AD #2436 – BMW’s Tesla Fighter, China Market Down…Yet Again, Dixon Wins 5th IndyCar Championship

On today’s show…the EPA changes its test procedures as a result of Volkswagen’s cheating…Elon Musk goes from one hell to another…and you can’t believe how fast an electric semi can accelerate. All that and more coming right up on Autoline Daily.

This is Autoline Daily the voice of the automotive industry.

ELON GOES TO HELL
If you told Elon Musk to go to hell, he’d probably tell you he’s already there. At first Musk talked about the “production hell” Tesla is going through, trying to get the Model 3 up to speed. And now he says the company is going through “delivery logistics hell.” Elon made the comment in a tweet responding to a woman who was complaining about how the delivery of her car was postponed yet again. He said the company is making progress and the problem should be resolved shortly. In the second quarter, Tesla built more than 53,000 vehicles but only delivered 40,000 of them.

DIXON WINS 5TH INDYCAR CHAMPIONSHIP
Lots of racing over the weekend. In IndyCar, Scott Dixon won the championship in his Honda-powered car for the Ganassi team. That makes 5 IndyCar championships for the New Zealander, second only to the legendary A.J. Foyt. But the last race of the season at Sonoma Raceway was actually won by Ryan Hunter-Reay, in his Honda-powered car for the Andretti Autosports team. In fact, Honda took the constructors championship for the first time.

HAMILTON WINS SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX
In Formula One, Lewis Hamilton took his Mercedes from pole position to checkered flag and won the Singapore Grand Prix, extending his championship lead over Sebastian Vettel whose Ferrari finished third, with Max Verstappen taking his Renault-powered Red Bull to second place.

KESELOWSKI HANDS PENSKE 500TH WIN
In NASCAR, Brad Keselowski took his third win in a row in his Ford Fusion at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and giving Penske Racing its 500th win including all the motorsports categories it has raced in. 500 is a lot and arguably makes the Penske organization the best racing team in history.

Still to come…BMW morphs the i3 into the iNext.

ELECTRIC SEMIS ARE FAST OFF THE LINE
When you come up to a traffic light and you see a semi-truck ahead of you, do you try to get in the other lane so that truck won’t hold you up? Of course you do. Some semis are so slow that the light will turn red again before you can get through the intersection. But electric semis are significantly faster than diesel ones. Toyota released this comparison, with a diesel semi on top and a fuel cell powered on the bottom. Both are loaded with 35,000 pounds of weight. And it’s no contest, the electric semi is significantly faster than the diesel–so much so that you’d probably be happy to stay in the same lane if you came up behind one at a red light.

BMW’S TESLA FIGHTER
BMW showed off its vision for the future with a concept called the iNEXT. It’s an electric crossover that combines autonomy, connectivity and mobility services into one vehicle. The driver can choose to drive themselves, what BMW calls “Boost” mode, or have the vehicle do the driving or “Ease” mode. When the vehicle is driving autonomously, the steering wheel retracts to provide more space for the passengers. The display screens also switch from driving related information to “Exploration Mode,” which provides suggestions of places to go. The iNEXT will be produced at BMW’s Dingolfing plant in Germany and it will be introduced into the market in 2021.

Coming up next, the EPA changes how it tests cars to prevent automakers from cheating.

EPA CHANGES TEST PROCEDURES TO PREVENT CHEATING
One of the results of the Volkswagen diesel cheating scandal is that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has changed the way that it tests cars because it felt it was too predictable. So now it’s going to what they call 3 by 3 testing. The EPA will now test cars at three different times during their lifetime, using 3 different test methods. And it is not divulging what one of those tests are to make it more difficult to cheat. The agency is even doing random testing of cars right off the assembly line. And it’s visiting OEM test labs in Japan, China and Europe to see that they’re properly calibrating and measuring cars that will be shipped to the U.S. market. The EPA says it has to ensure a level playing field amongst all OEMs, so that those who try to cheat don’t get an advantage.

CHINA MARKET DOWN…YET AGAIN
And here’s something that caught our attention. We all know that China is now the largest car market in the world and is growing by leaps and bounds. Well now we’re starting to see a slowdown that’s caught everyone by surprise. WardsAuto reports that sales in China, including heavy trucks and busses, fell nearly 4% in July. Automotive News is reporting they fell 4.6% in August. Sales in China are still up for the year, but we’re going to have to keep an eye on this and see if trouble is brewing in that market.

But that wraps up today’s show, thanks for watching and please join us again tomorrow.