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The President signed an executive order on Wednesday that will make the Federal government transition to the acquisition of 100% electric vehicles by 2035. Reuters is reporting the executive order states that all light duty vehicle acquisitions will be electric by 2027. The Federal government owns over 600,000 vehicles which is almost 10 times more than the largest fleet in the private sector at 66,000 vehicles at AT&T. The auto manufacturers are excited for this order and have publicly said how great it will be for the environment, funny how they leave out how much grant money they are going to receive with this transition and how this will increase the cost of these fleets and also make them huge profits. But I’m sure these multimillionaire CEO’s care more about the environment than profits… yeah right.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Stellantis CEO, Carlos Tavares, said that the microchip shortage has put a huge strain on the relationship between the auto manufacturers and some of their top-tier suppliers. Some of the microchip suppliers are still giving very vague information to the auto manufacturers as to the availability of chips over the next few years. This is leading most automakers like Stellantis to start looking elsewhere for products. Tavares said, ““We, the auto industry, were supposed to be protected by our Tier 1s (meaning their top tier suppliers) from this kind of situation. The discussion with Tier 1s is, ‘What are you doing on your side to make sure this does not happen again?'”. It seems to me to be a lot of finger pointing as to who is to blame for the current problem. I am disheartened to find out that the auto manufacturers have waited so long to start looking for other solutions. Are they just now realizing how delicate they have become by outsourcing almost all of their parts to other companies? The US auto manufacturers are basically assembly plants that have outsourced all of their actual manufacturing. It’s hard to understand how they didn’t think this could become a problem. Not only do they buy from 1000’s of smaller vendors but they have little to no control over those vendors and in many cases they are not even the largest customer for the vendors and yet they expect everyone to coddle and give them special treatment. The leadership in the auto industry seem like a bunch of whiney irresponsible children who have had a really hard time surviving in a free market without special treatment from other companies and free tax dollars from the government. Maybe instead of playing the blame game these executives should be looking into the future to try and foresee some other problems coming down the pipes and get in front of them for once instead of being so reactionary. I can’t imagine that this will ever happen as they seem preoccupied with giving each other awards and raises for their self proclaimed “great leadership” during the pandemic.
Tech giant Intel is looking to use funds from the stock offering on its self-driving vehicle component company Mobileye to build additional chip plants in the US and Europe. Intel knows that the auto manufacturers are going to be spending billions of dollars in the future and that contracts for parts are all up in the air right now and it looks like they are going to capitalize on the opportunity. President Biden wants Congress to approve $52 billion to expand semiconductor production in the US so there is also a chance that the giant mega corporation will get free funds for the government to subsidize their wildly profitable business. I know I have said this before but I wish small businesses could get the welfare that fortune 500 companies get from the government. Problem is that a lot of this welfare seems to be tied to the amount of money your company gives to political campaigns, or “nonprofits” run by powerful politicians. Sure seems like there should be something illegal about giving money to politicians who in turn give you free tax dollars, but what do I know.
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