Gladstone LNG exports almost flat in June

Energy News Beat

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the Gladstone port in Australia’s Queensland were almost flat in June compared to the same month last year, while volumes to China decreased 22.8 percent, according to the monthly data by Gladstone Ports Corporation.

Curtis Island is home to the Santos-operated GLNG plant, the ConocoPhillips-led APLNG terminal, and Shell’s QCLNG facility. These are the only LNG export facilities on Australia’s east coast.

GPCC’s data shows that about 1.88 million tonnes of LNG or 29 cargoes left the three Gladstone terminals on Curtis Island last month.

This compares to about 1.86 million tonnes of LNG or 28 cargoes in June 2023, the data shows.

June LNG exports were also almost flat compared to the previous month when LNG exports reached some 1.89 million tonnes of LNG or 28 cargoes.

Most of June LNG exports (1.02 million tonnes) landed in China, marking a drop of 22.8 percent compared to 1.32 million tonnes last year.

Other destinations for Gladstone LNG exports in June include South Korea (282,681 tonnes), Singapore (202,819 tonnes), Malaysia (183,515 tonnes), Thailand (123,911 tonnes), and Japan (69,573 tonnes).

Volumes to South Korea rose compared to 222,988 tonnes last year, while volumes to Singapore jumped compared to 71,837 tonnes last year.

Gladstone LNG exports in June to Malaysia increased from 125,836 tonnes last year and LNG exports to Thailand were flat, while there were no exports to Japan in June 2023, GPC’s data shows.

The three Gladstone terminals shipped about 22.97 million tonnes of LNG or 350 cargoes in 2023. This compares to about 22.64 million tonnes of LNG or 354 cargoes in 2022.

Source: Lngprime.com

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UK energy sector backs new government’s clean power plans

Energy News Beat

The energy sector has responded positively to Labour’s General Election victory, with industry leaders expressing their readiness to work with the new government on clean energy initiatives.

Emma Pinchbeck, Chief Executive of Energy UK, highlighted the sector’s eagerness to help deliver Labour’s clean energy ambitions.

Emma Pinchbeck said: “While the results – both for the new government and overall – demonstrate support for ambitious action on clean energy and climate change, the hard work starts now to deliver on this huge opportunity to bring in changes that benefit our economy and our environment and help create a brighter and fairer future for everyone.”

Scottish Renewables’ Chief Executive, Claire Mack, stressed the need for a coherent policy environment to attract investors and support the renewables supply chain, aiming to make Scotland a prime location for renewable energy projects.

Claire Mack said: “The time to secure our clean energy future is now.

“Maximising the enormous socio-economic potential of our renewable energy resources calls on the UK Government working in partnership with industry and the Scottish Government.”

RenewableUK’s Chief Executive, Dan McGrail, echoed these sentiments, stating that Labour’s election victory provides a clear mandate to advance their clean energy mission.

Dan McGrail said: “There are a number of actions we would encourage Labour to take in the coming weeks to make clear they intend to deliver that mission.

“Most notably, lifting the effective ban on onshore wind in England and increasing the budget for this year’s Contracts for Difference auction to enable new wind, solar and tidal clean energy projects to go ahead.

“By increasing the budget as one of its first key actions in office, the new government can make a crucial intervention to unlock billions of pounds of investment in renewable energy projects, lowering bills for consumers, enhancing our energy security, and boosting UK supply chains and high-quality jobs across the country.”

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“Labour’s 2030 net zero grid target is feasible” – Really?, and at what cost

Energy News Beat

Chris Skidmore, the former UK Cabinet Minister for Energy and Chair of the Net Zero Review, has stated that achieving the 2030 net zero targets is feasible, but only with absolute commitment from the new Labour government.

Mr Skidmore stressed that this commitment must prioritise net zero goals at the centre of government policy.

Chris Skidmore pointed out that the UK already has more than enough electricity waiting in grid queues but is not taking adequate steps to reduce these queues or expedite the deployment of projects.

Mr Skidmore highlighted the issue of planning permissions being refused and the delays caused by referring every wind farm to the planning inspectorate.

He emphasised that pushing forward with renewable projects will be a significant political challenge requiring strong leadership at the highest level.

