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Podcast

How Trump Could Dent EVs in America

Rob talks Ford and GM with BloombergNEF’s Corey Cantor. Plus, Rob and Jesse dig into the Trump transition.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s been a news-filled few weeks — so it’s time for a roundup. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk about what Trump’s cabinet selections might mean for his climate policy and whether permitting reform could still happen. Then Rob chats with Corey Cantor, senior EV analyst at BloombergNEF, about promising Q3 sales for U.S. automakers, General Motors’ turnaround, and how much the Trump administration might dent America’s EV uptake.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.

Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:

Robinson Meyer: How are you thinking about Ford and GM right now? Because they have basically totally reversed their position since the first time we started talking.

Corey Cantor: I hope I’m not too corny today, but I was thinking Missy Elliott — another New Jerseyan — “flip it and reverse it,” in terms of how people feel about Ford and GM. I think GM’s approach … don’t forget this is their second platform at the rodeo here, meaning GM had the Bolt and the Chevy Volt before it, and a good amount of experience with EVs. And really, what they were trying to do with Ultium was to build a battery and EV platform that could work with a variety of different vehicles.

And so the struggle, as we’ve outlined before, and many publications have outlined was they just couldn’t get the battery production working. They had issues with automation. They had issues with ensuring that they were setting up the necessary suppliers. And I’d say, about maybe nine months ago or so, a favorite EV journalist of mine, John Voelcker wrote in, I believe, InsideEVs, around this idea that GM had finally cracked Ultium and were finally kind of … He had got the head of Ultium at the time on record saying that they had resolved a lot of the issues, and really, you’ve seen it in the sales volume, as well as the fact that EVs like the Cadillac Lyric continue to sell pretty consistently.

Then GM ran into a software issue with the Blazer, and fixed that software issue, and that had slowed things down. And then since, really, June of this year has been off to the races. And so we’ll see how the fourth quarter goes, right? I think you don’t want to get too high on any kind of automaker, but GM is clearly in a better spot because they’re approaching making a profit on each of the EVs sold.

Now, I’ll caveat that with, we don’t know if the EV tax credit itself, you know, at the federal level, plays a role in the fact that they’ll be gross margin profitable, but that is a pretty big turning point. Because at that point, you’re no longer losing money on those EVs, and so you are kind of geared to go more high-volume. Where if you look at Ford, Ford has been losing thousands of dollars on every electric vehicle, really had not been building a platform for the current sales of the Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning, hoping to kind of just price them where they’d be losing little enough on each that they can make their bridge to that next platform.

And then earlier this fall, Ford basically announced pushing back those EV models to 2027, along with the new platform. So Ford kind of runs into the issue that we discussed on the previous conversation with Tesla, in that they’re going to have only really two EVs in the U.S. market for the next couple of years. So GM will have the Bolt back next year and some other Cadillacs. There’s a lot of exciting things on the way for GM.

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …

Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.

As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.

Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

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