Ford and General Motors Report a Sales Surge, Especially for E.V.s
The two big automakers said 2024 sales were up by 4 percent thanks to big increases in the final quarter.
Automakers closed 2024 with strong sales in the United States in the final three months of the year, helped by a surge in demand for electric models.
The gains were led by General Motors, which [said on Friday that its fourth-quarter sales rose 21 percent] from a year earlier, to more than 755,000 cars and light trucks. Its electric-vehicle sales in the quarter more than doubled, to nearly 44,000, making G.M. the second-largest E.V. seller after Tesla.
[Ford Motor sold more than 530,000 vehicles] in the quarter, a gain of nearly 9 percent. Ford’s E.V. sales climbed 16 percent, to more than 30,000 vehicles.
Honda Motor reported a gain of 9 percent in the fourth quarter, while Hyundai and Nissan each said their sales climbed 10 percent.
On the other hand, they are
making gains in the same market that Tesla is losing share in. On the other hand, if Tesla sold it cars at the same negative margins that the GM and Ford do, they probably would have run everybody out of business.
Their sales are to the dealers where inventory is piling up.
They have to pay large interest on accumulated debt and also pay Tesla for carbon credits.
Absolutely agree. However, the reason the board is obsessed with Tesla/Musk is due to years of posts from Musk/Tesla enthusiasts promoting Tesla/Musk and making wildly improbable claims about future success.
For example, Musk’s claim that Tesla would be making 20 million cars annually by 2030, which I believe he made way back in 2020, and we’ve been talking about it since then. Proponents argued that this was likely because Telsa would have iPhone-like adoption and Tesla’s technology was no far ahead no other manufacturer would be able to catch up. Tesla is a tech company, not a car company, after all.
It was pointed out gently that this would mean Tesla would become larger than Volkswagen and Toyota combined, and would require roughly an additional 20 factories, and the car market, which is mature, isn’t like the iPhone market, which was brand new.
These arguments (and many others) were roundly poo-poo’ed by the pro-Musk/Tesla crowd (in excruciating detail, I might add) and…turns out the criticisms were valid!
And you can kind of go on down the list. It was argued that Musk required a salary orders of magnitude greater than any other CEO because he couldn’t remain focused working for a mere couple billion. Turns out, now he’s living at Mar a Lago, so all that money didn’t help him remain focused on Tesla anyway.
That’s clearly not true. GM hasn’t released full year results yet, but as of Q3 GM was on course to make record profits this year.
Edit to add: The above comment is kind of what I’m talking about. There is an implicit assumption among many Musk/Tesla proponents that the legacy automakers are so far behind Tesla they will never catch up.
For example, in this thread it was suggested that GM is not profitable and it makes a trivial number of EVs. The assumptions are not supported by facts. This year GM has been very profitable and delivered 114,000 EVs. That’s not nearly as many as Tesla, but it is still a lot of EVs no matter how you slice it.
Sure he did, and CEOs are always right. I remember Gerry Levin saying AOL & Time Warner would going to be a colossus, Eddie Lampert telling me that Sears & K-Mart together would be great, Bill Gates predicting that Spam would be gone within two years, and Ken Olsen laughing that there was no reason to have a computer in the home.
Lots of those kinds of predictions around. They’re funny to look at now, Steve Ballmer: “There is no chance the iPhone will get any market share. None.” Elon Musk: “There will be humans on Mars by 2024.” Elon Musk: “We will have trips around the Moon by 2018.” Elon Musk: “There will be close to zero new cases of Covid by April” (said in February, 2020). Elon Musk: “We will have coast to coast self driving by 2018.” Elon Musk: “The Model S will have a 600 mile range by 2016, 2017 at the latest.”
GM was a client of mine back in 1963. My job was to install their IBM 1401 in their Caracas assembly plant. Doing that job you got to know the company quite well. Two years later, when I left IBM, I was told that GM was looking for a data processing manager. Reluctantly I went to the job interview. Those were early computer days and management had not yet learned the ins and out of running a data center (back then it was Big Iron plus some peripherals). One mayor problem was that they didn’t realize/understand the staffing requirements. During the interview I asked what my levels of authority and responsibility would be. The reply I got was that long term drones working at GM didn’t ask such impertinent questions and much less job applicants. That was the end of the interview.
GM did make a lovely 1964 Corvette Stingray. At my last post at IBM I met John Marchilla. He was from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and when he was ready to go back home he asked for my help selling his black Corvette. I asked how much he wanted, Just $5,000, the price of a new one back home. Since I had no idea of the car’s market value I went shopping. A similar used model was selling at Bs. 60,000. Next I went to another used car dealer and he offered me Bs. 20,000. At $5,000 it was a bargain so I wrote out a check for Bs.22,500. I had to sell it when my new consulting business was about to go bankrupt, but that is another story for another day.
The Captain
Alfonso de Albuquerque
(1453–1515), Portuguese colonial statesman. He conquered Goa (1510) and made it the capital of the Portuguese empire in the east.
Just after the high I sold covered calls at ridiculously high premiums.15 days later I bought them back at 10% of the price. You got to love a short squeeeze followed by window dressing by former deniers.
