Good morning! It’s Tuesday, April 23, 2024, and this is The morning shift, your daily roundup of the biggest automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: Tesla lays off its entire marketing team
If you were asked to name the automaker that is having its worst week, you would more than need it a few seconds to call Tesla? As a struggling automaker, there is currently little competition deals with erroneous callbacks, brick cybertrucks and falling new car registrations. Now the automaker is facing layoffs as Tesla cuts its entire marketing team after just a year in office.
After announced Big Boss Elon Musk Last year, Tesla said it wanted to “do a little advertising and see how it goes,” and the company’s entire U.S. growth content team has now been laid off. reports Bloomberg. The move follows similar job cuts in Tesla’s design team and its California facilities. As Bloomberg reports:
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The cuts represent a retreat from Tesla’s emerging advertising initiatives. The automaker had long eschewed television, radio, print or online advertising – and built a formidable brand largely through word of mouth.
Investors are increasingly calling on Musk to focus more on marketing as global electric vehicle sales growth has slowed and more competitors have entered the market. Tesla’s commitment to advertising also largely coincided with Musk’s acquisition of the company formerly known as Twitter. The social media platform has been trying to stem a sharp decline in advertising revenue caused by major brands’ discomfort with content moderation and Musk’s own, sometimes controversial, posts.
Now Tesla hopes to find it new ways to attract new buyers into the brand, which is currently facing a series of bad press. The company is struggling with one this week embarrassing recall for its flagship Cybertruck after the accelerator pedals on the nearly six-figure truck came loose. The company also made plans for an affordable model, which could have attracted hesitant electric car users.
2nd Gear: One in nine cars sold in the US is electric
Electric vehicles will have a difficult time in 2024. Companies like Ford has cut back Production goals, startups such as Rivian has lowered prices And Tesla just posted the first decline in operating profit in years. However, there is a silver lining for electric vehicles as it emerges that sales of battery-powered cars are expected to rise this year as they account for more and more of new cars sold worldwide.
However, half of the new cars sold in China are expected to be electric Electric vehicles could account for 25 percent of cars sold in Europe, that number is much, much lower here in America, reports Reuters. Here in the land of the free, electric vehicles are expected to account for only one in nine new cars sold this year. As Reuters explains:
Sales in the first quarter of this year increased by 25% compared to the same period last year. Although this rate is unchanged from the first quarter of 2023 compared to the comparable period in 2022, it comes on top of a larger vehicle base, according to the International Energy Agency.
First-quarter purchases matched total sales for all of 2020, it said.
Still, the share of electric cars in total purchases will vary widely by region, accounting for about one in nine vehicle purchases in the United States, one in four in Europe and nearly half in China, according to the IEA forecast.
This depressingly low number for the USA came about Sales of electric vehicles are forecast rising to 17 million units by the end of 2024, up from 14 million electric vehicles sold last year. However, estimates from the International Energy Agency suggest that revenue could be much higher if we solved two big problems: pricing and charging.
In Europe, electric vehicle adoption is being slowed by the “exit from subsidies in some countries,” Reuters claimed. Battery-powered models are therefore much cheaper than their gas-powered counterparts subsidies offered in the countries B. in the USA and Germany are helping to encourage buyers to switch. However, limited charging infrastructure and range anxiety also pose a major barrier for some buyers. Reuters added:
“Electric cars are generally becoming cheaper as battery prices fall, competition increases and automakers achieve economies of scale,” the IEA said, noting that prices – adjusted for inflation – remained stagnant or even rose slightly in some cases between 2018 and 2022.
Meeting the growing need for charging infrastructure will also be a key challenge, the IEA added, with charging networks expected to grow six-fold by 2035.
In the USA, charging infrastructure grows constantly. Last year alone, the number of charging stations in America increased by more than 20 percent to over 64,000 chargers.
3rd Gear: GM profits hit $2.98 billion
While Tesla is struggling, another American automaker is struggling is a flight of fancy like General Motors I just announced that it made a ton of money earlier this year. The Chevrolet owner reported a profit of $2.98 billion in the first three months of the year. Reports Automotive News.
earnings GM was impressive According to a report by, the company’s sales increased 24 percent in the period from January to March 2024 and US sales reached a new record Automotive News. As the website explains:
As a result, GM increased its full-year adjusted EBIT guidance by $500 million to between $12.5 billion and $14.5 billion. The automaker also raised its net income forecast by $300 million to between $10.1 billion and $11.5 billion.
“Globally, our team is seizing every opportunity with a focus on profitability to build on our strong start to 2024,” CEO Mary Barra said in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday. “We are therefore increasing our guidance for full-year earnings, earnings per share and free cash flow.”
The automaker continues to target positive variable profit (excluding fixed costs) for its electric vehicles in the second half of the year, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson told reporters.
The sky-high profits for General Motors came from cars like that Chevrolet Trax And Buick Envista continue to sell like hotcakes, with GM saying the models accounted for “a larger portion of the company’s sales.”
4th Gear: Stellantis layoffs continue
Across Metro Detroit, conditions are not quite the same as Rosey at rival Stellantis, which was forced into another round of layoffs, this time affecting its manufacturing facilities in the United States. The Jeep and Fiat owners had previously announced a round of voluntary layoffs at its factories in Italy and will now lay off nearly 200 employees at its Ram facility in Michigan. Reports Automotive News.
The newest Round of layoffs at Stellantis The Sterling Heights assembly plant, which is responsible for assembling the Ram 1500 pickup truck, will lay off 199 employees. The layoffs took effect Monday. As Automotive News explained:
“Stellantis is focused on maintaining business fundamentals in a highly competitive and challenging U.S. automotive industry and continues to take steps to improve the efficiency of its production facilities,” the automaker said in a statement on Monday. “As a result of ongoing operational reviews, the company will implement permanent layoffs across its U.S. facility in the coming months. These measures will help improve productivity and ensure the company’s long-term sustainability in a rapidly changing global market.”
More than 6,000 workers at the Sterling Heights plant are represented by the United Auto Workers union, which signed new contracts for workers at Stellantis last year. In response, the union argued the layoffs were “disappointing and disgusting.” The job cuts were a Stellantis case “Put profits over people,” they say Automotive News.