Mr Skidmore warned that any decision to retreat from these commitments would undermine private investment and support for the energy transition.

Chris Skidmore stressed that political leadership is essential to ensure consistent progress towards the 2030 net zero goals and to maintain investor confidence in the UK’s commitment to this transition.

Click the video to watch the full interview.

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Shipping’s winners and losers from an end to the Red Sea shipping crisis

Energy News Beat

Despite belligerent rhetoric and videos and images of enhanced military assets, it has now been eight days since the last confirmed incident in the Red Sea reported by merchant vessels to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO). This comes after a severe escalation by the Houthis in June both in terms of the number of attacks and their sophistication, and while navies in the region continue to take down drones, speculation is growing that the drop in confirmed attacks could be linked to high-level diplomatic activity going on around the Middle East to ensure some form of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas whose bitter war entered its tenth month over the weekend.

While many shipping analysts in recent weeks – including from Jefferies, Cleaves and Bank of America – have predicted the ongoing Red Sea shipping crisis will continue into the first half of next year, others have been turning their attention to what would happen to the markets in the event some form of ceasefire was achieved.

The Houthis have repeatedly stated that their campaign against merchant shipping – brought about with the aid of military intelligence and hardware from Iran – will carry on for as long as Israel remains at war with Hamas.

Discussions have been ongoing to get Hamas and Israel to agree to some form of a ceasefire with high level officials from the US, Israel and various Middle Eastern countries meeting last week and in the coming days to try and come up with an agreement.

A three-phase plan, presented by US president Joe Biden in May and mediated by Qatar and Egypt, seeks to end the war and secure the release of approximately 120 Israeli hostages held in Gaza. The proposal is being discussed by multiple parties at present and comes at a time when politicians from around the world are coming under greater pressure from their electorates to guarantee peace.

The Red Sea shipping crisis has seen an immense swathe of the global merchant fleet ditch the region and the Suez Canal for much longer, tonnage soaking voyages around South Africa. This has led to profitable times for almost all shipping segments. For instance, the ClarkSea Index, a weighted barometer covering all of commercial shipping, was up 43% above the 10-year trend in the first half of the year.

A new report from Kepler Cheuvreux, a European financial services company, has looked at what would happens to rates when – and if – the Red Sea shipping crisis lifts.

Unsurprisingly, the research finds that the biggest winner of the Middle Eastern turmoil, container shipping, will also be the most significant loser in the event of peace between Israel and Hamas (see chart below).

Kepler Cheuvreux estimates that around 22% of global container shipping volumes are affected by the rerouting due to the increased 32% distance from Asia to Europe. This increased demand by 5.6%, according to the report, versus mid-December last year, together with pent- up demand and congestion, absorbed year-to-date fleet growth of 5.5% and pushed up capacity utilisation from 84% to95%. However, given the huge order book still flowing out of Asian shipyards, Kepler Cheuvreux is warning spot rates could slide by up to 75% in the event of a truce in the Middle East.

Car carriers, product and chemical tankers also stand to lose according to Kepler Cheuvreux while crude carriers are likely to be less affected.

If, however, the Red Sea shipping crisis persists throughout the year Clarksons Research has estimated shipping will need to handle a record 3,600bn extra tonne-miles, a tonne-mile growth of 5.8%. That total would compare to a 10-year average of 1,315bn additional tonne-miles.

If the Red Sea crisis comes to a close this quarter, Clarksons still sees 2024 being the the second largest year of additional tonne-miles on record, following 2010’s post-financial crisis rebound.

Next year could be a very different case, Clarksons warned in a recent weekly report. If disruption in the Red Sea were to end, the trend could reverse with lost miles limiting tonne-mile expansion.

The biggest winner from an end to the Red Sea shipping crisis, however, would be for the seafarers – and their families – who have had to transit the dangerous waters over the past nine months in the knowledge that many of their peers have been attacked and even hijacked.

There has been dramatic changes to the world seaborne map in recent years as shipping faces disruption in the Red and Black Seas as well as the Panama Canal and multiple drying up rivers.

