Follow us on social media:
Runtime: 10:47
0:00 Audi Is a Damaged Brand in China
1:10 U.S. July Sales Inch Up
1:55 Fisker, Jaguar Hurt Magna Earnings
2:46 Volvo Up in Europe, Down in China
4:14 Nio & Li Auto See Sales Skyrocket in China
4:51 Mobileye Drops on Softening ADAS Market
5:21 Toyota GR Corolla Gets Automatic
6:20 Toyota Gets Stella CV for EU
7:18 Top GM Employees Can Make More Money
8:13 BYD Customers Mad About Price Cuts
Visit our sponsor to thank them for their support of Autoline Daily: Bridgestone, Intrepid Control Systems, MEDC and Teijin Automotive.
This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
AUDI IS A DAMAGED BRAND IN CHINA
For any automaker, but especially a luxury car company, their brand is everything. It’s the identity of the company. And in the luxury realm, a prestigious brand is what entices buyers to pay more for your car than someone else’s. So it’s stunning to see that Audi is not going to put its famous four-ring badge on its new generation of electric cars in China, according to a report from Reuters. Audi will not confirm that it will drop the badges, but says the new EVs will have “authentic Audi DNA.” But let’s face it, you probably don’t pull your logo off your cars unless that logo is no longer respected in the marketplace. Foreign automakers are in a fee-fall in the Chinese market, as buyers increasingly turn to domestic brands. And since Audi developed its new EVs in China with SAIC, we think they’re likely to be branded in a way that makes car buyers believe they’re Chinese.
U.S. JULY SALES INCH UP
The numbers for car sales in the U.S. in July are starting to trickle in. Honda, Hyundai, Mazda and Subaru all posted gains last month while sales at Toyota, Volvo and Kia fell. Of the brands that have reported, sales are up about 1%. And that’s right in-line with analysts who are forecasting a 1-3% increase in sales. The SAAR is forecasted to be between 16 and 16.7 million units. We’ll get a clearer picture when more automaker’s report sales. Ford will release its sales numbers later today. But remember some automakers like GM and Stellantis only report sales on a quarterly basis.
FISKER, JAGUAR HURT MAGNA EARNINGS
As we reported a few weeks back, Magna took a huge blow when Fisker filed for bankruptcy and Jaguar announced it’s dropping the I-Pace and E-Pace from its lineup. That’s because Magna manufactured those vehicles at its plant in Austria. And now Magna is blaming that lost business for lower than expected second quarter results. Magna Steyr, the unit that produces the vehicles, saw its revenue drop 18% to $1.2 billion. Magna said lower vehicle assembly volumes also hurt its sales. Magna currently builds the Mercedes G-Class, BMW Z4 and the Toyota Supra at its plant in Austria. And Automotive News reports it’s in talks with Chinese automakers to build vehicles for them to help make up for that lost business.
VOLVO UP IN EUROPE, DOWN IN CHINA
And speaking of sales, Volvo’s global sales were up 6% in July to more than 57,000 vehicles. That growth was thanks to Europe where sales rose 40%. But in China, Volvo struggled with sales plunging 31% and in the U.S. sales were down 11% in July. BEVs and PHEVs now account for 49% of Volvo’s global sales, with BEVs at a 25% share.
NIO & LI AUTO SEE SALES SKYROCKET IN CHINA
The Chinese car market has cooled off a bit but some brands are growing. Nio sold around 20,500 vehicles in July, which is the third month in a row it has exceeded 20,000 sales. For the full year, the EV maker has sold nearly 108,000 vehicles which is up about 44% from a year ago. And Li Auto posted a monthly record in July with 51,000 sales, which is a nearly 50% gain compared to last year. And so far this year, the company has sold nearly 240,000 vehicles.
MOBILEYE DROPS ON SOFTENING ADAS MARKET
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems or ADAS were supposed to be a growth technology. But Mobileye, one of the leaders in the field, just slashed its forecast for sales and earnings because several automakers are backing off their volume projections for using the technology, especially in China. Wall Street took the news hard and the stock dropped 20% in after-hours trading. And its stock was already down nearly 40% this year.
