FT : Prices for used Teslas drop in US and Britain

Prices for used Teslas drop in US and Britain
A glut of former fleet cars may explain the fall rather than any link to Elon Musk but the brand is undoubtedly under pressure

Used Teslas in the US and Britain are falling in price faster than other electric vehicles — but the decline appears to be driven primarily by a glut of formerly leased cars coming on to the market rather than by the brand’s association with Elon Musk.

US prices for second-hand Teslas dropped 7 per cent year-on-year in March, according to data from online marketplace CarGurus, against a 1.5 per cent decline for other EV brands. In the UK they fell 15 per cent, more than the general 10 per cent slide for all used EVs, according to sales platform Auto Trader.

The falling prices come amid suspicion that Tesla’s brand is being damaged by Musk’s emergence as a figurehead for the American far right and a confidant of US President Donald Trump, especially given that EVs tend to be more popular among left-of-centre voters.

Edmunds, a US car shopping site, has reported a sudden rise in the number of post-2017 Teslas being traded in at dealerships — accounting for 1.4 per cent of all trade-ins in mid-March, up from 0.4 per cent in March last year.


However, Kevin Roberts, director of economic and market intelligence at CarGurus, said the US sales data suggested “an influx of former fleet vehicles have caused the average list price of a used Tesla to drop”. He added that price cuts for new Teslas since 2023 were also weighing on the second-hand market.

Meanwhile, Auto Trader’s commercial director Ian Plummer said falling UK prices of second-hand Teslas appeared to be being driven by a large cohort coming on to the market that had been bought new on finance, taking the number of used Teslas for sale on the platform in March to 5,400, up from 2,900 a year earlier.


Plummer pointed to evidence of “strong levels of demand for used Teslas” in the UK, where they are selling after an average of 23 days on the market compared with 29 for the average EV on the platform.

FT analysis of prices of used Teslas in Germany, where Musk intervened on behalf of the far-right Alternative for Germany party during this year’s federal election, has also detected no shifts in the first quarter of 2025 in the number of Teslas offered for sale, their ages or asking prices.

However, the brand is certainly under pressure, with Tesla’s new-car sales falling well short of market forecasts. Official statistics suggest that first-quarter sales were down 55.2 per cent in Sweden, 49.7 per cent in the Netherlands, 41.1 per cent in France and 25.5 per cent in Norway.

This has contributed to Tesla’s worst quarter since 2022, with the group delivering 336,681 vehicles in the first three months of this year — 13 per cent fewer than a year earlier and well below the 390,000 expected by analysts.

Ryan Brinkman, auto analyst at JPMorgan, said Tesla’s most recent delivery numbers were “far below even our low-end estimate, confirming the unprecedented brand damage we had earlier feared”.

“The trend in Tesla sales is worse than we and the market had appreciated,” added Brinkman, prompting the broker to “lower our already below consensus estimates” for the group.


But Alexander Potter, a senior research analyst at Piper Sandler, disagrees, writing in a recent note that the “brand damage is overdone”.

While Potter acknowledged that “all else equal, Musk’s political endeavours are probably a net negative for deliveries”, he argued that a bigger issue was supply-side, after “multi-week shutdowns” hit “all four of the company’s Model Y factories”.

Much rests on the reception to the refresh of the Model Y, Tesla’s best-selling car, which analysts hope will breathe life into an ageing line-up.


Harald Hendrikse, an analyst at Citigroup, suggested customers may be delaying purchases ahead of the revamp.

A further challenge for Tesla is increased rivalry from overseas automakers, according to Hendrikse, with the US brand now facing “much stiffer competition from Chinese and other Asian peers, who are taking share with an influx of new, high-tech and relatively affordable EVs”.

This point was underscored in March when shares in China’s BYD touched a record high after the company said it had developed a platform capable of charging EVs in the time it takes to refuel a regular petrol car. Tesla’s shares, in contrast, are down more than 40 per cent this year, having given up a post-election bounce.

FT : China puts pressure on western producers of electric car battery materials

China puts pressure on western producers of electric car battery materials
Industry vital for energy transition is ripe for consolidation as fierce competition unsettles market

The industry that makes materials in electric car batteries — vital for the energy transition — is ripe for consolidation as fierce Chinese competition threatens western rivals, one of Europe’s top producers has warned.

Bart Sap, the boss of Belgian-based multinational Umicore, which makes materials used in cathodes, said he was hunting for deals and partnerships that would bolster the group’s struggling batteries business.

