Welcome to the Dec. 16 edition of the Daily 5.
You probably saw this coming: President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is recommending sweeping changes to cut off support for electric vehicles and charging stations and to strengthen measures blocking cars, components and battery materials from China. The recommendations, which weren't previously reported, come as the U.S. EV transition is stalling and China's heavily subsidized EV industry continues to surge, in part because of its superior battery supply chain. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to ease regulations on fossil fuel cars and roll back what he called President Joe Biden's tightening emissions standards, which he termed an EV mandate. The transition team is also recommending imposing tariffs on all battery materials globally, a bid to boost U.S. production. Taken together, the recommendations are a stark departure from Biden administration policy, which sought to encourage a domestic battery supply chain separate from China as well as a rapid EV transition.
Auto industry stakeholders are also keeping an eye on Trump's comments on artificial intelligence and are expecting a more innovation-friendly environment with broader guardrails on AI. In particular, Trump might have a looser view of autonomous driving. "I think what we'll see with the Trump administration is a wild, wild West," said Alexei Andreev, the co-founder of Autotech Ventures. "If you look at the first Cambrian explosion of autonomous driving, it was happening during the first Trump administration, and essentially his policy [was] whatever you guys get on the road you can operate, and if it starts killing people, it's your problem."
Still, regulation of the sector is already light. Some of AI's applications in the automotive world are novel and untested. Robotaxis, chatbots in dealerships and tools meant to estimate consumer creditworthiness have all hit snags in the process of deploying AI. In other words, it's not clear how much Trump will impact an industry already experimenting with AI.
The Energy Department finalized a $9.63 billion loan to a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and South Korean battery maker SK On to help finance construction of three battery manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. The low-cost government loan for the BlueOval SK joint venture is the largest ever from the government's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program. The final award is one of a series of actions by the Biden administration to boost electric vehicle production before Trump takes office next month.
Two other stories you won't want to miss are one about Volkswagen Group's labor woes dragging into next year and BMW's CEO weighing in on the automaker's electric future.
That's it for today. Enjoy the rest of your day!
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Wes Raynal, assistant web editor
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