AD #3189 – Tesla Lands Massive Order from Hertz; XPeng Shows Off Flying Car; Canada Slams Union EV Tax Credit

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

CANADA SLAMS UNION EV TAX CREDIT
The Biden Administration continues to get push back for its EV credit proposal that would give an extra $4,500 to union-made cars in the U.S. Last month, a group of 12 foreign automakers sent a letter to Congress urging it to drop the proposal. Tesla has also criticized it. Now the Canadian government is slamming the union tax credit saying it would damage the North American auto industry and that it isn’t consistent with current trade agreements. Canada’s trade minister says the tax credit would have a negative impact on Canadian production, which would also harm U.S. workers because the country’s supply chains are deeply integrated. And in an interview on SiriusXM, VW of America CEO Scott Keogh said the extra tax credit for union made EVs is “fundamentally wrong” and that all vehicles assembled in the U.S. should qualify equally for the credit.

TESLA LANDS MASSIVE ORDER FROM HERTZ
Tesla just landed a massive order. Hertz just signed up for 100,000 Teslas that it will rent out to customers in North America by the end of 2022. And Hertz signed up seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady to do television commercials to promote this. Customers will be able to use Tesla’s charging network and Hertz is going to install thousands of chargers at its locations. Interestingly, the interim CEO at Hertz is Mark Fields, who as many of you know was formerly the CEO at the Ford Motor Company.  

GM WON’T RETURN TO HIGH INVENTORY DAYS
GM is making some progress on the chip shortage. The automaker, like other companies, was building vehicles and parking them until they got the necessary chips to install them. But now the head of GM’s North American operations, Steve Carlisle, says it’s more than halfway through shipping pickup trucks it had parked due to the shortage. He says GM will clear out 2021 model year trucks by the end of the year. But while the company is starting to boost inventory for dealers, Carlisle says GM won’t return to its high-inventory days and will prioritize building its high profit models that sell the fastest. Carlisle says it’s now aiming to have between 30 to 60 days of inventory. That will allow it to charge more for vehicles while at the same time reducing incentives.

LUCID SKEPTICAL ABOUT ROBOTAXIS
Cruise, Tesla and Waymo are some of the leaders in autonomous vehicles and are very bullish on the tech, but Peter Rawlinson, the CEO of Lucid, says fleets of robotaxis are still a ways off. He says they’re 10 years out, even with the most advanced sensing systems in the world. Adding, there’s “an intellectual mountain to climb in terms of software.” We wonder if Rawlinson thinks there won’t be any robo fleets or if they won’t be commonplace? Because we can see there being some by that time. And if he thinks this is just in the U.S. and Europe. There’s some Chinese companies that I’m sure would be glad to challenge his claims. But what do you think? Is Peter Rawlinson right that robotaxi fleets are still a decade away?

XPENG SHOWS OFF FLYING CAR
Chinese automaker XPeng released a video of a flying car and it sure can capture your imagination. It’s an exotic-looking sports car with a super long rear-end that stores two giant rotors. Two gull wing doors at the rear open and the rotors swing out from the car, which can then fly away. The VTOL is made by Xpeng’s subsidiary HT Aero. It claims it has made over 15,000 flights, though this video is clearly computer generated. The plan is to go into mass production in 2024 with a selling price of about $156,000.    

BMW KICKS OFF i4 PRODUCTION
Despite major disruptions to production, automakers are moving ahead with their plans and BMW just kicked off production of the all-electric i4 at its plant in Munich. That means that plant now makes the ICE and hybrid versions of the 3 Series, including the M3 as well as the 4 Series Gran Coupe. In order to get ICE and BEV cars coming out of the same facility, BMW had to make an investment of 200 million euros, but somewhat interestingly, it says it did it all without halting production at the nearly 100-year-old plant. It helps that 90% of the existing systems in the body shop are still used on the i4 and it really only required new ones for the floor and rear end. But the moves pave the way for more EVs. BMW says more than half the vehicles that come out of its Munich plant will have an electric drive by 2023. It’s also phasing out engine production in Munich. That will be gone by 2024 at the latest.

DAIMLER TRUCKS RECEIVES LICENSE TO TEST FUEL CELL TRUCKS
We know that automakers are turning to batteries to help clean up their commercial fleets, but Daimler Trucks thinks those vehicles will mainly be used for lighter loads and shorter distances. It says long haul and heavier loads are more likely to be handled by fuel cell trucks and it just received a license to test those vehicles on the road in Germany. It’s using the opportunity to test prototypes of its GenH2 truck, which aims to have more than 1,000 kilometers or over 620 miles of range. But more than just testing the GenH2, Daimler will also compare the trucks to its battery-electric eActros as well as pantograph and fuel cell powered trucks from other manufacturers. However, these are still early tests. Daimler doesn’t expect the first series-produced GenH2s to hit customer hands until 2027. 

INDY AUTONOMOUS CHALLENGE HIGHLIGHTS
The Indy Autonomous Challenge ran on Saturday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was both a historic achievement and a bit of a letdown. Instead of a race with 10 cars on the track at the same time, it was conducted as a time trial with individual runs by each car. That’s because rainy weather in the days leading up to the event prevented a number of teams from completing their testing and getting a final sign-off. Even so, there was plenty of action. Every car had to make qualifying runs and avoid obstacles that were placed on the track at random. Several cars suffered sensor malfunctions which had them spinning off or even hitting the wall. Three cars qualified for a final sprint that would determine the winner, with a million-dollar prize at stake. They had to do 4 warm up laps to get the tires up to temperature, then do two timed laps. Two Teams emerged as the class of the field, the German TUM team from Munich, and the Euro Racing team with members from the University of Pisa, Zurich and the Polish Academy of Sciences. The German team posted the best 2 lap average of 135.944 miles an hour, going over 150 miles an hour on the straights. The Euro Racing team should have beat them. It posted one lap over 150 miles an hour, but then mistakenly shut down on its second timed lap because the team thought it had run its allotment of laps. It was a million-dollar mistake and they were devastated.

The event attracted a lot of attention from corporate sponsors, politicians, academics and the public. Spot, the robot dog from Boston Dynamics, was even there to wave the green and the checkered flags. 

The real purpose of the race was to generate a new generation of university students who are experts at developing software for autonomous vehicles. No doubt there are some future billionaires amongst those students who will launch their own AV startups, just as we saw happen with the DARPA Challenge. Remember, not one vehicle was able to complete the first DARPA Challenge. It wasn’t until the third DARPA Challenge that most vehicles could complete the course. And we expect the same thing to happen as the Indy Autonomous Challenge runs more events, hopefully starting next year.

But that brings us to the end of today. Thanks for joining us.