“We’re looking at all angles to recover value in this business because we’ve destroyed value over the last years,” Sap told the Financial Times.

“The industry is ready for consolidation . . . We are actively exploring partnerships” in the battery materials space, he added. “We’ve seen there’s an interest [in deals] in the industry in general.”

Umicore’s shares have plunged more than 50 per cent in the past year, and last month the company slashed its battery cathode materials capital expenditure by 50 per cent as part of a strategy reset. 

It has also been forced to delay plans for a battery recycling plant in Europe and a battery materials plant in Canada. This followed a €1.6bn impairment on its battery materials business last year. 

The company has been hit hard by a slowdown in the electric car market and the rapid growth of Chinese cathode materials, an essential and expensive part of an EV battery.

As well as Umicore, China’s dominance has put pressure on western groups such as Germany’s BASF, which have to contend with low-priced Chinese material, analysts said.

A surplus of manufacturing capacity, mainly from China, has triggered a fall in capacity rates at plants. Some in the industry were operating at 30-40 per cent of full capacity, Sap said. They typically needed rates of about 75-80 per cent to get good returns, he added.

Even in China, some smaller producers were “dropping out or running their facilities at 10 per cent utilisation . . . Consolidation in the market will happen,” said Evan Hartley of data provider Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

China controls more than 80 per cent of the market in cathode active materials, one of a battery’s two electrodes, having rapidly built out manufacturing capacity, according to S&P Global Mobility.

“There was an obscene amount of capacity that came online in China in the past few years . . . It’s enormous,” said Hartley.

Jason Ying, commodity strategist at BNP Paribas, said despite the EV slowdown global cathode material capacity would continue to grow this decade, “led by Chinese projects”. 

The cathode material market is one example of the west’s reliance on China for supply chains essential to a range of core sectors.

Industrial groups needed European policymakers to set out clear policies for the long term to help the sector “to avoid over-dependency on other regions,” Sap said.

FT : US tariffs threaten almost $2tn of investment pledges by global companies

US tariffs threaten almost $2tn of investment pledges by global companies
Businesses with supply chains vulnerable to sweeping duties had been hoping to negotiate concessions from Washington

Companies have pledged to invest at least $1.9tn in the US since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency but the spending bonanza could be threatened by a spiralling tariff war.

Investment pledges from overseas and US companies have reached $1.9tn, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. This compares with $910bn of private manufacturing investments announced from the start of Joe Biden’s presidency until October 2024, according to the US commerce department. 

The latest commitments include $100bn each from SoftBank, which made the commitment in December, and chip manufacturer TSMC, $20bn from French shipping group CMA CGM, a $500bn pledge by Apple and $5bn from carmaker Stellantis. 

However, many of the promises are from businesses with global supply chains that are vulnerable to the sweeping tariffs Trump has announced against trading partners including China, India and the EU.

Teresa Fort, associate professor and international trade expert at Dartmouth College, said the damage from Trump’s tariffs would go far beyond the $1.9tn investment pledges already made: “The amount of uncertainty that he has introduced to the world trading system means that nobody is in a position to make long-term investments. It is definitely going to make the US a less attractive place to invest in.”

Trump said in late March that money was “pouring in” because of his trade policies. But after he unveiled a 20 per cent tariff on EU imports, French President Emmanuel Macron urged companies to pause US investment as his government works with the European Commission on the EU’s response. 

 “What message would we send by having major European players investing billions of euros in the American economy at a time when [the US] are hitting us?” Macron said, calling on industries to also refrain from trying to negotiate exemptions with Washington. 

Japan’s foreign ministry said on Monday that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba “expressed strong concerns that the tariffs measures by the US could weaken investment capacity among Japanese companies” on a phone call with Trump. Japan is the top source of foreign investment in the US.


Some analysts argue that Trump’s protectionist policies could accelerate investment in US production as countries try to win concessions. Earlier this year the Capgemini Research Institute estimated that US companies were expected to spend $1.1tn on reshoring manufacturing to the US over the next three years, up from $750bn predicted in 2024.

But Scott Lincicome, vice-president of the free-market Cato Institute think-tank, said a decline in corporate earnings, higher production costs and a slowdown in the US economy as a result of the tariffs could dent investment appetite.

“Whoever had the plan to use these [investment] announcements to get the tariffs to go away or slow down has proven to be pretty wrong-headed,” Lincicome said. “It’s impossible to look at the tariffs that were announced as some sort of systematic plan to induce long-term investment.”

