It’s Friday! And Crowdstrike and Microsoft have likely given you the gift of not being able to work. Let’s enjoy it a bit by having a Morning Dump that has some politics and Tesla in it. Uh oh. Why work when you can get in an internet flame war? Just kidding, please don’t do that.
Tesla sales are down in California for the third straight quarter, which is an interesting outcome given that California is the place that made Tesla. It’s not just Tesla, as BEV growth is stalling out a bit in the state as hybrid sales surge.
Oh man, politics? Really? Here we go: Republican nominee Donald Trump said the UAW should fire its president Shawn Fain because of the threat of Chinese cars from Mexico. What?
Oh boy, let’s keep going. Did the Inflation Reduction Act do anything? An analysis shows that it probably has.
And, finally, car repossessions are surging.
Happy Friday!
Tesla Sales Are Crashing In California
Everything is relative, and I feel like all the stories you’re going to potentially read today about Tesla’s performance in California should be heavily caveated with the fact that three of the four best-selling EVs in California are all Teslas.
Even with falling sales, Tesla is still lapping the rest of the field. Or, to use another sports metaphor: Tesla is still the Harlem Globetrotters and everyone else is still the Washington Generals.
All of this data comes from the California New Car Dealers Association, which put together this great quarterly report on sales in the state. Tesla sales have fallen for the third quarter and, through the first half of the year Tesla sales are down 17% in the state, whereas the overall EV market is slightly up year-to-date.
In particular, Toyota, Cadillac, Lexus, Rivian, and a bunch of other automakers are up a lot. Polestar, Volkswagen, Volvo, and Chevrolet (RIP Bolt) are down more than Tesla.
What’s the deal? I think a few things are going on here. First, the EV market in California has been strong for years and, with higher interest rates, it was bound to slow down eventually. There’s also increased competition, meaning that more people are looking to good alternatives like the Ioniq 5 (the best-selling non-Tesla) and Mach-E.
There’s probably some Elon Musk Effect here as California trends liberal, though it’s hard to say for sure and I’d love to see some good data on this.
Finally, hybrids are becoming more competitive and you can see it in the data:
Electric car growth is stalling out but hybrids are marching along. In fact, both the Toyota RAV4 PHEV and Jeep Wrangler PHEV cracked into the top ten of BEV/PHEVs this year, ahead of the ID.4, F-150 Lightning, and other historically popular vehicles.
Year of the Hybrid, et cetera.
Ok, Let’s Talk About What Donald Trump Said Last Night
It’s news! It’s news! It’s news! I scream as the keyboard tries to jump out of my window and sacrifice its life before I attempt to do this.
The former President mentioned, in a speech where he was nominated to be the presidential candidate of one of our country’s two major parties, that the President of the United Auto Workers should be fired. He also said some other things. Would it surprise you if I said I don’t think most of these things are true?
You can see in the video above what he said (do not, under any circumstances, watch any other videos link on that channel if you enjoy your sanity).
Here’s the transcript of the speech as written:
I will END the Electric Vehicle Mandate on Day One — thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, and saving U.S. customers thousands of dollars per car.
I will bring auto jobs back to our country, through the proper use of taxes, tariffs, and incentives, and will not allow massive auto manufacturing plants to be built in Mexico, China, or other countries, where they send the product back to the United States, and steal our jobs, creating a hopeless situation for our companies and autoworkers.
Trump went a little off script and added:
The United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen. And the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately. And every single auto worker, union and non-union, should be voting for Donald Trump.
Oh boy. Let’s start with: There is no federal Electric Vehicle Mandate. There’s one in California and other states might follow it, but technically the new federal regulations on cars do not mandate any specific technology and leave it up to automakers to decide what they want to make (with a lot of leeway given to hybrids).
Maybe I’m being pedantic? Maybe. The bit about whether EVs will cause some kind of automotive apocalypse is also an opinion and maybe you agree or not.
The bit about Chinese companies building factories in Mexico to bring cars over here being UAW President Shawn Fain’s fault is interesting, mostly because it makes no sense.
First, as background: Chinese automakers sell cars in Mexico and have made noise about building cars there, albeit with the stated reason of selling to Latin America and not America America. No one really believed them and everyone freaked out. Mexico itself balked and said it wouldn’t provide incentives for these factories to get built.
President Trump, already concerned about this, pushed forward a 25% tariff on Chinese EVs when he was in office. President Biden doubled down on this after the most recent dustup and made it a 100% tariff.
The reason why China might be able to sneak cars in via Mexico without extra trade duties is because of the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is an update of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The USMCA was supposed to fix some shortcomings in NAFTA related to job losses in the US, but it didn’t quite work and ultimately created an opening for Chinese automakers.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a report from the Alliance for American Manufacturing explaining how this happened:
Under the NAFTA framework, Mexican auto industry employment grew by 620,000 between 1999 and 2016, while the U.S. lost 360,000 auto jobs during the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Mexican workers, meanwhile, made an estimated 12% of the wages of their U.S. counterparts.