TOYOTA GR COROLLA GETS AUTOMATIC
Toyota is trying to expand the appeal of its little hot-hatch, the GR Corolla by offering a new 8-speed automatic transmission. Different from the auto transmissions found in the Supra and 86, this unit was developed by GAZOO Racing and relies on inputs from the brake and accelerator to anticipate shifts rather than vehicle behavior, like speed and g-forces. It helps drivers get the most out of the car’s turbocharged 1.6L 3-cylinder engine, which generates an impressive 300 horsepower. The GR Corolla’s manual will still be available for the new model year and you may notice some mild design changes to the front fascia as well. Engineers were also able to squeeze a little more torque out of the engine, it now makes 295 lb-ft of torque and they tweaked the suspension to improve cornering. Toyota says the new GR Corolla will start arriving at dealerships this winter.
TOYOTA GETS STELLA CV FOR EU
Speaking of Toyota, its very first all-electric full-size van is about to go on sale in Europe. But it’s not actually made by Toyota. Like the rest of Toyota’s vans in Europe, the Proace Max is a rebadged Stellantis van. Toyota’s small Proace City is actually like a Citroen Berlingo or Peugeot Partner, the mid-size Proace is like an Opel Vivaro and now the Proace Max is like a rebadged Fiat Ducato or Ram ProMaster. And just like those vans, the Proace Max will be offered as a pure electric and with a diesel engine. The EV will have a 110-kWh battery that offers about 420 kilometers or 260 miles of range and is powered by a 200-kW electric motor. Pricing starts just over 70,500 euros or about $77,000.
TOP GM EMPLOYEES CAN MAKE MORE MONEY
White collar workers at car companies, especially in the U.S., can make a good income when an automaker turns in solid profits. At General Motors the top 5% employees can get a bonus up to 120% of their base salary. And now GM is going to raise that to 150%–as long as the employee hits certain targets. GM says it needs to do this to attract and retain top talent so it can compete with EV startups like Tesla and Rivian, who offer stock options. GM is going from a 3-point to a 5-point scale that rates employees from “exceeds expectations” to “does not exceed expectations.” And while the people rated the best can make more money, the ones on the bottom will likely be given a chance to improve or invited to leave the company.
BYD CUSTOMERS MAD ABOUT PRICE CUTS
BYD customers in China are not the least bit happy about a significant price cut at its premium off-road brand. Earlier in the week, Fang Cheng Bao trimmed nearly $7,000 from the starting price of its Bao 5 SUV. Imagine you just bought a model only to see its price cut so much shortly after. And some customers did protest. CarNewsChina reports that one group even showed up at a Fang Cheng Bao dealership with a sign wishing they had bought a competitor’s vehicle instead. Price cuts like these will really hurt a vehicle’s value, so they’ll be worth a lot less in the used market. Hertz rental car learned that the hard way after buying a bunch of Tesla’s, only to see the automaker slash prices. Now Hertz is trying to unload those vehicles as fast as possible, which will only hurt Tesla residual value even more.
But that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day and I hope that you have a great weekend.
Thanks to our partner for embedding Autoline Daily on its website: WardsAuto.com
Good luck GM with the new salaried performance management system. When Jac Nasser instituted a similar system at Ford, it created a lot of problems. Team work values were replaced with grand-standing and back-stabbing. The auto business is too complex to put team work at such risk. Part of Alan Mulally’s success was restoration of team work.
I would agree Drew. I can see employees sucking up to their boss for a favorable rating, and the temptation to falsify results to show that they hit an unrealistic target will be very high. In sales, where you can easily measure the results of the work by revenue or unit sales, this type of thing works fairly well. But in teamwork situations or subjectively evaluated performance jobs, this is a recipe for disaster.
On the Toyota stories, I was not aware that Toyota participated in badge engineering. I have never seen that before. I can see the logic in it, especially for rational purchases like work vans. It’s just that Toyota is one of the few full line OEMs I can think of that has not done this before.
Also, I have to say that the GR Corolla has some very interesting points. I am not usually interested in Toyota vehicles, but getting 300 hp from a turbo 3-cylinder is very impressive. With Toyota’s recently announced 100,000+ engine replacement program for the turbo 6 cylinder in the Tundra, I hope the engineering and sourcing is more spot on with this Corolla powertrain. And, I find the 3 exhaust setup to be kinda neat!
