Yesterday Elon Musk, clad in a cowboy hat and sunglasses, delivered the first batch of Model Y’s out of his new Gigafactory in Austin Texas. This makes Tesla’s 6th giant auto manufacturing plant that spans 3 continents. The Austin factory is now the world headquarters for Tesla and a projected 500,000 Model Y Crossovers are planned for production at the plant before the introduction of the Cybertruck scheduled for production in October 2023. During the factory launch event Elon titled Cyber Rodeo, he announced plans to roll out a 100% autonomous driving taxi. Musk said, “there’s going to be a dedicated robotaxi that’s going to look quite futuristic.” No timelines were given on this and other projects like the next generation Roadster or Tesla Semi Truck but Elon noted that the focus in 2023 is going to be more focused on their product after this year’s focus being on production volume. There were also rumors circulating that Tesla will offer a large commercial van sometime in 2024 pending the results of the Cybertruck launch. This would be very interesting as several companies are already competing for the future of “Last Mile Delivery” vehicles. I have no doubt that Tesla entering the market will provide even more healthy competition in the space, hopefully leading to even better products for the end users.
The invasion in Ukraine is still going strong. With global tensions continuing to rise and manufacturers experiencing disruptions from this conflict, we expect that the vehicle shortage will continue. Although US auto manufacturers are mostly keeping quiet, the signs of supply chain problems are still front and center when you look at dealership inventory. Levels are the lowest that I have seen in my 12 year career and expected to get worse. Chevrolet seems to be doing the best out of the big three US auto manufacturers. Usually at Cooper Fleet we have about a perfect 50/50 split between Ford and Chevrolet sales but so far the first quarter of 2022 is more like 95/5 in favor of Chevrolet. We have just about equal numbers of Ford and Chevrolet on order currently but it seems that Chevrolet is actually delivering sold units to us at a rate of almost 20 to 1 to Ford. Although Ford isn’t admitting it, I think that their total focus on future production and the “EV Revolution” is making them forsake today and the needs of their customer right now. I definitely love progress in this industry but have a hard time getting behind it at the sake of the world’s current needs.
Toyota is lowering the production forecast for 2022 to 15.5M stating that the supply chain issues were to blame. This is more than a 6% decrease from their projections not long ago. They also hinted that further adjustments may be needed depending on many factors, the biggest being the supply of semiconductors. Bob Carter, head of Toyota’s North American sales said that the 4th quarter would be “murky” and factors may even bring their yearly production to below 15M, but it seems too early to tell at this point. So much for the talking point they were giving us last year stating that by the end of 2022 the market should start to see some sense of normalcy come back. Glad I didn;’t hold my breathe.
