AAH #687 - Piston Engine Gear Head Talks BEV, PHEV and FCEV

I'll don't line after hours is brought to you by bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your journey, mister Vassilash, John, how are you? I'm chopping at

the bit ready to get going on it, just as this is a huge power train show we're going to have, but I don't know propulsion systems.

We'll get into that. So in nineteen twenty three, Buick built its one

millionth vehicle, which was a big deal back in those days, and it was the Model fifty five. Now, interestingly enough, it had a two

forty two cubic in inch inline six engine that created a wopping how many horse power? Sixty five? Larry Webster, Senior VP of Media in Editorial at

Haggerty which fifty and our very special guests, Mickey Blah, Senior Vice president, head of Global Propulsion Systems Stilantis one five. John, you almost took

it sixty sixty ten horsepower? Go over? So I went, can't go

over? Press the right rules you well, you know, and I probably

had a whopping six to one compression ratio, yeah thirty PM right, oh right yeah let fuel yeah right, So Mickey, well wait stop. We

got to let the people know who Mickey blick Is and why we invited him on the show. I just said we was well, I mean, but

we got to learn more about the sky. All right. So how far

back do we want to go with your career there? Mickey? So,

so you've been in power train since nineteen ninety I discussed you spent twenty two years with with General Motors in powertrain. You moved on to American EXLE and

we're in propulsion systems electric and when you're at GM also electrification. I should

should mention that. And in twenty nineteen you joined what was then FCA and

had a power train and here you are today. Yeah, five years almost

to the month. I think next month be five years at Stalantis or FCA

or whatever. Beginning or ending of the journey here. It's been a long

journey, thirty four years in industry. I'm a hardcore power train, propulsion

system, power trains, okay between us, Yeah that trips off the but yeah, I'm a long term die hard. Starting the Dinos at GM in

nineteen ninety and as a Dino rat, you know, working side by side with a shop coat and a toolbox and had a chance of working almost every engine at GM at the time a lot of the transmission programs, and today it's Stalantis right in the middle of the transition and sprinkling there as electrification four or five times as it starts and stops of electrification happened. And you're globals

ansis right, You're not just North America. I've got the whole globe,

which for US has nine engineering centers around the world that's handling different propulsion systems, and we're pretty much in the large geographic areas starting in North America, Mexico, US and Canada, have an engineering operation in Brazil and Beteam and then we're in Paris of course from the genesis of the former PSA colleagues, Frankfurt, which is where a lot of the old OPAL team was, and a couple of places in Italy Modena, Torino, Familiano, India, China, and then a few other little sprinkled engineering resource centers. We actually have

a big operation in Morocco now which has been a little jewel of engineering growth expertise for US. Now we're going to talk all this alternate propulsion stuff that

the industry is moving to. But my understanding is you're a total hardcore engine

guy. Small block V eight guys, those are your roots, right,

Small block V eight Deep Ruts, which is in the backyard at my parents' house in Augusta, Georgia, was nineteen seventy eight Pontiac Sunbird with an iron duke engine and a carburetor that started almost every time. And it was a

third time my dad had my brother had that. I took over and one

hundred and four thousand miles when I picked it up and leaks, drips, you know, stumbles everything I had to do. So that's where I really

got the bug of just working on engines, was back then and rebuilding in the backyard. Had to do it to keep it running until college. Can

I ask a question, how do you set a baseline these days of efficiency?

I was just thinking in my head, like you know, as you know, diesels fell out of favor. They had the best theremontha in the

US in efficiency. They basically you get forty percent of the energy of the

fuel that goes into the road or somewhere around. These are the numbers I've

heard around. Now you have somewhere you're capturing the energy and breaking like on

a hybrid system, then you have turbo chargers. I've heard like Formula one

engines are like hitting fifty percent efficiency, and I'm a little confused, like, how do you guys use all this stuff because it all depends on the tests and how you measure the efficiency. What's a good measuring stick for everybody

to think about this? It's all over because we're confusing everybody. You know,

it seems that we come up with a new standard as we go along.

Good news is essay is kind of a good rule of thumb of whether it's horsepower horsepower per leader, which has kind of been the measuring stick for everybody on a power efficiency point of view. Now we throw kilowatts in confuse

all the Americans, some of the Canadians and the Europeans get understand what killowatts are, and that's kind of where everything's moving over to that killo wat side.

