AD #3505 – Mach-E, Lightning to Get LFP Batteries; Porsche Starts Making eFuel; Tesla’s Godzilla Flexes Its Muscles

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

FORD CHOPS JOBS IN EUROPE
After losing $2 billion last year, Ford is swinging an ax to cut costs, and it’s especially taking aim at its European operations. It will cut 3,800 jobs over the next three years, mostly in the UK and Germany. 2,800 of those are engineering jobs and the other 1,000 are staff personnel. It’s not getting rid of all its engineers and will keep around 3,400 of them. Ford only made $47 million in profits last year and says the cuts will revitalize its operations. And it says that these cuts won’t affect its plan to offer an all-electric lineup in Europe by 2035.

FORD & CATL TO BUILD LFP PLANT IN U.S.
While Ford is taking an ax to its European operations, it’s taking advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act to invest heavily in the U.S. for EVs. To provide a little more detail to yesterday’s report, Ford will invest $3.5 billion to build an LFP battery plant in Michigan that will open in 2026. Chinese battery maker CATL will license its technology to Ford as well as supply the manufacturing equipment and the personnel to get it up and running. Ford will own and run the plant, which will employ 2,500 people. It will make 35 gigawatt hours of batteries a year, enough to power 400,000 EVs. LFP, or lithium iron phosphate batteries, don’t use critical materials like cobalt or manganese, which makes them significantly cheaper than NMC, or nickel, manganese, cobalt batteries. The IRA provides subsidies of $35 per cell and $10 per module which is why there is now a flurry of activity to build battery plants in the U.S.

MACH-E, LIGHTNING GET LFP BATTERIES
Ford is not going to wait for that plant to open and will start importing LFP batteries from China that will go in the base model of the Mustang Mach-E this spring and in the base model of the F-150 Lightning next year. The prismatic cells will use a cell-to-pack configuration which allows more to be packed into the battery. So even though LFP batteries have a lower energy density, the pack will have the same kilowatt-hour rating as an NMC pack, but at a lower cost. LFP batteries also charge faster, they tolerate more Level III fast charging, and they can be completely discharged and charged back to 100% without significantly degrading the life of the battery. Ford will continue to offer NMC batteries for customers who want more power and longer driving range.

BMW, VALEO DEVELOP SELF-PARKING CARS
In the future you may be able to drive to the place you want to go, get out of your car, it goes and parks itself and then comes back to pick you up again. BMW and the supplier Valeo are co-developing a Level 4 autonomous parking system that allows a car to park itself. Users have to pull into a drop-off zone, get out, tap a few buttons on an app and the vehicle slowly takes off for the nearest available space. They also say fully automated charging and car washes could be added to the service as a benefit to users. Depending on the parking situation, either the car will handle the parking or it will work with embedded technology on site. And the system is being developed so other automakers can join as well. However, they give no timetable for its launch. And if this sounds familiar, we’ve reported on a similar setup Mercedes is developing with Bosch.

eFUEL FOR THOUGHT
Porsche officially started making eFuels at plant in Chile. The site uses wind turbines to generate electricity, which is used to produce hydrogen through electrolysis as well as devices to capture CO2 from ambient air. The hydrogen and CO2 are then combined to create eMethanal, which is then converted to gas and then refined again so it can be used in cars. The first batch of eFuel was filled into a 911 and drifted around roadways at the facility. Initially, the site will make 130,000 liters or a little over 34,300 gallons a year, which will mostly be used in the Porsche Supercup racing series. By 2026 it will make 55 million liters or 14.5 million gallons of eFuel and then by 2028 it will be able to produce 10 times that amount. If eFuels can be made at the same cost of gasoline, it could be a real threat to EVs, since they would likely have a similar carbon footprint. But we’ve heard that eFuels currently take three times the energy to make and cost three times as much as gasoline.

TESLA’S GODZILLA FLEXES ITS MUSCLES
Look! Godzilla! Nah, we’re not talking about a giant lizard. We’re talking about a giant robot. Tesla released a series of videos on its Twitter account showing vehicle production at its Gigafactory in Berlin. It takes you through the process of making a Model Y, which starts out in the body shop; stamping out 13 body panels. Then it moves to the front and rear castings, which are married with the body and at the end of this line is where a giant robot, named Godzilla, lifts entire cars into the paint shop. And finally after paint, the vehicles move to general assembly where a 1,000 plus people are working on any given shift.

CAR SCREENS KEEP GETTING BIGGER
Tesla pioneered big display screens in cars, everyone copied Tesla, and now it’s hard to find a car without one. Even more, they keep getting bigger. According to S&P Global Mobility, about a quarter of vehicles in the U.S. have display screens that are 11-inches or larger. By 2027 one out of three vehicles will have a screen that big. Electric vehicles are leading the way. For example, in 2021, the ICE version of the Mustang came with a 4.2-inch display, while the electric Mach-E features a 15.5-inch screen. But not everyone is happy about displays becoming larger. Safety experts say they can be too distracting. And not all owners are crazy about them either. Consumer Reports says its surveys show the larger, flashier screens rank near the bottom in satisfaction, while smaller, simpler systems rank much higher.

TOYOTA TOP OEM IN PATENTS
For the ninth consecutive year, Toyota racked up more patents than any other automaker from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The company was awarded 3,056 patents last year and nearly half were related to future mobility. Overall, Toyota ranked #4 on the list, which is its highest ranking in the list’s 40-year history. Samsung, IBM and LG placed ahead of Toyota. Toyota says it spends more than $1 million per hour on R&D.

ZOOX AV STARTS DELIVERING PASSENGERS
Autonomous vehicles may be arriving later than expected, but they are slowly getting here. Zoox, which is owned by Amazon, is now shuttling employees between two of its buildings in California that are a mile apart. And its goal is to get approval to open its services to the public. Zoox designed its own purpose-built vehicle which seats four passengers who face each other and runs up to 35 mph, or 56 kilometers an hour. The vehicle is similar to the Cruise Origin and now the race is on between Zoox and GM Cruise to see who will be the first to get paying customers riding in their purpose-built AV shuttles. GM CEO Mary Barra set a goal for Cruise to be generating $1 billion in revenue a year by 2025.

And that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day.