AD # 2887 – GM & EVgo Partner to Add More Fast Chargers; Chinese Car Demand Still Weak; Ford Bronco Door Design

This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.

CONSUMER DEMAND IN CHINA STILL WEAK
At first glance, sales in China look like they recovered from the pandemic. LMC Automotive reports that sales were up 6.6% in June. But it says those are wholesale numbers, meaning they’re deliveries from the factories to their dealers, not retail numbers. It says that inventory is piling up and is 26% above a year ago. And that means consumer demand is still weak.   

CHINESE AUTO INDUSTRY HEADED FOR MAJOR SHAKEOUT
And it sure looks like the Chinese auto industry is headed for a major shakeout. LMC says that the top 30 car brands command 90% of the market. That leaves 75 brands to fight over the remaining 10%. Even more telling, the top 10 brands have 60% of the Chinese market. And the shakeout will also hit the electric car segment. 50 EV startups jumped into the segment, but LMC says all but 5 of them have seen their funding dry up and it wonders if any of them will survive.

RUSSIA CONSIDERS BREATHALYZERS FOR CARS
Russia has a reputation for being a nation of heavy drinkers and with that comes drunk drivers. But now the government is considering a mandate to equip cars with breathalyzers to help curb drunk driving. Around 17,000 Russians were killed in traffic accidents last year and a large number of those were caused by drunk drivers. Russia is hoping to have a plan by the end of the year but past attempts to require alcohol interlocks have been unsuccessful. Carmakers in the country are likely to oppose the new rule as well because it will add cost to vehicles, which could hurt sales.

OPEL ADDS OFF-ROAD CAPABILITY TO ITS VANS
Last month, Ford of Europe introduced Active versions of its Tourneo and Transit Connect vans. The trim adds things like rugged SUV skid plates and cladding as well as a raised ride height. And now Opel is making its vans a bit more off-road capable. The Combo Cargo and Vivaro vans are now available with all-wheel-drive, a higher ground clearance and underbody protection. It’s a 6,400 euro option for the Combo and a 6,600 euro option in the Vivaro.

GM & EVgo PARTNER TO ADD MORE EV FAST CHARGERS
General Motors is collaborating with EVgo to triple the number of public fast charging stations in the U.S. They will build 2,700 fast chargers over the next five years. The chargers will be installed in areas that most people go to frequently like grocery stores, retail outlets, and entertainment locations. Each station will be able to charge four vehicles at a time, with 100 to 350 kilowatt capability, and all the electricity will come from renewable sources. Strangely, GM did not mention the partnership it announced a year ago with the giant construction firm Bechtel to build thousands of EV charging stations across the U.S. They announced they were going to create a separate corporation to lead the effort. But it never happened. Autoline contacted GM to find out what’s going on and we were told that GM and Bechtel “continue to explore opportunities.” But with the EVgo announcement, it sounds to us that the other deal is dead.

PSA GROUP INTRODUCES NEW EV PLATFORM
In other EV news, the PSA Group will move away from the two platforms its vehicles are currently built on to two fully electric platforms. The first will be the Electric Vehicle Modular Platform or eVMP for C- and D-segment sedans and SUVs, which will start hitting the market in 2023. The battery is mounted in the floor of the architecture and provides 60 to 100 kWh of capacity. That’s expected to return a range of 400 to 650 kilometers or roughly 250 to 400 miles based on the WLTP test cycle. While most of the vehicles that use the platform will be electric, PSA says hybrid versions will be offered in certain markets. 

WULING UNVEILS NEW VICTORY VAN
Chinese automaker Wuling, which is joint venture partners with GM, revealed more information about its all-new Victory MPV, the first to wear the brand’s new silver logo and a vehicle that sounds like it will be offered in markets outside of China. It looks to be a nicely styled vehicle with three rows of seating and a body made mostly from high-strength steel, which helps allow the Victory to brag it has the largest sunroof in its segment. The interior is clean and simple, highlighted by a flat bottom steering wheel, which gives a bit of a sporting feel, and a floating LCD screen. Note how it curls up between the two-tone dash, almost like a weed growing through a crack in the cement, an interesting take on the “floating” screen design I’m not sure I’ve seen before. When the Victory launches, which hasn’t been announced yet, it will also come with a number of driver assist features, like adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking. 

Every year we go to the Management Briefing Seminars, or MBS as everyone calls it, which is put on by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. But because of the Covid pandemic, this year MBS is going virtual, and so will our coverage of the conference.  We’ll be providing condensed wrap ups that hit the highlights of what was discussed. We call them the Cliff Notes of the conference, and we’ll start posting them tomorrow afternoon so you can learn what the industry experts are talking about.

FORD BRONCO DOOR DESIGN
The Ford Bronco sure is attracting a lot of attention. And on Autoline After Hours we learned a ton of how Ford went about designing those models because our guest was Paul Wraith, the Chief Designer. One of the topics we got into was how they went about designing the doors for easy removal. It’s actually a lot more involved than you might think. And they got the idea of how to do it by watching a customer who loves off-roading, in this case a young woman who works as a nanny. Take a look.

Paul Wraith, Chief Designer, Ford Bronco
“What if we can put them inside the vehicle? Then there’s always a place for them to go. In order to do that, you got to make them small enough to go in the vehicle. And that took us to the frameless doors. So the process of removal is you drop the glass down into the door, you swing the door open and now the door is nice and small. There’s a few things we have to do to make the door really slim. So coming back to that comment about stiffness into the metal using the design. But also some real efficiencies on how we engineered the doors out. But then she’s not a huge person, so how’s she going to go and do this? So we need to carry the weight of the door and make the door as light as possible. It’s alloy, it’s light as we can make it. But then we put the right contact points onto the door. We need to make sure the removal process of the door is really easy. So it’s like one tool. The electrical connection to the door doesn’t require a degree in electrical engineering. It’s just a simple plug, it’s no more complicated than taking a socket out of the wall. The check arm doesn’t require a second process to remove because the check arm for the check is built into the door. So that just comes straight off with it. It’s a real simple process. And then the bags came in as a means of not only protecting the door while they’re being handled because we saw lots of scratched up doors from other manufacturers. But also as a way of shouldering the weight of the door and making it easy to manhandle around. Because you can lift it with your hands but if you can support it equally on your shoulder as well, that makes it a much more easy process. That’s one end of that whole kind of process but the other side of it is in order to make the door small enough we needed to take the mirrors off them. And we need to put the mirrors onto the body. Now you can say there’s nothing new under the sun about that because old vehicles always had the mirrors on the fender. But they didn’t have to deal with the legislation that we have to deal with. So the legislation on mirrors is extremely detailed and exacting and you got to get it right.”

There’s a lot of great insight like that in the rest of the show, and if you want to learn more about the Broncos, you can watch the entire show on our website or YouTube channel.

And then be sure to catch this week’s Autoline After Hours when our guest will be Mark Del Rosso, the CEO for Genesis in North America. Hyundai botched the launch of Genesis and it’s Del Rosso’s job to get it straightened out. He has a ton of automotive experience having worked at Toyota, at Bentley and at Audi. So we invite you to join us, to learn how he is going to rebuild Genesis in the American market.

And that wraps up today’s show, welcome to a new week, and a new month, of Autoline Daily.