And an efficiency is is it miles per gallon? Is it miles per

gallon equivalent? Is it miles pergawlln? Electric? Is electric range? Is

it efficiency? Yea, so it is. It is a problem with us

techies, know, the hardcore engineers, how do we get that marketing message?

Typically though customers really don't care about efficiency when they think about a propulsion system. You can talk to them all day, you guys get it,

but it really kind of bounced all over the place. Is they want an

arrange on electric vehicle, they want a miles per gallon or kilometers or leaders parklometer one hundred kilometers in Europe. That's kind of all the customer cares about.

And for us, the benchmark, as you said, an ice engine thermal efficiency forty percent, it's really good. Thirty eight. It's kind of

whereybuddy is. Okay, you get high compression engines, you can get up

at forty two forty three. People claim they can get the forty eight forty

nine. It's about the limit of the technology of compressing something in a gas

engine and lighting off the ignition system for it. Electrification. These motors,

these electric motors and machines, you're talking anywhere from eighty eight to ninety something percent efficiency. Electric machines are really really efficient. It's almost twice efficiency.

But you got this thing called a battery that costs a lot more and is a lot more room, picks up more room. So it's a trade off

along the way. So Mickey throughout your career, I mean dealing with you

know, as John saying, your roots in ices, talk to us about how you saw developments to improve the performance inefficiency of engines. I mean,

it used to be people were talking about, you know, we're going to downsize turbocharge engines, and you know we're gonna, you know, do all kinds of things to make it better. All that seems to have sort of

gone by the wayside as people are now talking about propulsion systems. Yes,

and though I think in my thirty plus years in there, you call me a hardcore engine guy, but I've been working electrification since two thousand and six when a GM we started really the beginning of the two mode hybrid, and then the VOLT that we launched after that. So you know, I've been

in the space almost twenty years now seeing the electrification starts and stops. But

it is clearly been an interesting time because you get the different constraints. You

get the regulation side, which drove a lot of the downsizing. You had

the diesels that we're doing very good, and then the problems that we're in the diesel markets some of the OEMs have had and you kind of have to shift gears literally along the way of what's the most important thing, And I started on small blocks with GM, but CLICK quickly went to the Ecotech four cylinder, which we developed in England with a partner with Lotus. Actually the

project center was located there because we saw that we need to move a GM from only having small blocks and some good six cylinders, so we needed a really global four cylinder engine. And then what happened is some regulations came in,

so we kind of downsized more. Everybody started saying vates are dead.

That was in nineteen ninety seven. You know vights are dead. Well,

now I'm at a place where we've lived on vights until literally the last few weeks building V eight. So we really have to just be very capable of

moving to where the industry wants us to go. And what I found out

is regulation is driving innovation. Also, not that I want more of it,

more regulation, but you know, you're talking about the old the Buick engine, you know, one hundred years ago. When you think about a

small block V eight. I remember working in nineteen ninety two trying my hardest

and sell sixteen or the Dino Lab and Warren trying to get three hundred horsepower out of the corvette, the LS one. At the time, we were

we're at two ninety six. We got to get three hundred, got to

get three hundred, got to get three hundred. Now, I mean we're

getting three hundred out of a two liter engine, you know, the stuff we're working on with the at Stilantis. So it's amazing how fast innovations developed.

You know, getting three hundred plus horsepower of a four cylinder is crazy.

And in our six cylinder we launched, we can talk about that some our new Hurricane engine. I mean, we're up over five hundred and fifty

horse power out of a three lider. It's crazy. I remember when one

hundred horsepower per Leader was sort of like you know, the glass ceiling as it were, and I think Lotus was the first to beat it. Twin

turbo inner cool blah blah blah. They threw everything in the kitchen saying now

it's almost hard to buy an engine that's good. Doesn't do that. Oh

yeah, that's a stand. I mean, that's an entry point. We

use the word entry tickets side the company. One hundred horsepowker Leader is simple.

