Tesla Rocked In China As BYD Strikes Back With A Big Month

Sales reports are just starting to trickle in and it looks like Tesla got the lumber in China, with a big drop in sales year-over-year. Is that just because the market is sliding and people aren’t buying electric cars there? Nope, Tesla’s main rival BYD had another big month.

Over here in the land of the Whopper and home of the KFC Double Down, early reports seem to indicate that the CDK Global ransomware attack did, in fact, impact the market.  That’s not great, especially if potential litigants can prove that CDK Global was negligent in some way in preventing the attack.

Also dragging down the market are interest rates, which aren’t likely to change until at least September. And finally, did Danica Patrick really lose her gig at Sky Sports F1 for talking about lizard people? It’s unclear.

Get ready for a weird The Morning Dump.

Tesla Down 24.2%, BYD Up 21% In China In June

China is likely to remain the biggest EV market in the world for some time, so the ability to sell cars there is key to Tesla’s hopes of remaining the planet’s largest electric carmaker.

For those keeping score at home, Tesla was the biggest automaker almost immediately upon the introduction of the Tesla Model S and maintained that lead on a quarterly basis until Q4 of last year when Chinese automaker BYD managed to briefly outsell Elon Musk’s company.

Both BYD and Tesla had a rough first quarter, with Tesla retaking the lead thanks to a mix of incentives and aggressive action. And now? Tesla’s Q2 was bad, with sales down 24.2% compared to last year according to China’s automotive industry association. BYD, on the other hand, saw a 21% increase in EV sales (BYD also sells a ton of PHEVs and other vehicles, but we’re going to focus on EVs today).

But even with BYD likely beating Tesla in China in June, Reuters estimates that Tesla managed to stay ahead of BYD globally by about 12,000 vehicles for the quarter. Given that BYD is going up and Tesla is going down, it’s possible we see this flip and maybe even see BYD topple Tesla for the full year.

Of course, both of them have new competition as Nio, Xiaomi, and Zeekr all start to muscle in on their market share.

Hyundai CEO Alludes To CDK Global Crisis As Reason For Sales Slowness

Hyundai sales were climbing this year as both its EVs and its exciting new vehicles like the Santa Fe hitting the market. That all stopped last month, with Hyundai reporting a 2.5% drop in sales. What happened?

Here’s Hyundai Motor America CEO Randy Parker:

“Once again in the face of yet another industry crisis the Hyundai dealers showed their resiliency by closing Q2 with a 2.2% increase in total sales, resulting in a 1.2% increase for the first half of the year,” said Randy Parker, CEO, Hyundai Motor America. “Hyundai’s strong performance this quarter was driven by demand for IONIQ 5 along with Tucson and Santa Fe HEVs. Our focus remains on delivering a robust product mix and growing market share.”

He is, of course, talking about the CDK Global ransomware attack. Kia sales were also down, although I didn’t see any assigning of blame. It’ll be fun to watch what various automakers say about this since I don’t think there are any major players who weren’t impacted.

Interest Rates Are Stretching Consumers

It doesn’t matter as much how cheap cars get if interest rates remain stubbornly high as most people, myself included, finance at least part of their car purchase.

According to Edmunds, the average new vehicle APR in the second quarter of 2024 hit 7.3%, which is up from 7.1% in Q1. Loan terms are also getting longer, reaching an average of 69 months in Q2. Combine that with lower down payments ($6,579) and you’ve got a recipe for consumers paying a lot of money for a long time.

High interest rates continued to be a heavy drag on new-vehicle sales growth in the second quarter,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ head of insights. “In theory, improved inventory and growing incentives should paint a more consumer-friendly picture of the market, but the reality is most Americans can’t buy their cars with cash, and increased borrowing costs continue to be a major roadblock when buying a new vehicle.”

The two things that seem to be keeping inflation high are housing and car insurance, which is a double whammy if you’re buying a new car and paying more for the car and more for car insurance. Hopefully, good news on the inflation front will convince the Fed to tweak rates a bit to bring down borrowing costs for average people.

No, Danica Patrick Isn’t Officially Fired For Talking About Lizard People

I don’t know former race car driver Danica Patrick and have no real beef with her, but a few people noticed her absolutely insane podcast. From what I’ve watched, it seems Patrick is one of those celebrity interviewers determined to prove Socrates wrong.

I’m all for questioning things and, specifically, questioning conventional wisdom. It’s important to have mavericks and iconoclasts to bring us fresh thought. On the other hand, giving voice to nonsense like ‘higher vibrations are forcing our reptilian celebrity overlords like Justin Bieber back to the source‘ is maybe not super helpful.

On the other other hand, maybe Danica is just asking the tough questions! Maybe Adele is a reptile person, which would explain why she has so many bars.

In addition to talking about lizards and the dangers of 5G, Danica also has a side hustle on NBC Sports as an IndyCar analyst and on Sky’s F1 broadcast. IndyCar is leaving NBC Sports soon so I don’t see that changing and, frankly, a place that could stand Paul Tracy for more than five minutes probably is a fine place for Patrick. F1 might be a little different, and there’s a rumor going around that says she got sacked over her weird podcast:

DANICA PATRICK GOT FIRED FROM SKY SPORTS LFG

— sabrina ‎ (@leclercworldz) July 2, 2024

This is all over F1 Twitter and people are gloating, though, if you spend more than five minutes on F1 Twitter you might start hoping that the reptilians are real and they will soon take us, and Elon Musk, to join the Galactic Federation just to end this current reality.

I’ve been poking around and, while it’s possible this rumor is true, it’s just a rumor. There’s no confirmation I’ve seen from anyone and Patrick herself mentioned on Instagram that she’s going to do more races for the broadcaster.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Yesterday’s post about ‘Baby Driver’ got me in a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion mood, so here’s the band doing ‘2 Kindsa Love’ live. Also, this allows me to tell the story about how I went to see them at Pitchfork Music Festival and some asshole kid walked by me and loudly murmured “Jon Spencer Blues Explosion? More like… Jon Spencer Shitty Nostalgia Experience.” It was such a good burn I had to laugh.

The Big Question

Can BYD topple Tesla in EV sales in 2024?