Toronto, Ontario — Looking for your global automotive stock report? Look no further! In this weekly Tuesday Ticker, Volkswagen amps up its EV deliveries; a former Nissan executive does a postmortem on the OEM’s EV strategy and Porsche preps for a potential IPO.
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Volkswagen is pushing its emissions-free offerings and seeing the returns, as the German OEM has managed to deliver 217,100 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the first half of 2022, marking a total increase of deliveries of 27 percent over the same period a year earlier.
BEV adoption, in general, is also up across the board for VW, reporting that emissions-free vehicles now make up for 5.6 percent of the company’s total deliveries, up from 3.4 percent.
This progress from Volkswagen comes amid continued supply chain bottlenecks in Europe, as well as resurgent COVID-19 lockdowns in China, which put a strain on production and delivery in the respective markets.
“We successfully continued our electric ramp-up despite challenging conditions, especially in the second quarter,” said Volkswagen Group board member, Hildegard Wortmann.
“Demand continues to be strong, and we expect an improving supply situation in the second half of the year. June BEV deliveries showed a clear upward trend already to the monthly levels of Q4 2021.
“We are working intensively to reduce the high order bank and the delivery times for our customers and are committed to our goal of a BEV share of 7 percent to eight percent for the full year.”
Notes for Nissan
With news that the automaker’s former flagship EV will be discontinued in the next model year, a former Nissan executive has come out to speak on the late Leaf, and where the company went wrong on electric vehicles.
Andy Palmer, a former Nissan executive who led the development of the automaker’s first fully-electric vehicle, the Leaf EV, back in 2011, spoke on a panel last week where he claimed that had the company taken a different path, Nissan could’ve been where Tesla is in the EV market.
“For one reason or another Nissan did not remain on the electric track,” said Palmer. “If they had, there was a very clear rollout plan for [electric] cars. If they had followed that they could have had a valuation not dissimilar to Tesla.”
He said the high cost of the Leaf for both consumers and Nissan led the company to decide that “Closing down the electric strategy improved the profitability of the company.” Palmer attributed the uncertainty around the future and profitability of EVs at the time as a leading cause for hesitation on the part of Nissan.
“Nissan was not just making a loss on the Leaf—it was not even covering material costs,” Palmer said. “When we first started we were paying $1,000 per kilowatt hour. Now it’s more like $150.”
The company plans to fill the space left by the Leaf with a coupe-styled small crossover that they expect to be three times as popular as its spiritual predecessor.
A price for Porsche
The Volkswagen Group plans to publicly list Porsche via an initial public offering (IPO) later this year, with the decision set to finance the OEM’s future in electric vehicles.
Porsche’s parent company flaunted the possibility of an IPO earlier this year. However, VW Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz recently suggested the luxury brand will go ahead with a listing in the fourth quarter as the unit has “proved resilient over the years to market disruptions,” including in recent supply-chain turmoil.
“We are optimistic we can pursue [the Porsche IPO] in the fourth quarter,” Antlitz said at the Munich Reuters Automotive Europe conference. “Porsche would gain entrepreneurial freedom, we can expect a lot from them.”
Bloomberg believes Porsche could offer one of the largest IPOs in German history, with an estimated value of up to CAD$118 billion, or €90 billion.
Volkswagen Group has already declared its goal to beat Tesla’s EV sales by 2025—a target expected to include the group’s luxury labels.
