Friday, November 8, 2024

Trump’s toll on EV forecasts

Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg's newsletter on the future of the auto world. Read today's featured story online here.Electric-vehi
by Keith Naughton in Detroit

Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg's newsletter on the future of the auto world. Read today's featured story online here.

Lower Expectations

Electric-vehicle adoption looks likely to slow further assuming President-Elect Donald Trump delivers on his promise to gut plug-in friendly policies he called the "green new scam."

Automotive forecaster GlobalData on Wednesday cut its outlook for EV market share in the US for 2030 to 28% from 33% due to Trump's election.

"The transition to electric vehicles in the US will be hindered under Trump's administration," Jeff Schuster, GlobalData's vice president of automotive research, said in a note. Trump's focus on lowering oil prices and weakening tailpipe-emissions standards could reduce EV market share by 15% to 20%, he said.

A Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup at an event in Washington in March. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

Automakers have poured billions of dollars into battery and EV plants in a push to field more electric models that increasingly will be required under US rules governing vehicle efficiency and tailpipe emissions.

Now, some $129 billion worth of EV investment in North America through 2027 is "at risk," said Mark Wakefield, global automotive market lead at consultant AlixPartners. The $7,500 tax credit consumers can receive for buying a North American-built EV could also be in jeopardy.

"What the EV market will look five years out is definitely less, much less," Wakefield said in an interview. "The amount of vehicles you want out of your factories and your industrialization for EVs is less and less for longer."

Automakers will continue to slow spending on EVs and delay or cancel new battery-powered models, Wakefield said. They've been making those moves in advance of the election and likely would have reversed them had Vice President Kamala Harris prevailed in the presidential race, he said.

Carmakers will also look for ways to increase production of profitable gasoline-fueled vehicles, while converting EV plants into facilities that can also built gas-electric hybrids, as Volkswagen's Scout Motors is doing at its $2 billion EV factory under construction in South Carolina.

"From a profitability perspective, it's a challenge because you've got a lot of industrial plans with assumed volumes for EVs that are less" now, Wakefield said. "So some of those plants might turn into hybrid plants doing both, rather than pure EV."

Trump will face difficulties rolling back President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act legislation that spurred a building boom of EV and battery factories, many in Republican-leaning states. Bigger changes are likely in store for fuel economy regulations, Wakefield said.

Trump softened those rules during his first administration and has promised to end what he calls "EV mandates" on the first day of his second term, though changing such policies involves a lengthy process that can take months or years.

"It's less about what happens this year," Wakefield said. "That doesn't really hit you until 2027."

News Briefs

Earnings Roundup

A Land Rover Defender sport utility vehicle at Jaguar Land Rover's plant in Nitra, Slovakia. Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg

Before You Go

Bentley vehicles on display at the Beijing auto show in April. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Bentley Motors is pushing back the timeline for when it will offer only fully electric vehicles by five years, to 2035. "Legislation for sure is driving electrification," CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser told reporters Thursday. "We have to be honest there's not a lot of demand — customers are kind of careful in considering something like that." Walliser confirmed Bentley remains on track to reveal its first fully electric vehicle — a compact SUV smaller than the Bentayga — in 2026. The luxury-car maker plans to introduce a new plug-in hybrid or battery-electric vehicle every year over the next decade.

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