I have observed Honda succumbing to badge engineering when they needed to buy time until they could develop their own home-grown entry (Isuzu-based Passport; GM-based BEVs).
Ford and M-B should take serious note that Toyota may be buying time until their own development of commercial vans.
The closest Toyota does to badge engineering in the US market is Supra, built by Magna Steyr with BMW powertrain.
There are always issues with performance rating systems at companies like GM, and the resulting “sucking up” to bosses, etc., but I’d think the large bonuses involved with what GM is doing would hurt teamwork more than systems with smaller amounts of money involved.
Re-badging? the Toyota Yaris is the Mazda 2
Speaking of Toyota, while having a recall done on my Highlander, I checked out a GR 86 they had in stock. I was surprised at the poor gas mileage ratings of 20/26/22 with the manual transmission. It must have really short gearing to do so poorly, but I suspect that driven for economy, it would easily beat those numbers.
Yeah, Toyota does more re-badging in other markets than in North America. Yaris has not been sold in the US for years. The Mazda2 based one was at the end of US Yaris sales, 2019-2020.
I believe it was GM or maybe Ford that instituted a cost improvement program years ago. Employees could receive a percentage of savings they proposed. This turned out to be exceptionally lucrative for Design Engineers. They could get a design released that got the job done and once into production offer a much better design that was thousands if not millions cheaper to manufacture. They got a huge payday, and new releases were less than desirable. So these types of incentives rarely work out for the company.
@GM Veteran on Toyota not badge-engineering. Admittedly it is just a low volume product but the Toyota Supra is a rebadged BMW Z4.
You guys are correct. I forgot about the Supra. Given some of the negative consumer feedback and the low sales, I wonder if either company would have an appetite to do that again?
Supra uses BMW powertrains, and both it and Z4 are built by Magna Steyr, but the bodies are quite different. At least they look quite different.
Owner satisfaction in CR’s survey is good for both Supra and Z4, but the sales are not very good. 2023 US sales of Supra were 2652, and Z4 sales were 1881.
What the salaried employees at GM really need is to join the UAW and tell management to go play mind games with themselves.
When is Autoline going to join the rest of the world of automotive journalism and report power and torque ratings at engine speed, or do you guys just not know enough about engines to know that they develop those max numbers usually at a specific RPM or band width?
It’s common knowledge at what rpm an EV generates maximum torque and horsepower. No need to report it.
As for soon to be obsolete ICE engines, they are easy to look up elsewhere if one has an historical interest.
Maximum torque of an EV is at zero rpm, but maximum horsepower is at roughly half the no-load rpm of the motor, which might not be widely published. Does it matter, though?
I don’t know what fantasy world some of you are living in but ICE powertrains will be around for quite some time in the future, EVs don’t have the affordability or fast enough charge times for most of the motoring public, hence the trend towards HEVs that, say with me, have ICE powertrains. And yes, those of us with a technical background like to know at what engine speed (not motor speed) max power and max torque are produced so that we know how much we are going to have to rev the engine to achieve good acceleration, the higher the engine speed the more you have to wait for the power and torque to develop, which is why turbo engines are so popular due to producing max torque at low engine RPM. Maybe someday Autoline will join the rest of the automotive press and actually give us that information that other sources have already recognized as useful.
Not that anyone cares, but Toyota has a long history in Japan of badge engineering. It is less obvious there, because they usually get the vehicles from automakers they control, like Daihatsu or Hino. All of the Toyoa kei cars are badge engineered (mostly Daihatsu) and some of the smaller cars that used to be sold in N.A. were also Daihatsu.
I find hp and torque numbers, like 189 hp at 5000 rpm, and 206 lb-ft at 1350 rpm for my Mini “interesting,” but what difference does it make? It has an automatic gear box which keeps the engine near the power peak rpm at full throttle to maximize acceleration, and keeps it at low rpm, generally optimized for efficiency at light throttle.
