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Luxury electric vehicle manufacturers are eroding Tesla’s advantage

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Luxury electric vehicle manufacturers are eroding Tesla's advantage

Electric-vehicle sales seem to be traveling in two directions at once.

On the one hand, that EV sales are rising and that it seems like everyone and their brother is purchasing one, yet these claims are swiftly succeeded by alarming news reports that show the complete opposite.

For example, Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ), a major player in the car rental industry, recently announced that it intended to sell off about one-third of its global fleet of electric cars due to declining resale values and rising repair expenses.

According to the business, it will reinvest the earnings from the sale of about 20,000 EVs this year to purchase conventional gas-powered vehicles.

According to a new study by S&P Global Mobility, households with automobiles that run on internal combustion engines are more likely to switch to hybrid or plug-in hybrid vehicles than entirely electric ones.

Consequently, a number of automakers have shelved or canceled plans to increase the number of electric vehicles, and former President Donald Trump has attacked EVs, saying they’re “too expensive” and “don’t go far enough,” according to CNN.

EVs are a rapidly expanding auto market

However, according to Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book, last year’s fastest-growing car-sales category was electric vehicles, which accounted for 7.6% of the U.S. vehicle market in 2023 (up from 5.9% in 2022).

With sales that were 52% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2022, EV sales set records for volume and market share.

From October until the end of December 2023, 317,168 EVs were purchased by Americans, accounting for 8.1% of total new automobile sales.

According to Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of Industry Insights at Cox Automotive, “there is a strong momentum for more when it comes to EVs – more new product, more incentives, more inventory, more leasing, and more infrastructure – and that momentum is not going away.”

According to Streaty, it appears increasingly likely that internal combustion engine and electric vehicle (EV) transactions will be priced equally in the upcoming years.

She stated that purchasers, who currently consider EV pricing to be unaffordable, will benefit from this. She stated that “our team forecasts that EV share of the total U.S. market will reach 10% in 2024.”

However, the average cost of a new EV last month was estimated by Kelley Blue Book to be $50,789, indicating that EVs are still pricey.

Changes in tax incentives will benefit and hurt consumers in the next year. Dealers will be able to apply tax credits at the moment of sale, but fewer vehicles now qualify.

Additionally, Kelley Blue Book stated that the slowdown is real even though records were established.

According to Kelley Blue Book, “the EV market in the U.S. is still growing, but not as fast.”

That might be a challenge for Tesla, particularly in the fiercely competitive luxury market.

Cox: The EV ‘Year of More’ is 2024

With 55% of the electric cars that Americans bought last year coming from the Elon Musk-led company, Tesla (TSLA) continued to lead the EV industry.

“Tesla remains the undisputed champion of EV sales in the U.S.,” Kelley Blue Book said.

Although the sales numbers were lower than 65% in 2022, Kelley Blue pointed out that Tesla was able to hold onto its top spot in 2023 because to an intensive price-cutting drive.

The Model X full-size SUV saw a nearly 12% decline in sales, the Model Y midsize SUV saw a roughly 57% increase in sales, and the Model S luxury sedan saw a nearly 50% decline in sales.

Last year, the Model Y overtook the Toyota (TM) Corolla to become the best-selling car globally, making history as the first electric car to hold the top place.

“One of the most popular electric cars on the road thanks to excellent electric range, loads of in-car tech, and swift acceleration, especially in the Performance trim,” is how the auto review company Edmunds describes the Model Y.

Tesla surpassed BMW (BMWYY) by more than 156,000 registrations to become the best-selling luxury brand in the United States in 2022, according to Automotive News.

But in 2023, BMW and other German automakers performed well, reducing Tesla’s lead. Sales of BMW nearly tripled (up 191.3%) for the year and more than doubled (up 102% ) for the fourth quarter. 2023 saw sales of the BMW i4 and iX increase by 205% and 135%, respectively, year over year.

Mercedes-Benz MBGYY sales increased 90.4% in the fourth quarter and 225.7% in the entire year. With the EQS leading the way, it sold over 40,000 units of its EQ series models.

EVs made up 12.5% of all new BMW sales in the previous year. Additionally, Mercedes-Benz and Audi saw growth in their electric vehicle sales in 2023, making up 11.4% and 11% of all brand sales, respectively.

To put things in perspective, sales of Tesla’s high-end Model S and Model X fell by 50% and 12%, respectively, in 2023.

“The Cox Automotive Economic and Industry Insights team is calling 2024 ‘the Year of More’ when it comes to EVs,” the firm said. “More new product, more incentives, more inventory, more leasing, more infrastructure – all the more will combine to push EV sales higher in the year ahead.”

This could indicate that this year’s tendencies in the luxury car market hold true.

