BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | 24 JULY 2023 | VIEW ONLINE ➡️

Automotive Ventures is very excited to participate in BusRight's $7M Series A financing round! This new capital will enable them to continue empowering our nation’s unsung heroes — School Bus Transportation Directors, Routers, Dispatchers, & Drivers. These folks are the backbone of our K12 system and economy more broadly, and BusRight is honored to help them safely transport the 26M students who rely on a school bus to access their education every day. (Link)

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes a clause that automatically qualifies EV battery materials recycled in the U.S. as American-made for subsidies, regardless of their origin. That is important because it qualifies automakers using U.S.-recycled battery materials for EV production incentives. (Link)After struggling to find enough batteries and other parts for the past couple of years, automakers are finally beginning to churn out large numbers of electric cars and trucks. And inventories of unsold vehicles are starting to pile up. (💲Link)Automakers traditionally have built enough profits into their wholesale costs to fund incentives if a vehicle's sales performance declines. But when there's no wholesale margin to begin with because battery mineral prices are rapidly rising with increased EV production, any room to turn to discounts disappears when the metal stops moving. That leaves dealers sitting on inventory waiting for a buyer, and weighing whether to sell the EV at a loss to get it off the floorplan expense. (💲Link)Is it a coincidence that Ford slashes prices by $10k on their F-150 Lightning the same week that the first Tesla Cybertruck rolled off the production line? (💲Link)Nissan is the latest automaker to adopt the Tesla NACS charging standard, following similar decisions by Ford, GM, Mercedes, Volvo, Rivian and Polestar. (💲Link)Several car companies say their electric vehicles will be built with the Tesla charging standard starting in 2025. It begs the question: Why wouldn't a non-Tesla EV shopper delay their purchase until then? Buying a non-Tesla EV now means finding charging stations will get more difficult in a few years. (Link)Tesla Superchargers do not accept payment at the stations themselves, so it seems as if we’re trending back toward the unavoidable situation of needing multiple apps on your phone in order to charge your car. (Link)As batteries are a dominant and expensive element of EVs, insurance premiums could rise if they cannot be repaired after accidents – further inflating the cost of owning an EV. BEV claims are already about 25.5% more expensive than their (internal combustion engine) equivalents and are taking about 14% longer to repair. (Link)Hydrogen has been caught in a chicken-and-egg conundrum where investments in vehicles only made sense if there was refueling infrastructure, and vice versa. A virtuous cycle might finally be underway in heavy trucks. (💲Link)Battery-powered trucks face hurdles that electric cars don’t. Among them: They can cost more than three times as much as a similar diesel model. (💲Link)During Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla was in talks with a major OEM to license its "Full-Self Driving" (FSD) software and hardware out to them. (Link)Tesla announced that drivers with home solar and a Powerwall charger now have an in-app option to exclusively charge up their vehicles via excess solar energy. (Link)Tesla plans to begin selling electricity to homes in the UK. Tesla Electric may help customers who own Tesla Powerwall batteries, solar panels or EVs to store electricity when it is cheap and sell electricity back to the grid when market prices are higher. (Link)China's "carrot-and-stick" approach to cultivating EVs: Tactics used for years to evolve into the biggest EV market on Earth. EV penetration in China is expected to reach 90% by 2030. (💲Link)Great analysis on the current state of the automaker/UAW negotiations, courtesy of Cliff Banks at The Banks Report. (Link)If you're building a pitch deck for your company, check out Deck Doctors. (Link)Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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🤝 Automotive Ventures is excited to partner with the Dealer Trade Network to help facilitate dealer-to-dealer new vehicle trades. DTN matches selling and buying dealers, coordinates payment between dealerships, executes all delivery details, and manages the damage claims process if anything should happen. (Link)

🗞️ This week's Future of Automotive segment on CBT News: If you want a screaming deal on an EV, just wait another 6 months or so. (Link)👥 Automotive Ventures portfolio company WarrCloud is hiring a number of positions. (Link)🐇 Automotive Ventures portfolio company HopDrive has just launched in two new markets: Detroit and Tampa. (Link)

🌟 Biped is a smart harness, worn on shoulders, that uses self-driving technology from Honda Research Institute to help avoid obstacles with short sound feedback, and get GPS instructions. (Link)

🌟 Skucaster works to address the fragility of the supply chain by focusing on AI-powered Inventory Forecasting. (Link)

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