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American auto sales used to be dominated by the big three US auto manufacturers, GM, Ford and Dodge or now Stellantis for a very long time. This trend has been slowly shifting to foreign cars over the last several years and in 2021 for the first time Toyota motors took the number one sales spot in North America. Toyota also won the world leader in vehicle sales, topping VW again this year and even expanding their lead over last year. Toyota seems to be the auto manufacturer least affected by the microchip shortage in 2021 and they attribute that to stockpiling parts earlier in the pandemic and also working more closely with their suppliers. Toyota’s production was up over 10% from last year. This seems to be a much more effective strategy than these multi-billion dollar companies running to the federal government in hopes that they will legislate another golden parachute for these companies that obviously have major flaws in their business plans. With GM and Ford much more focused on spending billions of dollars to ramp up EV production and research and Stellantis seemingly winding down in the US market, it has definitely created a huge gap in production of vehicles for the US that Toyota was happy to fill. Toyota is also not going all in on electric vehicles and is developing other technologies like hydrogen fuel cells. Unlike the US auto manufacturers that know the government will flood tax dollars to these mega companies because they are “too big to fail” Toyota is taking a more reserved and steady approach and looking at multiple options for improving their products.
GM announced that they will be building a battery recycling facility next to the Ultium battery plant in Warren OH starting in August. Like I spoke about in Recent Automotive News segment a few weeks ago, this will be a huge hurdle moving forward as there are currently not enough recycling centers to handle the amount of batteries being scheduled to be produced over the next several years. These batteries are really gross and will require special equipment and processes to dispose of them. This plant is expected to be able to process up to 5000 tons of batteries each year. I am glad to see that this problem is getting some solutions early as I had expected to be overrun with decaying old gross batteries before the process of dealing with the waste was even addressed.
Ford has had over 10,000 orders on the new E-Transit electric van. Among the customers ordering the van is Walmart who reportedly has 1,100 E-Transits on order. Ford is claiming that over 300 commercial and government entities have ordered the vehicle that starts just under $45,000. Ford Pro is also launching a test program for 3 farms in California. The 3 farms will each be given one E-Transit and one F-150 Lightning to beat up in some real world work scenarios. Ford Pro will also be supplying charging stations and telematics to these companies. Ted Cannis the CEO of Ford Pro said recently in an interview “We’re in a totally unique position to dominate the light-duty commercial vehicle business” and “Commercial customers have very different needs, but most automakers sell to them watered-down versions of their retail offerings, and that is a strategic mistake.” This is a very interesting take and to anyone in the fleet and commercial vehicle space it is very obvious. Ford splitting their retail sales and commercial sales division seem to really be driving some fresh ideas about the world of business vehicles.
We are heading for a very interesting crossroads as many auto manufacturers will be delivering their first electric commercial vehicles to companies soon. Issues that we have beat like a dead horse like charging times and payload capacities are about to be thrust into the limelight where we will be able to see for ourselves how the future of EVs will fit into commercial and heavy use cases. I am little worried about these manufacturers getting in over their skis and the possibility of massive recalls and lawsuits over a not well yet flushed out technology may be putting not only the manufacturers at risk but also the companies that choose to roll the dice on the early adoption of this technology.
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