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Runtime: 10:50
0:00 GM & Hyundai Going to Collaborate
1:09 Stellantis’ Dealers Attack CEO
2:21 Stellantis Lacks Safety Ambition
3:21 Denso Building Unmanned Assembly Plant
4:33 Nuro Drops AV Pods to License Tech
5:12 Nissan Trying to Get Inventory Under Control
6:13 Fiat Cuts 500e Production
6:31 VW Gives New Taos More Power
7:21 1st Level 4 Passenger AV
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GM & HYUNDAI GOING TO COLLABORATE
And we start off today with big news of a couple of giants coming together. GM and Hyundai signed a memorandum of understanding to investigate ways they can collaborate on product development, manufacturing and clean-energy tech. That includes co-development of passenger and commercial vehicles, internal combustion engines and electric and hydrogen technologies. They also hope to leverage each other’s scale and could combine sourcing of materials for batteries and steel to drive down costs. GM and Hyundai say they started looking for opportunities to collaborate as soon as they signed on the dotted line. So that means we don’t know the true depth of their partnership yet. Will it be more involved than GM’s deal with Honda, for example? But the two sold roughly 10.5 million vehicles combined last year, so there’s massive opportunities and it will be fascinating to see how this plays out.
STELLANTIS’ DEALERS ATTACK CEO
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares hasn’t been making very many friends in the auto industry lately. He’s been the source of attacks by the UAW and its president. Multiple suppliers are suing the company and have refused to ship parts. And now Stellantis’ own dealers are attacking him. In an open letter to Tavares, the president of the National Dealer Council, which represents its dealer network in the U.S., said his “short-term decision making” has led to shrinking market share and a degrading of the company’s brands. It also urged Stellantis to spend more money to clear inventory off dealer lots. The company responded with its own statement saying that it takes “absolute exception to the letter,” doesn’t believe in public personal attacks and thinks such dialogue should take place in its monthly dealer meetings. It also said it already started addressing some of the National Dealer Council’s complaints. But the council said it’s been sounding the alarm bells for two years and “now that disaster has arrived.”
STELLANTIS LACKS AMBITION WHEN IT COMES TO SAFETY
Stellantis is also facing criticism over the safety of its vehicles. The Euro NCAP, which crash tests and rates the safety of vehicles in Europe, just gave the all-electric Jeep Avenger a three-star rating. It says the model provided poor chest protection to a 10-year old in the side impact crash test and it criticized the company for not making a system that can detect a child standard. The safety agency also says the Avenger performed poorly in crash avoidance tests with pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists. The Euro NCAP was pretty harsh in its summary saying the test results demonstrate Stellantis has a “lack of ambition” when it comes to safety. And while it acknowledges the company has had to cut costs recently to remain competitive, Euro NCAP said “safety should not be where a car manufacturer makes its savings.”
DENSO BUILDING UNMANNED ASSEMBLY PLANT
The auto industry is pushing to make the manufacturing process more automated. We’ve seen several companies testing humanoid robots on the assembly line and now the supplier Denso, which is part of the Toyota Group, is going to open a plant in Japan without any workers. Denso says the plant, which will make electronic control units, will be capable of “24-hour unmanned operation.” And it’s not just manufacturing, the unloading of materials and components, transfers within the plant and packing of products for shipment will all be automated. The factory will be monitored remotely by workers who will step in to make any repairs or take care of any issues if necessary. Denso will start construction of the $480 million facility this year with production kicking off in 2028.
NURO DROPS AV PODS TO LICENSE TECH
Autonomous startup Nuro is switching up its business model. The company was known for its small driverless delivery pods. You may have seen some of the tests by Uber Eats, FedEx, Walmart and Kroger. But now it’s pivoting to license its AV tech to automakers and other mobility providers. The company says its system can provide up to Level 4 driving and believes the time is right for “personally owned vehicles to have autonomous capabilities.” While no companies have signed up yet, Nuro says it’s talked with automakers and other OEMs for the past 12 months.
