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By Joseph White, Global Automotive Correspondent

Greetings from the Motor City!

Beware the Ides of March, eh? Yes, today is that day, and if you are a Tesla shareholder you don’t need a reminder to be anxious.

The downward spiral of what is still the world’s most valuable automaker has erased nearly $250 billion – the value of five Ford Motor Companies – from the collective wealth of Tesla’s owners, including Elon Musk, since the start of the year.

A lot has changed in the World of Cars since the future was all about EVs and Tesla was worth $1 trillion. Yesterday, brokerage Piper Sandler said it was launching coverage of “five cornerstone stocks in the automotive sector.”

Are they EV companies? Autonomous vehicle software builders?

Nope. They are the Motor City Three and two well-established auto suppliers, Borg Warner and Mobileye. Of the MC3, “our favorite is Stellantis,” Piper analyst Alexander Potter wrote in a note. Stellantis – one of the companies along with Toyota that has been the slowest to launch electric vehicles.

Apparently, it is not sunset time for legacy automakers just yet. We’ll find out why – and look at a new deal pointing the way to EV industry consolidation.

Have a great weekend! Here we go –

Today –

• • Wall Street walks out on Tesla

  • Honda and Nissan could share EV technology

  • Ford’s Pro tip: Sell big company software to the little guys

Tesla: Not going to the moon this week. Reuters/Cheney Orr

Tesla hit an ignominious milestone Thursday when its shares replaced Boeing as the worst performing stock on the S&P 500 index.  Worse off than Boeing is not a good place to be these days.

Tesla shares edged up Friday morning. Still, they have shed nearly 35% this year as investors reassessed how rapidly electric vehicles will replace legacy automakers’ combustion models. The consensus: Not as fast or as profitably as Elon Musk and other EV advocates expected.

One catalyst for this week’s selloff was a scorching downgrade by Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan who called Tesla a “growth company with no growth.” Other analysts have drawn similarly bearish conclusions from Tesla’s continued price cutting, the short term disruption to production at the automaker’s Berlin factory, intensifying competition from Chinese rivals and signs that the pace of EV demand growth in the United States and Europe is shifting to a lower gear.

Investors who bet against Tesla by putting money into EV laggards Toyota (up 27% year to date) and Stellantis (up19%) would have done better since Jan. 2.

Tesla got some good news over the past 24 hours. Elon Musk was in Germany on Wednesday to celebrate the re-start of production at the Berlin Gigafactory following a suspected arson attack on its power supply.

India’s government on Friday said it would cut the tax on a limited number of imported EVs for companies that committed to investing $500 million in manufacturing facilities within three years. Tesla has been lobbying for just such a deal – though rivals may try to squeeze through the same opening.

Tesla shares still trade at nearly 38 times earnings – a far richer multiple than GM (5.38) Toyota (10) or Ford (11).

The next check point for investors who believe Tesla’s lofty valuation is justified will come on or about April Fool’s Day, when Tesla should release its first quarter delivery figures.

Nissan’s Leaf gets left behind. REUTERS/ Androniki Christodoulou

Japan’s No. 2 and No. 3 automakers said they have agreed to study how they could consolidate electric vehicle and software development.

The preliminary agreement between Honda and Nissan could fizzle – as partnerships between auto industry rivals often do. Just ask Nissan and Renault.

But even talks between the Japanese rivals are noteworthy, because they underscore the pressure on legacy automakers and struggling EV startups to put aside big-budget efforts to develop unique EV technology, and start standardizing and sharing to match Tesla’s technology and the Chinese EV industry’s superior economies of scale.

A Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid. Reuters/Andrew Kelly 

U.S. sales of gas-electric hybrid vehicles have accelerated this year, and automakers and suppliers are doubling down on investments that count on demand for hybrids to keep growing for years to come – notwithstanding California’s call to phase out all combustion vehicles by 2035.

U.S. sales of hybrids – including those that plug in to the grid to enable 20, 30 or 40 miles of petroleum free driving – rose by 49% in 2023 from 2022, and are up 177% since 2020, according to S&P Global Mobility. Fully electric vehicle sales are up 320% since 2020, but they rose by 49.6% year over year in 2023 – impressive, but slower than the change from 2020 to 2021.

Hybrids outsold EVs in the U.S. market overall in 2023, S&P data show. Certain hybrid models – Ford’s Maverick and F-150 hybrids, the Honda CRV, the Toyota Sienna and RAV 4, Jeep’s plug-in Wrangler 4xe – are among the industry’s fastest-selling models.

Ford is adding production for the Maverick and F-150 hybrid at the same time it throttles back on building electric F-150 Lightning trucks.

The hybrid bump comes as the Biden Administration next week is expected to back away from earlier proposals that effectively mandated that electric vehicles account for 67% of new cars and light trucks sold in 2032.  

Chinese automaker Chery is talking to the Italian government about building a vehicle assembly plant that would compete with Stellantis’ Fiat operations, Reuters colleagues Giulio Piovaccari and Giuseppe Fonte reported.