“The complex interconnection of geopolitical events, maritime security concerns, and global trade dynamics underscores the multifaceted challenges facing the shipping industry in the current scenario,” a recent report by Veson observed.

Source: Splash247.com

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Democrats want Biden to drop out this week – Axios

Energy News Beat

Nothing can reverse the damage inflicted by Biden’s disastrous debate performance, lawmakers reportedly believe

A growing number of senior Democrats want Joe Biden to withdraw from the US presidential election race by Friday, Axios has reported, citing sources. Lawmakers are said to be hoping that the entire party will “beg” the incumbent US leader to step aside.

Big Democratic donors and key constituents have expressed serious concerns about Biden’s ability to win reelection against Republican rival Donald Trump in the November vote, lawmakers from all factions of the party have said, as cited by the outlet.

One lawmaker in particular told Axios that every participant at a monthly forum in his state, which wasn’t named, preferred to talk about Biden’s age rather than community issues.

Dozens of House members and senators also reportedly told the outlet that it was “clear that scores are close to speaking out or signing letters telling Biden it should be over,” stressing that these calls would only intensify.

“Every day that goes by is a disaster,” a top Democratic operative who is “talking nonstop” to elected officials told the media. They specified that Vice President Kamala Harris would need time to ramp up her own campaign and pick a running mate, should Biden agree to drop out and endorse her as the nominee.

Grave concerns among Democrats and key party donors have been growing rapidly since Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate against Trump.

A poll by Reuters/Ipsos has revealed that one in three Democrats believes Biden should quit the race, while some major donors have reportedly demanded that the 81-year-old be replaced on the party’s ticket.

The White House and the Biden campaign have offered a range of excuses for what happened at the debate. Biden blamed his weak performance on a busy period of international travel ahead of the event, saying he “nearly fell asleep on stage.”

However, the administration has dismissed rumors of Biden’s potential withdrawal, with spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre insisting the president remains “clear-eyed” and that “he is staying in the race.”

Source: Bignewsnetwork.com

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Meteorologist Exposes How Media Is Hyping NOAA’s ‘Computer-Modeled’ Sea Level Scare

Energy News Beat

Hyperbolic predictions on New York City and sea level rise have been around for decades, and not one has come true or shown they will.

A recent CBS News article claims that climate change-induced sea level rise could result in large parts of New York City being underwater by the year 2100. This is false. [emphasis, links added]

The best and most relevant data measuring sea level rise in the New York Battery Park area shows a slow but steady rate of rise since 1850 that would fall very far short of submerging any locations in New York City by 2100.

In the article, CBS News cites the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) saying:

“NOAA predicts sea levels in Battery Park City and on the East Side of Manhattan will rise between 2.5 feet and 6.5 feet by the year 2100.”

CBS interviewed a resident nearby who said:

“That’s crazy to even picture,” said Nef Garcia, who lives in Battery Park City.

He’s right, it is crazy, and here’s why.

NOAA’s prediction is heavily predicated on computer climate models that assume a huge acceleration in sea level rate of rise over the next 75 years.

In particular, NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer, upon which the prediction is based, relies on estimates and models used in 2007.

These estimates are woefully outdated, and with the new generation of models now in use, the old estimates used by CBS don’t accurately represent the future of the current best projections. The predictions CBS cites are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. IPCC estimation for the average surface temperature rise based on the rate of CO2 emissions. Reproduced from Solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., Marquis, M., Averyt, K., Tignor MMB., et al (2007). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Since 2007, research has shown that computer climate models consistently run too hot.

The unfortunate part of these “too hot models” is that they have been in use for years, referenced by other scientific papers, and used for claiming future doom scenarios in thousands of media stories just like this one.

So, there’s a built-in bias in these models, and if you use their outputs to predict things like sea level rise, you’ll end up with exaggerations rather than reality. This is a dramatic case of Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Speaking of reality, actual data exists on sea level rise from NYC’s Battery Park area cited in the story. NOAA has plotted the data here, seen in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2. NOAA plot of sea level rise since 1855 in New York City.

Note the text provided by NOAA at the bottom of the graph:

The relative sea level trend is 2.92 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.09 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1856 to 2023 which is equivalent to a change of 0.96 feet in 100 years.

