Good morning! It’s Thursday, April 25, 2024, and this is 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: Toyota’s Hybrid Sales Are Up By A Third
While most automakers around the world made a sudden pivot to electric cars, Toyota held off and decided to stick with hybrid models and slowed its rollout of battery-powered cars. Now, that cautious approach to electrification appears to be paying off, as hybrid cars just helped the Japanese automaker to a record-breaking year in terms of deliveries and sales.
Toyota announced this week that across its brands it sold more than 10.3 million cars through its latest financial year, reports Bloomberg. As the site explains:
Production rose 4.5% to 11.2 million units on robust demand in North America, Europe, and India. Output was firm in Japan as well, despite a temporary halt in shipments in the latter half of the year after Daihatsu was found to have been manipulating crash safety test results for more than 30 years.
Toyota’s sales in China increased 1.4%, contrasting with the struggles faced by some Japanese peers amid the growing popularity of local carmaker BYD Co.
The world’s largest carmaker sold 116,654 battery electric cars between April 2023 and March 2024. Sales and output at the main Toyota brand and its luxury marque Lexus were up 7.3% and 9.2%, respectively.
That 7.3 percent growth for Toyota over the year isn’t to be sniffed at, but it pales in comparison to the gains seen across the company’s hybrid lineup. According to company sales figures, Toyota shifted more than 3.5 million hybrid electric models, marking a 31.1 percent increase on the year before. Its total electrified sales hit almost 3.9 million and accounted for more than a third of its worldwide sales.
Included in those electrified sales is the firm’s output of fully-electric cars, which includes models like the BZ4X. Around the world, Toyota managed to sell 116,000 battery electric cars, which was almost three times as many EVs as it shifted a year previously.
2nd Gear: Ford Earnings Hit By F-150 Delay
While Toyota was out celebrating record sales for the year, American automaker Ford had a little less to shout about after its income for the first three months of 2024 plummet by around two-thirds as a result of delays to its rollout of the 2024 F-150 pickup truck.
Ford was forced to delay the launch of the new F-150 earlier this year as it carried out additional quality control checks on the new model. This meant deliveries of the truck were pushed back by several weeks. This delay has been attributed to the massive drop in earnings for the Blue Oval, reports the Detroit Free Press. As the site explains:
The company’s Ford Blue segment, covering internal-combustion vehicles, saw a 66% drop in adjusted earnings before interest and taxes to $900 million, which was directly affected by the production and ramp-up of the truck.
Overall, Ford’s revenue for the first three months of this year was $42.8 billion, up 3% from a year ago despite the decline of vehicle shipments. The company has increased revenue in each of the past three years and expects to do so again in full-year 2024, Ford said in a news release.
While the delay in the rollout of the F-150 was bad for Ford’s bottom line, the company argues that it will be better for it in the long run. This is because ironing out quality issues before the cars roll out the factory means they are less likely to be recalled once they hit customer driveways.
3rd Gear: Toyota Delays EV Production In U.S.
Ford might have been hit with a delay of a few weeks, but now Toyota is facing a delay of its own that could push its U.S. electric vehicle ambitions back by as much as a year. The Japanese automaker has reportedly delayed plans for its stateside EV production sites to 2026, instead of 2025 as initially planned, reports Reuters.
The Japanese automaker was initially targeting output of up to 600,000 fully electric models by 2025, with production of those split between factories in Japan and a facility here in the U.S. However, those plans have reportedly been delayed to 2026, as Reuters explains:
Toyota Motor will delay the start of its electric vehicle (EV) production in the U.S. to the spring of 2026 from the proposed 2025 timing, the Mid Japan Economist newspaper said on Thursday.
The automaker will also reduce its domestic vehicle production to less than 14,000 vehicles per day by September this year, the newspaper said without citing sources.
The smoke and mirrors nature of this news does mean it’s probably worth taking with a pinch of salt, but it would bring Toyota in line with other automakers slowing ambitions for electrification. In recent weeks, Ford has cut production of its F-150 lightning truck, General Motors pushed back its own plans for new electric models and the rapid growth of EV sales we saw in the past has begun easing off.
4th Gear: GM Paid Boss Bara Just $27.8M Last Year
In a heartbreaking turn for rich people, General Motors cut the pay for its boss Mary Barra last year after the company failed to meet its stock targets, reports Automotive News. The move means that Barra is no longer the highest-paid exec at the Big Three after she took home just $27.8 million last year.
The cut in pay marked a 3.9 percent decrease in Barra’s salary, reports Automotive News. As the site explains:
Barra’s $2.1 million salary, $14.6 million in stock awards and $4.9 million in options were unchanged from 2022, according to a Wednesday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She and other top executives received lower incentive payouts because GM underperformed on goals related to electric and autonomous vehicles, even as it surpassed earnings and cash flow targets, Compensation Committee Chair Wesley Bush said in the filing.
Going forward, GM will tie bonuses for executives and other salaried employees more directly to four “strategic areas of focus” — combustion vehicles, EVs, AVs, and software and services — to encourage executing “with greater accountability and a broader enterprise perspective,” Bush wrote. Executives’ incentives also will factor in the company’s progress on its long-term transformation strategy.
Despite walking away with that eye-watering figure, Barra is now just the second-highest paid exec at America’s Big Three automakers. She now trails Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares, who had his enormous $39 million pay packet approved by company shareholders earlier this month.