Surprised, given the geopolitical tensions between Europe and China? Don’t be. Rome wants to boost Italy’s national auto production to 1.3 million vehicles annually – translated, jobs. Chery needs a production base inside the European Union as a hedge against steeper tariffs.

Other Chinese automakers are looking to build factories outside their home market as politicians in Europe and the United States reach for bricks and trowels to build higher walls against imported Chinese cars.

Chinese industry executives – and the Beijing government – are accelerating down the road that Japanese automakers traveled in the 1980s and South Korea’s Hyundai followed a decade later. Now tens of thousands of jobs in the United States, the UK and Europe depend on factories owned by, or supplying, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and other Asian automakers.

As in Italy, the promise of manufacturing jobs and investment could once again outweigh concerns about giving emerging global players a foothold to compete with domestic champions.

Volkswagen has four teams working to develop a more affordable ID.1 EV that can compete with Chinese EV champion BYD’s ultra-cheap models.

VW executives outlined plans to for 11 new EVs for the Volkswagen brand over the next three years, including an ID.2 that could sell for about 25,000 euros starting in 2026.

Low-cost EV projects are the new black in the auto business. Ford has a “skunk works” project to develop a low-cost EV that can compete with models BYD is already selling.

Automakers have made big plans for mining profits from ”software defined vehicles” and software services piggybacking on vehicle data connections.

Consultancy AlixPartners cautioned this week that 86% of industry executives it surveyed for its most recent “Disruption Index” say they are getting a return on investment of just 10% or less.

Ford Pro, the commercial vehicle unit of the Dearborn, Mich. automaker, appears to be doing better with a strategy of bundling work-oriented software and telematics with pickup trucks and Transit vans it sells to small and medium-sized businesses.

Ford CEO Jim Farley has signaled to investors that Ford Pro could generate 20% of its pre-tax profits from telematics and software services within two years. That calculates to more than $1.8 billion annually, assuming Ford Pro’s EBIT doesn’t tank from the levels projected for 2024.

The digital services Ford Pro sells are not video games or other buzzy stuff. They are focused on tasks such as anticipating maintenance to keep trucks rolling, monitoring the behavior of commercial drivers and tracking the health of batteries in electric vans.

Ford Pro must deliver on its profit promises to keep Wall Street happy. But it has already received validation from rivals. Stellantis and GM have both restructured their commercial fleet businesses to go after Ford Pro. Stellantis called its new commercial unit Stellantis Pro One.

If you are annoyed by food prices rising 3.8% from a year ago, consider the inflation in auto insurance rates. They are soaring – now up 20.6% during the past year, the U.S. Labor Department reported this week. Motor vehicle insurance is public enemy No. 1 in Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell’s fight to whip inflation now.

Insurers have blamed large losses from storms and other catastrophes for rising policy costs. In the automotive space, insurers cite higher repair costs.

But Allstate last month reported higher profits thanks to higher premiums. Big auto insurer Progressive said its fourth quarter profits jumped 42%.

The insurance industry’s windfalls do not mean that car repairs are cheap. The government’s auto repair cost index is up 36% from February 2019 – just prior to the pandemic lockdowns.

Repair costs are rising along with sales of electric vehicles, which cost an average of $1,322 more to repair in the United States than a combustion vehicle, according to a study by Mitchell, which gathers and analyzes collision claims data.

Japan’s big employers, including Toyota, have agreed with unions to pay the biggest wage increases since 2013.

Japan Inc’s willingness to pay has to do with efforts to spur a weak economy. Japan’s central bank wants a higher rate of inflation – the opposite of U.S. policy. But the echoes of the record wage increases won by the United Auto Workers last fall are hard to ignore.

UAW President Shawn Fain credits the “UAW Bump” for wage increases at non-union automakers in the United States, including Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

Waymo and Zoox, rival robo-taxi operators, are expanding operations. Waymo, controlled by Google parent Alphabet, is offering driverless rides in Los Angeles, and Zoox, owned by Amazon, is expanding its driverless ride service area in Las Vegas and boosting driving speeds. Waymo and Zoox are moving ahead while rival Cruise, the robo-taxi unit of General Motors, is still off the road, restructuring after a serious accident in San Francisco.

NIO and CATL are teaming up to develop longer-lasting EV batteries.

Lithium Americas received a preliminary commitment for a $2.26 billion U.S.government loan to develop a lithium mining and processing operation at Thacker Pass in Nevada. The DOE loan plus an investment by General Motors should provide Lithium Americas with the capital it needs to launch the project.

The DOE loan commitment comes as sagging lithium prices are hammering miners. Global lithium prices are down more than 80% in past 12 months

Struggling EV startup Fisker is preparing for possible bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Fisker said in a statement reported by Electrek that it “often works with outside advisors” but did not comment on the report that it has hired advisors for a potential bankruptcy. The company said it is focused on raising additional capital and engaging in a partnership with a large automaker. The company is in talks with Nissan about securing an investment in return for sharing its design for an electric truck.

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