Happy Friday! You made it through another week to reach February 9, 2024, and one final installment of The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: VW Is Standing Firm In The Pivot To EVs
It’s been a tough few weeks for electric vehicles, with GM committing to focus more of its efforts on hybrids, Ford cutting output of its F-150 Lightning electric truck and Mr Bean is encouraging everyone to skip EVs. But there’s still one staunch supporter of the electric revolution: Volkswagen.
The German automaker, which launched its first ID.4 EV back in 2021, told reporters from Reuters that it is sticking firmly to its plan to release 25 new EVs in North America by the end of 2030. According to Reuters:
“When I look at the data from January, the (EV) segment continues to grow,” [Pablo Di Si, head of Volkswagen’s North American business] said in a video interview ahead of a speech on the sidelines of the Chicago Auto Show. Electric vehicles accounted for 8.5% of North American vehicle sales in January, up from just under 8% last year, he said.
This doesn’t mean that VW’s pivot to EVs has gone smoothly where others have faltered, oh no. Instead, Di Si warned that VW has faced challenges of its own and pace of growth is “slowing.” To combat this, the VW exec said more support was needed to expand charging infrastructure, and he argued that “government support will be needed to expand EV sales in “middle America.”
The all-electric ID.4 SUV accounted for a little over 11 percent of VW’s sales in North America last year. However, the German automaker is set to expand its offering this year, with both the ID.7 sedan and ID.Buzz minivan joining the ranks in 2024.
2nd Gear: Mazda Is Making Bank On Its Hybrid Gamble
If you’d told me a few years ago that hybrid cars would be the talk of the town in 2024, I’d have laughed in your face. But here we are in February 2024 with two automakers celebrating booming sales off the back of their hybrid models. After Toyota shared its bumper hybrid sales earlier this week, it’s now Mazda’s turn to celebrate its successes.
According to a report from Automotive News, the Japanese automaker is expecting “record profits” in the third quarter of its fiscal year thanks to consumer demand for hybrid models like the CX-90 crossover. Automotive News reports:
CFO Jeffrey Guyton on Friday said the Japanese carmaker has high expectations for hybrids in the U.S. Gasoline-electric hybrids are getting extra consumer attention in the U.S. market, thanks partly to growing interest in full-electric vehicles.
“I think hybrid is benefiting a little bit from the hype around EV,” Guyton said. “Now there is a flattening of the EV market. And I think the people who used to be shouting EV and promoting EV have decided, well, if we cannot get people to take pure electric, hybrid is a good alternative.”
Annoyingly, Mazda doesn’t separate out the sales of its CX-90 SUV into gas-powered and PHEV models. However, in its results for 2023 the company shared that it sold more than 30,000 crossovers during the year. In contrast, it shifted just 100 MX-30 EVs during 2023, and announced plans to discontinue the model last year.
Mazda will also add a second plug-in hybrid model to its lineup this year with the launch of the new CX-70 crossover.
3rd Gear: American Driving More Than Before The Pandemic
As the country reopens as the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic lessens, Americans are getting out on the road in their millions. In fact, U.S. drivers covered an eye-watering 3.62 trillion miles last year, which marked a new annual record.
According to a report from Reuters, that mammoth figure came as travel on U.S. roads rose 2.1 percent in 2023. The boost was helped by slightly lower gas prices in 2023, after record highs the year before. As Reuters explains:
Road travel overall last year was up 67.5 billion miles and up by 2.2% in December, according to preliminary data. In 2019, U.S. motorists logged 3.261 trillion miles for the year. U.S. driving sharply declined after Covid-19 lockdowns were imposed in early 2020 as many people worked from home.
The increase in driving comes as more Americans are returning to offices for work as businesses and federal agencies push workers to return.
Before the pandemic hit and forced everyone to stay home, Americans were comfortably covering around 3.2 trillion miles on the road every year. Now we’re up at 3.62 trillion miles, it’s an almost inconceivable number. In fact, if one person was to try and cover that distance at U.S. highway speeds, it would take them almost 1.5 million years on non-stop driving. That’s insane.
While the number of miles Americans are driving was up in 2023, the number of people dying on U.S. roads did take a much-needed dip after its post-pandemic high. Traffic deaths fell by 4.5 percent in the U.S during the first nine months of the year to 30,435, reports Reuters.
4th Gear: You Can Basically Get Away With Car Theft In Britain
We all like to moan about how useless the police force is, but now lawmakers in the UK have got the stats to back up their in-competencies. When it comes to car theft in the UK, it seems as if the cops are as good as useless, with less than 1.5 percent of all reported car thefts in the country resulting in any kind of charges being brought forward.
According to a report from British outlet AutoExpress, between July 2022 and June 2023 the rate of charges for car thefts dropped from just 2.8 percent to a woeful 1.43 percent. In London, things are even worse with criminals being charged in just 0.69 percent of car theft cases. AutoExpress reports:
According to information provided by the Home Office, the average charge rate over 12 months for stolen vehicles nationwide was 2.12 per cent across all police forces, leading a spokesperson for Nextbase to suggest the practice of stealing cars “appears to be essentially decriminalised”.
The hangover of this woefully low rate of conviction is that for regular car drivers, insurance premiums in the UK are through the roof. According to AutoExpress, drivers in London, Manchester and West Yorkshire, which have the highest rate of car thefts in the country, also face the highest insurance prices - if they can get coverage at all.
In fact, for a bit of Friday morning fun, I looked at the cost of insuring a 2012 Range Rover for myself in London and was told that there was nobody out there that could cover me. There goes that dream.