The Erosion of Tesla's EV Market Share Is Happening Now

New [Chevrolet] Bolt registrations rose to 19,947 in the first quarter, compared with 477 last year, Experian data showed. The subcompact hatchback twins are Chevrolet’s only EV models on sale.

The Ford brand was in third place for EV registrations with 13,362, for an 82 percent increase, the quarterly data showed. Its EV share in the first quarter rose to 5.2 percent from 4.6 percent a year earlier.

Mustang Mach-E registrations fell 12 percent to 6,110 in the quarter. Some Mustang Mach-E production was lost because of factory upgrades, Ford said. F-150 Lightning registrations rose to 5,652 from just 53 a year earlier, and e-Transit van registrations rose to 1,600 from 348, Experian data showed.

Volkswagen registrations for its ID4 rose 244 percent to 10,053 for fourth place on the EV brand chart. VW’s market share more than doubled to 3.9 percent from the year-earlier quarter.

“If we align with partners and say this is how we decarbonise the supply chain... we can make an impact... we would like to team up,” Dennis Nobelius said, speaking at the Reuters Automotive Conference in Munich.

Polestar, whose cars are produced by Volvo, lowered its 2023 production guidance last week and said it would cut headcount by 10% amid a challenging environment for the industry.

The car maker and Rivian, a competing EV maker, were backers of a study that said in February that the automotive industry was set to overshoot the 1.5-degree Celsius pathway by at least 75% by 2050, calling for collaboration to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles (EVs).

Car makers, partners and suppliers need to pool efforts on everything from traceability in the supply chain to greening the grid and tracking battery health to create cross-industry standards, Nobelius said on Tuesday.

Being able to shift quickly in line with new technologies was also key to succeeding in the EV market, Nobelius said, taking the example of battery cell technology.

“We need to have the capability to shift cell chemistry every second year based on competition,” he said.

The former CEO has been on trial for fraud since 2020 over his role in the scandal after parent group Volkswagen and Audi admitted in 2015 to having used illegal software to cheat on emissions tests. Stadler had previously rejected the allegations.

Stadler’s defence lawyer Ulrike Thole-Grolle read a statement to the court, saying the defendant did not know that vehicles had been manipulated and buyers had been harmed, but he recognised it was a possibility and accepted that.

“I understand that for my part, there was a need for more care,” said the lawyer on Stadler’s behalf.

Asked by the judge whether the words were his own, Stadler replied: “Yes”.

The statement had been widely expected after the judge said earlier this month that Stadler would face a suspended prison sentence of 1.5-2 years and a fine of 1.1 million euros if he were to confess to a charge of fraud by negligence. The verdict is expected in June.

Russian authorities have approved the sale of Volkswagen’s local assets to Avilon, one of the country’s largest car dealers, in a cut-price deal that underlines the challenges western companies face when trying to exit Russia.

The value of the sale to Avilon, which is the main supplier of cars to the country’s security services, will not exceed €125mn, state news agency Interfax reported on Tuesday.

VW’s fixed assets in Russia, including buildings and equipment, were valued at Rbs111.3bn (€1.5bn) in 2022, according to company disclosures.

Last year, Russia introduced stringent criteria for western companies pulling out of the country following President Vladimir Putin’s decision to wage war on Ukraine. Measures include selling at a discount of at least 50 per cent and making a “voluntary donation” to Russia’s war chest.

Lawyers involved in recent corporate exits say meeting these criteria is necessary but not enough as the state foreign investment commission decides on each deal on a case-by-case basis, occasionally adding extra requirements. But in the west after more than a year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the political pressure on western consumer groups is mounting to stop doing business in or with Russia.

“Sergio was a patriot in the highest sense of the word,” Elkann, 47, said in an interview for the latest edition of the biography of the late Marchionne, who ran the Italian carmaker from 2004 until his death in 2018. As Fiat’s chief executive officer, Marchionne and Elkann saved Fiat from near bankruptcy and combined it with US manufacturer Chrysler, turning two struggling regional players into one of the world’s biggest auto producers.

“Our battles were always for Italy, never battles against Italy,” Elkann said at the Agnelli Foundation headquarters in Turin, which houses the villa of his great-great grandfather Giovanni Agnelli, who founded Fiat with a group of investors in 1899.

Elkann insists that without the current strategy — which dates back to Marchionne and envisages building a global leader strong enough to survive the disruption of electrification — the company’s domestic plants would have been at existential risk.

“Stellantis is the evolution of Sergio’s vision: the need for mergers in the car industry to avoid duplication ­of costly investments required for new technologies,” Elkann said in a late February interview for the book. “Without the creation of Stellantis, all the investments we are making in Italy — from the Mirafiori electric hub to the battery plant in Termoli — would not have been possible.”