Tesla’s Chinese Rivals Could Be Looking At A Rough Road Ahead
China’s EV boom is turning into a bust. Sales of “new energy vehicles” have been sliding for the past 10 months. In April, they showed a 43% drop from the same month in 2019.
China’s EV boom is turning into a bust. Sales of “new energy vehicles” have been sliding for the past 10 months. In April, they showed a 43% drop from the same month in 2019.
How has Tesla kept profits flowing in Q1 against odds?
In the first 4 months of 2020, plug-in vehicles accounted for 5.5% of all auto sales in Ireland. The wild world of coronavirus, though, made something special out of April — or perhaps Ireland’s time has simply come. A stunning 18% of auto sales in the month of April were plug-in vehicle sales.
Compared to most states, the large installations of North Carolina’s solar industry have been less influenced by the economic slide from the pandemic. The question is, will those numbers hold over the next few months? The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) recently released state data on solar job losses. Better news than others only slightly abates the concerns, as North Carolina is still showing 19% fewer solar workers than expected in June according to the data.
The Swedish auto market, like other auto markets but not as extreme, saw its numbers crash (again) in April. The overall auto market was down 38% year over year. Also like in other markets, plug-in vehicles did better than the overall market. They actually saw a sales increase in April.
Discussing COVID-19 on the company’s Q1 earnings call, Elon Musk confessed that the economic impact of the pandemic “will cause great harm not just to Tesla, but to many companies. While Tesla will weather the storm, other companies will not.” It turns out, Tesla has a long history of succeeding against the odds, but this time the odds are pretty darn long.
While the overall French market ground to a halt due to the coronavirus lockdown (-89% year over year), plugins were down just 66%, with fully electric vehicles (BEVs) faring slightly better, down only -62%. That allowed BEVs to have 74% of the plugin market last month, slightly better than this year’s average of 73%.
A powerful polar vortex helped eat a hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic.
Oil prices are down but that won’t necessarily give gasmobiles a COVID-19 recovery edge against electric vehicle sales, energy storage, and clean power.
With the US and global economy in free-fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the renewable energy industry is hemorrhaging projects and jobs at a faster rate than the overall economy.