The USMCA was meant to help correct this imbalance that weighed heavily on U.S. autoworkers by including rules of origin designed to guarantee that products qualifying for duty-free status would be produced regionally, as well as average wage thresholds meant to raise pay for workers across the trading bloc. So far there are strong indications that it has not rebalanced trade, but rather has created disproportionate investments into Mexico including from Chinese entities. Indeed, between 2018 and the first 11 months of 2023, the automotive trade imbalance between the U.S. and Mexico increased by $12 billion, and the auto parts trade imbalance increased by $9 billion.
Should we blame the UAW for the USMCA? In the most abstract way, the existence of unionized workers makes cheaper non-union workers more attractive, but the leakage effect of the USMCA is really the fault of the administration that negotiated and signed the treaty.
Would it surprise anyone to find out that the USMCA was the suggestion of then-President Donald Trump and that it was President Trump who signed it into law?
He did. Here’s video of him calling it a “colossal victory” for America.
So what’s the deal here? I think it’s quite simple. Fain called Trump a “Scab” in his endorsement of Biden and is therefore one of the former President’s enemies. No one listening to that speech will care that the unscripted aside doesn’t make any sense.
The Inflation Reduction Act Probably Saved/Created A Lot Of Jobs In Republican Districts
Whether you think it’s smart or dumb, the Inflation Reduction Act is likely the most important industrial policy initiative since NAFTA and there are now some numbers to back that up.
This is from a thread on the platform X, which I’m embedding below:
Inflation Reduction Act + 23 months
My students at @Wellesley and I are tracking investments in the US electric vehicle supply chain.
Here is our post-I.R.A. tally for the US since 8/16/22:
121 new projects
$94.2B in planned investments
60,597 new jobsA short???? 1/9 pic.twitter.com/8lnDNFWw9y
— Jay Turner (@_jay_turner) July 17, 2024
If you don’t like to read the news that way, the highlight is that in the 23 months since the passage of the IRA, there have been about $94 billion worth of new projects announced. These are likely to produce about 60,597 new jobs just in the EV supply chain (total jobs are about 375k by the current calculations).
As you can see, most of these projects are in Republican-led districts. Some of this is just a result of these investments being focused in places where cars are already made which, in general, tend to be less urban and thus more Republican.
Literally every Republican in the House of Representatives voted against the legislation, if you were curious. Now that it’s law, though, many of them seem to be quite happy to crow about the new jobs.
Repos Will Likely Continue To Climb
About a year ago I did a story on loan vintages and how, over the next few years, the loans that were given out during the pandemic are likely to become a problem.
As you can see in this graphic from Cox Automotive, they’re seeing the same thing. Repossessions are up more than 20% compared to last year and Cox thanks the numbers will continue to grow.
It’s been a bit of whiplash lately as interest rates dropped but cars got super expensive during the pandemic. Now cars are getting cheaper, but interest rates are up.
Buying a car now puts you at a little less risk as you’re likely buying something that will follow a normal depreciation curve. Cars sold during the pandemic were priced so high above normal that buyers who have held onto their cars are more likely to be upside down on their loans, thus more repos.
What I’m Listening To While Writing The Morning Dump
Let’s inject a little happiness into today with The Troggs. Gotta love The Troggs. “Love is all around” if you look for it.
The Big Question
Are you going to ignore what I ask and just talk about politics? Almost certainly, but lemme give it a shot anyway: What’s the longest you’ve gone without getting into a fender-bender?
the biggest curiosity is whether the jump to a more gun toting state and throwing a large super pact to Don, will result in more sales as the saturation of California already seemed to be a thing.
Obviously Elon is a complete douche, and the Don side of the aisle seems to be fine with douches, so maybe the little weasel is just being business smart here.
But I WANT to work in a coal mine. My Pappy did it, my Grandpappy did it and his Pappy did it. Don’t offer me retraining to a cleaner, safer job where I might not die young and that pays me more. Coal mining is my IDENTITY!!!
Anybody else notice how much the cost of buckshot has gone up? Vermin hunting is getting so expensive, it’s hard to feed my family. /S
Well you’re gonna have to work in an iron, lithium or copper mine instead.
SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP!!!
Ok but you’re going to have to use a pick and shovel and work by candlelight with only a dirty bandana as a filter. You’ll also have to sometimes to do the unpaid jobs of checking supports and laying minecart tracks.
The bad news is you’ll be in crushing debt to the company store for the rest of your life. The good news is that probably won’t be very long.
