Good morning! It’s Wednesday, December 11, 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: Once You Go Electric, You Never Go Back
Sales of electric cars are heating up, with the share of new car sales that electric vehicles command rising steadily and the U.S. recently setting a new record for battery-powered car sales. It has become clear that most people who buy an EV are turning their backs on gas-powered cars forever.
More than 90 percent of people who own an EV say they plan on buying another battery-powered car as their next vehicle, reports Bloomberg. The findings are part of a new study that revealed that just one percent of EV owners said they plan to return to owning an internal combustion engine model, as Bloomberg reports:
Of about 23,000 drivers surveyed by the Global EV Drivers Alliance, 92% plan to buy an EV again, while 1% said they would return to fossil fuel options. Some 4% of those surveyed said they would opt for a plug-in hybrid, according to the consumer lobby that represents about 336,000 EV drivers.
“What we see, is that there isn’t a big difference between what drivers have experienced in Norway and what is happening in other countries,” said Petter Haugneland, assistant secretary general of Norway’s EV Association. “People who choose an EV are happy with that choice.”
Lower operating costs topped the list of reasons to select an EV, with environmental arguments related to climate coming in second, according to the survey. Charging infrastructure was the main drawback cited by participants, who were drawn from 18 countries including the USA, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France and India.
As well as cost savings, those new EV owners may have something else to celebrate about this morning, as it’s emerged that electric cars can actually last for much longer than first thought. While many expected the life of an EV battery to be short, and some feared that used models listed for sale could need costly battery replacements, a report from Wired has found that this may not be the case.
While the capacity of a battery does deplete with age, as we’ve all witnessed with our dying smartphone batteries, the rate of degradation with car batteries may be much slower. In fact, over more than 60,000 miles of electric driving you may lose just 10 percent of your range, as Wired explains:
But there is growing indication that EV batteries are much sturdier than those in smartphones. Just for starters, you don’t tend to recharge your EV every day like your handset. It might be as infrequently as once a week or less. Real-world studies show how this affects an electric car’s battery. Consulting firm P3 recently analyzed 7,000 fleet electric vehicles, in partnership with Austrian battery testing specialist Aviloo. Their report showed that, on average, EV batteries have 90 percent capacity after 100,000 kilometers of driving, and at 300,000 kilometers they still have 87 percent of their original kilowatts left.
With bargains to be picked up on the second-hand EV market right now, could this kind of finding be the push many people need to try out electric power for themselves?
2nd Gear: Big Trucks Are Still Deadly At Slow Speeds
Speed limits across the U.S. are in place to try and keep us safe when we’re out on the roads, with caps put on the speeds you can hit on highways, country lanes and in the city. Some of those limits might not be slow enough, though, as even at low speeds the massive trucks and SUVs we all drive now are still pretty deadly for other road users.
The 25 miles per hour limit that’s enforced in some cities and around heavy pedestrian areas isn’t quite as safe as it once was, according to a new report from the Detroit Free Press. While 25 mph might feel slow if you’re inside a car, the speed is still sufficient to seriously injure pedestrians and cyclists if they’re hit by a slab-sided, bluff-grilled pickup, as the site explains:
“A small increase in crash speed can really ramp up the danger to a pedestrian,” [Insurance Institute for Highway Safety] president David Harkey said in a news release. “Our fondness for tall SUVs and pickups in the U.S. has intensified that effect.”
While perhaps not surprising to some, the finding, being released by IIHS on Tuesday, highlights once again the impact that more trucks and SUVs on U.S. roads have had on the number of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in the United States, which a Detroit Free Press/USA TODAY Network investigation spotlighted in 2018. Pedestrian fatalities have increased significantly in recent years, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reporting 7,522 pedestrians killed in 2022.
The IIHS compared pedestrian fatalities between the U.S. and Europe, where high-sided vehicles are less common but the speed limits are similar. Here in America, it found that “pedestrians begin to suffer more serious injuries at lower speeds.”
As such, the organisation is now calling on policymakers to take into account the makeup of American traffic when setting regulations. This could potentially include setting city speed limits close to 15 mph, at which the IIHS said the risk of serious injury for pedestrians is 10 percent or less.
Is lowering speed limits the answer to curbing deaths on America’s roads? Or would it be better to try and cut down the number of massive vehicles out on our highways and clogging up our cities?
3rd Gear: The Electric Postal Truck isn’t Going Anywhere
After it was rumored that incoming president Donald Trump was preparing to cut support for the United States Postal Service’s new electric delivery truck, the head of the USPS has come out in support of the new battery-powered van. U.S. postmaster general Louis DeJoy has defended the truck and said he plans to continue buying more battery-powered trucks for the USPS fleet.
Since entering service earlier this year, the duck-shaped electric postal truck has been winning favor among delivery drivers that operate it. That hasn’t stopped its naysayers arguing that it’s a waste of money, but now the chief of the USPS has thrown his support behind the vehicle, as Reuters reports:
In 2023, Congress gave USPS $3 billion as part of a $430 billion climate bill to buy EVs and charging infrastructure — including $1.2 billion for electric vehicles. It plans to buy some 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028.
DeJoy said at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on Tuesday that the EV purchase plan makes business sense for USPS.
Representative William Timmons, a South Carolina Republican who represents the district that is home to the Oshkosh plant building the EVs, said USPS should revert to its prior plan to buy 90% gas-powered vehicles, but not cancel the contract.
“There’s no reason that we should spend a billion plus more dollars to impose a green new deal mandate on the Post Office,” Timmons said. “I can promise you that Congress is about to fix it. I look forward to working with the incoming Trump administration to right this ship.”
Despite opposition from the likes of Timmons, DeJoy said the USPS will continue with its purchase of electric trucks. So far this year, it bought 28,000 new delivery trucks, of which around 6,000 were battery-powered.
From next year, the postal service has pledged to buy 50-50 electric and gas-powered trucks, which will include the new duck-shaped delivery van as well as off-the-shelf EVs like the battery-powered Ford Transit.
4th Gear: Ferrari Isn’t Scared Of Trump’s Tariffs
As well as cuts to the USPS and its electric fleet, the incoming Trump administration is also hoping to make it harder for overseas automakers to sell their future models here in America. This could include sky-high tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, as well as a clampdown on EV tech being shipped in from overseas.
The threats being tossed around by the president-elect don’t appear to have phased Ferrari, however, and the Italian automaker has reaffirmed its commitment to its home in Maranello, reports Reuters. The supercar maker told a panel that it will always build its cars in Italy, regardless of restrictions in place on imports and exports, as Reuters explains:
“We make cars in Maranello,” [chief executive Benedetto] Vigna said at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, replying to a question if Ferrari would ever consider manufacturing cars in the U.S.
“We will sell cars in U.S., but we will make cars in Maranello.”
Vigna said he did not anticipate any changes in demand as Trump will soon come into office. The president-elect has floated possible tariffs on European made goods.
“Our order book is pretty strong,” Vigna said. “He decides what to do here, we will cope with those new rules… there will be tariffs for us, for everyone. It’s good because when you have the realities changing around you, it’s a way to foster more and more innovation.”
Ferrari has pledged to unveil its first fully electric car towards the end of next year, meaning it will hit the market once Trump has had time to backtrack on all of America’s current green legislation. The loss of a $7,5000 tax cut on EVs might be of little worry to anyone in the market for an electric Ferrari, but tariffs on imports could mean that the base price of Ferrari’s first EV is much higher than the automaker might have initially intended.