Even though my Cayman has a, rare, manual transmission, it matters only a little that I know its 300 hp comes at 6500 rpm? Yeah, knowing that informs me that for best acceleration, I should probably shift a little below the 7500 rpm redline, but the power drops only 5% between power peak rpm and redline.
If you are comparing two similar vehicles and are interested in decent acceleration and one vehicle has a torque peak at 5000 RPM and the other has a torque peak at 2000 RPM with similar size engines and similar amounts of torque then the one that peaks earlier is going to be faster, most likely because of forced induction. If you don’t care about things like acceleration, then ignore what speed the torque and power are made at, but I for one hate driving slow acceleration vehicles and consider them a safety hazard for merging onto expressways. I also hate having to rev the piss out of an engine so the vehicle can get out of it’s own way, it wears the engine out faster too. And for those of you lucky enough to have a manual transmission you can’t drive it properly if you don’t know where the torque and power peaks are if you want to use it to it’s maximum ability.
Ziggy, the one with torque peak at 2000 rpm will accelerate faster at 2000 rpm, if you have a manual transmission and put it in one of the higher gears so the engine is at 2000 rpm, Of course, if you use a lower gear to run the engine at 5000 rpm at the same road speed, you will accelerate 2.5 times as fast with the engine having the torque peak at 5000.
For those who don’t know the relationships between torque, power, and gearing, and would like to learn some things, this video does a good job of explaining, with a “FAQ” of questions at the end. It’s kind of long, though, 30:50, and kind of “technical.”
https://youtu.be/UIQjyn95c-o?si=qPjAiGlqyF_URen1
Certainly, lots of things go into making a vehicle quickly accelerate beyond HP and TQ. things like gear ratios and weight are huge but drag racers are always after low end TQ. Looking at a sport bike that has 43HP and 29 ftlb of TQ can accelerate very quickly. But look at the TQ curve and its pretty flat. Getting almost the same TQ at 2000 rpm as it has at the peak 6400 rpm. HP is just a calculation of TQ X RPM/5252. Which is why the HP numbers can sound impressive, but when you consider a bike winds out to 13,000 rpm to get there it’s not as impressive. A bike that has 40.4 ftlbs of TQ at 13,000 can claim 100hp. However, a bike that has 50ftlbs at 9000 only has 85hp but will likely be faster assuming a similar flat TQ curve.
I agree with you Ziggy that HP and TQ are not very helpful without the RPM range they peak at. I also agree that ICE will be around way longer than we have been led to believe. Just plain common sense tells me EV’s have some obstacles to overcome before being a viable option for many people and saturation is going to take much longer even as we get closer to meeting the needs for everyone. But apparently EV news is exciting and new and ICE development has been placed on the back burner for now. As HEV take hold they’ll soon realize they need to get on the ball developing engines that work well in a hybrid application.
This study seems to be way different that ones I saw a while back. I remember hearing something like 30% of Tesla owners went back to ICE. I assumed it was people that didn’t truly evaluate what they were getting into without having maybe a home charger realized how difficult public charging can be. But this study says it was closer to 70% in 2020 and is down to around 50% in 2024. That seems hard to believe.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/over-half-of-tesla-owners-switch-to-gas-cars-but-that-s-an-improvement/ar-AA1odRko?ocid=socialshare&cvid=7379f7bf0abc4dacb89f6295bd581dc2&ei=58#comments
A vehicle of a given weight and power will accelerate quickest at a given road speed with the engine at peak power rpm. If CVTs had friction loss equivalent to gear transmissions, a CVT keeping the engine at that rpm during acceleration would provide the best acceleration. With gear changing transmissions, you get best acceleration by shifting at the speed where decreasing torque at the wheels in the current gear is equal to the increasing torque to the wheels in the next higher gear. It’s all basic physics.
Yeah, to get the last bit of acceleration through the gears with a manual transmission, plotting the engine power curve with the gear ratios, and knowing the exact best shift points is useful. It won’t be the exact same rpm for each shift, because the percent ratio change is not the same between all of the gears.
I wonder if a lot of the people in that study who “went back” to an ICE just got an ICE, in addition to the EV, to use when it would be more convenient.
I know only two Tesla owners, both of whom have multiple vehicles, and have home charging.
