Business
California EV sales inch up but Tesla posts a decline
— EV sales and leases tick higher, but Tesla posts a decline in latest quarterly numbers.
— Tesla still dominates EV sales in California, accounting for more than half of EV sales and leases.
Electric vehicle registrations rose 2% in California for the three months that ended Sept. 30 compared with the year-earlier period, but top-selling EV maker Tesla saw a 3.5% decline, according to the latest report from car dealers.
Tesla moved 57,587 vehicles for the third quarter — which still accounts for more than half of the 102,044 EVs sold or leased in the state for the period, according to the California New Car Dealers Assn. The third-quarter sales decline for Tesla follows drops of 7.8% in the first quarter and 17% in the second. Year to date, Tesla’s California sales and leases have declined 12.6%. Globally, for the third quarter, Tesla sales rose 6.4% as the new Cybertruck made up for sagging sales of the Model 3 and Model Y.
Tesla’s dip in sales comes amid increasing competition from other automakers rolling out new EVs, especially at lower price points. It could also be a reflection of Tesla owner Elon Musk’s prominent support of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump in left-leaning California. “I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy” is the slogan on one bumper sticker that can be found on many Teslas these days.
“Unfortunately for Elon, a certain amount of his consumer base is not a fan of what’s given him a high profile over the past year,” said Karl Brauer, auto market analyst at iSeeCars.com.
Alexis Tjian of Berkeley sold her Tesla Model Y several months ago and bought a Rivian. She and her husband were unhappy with the Model Y’s quality and Tesla’s service, she said, but Musk’s politics and increasingly bizarre behavior were the last straw: “We said we’re done. He doesn’t align with our values anymore.”
Other EV makers saw high percentage gains but on a much smaller base. Year to date, Kia jumped 64%, to 10,584 vehicles, while Hyundai posted a 30.5% increase with 16,433 vehicles. Both South Korean carmakers occupy the more-affordable segment of the EV market, and also offer what Brauer calls attractive leasing options.
Ford posted a 17.3% jump in California EV sales and leases, to 12,828 vehicles for the quarter. BMW rose 36%, on 14,610.
Sales and leases of General Motors’ Chevrolet EVs plummeted 48% to 8,817 vehicles. The automaker’s fortunes might improve in the months ahead, however, with the recent launch of two new crossovers, the Equinox EV and the Blazer EV. Trade journal Automotive News reports those vehicles are already among the ten top-selling EVs nationally.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has mandated that 35% of California car sales and leases be for EVs and plug-in hybrids by 2026, rising to 100% by 2035.
But the pace of EV sales has slowed dramatically after several years of torrid growth. New car market share for battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rocketed from 7.6% of new registrations in 2020 to 12.2% in 2021, 19.1% in 2022 and 24.9% in 2023.
For the first nine months of this year, however, the market share has inched up to 25.6%, amid continuing concerns among some consumers over the higher cost for EVs and so-called range anxiety.
Josh Boone, executive director of Veloz, a nonprofit consumer resource for electric vehicles, said he remains optimistic. “From our perspective, we’re continuing to see remarkable sales momentum across California,” he said. “EV market share is still increasing.”
Acknowledging that growth needs to pick up to reach state goals, he said that “we also understand that any high-tech market has ebbs and flows.”
He also put a positive spin on Tesla’s loss in popularity among many Californians, and their move to competing makes and models: “More competition is good.”
Yet, impediments to growth remain. Brauer believes California’s botched rollout of public EV charging stations is a major hurdle. Tesla has earned a strong reputation for reliable charging stations, while public chargers built to serve other brands continue to suffer from overcrowding and poor performance.
Brauer says a recent journey in a rented Hyundai Ioniq 5 became “a nightmare,” a “hugely stressful and time wasting Friday evening” when he spent four hours searching for a working charger and then waiting in a long line to fill up for the 50 miles to get him to his destination.
“That was not a fun four hours,” he said, and unless public charging improves, “I will never buy an electric car.”
Business
Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
Business
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Business
How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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