Musk's politics lost Tesla 1 million car sales

 

From Electrek

We’ve been talking about the impact of Elon Musk’s venture into politics on the Tesla brand for years, but now a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is putting some staggering numbers to it.

According to a new working paper, Musk’s “polarizing and partisan actions” have directly cost Tesla over a million vehicle sales in the US alone.

The study, titled “The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales,” argues that without this effect, Tesla’s sales would have been 67% to 83% higher between October 2022 and April 2025. That’s an absolutely massive number, and it suggests Tesla’s recent sales slump isn’t just about “increased competition” or “pent-up demand” being satisfied.

It’s about the brand.

The researchers from Yale and NBER didn’t just run a poll. They dug into county-level, monthly new vehicle registration data for all EVs and hybrids from March 2020 to April 2025.

They used a “difference-in-differences” analysis. In simple terms, they tracked how sales trends changed in heavily Democratic-leaning counties versus heavily Republican-leaning counties. The “treatment” event that broke the trend? Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.

Here’s what the data shows:

Before Oct. 2022: Counties with more Democrats showed an increasing preference for Teslas compared to Republican counties. This makes sense, as we know EV adoption has historically been higher among liberal-leaning buyers.

After Oct. 2022: The trend dramatically reverses. As Musk’s political activities—including “relaxed content moderating of far-right and extremist voices” and massive campaign contributions—ramped up, Democratic-leaning counties began “shifting away from Tesla purchases”.

The study is blunt, noting Musk’s actions “antagonized his most loyal customer base”.

The paper runs two different models to quantify the damage, and the results are “remarkably similar”.

Aggregated from October 2022 through April 2025, the “Musk partisan effect” cost Tesla between 1.0 and 1.26 million vehicle sales.

Again, that’s in the US alone. Tesla’s sales in Europe have also been crashing over the last 2 years. Some of that has been attributed to Musk’s political activism, but Tesla is also facing tougher competition in Europe, where more EV models are available due to fewer protectionist rules.

Battery costs to fall 90%

 

CATL (the world's largest battery manufacturer) has put its new sodium-ion battery into production, and will be starting mass production in December.

• They will initially cost half lithium-ion batteries.  Tesla's batteries cost ~$100/kWh.  CATL's goal is a cost of $10/kWh within a few years, as the technology is perfected and mass production increases.    
• They will last 10,000 cycles (compared to Tesla's 1,500), or 3.6 million miles.  That's million.  And even then, they will still have 80% of their original capacity.  Used as grid batteries and fully discharged every day, sodium-ion batteries will last 27 years.  After 60 years, they will still have 60% of their original capacity.
• So they won't just be cheap to buy, but will have very, very low LCOE/LCOS (levelised cost of storage): 90 cents per MWh of output (assuming a life of 30 years).   4 hours of storage will add just $3.50/MWh to solar electricity; 12 hours just $10.  This will completely remove the need for fossil fuel generation, except in high latitudes, and it will make even existing fully-depreciated and paid-off coal power stations wildly uneconomic.
• They will be able to be charged must faster than lithium-ion, capable of adding 520 km of charge in 5 minutes.
• They will operate over a much wider temperature range: from -40C to +70C.
• They are safe.  Unlike lithium-ion batteries, they won't catch fire even if they are pierced,
• Even their energy density is now respectable (sodium-ion batteries have hitherto had low energy densities), at 175 Wh/kg, comparable with the low end of lithium-ion.

The implications are staggering.  Solar costs continue to fall; battery costs will soon make 12 hours of storage economically feasible, and EV batteries will fall from $6,000 per car to $600, making even small EVs easily cheaper than petrol/diesel cars.

The transition from fossil fuel generation and petrol cars will accelerate.  Emissions from electricity generation and land transport make up ~50% of global emissions.   It seems certain that by 2040, these emissions will have mostly ended.  If we replace fossil fuel heating with heat pumps (and electric heating in high latitudes), this could cut emissions by another 10%.  

We still have to cut emissions from cement, iron and steel, air travel, sea transport and agriculture (a biggie), but we will have travelled a long way down the road to net-zero.

[Update 15/10/2025:  The costs are even lower than I thought.  Here's my updated analysis]

BYD targets Europe

 

BYD Seal

From Business Insider

BYD has set its sights on Tesla's European backyard.

The Chinese EV maker announced on Monday that it would nearly triple the number of sales and service locations in Germany, the home of Tesla's European gigafactory, by the end of 2026.

The German expansion comes as part of a larger European push that will see the number of BYD stores on the continent double to more than 2,000 next year, executives said in a press conference at the IAA Mobility summit in Munich.

BYD, China's biggest automaker, has bet heavily on overseas markets as it confronts fierce competition back home.

According to executive vice president Stella Li, the company now sells 13 models in Europe, and sales have surged so far this year.

BYD outsold rival Tesla in Europe for the second time this year in July, as Elon Musk's carmaker grapples with slowing sales in its third-largest market.

Buoyed by recent success, BYD is now looking to put down roots. The company showed off its new SEAL 6 DM-i Touring, a hybrid sedan with a combined range of up to 1505km, in Munich, and is building a factory in Hungary with a production capacity of 200,000 cars a year.

Li told reporters that the Hungarian plant, which will allow BYD to avoid the 17% tariff imposed on Chinese cars by the European Union last year, would begin production by the end of 2025. She added that the $24,500 Dolphin Surf hatchback will be the first car to be made in the factory.

BYD is also planning to roll out its ultra-fast "megawatt" EV chargers in Europe, which the company says can add 400km of range in just five minutes.

Li said BYD aimed to install 200 to 300 of the ultrafast chargers, which are twice as powerful as Tesla's top EV chargers, in Europe by the second quarter of 2026.

Some progress on emissions is happening

 From The Guardian

There is something of a reality check under way on the response to the climate crisis. It’s no secret that countries and corporations are far from living up to the goals set by international leaders at the landmark 2015 Paris agreement.

Unless there is a significant course correction, the ramifications will be far-reaching and often destructive. The second coming of Donald Trump and growing global instability has made a top-down injection of urgency at the pace needed harder to imagine. Optimism is harder to come by.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

It’s worth pointing this out because a narrative has started to take hold that renewable energy and other clean solutions have made little to no headway in displacing fossil fuels, and therefore are pointless. Fuelled by Tony Blair and the former US government adviser Daniel Yergin, and embraced by the fossil fuel industry and its lapdogs in the commentariat, it is used to attack zero emissions targets as a fool’s dream. In Australia, it is part of the backdrop as the Albanese government is lobbied over whether to set an ambitious emissions reduction target for 2035.

