Bentley’s path to electric cars; VW’s carefully chosen words; and Nio’s upgradeable battery packs. Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 2^nd November to 8^th November 2020. A PDF version can be found here.

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

No More Sad Songs — Bentley announced that by 2026 its entire line-up will be either all-electric or plugin hybrid and then by 2030, customers will only be able to buy battery electric models. Although for many, a decade might seem like a long time, Bentley is amongst the first to commit itself to an all-electric future. All-electric vehicle attributes: solid road-holding, excellent acceleration and quietness; seem to lend themselves well to luxury cars, and customers have the deep pockets to pay for the technology, so why are rivals so reluctant to make similar commitments?
Confessions — VW will soon be making eight ID badged models in China, but two of them will be versions of the ID.4 crossover. Beware of auto executives bearing statistics of how many electric vehicles they plan to launch. For many of them. the naughty little secret is that they are treating saloons, estate cars and coupes as worthy of separate billing. Will the electric car revolution have as much variety as we hoped?
Keep On Movin’ — Nio released a new, 100 kWh, battery pack. The interesting bit is that owners of older cars (who are getting by with a trifling 70m kWh) will be able to rent the larger units for a month at a time. The price isn’t cheap ($133) but it might be an attractive alternative to a full upgrade for people who only rarely need to take a longer journey. Will temporary upgrades catch on and will the infrastructure to provide the extra batteries be well enough used to justify the investment?

News is arranged by company and topic. Stories that apply to more than one company or topic are duplicated.

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

BMW ^(history)

Released Q3 2020 financial results. Revenue of €21.9 billion fell (4.6)% on a year-over-year basis. EBIT of €1.5 billion fell (2.5)%. (BMW)
BMW’s CEO recalled the concept of E-FIRST on the earnings call saying that the next generation of platofrms will “Not be electric only, they must start electric-only”. He also said it is very important that plugin hybrid owners charge their cars and that “We want to give only hybrid cars to people who can prove that they can charge the car”. He claims that all the battery electric vehicles BMW offers are practically sold out. (Seeking Alpha)
Following earlier news reports about potential financial problems for BMW’s Chinese partner Brilliance, CEO Zipse said that there would be no impact on the firms’ joint venture. (Seeking Alpha)

Daimler ^(history)

Daimler’s CEO said the €1 billion profit target for digital services by mid-decade included selling driver assistance upgrades and that between 2025 and 2030 battery electric vehicles will start to outsell plugin hybrids. (Handelsblatt)

FCA ^(history)

Might pay €500 million more than expected to settle charges of emissions cheating with US regulators. (Reuters)

Ferrari

Published Q3 2020 earnings. Revenue of €888 million fell (3)% versus prior year whilst EBIT of €222 million fell by about the same amount. Ferrari said the market was at the top end of its expectations. (Ferrari)
Ferrari’s CEO doesn’t see the company reaching a 50% mix of all-electric vehicles in his lifetime. (Seeking Alpha)

Ford ^(history)

Recalling 375,000 Explorer SUVs because, following an earlier repair, parts of the steering might fall apart. (Ford)
Has no plans to build an electric version of its largest, Super Duty, pickup trucks. (Detroit Free Press)

General Motors ^(history)

Reported Q3 2020 earnings. Revenue of $35.5 billion was in line with prior year. Income of $4 billion was 74% up on a year-over-year basis and coronavirus was more than offset by reversing the effects of last year’s UAW strike. (GM)
CEO Barra appeared to pour cold water on talks of any separation of the electric vehicle business saying “EV is a propulsion system”. She also implied that GM might have to rethink its strategy for mid-cycle actions for electric vehicles as electric powertrain and over the air connectivity gives less to change. (Seeking Alpha)

Honda ^(history)

Published financial results for Q3 2020 (fiscal Q2). Revenue of 3.6 trillion JPY (about $34.7 billion) fell (2.1)% on a year-over-year basis. Profit before tax of 345.7 billion JPY (around $3.3 billion) rose 19%. Honda said that cost reductions more than offset volume losses. (Honda)
Restructuring its North American operations to merge manufacturing and engineering divisions. (Honda)
Published a new environmental report for its European business. (Honda)

Nissan and Mitsubishi^(history)

Mitsubishi published Q3 2020 financial results (fiscal Q2). Net sales were 354 billion JPY (about $3.4 billion), with a net loss of (34) billion JPY (about -$320 million). The company said that its restructuring plan is over delivering, thanks to better than targeted general and administrative cost reductions. (Mitsubishi)
Sources say that in 2020 Nissan’s sales started via the internet reached 11% of total car sales volume, up from 4% to 5% in 2019. The company is reportedly concentrating on a role out of end-to-end digital sales in North America and China and plans to involve dealers in the ordering and delivery process. (Reuters)

Renault ^(history)

Unveiled a minor refresh of the Scenic MPV. (Renault)

