VUL megathread, page-1163

Hi Vulcaners
While we're waiting for the PFS (Friday pre-open, IMO), the following CNBC article by Anmar Frangoul - Published Fri, Jan 8 2021 is worth a quick look. I've underlined bits for ease of reading. We know the EV movement has barely got started yet but the point is illustrated for a few different manufacturers (Mercedes, Tesla in the UK, VW and Nissan). I especially liked the Daimler CEO's comment about "doubling down...on electrification".

PFS by Friday as always planned - no implications in that.
Speaking though of the PFS, for those posters who were wondering whether there was any implication from it not being released on Wednesday, the answer is "No"! It was to be released this week (i.e. any time up to Friday, as will now occur IMO). The Company obviously tried to do so by pre-open Wednesday, as that was the date by when the Trading Halt expired in the normal course of events but they obviously were unable to do so. That was no surprise to me as they were only 2 days into the week. There was zero value in losing unexpectedly 2 days out of the last week of prep. on a something as important as a PFS.

It is a very challenging task in such transformative circumstances, especially for a world-scale project that is coupling up a geothermal plant to a DLE plant, especially as the situation happily has been very dynamic - with rapidly increasing demand, increasing prices for the final product plus German legislation changing for the better only on 1 January 2021 re guaranteed tariffs from which the Project will benefit - to mention just a few things. Nice challenges to have but challenges nevertheless.

So to the CNBC article

"Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz triples its electric car sales as CEO predicts a ‘transformative’ decade"

Key Points

• Daimler’s CEO, Ola Källenius, tells CNBC the firm is doubling down on electrification and digitization.As attitudes and technologies change, both politicians and companies are looking to embrace low and zero emission forms of transportation.

• The CEO of Daimler emphasized the importance of low-emission technologies and innovation on Friday, telling CNBC that the automotive industry was “in the middle of a transformation.”

“Next to the things that we know well — to build, frankly, the world’s most desirable cars — there are two technological trends that we’re doubling down on: electrification and digitization,” Ola Källenius told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach.

The Stuttgart-headquartered firm was “pouring billions into these new technologies,” he added, stating they would “drive our path towards CO2 free driving.” This decade, he went on to claim, would be “transformative.”

Källenius’ comments came on the same day Daimler announced its Mercedes-Benz Cars division had sold over 160,000 plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles in 2020, a tripling compared to the previous year.

In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, the German automotive giant said approximately 87,000 xEVs — a term which refers to both plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles — were sold.

Daimler added that the share of xEVs at Mercedes-Benz Cars hit 7.4% in 2020, up from just 2% in 2019. Looking ahead, it’s forecasting that the share of xEVs at Mercedes-Benz Cars will grow to roughly 13% this year, with several new models set to be rolled out in 2021.

“We more than tripled sales of our plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars,” Källenius said in a statement issued on the company’s website. “Demand for these vehicles increased sharply, especially towards the end of the year,” he added.

New goals, symbolic shifts

The uptick in electric vehicle sales for Daimler comes at a time when both politicians and companies are looking to embrace low and zero emission forms of transportation.

Last month the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, presented its Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy. Among other things, it aims to have at least 30 million zero-emission cars on the road by the year 2030.

Drivers’ habits do seem to be changing. In the U.K. — which recently announced plans to stop selling new diesel and gasoline-powered cars and vans by 2030 — road users’ demand for battery electric vehicles rose by 185.9% in 2020, with 108,205 new registrations, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

Sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles hit 66,877 last year, an increase of 91.2%, the SMMT’s figures show. The industry body said that combined, battery and plug-in hybrid electric cars “accounted for more than one in 10 registrations — up from around one in 30 in 2019.”

For the month of December the Tesla Model 3 — an electric vehicle — was the best selling car in the U.K.

In Norway, the uptake of electric vehicles is even more pronounced than in the U.K. On Tuesday, Reuters, citing the Norwegian Road Federation, reported that battery electric vehicles accounted for 54.3% of all new car sales in Norway last year. This, it said, was a global record.

Daimler is one of many big automotive firms looking to make big plays in the electric vehicle sector and challenge Elon Musk’s Tesla.

The Volkswagen Group, for instance, is investing 35 billion euros (around $42.86 billion) in electric vehicles and says it wants to roll out roughly 70 all-electric models by 2030.

Nissan is also looking to ramp up its EV offering. In an interview with CNBC last month, Ashwani Gupta, the firm’s chief operating officer, said a “turning point” had been reached when it came to the electrification of vehicles. Gupta added that the Japanese company was “ready to address that opportunity everywhere in the world.”