AD #2938 – Lucid Reveals Base Air Price; CARB Urges Automakers to Admit Cheating; Startup Claims to Slash Lidar Costs

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

LUCID ANNOUNCES BASE AIR PRICE
The battle between Lucid Motors and Tesla is starting to heat up. Lucid revealed that the base version of its Air sedan will have a starting price of $77,400 but when you include the $7,500 federal tax credit, it drops to just under $70,000. And it didn’t take Elon Musk long to respond. After Lucid’s announcement, Tesla’s CEO tweeted “The gauntlet has been thrown down! The prophecy will be fulfilled. Model S price changes to $69,420 tonight!” That undercuts the price of the Air by about $500. But Tesla still has some breathing room before the base Air sedan hits the market in 2022. Lucid is launching its more expensive models first in 2021. This is an interesting development. Up to now Tesla has pretty much had the EV segment to itself. But with more and more EVs entering the market, we could see more price cuts from Tesla to try and stay ahead of the competition.

BMW AWARDS POINTS FOR ELECTRIC ONLY DRIVING
BMW has a unique way to encourage the use of plug-in hybrid vehicles. It created a points system that owners can then exchange for free charging. Here’s how it works. A point is awarded for every kilometer driven in pure electric mode. Double points are given out when travelling in ‘green zones,’ which are areas that don’t allow vehicles to run on internal combustion. The points are collected automatically via the My BMW App. 1,250 points is the equivalent of a 10 euro credit, 3,000 points equals 25 euro and 5,800 points is 50 euro. The service is only available in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, but BMW will roll it out to other markets throughout the remainder of the year.

DAIMLER TO SLASH F1 COSTS
When Ola Kallenius, the CEO of Daimler, announced that the company is going to slash costs including R&D we wondered if Mercedes-Benz would continue its involvement in Formula One. After all, Mercedes could probably save $300 to $400 million a year if dropped out of F1. But Kallenius just gave his full-throated support for their Formula One effort. However, he said they are going to cut their F1 costs in half over the next three years. We wonder if that means Mercedes will only be an engine supplier and not field its own team. Kallenius said Mercedes is also working on a plan to make motor racing emissions-neutral by using synthetic fuel.

NEW REGULATION BANS ILLUMINATED HOOD ORNAMENTS
We know that rules are regulations are in place for a reason but sometimes there’s little stipulations in there that make absolutely no sense and keep us from having things that we think are cool. Like in the U.S., rules and regulations don’t allow for adaptive high beam headlights or true, fully sequential turn signals. And newer lighting rules in the EU have banned the use of illuminated hood ornaments. It’s believed to be part of a wider crackdown on so-called ‘light pollution.’ This particularly impacts Rolls-Royce, which has offered a light up version of its Spirit of Ecstacy for four years now. The feature costs 3,500 pounds or a little over $4,500, but Rolls is now telling owners it’s required to shut them off by law. So, the automaker is offering full refunds, a silver-plated Spirit of Ecstasy as a replacement or another option from its list.

CARB URGES AUTOMAKERS TO REVEAL CHEATING
The California Air Resources Board is urging automakers and engine manufacturers to tell it about any unapproved hardware or software that could impact a vehicle’s emissions. If you’re like us, your first reaction might be ‘Why the – blank – would an automaker do that?’ But here’s our Autoline Insight. Companies that self report will have their fines reduced, which can be a big incentive when fines creep into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars range. CARB could also go after harsher penalties by saying, ‘hey, we gave you a chance to turn yourself in’ and failure to report may affect the result of future enforcement actions as well. The California Air Resources Board has already collected more than a billion dollars in fines from automakers and it could soon rake in more. It currently has other emission investigations going and next year it will open a new state-of-the-art testing facility that could find further violations.

JAPAN CREATING HYDROGEN FUEL NETWORK
One the biggest obstacles fuel cell vehicles face is a proper refueling infrastructure. It’s basically non-existent. So to help kickstart that segment, Japan announced plans to develop a hydrogen fuel supply chain by 2030. And at the same time, Toyota and eight other Japanese companies formed a committee called the Japan Hydrogen Association, to promote the creation of a hydrogen supply chain as well as global partnerships in the hydrogen segment. While there’s many skeptics who question the viability of fuel cells, it seems like every week more and more companies are investing in the technology.

STARTUP SLASHES COST OF LIDAR
Elon Musk says autonomous vehicles don’t need lidar. But almost every other automaker in the world that is working on AVs is giong with lidar. And Innoviz, an Israeli lidar startup, says it’s coming out with a new unit that will slash the cost of lidar by 70%. While it did not say what it’s new unit will cost, Innoviz hints it will be under $500. What we found significant is that Innoviz already makes solid state lidar, so that 70% cost reduction comes from a lot of other improvements, and not from switching to solid state. BMW already uses lidar from Innoviz for hands-free driving on the highway, and presumably will use the new unit when it becomes available in the third quarter of next year.

Design and manufacturing teams are often at odds over styling. Wild, dramatic designs look cool but building vehicles like that in high volume is a logistical nightmare. That’s why the production version of a vehicle isn’t as expressive as the concept. But on last week’s Autoline After Hours, Ken Sheridan, the Manufacturing Leader of the Acura TLX, told us about new manufacturing techniques the company is using to make that car more stylish.

Ken Sheridan, Manufacturing Leader, Acura TLX
“So if you look at the styling lines on the hood, it has a first time applied sharp edge technology for us. So, we’re able to take advantage of some of our equipment that we have in house. So we have a high tonnage stamping servo press, that we can start getting into stamping these complex shapes onto that sharp edge hood. Where this is the first time in our factory that we’ve been able to do aluminum fenders with some of those complex shapes. Or if you look at the back of the car, the back of the car has those really deep hips that come out. So this is the deepest drawn SVO that we’ve ever done in high volume manufacturing. So back to your question, when you talk about when you get to that clay model of those first concepts, the kind of stuff that Jason’s (Performance Development Leader, Acura TLX) dreaming about, a lot of times the manufacturing side has to push back and say ‘we can’t do that.’ But in this case, we were actually able to take advantage of some of these weld equipment we have in-house or stamping equipment we have in-house and really collaborate as one team and deliver that concept that Jason and his team kind of dreamed about.”

John McElroy
“Ken a follow up on that. You know Honda has historically avoided deep draws, because it slows your press line down. Instead of running, I don’t know, 18 to 20 strokes a minute, you’re probably running 12 strokes a minute or something like that. What was the thinking behind changing that philosophy, going more for styling, even at the sacrifice of manufacturing efficiency?”

Ken Sheridan, Manufacturing Leader, Acura TLX
“I think we have to do that because in the automotive industry, the way that we’re kind of turning right now, the sedan or the car market, sales continue to be more competitive or shrink and the SUV sales continue to go up. So we have to come up with a car that looks different than the other cars that we have. We really need to get that seven second knock-out or that wow factor when you first see this car. So, in order to do that we really got to go after those deep styling lines and we really got to try to make an impression.”

Be sure to join us for Autoline After Hours this afternoon at 3 pm eastern time. Our guest is Thomas Mally, the Associate Chief Vehicle Engineer, from Nissan’s Technical Center. We’re going to learn how Nissan significantly upgraded the all new Sentra and Rogue. Tom Murphy from Wards will also be on the show, so join John and Gary as we let you learn from some of the top talent in the automotive industry.

That’s a wrap for this show. Thanks for watching.