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Empty shelves that usually stock bottled water at Sainsbury’s supermarket, Greenwich Peninsular, on September 19, 2021 in London, England.
Chris J Ratcliffe | Getty Images

LONDON — Britain has been plunged into uncertainty as issues over gasoline, electricity and food have prompted warnings of “a really difficult winter” for the country.

A significant lack of truck drivers has meant deliveries of fuel and goods have fallen short.

In a bid to incentivize people to take the job, some employers have reportedly offered salaries as high as £70,000 ($95,750) a year, with joining bonuses of £2,000.

Speaking to ITV News on Thursday, Paul Scully, the U.K.’s minister for small businesses, warned that “this is going to be a really difficult winter for people.”

“We know this is going to be a challenge and that’s why we don’t underestimate the situation that we all find ourselves in,” he said. However, he told Times Radio on Friday that there was “no need for people to go out and panic buy.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said earlier this week that there was no shortage of fuel in the U.K., and people should continue to buy gas as normal. He also described the U.K.’s food supply chain as “highly resilient,” but acknowledged that some businesses in the industry were facing challenges and said the government was having meetings with representatives from the sector.

Gas station closures

As supplies of some essential goods have dwindled, reports have emerged of empty shelves and long lines of cars outside gas stations.

In a BBC interview on Friday, U.K. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said people should continue to buy gasoline as usual, adding that military personnel would be brought in to drive trucks if it would help the situation.

Vehicles queue for fuel at a Sainsbury’s petrol station on September 24, 2021 in Weymouth, England.
Finnbarr Webster | Getty Images

Oil giant BP confirmed Friday that it had temporarily closed a handful of its U.K. gas stations due to shortages of unleaded gasoline and diesel. 

“These have been caused by some delays in the supply chain which has been impacted by the industry-wide driver shortages across the U.K., and there are many actions being taken to address the issue,” a spokesperson said via email.

“We continue to work with our haulier supplier to minimize any future disruption and to ensure efficient and effective deliveries to serve our customers. We are prioritising deliveries to motorway service areas, major trunk roads and sites with largest demand.” 

A spokesperson for ExxonMobil’s Esso told CNBC that a small number of the sites it operated in the U.K. had been impacted by fuel shortages, but that the firm was “working closely with all parties in our distribution network to optimize supplies and minimize any inconvenience to customers.”

In an emailed statement on Friday, a spokesperson for Tesco, the U.K.’s largest supermarket and an operator of 500 gas stations, said: “We have good availability of fuel, with deliveries arriving at our petrol filling stations across the U.K. every day.”

The company has only experienced temporary outages at two of its own gas stations so far. Some stations are owned by other operators but have a Tesco convenience store onsite.

Competitor Sainsbury’s said it wasn’t currently experiencing any issues with fuel supply but was monitoring the situation.

‘Serious labor shortages’

Some food supplies in Britain have also been affected by delivery disruptions. But according to Ian Wright, chief executive of the U.K.’s Food and Drink Federation, food and drink manufacturers in the country have been experiencing the “same serious labor shortages as those being seen across the food supply chain.” 

“We need Government urgently to conduct a full survey of the state of employment markets to gain an understanding of the most pressing issues,” he said in an emailed statement.

“For example, workers may have returned to their respective home countries during lockdown and not returned [to the U.K.]. Some estimates put this figure at well over a million. If fast action is not taken, the impacts we are already seeing will worsen.”

One remaining drink is seen on a near-empty shelf at an Asda supermarket in London, England on September 19, 2021.
Chris J Ratcliffe | Getty Images

In recent days, a serious carbon dioxide shortage in Britain had prompted concerns that food production would suffer a blow and dent supplies nationwide. U.S. CO2 producer CF Industries recently closed two U.K. sites that produce 60% of the country’s commercial supplies, blaming soaring wholesale gas prices

While Britain’s government struck a deal with the company to restart production, the BBC reported that the country’s food industry could end up paying five times more for the gas under the agreement.

Energy companies have also come under strain, with at least seven suppliers collapsing since August after the price of wholesale natural gas soared 250% in less than nine months. According to energy industry body OGUK, prices surged 70% between August and September alone.

The U.K. has limits on how much suppliers are able to charge consumers for energy, with price caps reviewed by the government every six months. Some are expecting the current cap to be lifted when it is reviewed by ministers in April, meaning British households will absorb some of the increased wholesale cost.

In a report on its latest monetary policy decision on Thursday, the Bank of England warned that the inflation rate was likely to climb to “slightly above” 4% this year, double its target level.

Positive growth outlook

A surge in demand following coronavirus lockdowns is seen as a factor behind these issues, as well as labor and supply shortages accentuated by Britain’s full departure from the European Union at the start of this year.

Speaking to CNBC in a phone call Friday, Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG U.K., said it didn’t look as though the country’s supply chaos was going to be completely resolved before the winter.

Labor shortages could take at least six months to resolve, Selfin said.

“We are a little bit vulnerable as there’s a lot of strain in the system already. Any additional shock, like what we’ve just seen with gas prices, is just going to make it harder for businesses and households to absorb,” she told CNBC.