Stellantis, which makes Jeep and Ram trucks, has already said it would furlough 900 workers at five plants in the US and temporarily shut down production in Canada and Mexico as a result of the tariff uncertainty. 

Experts noted the difficulty in determining how much of the pledged amounts were new, as well as predicting how much of it would happen. Promises made during Trump’s first presidential term included some investments that were already planned, while it is unclear how many of those made during Biden’s presidency materialised.

“These investment announcements, coming in January or February, cannot be the result of the new incoming administration,” said one US academic focused on management, noting that financial planning happened over longer timescales.

Apple announced $500bn of investment in February but lost more than $300bn in market value after Trump unveiled his tariffs, which will hit its supply and production hubs in Asia. Apple already invests substantially in the US, so it is unclear how much can be attributed to Trump.

South Korea’s Hyundai promised it would spend $21bn over three years to expand its US car production and steel business and create 100,000 jobs. Despite that, foreign-made cars sold in the US now face a 25 per cent tariff.

Trump also announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on all South Korean imports.

SoftBank, led by CEO Masayoshi Son, said it had exceeded a $50bn pledge made after Trump’s first win in 2016, creating more than 50,000 jobs, although it did lay people off during the pandemic.

Kirk Boodry, analyst at Astris Advisory, said SoftBank could be forced to sell assets if the tariffs caused a prolonged market downturn — as it did in 2020 during the pandemic.

FT : Universities should not be greedy with technology spin-offs

Universities should not be greedy with technology spin-offs
Letting software and life sciences companies emerge from research has long-term benefits for academic institutions

The financial stress facing many UK universities is prompting them to look for new sources of cash. Here is the bad news for those hoping that spinouts from technology and life sciences research will plug the gap: not only are they likely to be disappointed, but they also could miss a long-term opportunity.

Do not take my word, but listen to Anne Lane, who heads UCL Business, the technology transfer operation of University College London. UCL is in the “golden triangle” of research universities linking London, Oxford and Cambridge and is among the most successful in profiting commercially from the science and healthcare inventions streaming out of its research.

UCL Business last year contributed £6mn in gift aid to the university and gained another £18mn in revenues from inventions such as the technology behind Roctavian, a gene therapy treatment for haemophilia A. It currently has 95 active spinout companies and 24 advanced therapeutics based on its research in clinical trials. It is not, in other words, a financial dunce.

But this is still modest compared with UCL’s income of £2.1bn last year, or within that its research grants and contracts of £538mn. “Academics want to get involved because it gives their work real-world impact. If anyone hoped to [fully] finance research with spinouts, it would be a long wait,” Lane says.

Or listen to Lord Jim O’Neill, chair of Northern Gritstone, the £312mn partner investment fund of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield universities. Universities “need to appreciate how risky venture investing is and not hope for a guaranteed income stream . . . If they try to dominate the equity and control all intellectual property, they will not be able to attract investors.”

The good news is that despite the financial challenges facing universities, and the fact that many are coming late to the opportunity of research commercialisation, it does exist. Once a few bets on technologies turn into an ecosystem in which a university’s researchers can easily and consistently turn ideas into ventures, it starts to become ingrained.

The more modest a university’s short-term expectations and the more agile it is in spinning out or licensing its intellectual property, the more it stands to gain eventually. “It’s better just to take a little bit of everything than try to play at venture capital,” says David Grimm, partner of AlbionVC, which has collaborated with UCL on two spinout investment funds.

Universities are recognising this, encouraged by a 2023 review of spinouts co-led by Irene Tracey, vice-chancellor of Oxford university. A recent study by the research group Beauhurst found that universities’ equity stakes in spinouts have fallen to a 10-year low of 16 per cent. This opens up more equity to inventors and investors.

Taking less equity and adopting a standard model rather than negotiating individually and slowly over every potential invention brings two benefits. One is that it promotes greater scale, especially alongside partner investment funds. The second is that it gives a university a tangible economic role and attracts researchers who prefer to combine pure and applied research.

One size does not fit all across the range of science and technology research in institutions such as UCL. For software and artificial intelligence, business ideas need to be developed by entrepreneurs to have true financial value. For life sciences, molecules and therapeutics that emerge from university laboratories can have patentable and enduring worth.

Thus, UCLB takes quite an open approach to software spinouts, encouraging anyone with a business idea to develop it and licensing out its right for 5 per cent of the equity. For medicines, it tends to retain bigger stakes or work with academics to license intellectual property to biotechnology companies, which is less risky and offers a revenue flow from royalties.

