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Runtime: 10:40
0:07 Happy St. Paddy’s Day
0:33 GM, Ford, FCA, Tesla Keep U.S. Plants Running
1:31 Automakers Offer Sales Incentives
1:54 Tesla Likely to Weather Storm Better Than Others
2:35 VW To Pay More Diesel Fines
3:33 Continental’s 3D Display
4:32 Hella Designs One Headlamp for The World
5:14 Ford Unveils Hybrid Kuga
6:15 Honda Goes Hog Wild with Hybrids
7:46 Honda Puts Designers on The Shop Floor
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
HAPPY ST. PADDY’S DAY
Well Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody. While there won’t be any parades or pub crawls today, I’ll tip a pint to all of you later this evening, and drink to your health and continued safety. The Autoline crew started preparing for this crisis a month ago, and we have the technology and processes to continue bringing you all of our programs. I’ll have more to say about that later in the show, but now let’s get to the news.
GM, FORD, FCA, TESLA KEEP US PLANTS RUNNING
It’s doom and gloom in the auto industry as automakers, suppliers and dealers all over the world are bracing for a big drop in sales due to the coronavirus. Auto plants in China are starting to come back on stream, but they’re closing down all across Europe. In the U.S., automakers are keeping their assembly lines running, but UAW workers in several plants are demanding time off to self-quarantine and they want more hand sanitizers in bathrooms and cafeterias. Amazingly, Autoforecast Solutions reports that many assembly plants from GM, Ford and FCA are scheduled to be running on overtime this month, including 8 plants from GM, 6 from Ford and 6 from FCA. But sales are undoubtedly going to fall dramatically, and we bet that overtime will get tossed out the window post haste.
| U.S. PLANTS RUNNING ON OVERTIME |
|---|
| FCA |
| Bramalea |
| Jefferson North |
| Saltillo |
| Toledo North |
| Toledo Supplier Park |
| Warren |
| FORD |
| Dearborn |
| Flat Rock |
| Kansas City 1 |
| Kansas City 2 |
| Kentucky |
| Michigan |
| GENERAL MOTORS |
| Fairfax |
| Flint No. 2 |
| Fort Wayne |
| Lansing Delta |
| Lansing Grand |
| San Luis Potosi |
| Spring Hill Wentzville |
| Source: AutoForecast Solutions |
AUTOMAKERS OFFER SALES INCENTIVES
To entice customers into showrooms General Motors began offering 0% financing for 7 years. Ford is allowing customers to not make payments on a new car for 90 days. Hyundai is also offering deferred payments for 90 days, and will make car payments for 6 months for any new car buyer who gets laid off.
TESLA LIKELY TO WEATHER STORM BETTER THAN OTHERS
The timing of all this could not come at a worse time for the launch of several new cars. C8 Corvettes are just starting to show up at dealerships. And Tesla just started deliveries of its Model Y. Tesla will likely weather the storm much better than most automakers. For one thing, it too is keeping the assembly lines humming at its plant in Fremont, California. For another, most of those Model Ys are pre-sold and customers are eager to take delivery. So Tesla will not have to lure customers to its stores, and besides, they can do all their ordering online from the comfort of their homes.
VW TO PAY MORE DIESEL FINES
OMG, that diesel emission cheating scandal at Volkswagen, which started nearly five years ago, is far from over. The company’s Chief Financial Officer, Frank Witter, says the scandal so far has cost VW over 31 billion euros in fines and settlements. And he’s warning investors that it could pay another 4 billion euros in fines next year. While that’s a lot of money, when the scandal first broke some analysts believed it could cost VW as much as $70 billion, so it could have been a lot worse.
CONTINENTAL’S 3D DISPLAY
Often, when we’re talking about technologies that suppliers are working on, we end the story saying ’and so and so expects this to hit the market in the next few years.’ While that doesn’t always happen, here’s one that did. We’ve shown you a couple of versions of Continental’s 3D display and it just announced that the new Genesis GV80 will use it. The 3D display doesn’t require goggles or glasses. Instead, slanted slats divide the image, so two different, slightly offset views reach the right and left eye, which your brain processes into a three-dimensional image. The system also uses an interior camera to detect the driver’s head position and will adjust the 3D view to that. Continental says it’s developing a new 3D system that doesn’t need an interior camera and is smaller and lighter as well. That system is planned for production by 2022.
