Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Toyota Expects One More Year Of Tight New Car Supply
So much for predictions that shortages would ease towards the end of 2022, huh? Automotive News reports that Toyota USA sales chief Jack Hollis expects the new car supply shortage to last well into 2023. It sounds like it’ll be a slow return to anything resembling normal for Toyota, and reading between the lines, I wouldn’t be surprised to see fewer vehicles on dealership lots when everything’s said and done. This is probably bad news for anyone looking to leap on slow-moving stock for below MSRP in the next few years, as leftover cars will likely prove hard to come by even after new car supply stabilizes. Hollis said dealer inventories are likely to remain tight — he noted that Toyota dealerships have been down to a 36-hour supply at certain points recently — for the foreseeable future, but said he doubted that any automaker would return to inventory practices that were commonplace prior to the pandemic. “They just won’t,” Hollis declared, adding that the advent of widespread digital retailing tools have given consumers a level of comfort with ordering or buying vehicles that are still in transit or waiting to be assembled.
General Motors Might Be Building A Fourth Battery Plant
GM has some big plans for its Ultium battery ecosystem over the coming years, from collaboration with Honda to electrifying every market segment from commercial vans to crossovers. It’s a road map that will require massive investment, and Reuters reports that General Motors might be building another battery plant in Indiana. A target of one million EVs per year will require a lot of batteries, and given the impending battery sourcing mandate, it only makes sense for GM to be considering a fourth battery plant in America. New Carlisle, Ind. would be a convenient location given its proximity to vehicle plants such as Fort Wayne Assembly in Roanoke, Ind., Wentzville Assembly in Wentzville, Mo., and Fairfax in Kansas City, Kan., and a battery plant there could signal plans for some of those aforementioned assembly plants. Last month, the U.S. Energy Department said it would loan Ultium $2.5 billion to help finance construction of battery cell manufacturing plants in Ohio, Tennessee, and Michigan. Last month, GM said it struck multi-year agreements with LG Chem Ltd and Livent Corp to secure key raw materials used in manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles. GM said it was on course to reach its goal of producing 1 million EVs annually in North America by the end of 2025.
Volvo Will Try Putting Charging Stations At Starbucks Locations
This is one of those stories that will make you go “what did it take so long for?” It’s no secret that EV charging locations are inconsistent at best and can be downright sketchy, so Volvo has a plan to change that. Automotive News reports that the Swedish automaker is partnering with Starbucks to pilot building a charging network. It just makes so much sense to set up charging stations at Starbucks locations. Not only are most Starbucks locations owned by the company to streamline installation, but Starbucks brings a level of consistency to EV charging. Stop by, have a yogurt parfait, sip back some coffee that’s probably better than gas station bean water, and let some indie radio station serenade you while you wait for your EV to charge. Alex Tripi, Volvo Car USA head of electrification, described the Starbucks tie-up as an “amenities-first” approach to EV charging. “We want to send drivers to where there are the amenities that they expect — a clean restroom, a snack, a well-lit parking lot,” Tripi told Automotive News. “Who better to do it with than Starbucks, given their footprint?”
The 2023 Geneva Motor Show Goes To Qatar
The pandemic has been a rough era for auto shows, with COVID restrictions piling on top of already falling show attendance. As such, it’s not entirely surprising to hear of another auto show casualty. Reuters reports that the Geneva International Motor Show in Geneva has been canceled yet again, although for rather puzzling reasons this time. That comment on geopolitics seems a bit odd. I’d have expected Geneva to be more palatable from a DE&I standpoint than a country with a less-than-excellent track record of human rights. Then again, money talks, and Qatar’s oil-based economy seems like the perfect fit for supercar debuts and high-end tuners like Mansory. “Due to the uncertainties in the global economy and geopolitics, as well as the risks related to the development of the pandemic, the organisers have decided to focus exclusively on the planning of the event in Doha in 2023,” the organisers, the permanent committee of the Geneva International Motor Show (GIMS), said in a statement. The car show in November in Doha, Qatar, which was initially planned as a complement to the Geneva event, is now going to be the only GIMS show in 2023. It is scheduled to take place every two years, the organisers said.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. I definitely understand why auto shows are dying in an age of digital debuts and tight new car supply, but that doesn’t make their decline sting any less. There’s nothing quite like seeing a new car with your own eyes instead of through heavily-edited press photos, plus you can compare interiors and cargo space of new vehicles without being badgered by half a dozen salespeople who are just trying to do their job and sell cars. I’d love to know what your favorite auto show memory is, for motoring exhibitions are often core memories of our automobile-enthused adolescences.