The reality, though, is more complicated. Here are some things worth considering if you hear climate action is pointless.

Clean energy is coming for fossil fuels

 

One line that has gained some traction this year is that the proportion of global energy supply from fossil fuels has barely moved over the past 35 years. The claim – bubbling away in The Australian, on Sky News [right-wing Murdoch media] and on social media – goes that dirty fuels provided 85% of energy in 1990, and still provide 80% today.

So much for progress, right?

But the Bloomberg New Energy Finance [BNEF]founder and self-declared conservative Michael Liebreich points out that this ignores an important factor.

The percentages referred to by fossil fuel advocates are for primary energy – that is, raw coal, crude oil, gas, wood, sun or wind. They do not refer to useful energy – energy that has been converted into a transportable form, such as electricity or refined petroleum, delivered to a consumer and then used to light their house or move their car.

This useful energy is the more relevant measure. And the process of processing raw fossil fuels into useful energy is, in many cases, not particular efficient. More energy is lost in generating at a remote coal-fired power plant and transmitting it to a home than if solar, wind or hydro was used. Petrol cars require much more energy to travel a kilometre than an electric vehicle does.

If we acknowledge this and consider useful energy alone, Liebreich says the amount of energy provided by fossil fuels is not 80%, but about 68%.

This is obviously still too high. But it won’t stay at this level. Despite all the talk of new coal plants still being built, they are playing in the margins. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that solar and wind will meet more than 90% of the global increase in electricity demand this year. Global generation from solar and wind energy is expected to increase by about 25%, from 4,000 terawatt-hours to more than 5,000. Next year it is expected to jump another 20%, past 6,000TWh.

The IEA projects that global renewable energy output – including solar, wind and hydro – will surpass coal output in either 2025 or 2026. For the first time in a century, the share of electricity coming from coal will have fallen to less than 33%.

Solar and wind will together be nearly 20% – up from 4% a decade ago.

A key question is if this growth in renewable energy will eventually reduce global fossil fuel use – as is necessary – or mostly just meet growing energy demand. Liebreich argues compellingly that fossil fuel use is set to fall. Using a simple model, he suggests it is likely to start falling in the 2040s and could be squeezed out of the system by about 2065.

That is not near fast enough to deliver the trajectory scientists say is needed to limit global heating since pre-industrialisation to 1.5C. But it is a well argued rejection of claims that a global transition isn’t possible.

China? It’s moving

 

With a population of 1.4 billion and having taken on a huge proportion of the world’s manufacturing, China is easily the world’s biggest direct national climate polluter, pumping out more than twice as much CO2 as the second-placed US.

Its story is mixed, as always. But the data show it is changing. An analysis for Carbon Brief by China experts Qi Qin and Lauri Myllyvirta found that coal’s share of the country’s power generation fell from 73% in 2016 to 51% in June this year. This happened as it continued to build new coal plants for a simple reason – it doesn’t run them at anything like capacity.

A significant moment came earlier this year when China’s national emissions fell for the first time, dropping 1% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. Beijing needs to do much more if it is to meet its commitment under the Paris deal. Its next five-year plan for economic development, due this year, will be crucial.

Source: Carbon Brief
Note how renewable electricity generation has, for the first time since the deep 2009 recession, grown by more than the growth in electricity demand, even though demand growth has been strong.

Dirty car sales are down

 

According to Our World in Data, global sales of internal combustion engine cars – which run solely on petrol or diesel – peaked in 2016 at 80.47m. Electric and plug-in hybrid car sales in that year were just 780,000.

Last year, sales of dirty cars were 62.05m, a 23% fall. Electric and plug-in hybrid car sales had increased to 17.5m.

Put another way, nearly a decade ago only one in every 100 cars sold across the globe was electric. Now it is more than one in five. Elon Musk’s extraordinary self-own in damaging Tesla’s reputation may dent the pace of growth but it won’t stop it. China has little time or need for Teslas and is home to more than 60% of global EV sales.

Still a mountain to climb

None of this is to understate the scale of the problem. This column has reported before on the big step-up in global heating since June 2023. Averaged across the globe, every day in 2024 was at least 1.25C hotter than preindustrial levels, and three-quarters were 1.5C hotter.

Extreme weather events are becoming more damaging. Feedback loops (melting permafrost and huge wildfires) are releasing large additional amounts of CO2, accelerating the problem. Governments have barely started to acknowledge the expected increase in economic, societal and environmental costs that will hit productivity – the current focus of the Australian political class – and so much else.

It’s hard to overstate how much there is to be done. But don’t believe self-interested arguments that action is impossible, or will be for nothing.

 

Tesla Is Getting Absolutely Creamed In Europe

From Inside EVs 

Tesla is getting shellacked. Toasted. Wrecked. Destroyed. Choose whatever synonym suits you, the result is the same: The company's European business is collapsing.

That is not an exaggeration. Sales fell a whopping 49% last month in Europe, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). Don't blame an EV slowdown, either, as purely electric cars are on a bit of a tear in Europe. Sales increased 27.8% in April, to 184,685 units across the European Union (EU), European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) countries and the United Kingdom.

EVs accounted for 15.3% of the new vehicles registered in those markets, a new high-water mark for an April report. It's a good reminder that, as the U.S. waffles back and forth on EV policy, many other markets are charging ahead.

Now, they're doing so with less reliance on Tesla. Elon Musk's company used to be the biggest name in EV sales, but increased competition and the boss's political meddling have proven to be a toxic combination. Tesla is still the EV sales leader in the U.S., but it's also struggling here. Buyers in Europe have been quick to abandon the brand, too, while Chinese buyers are ditching Teslas for home-grown brands.

It's not clear if Tesla has a solution to this problem. While the company pinned its hopes on the refreshed Model Y, that strategy clearly didn't work. First, Musk tried to blame the sales slump on factory downtime during the transition from building old Model Ys to new ones. Now that inventory levels are up and the factories have been running normally for some time, that excuse isn't holding water, so it looks like the new Model Y hasn't moved the needle.

That means any growth we see from Tesla is going to have to come from either price cuts or new models. The company has already cut its prices repeatedly in recent years, leaving it less room to move down. Plus, with U.S. tax credits on the chopping block, Tesla's products are already about to get $7,500 more expensive in its home market. Just mitigating that change will chew into Tesla's margins, and that's before you account for the increased production costs thanks to new tariffs on auto parts.

