EV sales slow, US Treasury yields grow, 'Niu Lai' has impressive box office mojo

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
N-P-R.

**Adrian Ma** (0:06)
This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm your host, Adrian Ma.

**Ricky Mulvey** (0:09)
I'm your other host, Ricky Mulvey.

**Adrian Ma** (0:11)
And joining us from Producer Land is our third host, Coolest Cucumber, Mr. Cooper Katz, McKim.

**Cooper Katz McKim** (0:17)
Hello, welcome to me. Thank you for having me.

**Adrian Ma** (0:21)
It's time for Indicators of the Week.

**Ricky Mulvey** (0:24)
We're here to tell you about the most interesting numbers in the news this week.

**Adrian Ma** (0:28)
On today's show, we've got the ups and downs of EV sales, a movie so terrible it became a box office hit, and the US Treasury bonds hovering a little high.

**Ricky Mulvey** (0:38)
That's after the break.

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**Adrian Ma** (1:45)
Cooper Katz McKim, start us off.

**Cooper Katz McKim** (1:47)
Okay, so my indicator is 27%. That is how much electric vehicle sales have fallen in North America year over year since last July, which is interesting because electric vehicle sales pretty much everywhere else are very much up. The rest of the world has seen more than 10% year over year growth.

**Ricky Mulvey** (2:07)
It's kind of nuts. This is happening at a time where gas is hovering near, what, $4 a gallon right now, Cooper?

**Cooper Katz McKim** (2:13)
Yeah, I think everybody else understood the assignment. The US is working on it.

**Ricky Mulvey** (2:18)
I like my large SUV.

**Cooper Katz McKim** (2:20)
We all do. Europe is leading the way with new sales in part due to government support. Spain, for example, has its own incentive program, giving buyers up to more than $5,000 if they bought an EV.

**Adrian Ma** (2:32)
And I guess the lack of government support is contributing to decline sales here in the US.

**Urien Timmer** (2:37)
Right.

**Cooper Katz McKim** (2:38)
So last September, Trump officially ended the federal EV purchase initiative. But guys, here is where it gets interesting because EV sales is just one part of the story that interested me. Since 2022, there's been a tsunami of investment in the battery manufacturing in the US.
And in part, that was to serve electric vehicles. So what's a factory to do without that demand?

**Ricky Mulvey** (3:01)
Got to go looking for a new customer if you can find one.

**Cooper Katz McKim** (3:03)
Right. So Ford, GM, LG, all these battery making companies are turning their eye towards grid scale storage batteries.

**Ricky Mulvey** (3:11)
Those are the things that can hold on to power generated from like wind, solar or whatever it is for later.

**Cooper Katz McKim** (3:19)
Exactly. So Ford had planned this massive facility to focus on EV batteries. But now the factory will be a hub for grid scale batteries. Its hope is to find a certain kind of customer.
Can we guess who I am talking about?

**Adrian Ma** (3:32)
Data centers?

**Cooper Katz McKim** (3:33)
Yes, you're right.
The ultimate customer of 2026 We've talked on the show about battery demand increasing with more solar and wind. I mean, data centers are just going to create an insane level of new demand.

**Ricky Mulvey** (3:44)
So it sounds like these battery factories are going to be just fine.

**Cooper Katz McKim** (3:47)
I think that's right. I reported this segment, by the way, for the Indicators Weekly Newsletter. If you haven't signed up for that, it's at npr.org/indicatornewsletter, or you can find the link in the show notes.

**Adrian Ma** (3:57)
Okay. Ricky Mauvy.

**Ricky Mulvey** (3:59)
My indicator this week is 5.3%.
That is the yield on a 30-year US Treasury bond. And that's the average return investors now want to lend the government their money. And that is the highest it's been in nearly two decades.

**Adrian Ma** (4:15)
I mean, this number is a big deal in the economic world.