The fact that UCL has a practised technology transfer office helps. The think-tank Onward last year criticised the offices of many universities as lacking in funding, capacity and expertise. The bigger the university operation, the more likely it is to work well with investors, and draw in proof-of-concept funding for potential spin-offs.

So there are many reasons for universities to take spin-offs seriously, and to enable partner funds such as Northern Gritstone. Forget about trying to fill a hole in the budget, and focus on making universities more engaged and inventive places. It will pay off in time.

FT : China vows ‘fight to the end’ after Trump threatens extra 50% tariff

China vows ‘fight to the end’ after Trump threatens extra 50% tariff
Beijing and Washington swap warnings of additional trade retaliation as markets rebound in Asia

China has vowed to “fight to the end” if the US goes ahead with threatened tariff increases, intensifying fears that the world’s two most important economies are set for a hard decoupling.

The commerce ministry on Tuesday said it would further retaliate if US President Donald Trump makes good on his threat to levy an additional 50 per cent tariff on Chinese goods.

“If the US proceeds with implementing these escalated tariff measures, China will resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests,” a commerce ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday. “If the US insists on going its own way, China will fight to the end.”

Trump’s tariff plans have roiled global markets in recent days.

The S&P 500 index has shed more than $5tn since Trump shocked US trading partners with universal tariffs and “reciprocal” levies, triggering warnings of faster inflation and slower economic growth — or outright recession. The index closed down 0.2 per cent overnight after wild swings and Asian markets have regained ground in early trading.

Beijing has said it will impose tariffs of 34 per cent on US imports after US levies on Chinese goods come into effect. Trump on Monday threatened to introduce an additional 50 per cent tariff on Chinese goods, a move that would bring US duties on Chinese imports to more than 120 per cent by some estimates.

“The US threat to further escalate tariffs is a mistake compounded by another mistake and once again exposes the coercive nature of the US side,” said the ministry spokesperson. “China will never accept this.”

Beijing backed up the threat of retaliation by fixing the exchange rate of its currency, the renminbi, at Rmb7.20 per dollar — the lowest since September 2023 — in a sign it could use depreciation to offset Trump’s tariffs.

During the first Trump administration, Beijing let its currency decline to offset the impact of tariffs. On Tuesday morning the offshore renminbi, which trades freely, weakened past the threshold of Rmb7.35 per dollar for the first time since February.

“I don’t think Beijing’s going to back down,” said Lynn Song, ING chief economist for greater China. “It might be [a case of] who blinks first.”

Song added: “It feels more like a test of endurance at this point — basically who feels the pain first and who has to come to the table with a slightly weaker bargaining position.”

Chinese markets rose on Tuesday after sustaining big falls on Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index jumped 3 per cent, led higher by the Chinese companies listed in the territory, while the mainland’s CSI 300 rose 0.3 per cent.

China’s financial regulators and state fund managers weighed in on Tuesday with vows to support the country’s stock market. Several Chinese companies also announced share buybacks.

Chinese experts said that while the world’s second-largest economy stood to suffer from Trump’s trade turmoil, Beijing would hold fast to its stance rather than concede to Washington.

“There is no possibility that Beijing would submit to Trump’s intimidation,” said Gao Jian, a Shanghai-based foreign policy expert with the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University.

Shi Yinhong, a government adviser and professor at Renmin University, said that while US-China trade stood to be “mostly destroyed”, Beijing’s hardline approach was unlikely to change.

“China stands out as the only country in the world that has taken a uniquely tough and uncompromising position in response to Trump’s tariff war,” Shi added, predicting that a new global trade paradigm would be “extremely disadvantageous for China”.

ONLINE

>>> US After Hours Summary: HUM +11.8%, CVS +6.6%, UNH +5.4% higher on WSJ repor

After Hours Summary: HUM +11.8%, CVS +6.6%, UNH +5.4% higher on WSJ report that private Medicare rates to rise; AVGO +3.1% on $10 bln share repurchase program; PCRX +15% settles patent litigation; LEVI +2.6%, PLAY +2.5% on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: LEVI +2.6%, PLAY +2.5%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: PCRX +15% (settles patent litigation), HUM +11.8% (Private Medicare plans to get large rate boost from Trump administration next year, according to WSJ), CVS +6.6% (Private Medicare plans to get large rate boost from Trump administration next year, according to WSJ), UNH +5.4% (Private Medicare plans to get large rate boost from Trump administration next year, according to WSJ), MRVL +4.2% (to sell its automotive ethernet business to Infineon for $2.5 bln), PNC +4% (names former BlackRock exec as president), AIR +3.3% (forms joint venture with KIRA Aviation), AVGO +3.1% (authorizes new $10 bln share repurchase program), NDAQ +2.9% (reports March trading volume), AGX +2.5% (receives notice to proceed on contract), GME +0.9% (CEO/Chairman Ryan Cohen bought 500000 shares), FANG +0.8% (files for 6,842,625 share offering by selling shareholder), NKE +0.8% (Director bought 8600 shares), CACI +0.4% (wins US Navy $66 mln task order), AAPL +0.4% (Consumers rushing to buy iPhones before tariffs, according to Bloomberg), CORZ +0.3% (provides March data)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: CVRX -18.2%, GBX -4.1%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: ASR -5% (reports March traffic)

