GM sold more cars last quarter, but forecasts look grim

General Motors overtakes Toyota again in the US, Rivia’s present is stable but its future looks uncertain, and Ferrari is trying to figure out how all its internal documents were leaked online. All this and more Morning shift For Tuesday, October 4, 2022.

1st Gear: Still up

In July, GM took back the US quarterly sales crown from Toyota. Who sold the most cars last year?. The General maintained its leadership in the third quarter of 2022. Reuters reported Monday afternoon. This is 24 percent more than in the same period of 2021.

GM said it sold 555,580 vehicles in the quarter through September, up 24% from last year when inventory shortages hit sales. Toyota’s sales decreased by 7.1% in the same period and amounted to 526,017 vehicles.

During the first nine months of the year, GM outsold Toyota by about 80,000 vehicles. Toyota surpassed GM by nearly 110,000 in 2021, marking the first time since 1931 that GM did not lead the U.S. auto industry in sales.

It’s incredible to think that Toyota’s total volume actually is decreased At the same time, 7 percent of the GM increased almost three times. This just goes to show the volatility of the market under ongoing supply constraints, which brings us to another topic.c: interest rate. Experts and executives fear that another phase of backwardation in demand is imminent:

But analysts are now warning that demand could fall in the coming quarters as rising interest rates discourage consumers from paying more for cars and trucks in the coming months.

“We are cautiously optimistic moving forward. There is a lot of negative consumer sentiment in the market. So we’re obviously concerned about that,” Hyundai Motor North America CEO Randy Parker said in an interview after the automaker reported a 3% rise in vehicle sales.

Second-hand car dealers are also shaking in their boots:

However, after last week’s inflation warning from used car retailer CarMax Inc, macroeconomic concerns are at the forefront of analysts’ minds.

“Discounts may begin to materialize as economic conditions, rising interest rates and continued vehicle availability impact the supply-demand imbalance in the quarters ahead,” said TrueCar analyst Zack Krelle.

Which, if you’re shopping for a used car, says our car buying guru, Tom McParland have some tips That way, you can negotiate with confidence and ideally not get ripped off. Good luck out there; no one has any idea what will happen next.

2nd Gear: Bolt needed a win

The Chevrolet Bolt and Bolt EUV, two very affordable EVs plagued by battery issues last year, just enjoyed a relatively strong quarter. GM is trying to ride that wave in 2023, when it plans to produce 70,000 vehicles, up from 44,000 in 2022. It will also slam on the brakes. GMC Hummer production is ramping up as the automaker ramps up the Bolt and tools for other new EVs. From Reuters:

The largest U.S. automaker said it is ramping up body shop upgrades at ZERO at its Detroit plant and taking other steps to prepare for production of the 2023 Silverado EV.

GM will stop production of the GMC HUMMER EV Pickup for several weeks starting in late November to prepare for the production jump.

Cadillac Lyriq production will ramp up in the fourth quarter, and GM plans additional production shifts for GMC Hummer EVs in 2023.

The automaker reiterated that EV launches are on schedule for 2023, including the Chevrolet Silverado EV, Chevrolet Blazer EV and Chevrolet Equinox EV.

GM’s EV sales are still a small fraction of US sales. Of the 1.65 million US vehicles sold in the first nine months of the year, GM sold 22,012 Bolts, 782 Hummer EV pickups and 36 Lyriq SUVs.

Despite recent good fortunes, Bolt is not really in the cards For GM to move forward as it is based on an outdated architecture. At least now he will leave this world with some dignity.

Gear 3: Rivian stays on track…

The electric truck startup rolled out 7,363 vehicles last quarter at its plant in Normal, Illinois, and delivered 6,584 of them. Anecdotally, I can believe it because I see a lot of Rivians on the road these days. More importantly, the company said it expects to hit its targets by the end of the year. Again, Reuters:

The company also reiterated its full-year production target of 25,000 vehicles and increased its aftermarket share by 9%.

The Amazon.com Inc-backed electric car company produced 4,401 units and delivered 4,467 vehicles in the previous quarter.

This is a bit of encouraging news for Rivian, which hasn’t had its best year. After raising prices and forcing reservation owners to either upgrade the features of future trucks or go homemany people felt burned—and not just customers. Rivian withdrew the price hikes it had proposed in the spring as a result of the initial backlash, but rolled out a different hike scheme in August.

4th Gear: …But it’s not out of the woods yet

Meanwhile, on the manufacturing side of things, a plan to secure incentives for Rivia’s prospective $5 billion facility in Georgia, about 45 miles east of Atlanta, was rejected by a local court. Luck reported over the weekend:

Morgan County Superior Court Judge Brenda Trammell denied a local government’s routine request to approve a bond agreement, ruling Thursday that the development authority that filed the case had not proven the $5 billion plant would employ 7,500 people. was “sound, reasonable and practicable” as required by state law.

Trammell also ruled that under state law, Rivian must pay regular property taxes on the level of control over the property it will lease from the development authority, undermining the reason it took legal action in the first place.

Rivian declined to comment.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development and the local four-county joint development authority that hired Rivia said they were “disappointed and respectfully disagree with Judge Trammell’s decision. They said they have not abandoned their plans and are considering an appeal.

“We are unwavering in our efforts to bring high-paying, American-made jobs to Georgia and are currently evaluating all legal options,” the groups said.

Late last year, Rivian announced its plan By 2024, the plant in Georgia is expected to be operational, 7,500 workers on an area of ​​2,000 hectares and the annual production of 400,000 trucks. Accepted much protest from residentsand Judge Trammell isn’t sure the company will have the money to complete it.

5th Gear: Ferrari doesn’t know what’s going on

According to an Italian newspaper, 7 gigabytes worth of internal Ferrari documents have been published on the Internet in recent days. However, Ferrari itself says it has found no evidence of a data breach and is still trying to figure out exactly what happened. Reuterstake it, one last time:

Ferrari said on Monday that some internal documents had been posted online and that the luxury sports car maker was trying to determine how it happened.

The emailed statement said it would take all appropriate action if necessary.

Ferrari added that there was no evidence of a breach of its systems or ransomware and said there were no disruptions to its business or operations.

On Monday morning, the Corriere della Sera newspaper cited the Red Hot Cyber ​​website as saying that Ferrari was the victim of a cyber attack and that seven gigabytes of documents, including internal documents, data sheets and repair manuals, had been made public.

This is not the only escape with hackers – or so it seems Maranello lived in 2022, as they are called “threat actors” in professional circles. Cybernews tells us:

Earlier this year, threat actors prevented Ferrari from entering the NFT market. Shortly after Ferrari announced it would mint tokens based on Ferrari cars, threat actors hijacked the company’s subdomain and used it to host an NFT scam.

Interestingly, RansomEXX published [latest] The leak comes less than a week after Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender became an official sponsor of Ferrari’s Formula One (F1) racing team.

The last part is a lot of fun though. You have to hand it to the hackers – they know how to capture the peak moments of sarcasm.

Reverse: I watched “Balloon Ascension” once and you don’t hear anyone talking about it