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Apple’s own 5G modem-equipped iPhone SE 4 is “confirmed” to launch in March

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Tom O’Malley, an analyst at Barclays, recently visited Asia with his colleagues to speak with suppliers and makers of electronics. The analysts said they had “confirmed” that a fourth-generation iPhone SE with an Apple-designed 5G modem is scheduled to launch near the end of the first quarter next year in a research note they released this week that outlines the main conclusions from the trip. That timeline implies that the next iPhone SE will be unveiled in March, similar to when the present model was unveiled in 2022, in keeping with earlier rumors.

The rumored features of the fourth-generation iPhone SE include a 6.1-inch OLED display, Face ID, a newer A-series chip, a USB-C port, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, 8GB of RAM to enable Apple Intelligence support, and the previously mentioned Apple-designed 5G modem. The SE is anticipated to have a similar design to the base iPhone 14.

Since 2018, Apple is said to have been developing its own 5G modem for iPhones, a move that will let it lessen and eventually do away with its reliance on Qualcomm. With Qualcomm’s 5G modem supply arrangement for iPhone launches extended through 2026 earlier this year, Apple still has plenty of time to finish switching to its own modem. In addition to the fourth-generation iPhone SE, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier stated that the so-called “iPhone 17 Air” would come with a 5G modem that was created by Apple.

Whether Apple’s initial 5G modem would offer any advantages to consumers over Qualcomm’s modems, such quicker speeds, is uncertain.

Qualcomm was sued by Apple in 2017 for anticompetitive behavior and $1 billion in unpaid royalties. In 2019, Apple purchased the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business after the two firms reached a settlement in the dispute. Apple was able to support its development by acquiring a portfolio of patents relating to cellular technology. It appears that we will eventually be able to enjoy the results of our effort in four more months.

On March 8, 2022, Apple made the announcement of the third-generation iPhone SE online. With antiquated features like a Touch ID button, a Lightning port, and large bezels surrounding the screen, the handset resembles the iPhone 8. The iPhone SE presently retails for $429 in the United States, but the new model may see a price increase of at least a little.

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Google is said to be discontinuing the Pixel Tablet 2 and may be leaving the market once more

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Google terminated the development of the Pixel Tablet 3 yesterday, according to Android Headlines, even before a second-generation model was announced. The second-generation Pixel Tablet has actually been canceled, according to the report. This means that the gadget that was released last year will likely be a one-off, and Google is abandoning the tablet market for the second time in just over five years.

If accurate, the report indicates that Google has determined that it is not worth investing more money in a follow-up because of the dismal sales of the Pixel Tablet. Rumors of a keyboard accessory and more functionality for the now-defunct project surfaced as recently as last week.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google’s Nest subsidiary may abandon its plans for large-screen products in favor of developing technologies like the Nest Hub and Hub Max rather than standalone tablets.

Google has always had difficulty making a significant impact in the tablet market and creating a competitor that can match Apple’s iPad in terms of sales and general performance, not helped in the least by its inconsistent approach. Even though the hardware was good, it never really fought back after getting off to a promising start with the Nexus 7 eons ago. Another problem that has hampered Google’s efforts is that Android significantly trails iPadOS in terms of the quantity of third-party apps that are tablet-optimized.

After the Pixel Slate received tremendously unfavorable reviews, the firm first declared that it was finished producing tablets in 2019. Two tablets that were still in development at the time were discarded.

By 2022, however, Google had altered its mind and declared that a tablet was being developed by its Pixel hardware team. The $499 Pixel Tablet was the final version of the gadget, which came with a speaker dock that the tablet could magnetically connect to. (Google would subsequently charge $399 for the tablet alone.)

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Windows 11 PCs with Arm Processors now have an Official ISO for Clean Installations

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Power users occasionally prefer to start over when they acquire a new computer, so they follow the pro-gamers’ advice and reinstall Windows using a brand-new ISO image that comes straight from Microsoft and is free of bloatware and needlessly complex “driver management programs.” Up until recently, the new Snapdragon laptops’ more specialized version of Windows 11 didn’t support that.

The Windows 11 build on these new laptops is unusual because of the Arm64-based hardware, which differs from the typical x86 and x64 innards found in most laptops and desktops. Microsoft has finally released a disk image (or ISO file) for these devices after several months of waiting. To perform a direct reinstallation or make a bootable flash drive for a different device, you may now download it straight from Microsoft’s website. It is identical to the installation media utility that is currently available.

Be aware that there may be some glitches if you use this method for a fresh install. Compared to previous designs, the Snapdragon X system-on-a-chip has a lot fewer hardware variables, but because it’s so new, Windows Update might not include all the necessary components. You may need to use an Ethernet connection or the old-fashioned sneakernet to manually load drivers from another computer. You may also need to do some Googling to locate all the files you require for that.

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