I mean, it's just like Okay, what are we to do from here? Now? These you guys are switched switching from the hemy V eight

to the inline six turbo charge. You know, I know on the EPA

test the turbo engines perform really well, but then I hear different things in the real world where when you're at full throttle a lot and some cars not all that, the engine managements go rich. They throw a lot of fuel

down to keep the I don't know why, it needs to keep something cool, and that ends up affecting real world fuel economy. So what you see

on the windowsticker, yeah, it looks great, but then in the real world they actually drink a lot of fuel. So I know you're aware of

this. How do you guys manage that? Well, they're there, I

think what you're talking about, yeah, but like you know, what we what we also heard is these these big V eight's that turn so few RPMs, like on the highway, they're actually pretty efficient, right without the turbos.

Yeah, I mean, I think what you're getting at is on higher compression ratio, higher compression ratio, higher spinning engines, there is a lot of things you have to do to manage that amount of energy that you're putting into the smaller displacement engines, and whether it's intercoolers where you're cooling and the earth is coming into the engine, or what you're saying is all engines use some form in the US market mainly use some form of what's called power Richmond.

So you go off as Tokyo metric or what's called lambdawan in Europe and give a little bit of fuel. The regulations clearly allow that to happen,

but you really only happen that on wide open throttles, high performance drag racing scenarios that will say, very highly loaded engines, and it's purely to protect the mechanical devices that may suffer from that very short limited time of running, and it cools the pistons, normally the top of the pistons on that so that allows us to be very efficient on the internals of the engine. And

the very low scenario, low cases where you're trying to be the racer of the stoplight or towing your boat up north, we're allowed to do that to protect, not damage the the engine. So that's clearly what has to happen.

But normally on cycle, on driving every day, you never get into those conditions. It's a very very very small percentage of the time. I

think the key to what Larry's saying, though, what you're alluding to their stand on cycle. The cycle's pretty easy. You know. If you want

to keep up with traffic, if you want to move, you're you're off the EPA cycle. You put a little under two liter turbo charge motor in

a thirty two hundred pound car, that thing is going to be what pretty regularly. No, not really. I mean if you look at where we

drive now, we've got a lot of real time data. The cycle's a

cycle, right. Europe's got their own cycle. US has their own cycle.

The US cycle was developed in the seventies, basically modified a couple of times from a driving pattern point of view. But you know, we want

to make sure that we're we're in a common test environment so we're all the same, and then we make sure that off cycle, you know that we don't do anything that you have to look at it. Yeah, well we

have to drive there, so you have to do all the other all the other things, and you know, it's a spirit of the regulations. We

at Stilanti's make sure that we're not doing anything that is not in violation of the spirit of what the regulation is trying to do, which is make sure you have gross pollution, you have good fuel economy and good customer satisfaction.

So we want it. So the new six cylinder to Turbich are sixth in.

That's replacing a really beloved engine, the Hemi. Right, what was

what really drove that? Why make the switch because it's going to be a

more expensive engine, presumably, right? Yeah, I mean you have a

twin turbo in line six. So our three Leader Hurricane engine, it's been

a great success since last year. First of all, there's no excuses about

it because it actually makes more power than the Heimi. So if you take

it from him Me to a Hemmy comparison of a five point seven Leader or even the six four naturally aspirated Hemmy, it actually is more powerful than that.

So the customer is not losing any performance value. So it wasn't like,

ah, we had to give up the Hemi and got a sacrifice to this Hurricane, the Mantra or that engine. Was we want the customer to

have an amazingly capable engine for it. Now it doesn't be the HELLCAD.

It doesn't beat the demon, you know, the very small volume capable engine that we put in the market. But the goal of where it was more

efficiency. So we had, you know, we had to bring up our

field economy fleet average field economy or our CO two performance in there. And

the engine does it ten twelve up to sixteen percent improvement the field economy in the similar equipped car is what drove it. We had to get our corporate

average up. I see. So when you guys introduced that engine, some

people thought you guys were crazy. I mean, you developed an all new

engine, clean sheet and everybody knows engines are going away. Yeah, so

talk to us about that. Yeah. Well, I will tell you.

When I walked into the company five years ago, there was a small little project working on the side of a new new six cyliner, and you know I was I was able to replace Bobbly who had been in the job for many, many years. And Bob was an excellent engineer and he knew that

what the company had at the time, I needed to have some refresh.

We had the Pinnastar that was doing very good, naturally aspirated the six engine.

