Automakers have borrowed a ton of money to get through the pandemic, FCA and GM salaried employees are getting their full paychecks, FCA and Mazda are struggling, and the UK is discussing EV mandates. All that and more in for July 31, 2020.

Governments and private lenders around the globe have been offering automakers financial relief in the form of loans. Without these, and with depressed demand for cars and severe constraints on vehicle production, it’s unlikely that the furloughs and salary deferrals that automakers instated to stay afloat would have sufficed. So, how much has the auto industry borrowed so far? Well, according to , quite a lot. Apparently more than any other industry. From the news site:

The automotive industry has borrowed $132 billion since March as the spread of the coronavirus curbed demand for cars and closed factories.

The sector is the largest user of funds put in place to ease the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The amount consists of $79 billion in new loans and $53 billion in drawdowns from existing credit lines. Facilities linked to the pandemic account for almost 80 percent of overall loan borrowings by the sector in the year to date.

It’s not entirely clear which loans exactly Bloomberg is referring to, but “funds put in place to ease the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic” sound like at least some of them may be government loans.

In any case, that’s a lot of borrowing.

Back in late March, as pandemic shutdowns were in full-swing, Jalopnik was first to report about , including a number of my engineering friends at the Auburn Hills headquarters.

As of the beginning of July, after over three months of pay deferment, “Chryslerians” (as I like to call people who work at Chrysler) stopped having to live 80 percent of their former lives. GM employees will soon be able to do the same. From :

Unlike General Motors, which announced its own for salaried workers, the move was not earlier than expected, according to FCA, but was in the planned time frame for addressing the financial impact of the coronavirus. Ford had announced a similar plan beginning in May for 300 executives to take salary deferrals for at least five months.

[...]

GM told its white collar employees on Tuesday that the 20% pay deferral for 69,000 salaried workers worldwide would end on Aug. 1, a month earlier than expected. For FCA’s salaried workforce, 15,000 of whom work in the United States, that happened on July 1, according to spokeswoman Shawn Morgan. The FCA workers are to receive their deferred pay, without additional interest, by mid-March 2021; GM said it would return the money to its workers in October with 6% interest.

Mid-March 2021 is going to be a good time for my former coworkers at Chrysler. And my god, in October, when GM employees get all that deferred money back, the Detroit area is going to see lots of spending.

Yesterday, we wrote about , and of course, they weren’t good. Pandemics tend to have that sort of effect. Second quarter results continue trickling in from other companies, and now we’re seeing Fiat Chrysler’s numbers.

Again, they’re not good, but—at least as has framed it—they could be worse. From the article:

The question on Friday was how bad things would get for FCA, the last of the Detroit Three to announce its results for the second quarter of 2020. It was bad, as expected.

FCA said it lost $1.24 billion (1.05 billion euros) in the second quarter, a drop of 232% compared to the same period a year ago. That follows FCA’s woeful first quarter performance, when the automaker said it lost $1.9 billion (1.7 billion euros).

That’s bad, of course, but it’s bad for most in the auto industry these days, with the coronavirus pandemic continuing to rock the global economy. That’s forced companies to focus on finding the bright spots.

The company’s CEO, Mike Manley, had positive things to say about how FCA has handled the pandemic. From the Free Press:

For the quarter, FCA reported revenues of $13.8 billion (11.7 billion euros), and an adjusted earnings loss before interest and taxes of $1.09 billion (928 million euros).

FCA CEO Mike Manley touted the company’s efforts to manage the crisis, which included a one-quarter pay deferral of 20% for salaried workers and pay cuts for top leaders.

“Our second quarter showed that decisive actions and extraordinary contributions from our workforce enabled FCA to contain the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. While the company remains vigilant about the health and safety of employees, our plants are up and running, dealers are selling in showrooms and online, and we have the flexibility and financial strength to push ahead with our plans,” Manley said.

Now we’ll need to wait and see how the PSA merger into the company called will help cut costs.

Let’s continue down this path of “poor financial performance in the auto industry,” just to get it over with. Here’s how Mazda fared (not well), per :

Japan’s No. 5 automaker anticipates a 40 billion yen ($383.5 million) loss for the year to March, joining a growing number of automakers including Ford Motor Co () and Nissan Motor Co () which expect annual losses after the virus shuttered vehicle plants and kept customers away from car dealerships.

The story goes on to single out the second quarter, in which Mazda did see some positive results from China (which has been seeing a resurgence in vehicle demand as people eschew public transportation in favor of cars), but otherwise struggled:

In the April-June quarter, sales fell to 244,000 units, largely due to a drop in demand at home and in Europe. Sales in North America, Mazda’s biggest market, fell 19% in the same period.

But China was a bright spot, as sales rose 13% during the quarter as car demand has returned to the world’s largest auto market, having recovered relatively quickly from the virus.

The cost of climate change is carried by us all, especially the poor. But enacting certain regulations aimed to help stem the tide of climate change, automakers argue, will put a financial burden on those same people.

As governments around the world enact ever-stricter vehicle emissions regulations, car manufacturers have been suggesting that these measures will finally harm poor people. The idea behind these thoughts is that reducing emissions—and especially electrifying—adds cost, which has to be absorbed by someone. That could be automakers, that could be consumers, or of course, that could be the government (in the form of financial incentives).

UK dealers and carmakers are asking these questions now, as plans to phase out gas and diesel cars by the early to mid 2030s loom. From the :

Ministers want to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035, but are considering whether to move the date to 2032, and whether to include hybrid cars in the ban. They have asked the industry to submit their reactions to the proposals by Friday, several of which have been seen by the Financial Times.

“Restricting customer choice to expensive electric vehicles would result in less affluent customers being excluded from mobility, preventing the government from achieving its levelling up agenda,” said the submission from one carmaker with UK manufacturing operations.

The story goes on:

Banning traditionally powered cars will “put additional strain on those with low incomes where public transport is not available”, one carmaker said in its filing, seen by the Financial Times.

“We do not believe that all customers will be able to afford the latest technologies, and social injustices could be exaggerated further if those in hardship continue to use their internal combustion engine technologies beyond the end sale date,” it added.

One of the key arguments included in the article is that plug-in hybrids should be allowed, as they can offer significant CO2 reductions without range anxiety and within the budgets of a greater number of people than EVs. Generally speaking, when it comes to government mandates on emissions, have to agree with one automobile company, which stated:

“A broad approach, that makes use of a range of technologies and energy sources, will deliver the necessary CO2 reductions more quickly and more effectively.”

It’s worth nothing that EV prices are dropping, and also, keep in mind that automakers care about making money. This bit about electrification affecting the poor is almost certainly not the companies’ main motivation. But that should be obvious.

From E:

On this day in 1971, 15 astronauts and first used the four-wheeled battery-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle to extensively explore the ’s surface, in particular the Hadley-Apennine site.

Do you think fully electric cars are what the world needs right now, or do you think plug-in hybrids may actually be more palatable for consumers, financially speaking (and also more practical from a range standpoint and possibly even cleaner due to their smaller batteries that can power the vast majority of trips)?