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Runtime: 9:51
0:00 GM Faces Dual-Front Labor War
1:22 Chinese OEMs Take EVs to Developing Markets
2:28 China EV Startup Files for Bankruptcy
3:22 BMW EV Sales Jump 80%
5:08 ZF Expands AV Business
5:47 Schaeffler Bids on Vitesco
6:56 Nissan Using AI for New Materials
7:37 Nissan’s Wild Hyper Adventure Concept
8:16 Honda Develops Self-Driving Lawn Mower
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
GM FACES TWO-FRONT LABOR WAR
General Motors is now facing a two-front labor war. In the U.S., the UAW is striking at two of GM’s assembly plants and 22 parts depots. Those strikes forced GM to shut down another assembly plant and a stamping plant. Then, last night, in Canada, Unifor announced it’s striking one of GM’s full size truck plants, one of its engine plants and a parts depot. All told, GM now has over 15,900 workers who are on strike or are laid off. While the Canadian union reached an agreement with Ford, Unifor accuses GM of not agreeing to the same issues that Ford did. And it’s demanding that GM follow the traditional pattern agreement. Here’s where it gets interesting. GM’s St. Catherines plant ships engines and transmissions to assembly plants in the U.S. and Mexico, which means Unifor’s strike in Canada is going to cause UAW members in the U.S. to get laid off. That’s going to put even more pressure on General Motors, but it’s also going to test just how much solidarity there is between the two unions.
CHINESE OEMs TAKE EVs TO DEVELOPING MARKETS
Chinese automakers are making major inroads with EVs in developing markets that legacy automakers are completely ignoring. For example, last month in Thailand consumers bought 6,875 EVs and 5,880 of them were Chinese, or 86%. Tesla got the other 14%. In Brazil, EV sales are running between 5,000 and 6,000 a month, and China dominates that market too. Legacy automakers say that developing countries don’t have the infrastructure to support EVs. But it looks like a lot of consumers in those countries don’t care what the legacy automakers have to say. By getting into those markets now, Chinese automakers like BYD, Great Wall and SAIC are going to have an enormous advantage, as well as get more manufacturing scale that will help drive down their costs. As the old saying goes, victory goes to the firstest with the mostest.
CHINA EV STARTUP FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY
But while developing markets look promising for Chinese EV makers, things look tougher on the home front. Chinese EV startup WM Motor just filed for bankruptcy. It was founded in 2015 and had major backers including Chinese tech company Baidu and Shanghai’s state-owned asset regulator. But the company struggled to turn a profit, which it blames on pandemic setbacks, rising raw material costs and securing the money needed to produce and develop vehicles. We would add that the price war which Tesla kicked off this year was a major issue. Besides, China has too many brands, too many models, too many car companies, and tens of millions of units of overcapacity. So, WM may not be the last one to go bankrupt.
BMW EV SALES JUMP 80%
Say what you will about its grilles, car buyers continue to flock to BMWs. It delivered nearly 622,000 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce models around the world in the third quarter, which is up almost 6% from last year. It’s also doing pretty well selling electrics. The Group sold about 94,000 BEVs in Q3, a jump of close to 80%. That’s significantly more than its German luxury rival Mercedes, who sold 61,600 EVs worldwide in Q3, which is a 66% increase. But it’s not all sunshine and roses. BMW’s sales in China were down roughly 2% to more than 210,000 units, while Mercedes was even worse at 196,000 units, down 12%. It blames supply chain issues and model changeovers, but competition from domestic brands in China is the toughest it’s ever been and right now BMW and Mercedes aren’t offering products that Chinese consumers feel like they have to have.
ZF EXPANDS AV BUSINESS
Autonomous vehicles just took another step forward. The giant German supplier ZF is expanding a partnership with Texas based Oceaneering International to produce and sell its autonomous shuttles. They didn’t reveal exactly how many shuttles will be built but say it will be in the four-digits over the next several years. The autonomous shuttles are designed to operate in specialty vehicle lanes and they’re being marketed at airports and theme parks. ZF and Oceaneering have worked together for more than 30 years to design and develop transport shuttles through ZF’s 2getthere subsidiary.
SCHAEFFLER BIDS ON VITESCO
The supplier company Schaeffler is putting in a bid to buy the supplier Vitesco. Schaeffler, which is a sponsor of Autoline Daily, wants the electric motors and power electronics that Vitesco makes for EVs and hybrids. You may remember that Vitesco was carved out of the supplier Continental, because Continental wanted to get out of powertrains and concentrate on electronics, ADAS systems and tires. But now Continental is even thinking of selling off all its electronics and ADAS business and just concentrating on tires. And here’s an interesting twist. The Schaeffler family, which is one of the richest in Germany, has major holdings in Schaeffler the company, as well as in Vitesco and Continental. You got all that? It sure is complicated. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re going to see massive upheaval in the supplier sector as the auto industry transitions to software defined electric vehicles. And by the end of this decade the industry is going to look very different than it does today.
NISSAN USING AI FOR NEW MATERIALS
Nissan is using artificial intelligence at its tech lab in Silicon Valley to help it research new automotive materials and says it has significantly cut the time to test them. It says it normally takes 20 years to research and test new materials because of all the trial and error. But thanks to AI, that’s been cut to just two years. AI allows Nissan to sample millions of materials and help predict which have the ideal characteristics for a given application. Nissan says AI has helped speed up the development of its solid-state batteries, too, which it plans to bring to market in 2028.