Actual data says 0.96 feet (less than a full foot) in 100 years, and of course, it will be even less for the 75 years until 2100.

Despite the hard data, another division of NOAA, which produced the sea level viewer that CBS News touted, says “between 2.5 feet and 6.5 feet by the year 2100.”

Somebody is wrong, they both can’t be right.

Sound science practice dictates that when data and theory conflict, you question the theory, not the data, which in this case would mean trusting actual data, rather than computer model projections.

Also notable are the past failed predictions of NYC being inundated by rising seas by some prominent people, such as James Hansen, Ph.D. of NASA, often referred to as the father of global warming, who had an office just a few blocks away from the Battery Park tide gauge.

In a 2001 interview with Salon.com, he said this:

While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?”

He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be underwater. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.” (emphasis, authors)

When WUWT reported the story in 2011, discussing Hansen’s falsified prediction, it made some waves, and lo and behold, the original reporter came to Hansen’s rescue by moving the goalposts out another 20 years saying he had misquoted Hansen, and that it was actually 40 years, not 20 years.

So, [according to Hansen’s] claim, the West Side Highway will be under water in 2028.

Here is a 2023 Google Earth Street View of the West Side Highway, about a mile North of Battery Park. It seems the ocean has a ways to go before the highway is flooded in five years, as seen in Figure 3 below:

Figure 3. 2023 Google Earth Street View from the West Side Highway in New York City showing the level of the ocean there is not close to flooding at all.

When the topic is climate change, even the “father of global warming” has repeatedly been proven wrong.

The bottom line: hyperbolic predictions on New York City and sea level have been around for decades, and not one of them has come true, nor is there evidence that they will come true within any realistic time frame.

If CBS News had bothered to fact-check, they would have discovered this. Instead, they chose to write a scare story citing outdated, flawed computer models predictions of future doom, ignoring real-world data to the contrary in the process.

The only accurate portion of the CBS News story is the quote from Battery Park resident Nef Garcia, who said: “That’s crazy to even picture.”

Read more at Climate Realism

 

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Deutsche ReGas says second FSRU arrives in Mukran

Energy News Beat

German LNG terminal operator Deutsche ReGas has welcomed the second floating storage and regasification unit at its LNG import terminal in Germany’s port of Mukran.

The 2009-built 145,000-cbm, FSRU Neptune, has arrived on Wednesday at the “Deutsche Ostsee” energy terminal in the industrial port of Mukran, Deutsche ReGas said in a statement.

The unit, which is 50 percent owned by Hoegh LNG and sub-chartered by Deutsche ReGas from TotalEnergies, left in May Germany’s industrial port of Lubmin, where it served the Lubmin terminal.

Deutsche ReGas officially launched its Lubmin FSRU-based LNG import terminal, first private LNG terminal in Germany, in January last year.

After leaving Lumbin, Neptune was located for about a month at Fayard, in Denmark’s Odense port, to complete preparational work prior to its deployment at the Mukran LNG terminal on the island of Rügen.

Deutsche ReGas recently said that it expected to launch full operations at the Mukran LNG facility in July.

Prior to the arrival of Neptune, the terminal featured the 2021-built 174,000-cbm, Energos Power, owned by US-based Energos Infrastructure.

In June last year, Deutsche ReGas signed a deal with the German government to sub-charter the FSRU delivered in 2021 by Hudong-Zhonghua. Deutsche ReGas took over the charter of Energos Power in October last year.

Moreover, Deutsche ReGas received the first LNG tanker at the Mukran facility in March as part of the commissioning phase, and in April it received an operating permit for the facility.

Last month, Deutsche ReGas moved Energos Power offshore Mukran ahead of the arrival of the second FSRU.

The FSRUs will be located side-by-side at the berth 12 in the Mukran port,

“In the course of the next few days, the second regasification vessel Energos Power will also be stationed alongside the Neptune, completing the terminal,” Deutsche ReGas said in the statement.

A spokesman for Deutsche ReGas told LNG Prime that “the terminal is still in commissioning subject to the permission.”