New products seem like a better way out, but I'm skeptical they can fundamentally reset the trend here. Elon Musk has repeatedly said that Tesla's value is in AI, not in car-making, and his relentless focus on full self-driving has taken up most of the company's resources. Its products are old—the Model S debuted in 2012 and the Model 3 in 2017, and while both have received refreshes, they are no longer world-beating EVs. Its lone truly new product, the Cybertruck, is a flop. And its next three products seem to be a moderately updated Model Y, a Cybercab with only two seats and, eventually, large-scale production of the Semi.

The gamble, it seems, is that true self-driving technology will reset the value proposition of these vehicles. An even less luxurious, more drab Model Y strikes me as an unappealing offering. But if you can deliver a self-driving car that fits plenty of passengers and cargo and can go 300 miles on a charge for like, $35,000, I can see it working.

The problem is that being a self-driving car company requires one thing above all: Trust. Consumers need to trust that companies offering autonomous driving products have fully validated the safety of the technology. After years of using the public as beta testers, then a year of live-tweeting the destruction of all regulatory bodies, I just don't know if Elon Musk can still inspire that trust among buyers.

Still, it may be the only option he has left. As the European sales collapse shows, this is not the time to keep calm and carry on. Tesla has become a toxic brand in many corners of the world, and its products are less exciting than they used to be.

The company needs a reset, but it may not be getting one soon.

Oz's EV sales: The Musk effect

 Australia's EV sales plunged in February.  This appears to be mostly because of a collapse in Tesla sales, down 75% in February over February last year.  And it's no good saying that it's because the market is waiting for the "refreshed" Model Y: Model 3 sales were down 80% over the same period.  

The new BYD sub-A$30,000 EV has been announced but not yet released.  I expect its sales will be phenomenal, because it's about the same size and same price as the cheapest Toyota Corolla, the Ascent Sport.   

If you routinely drive long distances, then you will prolly want a plug-in hybrid or an ICEV, because the rural charging network in Australia is still pretty feeble.   But if you mostly drive in the city, going to the supermarket or picking up the kids from school, while charging your EV in your garage, an EV will save you upwards of $2000 a year, and even more if you have your own solar panels, for the same up-front costs as the cheapest Corolla.  In addition, there's talk that the new BYD will allow V2H  (vehicle to house) charging later this year, which means you'll also save on your electricity bill.  In my case, I'd save $2,000 a year.  So your new BYD EV will pay for itself over 7 years.  Oh, and that's ignoring the tax incentives you'll get if you buy an EV (minimum 20% if you get average earnings, more if you earn more).

In short, I expect runaway sales of BYD's new EV.  Is this the low for EV sales?  Prolly; how much further can Tesla sales fall?  And, meanwhile, BYD has picked up the baton.

BYD leads unstoppable charge

BYD's plug-in hybrid, The Shark

 

From The Driven 

In 2024, China registered 31.436 million new automobiles, a rise of 4.5 per cent over the previous year, with the growth of NEVs (new energy vehicles) jumping an astonishing 35.5 per cent.

In the passenger vehicle market, China achieved an annual penetration rate of NEVs of 47.6% throughout 2024, with the percentage of new sales exceeding 50% for five consecutive months in the second half of the year.

That trend has continued into 2025, with China’s February NEV sales reaching 892,000, up 87 per cent from February 2024. BEV and PHEV sales were up 85% and 90% year on year respectively, far outpacing the overall demand growth (including ICE vehicles) of 34 per cent.

As the country’s biggest car maker BYD says, the facts demonstrate the unstoppable trend of electrification and accelerated replacement of ICE vehicles with NEVs.

As the world’s largest NEV producer, BYD is leading the charge both domestically and internationally on transforming the possibilities of electrified mobility and household electrification. Its rival, Tesla, has effectively left the race when it comes to sales growth.

The BYD profit report released overnight reveals that BYD generated RMB 777.1 billion ($US107 billion) in revenues in 2024, up 29.02% yoy, driven by a 40% yoy growth in NEV sales.

This translated to a 34% yoy growth of net profit to RMB 40.3bn ($US5.55bn) over the year for BYD, even as it invested RMB 54.2bn ($US7.48 billion) into R&D in 2024, taking its total investment into R&D to RMB 180bn ($US24.83 billion), most of it into its world-leading technology in batteries, electronics and EVs.

The company has 20,000 R&D engineers, and submits an average of 45 patent applications and 20 patent licenses every day. One of the latest is the ‘Super e-Platform’, enabling 1,000 kW charging power. Stepping into the era of “charging as fast as refuelling” with the ability to charge 400km in just 5 minutes.

The impact of that R&D is there to see. Battery prices have fallen 82% in the last 10 years alone. In the same time, battery densities have risen 5-fold.

In 2024, lithium-ion battery prices fell a further 20% to a record low of US$115/kWh as manufacturing overcapacity continues to surge.

In 2024, 3,100 GWh of fully commissioned battery-cell manufacturing capacity was online, more than 2.5x that of annual demand. This has driven massive demand growth for EVs and stationary energy storage (BESS) systems globally, with China continuing to dominate.

BYD is already showing incredible growth in 2025, with sales up 93% in the first two months of the year to 623,300 vehicles.

While Tesla’s profitability contracted over 2024, and its share price continues to dive as the US regresses on climate, clean energy and trade, BYD’s share price is up more than 51% in 2025 on the Hong Kong Exchange.

China was already the winner. Now it is clear, the runner-up has left the race. Incredible to see the EV revolution and China’s leadership in real time.

I've been saying for nearly a decade that the growth of EVs to market dominance was inevitable.  You just had to extend the lines plotted on log scale to see what was likely.

What I got wrong was that I assumed that Tesla would remain the market leader.  But Musk became obsessed with right-wing culture wars, and took his eye off the ball.  Anybody who has ever managed a business will know that that is fatal.   Market leadership has now switched to BYD, and more broadly, China.  The US had the lead; and together Musk and the Republicans have thrown it away.  Even assuming a changed administration in 2028, the US auto industry's lag behind China will have expanded to 5 years.   With the speed with which the market is shifting, that might as well be a lifetime.  Things are moving so fast in China that competitors will be unable to respond.