“A bike that has 40.4 ftlbs of TQ at 13,000 can claim 100hp. However, a bike that has 50ftlbs at 9000 only has 85hp but will likely be faster assuming a similar flat TQ curve.”
If the bikes weight the same, and have proper gearing, if the bike with 50 lb-ft can continue to rev beyond 9000 rpm with not much drop off in torque, it could be faster. The power increases as the rpm exceeds 9000, if the torque remains flat. If the peak power of the engines is 85 and 100, like if the one with 50 lb-ft can’t rev past 9000 rpm, the 100 hp bike will be faster, if it has proper gearing.
On Toyota rebadging cars, the most egregious was when they rebadged a 1995 Chevrolet Cavalier and sold it as a Toyota Cavalier in Japan. It wasn’t even a thin reskin of the cavalier. It was a direct copy with literally just a badge difference. Technically they did put the steering wheel on the right so it was not a direct copy, but that did not improve the cavalier in any way. I can’t believe Toyota ever agreed to that.
The cavalier was an OK car, but the corolla was a superior car in every way. My guess is that they wanted an entry level car priced below the corolla, but that did not quite work out that way with the exchange rate and import taxes. There are people in Japan that truly like american cars such as mustangs, camaros, corvettes, and even tahoes/suburbans, but the cavalier was never one of those desired by that group of people. I just can’t think of why Toyota would have wanted a Cavalier LOL
https://www.hotcars.com/toyota-cavalier-how-gm-tried-to-conquer-the-japan-auto-and-failed/
I’d about forgotten about the Toyota Cavalier. Yeah, that was not such a great idea, and I suspect the RHD conversion was not the best. The one huge advantage of the Cavalier was having a timing chain which would last 200-300K miles, rather than the belt on the Corolla engine that needs to be changed every 60-90K miles. The Corolla would have been better in most other ways, especially mpg with a manual transmission.
Actually, those second generation Cavaliers were decent cars, for the American land of cheap gas where their less-than- Corolla/Civic mpg is less of a deal. My friend’s similar-to-Cavalier 2002 Sunfire has 250K miles with no major repairs, and the cloth seats are still in good condition, free of any rips, etc.
Yeah, the cavaliers were not so bad. The engines suffered mainly from Head/Intake gasket failures early on but towards the end those issues were sorted making for a reliable car. They weren’t that good on fuel, particularly with the automatic, but they had decent enough room for people/cargo. To me the seats were very flat and hard which did not make them a comfortable experience. For a short drive city car it was OK but long distance the comfort was off putting. You could tell the seat fabrics were rugged though. I thought that people would warm up to them and you would see more of them still around and being collected, particularly the Z24 variants. They sold in the millions over their run so I figured there had to be more than a few people that loved them enough to save them.
Sadly, they seem to have gone the way of the Grand Am/Oldsmobile Calais, Skylark and are nearly extinct these days. Trying to find an 85-89 Grand Am is next to impossible these days. Way back in the day you would trip over them as they were everywhere. Those and the L-Body Beretta/Corsica are almost all but extinct. At least the Beretta is somewhat still available these days, particuarly the indy variant, but the Corsica is next to impossible to find. Of course the Corsica was the plain jane 4 door version of the Beretta that most people probably just used and threw away. The only special variant of the Corsica was a little known LTZ trim with the V6 and Manual Transmission. The spiritual successor to the Celebrity Eurosport in a way. A manual Corsica LTZ is impossible to find. I have seen recently a VR spec celebrity for sale in decent shape. Talk about obscure variants, that VR spec Celebrity Eurosport is a downright unicorn.
It’s been ages since I’ve seen a Beretta or Corsica. I see some Grand Prix, Grand Am, Cavaliers, and Sunfires where I am now in Indiana, most in “rough” condition. A lot of them were sold when GM still employed a lot of people here, but most have been run out and rusted out, not collected. The newest ones would be almost 30 years old.
I had a rare, 2.2 manual Beretta which I ordered. I don’t think dealers ever stocked anything like that.
My friend’s Sunfire is still in pretty good shape, spending most of its time in Florida, not on a coast, and garaged when not driven.