And FFS don’t die like your grandpappy, you keep a close eye on the damn canary!
Drive around West Virginia and you will find many battling billboards – on one side mines trying to recruit workers and on the other side lawyers recruiting miners with silicosis to sue the mines. It is a really sad story, as the coal is getting harder to find the deposits have a lot more silica and the mining operators are not creating safe working environments (we know how to deal with the silica, but it requires planning, venting, and respirators which no one likes to wear), and silicosis rates are at modern time highs. Silicosis is an awful disease and a terrible way to die. I guess we need more education – and maybe someone to make a better respirator that the miners will want to use.
I am under the impression heavy machinery does most of the work nowadays so can’t those be operated remotely so humans are away from the worst of the dust? Or is there still pickax, hand drill and shovel work to be done?
The only accident I’ve ever been in, someone rear-ended my Sentra at a yield. That would have been 12 years or so ago.
“There is no federal Electric Vehicle Mandate. There’s one in California and other states might follow it”
California needs a federal waiver to implement their program, which can be eliminated on day 1. This is probably what is being talked about.
You give him way too much credit.
“Fifteen states joined Nebraska in the lawsuit against the California regulatory board and California Attorney General Rob Bonta: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. They were joined by the Arizona Legislature”
You do not think he heard about all the people who like him suing the people he considers enemies? Seems to me that is the type of thing that would hold his limited attention.
I am 100% confident he knows nothing about that lawsuit.
I’ve only been in 2 accidents in my almost 35 years of driving, one a long-ago double total with a parked car*, the other a fender bender in my dad’s TT 23 years ago. Believe it or not, I’ve lived in a city for 30 of those years.
*I was driving into Baltimore in a heavy storm when the right lane abruptly switched from being a driving lane to being a parking lane. My Grand Am’s always-shitty brakes locked up, and the left lane was completely full, and so I slammed into a parked car at, I dunno, 30 mph? No airbag, but I was totally fine. The punchline? I was at my destination.
I see a disclaimer like that and I immediately open in an incognito window to check it out anyway. I couldn’t get past any of the titles to actually think a click was worth my time. She is committed to the bit though, whatever that may be. I have no idea who Karen Read is but I’m sure this person has some opinions.
Thirty-five years.
My last accident was when I was 19, so let me just do the math…OH GOD, WHEN DID I GET SO OLD?!
Does an unplanned motorcycle dismount at highway speeds count? It was definately a fender bender, as well as the rest of the bike. If so, 45 years ago and it was totally my fault.
I had a 30 year run from when I got my license to when an idiot failed to stop in time and rear-ended my TDI Sportwagen totaling it. I have told the story before but it was a doozy of a way to have a first accident. I was on vacation 400 miles from home and 100 miles from my destination so basically stranded and had my dog with me. It was also in the brief window where VW had announced the buyback but you couldn’t sign up for it yet so I was stuck in limbo for quite a while about whether I was going to get anything out of them at all. It all worked out eventually but made for some fun stress for a while.
My 1st and only fender bender was in 1994 at a 4-way stop where some miscreants had removed one of the signs.
I’ve had weather related single vehicle slide offs, and a couple 2 wheeled low sides from exploring the limits of both myself and my tires, but I think a fender bender requires 2 vehicles.
One time I was driving my Saturn across PA late at night when suddenly there was a puddle on the highway (I-81 IIRC) and the car spun out and ended up in the grass by an exit ramp. No other cars around, but got a flat somehow.
It was a long time before I was in my first one, but I’m not good at chronology. Best I can give you is the shortest time between them. I got rear-ended on a Monday. Talked to her insurance, got set up to go get it repaired. Had someone back into the side of my car the following Monday, a couple days before I was scheduled to drop it off for repairs. Luckily, the second woman’s insurance was willing to go through the same shop.
The shop was a bit confused to be dealing with repairs billed to two different insurance companies, neither of them mine.
My last (and only) fender bender was 22 years ago. I was stopped at a red light when I was rear ended by a communist (not bringing up politics, she literally had a bumper sticker supporting communism). As it turns out, it was the comrade’s second at-fault accident that week. While communists may not be great drivers, they apparently believe in good car insurance. I ended up getting a check from her insurance company for twice what I paid for the car. I then fixed the car with $200 in junkyard parts and sold it. I made $3,000 dollars as a result of this incident.
Maybe this is what Marx meant when he said “to each according to his needs”?
I think this was probably 4 years ago but I was stopped, for a while I might add, in a full Lowes parking lot. An Escalade EXT was parked on my right. Puts it in reverse, I can hear their back up sensors blaring, I blared my horn and crunch. Old geezer just backed into my passenger side front fender. Probably the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a long time. It wasn’t like I just snuck up on them.