NISSAN’S WILD HYPER ADVENTURE CONCEPT
Nissan is also showing off another one of its Hyper concepts. The first was the Hyper Urban and this is the Hyper Adventure. As its name implies, this concept is meant for exploring and features all-wheel drive to take users off the beaten path as well as a big battery pack that can power up a campsite or even recharge an electric jet ski. The Hyper Adventure is even more wild looking than the first, especially that rear end. And I can’t wait to see what Nissan has in store for the next one. There will be four Hyper concepts in all.
HONDA DEVELOPS AUTONOMOUS LAWN MOWER
I don’t know about you, but mowing my lawn doesn’t make me want to jump out of bed in the morning. If you’re like me then we need to start supporting this idea from Honda. It developed a ride-on mower that can be taught how to mow a lawn. First, a human has to show the mower the path, but then it can repeat that same route on its own. So, the mower could cut grass while someone else takes care of another area and even if they cross paths, the mower has 4 lidar and 4 radar to detect objects around it. Right now this is just a prototype, but this is one piece of tech I hope goes mainstream.
But that’s the end of today’s show. Thanks for joining us.
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In August GM had to idle several truck plants due to a shortage of parts. I wonder if they kept the St. Catherines plant which builds engines and transmissions running a full capacity. If so, that would give them more time to negotiate with Unifor before running out of engines and transmission for the US/Mexico trucks plants.
I for one, would really like to hear more about how AI reduced development time on materials for Nissan. They said it allowed them to sample millions of materials to predict the best material for the application. Which sounds similar to a simple logarithmic computer program. Maybe it is that simple. It just seems like we keep hearing about AI as the solution to lots of problems yet it’s still unclear how it actually helped. Both Nissan and computers have been around for quite a few years. Certainly if someone had been entering all the available materials and their wear properties it would be simple to sort in order for the one that best fits the job. How AI does that 18 years faster I’m just not sure.
WM won’t be the last EV start-up to go belly up. In fact, I could easily see the global market becoming limited to a few automakers consolidating or even dissolving more legacy automakers. The fall-out of this EV transition is the vehicles losing their personality. Those people that loved the sound of a V8 or the gearbox of a great BMW even the buzz of a high revving turbo 4 will be gone. Toss on top of all that the popularity of the CUV/SUV style like the WM shown today. You’re left with vehicles that look alike, drive alike and sound alike. The only way left to stand out will be interiors. So consumers will be left with a bunch of appliance like vehicles that have varying battery sizes and range that for all intents and purposes are the same vehicle with options being the distinguishing factor.
So, the automaker that can offer the most for less will dominate the market and sadly those that cannot, will fall to the wayside. Its going to be much more difficult for the luxury brands to stand out. Electronics are reasonable and that means even the cheap brands can afford to offer AV tech and all the gadgets. The gap between entry level and luxury is about to shrink. IMO.
Honda already has the IMow robotic mower.
Why would a person need a ride on?
So Honda created a Roomba that cuts grass. Awesome, now that is a AV I could support.
I have been a BMW fan since the 1980’s, but their styling of the last four years or so has been disappointing, especially the grilles. However, that being said, I would still take any BMW model over any of the Mercedes-Benz models, EV or ICE. I remember when M-B styling was proudly conservative and reflected the brand’s devotion to quality and top shelf engineering. Now their EV models are amorphous blobs that don’t have any brand affiliation and their ICE models feature front end styling that reminds me of the machine they use to clear weeds from the local ponds. What happened to the class and sophistication?
Greg, to me, the ride-on mower concept would allow one person to arrive at a job site and set the mower loose to mow that property the same way it was done the last time while the human takes care of the weed whipping or trimming. For a company to invest in this type of equipment, they would want it to be able to work with or without a person on it. For a homeowner though, the iMow robotic mower is an interesting concept. I have been thinking about investing in one. I’m not so sure about it mowing in the middle of the night, but I assume that the mowing can be restricted to certain hours.
The Chinese auto industry is now sort of where the US was 100 years ago. In the early 1920s, there were dozens, or hundreds of car companies in the US, but by the end of WW II, all but about 7 were gone. After the war, a couple non-auto companies, Kaiser and Crosley decided to take advantage of the pent up demand for cars, but neither lasted long. In 1987, it was down to 3, after Chrysler bought AMC. Now, with the EV thing, there is Tesla and few other smaller EV companies, most of which won’t be around too long.
I’d think starting a robotic mower and leaving the area could have legal consequences, like if a kid decided to take a closer look and got a foot cut off.
I don’t like the front end of most recent BMWs, but if in the market for an EV, I’d still consider an i4. It’s a hatchback car, not an SUV, and except for the front end, looks good to me. The interior is reasonably attractive, and the price of the adequately fast RWD version is not bad.
@Lambo2015: interesting way of looking at the situation. It makes total sense to me.
I believe the reason for the AV mower to be a ride on was that it needed to be taught the path first, so it doesn’t sound like they use an area map, and some blocked out area like the ones I’ve seen so far. This one is taught by recording the path provided by an operator the first time. I would really hope it has more to it than that as I would think changing ground conditions could really mess with a recorded path. Tires get a little slippery and don’t travel the distance that they should and the whole pattern would be off. Also, to your point Kit I have to imagine that the blades shut off if it detects something approaching. However, like anything that can probably be fooled by standing still next to a tree. The sensors would know something is supposed to be there but maybe not know if an adult is also there. Which brings up another good point. Theft! I would want the mover to require a fingerprint scan or RF card to switch it back to manual mode so that a thief cannot just jump on it while its mowing and take off with it.
Tesla is going to sell factory wraps for Models 3 and Y, for $7500-8000 as a way to offer a few more colors. Apparently the Berlin plant has a more serious paint shop and can handle more colors, but the US plants cannot.
Fain won’t be happy until all the capitalists are broke and all his “brothers” are unemployed. What an ignorant Marxist tool he is.