Automakers are going big on hybrids as electric vehicles sales struggle
Car buyers are still not entirely sold on electrification, and automakers are more than happy to offer them gas-burning vehicles instead. Kia, reading the room, will supplement its EV offerings with hybrids until buyers’ minds shift. From Automotive News:
Kia plans to ramp up its hybrid vehicle offerings amid softening and uncertain demand for electric vehicles so it can secure “maximum flexibility” in its lineup.
The South Korean automaker will build its portfolio of gasoline-electric hybrid offerings to nine models in 2028, from six in 2024, and add hybrid options on most of its major nameplates.
Kia CEO Ho Sung Song outlined the strategy at this month’s CEO Investor Day presentation.
“While the long-term EV demand for 2030 is expected to remain unchanged, the pace of demand growth may prove uneven in the near term,” Kia said in a news release on April 5 after the annual business strategy update in Seoul, South Korea.
The whole “individual buyers rejecting EVs, and automakers supplementing with more gas-burning cars” thing feels like perhaps a bad sign for the state of the world. Remember snow? I remember snow. I’m not sure the Zoomers will, though.
American auto factories for American automakers are often unionized, but American workers for foreign makers aren’t always so lucky. The UAW, in its latest push, is looking to change that. From Automotive News:
“Conditions are as favorable as they’ve been in my lifetime,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in an interview. “It’s a culmination of a lot of things, but I do think the times we’re in right now, obviously workers are looking for a better way.”
Upcoming elections will show whether workers agree that the UAW can provide that better way. VW employees here are voting this week, and another vote at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama is expected by early May.
The two sites will be a good measuring stick; the UAW has failed twice since 2014 to organize VW’s Chattanooga workforce, and multiple attempts to unionize the Mercedes-Benz site outside Tuscaloosa, Ala., haven’t even led to a vote.
The big contracts won by the Big Three are likely to help the UAW’s case, as workers at Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz can look to the benefits provided by the union. Shawn Fain’s commitment to the cause, too, is likely an asset.
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