BYD is also driving down battery prices for grid storage.  And this will accelerate the replacement of coal and gas by solar with storage.   Learning curves with a vengeance, fuelled by billions of dollars of Chinese research.  Under these circumstances, no rational investor will put money into coal, oil or gas.  They're done.  Over.  Antediluvian.  As outdated as the Lockheed Constellation, or the Vickers Viscount, technological marvels of their time.   

So, whatever Trump or the Republicans or Big Oil think or do, electricity generation and road transport will go fully electric.  And as battery energy density rises, so will rail transport, shipping, and (eventually) air transport.  50% of global emissions will be eliminated.

[BYD's sales include plug-in hybrids.  These will surely be replaced with fully electric vehicles as cost falls and energy density increases.  At some point the cost of a second engine will outweigh the cost of bigger batteries, while at the same time, the rapid deployment of fast chargers will remove range anxiety.]

 

Lady Liberty

 By Jesse Duquette

Tesla sales are crashing

From Electrek

Tesla’s sales have dropped nearly 60% in January in Germany compared to the same period last year. The same thing is happening throughout Europe.

Earlier this week, we reported that Tesla’s sales crashed throughout all European markets in January.

The two main reasons are believed to be the introduction of the new Model Y and the disapproval of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his meddling in politics, which is especially not appreciated in Europe.

At the time, we didn’t have the number from Germany, but now we do.

Reuters reported that Tesla’s sales were down 59.5% in January:

"German road traffic agency KBA’s website on Wednesday showed the number of newly registered Tesla cars fell 59.5% to 1,277 in January, while the overall German market was down just 2.8% at slightly more than 207,000 vehicles during the month."

This is undoubtedly a Tesla problem because the German auto market was down just 2.8% in January, and the battery-electric market was up 53.5% during the period.

These are now Tesla’s sales in Europe in 2025 compared to 2024:

Why?  Partly because there are lots of new EV models being put on sale.  But, I suspect, mostly because of Elon Musk.  Once, buying a Tesla was cool, a statement that you cared about climate change and global heating.  Now, people are going to look at you in your Tesla and cringe.

I myself always wanted to buy a Tesla.  But there's no way I'd buy one now.  Especially given the plethora of very attractive alternatives.  Buying a Tesla now makes a statement that you are happy with Musk's Nazi salute, with his buying an election, with his loud and obnoxious far-right politics, with "DODGY", and with his intervention in European politics.  Why would anybody progressive (the new-adopters in the EV space) be OK with that?

Full self-driving

 By Matt Davies

No more free lunch

 By Mike Luckovich

Tesla sales have peaked

 From Inside EVs

One other factor:  Tesla And Musk used to be cool.  Now they're not.

Australia's EV sales plateau

The chart below shows EV sales in Australia, cobbled together from various sources, with my seasonal adjustment and trend calculations.  Seasonally-adjusted sales peaked in May/June.  Since June, total Tesla Model Y and Model 3 sales have fallen nearly 50%.  The decline is entirely due to the decline in Tesla sales.

It used to be cool to own a Tesla.  Now, it's seen as daggy.   As Elon Musk has hurtled ever farther to the loony Right, his cars have lost cachet.  It doesn't help that they're very dated, and that competitors have fresher, more compelling, and much cheaper models. 

 

Your EV's battery will last at least 200,000 miles

From Clean Technica

One of the bigger concerns many consumers have had about buying electric cars is that the big batteries that power the cars will need to be replaced after a few years, at very high cost. That may have been a legit concern initially, especially because without electric cars that had been around for years, no one could really know how long their batteries would last in real life. Also, some automakers did have issues with battery degradation — well, Nissan did because it didn’t include battery management systems.

However, Tesla pointed out at its recent shareholder meeting that there’s no such worry with its batteries. The company says that its batteries are designed to last longer than its cars. As evidence, Tesla showed a graph of Model 3 and Model Y battery degradation up through 200,000 miles (322,000 km) of driving.

If you assume 15,000 miles of driving a year (the US average), that’s over 13 years of driving and your battery still has more than 80% of its original capacity. If you assume 10,000 miles of driving a year (our family’s average), that’s 20 years of driving and your battery still has more than 80% of its original capacity. Actually, Tesla indicates that the batteries should retain a full 85% of their original capacity after 200,000 miles of driving.

Of course, this graph is from Tesla, but it should be a very similar story for other electric cars and their batteries these days. Much has gone into improving batteries, protecting them, and making sure they last a long time.

Naturally, there still can be some batteries that lose more than 80% of range in under 200,000 miles, but those would be odd, highly uncommon cases.

It’s also worth noting, especially for new EV owners, that your battery will take a degradation hit and lose a chunk of range early on. The first year or two of driving will probably see it knocked down by about 10%. It’s how batteries work.

I also find it interesting that there’s more variation and “jumpiness” in the degradation norms and estimate further along the graph. It’s not the greatest divergence in estimates, but it’s clearly visible that things get less steady and predictable.

The only other thing that jumps out to me while looking at this graph is that Tesla previously aimed to have its vehicles last 1 million miles. Naturally, 200,000 is just one-fifth of 1 million. I’m curious to see what Model 3 and Model Y battery degradation will be at 1 million miles, if we ever have vehicles that do last that long. However, I’m also not super confident that many Teslas will last 1 million miles. Even if you used 20,000 miles a year as the annual estimate, that would be 50 years of driving. If you used our average of 10,000 miles a year, that would be 100 years! So, yes, maybe it’s best to just drop that 1 million miles target or estimate and stick with a more reasonable vehicle lifespan. In that case, it seems that Tesla is right to point out that its batteries should outlast the cars their powering — and then can be recycled or reused for new purposes!

US plug-in sales slow

 I used to regularly post updates on the US EV market, but stopped in 2019 when my source (Inside EVs) stopped publishing the data because several carmakers started being coy about their EV sales (I wonder why?)

However, I've found a new source, Atlas EV Hub, and so I've been able to update my charts.

This chart is from Atlas EV Hub, but the data are not seasonally adjusted.  The data include plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (EVs).

The chart below shows the original (= not seasonally adjusted), seasonally adjusted, and smoothed data for EVs and PHEVs combined, drawn on a log scale.

Sales have clearly slowed.  A big chunk of the problem has been the turmoil at Tesla.  Elon Musk has taken his eye off Tesla to focus on his vanity project Twitter (X) and obsessive dotty right-wing memes, and this has happened at a time when the overall US auto market has been slowing, and China has been struggling to get economic growth out of the doldrums.  In the last couple of weeks, he's sacked all the staff working on the Tesla supercharger network, only to say last night that he's going to spend $500 million building it up again!  The people who initially supported Tesla because they wanted to do something about the climate and pollution have been repelled by Musk's lurch to the Right.  But perhaps, as Musk says, Tesla is now an AI company, in which case he's prolly stopped caring about EV sales.  Bad news for the planet.