I wish someone who gave a shit about Tesla cars were actually running the company. Their offerings are all boring as hell and I would love to see them updated. Instead we have to deal with the person running it go their their mental problems in public.
I’d be curious about what the actual impact on sales Elon has. He’s irritating as hell, but I would probably own one if my wife wasn’t so utterly repulsed. We’re 100% the buying demographic, but it’s a total non-starter and I don’t think she’s particularly unique.
I’m telling your wife you said this and I plan to omit any helpful context.
Dan’s diabolical plan to get rid of wife and get a Tesla.
I’m in that boat. I was the textbook perfect buyer for a Model 3, but I couldn’t stomach giving Elon money. I ended up buying a Lexus ES300h. Great car, super comfortable. No ragrets.
I think hybrids are such a cool market. I think of the BMW i8 and the newest iteration of the Acura NSX and imagine some cool near future where you’ve got a sweet little 4 banger AND 2 electric motors driving your rear wheels and you get 250+ WHP and great gas mileage. But I also lament the phasing out of manual transmissions. That being said, I’m not too keen on switching to a FEV because I do enjoy rowing gears, and the ability to go from 0-60 in 4 seconds just doesn’t seem like a lasting kind of “fun”.
Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too?
I’ve put 350 problem free EV miles on my $2k PHEV in the last month. Probably $12 worth of electricity. Its my go-to car now for those daily short trips. It honestly doesn’t even need an engine, but nice to have if I get a bit out of range unexpectedly.
Tesla needs to update design ASAP. The problem is that they more or less optimized for aero so all we will likely see are headlight and taillight tweaks.
A design update doesn’t change Musk’s loud mouth or shitty personality.
You’re suggesting they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Musk doesn’t want to sell cars. He wants to build AI driven robotaxis and sell rides.
Over 30 years since last bender (booze too?). For the record, I was not at fault. Although, I did scrape a bumper and rocker while parking about 20 ago so I’m certainly not perfect.
When your CEO says things only 50% of the population (at best) don’t find to be abhorrent, of course your sales will drop. Tesla really needs a new CEO.
I work in IT and CrowdStrike gave me the gift of a 2AM wake up call after a lovely 4 hours of sleep. Still bypassing bitlocker to nuke the garbage file that sent everything into a boot loop BSOD nightmare.
Clearly NO testing was performed considering the magnitude of the destruction wrought. All CrowdStrike had to say was oopsie, our bad.
Pouring one out for you, brother. I’m in an AWS/Linux/MacOS shop now so I dodged that bullet.
Gotta give it to Musk, he got people who at one time thought electric cars were for tree huggers and commies to line up and buy his Edsel.
Did he? I don’t think the maga-types are buying them. Just look at the speech referenced above — they hate EVs.
Who is buying Cybertrucks, wrapping them with some nonsense, and claiming them as a business expense?
I still wonder what Musk’s exit strategy for Tesla is. I’m sure he knows it would be tough once the big boys jumped into the EV market. Tesla still has a ridiculous market capitalization. Somebody is going to get burned and it sure wont be Musk.
Ah yes, fellow blue collar employees! Vote for me, where I blame companies willing to fuck over the middle class by shifting production to overseas, on unions. Nevermind the c-suite getting crazy bonuses despite the health of the company, nevermind the record profits and non moving wages, let’s blame unions.
Fuck I am tired of this clown.
“Vote for me, where I blame companies willing to fuck over the middle class by shifting production to overseas, on unions”
If I were on your election team our very first debate topic in our practice sessions would be:
Mexican workers, meanwhile, made an estimated 12% of the wages of their U.S. counterparts.
Couple that with (I presume) lax environmental and worker protections and you have a very powerful motivation to cross the border.
What’s your answer to that which doesn’t demand American workers take a massive pay cut and take on greater workplace risk while dumping untreated wastes onto the ground?
The lowest-hanging fruit, like the stuff rotting on the ground, is to not make electric vehicles assembled in Mexico or Canada eligible for EV tax credits.
That may not be enough.
I think it was about 10 years. I got into an accident a few months ago and broke that streak. Fricking garbage truck turning right without signaling when I was already turning right.
Haven’t gotten into a fender bender in a while now but I did take a corner to quickly last year and dented up my fiances Buick and also had brake failure on my Cummins but luckily only slid into a grass median and hit a do not enter sign. Before those two I did accidentally back up onto my dad’s blazer with same Buick. All of this has taught me that I am a pretty crappy driver and need to pay attention more and be more safe when driving.
Last time I was in California it seemed like everyone already had a Tesla. Maybe they just ran out of people to sell them to?
So, this is anecdotal, but a few of my neighbors have Teslas and one mentioned that when they picked up their new Model 3 a few months ago that the Tesla delivery center folks commented they see more repeat buyers than new buyers.