However, Selfin’s overall outlook for the U.K. economy remained positive.

“The good news is that we are quite near to where we were prior to [the coronavirus pandemic],” she said. “We’re expecting the economy to reach its pre-Covid level by the third quarter of next year. Even with additional shocks, we may have weaker growth, but we’re still expecting 6.2 percentage point growth.”

“The main problem is that there’s very strong demand that cannot be met. So it’s bad, but it could be worse if no one wanted to buy anything,” Selfin added.

Andrew Goodwin, chief U.K. economist at Oxford Economics, also told CNBC on Friday that it would take time to resolve the delivery driver shortage.

“Training or recruiting new HGV [heavy goods vehicle] drivers isn’t something you can do overnight, it’s going to take quite a while. The industry is really going to have to work with what it has at the moment,” he said via telephone.

However, Goodwin said he too remained “reasonably optimistic” about the state of the U.K. economy.

“Households have got this big stockpile of savings to spend, but that will be starting to ebb away a bit simply because the bad news we’re having on things like inflation,” he told CNBC. “[But] certainly over the next year we should achieve much stronger GDP growth than we normally would because we’re still in the catch-up phase.”

“I suspect, we’re going to end up in a situation where the reality is a little bit disappointing to what we were expecting say three months ago,” Goodwin added. “And that’s simply because of these issues with supply shortages, both in terms of sort of constraining output and also just eating into consumers’ purchasing power.”

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Kia’s electric van spotted with an open bed and it actually looks like a real truck

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Kia's electric van spotted with an open bed and it actually looks like a real truck

Is it an electric van or a truck? The Kia PV5 might be in a class of its own. Kia’s electric van was recently spotted charging in public with an open bed, and it looks like a real truck.

Kia’s electric van morphs into a truck with an open bed

The PV5 is the first of a series of electric vans as part of Kia’s new Platform Beyond Vehicle business (PBV). Kia claims the PBVs are more than vans, they are “total mobility solutions,” equipped with Hyundai’s advanced software.

Based on the flexible new EV platform, E-GMP.S, Kia has several new variants in the pipeline, including camper vans, refrigerated trucks, luxury “Prime” models for passenger use, and an open bed model.

Kia launched the PV5 Passenger and Cargo in the UK earlier this year for business and personal use. We knew more were coming, but now we are getting a look at a new variant in public.

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Although we got a brief glimpse of it earlier this month driving by in Korea, Kia’s electric van was spotted charging in public with an open bed.

Kia PV5 electric van open bed variant (Source: HealerTV)

The folks at HealerTV found the PV5 variant with an open bed parked in Korea, offering us a good look from all angles.

From the front, it resembles the Passenger and Cargo variants, featuring slim vertical LED headlights. However, from the side, it’s an entirely different vehicle. The truck sits low to the ground, similar to the one captured driving earlier this month.

Kia-electric-van-open-bed
Kia PV5 open bed teaser (Source: Kia)

When you look at it from the back, you can’t even tell it’s the PV5. It looks like any other cargo truck with an open bed.

The PV5 open bed measures 5,000 mm in length, 1,900 mm in width, and 2,000 mm in height, with a wheelbase of 3,000 mm. Although Kia has yet to say how big the bed will be, the reporter mentions it doesn’t look that deep, but it’s wide enough to carry a good load.

Kia-PV5-open-bed
Kia PV5 Cargo electric van (Source: Kia)

The open bed will be one of several PV5 variants that Kia plans to launch in Europe and Korea later this year, alongside the Passenger, Cargo, and Chassis Cab configurations.

In Europe, the PV5 Passenger is available with two battery pack options: 51.5 kWh or 71.2 kWh, providing WLTP ranges of 179 miles and 249 miles, respectively. The Cargo variant is rated with a WLTP range of 181 miles or 247 miles.

Kia-PV5-open-bed-pickup
Kia PBV models (Source: Kia)

Kia will reveal battery specs closer to launch for the open bed variant, but claims it “has the longest driving range among compact commercial EVs in its class.”

In 2027, Kia will launch the larger PV7, followed by an even bigger PV9 in 2029. There’s also a smaller PV1 in the works, which is expected to arrive sometime next year or in 2027.

What do you think of Kia’s electric van? Will it be a game changer? With plenty of variants on the way, it has a good chance. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Source: HealerTV

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Solar and wind industry faces up to $7 billion tax hike under Trump’s big bill, trade group says

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Solar and wind industry faces up to  billion tax hike under Trump's big bill, trade group says

Witthaya Prasongsin | Moment | Getty Images

Senate Republicans are threatening to hike taxes on clean energy projects and abruptly phase out credits that have supported the industry’s expansion in the latest version of President Donald Trump‘s big spending bill.

The measures, if enacted, would jeopardize hundreds of thousands of construction jobs, hurt the electric grid, and potentially raise electricity prices for consumers, trade groups warn.

The Senate GOP released a draft of the massive domestic spending bill over the weekend that imposes a new tax on renewable energy projects if they source components from foreign entities of concern, which basically means China. The bill also phases out the two most important tax credits for wind and solar power projects that enter service after 2027.