Of course, we had the HEMI but he had the foresight that he needed we needed to start working on that, and he endorsement from the company and Marcioni at the time I was told, I was okay, work on it. Let's see where this goes. So I kind of took the baby

that he had started and we ran with it. It had a little code

name inside of it and which actually was Hurricane, which was kind of an interesting there was a tornado and a hurricane with the two code names inside the company. And we just kept working on it, and it was a small

group of very dedicated engineers. We kept it quiet. In fact, I

think when we revealed it the it was during the middle of COVID and we did the broadcast for people said what you guys, what are you doing?

We didn't know about this, and so it was kind of kept in the back dinos of Auburn Hills. And the guys that had one mission was you

know, make an incredibly no excuse new engine for the company that would be the benchmark, and we think we've done it. So the thought process was

CO two improvement for the company. We had to make a move. We

industrialized it. Now it's up and running. We launched it on the Grandwagon

Air. We're launching it right now literally in the new RAM and feedback from

your peers in the industry articles came out about a month ago. We think

we did a pretty good job with it. It's smoother, it's more power

than the Hemi, it's better fuel efficiency, it's matched with the transmission, I think very well. And we've said it, we're going to actually have

a four cylinder version of that coming right behind it. So take off two

cylinders and have its little brother and use that same performance. And that's our

future, right, It's a four cylinder, six cylinder future. And in

the North American environment, of course, two years ago, when everybody was going ev gaga, you know, it looked like it was a crazy thing that you guys were doing it. Now it looks really smart. And I'm

using that as a segue. Earlier you said you don't want more regulations,

but the EPA just dumped a bunch more regulations in your lap. All the

headlines, all the media is like, oh, the EPA backed off the Biden administration. May you do them back off? Well, it looks to

me like they backed off, you know, an ectenc little bit. It

looks like there's a lot more regulation coming. What you're thinking now in terms

of propulsion, because even though they gave you a little bit more leeway early twenty twenty seven to twenty thirty two, looks to me, if I'm reading it right, twenty thirty two, it's almost just as strict as it was, and that's dictating over sixty percent ev penetration by then. Yeah, well,

you're right. The EPA announcement earlier this week was a good step forward

for certainty. Right, We've been working in a two years of a little

bit of uncertainty of what the regulations, and as you said, in the administration kind of mandated it was going to be a percentage of sales. It's

gone away from that. But in order it gives us a lot more latitude

to have full BEVs, plug in hybrids, even mild hybrids will probably get a little bit more energy out of this if you look at how the REGs are. We still need to get the rules all written and rolled out.

It just came out. We've been a part of that process. But you

start off by saying maybe we did a good thing. I don't know if

we're lucky or Clairvriant or our Crystal Ball was a little bit better than some of the other ones. But we are in an absolutely perfect position for this

now. If you look at the flexibility we've built into our strategy, we're

all in. We're not backing off a single bit because of any of the

announcements. Our b EV strategy is extremely clear in North America, extremely clear

in Europe. Carlos Tavars three or four weeks ago on Squarkbox, I think

it was, and you know, we're still moving forward with our plan.

We went from you know, forty evs that we have in Europe right now and we're going to be up in the fifty to fifty five name plates of b evs very soon. North America, we're launching eight b evs right now.

In twenty twenty four, we'll have eight b evs in the marketplace everywhere, from a big Ram Pro Master EV delivery vehicle partner with Amazon and others, to FF five hundred city car we're bringing it back in which is actually one of our strongest selling cars in Europe right now. We've got a great

plug in hybrid solution, the four by E, which that was another funny one we launched it in a virtual mode. It was everyone wasn't sure with

four by E four x E four What is it but four y E And we're number one, number two, and number three sales in the US with our plug in hybrid. So we're sitting with a I think a very balanced

strategy for the next five, six, seven, eight years. Twenty thirty

two. It looks like we're going to have to get a little tighter on

some of these things, but I think we're positioned with flexibility. Yeah,

I was looking at Bloomberg did a breakdown of what twenty thirty two should look like, and they have it as fifty six percent evs, thirteen percent plugins in twenty nine percent ice engines. So twenty nine percent ice engines. That

ain't bad. Now you know. Our therefore strategy we announced two years ago

now three years as it was, was very clear for North America, we'll stay in North America. We said that there's kind of three tenants. One

of the company is fifty percent reduction in carbon footprint by twenty thirty, fifty fifty percent BEV capability we said by twenty thirty, and then of course doubling the revenue and double digit margins. So we've said that we're going to be

targeting by twenty thirty to fifty percent BBS, which means fifty percent, and we're growing. We want to grow the volume, so our ice capacity,

we're not decreasing ice capacity in North America. In fact, we're building where

we just added a plant in Cocomo, an engine plant there last year.