Once both FSRUs are in Mukran, the terminal will offer an annual regasification capacity of up to 13.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas and will be able to cover up to 15 percent of Germany’s total natural gas demand, Deutsche ReGas said.

Deutsche ReGas said the privately financed terminal has the largest capacity of all German LNG terminals and plays a “central role” in supplying eastern Germany, industrial consumers in south-western Germany, and neighboring Eastern European countries.

Besides the FSRUs, the Mukran terminal includes the 50-kilometer-long pipeline Ostsee Anbindungsleitung (OAL).

Germany’s Gascade built this pipeline which connects the LNG terminal in the port of Mukran with the German gas transmission network in Lubmin.

Belgium’s Fluxys recently bought a 25 percent stake in this pipeline.

The terminal is connected to the pipeline via the entry point named the Baltic Energy Gate(BEG).

In June, Deutsche ReGas invited market participants to express an interest in capacity at the Mukran FSRU-based facility from 2024 to 2027.

Deutsche ReGas said the terminal has been designed for a nominal sendout rate of 1,254,000 MMBtu/d, while net LNG tank capacity of the terminal is 310,000 cbm.

This allows for up to 3 cargoes to be simultaneously regasified at any given time creating a sendout profile of 9 days for the terminal users, the firm said.

 

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Gastrade expects to launch commercial ops at Greece’s first FSRU in October

Energy News Beat

Greece’s Gastrade expects to launch commercial operations at its FSRU-based LNG import terminal off Alexandroupolis in October this year following an issue with the project’s pipeline.

The 2018-built 174,000-cbm LNG carrier, GasLog Hong Kong, delivered on February 18 the commissioning cargo from the US to the 153,600-cbm FSRU, Alexandroupolis.

Gastrade said on April 5 that the company planned to launch commercial operations at the end of April and receive the next LNG cargo in mid-May.

However, the company postponed the launch due to a “technical issue” that was faced during the commissioning process of the terminal, it said on May 2.

“The new COD (commercial operation date) has now been anticipated for October 1, 2024, to coincide with the start of the next gas year,” a Gastrade spokeswoman told LNG Prime on Thursday.

“The issue that was identified during commissioning in the pipeline system of the project, is under rectification,” she said.

“Should the issue be resolved earlier, the company will update its customers accordingly and announce an earlier COD,” the spokeswoman added.

Gastrade’s shareholders include founder Copelouzou, DESFA, DEPA, Bulgartransgaz, and GasLog.

This is Greece’s first FSRU and the second LNG import facility, adding to DESFA’s import terminal located on the island of Revithoussa.

The Alexandroupolis LNG terminal will have a capacity of 5.5 bcm.

Greece’s converted FSRU arrived in Alexandroupolis from Singapore on December 17, 2023, while mooring hook-up was completed on December 23.

The FSRU is located in the sea of Thrace at a distance of 17.6 km SW from the port of Alexandroupolis and 10 km from the nearest coast of Makri.

It is connected to a high-pressure subsea and onshore gas transmission pipeline.

Italy’s Saipem announced in April this year that the pipeline project had been completed. The work included the offshore installation of 24 kilometers of pipeline with its pipelay vessel Castoro 10.

Following commercial launch, the pipeline will deliver natural gas to the Greek transmission system and onwards to the final consumers in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia and further to Moldova and Ukraine to the East and Hungary and Slovakia to the West, Gastrade previously said.

 

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European Commission approves $11bn in support for French offshore wind

Energy News Beat

The European Commission has approved a €10.82bn ($11.67bn) scheme to support the deployment of offshore wind energy in France.

The scheme was approved under the State Aid Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (TCTF) and will run for 20 years. The TCTF was established in 2023 to foster support measures in sectors which are key for the transition to a net-zero economy, in line with the Green Deal Industrial Plan.

This measure will support the construction and operation of two bottom-fixed offshore wind farms, one in the South Atlantic zone and another in the Centre Manche 2 zone in Normandy.

The South Atlantic wind farm is expected to have a capacity of 1 to 2GW and generate at least 3.9 TWh of renewable electricity per year. The Normandy wind farm is expected to have a capacity of 1.4 to 1.6GW and generate at least 6.1 TWh of electricity annually.

