Volkswagen delays fourth EV battery plant over ‘sluggish’ sales
Europe’s largest automaker, Volkswagen, is delaying plans for a fourth EV battery factory for now. CEO Oliver Blume said the decision was based on market conditions in Europe.
Volkswagen pushes back fourth EV battery plant plans
The Volkswagen Group announced plans to open six gigafactories by the end of the decade. VW has already chosen three sites, including one in Salzgitter, Germany, another in Valencia, Spain, and the most recent in St. Thomas, Ontario.
Volkswagen initially planned for the third to be in Europe but chose North America to take advantage of IRA incentives.
The company has been searching for its fourth in Eastern Europe for over a year, considering sites in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
Although the Czech Republic has been pulling for VW to establish a plant, officials said they could not wait any longer and would offer the site to others. The news comes after Blume met with Czech officials this week, according to Automotive News.
Blume explained that “there is for the time being no business rationale for deciding on further sites.” VW CEO said the decision was “based on market conditions, including the sluggish ramp up of the BEV market in Europe.”
Volkswagen is already in the middle of building three facilities. Blume said the three plants have up to 200 GWh production capacity annually.
The news comes after the company’s CFO, Arno Antlitz, said EV orders were down 50% in Europe from 300,000 last year to 150,000.
Europe is Volkswagen’s biggest EV market, accounting for over 60% of global sales. Its second largest, China, is also at risk. Antlitz explained the automaker could lose market share in the region until new models with XPeng begin rolling out.
Electrek’s Take
Volkswagen delaying its fourth EV plant comes after several major automakers, including Ford, GM, and Toyota, pushed back their own plans.
Ford said it would push back its 600,000 EV run rate goal for another year while delaying around $12 billion in planned manufacturing investments.
GM is delaying production of the Equinox EV, Silverado RST EV, and GMC Sierra EV Denali. Both automakers revealed battery plant delays as well.
Toyota announced Wednesday it’s cutting its EV sales forecast for the fiscal year by nearly 40%. The Japanese automaker said the move was due to the “intensifying price war” in China.
Despite this, Toyota surprisingly invested an additional $8 billion into its North Carolina EV battery plant, bringing the total to roughly $13.9 billion.
Automakers investing now will see the benefits as EV adoption is only expected to continue climbing from here on out. Those delaying plans now will fall further behind as leaders like Tesla and BYD rapidly gain market share globally.
Volkswagen cited “sluggish” EV sales in Europe, but Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling passenger vehicle (gas or electric) in September. This is the sixth time the EV has earned the title in nine months. How is that so?
Tesla is building EVs people want to buy, providing value to customers. Meanwhile, some buyers are not seeing the value in Volkswagen’s EVs. The automaker has struggled with software and other features, which has led to sluggish orders. That’s not to say Volkswagen EVs are bad. They are just lacking that Tesla-like appeal.
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GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
- seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
- two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
- two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.
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While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.
As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”
Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.
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