NISSAN TRYING TO GET INVENTORY UNDER CONTROL
Nissan is trying to get its North American operations under control. Inventory soared, so it boosted incentives to increase sales, but that just cut into its revenue. It did take Nissan’s days’ supply of vehicles from over 105 days at the beginning of the year down to 83 days, only slightly higher than the national average of 81 days’ supply. But inventory of a couple of key models are still higher than it would like them to be, so Automotive News reports that Nissan is cutting production of the Rogue and Frontier. It says it wants to trim about 40,000 units between this month and next. But dealers say production cuts won’t solve their problems. 70% of Nissan dealers earned less profits this year and 40% lost money. Nissan has also seen its market share fall 2% in the last 5 years in the U.S. and the Rogue and Frontier account for about 40% of its sales right now.
FIAT CUTS 500e PRODUCTION
And Nissan isn’t the only company that is cutting production due to slumping demand. Fiat is pausing production of the electric 500 for four weeks at its Mirafiori plant in Italy because of poor sales. Fiat blames the slowdown in EV demand in Europe for the production stoppage.
VW GIVES NEW TAOS MORE POWER
Volkswagen is showing off a refreshed version of its small crossover the Taos. Front-end styling updates include a new bumper design, a new grille with an available light bar and standard LED headlights. The interior features a new dashboard design and an 8-inch infotainment screen that sits on top of the center dash. The Taos’s 1.5L turbocharged four-cylinder engine was updated which boosts power from 158 to 174 horsepower. And all-wheel-drive models are now equipped with an 8-speed automatic transmission, like FWD versions, instead of a seven-speed dual clutch. The Taos goes on sale later this year in the U.S. and pricing will be revealed closer to its launch.
1ST LEVEL 4 PASSENGER AV
Chinese automaker Jiyue, which is a joint venture between Baidu and Geely, is launching a new sedan called the 07 that features Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving system. It’s a bit of a landmark because it will be the first Level 4 AV going into volume production that regular people can buy. There’s not a lot of details, but it’s a perception-based system, which I think means it doesn’t have any lidar. Prices for the 07 start under $30,000 up to about $42,000. But the self-driving tech will be part of a monthly subscription or a one-time payment and the cost of that wasn’t revealed.
And just a quick reminder before I sign off that there won’t be a new Autoline After Hours today. Both John and Gary are out. But they’ll be back next week. And that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for tuning in.
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Well, here we go… That 24/7 fully autonomous, robot operated Denso plant will be groundbreaking. Now watch as Fain tries getting the iRobots to form a union. 😉
I can hear Fain’s bargaining pitch now. “I’ll get you mandatory charging breaks every 90 minutes and no weekends…”
I can imagine GM collaborating with Hyundai on EVs as GMs efforts in that space have not necessarily panned out for them. Hyundai has been successful in that space however.
I think it would be misguided for GM to follow Hyundai in the ICE world. It is very well known that Hyundai is not a good vehicle in the long run. They sell well new because of the promise of their 10 year/100 mile warranty and low price. All GM needs is a 10 year warranty matching Hyundai and they would likely put Hyundai out of the ICE business. Everyone knows, or should know, to never ever ever ever ever ever ever buy or keep an ICE Hyundai vehicle out of warranty. You can roll those big dollar dice though and you may get lucky. Most don’t.
Probably a good move on GM’s part to partner with Hyundia which should help prepare them for the China invasion that will give being competitive a whole new meaning.
Tavaris is digging his own grave. The whole EV transition was handled so poorly. You don’t cut the models that are selling before launching the new EV models and seeing if they will actually sell. I’m sure that’s what dealers have been complaining about for 2 years and public relations wonders why the dealers are upset. Tavaris should probably be setting up his golden parachute for an early retirement.