Chinese carmakers can't fill the gap, because the US has a 25% tariff on Chinese EVs.  Since the Biden Administration plans to quadruple this, EV sales in the US are likely to continue to wobble, while consumers wait to see what happens.  The US's attempt to gain ground in EVs with higher tariffs will no doubt push up EV prices, even after the generous subsidies.   The subsidies won't be available for EVs with Chinese batteries, so CATL's dramatic halving of li-ion battery pack prices (to ~$56/kWh) this year, and its introduction of hugely improved sodium-ion batteries at $40/kWh, won't benefit US consumers.

US EV sales are likely to stagnate over the next couple of years, while we wait for US EV and battery makers get their act together.  

Tesla Robotaxis. I was wrong.

I've been doubtful that Tesla (or anybody) would ever make an AI which would be able to safely drive a car. Well, I'm eating my words.

From The Driven.

After more than a decade of development on its revolutionary vision based autonomous driving software, Tesla will finally reveal its much anticipated Robotaxi on August 8, 2024.
The Robotaxi unveil will mark the convergence of Tesla’s latest Full Self Driving software and revolutionary 3rd generation vehicle manufacturing and usher in a new era of “Transport as a Service” (TAAS) with massive ramifications for the 70 million unit per annum global fossil car industry.

The announcement comes as the online Tesla community is abuzz with Full Self Driving (FSD) Beta software testers raving about the latest FSD version 12.3.3 update, with drivers reporting zero interventions during long drives in complex city traffic.

Former Tesla employee and YouTuber Farzad Mesbahi discussed the latest software update with James Douma, who’s one of tens of thousands of Tesla drivers in the US who’ve been testing the Beta software over the past two years.

“It’s a pretty remarkable departure in behaviour from V11,” said Douma. “It just works, you just don’t have interventions anymore.”

Douma, who’s been testing the latest update for the last two weeks, says he’s completed hours of city driving without manually overriding the software.

“The first thing I did was spend 3 hours driving all over the part of LA I live in, just random pin drops.” said Douma.

“And I didn’t have any interventions, it was rock solid.”

Another FSD tester and online Tesla blogger Omar Qazi, AKA @WholeMarsBlog, has also been testing FSD beta and has posted some stunning videos of version 12.3.3 in action around San Francisco. 

 

Unlike other companies who’ve attempted to use LiDAR to solve autonomous driving, Tesla’s strategy from the beginning was to use a vision-based system of camera’s and artificial intelligence.

The theory being that humans naturally use vision to drive and navigate the world so why shouldn’t machines? Our road networks are all designed for vision with lines and signs which can be easy read by cameras and AI.

The software is so advanced that it can differentiate between sedans, utes, trucks and buses as well as motorbikes, scooters and bicycles. It can accurately identify pedestrians, traffic cones, wheelie bins and even dogs and place them in 3D space with astonishing precision.

Unlike the purely object based LiDAR system, the cameras can also identify and read traffic signage such as stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits, road works and even the arrows and symbols painted onto road surfaces. For an in-depth look of Tesla’s FSD software development see The Rise of the Machines: Tesla drives 50km autonomously through heavy LA traffic.

Unlike other companies who’ve attempted to use LiDAR to solve autonomous driving, Tesla’s strategy from the beginning was to use a vision-based system of camera’s and artificial intelligence.

The theory being that humans naturally use vision to drive and navigate the world so why shouldn’t machines? Our road networks are all designed for vision with lines and signs which can be easy read by cameras and AI.

The software is so advanced that it can differentiate between sedans, utes, trucks and buses as well as motorbikes, scooters and bicycles. It can accurately identify pedestrians, traffic cones, wheelie bins and even dogs and place them in 3D space with astonishing precision.

Unlike the purely object based LiDAR system, the cameras can also identify and read traffic signage such as stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits, road works and even the arrows and symbols painted onto road surfaces. For an in-depth look of Tesla’s FSD software development see The Rise of the Machines: Tesla drives 50km autonomously through heavy LA traffic.

If Tesla delivers on its August 8th commitment to showcase the self-driving Tesla Robotaxi, it will mark yet another correct prediction made by technology futurist Tony Seba.

Seba, who was interviewed on The Driven podcast last year, predicted in his 2014 book Clean Disruption that lithium-ion batteries would reach $50/kWh by 2027.

That was a forecast that many people said was crazy. However, it now seems Seba’s prediction was too conservative as Chinese battery maker (and Tesla supplier) CATL is likely to reach the milestone by mid-2024.

Despite being considered one of the boldest technology forecasters in the world, Seba has also underestimated the speed of development of battery longevity. In 2017 he predicted the first million-mile battery by 2030 however last week CATL announced a new EV battery with a 1.5 million km warranty, effectively beating Seba’s prediction by 5 years.

On autonomous vehicles Seba had some fascinating insights which he shared during his interview with The Driven.

“The day that we get level four, autonomous technology ready and approved by regulators, when that converges with on-demand, and electric transportation we will get what we call transportation as a service [TAAS].” Seba told The Driven.

“Some call it Robotaxi. Essentially, when that happens the cost per mile of transportation is going to drop by anywhere from 10 to 20 times.”

“So for most people who can barely pay their bills, it won’t make any sense to own a car,” said Seba.

“Do I spend $50,000 over the next five years to own a car? Or do I pay $100 a month for a subscription to transportation as a service?”

Seba says ICE vehicles get around 140,000 miles (225,000 km) over their lifetime. An EV with a 1.5 million km battery will get almost 7 times that amount. This means that EVs will last at least 6-7 times longer than ICE vehicles meaning the global car market will likely drop by over 75% because people won’t need to replace cars as often.

“People are going to be buying vehicles a lot less often. So with that, essentially cut the global vehicle market by a factor of four or five.”

TAAS combined with the million-mile battery will mean new vehicle sales will drop even further as people opt for super cheap electric robotaxi transport instead of spending tens of thousands on private vehicles.

“Either way, it’s pretty much over for internal combustion engine.” says Seba.

