Good morning! It’s Monday, March 4, 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: The Team That Said Musk Was Paid Too Much Now Wants Paying Too Much
What’s a decent hourly salary do you think? $20 per hour, $50 per hour? What about more than $250,000 per hour? In a bitter twist, that’s reportedly the going rate for the lawyers who argued against Elon Musk’s massive Tesla pay packet last year.
According to a report from Reuters, the lawyers who fought against Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay packet are now arguing that they should be paid $6 billion in Tesla stock for their services. Reuters reports:
The lawyers who voided Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation as excessive on Friday sought a record a $6 billion legal fee, payable in the electric car maker’s stock.
“We recognize that the requested fee is unprecedented in terms of absolute size,” the three law firms said in a filing with the Court of Chancery in Delaware.
The fee works out to an hourly rate of $288,888, they said.
In an attempt to justify the eye-watering payout, the group of lawyers argued that because the electric vehicle maker will save billions after Musk’s own salary was blocked, Tesla won’t actually lose “one cent from the Tesla balance sheet to pay fees.”
Musk, however, doesn’t see it that way and has, predictably, slammed the enormous payout that his company might have coming its way. The Tesla boss took to Twitter X to call the group of lawyers “criminal,” adding in the post “the lawyers who did nothing but damage Tesla want $6 billion.”
The final decision on the payout will be made by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, who has overseen the whole case this far.
2nd Gear: GM Has A Fire Problem At Its EV Plant
After lawmakers in the U.S. warned that firefighters across the country weren’t prepared to deal with a rise in electric vehicle fires, it now turns out that American automaker General Motors may be facing a rise in electric vehicle fires.
Firefighters were called to GM’s electric vehicle plant in Detroit on eight occasions since summer 2023, reports the Detroit Free Press. This has prompted union leaders and firefighters in the area to call for GM to address any issues at Factory Zero. As the Free Press reports:
One of them, as the Detroit Free Press reported on Dec. 19, was a three-alarm fire that warranted an evacuation of the building and a halt to production that day of the GMC Hummer EV pickup and SUV, and Silverado EV work trucks. According to the incident report obtained by the Detroit Free Press through a state Freedom of Information Act request, there were 22 fire trucks and 88 firefighters at the scene, many of whom were exposed to “the tremendous hazards of a toxic environment.”
But even before that fire, the city had been pushing GM to invest in equipment to prevent or contain the fires often sparked by the lithium ion battery cells GM handles at the factory, Hunter said.
Officials the site spoke with said that while GM did have contingency plans in place for when fires break out at the factory, these amount to little more than evacuation plans. In response, the automaker is being encouraged to invest in technology that can contain EV battery fires when they break out, as well as improved monitoring systems.
General Motors argued that not all of the eight call outs were for fires at the site, some were for medical emergencies. The Hummer EV maker also said it is now working with the city to “enhance the company’s safety plan,” reports the Free Press.
3rd Gear: Despite Backlash, California Approves Waymo Expansion
After a self-driving car was set ablaze in San Francisco and locals protested the autonomous taxis by sticking cones to their hoods, lawmakers across California have decided now is the right time to expand Waymo’s self-driving taxi service in the state.
As part of an expansion to Waymo’s services in LA and San Francisco, the self-driving cars are now allowed on highways around both cities, reports the Verge. The move means that autonomous cars will now be able to travel up to 65 mph on local roads and highways in certain areas, the Verge reports:
Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) put the company’s expansion on hold until June “for further staff review,” following protests from several San Francisco city agencies and other groups. Concerns about the safety of driverless robotaxis have grown after several high-profile crashes, such as when a Waymo car crashed into a bicyclist last month and a Cruise vehicle struck and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in October last year.
Now, CPUC has concluded that that Waymo has shown its “attention to continuous evaluation and improvement of its technology, safety practices, and aspects of its operations involving humans … that minimize risk of driverless passenger service operations” in expanded areas. The decision gave Waymo permission to start its expansion immediately.
Despite the expansion of Waymo’s services gaining regulatory approval, it wasn’t a policy that was backed by all. In fact, the Verge reports that the CPUC denied the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s request for evidentiary hearings into Waymo’s impact across the state.
Additionally, the American Council of the Blind called for new safety and accessibility standards to be implemented before Waymo’s expansion was passed. This was refused by the CPUC.
4th Gear: One In Five New Cars Sold Are Electric, Cutting Oil Demand
Despite growth of EV sales slowing in recent months, there’s no denying that they now make up a significant amount of new car sales around the world. In fact, it’s estimated that EVs now account for one in five new cars sold, which is cutting fossil fuel demand around the world.
According to a new report from Elecrek, an annual study of fossil fuel usage and clean energy technology found that EVs account for 20 percent of new cars sold. This rise in EV adoption has helped curtail oil demand, keeping it below pre-pandemic levels. Electrek reports:
The new findings come from the [International Energy Agency] IEA’s annual update on global energy-related CO2 emissions and the just-released inaugural edition of the IEA’s new series, the Clean Energy Market Monitor, which will track clean energy deployment and broadly outline the implications for global energy markets.
“The clean energy transition has undergone a series of stress tests in the last five years – and it has demonstrated its resilience,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “A pandemic, an energy crisis, and geopolitical instability all had the potential to derail efforts to build cleaner and more secure energy systems. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite in many economies.”
Here in the U.S., EV adoption has been rumbling on gradually. Nearly 2 million electric cars were shipped to drivers across America in 2023 and at the start of this year, sales of battery-powered models were up 69 percent compared with the same period last year.