AD #3431 – Tesla Developing Cheaper, Next-Gen EV Platform; GM Considers Baby Hummer; New EV Charger Much Faster

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

TESLA EARNINGS WOULD HAVE LEGACY OEMs DROOLING
Tesla reported its third quarter earnings last night, and while Wall Street didn’t like the numbers, most other automakers would eagerly trade places with the EV leader. Tesla’s total revenue jumped up 56% to $21.4 billion. Its EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, shot up 55% and was just shy of $5 billion. And it posted a net profit of $3.3 billion, which was up 103% from a year ago. If Tesla was a legacy automaker all this probably would have triggered a bull run across the Big Board. But investors expected more. The stock dropped more than 6% and closed at $222 a share. Investors are worried that Tesla built more cars than it could deliver. It shipped nearly 344,000 vehicles, but built 20,000 more than that. That triggered some speculation that maybe Tesla was starting to hit a sales plateau. The company says it’s a problem with transportation capacity, not sales, and that it’s going to adopt a smoother process for delivering vehicles. Maybe some investors are worried, but sales were up a whopping 42%, and that’s the kind of growth that legacy automakers can only dream of.

TESLA DEVELOPING CHEAPER, NEXT-GEN EV ARCHITECTURE
Speaking of Tesla, Elon Musk revealed that engineering for the Cybertruck and Semi are done, which means the Semi should be ready before the end of the year and the Cybertruck sometime next year, like the CEO has said recently. And now that that development work is done, Elon says Tesla is working on a next-gen platform for EVs. He says it will be smaller than the current Model 3 and Y, but it will slash its own costs in half and it could produce more volume than all of Tesla’s other models combined. We know automakers like GM and Honda are going after more affordable EVs and it looks like Tesla doesn’t want to get left behind.

GM CONSIDERS BABY HUMMER EV
It looks like the electric pickup segment is about to get more crowded. Bloomberg reports that General Motors is considering adding a mid-size electric truck to the GMC Hummer lineup. The model is still just a concept at the GM’s design studio in California but it has a good chance of making it into production, according to people familiar with the plans. The full-size Hummer pickup is already on sale and the SUV version is coming next year, so that means the mid-size truck is still a few years away before hitting the market.

BANKRUPT ELMS BOUGHT OUT BY ANOTHER EV STARTUP
California EV startup Mullen Automotive looks like it’s turning itself into a commercial EV startup. In early September it bought a 60% stake in Bollinger Motors with the plan to first launch its Class 3 through 6 electric trucks and then its boxy off-roaders. And now it’s acquiring Electric Last Mile Solutions or ELMS, which filed for bankruptcy in June. ELMS wanted to introduce a range of commercial EVs, which were meant to be built on imported truck chassis from China. With the purchase Mullen gets access to all of ELMS’s assets, including its plant in Indiana, its inventory of vehicles and all its intellectual property. Mullen says its current facility in Missouri will be used to make the commercial vehicles and the ELMS plant in Indiana will make passenger vehicles, including its FIVE EV and the Bollinger off-roaders. That plant has the capacity to produce up to 50,000 vehicles a year.

MITSUBISHI CONCEPT HINTS AT PRODUCTION SMALL CROSSOVER
Mitsubishi could be moving its design in a new direction. The new XFC Concept, which debuted at the Vietnam Motor Show, is a preview of a new compact SUV that will launch in ASEAN markets in 2023 or 2024. Mitsu calls the design “powerful and imposing” and we think highlights include a new shark nose front end, boxy rear fender accents and hockey stick lighting assemblies with stacked lighting elements below that help tie the front and rear together. The interior follows the edgy, futuristic exterior and features two large screens combined into one display on the dash and the use of a lot of different materials. Mitsu doesn’t say what will power the vehicle, but it will be ICE based. And in the future it says it wants to add an electrified variant and to roll it out to other regions of the world.

NEW CHARGER GREATLY SPEEDS UP CHARGING TIME
Charging time anxiety has become the new range anxiety for electric cars, but help is on the way. Delta Electronics, from Taiwan, claims its new 400 kilowatt, 500 amp charger can deliver 180 miles of range in 10 minutes. It used a Hummer EV for its demonstration and it developed the charger with General Motors, two Michigan-based electric utility companies and Virginia Tech as part of a grant from the US Department of Energy. Delta says the grid-to-vehicle energy transfer efficiency is as high as 96.5% and that the system weighs 4 times less than today’s fast DC chargers. Delta has been in the EV charging business for a decade and has sold 1.5 million chargers worldwide.

BMW INVESTS $1.7 BILLION TO MAKE EVs in the U.S.
BMW is the latest foreign automaker to make an investment in the U.S. since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. CEO Oliver Zipse announced the company will spend $1 billion to prepare its current plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina to build electric vehicles. It will spend an additional $700 million to open a new battery manufacturing plant near that plant. Additionally, battery producer Envision AESC will open a new battery cell plant in South Carolina to supply BMW with new cylindrical lithium-ion cells for its next-gen EVs. BMW plans to build six new EVs in the U.S. by 2030.

BMW SLASHING PAINT SHOP EMISSIONS
But that’s not all the plant upgrades BMW is making. Over in Germany at its plant in Leipzig, the company is planning to increase production capacity for EV parts with the addition of 8 new lines by 2024. The extra lines will be used to produce battery cell coatings, battery modules and high-voltage batteries. The components will be used in the all-electric version of the MINI Countryman. In addition to that, BMW announced that it’s launching a pilot project at the plant to power paint dryers with green hydrogen, methane or a combination of the two. The burner can switch between the fuels automatically while operating. The system is being implemented to reduce CO2 emissions at the plant by reducing the amount of natural gas it burns to operate the paint shop.

WAYMO EXPANDS INTO LA
Good news for Waymo. It’s expanding its autonomous ride-hailing service to Los Angeles. Waymo says, in terms of revenue opportunity, LA is like 12 smaller markets combined and estimates the area could generate $2 billion in ride-hailing services this year. It will deploy an around-the-clock service in LA, which adds to its current operations in Phoenix and San Francisco.

The Cadillac Escalade is probably the most profitable vehicle that GM makes. Yet, there was a battle royale inside GM to just put it in production. Some execs were dead set against it because they didn’t think that Cadillac should sell a truck. Fortunately for Cadillac it did make it into production. And on today’s Autoline After Hours we’re going to go through what it took to win that fight. John Smith, the former head of Cadillac, and author of the book Fin Tales will be on the show. So will Doron Levin from Seeking Alpha. So join John and Gary for some good lessons on how to fight your way through the bureaucracy of any large organization.

But that’s it for today, thanks for watching.