Republicans are racing to pass Trump’s domestic spending legislation by a self-imposed Friday deadline. The Senate is voting Monday on amendments to the latest version of the bill.

The tax on wind and solar projects surprised the renewable energy industry and feels punitive, said John Hensley, senior vice president for market analysis at the American Clean Power Association. It would increase the industry’s burden by an estimated $4 billion to $7 billion, he said.

“At the end of the day, it’s a new tax in a package that is designed to reduce the tax burden of companies across the American economy,” Hensley said. The tax hits any wind and solar project that enters service after 2027 and exceeds certain thresholds for how many components are sourced from China.

This combined with the abrupt elimination of the investment tax credit and electricity production tax credit after 2027 threatens to eliminate 300 gigawatts of wind and solar projects over the next 10 years, which is equivalent to about $450 billion worth of infrastructure investment, Hensley said.

“It is going to take a huge chunk of the development pipeline and either eliminate it completely or certainly push it down the road,” Hensley said. This will increase electricity prices for consumers and potentially strain the electric grid, he said.

The construction industry has warned that nearly 2 million jobs in the building trades are at risk if the energy tax credits are terminated and other measures in budget bill are implemented. Those credits have supported a boom in clean power installations and clean technology manufacturing.

“If enacted, this stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country,” said Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, in a statement. “Simply put, it is the equivalent of terminating more than 1,000 Keystone XL pipeline projects.”

The Senate legislation is moving toward a “worst case outcome for solar and wind,” Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco told clients in a Sunday note.

Shares of NextEra Energy, the largest renewable developer in the U.S., fell 2%. Solar stocks Array Technologies fell 8%, Enphase lost nearly 2% and Nextracker tumbled 5%.

Trump’s former advisor Elon Musk slammed the Senate legislation over the weekend.

“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” The Tesla CEO posted on X. “Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”

Catch up on the latest energy news from CNBC Pro:

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Nissan is in crisis mode as job cuts begin and suppliers are caught in the crosshairs

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Nissan is in crisis mode as job cuts begin and suppliers are caught in the crosshairs

Is Nissan raising the red flag? Nissan is cutting about 15% of its workforce and is now asking suppliers for more time to make payments.

Nissan starts job cuts, asks supplier to delay payments

As part of its recovery plan, Nissan announced in May that it plans to cut 20,000 jobs, or around 15% of its global workforce. It’s also closing several factories to free up cash and reduce costs.

Nissan said it will begin talks with employees at its Sunderland plant in the UK this week about voluntary retirement opportunities. The company is aiming to lay off around 250 workers.

The Sunderland plant is the largest employer in the city with around 6,000 workers and is critical piece to Nissan’s comeback. Nissan will build its next-gen electric vehicles at the facility, including the new LEAF, Juke, and Qashqai.

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According to several emails and company documents (via Reuters), Nissan is also working with its suppliers to for more time to make payments.

Nissan-delays-supplier-payments
The new Nissan LEAF (Source: Nissan)

“They could choose to be paid immediately or opt for a later payment,” Nissan said. The company explained in a statement to Reuters that it had incentivized some of its suppliers in Europe and the UK to accept more flexible payment terms, at no extra cost.

The emails show that the move would free up cash for the first quarter (April to June), similar to its request before the end of the financial year.

Nissan-delays-supplier-payments
Nissan N7 electric sedan (Source: Dongfeng Nissan)

One employee said in an email to co-workers that Nissan was asking suppliers “again” to delay payments. The emails, viewed by Reuters, were exchanged between Nissan workers in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Nissan is taking immediate action as part of its recovery plan, aiming to turn things around, the company said in a statement.

Nissan-Micra-EV
The new Nissan Micra EV (Source: Nissan)

“While we are taking these actions, we aim for sufficient liquidity to weather the costs of the turnaround actions and redeem bond maturities,” the company said.

Nissan didn’t comment on the internal discussions, but the emails did reveal it gave suppliers two options. They could either delay payments at a higher interest rate, or HSBC would make the payment, and Nissan would repay the bank with interest.

Nissan-delays-supplier-payments
Nissan’s upcoming lineup for the US, including the new LEAF EV and “Adventure Focused” SUV (Source: Nissan)

The company had 2.2 trillion yen ($15.2 billion) in cash and equivalents at the end of March, but it has around 700 billion yen ($4.9 billion) in debt that’s due later this year.

As part of Re:Nissan, the Japanese automaker’s recovery plan, Nissan looks to cut costs by 250 billion yen. By fiscal year 2026, it plans to return to profitability.

Electrek’s Take

With an aging vehicle lineup and a wave of new low-cost rivals from China, like BYD, Nissan is quickly falling behind.

Nissan is launching several new electric and hybrid vehicles over the next few years, including the next-gen LEAF, which is expected to help boost sales.

In China, the world’s largest EV market, Nissan’s first dedicated electric sedan, the N7, is off to a hot start with over 20,000 orders in 50 days.

The N7 will play a role in Nissan’s recovery efforts as it plans to export it to overseas markets. It will be one of nine new energy vehicles, including EVs and PHEVs, that Nissan plans to launch in China.

Can Nissan turn things around? Or will it continue falling behind the pack? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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