Tag Archives: S&P Global Mobility

Tesla Dominates S&P Global Mobility Loyalty Awards: How Come?

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By Gary S. Vasilash

Tesla is a phenomenal company in many respects, not the least of which are captured in the most recent S&P Global Mobility Loyalty Award assessment. The firm has been doing this for 27 years, so it has a good handle on what’s going on.

Based on 11.7-million new vehicle registrations in 2022, the loyalty determination is made on whether a household with a particular make, model or manufacturer in the garage goes out and buys a new vehicle that repeats the same. So a Tesla loyalist might have a Model 3 in the garage and gets (additive or replacement) another Model 3 or a Model Y or S or X.

Of the eight overall categories, Tesla took five:

  • Overall Loyalty to Make
  • Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make
  • Most Improved Make Loyalty
  • Highest Conquest Percentage
  • Alternative Powertrain Loyalty to Make

The other three are:

  • Overall Loyalty to Manufacturer: General Motors
  • Overall Loyalty to Dealer: Subaru
  • Most Improved Alternative Powertrain Loyalty to Make: Mercedes-Benz

As for those three: Tesla couldn’t have won the Manufacturer award because that goes to a firm with multiple brands, and Tesla just has one. It doesn’t have dealers, so that’s out. And the “Most Improved” goes to a brand that has historically had one type of powertrain (e.g., ICE) and is now adding EVs to the mix.

All of which is to say that Tesla is dominant.

On this edition of “Autoline After Hours,” Vince Palomarez, who manages and develops the Loyalty tools at S&P Global Mobility, talks with “Autoline’s” John McElroy, Jeff Gilbert of WWJ-950, and me about Tesla’s performance as well as how other companies did in this latest assessment.

Realize that, for example, GM has taken the Manufacturing award for eight years running and has taken it 19 times out of the possible 27, so it isn’t like it is withering from the Tesla onslaught.

That said, when you think of the OEMs spending literally billions of dollars on advertising (according to Statista, Ford spent $1.98-billion in 2021 on advertising in the U.S. to persuade people to buy its vehicles—those who already own a Ford or Lincoln and those it hoped to conquest) and Tesla spent $0, how it is accomplishing its domination of the Loyalty awards is something that is essential for some to know and just fascinating for the rest of us.

And you can see it here.

What the IRA Means to the Auto Industry

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By Gary S. Vasilash

According to the U.S. Energy Dept., the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is “the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history.”

And in the automotive space, the IRA means a continuation of tax credits for consumers who buy electric vehicles (up to $7,500, though the math gets tricky) and even for OEMs and other companies that get into the business of making batteries.

Blue Oval City, the $5.6-billion, 3,600-acre campus for EV and battery production Ford is building in Stanton, Tennessee. (Image: Ford)

As for that battery money:

It provides tax credits of $35 per kWh for the cells. And if another company organizes those cells into battery modules, it gets $10 per kWh. So if there are two companies involved and they each produce portions for a 100-kWh battery for an EV, then the cell manufacturer would get $3,500 and the module maker $1,000. And if a single company did both, then that’s $4,500.

So if you wonder why vehicle manufacturers are investing billions in battery plants (like Ford’s recent $3.5-billion announcement) perhaps that makes it even more understandable.

Not only do they make money by selling vehicles, but they also make money by producing the batteries that go into those vehicles.

On this edition of “Autoline After Hours” we’re joined by Devin Lindsay, who is responsible for Alternative Propulsion forecasting at S&P Global Mobility, Mark Barrott, principal with Plante Moran’s strategy and automotive practice, and Mike Martinez, who covers Ford for Automotive News.

The topic is the multi-billion dollar effect of the IRA on the automotive industry.

The IRA is essentially industrial policy. The aforementioned tax credits that consumers can receive are only possible if the vehicle in question not only falls below a price cap, but if the vehicle’s manufacturing—including the batteries—has sufficient domestic content. This puts companies that do make electric vehicles but don’t make them in the U.S. (think Audi, for example) at a competitive disadvantage.

While an objective is to make EVs more accessible to more people—right now EVs account for 5.6% of the market—it isn’t entirely clear that the 50% mark that the Biden Administration hopes to achieve by 2030 (and that several OEMs seem to be capacitizing themselves to provide) will happen: Do consumers really want EVs?

These and other questions are explored on the show.

And you can see it here.

Tesla’s Loyalists

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By Gary S. Vasilash

Tom Libby, associate director and loyalty principal, S&P Global Mobility, thinks that what are ordinarily considered “conventional” or “traditional” automakers have a problem. This isn’t a problem that happened yesterday or last week. It is a problem that has been there for a few years now. A problem that execs at those companies talk about a lot and have made efforts—and for a long time these efforts were not much beyond lip-service—to address it. A problem that is now garnering sufficient attention, though results will vary.

The problem is Tesla.

Tesla vis-à-vis owner loyalty.

Libby charts owner loyalty to a brand. With regard to luxury brands including BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus and Tesla, owner loyalty has been declining. Yet Tesla’s decline still puts it in a position that is much higher than the others. People who buy a Tesla often by another Tesla. The same isn’t as much the case with others. Tesla even takes market share from a number of mainstream brands, as well.

The loyalty rate for the Tesla Model 3 this past March was 76.6%, the sort of figure that program managers at other OEMs wish they had.

Libby says, however, that the Porsche Taycan, which has been available on the market for a few years and the Mercedes EQS, a new entrant, are gaining loyalty.

But if you take into account all of the other models being offered by other OEMs—remember: both luxury badges and well as mainstream—then the dominance of Tesla is rather astonishing.

A question that arises is whether, as other OEMs come out with more-compelling EVs (e.g., while the Cadillac LYRIQ has much to be said for it, remember that GM also foisted things like the Spark EV on the market as though it had relevance when things like the Model S and Model X were on offer: not that there was cross-shopping between those two Teslas and the tiny Chevy, but keep in mind that people were aware of what was being put out there by whom, so Tesla gained share of mind) whether Tesla’s loyal following will peel off.

Let’s face it: there is something to be said about gravity.

You can see the conversation with Libby on this edition of “Autoline After Hours” with “Autoline’s” John McElroy, Joe White of Reuters and me here.

Why You May Not Be Getting That New Vehicle Anytime Soon

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“The preliminary assessment from S&P Global Mobility for global auto production and sales levels continues to develop, but the current geopolitical events put pressure on an already delicate auto industry situation. Given additional uncertainty surrounding some important raw materials used in the production of semiconductors out of Ukraine and Russia, an initial assessment results in an assumption that several semiconductor plants will be forced to run intermittently at suboptimal speeds between the third quarter of 2022 and the second quarter of 2023, which in turn results in a further downgrade of global light vehicle production levels.  Lower production levels will create an even more untenable new vehicle inventory situation resulting in a downgrade to US light vehicle sales expectations.  As reflected in the S&P Global Mobility March 2022 forecast release, our initial impact removes approximately 250,000 units from our CY2022 US sales expectation and just over 300,000 units from our CY2023 projection, resulting in expected annual volume totals of 15.2M and 16.6M respectively.”– Chris Hopson, manager, North American light vehicle forecast, S&P Global Mobility

Maybe next year. . .