Subaru

Reported Q3 (fiscal Q2) revenues of 761 billion JPY (about $7.2 billion), down (1.1)% versus prior year. Profit before tax of 47 billion JPY (about $440 million) was up strongly from only just above breakeven a year earlier. As a consequence, the forecasts were increased for full year revenue and profit (just over $1 billion). (Subaru)

Tata (includes JLR)^(history)

The original Land Rover Defender will seemingly live on in a range of special edition models built by the (now in-house) Bowler brand. Expect a six figure price tag. (Land Rover)

Tesla ^(history)

Launched a $250 bottle of Tequila in a bottle the shape of a lightning bolt. It quickly sold out. (Tesla) Without wanting to suggest that Tesla customers are ever ripped off, the original manufacturer sells the same quantity, in its own packaging, for $45.

Toyota ^(history)

Reported financial results for Q3 2020 (fiscal Q2). Revenue of 6.8 trillion JPY (about $64 billion) fell (11.3)% on a year-over-year basis. Operating income of 506 billion JPY (about $4.8 billion) was down (23)%. Toyota blamed continued drops in volume for the lost profits. The company is now more bullish about a full year outlook and lifted revenue and profit forecasts, hoping to make around $12.4 billion. (Toyota)
Published a new environmental report. (Toyota)
Journalists picked up on bland comments made by Toyota’s CEO about Tesla still being a relatively immature business and reported them as a major slap in the face for the Californian company. (CNBC)

VW Group ^(history)

CEO Diess says that VW will hopefully make its 2020 European CO₂ target, but that he can’t be certain as internal modelling shows there is a “gram or so” margin of error. (FT)
Truck making unit Traton signed a definitive agreement to acquire Navistar. (Traton)
Bentley announced that by 2026, the brand will only sell either fully electric or plug-in hybrid electric cars, and that by 2030 the entire range will be battery electric. The company also appears to have slightly pulled forward the launch of some of the products versus earlier announcements. (Bentley)
VW’s China head said the company will soon be making eight “ID.” badged models in the country, but since two of them will be different variants of the ID.4, this won’t necessarily translate into completely new models. (Reuters)

Other

Nio launched a 100 kWh battery. Owners of older vehicles, which have a 70 kWh battery, will be able to rent an upgraded unit for $133 per month. (Nio) Nio has apparently selected a site in Copenhagen, Denmark, for its first European store and hopes to sell 7,000 cars per year in Europe within two years. (China Money Network)
Fisker’s Ocean SUV has received just under 9,000 reservations in almost 12 months. (TechCrunch)
Creditors started bankruptcy proceedings against Spyker, saying that despite recent announcements of funding no money is forthcoming and that trademarks will be sold if the situation isn’t rectified very soon. (RTL)
Bollinger’s CEO said that he is confident his truck will face little competition because it is a Class 3 vehicle designed to sit above products like F-150 and Cybertruck. (Yahoo)
Li Auto is recalling almost 10,500 cars because of problems with the suspension. (Li Auto)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

US light vehicle industry during October of 16.21 million units fell (2)% versus 2019. (Wards)
UK October passenger car sales of 140,945 units fell (1.6)% on a year-over-year basis. (SMMT)
274,303 passenger cars were registered in Germany during October, (3.6)% down on prior year. (KBA)
October French passenger car sales of 171,049 units fell (9.5)% versus prior year. (CCFA)
Italian October passenger car registrations of 156,978 units fell (0.2)% versus 2019. (UNRAE)
Spanish passenger vehicle registrations in October of 74,228 units fell (21)% versus prior year. (ANFAC)

Suppliers

Veoneer appointed a new CFO. (Veoneer)
Tenneco reported Q3 2020 revenue of $4.3 billion and EBIT of $236 million. (Tenneco)
Modine Manufacturing reported Q3 2020 sales of $461 million and operating income of $29 million. (Modine)
Magna reported Q3 2020 revenue of $9.1 billion and net income of $405 million. (Magna)
Valeo reported Q3 revenue of €4.4 billion, down (6)% versus prior year. (Valeo)
Dana acquired some of Modine Manufacturing’s cooling parts plants. (Dana)

Ride-Hailing, Car Sharing & Rental ^(history)

Uber reported financial results for Q3 2020. Gross bookings and Uber’s own revenue fell (the latter by more than the former, indicating higher discounts). The net loss of $(1.1) billion was slightly improved from prior year. (Uber)

Driverless / Autonomy ^(history)

Pony.ai, already backed by Toyota, raised an additional $267 million. (Reuters)
Driver assistance developer Provizio raised $6.2 million. (FINSMES)

Electrification ^(history)

Ultracapacitor developer Skeleton Technology raised €41 million. (Reuters)

Other

Truck maker Volvo Group held a capital markets day. (Volvo)

Find our archive here.