Today’s focus will mostly be about EV’s and Insurance. If you’ve been following the mass media news about auto and light duty truck sales you’ve been hearing about the slowdown in EV sales. And yes, some of the auto manufacturers have moderated their production of them and their outlook. What is happening is that the PACE of growth of EVs has slowed down. But sales growth IS happening. Volume and market share are both growing. Just simply not at their former pace. Essentially, the market is taking a slight breather. That said, I am fully convinced that the pace of growth will dramatically increase again soon as a number of developments come to fruition.
For a variety of reasons as some of the articles will portray, prices are coming down and will continue to fall.
Combine that with new technology that will allow make vehicles and batteries weigh and cost less, charge faster and provide greater range. In addition, there will be more and more opportunities for charging as the charging network continues to get built out and in addition to that, Tesla is now making their charging network available to all vehicles.
Given all this, more and more manufacturers are committing billions of dollars to R&D and to building out their entire fleet of vehicles as EV’s. Let’s take a look at some recent articles.
From Automotive News
https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/teslas-new-supercharger-access-could-improve-ev-adoption
Tesla Opens Superchargers to Rivals, Marking a Milestone for EV Adoption
March 23, 2024
The opening of the Tesla network about doubles the number of fast chargers available to the public.
As Tesla grants Supercharger access to more automakers in the coming weeks, EV adoption should improve across the country as driving range and charging concerns ease, analysts say. The opening of the Tesla network about doubles the number of fast chargers available to the general public.
“It basically takes the worry about charging out of the buying decision,” said Loren McDonald, CEO of consulting firm EVAdoption. Tesla dominates the EV segment, in part, because Superchargers nearly eliminate those consumer concerns, he said.
FLIPPING THE SWITCH
In March 2023, Ford Motor Co. was the 1st to reach a deal with Tesla, which agreed to open the bulk of its Supercharger network to the Detroit automaker. Similar agreements for other automakers followed. Tesla has not announced an official timeline, but automakers have given tentative dates for when they’ll be granted access based on their agreements.
Now, the charger availability opens up a world of new makes and models to potential EV buyers not interested in a Tesla.
From Automotive News
How Nissan Plans to Get its Fight Back with Advanced Next-Gen EVs
March 28, 2024
The Japanese carmaker says its new strategy will slash production costs and development times
“The price of EVs is falling much faster than we anticipated, maybe two years ahead of what we imagined,” Uchida said.
Battery breakthroughs will be a key determinant of Nissan’s EV momentum. New battery technology in the works includes a next-generation nickel-cobalt-manganese lithium ion battery, a lithium iron phosphate battery and a solid-state battery.
The nickel-cobalt-manganese lithium ion battery will provide a 50 percent reduction in quick-charging time and a 50 percent improvement in energy density over the battery used in the Ariya.
The iron phosphate batteries, which typically cost less than their nickel-cobalt-manganese counterparts, will register a 30 percent cost reduction compared with the standard lithium ion battery in the Sakura.
Staying on my insurance industry theme, here’s more headlines emphasizing how climate change is continuing, and actually accelerating, the cost and availability of insurance that is eventually going to impact everyone.
From E&E News
Insurance Prices Skyrocket in Disaster-Prone States
04/02/2024
The cost of homeowners coverage has soared by double digits because of climate change, inflation and higher reinsurance prices, according to a new report
The cost of insuring a home in the U.S. has surged nearly 20 percent since 2021 as insurers raise prices to hedge against mounting climate risk and other economic factors, new data shows.
It could get worse. Homeowners across the country are expected to on average see a 6 percent spike in insurance rates in 2024, with the most disaster-prone states poised for double-digit increases. Property insurance in Louisiana, for instance, could soar by 23 percent.
Analysts with Insurify, an insurance cost comparison website, projected that annual costs could rise to $2,522 on average in 2024, up from $1,984 in 2021.
Those increases could have major implications for millions of homeowners who rely on insurance to keep their mortgages and protect themselves from financial disaster.
“It’s possible that the highest-risk areas will become uninsurable,”
From E&E News
State Farm to Drop Thousands of Calif. Policies Despite Pending Reforms
03/22/2024
The insurer said it would decline to renew 30,000 homeowner and 42,000 commercial apartment policies.
State Farm’s further retreat is just the latest in a series of decisions by insurers to pull back from California and leave hundreds of thousands of residents with no option but to go to the dangerously bloated insurer of last resort.
And let me end once again with some hopeful news.
From the Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon State University Scientists Discover Metal Capable of Removing Carbon Dioxide From Air
MARCH 19, 2024
A metal found in the Earth’s crust could be used to attract and remove climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Oregon State University scientists studying ways to filter greenhouse gases from the air recently discovered that when molecules of the metal vanadium are bound with oxygen molecules as peroxide, they can pull carbon dioxide from the air. The carbon molecules can be siphoned off using a small amount of energy that’s then funneled into other uses, like making limestone for buildings or enhancing the atmospheric carbon in greenhouses, accelerating plant growth.
The process could help improve nascent technologies in capturing carbon dioxide from the air to slow the impacts of global climate change. The discovery was published in the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in December.
