Automotive

A matchup of former-Ford siblings

albeit in a tangibly less potent manner, this timelessly hilarious spoof of Apple from a dozen or so years ago....

They lost the plot over a decade ago already.
And now some crazy 'marketeers' decided to completely destroy it.

What comes out today. But with both Tavares (CEO of Stellantis) and Ma (CFO of Nissan) having to vacate posts last weekend it looks like an exciting week 😉

Clearly, it's not a symptom of markets as a whole - at least not in the US. Leadership, vision, and product mix are usually the keys in this industry. Tavares and Stellantis got greedy and are paying for it.
Best,
Tim

And have some more hopefully good surprises in store. What Tavares did is the classical GE / Jack Welch trick of pulling dividends forward and destroying terminal value. While in some circumstances this can make sense financially (practical destruction of the Cadillac brand in the 1970s and 1980s) due to the higher net present value, it’s rare that it’s allowed and supported in a company with a relatively stable long term oriented shareholding (the Peugeot and Agnelli families).
And for a manager like him, where you accept a complete breaking of company culture, as soon as they do not deliver the quarterly performance the air becomes thin. According to FT the break was over the short term actions to turn around the situation - him supposedly being ready to break the future to save his tenure (anyway only till 2026) and reputation, something that not all other board members saw as the best way forward. Who knows how it really played out in the end 🤷🏻‍♂️

When a bunch of fund managers, investment bankers, and institutional investors tell that guy he's too short-term and fast-cash oriented. Apparently, Tavares' whole plan for a near-term turnaround was closing factories, gutting product development, and the usual kind if self-defeating cheapness that always screws customers, employees, and investors in the longer term. Good riddance.
Best,
Tim

Was that Tavares was keen on adding more brands and Elkan was adamantly against. Another acquisition would allow the roll- out of the same playbook elsewhere but leave the company with a neigh on unmanageable portfolio that would need addressing soon after Tavares’ official retirement 😉🤷🏻‍♂️

Now comes the hard part. You've got a capital-intensive industry with years-long development cycles, extreme susceptibility to interest rates and business cycles, uncertain and non-standard global regulations - more so every day in the US - and huge legacy costs. Turning this ship around is going to be a mess. Adding so many conflicting corporate cultures and consolidating so many companies is going to catch up to them. This is a Frankenstein's monster that's been in merger mode almost since the global financial crisis, and now it has to live with itself.
Best,
Tim

Aren’t promising!



From the WSJ

I follow the auto industry pretty closely, and I couldn't tell you what "Arrival" is. Legacy OEMs and Tesla are doing a lot better. EV sales are up solidly this year in the US at least. Rolls-Royce's experience with the Spectre suggests there is a market for the sort of thing Jag is proposing, I just don't think Jaguar has the brand strength, customer trust, or dealer experience to win that kind of customer at that kind of price. It just issued a buyback for 3,000 EVs it can't guarantee won't burn.
Best,
Tim

They missed the boat somewhat in terms of timing and now there’s no free money anymore (interest) and an established competition.
Lucid possibly builds the best cars but is in the same tough spot Tesla was until they managed to produce the Type 3 in volume. The question will be if the Saudi sovereign wealth fund keeps pumping in money long enough.
Rivian has saved itself through the US$5 billion deal with Volkswagen. For the moment.
And let’s not forget that Polestar was one of the most brilliant stock market exercises in terms of a partial listing of the entity at the time when electric was super hot to basically pay for the whole development without stressing internal resources. At that it succeeded marvelously and Volvo can now reap the rewards itself.
The rest are indeed very questionable.

My PhD supervisor had a saying for those kinds of situations, ‘If you tie together two foot sore people, you rarely get a high performance runner’ (admittedly sounded better in the original) 😉
They did manage quite a bit in the meantime and some parts of the organization got thoroughly professionalized. Funnily enough Tavares poached a large part of the team responsible for the Dacia success at Renault and brought it to Stellantis. And in the European car industry the French are considered reliably the best when it comes to stringent cost discipline. Unlike the Germans, when the brief is to make a car costing x they come up with one. The Germans argue that for y (much larger than x l) they can build a better one and don’t even seriously start 😉

Assuming this is real, I like the direction - like an old upright 1950s Mark VII - but this will be polarizing. 

But if the camouflaged car from the spy shots in any way resembles its camouflaged shape, the "big Jag" look of the 1950s and early 60s might still be on track for a comeback.
Best,
Tim

Some more serious publications now issued the same images. At the same time I would be thoroughly impressed if the actual cars looks anything like that - the shapes look exceedingly difficult to manufacture unaltered. Still feels more like a design study than a production ready car 😊🤷🏻‍♂️

... is to make them in composites. That's what Volvo/Polestar did with the Polestar 1. The minimum radius for shaping alloys is larger than for composites, which can be shaped with super-abrupt folds and creases. It also reduces mass by hundreds of kilos on EVs where you take any weight savings you can get. If Jag really is looking at Rolls Royce MSRPs, that definitely supports a carbon composite body.
Best,
Tim

Should be drastically below a RR. Starting at GBP90k, with a median somewhere around 120k

Unfortunately, that's a tough spot, too. AMG Benz and Porsche Panamera/Taycan competition in that range is fierce.
Best,
Tim

There’s no easy answers wherever you look 🤷🏻‍♂️

“F-ing road hog bastard” and they were yelling that at my Imperial 40 years ago, before ecologically-sensitive people multiplied like bunnies.



But the Jag windows will no doubt be tinted, dual-glazed for noise protection, and won’t roll down.

The real problem I see with these concepts? Doors too long, car too low. No way can it drive on today’s roads or park in today’s parking lots.




And the police will be pounding on your door saying “windows too dark, no rear visibility”

A concept - getting into serial production like that would at least be exceedingly expensive if at all possible. Now the reports were that it’s a 4 door (suicide rear doors?) but one doesn’t see it from the rendering.

Honestly, I don't think it's going to be all that large compared to the full size trucks people drive as cars in this country. 224-244" pickups are common these days. This might not seem so large when it hits the streets. That said, here's the weirdo explanation for the... compartment... alongside the front wheels. 

But my daughter absolutely loves the idea 😊 Maybe I am not the intended audience after all 😉

We finally have a physical-ish photo of the thing with a person. Every other shot had me convinced this only exists as a render.


I think it's kind of cool. Let's see the spec and price before jumping to any conclusions. And honestly, a nice dark green, black, or blue - maybe burgundy - will give it a less toy-like appearance.