We're retooling some stuff right now in Cocomo, another engine plant. We're retooling

Dundee here in Michigan. Uh So we're we're making sure our footprint is very

strong and if we get out of North America, our Brazil. We made

a big announcement to six billion euros of investment for Brazil. So we have

a huge ice footprint and we think that's going to be a long term ice footprint need. With what we're called biohybrids using ethanol and electrification together in South

America. Right now, what do you think is going to take to you

know, the first two months of this year, I think ev sales growth was about twelve percent and they sold about a million bvs last year give a million, okay, so I mean still pretty interesting growth in a segment there's a lot of news about, oh, the growth is slowing but still but I mean, if you follow the trend lines, yeah, it seems it's only going to get harder to increase that percentage of evs. I mean,

the regulations kind of drive me nuts because they go about it from the wrong angle. But that's a that's a whole other that's another show. Yeah,

a whole show. But what do you think it's going to take to get

people to buy these things evs specifically? Yeah, people are buying them,

So let's talk about that. If you look at the footprint in Europe,

the Europeans are buying them. If you go for the Nordic regions, which

you can't you can't say what's too cold for evs because the Nordic region of Europe has been high percent forty fifty sixty percent in some of the countries.

Look at the middle belt of Europe, they're buying hop over to North America.

You know, our competitors have done a good Tesla's done a good job.

You know, they're selling them pretty strongly here and they probably could sell more if they had more capacity. Ford's done a good job of break in.

We're just showing up. We are not backing off on our volumes.

Are our plans here? We believe we got well, I know we do.

I think he had Ralph Jills in here. Recently. He has designed

some marvelous vehicles. You know, he's where we don't want melt the jelly

bean looks of the of the cars, and He's right. Our dodges are

going to look like a dodge. Our rams are going to look like rams.

Our jeeps are going to look like jeeps. And we believe that's part

of the secret sauce is how do you make sure you keep the brand authenticity and give them an amazing experience. I mean, I'm driving a Maserati BEV

outside, drove it here today, the Grand Turisma. It's a wonderful car.

It looks beautiful and it's great, great propulsion system with it. From

a BV point of view. So to your question specifically, I think the

mark is going to absorb them. I think the early adopters are kind of

waning now. It's kind of that next segment of kind of I want it,

but I'm not gonna or techies. I think what has to flip into

a rational purchase right now, it's an emotional purchase, but then the emotional purapase sometimes, but it's also you know, I was just at a thing last week, Mary Barrow was speaking and she just was very equivocal. Yeah,

the buyers are really rational because it's a big purchase, so it's but they irrational, but they still do it. I mean, let's just take

our product. I'll stay on the Stalantis product. Look at the Demon one

seventy, right, that's not a rational purchase, tiny little volume. How

many volumes of evs are there right now? So you've got to figure how

to you expand upon that. Look at the track coock. We've been super

accessible with a Jeep track cock. That's not a super that's somewhere one hundred

thousand. We just announced the three ninety two runout ninety nine thousand dollars MSRP

for that. So we think there's a spot for people to buy these cars.

And once you're in them, and I've driven many, many, many, many times, you'd love the experience of these cars. What's gonna happen

with the batteries and what's gonna happen with the batteries and precious metals? You're

probably right at the forefront more than we are. We hear so many different

things. I've heard some car companies say there won't be any precious minerals by

twenty thirty in these batteries. I was like, whoa, you know,

because that's a lot of what you hear as a negative against these batteries is how do you mind him and all that stuff? So where is the batteries

going? What do you see happening there the little refinements, or do you

think there's big steps ahead? I would say there's been three big steps today.

Right If you look at the big guys, whether it's LG, Samsung, C ETL, they've been in this for thirty years. There was the

early early nicomel hydroide batteries, then there was the LFP, the iron phosphate batteries, and now there's lithium ion, a bunch of families of lithianion.

