DETROIT – If electric pickup trucks from Detroit automakers take off, auto supplier Magna International is in a unique position to benefit from producing a key vehicle part. . The Canadian company manufactures loudspeaker enclosures for the lithium-ion batteries of the Ford F-150 Lightning and Hummer EV pickup trucks. Components are built to the highest standards and are important to the vehicle, including helping to protect the battery in the event of a crash. Magna expects its enclosure business to go from nothing last year to $600 million by 2024; then continue to climb to $1.5 billion by 2027. CEO Swamy Kotagiri expects Magna to add several other vehicles to the business. “The beauty of all of this is that every electric car will have one, right?” he said in a recent briefing after an investor event. “So that’s why we’re so excited about it, it’s a huge product line.” Both products are custom made for pickup trucks. Ford’s is aluminum and matches the vehicle’s frame. The GM is steel and doubles as the frame. The new business is one reason the 65-year-old auto supplier is optimistic about the future opportunity with electric vehicles. Magna has raised the forecast value of the EV business to more than $4.5 billion by 2027, up 12.5% from last year’s estimate of $4 billion. For context, the company reported total sales of $36 billion in 2021, making it one of the largest auto suppliers globally. RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak says increased exposure to electric vehicles and other growing segments puts Magna “better positioned going forward” and supports expectations of rapid growth in the second half. of the decade. “The growing confidence in (long-term) electrification goals stems from a string of strong booked and unreserved businesses that the company is seeing today and should provide a point of proof.” that the strategy of accelerating capital deployment to high-growth regions is working,” Spak wrote in an investor note Tuesday. Although Magna has a non-EV business from 2031, the company is being extremely cautious about adding any new capacity to its old operations, Kotagiri said. . “We’re cautious about bringing up any possibility in that. We’ll just do it on a programmatic basis to support it,” he told CNBC in an interview. “Unlike electrification, where we are investing in R&D, product roadmap and future.” Magna says it will deliver “important content” on about a dozen new electric vehicles this year. In addition to pickup trucks, projects include the Rivian R1S, BMW iX, Volkswagen ID Buzz and the upcoming Nio ES7. Magna also has a deal with Fisker to build the transatlantic vessel starting later this year. Henrik Fisker, CEO of the EV startup, told CNBC’s Phil LeBeau earlier this month that the companies now plan to triple Ocean’s production from 50,000 vehicles in 2023 to 150,000 annually by end of 2024. Magna’s stock is down more than 25% since the beginning of 2022.
Production has now begun at the former Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, less than two years after GM announced a massive $2.2 billion investment to renovate the entire facility to build a variety of vehicles. electric trucks and SUVs.
Jeffrey Sauger’s photo for General Motors
DETROIT – If electric pickups from Detroit automakers take off, auto supplier Magna International in a unique position to benefit from the production of a vital part of the vehicle.
