| Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg's newsletter on the future of the auto world. Read today's featured story in full online here. When Amedeo Felisa, the then-75-year-old former CEO of Ferrari, joined Aston Martin in 2022, the carmaker was reeling from the pandemic, grappling with huge debts and hemorrhaging money. Felisa brought with him a coterie of Italian executives who, rather than relocating to Aston Martin's headquarters in England's West Midlands, flew in each week from Italy by private jet. According to the company's latest annual report, Felisa's travel alone cost the company £1.2 million ($1.5 million) between 2022 and 2023. For the first three quarters of last year, Aston Martin lost £228.9 million, equating to a loss of almost £63,000 on each car it sold. Felisa is gone. So too are the private jets, as part of an efficiency drive at the company under the Italian's replacement, the former Bentley Motors CEO Adrian Hallmark, according to people with knowledge of the company's plans. Aston Martin now won't rush to develop new models, they said, while delivery targets will be slashed, and external consultants will be brought in to find production and supply chain efficiencies. The company's annual results on Wednesday are likely to offer further detail on Hallmark's turnaround plan. But perhaps the biggest change is that the company's executive chairman and biggest shareholder, the Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, has taken a back seat to let Hallmark run the show.  Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg If Hallmark, with his track record at Bentley, can't turn the company around, "then it's hard to imagine how they can sustainably do it going forward," said Anthony Dick, an analyst at Oddo BHF. "This will be quite a pivotal year for them. They've got the products in place and the management in place, now the cars need to sell. And this is what remains to be seen." Aston Martin declined to comment. Aston Martin has always designed beautiful cars — its DB5 model has been a regular fixture in James Bond movies since 1964 — but the company has often struggled to turn a profit from them. It has collapsed seven times in its 112-year history, and over the past two decades it's been in a near-constant cycle of crisis and turnaround. In 2018, Aston Martin listed in London at a valuation of £4.3 billion. By 2020, the company was worth £1.1 billion, after a series of dismal results. Stroll rode to the rescue, leading a £536 million bailout at the head of a consortium that included JCB chairman Anthony Bamford. Stroll made his name and fortune turning around the fashion brands Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors, which gave investors hope that he might be able to bring Aston Martin back to profitability. He also had a well-known love of cars, having bought the bankrupt Force India Formula One team in 2018. He first renamed the team Racing Point and then, in 2021, Aston Martin. His son, Lance, drives for the team.  Lance Stroll driving the Aston Martin AMR24 during practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi. Photographer: Bryn Lennon - Formula 1 But Aston Martin's troubles have continued. Suppliers have been hit by fires, floods and bankruptcies. Demand has slumped in China. The company's £2.5 million supercar, the Valkyrie, was two years late to market. In the months after Hallmark joined Aston Martin in September, the carmaker issued two profit warnings. Since its IPO, Aston Martin has raised £1.9 billion selling new equity, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. The company's stock market value is just over £1.1 billion. More headwinds could be coming. The US made up a quarter of Aston Martin's revenue in 2023, according to its latest annual report, making the company vulnerable if the Trump administration makes good on threats to impose tariffs on auto imports. Hallmark wants to trim production to avoid wasting money making cars that sit unsold, people with knowledge of the company's plans said. The CEO has already said he wants to reduce Aston Martin's delivery target to around 8,000 vehicles per year, from Stroll's stated ambition of 10,000. This is all about boosting margins, as Hallmark flagged to analysts in October: "The bottom line — cash and profit — are what we're going to be obsessively focused on, not volume first." The company will also try to fix perennial problems in its supply chain, the people said, explaining that Aston Martin has often picked cheap suppliers for parts who then fail to deliver on time, leaving the company paying more than expected to fix issues. Aston Martin isn't planning to launch any new models in the near future — to save money on development costs — and will instead try to launch more derivatives of its existing models, something that Lamborghini, Porsche and Bentley have successfully done, the people said. At Bentley, Hallmark oversaw a strategy of offering customers the opportunity to customize their vehicles. In 2023, the last full year he was in charge, more than 70% of Bentley's cars were fitted out with add-ons like special trim.  Aston Martin Executive Chairman Lawrence Stroll. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg Investors and analysts have remained remarkably bullish on Aston Martin. Stroll has on several occasions denied that the company needed more cash, only to then raise another round. The company would be cash-flow positive from the second half of 2024 "and forever," he told journalists at an event last April. It wasn't. "The stock is being bitten and is going to continue being bitten until they can prove they can sustainably generate positive free cash flow," said Giacomo Reghelin, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. "Until that happens, there is always the risk that they might need to turn to investors and raise more capital. And that's probably where the new CEO has to focus and set realistic expectations." Stroll has said he's committed to Aston Martin for the long haul. But people familiar with the matter say he's going against his instincts and letting Hallmark make the decisions. Gone are the weekly four-hour meetings with the CEO. In their place, a monthly meeting between the two and a couple of calls a week. Stroll now isn't seen as regularly at the company's headquarters. When he visits, he usually flies in by helicopter. — By Jamie Nimmo  An electric truck refills its battery at a WattEV charging depot in Long Beach. Photographer: Alex Welsh Stringent electrification regulations for heavy-duty trucks are teetering under Donald Trump. Nineteen states, all of which voted for the US president in the most recent election, have filed a legal challenge against California's requirements for truck manufacturers. And in January, the California Air Resources Board effectively gutted its rule that would push fleet owners into electric trucks after it became apparent former President Joe Biden wouldn't grant the required approval before leaving office. Read More: Anthony Levandowski keeps on truckin'. | 
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