The Denso plant sounds interesting. So, will there be lights and heat? Since its electronics I would imagine the HVAC will still need to be controlled. As Elon learned with the model 3 some tasks just are not great candidates for automation. Much of a vehicle’s interior required a certain amount of dexterity and manipulating flexible components like headliners, carpet, wiring are really hard to manage with a robot. So although it may be the future, I think the assembly plant is fairly safe for a while longer.
Nissan dealerships losing money? I thought only a fraction of their profit was due to new car sales. They were claiming the money was in service. So maybe their service departments need an overhaul. Or maybe Nissan doesn’t provide enough funds for all the CVT transmission replacements especially since they have extended the warranty to 10 years 120k miles.
MURKUR
Are recent Hyundais unreliable? It’s a small sample, but a couple friends have them with fairly high mileage, like 150K, with no significant problems.
Nissan CVTs have a bad reputation for reliability. How about all of the others, like Subaru, Honda, Toyota, Chevy, and probably others?
Over the years GM and Honda have been working together several things, (Honda drivetrain in a Saturn vehicle, Hydrogen FuelCells, the current Honda EVs are GM designs). I always thought they should do more. I wonder if that has not gone as smoothly as it would appear. If GM and Hyundai start working together, what does that mean for the Honda relationship long term?
If the Jeep Avenger performed so poorly on the NCAP test, the Alfa Romeo Junior could have done, or will not do much better, seen it and other vehicles are built from the same Stellantis architecture! With that and other Stellantis platforms being new (or mostly new) with the ability to support ICE and BEV powertrains, this would seem like a major blow to Stellantis’ decision to that type of joint development! Is it just the safety tech, or the architecture itself? All that pressure on the individual brands to make money and this is the type of tools they are given to work with?! What is incredible is that HE put Stellantis together and is expecting, demanding, that others make it work.
Hello bought my son a 2003 Hyundai. Brand new $8,305. and he used it till 2021 when it would no longer pass pa inspection for rust I never helped him with any maintenance and it was running well when he had to junk it. Rocker panel rust took it down. 200,000 plus miles. Stick shift. All mechanicals were ok when junked.
Lambo, regarding the expectation that ‘computers’ should be perfect, the subtitles at roundabout 7’43 are hilarious (the Chinese EV with lvl 4 autonomy), viz: “… there’s not a lot of details, but it’s a perception based system which I think means it doesn’t have any liar …”. We really don’t need our cars to start hallucinating.
Japan immediately benefits from building truly automated / robotic factories. Just like South Korea, they are facing an increasingly severe dearth of labor. Yesterday, I deconstructed a chocolate wrapper, and it’s truly an amazing feat of packaging we hardly think about anymore – battery manufacturing is not so different, except that the mass of material differs. There’s raw materials from overseas, refining, tempering, layered filling, intricate individual packaging, assembly… except that the latest bad harvests have made chocolate bean prices go through the roof.
Re: Hyundai/Kia reliability, I think the black eye is the engine trouble they’ve been having. Most of the issues are major, but if it’s going to fail, it is normally early enough to be under warranty. I know four friends at work that had issues and it was difficult to get Hyundai to replace the engine. They were all around 2012-2016 Kia short block engines (1.6, 2.0, and 2.4 I think). I think as long as you don’t get one of those bad engines, they are reliable, but I wouldn’t take that gamble. The electrics are probably good though; I haven’t heard of any issues with those.
Re: the 10,000 lb question yesterday, I agree that V2X is the answer. Even before autonomous vehicles become competent, I think V2X should be a priority. Improve the communication of the individuals involved in traffic, and the traffic issues (congestion, collisions, fatalities) should improve. My RAM 2500 has a GVWR of 10,000 lbs, so that pedistrian safety issue wouldn’t involve me anyway. but on that weight topic: I’ve never had to have any emissions test on it. Though I’m glad it is easy for me, it seems like nowadays, the smaller vehicles are very clean and it’s these heavier vehicles that should be checked -not exempt- from emissions.