So, the incentive is there to sell as many cars as possible.
As for anticipating demand… that’s a very black art. Almost no manufacturer builds a car for which the company believes there is little or no demand. That would be stupid. Now, there are a few exceptions – “halo cars” whose function is advertising for the brand and ideally bringing customers into a showroom where they will ultimately buy something else – Cadillac often has these – but these are built in limited numbers to keep losses to a minimum. So, in general if a car isn’t anticipated to sell enough to break even it will never even see the showroom.
Having been around the domestic dealership and manufacturing scene for a while, I don’t think manufacturers are going to move away from wanting market share. Eventually when supply catches up, manufacturers will go back to pushing inventory off their books and onto the dealerships books. Dealers also will probably want to go back to having more inventory since right now, though they are making more on each sale, fewer sales will translate to fewer service visits. To be clear, dealers survive on sales, but make more on service.
It would take all manufacturers colluding to try and keep that from happening now. Which is illegal in the US. Someone will break ranks to sell more volume and make more money, even if per unit profit is lower.
“They just won’t,” Hollis declared, adding that the advent of widespread digital retailing tools have given consumers a level of comfort with ordering or buying vehicles that are still in transit or waiting to be assembled.”
Logic would back Hollis up on this. However, I don’t think it’ll last. All it takes is for one manufacturer to become dissatisfied with the Mexican Standoff/Gentleman’s Agreement and desire more share of the market and then all bets are off. My uneducated guess is that the first to blink will be GM or Stellantis. Go ahead and bookmark this and check back in a year or two. We’ll see if I was wrong or not.
https://www.mustangspecs.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/18e6b254784650f1f7a36ac1dbfa3f34-e1600381966173-1500×750.jpg
Luckily, Monogram brought out a Snap-Tite model of it almost immediately, so I was able to have my very own.
As for Starbucks charging stations. Good idea on paper, but it hard enough to get through the Starbucks lines as it is. Imagine with EVs taking up spots for charging. It should not take 20 minutes to get a friggin cup of coffee. 🙂
Once I moved to Manhattan in 1979, I went every year until I left in 2014. Like monthly car magazines, I’ll miss car shows like these.
The most expensive car on display was the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow at $19,700, followed by Ferrari’s 330GTC, 275GTB and 275GTS at prices ranging from $14,500 to $15,500.
AMC had a contest booth: they had wired up faux shifters and the idea was to listen to the soundtrack of an AMC racing stock car accelerating through 4 gears, and shift correctly at the precise time the driver shifted. If you got all shifts timed right, you’d win an AMC Racing Team windbreaker. Since I’d watched my Dad shift for years and had a lot of engine-off “driveway” practice, I ended up getting all but the 3-4 shift, which was better than any of the 3 adults I was competing against. So no windbreaker, but a definite moral victory for the kid.
Oh, Miss America was there handing out “autographed” postcards – I think at the Oldsmobile booth. She was pleasant but way too old for me.
Second to everyone complaining about dealerships Think about it what we are seeing with low inventory, high demand, waiting for your car, and no discount is pretty much what the situation will be without dealerships.
For upcoming EV’s buying them at MSRP sounds fine. Batteries will be supply constrained for a few years yet. Probably by battery grade lithium production needing to scale here in the States. It was cheaper to offshore mining but with China rattling its saber that’s probably not true for long.
I’ve always loved cars and I can remember when I was young my dad sometimes asking me if I wanted to go to a car show out of the blue, so we used to go walk around the Wichita Rod and Custom Show, or even just random night street shows down town. Those are my favorite memories, hanging out with my dad, who didn’t really care about the show but knew that I’d like it so he’d take me.
My own kids are pretty young but so far they are both into cars and I hope that they’ll enjoy it when I surprise them by taking them to a show some time.
It might not work as well in a Dunkin because people don’t hang around there as long.
Qatar International Motor Show
Too bad the Elise is no longer sold in the U.S. If there was a new car I’d want to buy, it would be one of those. I have my gripes with it, but it’s still a light-weight machine built for going fast.
If what they want to do is make charging more ubiquitous, then they need to figure out what to do with street parking buyers, like city dwellers and Van-Life addicts.
Come on Volvo, do your civic duty.