HELLA DESIGNS ONE HEADLAMP FOR THE WORLD
As you know, there’s different rules and regulations for different regions of the world. For example, a single global vehicle model with left- and right-hand drive variants may have up to 12 headlamp combinations. Lighting supplier Hella is changing that. Each individual pixel in its new world headlamp can be adjusted by software according to the region it’s going to be used in. Hella says the new light will launch this summer in a premium manufacturer’s vehicle. And that will make car assembly a lot easier, since automakers can install one type of headlamps no matter where they export those vehicles.
FORD UNVEILS HYBRID KUGA
In Europe the Ford Kuga, known as the Escape in the U.S. market, is the first vehicle in the automaker’s lineup to feature a mild-, full- and plug-in hybrid option and we’ve got more detail on the plug-in. It combines a 2.5L four-cylinder Atkinson-cycle engine with an electric motor/generator and a 14.4 kWh battery pack. Ford said the Escape plug-in would get over 30 miles of range in the U.S. and when we convert the Kuga’s 56 WLTP kilometers to EPA miles it comes to about 31, so there’s really no difference between the European and North American versions. Ford says it will offer 18 electrified vehicles in Europe before the end of 2021.
HONDA GOES HOG WILD WITH HYBRIDS
Honda is making a big push with hybrid vehicles. By 2030, it says hybrids will comprise 50% of its global vehicle sales. And to achieve that, it added a hybrid version to the CR-V lineup. In fact, the company expects it to become its best-selling hybrid in the U.S. It’s powered by a 2.0L four-cylinder Atkinson Cycle engine and two electric motors. It’s rated at 38 MPG combined but in our time behind the wheel, we hit over 40 MPG. However, that was in limited driving time and in admittedly ideal conditions. There are four driving modes; Normal, Sport, Eco and EV, which do a good job of changing the driving dynamics of the crossover. You can also use the paddle shifters, to adjust the regenerative braking, which also improves the driving experience. It’s real time all-wheel-drive system works smoothly and gives you confidence when the road conditions aren’t good. And we’d guess most people wouldn’t realize it’s a hybrid unless they were told. The interior is nice, the seats are comfortable and the dash isn’t cluttered with too many buttons. And while there isn’t as much cargo room as the gasoline version, engineers were able to package the battery so the second-row seats can fold flat. The CR-V Hybrid is built at the company’s plant in Indiana and is on sale now. It starts just under $29,000.
HONDA PUTS DESIGNERS ON THE SHOP FLOOR
And speaking of Honda, it goes to great lengths to make sure its designers understand what’s going on inside its manufacturing plants so they design products that can be assembled more easily. On last week’s Autoline After Hours we were joined by Rob May, the VP of Honda of America Manufacturing and his wife Gail, who works at Acura’s plant that builds the NSX. And they talked about why Honda makes its designers work on the factory floor, when they’re designing a new vehicle.
Rob May, VP, Honda of America Manufacturing
“We’re trying to use more collaboration between the designers and the people that actually touch the parts. You know, we spend time having the designers come to the factories, to understand exactly what it looks like, what it feels like to do the process, actually have designers do the process. So they kind of understand some of the challenges. Under the watchful eye of our experts.”
Gary Vasilash
“So you have a designer go in and is working and doing a job on the line?”
Rob May
“That’s not out of the realm of possibility for us to consider doing things like that. Because again, it bridges that gap between what designers think and what our manufacturing technicians think and it also I think builds a relationship. So, when we do need subtle changes to a process, there’s some understanding as to how difficult processing that is. Looking is one thing but when you actually put gloves on and parts on the car, certainly it takes on another dimension.”
Gail May. Performance Manufacturing Center, Acura
“What’s interesting about that too is, every one of us when we started at Honda, it’s kind of our culture, you start on the assembly line. So I’m an engineer, thinking I’m hiring into an engineering job, which I did, but it started with about three months working in every department on the line to understand what it actually takes to put a car together, to build a car. So that just taught us a lot. So that in the jobs that we’re in, we need to understand what they’re struggling with and then we negotiate with the design side to make sure it’s something we can actually manufacture.”
You can watch that entire show right now on our website or you can find it on our YouTube channel. And we’ll continue to bring you Autoline After Hours even with the coronavirus crisis. Coming up this Thursday we’ll have Jeff Trumble who came up with a simple, but brilliant way to improve just about every manufacturing operation. You’ll be impressed. And we’re going to do this show remotely, with all of us participating from home, which will be another technological first for Autoline After Hours.
But that’s it for today, thanks for watching and we’ll see you again tomorrow.
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John McElroy is an influential thought leader in the automotive industry. He is a journalist, lecturer, commentator and entrepreneur. He created “Autoline Daily,” the first industry webcast of industry news and analysis.
