Everything catches up with Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson is losing money sooner than expected, Land Rover takes second place in France, Nissan continues to lose big and more in Tomorrow’s turn for Tuesday, July 28, 2020.

1st gear: Harley hits first quarterly loss in more than One of each

With its retail sales dropping 27 percent last year alone, Harley has been on the wall for Harley to start losing and start losing big soon, as we’ve been reporting for the past few years.

And then COVID-19 occurred and accelerated Harley’s plans, not for recovery, but for loss. Now the new CEO has to make it look like there is hope, through Reuters:

The Milwaukee-based company reported a loss of 60 cents a share for the quarter through June, compared to a profit of $ 1.23 a share a year ago. Analysts, on average, expected earnings to reach 4 cents a share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Motorcycle and related product revenues fell 53% year-over-year to $ 669 million, affected by the temporary suspension of production during the quarter due to blockages to slow the spread of the virus.

The company’s shares were trading down 4.9% to $ 27.85 in hours prior to trading.

This is the first quarterly loss since 2009, as Bloomberg reports.

CEO Jochen Zeitz has a plan to cut the line, cut production, redefine its global markets, not focus on volume but profit, cut up to 700 jobs, and potentially save up to $ 100 million.

Hopefully the country that Harley built can wear a mask long enough to give motorcycles a chance.

2nd gear: JLR gets Ghosn’s successor

Former Renault CEO Thierry Bollore was fired in October, practically only because he was ousted from the successor chosen by the company’s president, Carlos Ghosn, as the company’s CEO, and that did not look good with Ghosn fleeing the authorities. Japanese and hiding in Lebanon.

But while Renault can find a CEO without possible troublesome connections to a Jaguar Land Rover, an internationally wanted criminal businessman, apparently cannot.

Of Automotive News:

Tata Motors, parent of Jaguar Land Rover, named Thierry Bollore as the next CEO of the UK luxury car maker.

Bollore, who was fired from his position as CEO of Renault in October, will replace Ralf Speth as head of JLR starting September 10, the company said in a stock exchange statement. Speth, 64, will retire in September and become JLR’s non-executive vice president.

“It will be a privilege to lead this fantastic company through what remains the most testing time of our generation,” Bollore said at the presentation.

Former Aston Dr. Andy Palmer is there, guys. Don’t want a mid-engine F-Type?

3rd gear: Nissan exceeds expectations with a loss projection of $ 4.5 billion

Speaking of that Renault-Nissan alliance that is still reeling from Carlos Ghosn, Nissan is in bad shape and on track to post its second consecutive massive annual loss, this time far exceeding expectations.

Of Automotive News:

The automaker forecasts an operating loss of 470 billion yen ($ 4.5 billion), which would be the largest, according to Nissan data dating back to 1977, and much larger than a consensus estimate of a loss of 262.8 billion. million yen drawn from 20 analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.

The company forecast revenue would drop between a fifth and 7.8 trillion yen ($ 74.1 billion) and global vehicle sales would drop 16 percent.

Years of aggressive expansion, particularly in emerging markets, have left Japan’s No. 2 automaker with disappointing margins, an aging portfolio and a tainted brand.

If you are an automaker and are somehow losing more money now than in the decade of the oil crisis, you probably should have changed something a long time ago.

4th gear: Elon Musk is a hypocrite

Tesla CEO and prominent billionaire Elon Musk has repeatedly tweeted his disdain for the government tax relief for American citizens facing unemployment and strained finances amid a massive global virus outbreak unprecedented for my life. Meanwhile, his company is taking those same tax documents to keep paying its employees, despite recently posting one of its only quarterly earnings and owning, well, a damn billionaire.

Of Reuters:

Tesla Inc received government payroll-related benefits in the first half of the year to help reduce the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its business, the electric car maker said in a presentation Tuesday.

The company, whose chief executive Elon Musk spoke out against more government aid as Congress debated another round of stimulus, said that, along with cost cuts, the benefits had offset nearly all of its costs due to factory downtime. in the lockouts this year. .

The only Tesla vehicle factory in the US, in California, where most of its cars are currently produced, closed for about six weeks in the second quarter ending in June after an initial clash with local authorities .

The guy who wants to give Africa free internet with money from NASA (a good idea if it doesn’t destroy the night sky and it really works as advertised, and it’s not a super obvious fucking capitalist scheme, although it almost certainly is), no wants to pay taxpayers money back when they lose their jobs because the government did not force people to close their stores for a couple of months.

5th gear: National Grid of the UK plans its anticipated demand for electric vehicles in infrastructure

A new report from National Grid, the UK’s grid operator, suggests that 30 million new electric vehicles will be on the island nation’s roads in the next 20 years, and think will have the electrical network to handle it. Of Bloomberg:

Emissions from the power sector will be negative by 2033, as renewable generation and carbon capture and storage technology effectively sequester more CO2 than plants emit, National Grid said. Natural gas levels burned without emission abatement technology will halve by 2038.

[…]

The utility’s electric vehicle forecast is more than the number forecast by BloombergNEF, whose analysts see 17 million electric vehicles in the UK in 2040. BNEF does not meet the target of phasing out internal combustion engines by 2035 .

By 2050, up to 80% of households with an EV will be smart about charging their car when electricity market prices and energy demand are lower, National Grid said in the report. Approximately 45% of households will be able to offer grid-balancing capacity, creating up to 38 gigawatts of flexible electricity to help manage peaks and valleys of demand.

Before you learn how to charge your electric car, your government will teach you how to intelligently charge it so that it doesn’t drain millions of people of energy because they won’t be riding the bus.

Reverse: topical as always