WSJ : Private Medicare Plans to Get Big Payment Boost From Trump Administration

Private Medicare Plans to Get Big Payment Boost From Trump Administration
Medicare Advantage plans will get a 5.06% rate increase, well above the 2.23% bump that the Biden administration proposed

The Trump administration will substantially increase payment rates for Medicare insurers next year, generating more than $25 billion in additional revenue for the industry and doubling the boost proposed in January.

The rate increase of 5.06%, compared with 2.23% in the earlier proposal from the Biden administration, overshoots even optimistic expectations from many Wall Street analysts, and will likely lead to a rally in the shares of big Medicare insurers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and CVS Health, parent of Aetna.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced the increase for 2026 payment rates on Monday. Investors are expected to view the bump as a sign of the Trump administration’s support for Medicare Advantage, the program under which private insurers administer the benefits of the federal program for older and disabled Americans.

The Medicare agency said the increase in the planned payment rate reflected rising medical costs, and that more recent data had led to the steeper final rise compared with the January proposal.

The agency said it is “ensuring that Medicare Advantage continues to offer access to critical services in an efficient, accountable manner, further strengthening the program’s ability to serve beneficiaries.”

The Trump administration did stick with a Biden administration policy change that limits certain billing practices that have boosted payments to Medicare Advantage insurers. The change was being phased in over three years, to be completed in 2026, and the agency rejected suggestions from some insurers to pause the process.

The rate increase, combined with a rule issued last week that withdrew a Biden administration proposal to cover drugs for obesity, provides a turnaround for big insurers after a difficult year when the long-profitable Medicare business became a drag on margins and share prices.

Mehmet Oz, the new head of the Medicare agency, who was confirmed last week, had long been a strong supporter of private insurers’ role in Medicare.

More recently, though, he publicly criticized Medicare Advantage industry practices that can increase insurers’ payments by documenting more diagnoses in their patients. Medicare Advantage insurers get higher payouts when patients have certain conditions. During his Senate confirmation hearing, he criticized “upcoding” in Medicare Advantage and said, “I pledge if confirmed I will go after it.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in a series of articles last year that the federal government paid Medicare Advantage companies more than $50 billion for payment-boosting diseases that weren’t identified by any treating doctors or hospitals from 2019 to 2021. Findings from the stories were referenced in senators’ questions to Oz.

TechCrunch : Former Tesla exec Drew Baglino’s new startup is rethinking the elec

Former Tesla exec Drew Baglino’s new startup is rethinking the electrical transformer

Former Tesla executive Drew Baglino has a new startup developing solid-state transformers for the electric grid, Axios reported.

The new company, Heron Power, is raising between $30 million to $50 million for a Series A, according to the report, with Capricorn Investment Group pegged to lead the round.

Baglino was a longtime employee at Tesla, starting at the company in 2006, two years before Elon Musk took over as CEO. He rose through the ranks, designing the powertrain for the first Model S and leading engineering for Tesla’s battery storage products before being named senior vice president of powertrain and energy.

Baglino left Tesla last April, the same time the company laid off 10% of its staff.

In founding Heron Power, Baglino is tackling a part of the electrical grid that hasn’t seen much innovation in over a century. Transformers have been largely unchanged in that time, and having been commoditized, the majority of them are now made overseas.

Solid-state transformers are more capable than existing transformers, regulating dips in voltage that might arise from solar panels and wind turbines. They’re also a lot more compact, can quickly transition from one source of power to another, and can be actively managed, boosting grid stability.

Heron Power isn’t the only startup hoping to shake up the transformer market. Singapore-based Amperesand is also in the process of raising a Series A after closing a $12.5 million seed round in early 2024. Like Heron, Amperesand also counts Tesla alumni among its executive ranks.