I doubt that robotaxis will be the money-spinner Musk says.  If they become that profitable, everyone will buy a Model 3 to make money, and the charges they will be able to levy will go down.  (BTW, I don't think Tesla will be allowed to run a robotaxi monopoly --- but that doesn't mean they won't be able to charge a lot for FSD)  But that only implies that TaaS will take off.  Seba is right.  Why pay a fortune for a car which sits in your driveway or at in a car park for most of its life?  Taxis are expensive because they have to have a human driver and because they're ICEVs.  Robotaxis will be cheap.

Anyway, now I'm convinced.   I was wrong.

Legacy auto makers face disaster

From The Driven

We are currently witnessing a major disruption in the world’s largest car market, that will have massive implications for the biggest carmakers as they seek to manage the switch from fossil fuel vehicles to electric.

Potentially millions of petrol and diesel cars may about to become unsellable in China as the country implements new vehicle emissions standards, and as EV demand booms. With China already experiencing a car inventory crisis, the next three months could spell disaster for some legacy auto companies.

Auto News recently reported that the China Auto Dealers Chamber of Commerce (CADCC) posted an article on March 23 on WeChat saying that dealers could be left with hundreds of thousands of non-compliant unsellable petrol and diesel vehicles once China’s new emission standard is implemented in July.

According to its website, the CADCC had over 8000 auto dealer members as of 2019.

More details on the CADCC March 23 article – now deleted – were given on the Shanghai Metals Market SSM news site on Monday in post titled Industry Association Appeals for Delayed Enforcement of Imminent China VI B Emission Standards to Tackle Huge Inventory Pressure.

The Chinese metals industry publication is justifiably concerned as the inventory crisis will have massive flow on effects for auto industry metals suppliers.

The SSM article says the deleted document stated that the CADCC had “received reports from many auto dealer groups that the upcoming full implementation of the China VI B emission standards will bring enormous pressure to the survival of auto dealers.”SSM reports that in the document the CADCC appealed for three measures on behalf of the majority of auto dealers.

1. Postpone the implementation of the China VI B emission standards to January 1, 2024;
2. Car makers should stop producing new cars that do not meet the China VI B emission standards;
3. Auto OEMs should allocate existing new cars that do not meet the China VI B emission standards to dealers as soon as possible, and launch sales promotions.

China released its rule for stage 6 light-duty vehicle emissions limits in December 2016, so manufacturers have had 7 years to bring their vehicles into line.

The “China 6 standard” is being implemented in two phases. The first phase, 6a took effect on July 1 2020 and the 6b standard will be implemented on July 1 2023.

The China 6 standard applies to light-duty vehicles up to 3,500 kg powered primarily by gasoline or diesel.

The International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT) says the China 6 standard combines best practices from both European and U.S. regulatory requirements in addition to creating its own.

The ICCT says “China 6b further lowers the limits by about one third to half of the magnitude for NOX [nitrogen oxide] , THC [Total hydrocarbons], NMHC [non-methane hydrocarbons] , PM [particulate matter], and CH4 [methane], on top of the China 6a standard.”

While the inventory crises is hitting Chinese dealerships hard, the biggest impacts will be felt by legacy auto companies who have failed to shift to electric vehicles.

The glut of hundreds of thousands of high polluting vehicles sitting in Chinese dealerships comes as Chinese consumers shift rapidly to EVs. Over 25% of all new cars sold in China in 2022 were electric.

According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), 27 million vehicles were sold in China in 2022, with almost 7 million being EVs. China accounted for around two-thirds of global sales of EVs last year.

Although the inventory crisis is playing out in China, counterintuitively Chinese car manufacturers may actually benefit while foreign legacy auto companies sales plummet in the world’s largest car market.

This is because electric vehicles make up a much higher proportion of the total production of Chinese automakers like BYD, while foreign companies like Toyota and Volkswagen are manufacturing and selling mostly petrol and diesel cars in China.

So it will be predominantly Japanese, German and US carmakers that are hit the hardest by the inventory crisis while Chinese EV companies as well as Tesla will continue to see demand grow.

This trend is already playing out in 2023.

In the first two months of the year, sales of Japanese brands in China have dropped by 40% year-on-year. German and Korean brands have dropped by around 20% while US brands have dropped 12.5%.

Meanwhile, Chinese brands have held steady with losses of ICE sales being offset with increased EV sales domestically.

And this trend is accelerating rapidly. EV output in China totalled 7 million units in 2022, an increase of 97% on 2021, while sales of electric vehicles rose by 93%.

The imminent implementation of new pollution standard will compound this trend even further.

Meanwhile, the two largest automakers in the world Volkswagen and Toyota aren’t even planning on launching mass produced EV models until 2027, which is still 4 years away.

The German and Japanese car giants are also two of the most indebted companies in the world, both with almost $US200 billion of debt and highly questionable valuations on their internal combustion factory assets.

An inventory glut of unsellable vehicles in the world’s largest car market is the last thing these companies need and with ICE vehicles sales plummeting, it’s difficult to see how they will survive.

In Japan, automotive manufacturers and the industries that support them are estimated to employ over 5 million workers. Around 8% of Japan’s workforce.

Because of Japan’s disastrous national hydrogen strategy (largely promoted by Toyota), the nation produces a trivial number of electric vehicles and as a result its addressable market in China is vanishing before its eyes.

With Chinese automakers largely shielded from the impacts of the new pollution standards because of their early move to EVs, it’s unlikely that the Chinese government will delay its implementation.

Its looking like the next few months will be crunch time for the legacy automotive industry.

The surplus stocks in China are likely to encourage steep price discounting and also greater exports.  The plunge in the lithium price is making EVs cheaper.    Tesla, with the highest margins in the EV business (in fact in the car business) wants to expand its market share, and can afford to cut prices.  BYD, the world's largest EV maker will defend its share and will take the fight into Tesla's court by increasing exports.  Expect the price of EVs to reach parity with the price of ICEVs far, far sooner than the consensus has it as China's auto price war explodes into world markets.   And expect legacy manufacturers to struggle and (prolly) fail.  

Source: The Driven

 

Toyota faces disaster

From The Driven

The world’s largest automaker made two major announcements last week which signal that it finally recognises that the future is electric. But it may be too little too late for the company that revolutionised manufacturing half a century ago.

The first announcement was that Toyota would develop a dedicated EV platform after its disastrous half-hearted attempt with the BZ4X.

The BZ4X design, which shared its platform with petrol and hybrid cars, meant its first fully electric offering had redundant components that resulted in much higher manufacturing costs compared to Toyota’s “clean slate” EV competitors.

Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun reported Toyota doesn’t expect to launch its EV range until 2027-28. At the rate at which global EV market share is growing, Toyota will be lucky to retain a tenth of its 10 million unit market share in major market on that timeframe.

The second announcement made last week was that Toyota’s CEO, Akio Toyoda will stand down in April to make way for a new generation for the company.

“The new team can do what I can’t do,” he said in a statement.  ”I now need to take a step back in order to let young people enter the new chapter of what the future of mobility should be like.”

The grandson of Toyota’s founder Kiichiro Toyoda, Akio has received a barrage of criticism in recent years for his failure to identify the world’s shift to EVs while pouring billions of dollars into white elephant technologies like hydrogen.

In the 1970s, Toyota led a manufacturing revolution that changed the world. 50 years on and the automotive giant has grown complacent, taking its market dominance for granted and developing a false sense of security.

In 1991 a group of MIT researchers published a book called “The Machine that Changed the World”. The book was the result of a five-year, five-million dollar research project to identify and understand key manufacturing principals that had enabled Japanese automakers to dominate their US and European rivals since the 1970s.

Engineering students around the world are encouraged to read the book as it provides an excellent history of automotive manufacturing, from Henry Ford’s development of mass production through to the lean manufacturing revolution which forms the basis of modern advanced manufacturing around the world.

You can’t talk about modern manufacturing without talking about Toyota and the 100 year Toyoda dynasty.

Born in 1867, Sakichi Toyoda, considered the “father of the Japanese industrial revolution”, reinvented the loom, dramatically increasing its productivity and set up factories to sell his inventions to the world.

Sakichi’s son Kiichiro Toyoda then expanded the family business to automotive manufacturing and founded the Toyota Motor Corporation in 1937.

In 1967, Kiichiro’s cousin and mechanical engineer Eiji Toyoda took over the presidency of the company and with Toyota’s chief engineer Taiichi Ohno, is largely credited with the development of lean manufacturing principals including the “Just-in-time” Kanban system, “Kaizen” continuous improvement and 5S organisational housekeeping.

These developments lead to a step change in innovation and productivity in the Japanese automotive ecosystem and enabled Toyota to dominate the global car market for the next 50 years.

At the time, US and European carmakers had to scramble to learn and copy Toyota’s manufacturing methods or face wipeout. Projects like the MIT study enabled them to make the necessary changes and survive.

A disruption like the one Toyota inflicted on US and European carmakers in the 1970s is now about happen to Toyota itself, but with one important caveat. While US and European carmakers were able to survive the lean manufacturing revolution, Toyota could struggle to survive the current disruption which is now well underway.

The disruption, which seems to have been largely undetected by Toyota’s top executives, is the exponential growth in market share of electric vehicles coupled with China attaining a new stage in its industrial transformation.

Nothing articulates the challenge Toyota faces better than some recent key figures. In December, fully electric vehicles made up 33% of all new car sales in Germany and the UK, up from less than 10% in both markets just 2 years earlier.

In China BEVs made up 25% of the market in December 2022. Up from just 5% in 2020.

What these numbers reflect is that technology shifts don’t happen in a linear fashion and that once certain market thresholds are reached, growth can accelerate dramatically. In the case of Germany and the UK, EV share was below 5% for ten years but once that share reached 5-10%, it then grew rapidly to a 33% in just 2 years.

And that speed of market share growth is getting even faster. In Norway, which has lead the world in EV growth, it took three years for EV market share to go from 12% (2014) to 32% (2017). The much larger German and UK markets saw an even faster uptake over just 2 years from 7% (2020) to 33% (December 2022).

Automotive manufacturing is incredibly complex and it’s much easier and faster to scale up existing production than it is to develop new production lines for new products.

Therefore as global EV demand surges its much easier for companies like Tesla and BYD, who already produce EVs in high volumes, to scale up their existing production to capture that new demand than it is for companies who don’t already produce EVs at any significant volume.

This is a major problem for Toyota where EVs make up just 0.2% of total production. Despite being the largest automotive manufacturer in the world, Toyota doesn’t even make the top 20 when it comes to EV production.

By October, Toyota had only sold around 14,000 BEVs globally in 2022. An annualised production rate of less than 20,000. For comparison BYD produced 911,140 BEVs in 2022. Tesla produced 1,310,000 around 650 times more fully electric vehicles than Toyota.

One third of new car sales in Germany and the UK are now fully electric vehicles. That equates to Toyota losing almost a third of its addressable market in those countries in just a few years. This could climb towards 50% by the end of this year.

BEV sales in Norway went from 30% market share in 2018 to 80% in 2022. That’s 50% of the market in just 5 years. If the global EV market share follows a similar S-curve, by the time Toyota launch its EV range in 2027-28, over 50% of the world’s car sales will be BEVs and virtually none of those will be coming from Toyota.

Cathy Wood, from Ark Invest, forecasts an even more dire situation for Toyota. She predicts that fully electric vehicle sales will reach 90% of global car sales in 2027 as consumers become aware of the shift taking place, causing demand for petrol and diesel cars to collapse completely.

In that scenario, Toyota will have little to offer to a rapidly changing market, but would be just one of many problems facing Toyota. The company is one of the most indebted companies in the world with $US170 billion in current liabilities on its most recent balance sheet.

On the asset side of the ledger, Toyota is showing $US215 billion in property, plant and equipment. These assets are largely factories that produce internal combustion engine vehicles which the world is rapidly moving away from.

These asset valuations assume that Toyota will maintain its 14% share of the $US3 trillion global car market.

As EVs continue to take large chunks of market share away from 19th century ICE technology, Toyota’s ICE factory valuations are going to become impossible to justify.

Like coal and gas power plants, Toyota’s ICE factories are stranded assets. The ramifications of this will be enormous, especially for Japan whose economy is dominated by ICE vehicle exports.

Decreasing sales from a vanishing addressable market will mean Toyota will find it harder and harder to service its debts. A vicious circle right when Toyota needs to spend billions developing EV production.

Can Toyota perform a miracle pivot to EVs?

Tesla is the fastest growing car company in history.

In 2013 Tesla produced 22,477 electric vehicles which is roughly the same number of BEVs Toyota produced in 2022.

When discussing production growth during an interview with Financial Times in May 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said “Our growth rates are faster than any large manufacture production in the history of the earth, We're faster than the (Ford) Model T”

Scaling automotive production is hard. Even with record production growth rates it took Tesla 9 years to go from 22,000 to 1 million EVs per year.

