to supply South American market

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