The aid will be granted based on a bidding process, which will be organised to select one beneficiary per offshore zone.

Under this scheme, the aid will take the form of a monthly variable premium under a two-way CfD, which will be calculated by comparing a reference price, determined in the tender offer of the beneficiary, to the market price for electricity.

When the market price is below the reference price, the beneficiaries will be entitled to receive payments equal to the difference between the two prices. However, when the market price is above the reference price, the beneficiary will have to pay the difference between the two prices to the French authorities. 

“[This scheme] will also help France reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuels while ensuring that any potential competition distortions are kept to the minimum,” said Margrethe Vestager, EVP in charge of competition policy at the European Commission.

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New Vehicle Sales, Q2: EVs Surge YoY, Except Tesla. Stellantis Drops to #6 for First Time, behind Honda. GM & Ford ICE Vehicles Dip YoY, but their EVs Spike. Prices Drop

Energy News Beat

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The ransomware attack on CDK’s cloud-based dealership management system, which on June 19 had cut off nearly 15,000 dealers from the software that was running every aspect of their operation, wreaked havoc on processing and reporting sales by the end of June. The large publicly traded auto dealers, including AutoNation, warned about it last week. The work had to be done by hand. As of July 2, “substantially all” of the nearly 15,000 dealerships were back on the core system, according to CDK. But by then it was too late, in terms of catching up with processing and reporting to their manufacturers those deliveries that had been made since June 19.

Those deliveries that didn’t make it into Q2, will get picked up in July and Q3. Several automakers made reference in their press releases today to this “industry crisis.”

Despite this mayhem at the worst possible moment toward the end of the quarter, total new vehicle sales – deliveries by dealers or automakers to their end-users – rose by 9.1% from Q1, to 4.08 million vehicles, down just 0.4% year-over-year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today.

As the chart shows, new vehicle sales have been a no-growth business since the 1980s, and only price increases and more expensive models kept revenues growing for automakers. But now the opposite is happening, after the huge price spikes in 2021 and 2022: New vehicle prices have started to edge down as automakers and dealers are piling on incentives and discounts.

Average incentives per vehicle sold rose 51% year-over-year to $2,625, or 5.3% of MSRP, according to J.D. Power estimates.

But automakers and dealers are still slow to react to this market, and to the large-scale build in inventories, and they’re letting go of their big-fat pandemic-era profit margins only very slowly. During periods in 2019, as inventories were also piling up, incentives ran over 10% of MSRP.

The average transaction price – including all incentives, discounts, and odious addendum stickers – fell 3% year-over-year to $44,857 in June, according to J.D. Power, on rising incentives by manufacturers, declining gross profit margins by dealers, and increased inventories of lower-priced vehicles that automakers had deprioritized during the era of shortages, in favor of high-dollar vehicles.

The ATP had spiked by 36% during the pandemic, from $34,900 in December 2019 to $47,300 in December 2022. Since that peak, the ATP has dropped by 5.2%. New vehicle prices are sticky on the way down, as everyone in the industry is trying to keep them from going down, while still maintaining sales momentum.

But the erstwhile shortage of vehicles has turned into what for some brands is a full-blown glut, and the vehicles must be sold and deals must be made, and to do that, the price spike is finally getting whittled down – but not nearly as fast as used vehicle prices that have dropped in a historic manner.

The biggest automakers in the US in Q2.

General Motors, #1: Sales of all its brands in the US rose 0.6% year-over-year, to 696,086 vehicles in Q2. All the growth was in EVs, whose sales surged by 40% year-over-year to 21,930 vehicles. Sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE) fell 0.3%:

General Motors sales
Q2 2024
Q2 2023
YoY
Total
696,086
691,978
0.6%
EV
21,930
15,652
40%
All ICE vehicles
674,156
676,326
-0.3%

GM killed its long-running EV, the Bolt and Bolt EUV, at the end of last year, and Bolt sales have become a trickle. But it has a slew of new EV models now on the market, including a full-size truck, though ramping up production of models with all-new powertrains and platforms is tough, and the numbers are still painfully small, but they’re coming up. GM is struggling with the problems every automaker has run into in setting up EV supply chains, from Tesla on down, and like all of them, has been dogged by quality issues of early production models.