So even if Toyota is somehow able to match Tesla's production growth rate on BEVs, it would only hit 1 million EVs by 2031, by which time many analysts believe the global car market will be 100% electric.

Toyota currently produce around 10 million petrol and diesel cars per year.

If the predictions about EV market share growth are accurate and if Toyota is somehow able to reach an annual production rate of 1 million EVs by 2031, it would still result in a 90% drop in sales for Toyota.

50 years ago Toyota spearheaded a manufacturing revolution that enabled it to become the world's largest automotive manufacturer.

It's difficult to see how Toyota will survive the electric vehicle revolution.

 

Solid state battery approved by Tesla co-founder

From CleanTechnica

Mercedes-Benz is piling on to the solid-state electric car battery stampede with a bang. The company has just inked a deal with the advanced energy storage firm ProLogium Technology, which cites Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard among the fans of its new ceramic-based solid-state energy storage platform for electric cars.

For those of you keeping score at home, Martin Eberhard co-founded Tesla with Marc Tarpenning in 2003, after reportedly having been inspired to fill in the electric mobility gap left when GM pulled the ill-fated EV1 off the market. Elon Musk got the company rolling in 2004 as an investor, and the rest is automotive history.

EV batteries certainly have come a long way since 2003. Our friends over at Car and Driver remind us that the original EV1 sported 26 lead-acid batteries for propulsion, good for just 55 miles of range a far cry from today’s lithium-ion technology.

The driving public had to wait a few years before lithium-ion electric car batteries entered the scene. Mitsubishi is credited with getting the first highway-legal, mass-produced EV with a lithium-ion battery pack off the ground in 2009 under the name i-MiEV, though some auto industry observers credit Tesla with delivering the first Tesla Roadster in 2008.

Tesla Motors previewed the Roadster Li-ion battery pack in 2006. A Tesla document on file at Stanford University describes it as “one of the largest and technically most advanced Li-ion battery packs in the world.”

“It is capable of delivering enough power to accelerate the Tesla Roadster from 0 to 60 mph in about 4 seconds,” the authors noted. “Meanwhile, the battery stores enough energy for the vehicle to travel more than 200 miles (based on EPA city/highway cycle) without recharging, something no production electric vehicle in history can claim.”

Be that as it may, the first iteration of the Roadster was expensive, and production maxed out at approximately 2,500 units in 2012. That’s somewhat ironic, considering that GM was roundly criticized for pulling EV1 after reaching a similar point in a similar timeframe, topping out at approximately 1,000 units. The i-MiEV fared much better than both cars, though it still only managed a little over 31,000 units in 10 years.

Lithium-ion EV battery technology has improved exponentially since those first two Li-ion EVs, but the technology still relies on a liquid electrolyte. Various attempts to replace it with a solid electrolyte have surfaced in recent years, in an attempt to improve battery range while cutting costs, streamlining the supply chain and reducing lifecycle impacts.

In 2017 the US Department of Energy noted that a solid-state EV battery could be forthcoming within the next few years, and it looks like its energy storage forecast has come true. All the leading automakers are piling on, even though the technology is not quite ready for its closeup.

The solid-state EV battery of the future is coming close, though. That brings us to ProLogium Technology, a Taiwanese firm founded and helmed by Vincent Yang, who launched the company 15 years ago with the vision of inventing a better battery. ProLogium bills itself as “a global leader in high-performing, safe, and cost-effective battery technologies in EV, consumer, and industrial applications” and the first to “successfully develop, mass produce, and commercialize the solid-state lithium ceramic battery.”

The company already has a pile of commercial accounts under its belt and a major scale-up is in the works (more on that in a sec).

And yes, ProlLogium has also enlisted Martin Eberhart’s opinion on its ceramic battery. In press release last April, the company cited this observation from the Tesla co-founder (and original CEO, for the record):

“ProLogium’s solid-state electrolyte battery technology is the most exciting new development I have seen in this field. The combination of safety, aging characteristics, fast charge rate, and bipolar packaging, all without sacrifice energy density, and at a competitive price, make ProLogium cells the best I have seen for automotive applications.”

Things have moved along at a quick pace since then. Last October, ProLogium announced the completion of a $326 million round of financing, which will be deployed to develop and expand Prologium factories in Asia, Europe, and the US in the coming years.

That brings us to the new Mercedes-Benz deal. A hint regarding the automaker’s interest in a solid-state EV battery surfaced last year, when Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler put their money on the solid-state battery firm Factorial.

The ProLogium deal was announced on January 27, which set the wheels in motion for Mercedes-Benz, though it will be some time before Mercedes-Benz customers get their hands on the new technology. The automaker expects to receive its ProLogium solid-state EV battery for test vehicles over the next several years, with full integration across a number of models expected after 2025.

As for the benefits of a solid-state EV battery over its liquid-electrolyte cousin, Markus Schäfer, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG, Chief Technology Officer responsible for Development and Procurement, noted that solid-state technology helps to reduce the size of the battery, which would provide high-end automakers with more design flexibility.

“This is why we are partnering with companies like ProLogium to ensure that Mercedes-Benz continues to break new ground in the automotive sector – for the benefit of our customers,” Schäfer said.

Automakers are scrambling to clean up their supply chains in order to satisfy the demands of car buyers and investors who want to drive around without killing the planet, so it’s no surprise the ProLogium emphasizes ease of recycling and reusing, as well as sustainable and ethical sourcing, for its solid-state EV battery.

Mercedes-Benz is among those scrambling to carve out a sustainability space for automotive technology in the sparkling green future. In a press release dated January 27, Mercedes-Benz touted an environmental validation audit for its oversized EQS 450+ electric car, and detailed its efforts to build recyclability and ethical sourcing into its liquid electrolyte EV battery. The company should find the going a little smoother once it transitions into the solid-state EV battery field.

For the record, Mercedes-Benz is not ProLogium’s first automaker. The Vietnamese automaker Vinfast, which first popped up on the CleanTechnica radar back in 2020, zeroed in on ProLogium for its EV batteries last year, so stay tuned for more on that.

 

Elon Musk should get back to his real jobs

Elon Musk should get back to his real jobs---making EVs ubiquitous and getting mankind to Mars.  His bizarre obsession with Twitter is costing Tesla shareholders heavily.  

Yes, high growth companies have underperformed, as they always do when interest rates rise.   But Tesla's share price has fallen much faster than other high-tech stocks.  And the decline has accelerated as the market, dismayed, watches Musk making an idiot of himself with Twitter.