Toyota, #2: Sales of Toyota and Lexus brands combined in the US rose 9.2% year-over-year in Q2, to 621,549 vehicles.

EV sales, staring to: Sales of its pure EVs multiplied by four to 11,607 vehicles.

Ford, #3: Sales by Ford and Lincoln brands rose 0.8% year-over-year in Q2 to 536,050.

The sales growth was all in EVs (+61% yoy), while sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE) fell (-0.9% yoy), and sales of ICE vehicles without hybrid powertrains fell 5.0% (yoy).

Hybrids are ICE vehicles with an auxiliary electric drive as part of the powertrain. They’re more efficient, but usually somewhat more expensive, than the equivalent non-hybrid ICE model. Plug-in hybrids have larger batteries and more powerful electric motors than regular hybrids, but still have a gasoline engine. Most of the hybrids sold are regular hybrids.

Ford offers hybrid powertrain options on many of its models, including its F-150 pickup, and they’re popular. Hybrid sales are now eating into non-hybrid ICE sales which dropped 5% year-over-year:

Ford Motor Sales
Q2 2024
Q2 2023
YoY %
Total
536,050
531,662
+0.8%
EVs
23,957
14,843
+61.4%
All ICE vehicles
512,093
516,819
-0.9%
Non-hybrid ICE
458,271
482,230
-5.0%

Hyundai-Kia, #4: Hyundai is the parent company of Kia, with Hyundai holding a 33.9% stake in Kia, and Kia holding stakes in Hyundai subsidiaries. And they share vehicle platforms. They report US sales separately, but for our purposes, we look at them as one automaker with two brands.

Combined sales edged up 0.2% year-over-year in Q2 to 421,558 vehicles (Hyundai +2.2%, Kia -1.6%).

EV sales are hot: Hyundai EV sales jumped 15% year-over-year in Q2; Kia’s EV sales in Q2 exceeded 15,000 vehicles, it said without disclosing further details, and in the first half soared by 112% to 29,392 vehicles.

In its press release, Hyundai made reference to the CDK fiasco: “Once again in the face of yet another industry crisis the Hyundai dealers showed their resiliency by closing Q2 with a 2.2% increase in total sales.”

Honda, #5: sales rose 2.7% in Q2 year-over-year, to 356,457 units, “despite the software cyberattack impacting auto dealers nationwide,” it said in its press release.

Stellantis (FCA) #6:  FCA sales plunged 21% year-over-year in Q2, to 344,993 vehicles. It dropped to the #6 spot for the first time ever, behind Honda, from the #5 spot it still had teetered on last year. And of course, they’re no EVs here.

Ram, Jeep, and Dodge dealers are sitting on 150 days’ supply, the worst of any brands, and Chrysler dealers on 140 days’ supply. Dropping sales and a glut of inventory call for all-out huge profit-margin-gobbling incentives and dealer discounts to move the vehicles. We’re still waiting if they’re going to get the message someday.

Nissan, #7: Sales of its brands Nissan and Infiniti combined fell 3.1% in Q2 year-over-year, to 236,721 vehicles.

Sales of its all-electric Ariya crossover jumped by 123% to 5,203 units. At least something is growing.

Tesla doesn’t disclose US sales. It only discloses global sales. For Q2, it reported 443,956 deliveries globally, up 14.8% from its extra-gloomy Q1 deliveries but still down 4.8% year-over-year. Tesla reports its Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck under the category, “Other.” It sold 21,551 of “other.” And it sold 422,405 Model Y and Model 3. In the US, Model Y was again the #2 bestseller in Q1 by registrations, behind only Toyota’s RAV4.

Because there was some confusing reporting in the media of Tesla’s deliveries, we’ll just post our chart here, though it doesn’t really fit because those are global sales, and we’re discussing US sales:

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The post New Vehicle Sales, Q2: EVs Surge YoY, Except Tesla. Stellantis Drops to #6 for First Time, behind Honda. GM & Ford ICE Vehicles Dip YoY, but their EVs Spike. Prices Drop appeared first on Energy News Beat.