Lithium ion has clearly broke through every barrier of cost, weight, and availability of that and they're doing really well. The energy denzies are going up,

the costs are coming down. Kind of flattened on the cost curve right now.

There was some hedging and some really crazy things in the raw material market.

But there's plenty of those materials around at least for the next four or five six years, and people will keep finding more and more underneath. There's

some certain minerals that we've got to make some big decisions on Rightbalt Cobalt had a very negative, negative reality that there was mine in some areas, that labor practices were unethical, and we've vowed and we've signed a lot of things that said, you know, we're going to make sure our supply doesn't come from them. But there's other thing like nickel. Nicol is a very large

proponent of this, and nichol's all over the place, But will people start mining it up there's a big nickel mine in northern Michigan. Are we're going

to extract start extracting that nickel heavier than it already was in the up here in Michigan. I think there's just choices have to be made of how we

mind these materials. I don't think anybody thinks we're gonna have a problem running

out before the big recycle loop happens. And that's what people are forgetting to

put into their equation is after about eight or ten or twelve years on the road, and these batteries start consuming, they're going to start giving back in eight to fifteen or ten to fifteen years from now as that circle loop, just like catlet converters did, whether it's rodium, pladium or platinum. If

you go back in the seventies when we're doing catalytic converters, everybody's oh, there's not enough of this mining, but there's not enough this material. Well,

now you get ninety two percent of it back in the recycling loop.

When you take the catalysts off the cars, you put them back, you recycle it out, you can reprocess it and put it back in. So

that's going to be the big How does that three sixty loops start happening with materials? To Mickey, I think one of the most interesting vehicles is more

than just a nice guy you are. I think one of the most interesting

vehicles that'll come out this year will be the RAM Charger and you know, interesting hybrid system. Talk to us about what you guys did with that.

I think we kind of surprise people on Total too completely total. So yeah,

we got to get into a lot of detail. It's got a lot

of stuff on it. Yeah, it does. But so explain the RAM

charger in case anybody watching the show doesn't know what you're going We just made announcement of a RAM charger. We actually hinted about it about eighteen months ago

where Carlos Tavaris made a statement of a range extending paradigm breaker r E p B. That was kind of he threw it out there and it didn't get

a lot of traction. You guys didn't pick up on it, and we

stayed silent on it. Well, we've heard the range extender thing, but

none of your communications people would say peep about it. So we keep them

locked up until we need them. But so we've been working on this in

the background, and to be honest with it, was the Ram. The

Ram is such a strong brand. Now we're talking to the pickup truck that

maybe others the Ram pickup truck. We needed a solution to move in electrification,

and I would say we had both feet and we're one foot in, one foot out on the same So again, we took a small team kind of put them away in Auburn Hills and said, listen, we want to make sure that we have flexibility, and that's how our whole strategy has been rolled out of a flexible solution. We knew we had to do a BEV.

We're fully committed to BEVs, absolutely no doubt about it. Mantra was

the BEVs are going to be important for this, for us to do this, So let's go to a range extender. So very very simple. Range

extender. You have an engine that normally is hooked up to a transmission gears

shaft comes outside of it, goes to the wheels through an axle. Set

up a range extender is a very simple. You take a gas engine and

on the back of it, instead of transmission, you put a generator.

So you amount a generator on it, just like you have a gen set as a backup generator at home. You know, when you run out of

power, what do you do? You crank the engine cranks up in the

little brown box outside and the generator spending generates electricity. So we have an

engine generating in the back and nothing else. Normally it's running as a fully

electric vehicle. You have a battery and you have electric metors on both axles,

which we'll have in the ram charger front. So an all will drive

for a four wheel drive system and one hundred and sixty hundred and eighty miles of electric range, which a ton of customers will be fine with that kind of a range in their truck if you happen to not charge it or you don't want to drive up north. As soon as that battery runs down,

we fire up the engine running on a gas tank, and that gas tank is running, the engine creates electricity and you can either keep driving down the road or you can actually charge the battery back up. Never have to plug

it in. If you don't want it, you can, you don't have

to plug it in. So that's what a range extender. How we have

a setup and code name. We had a code name for that inside also,

which is Pegasus that I can talk about that. We like aircraft names,

if all our code names are around military aircraft, and Pegasus was the big refueler tank that the Air Force when the planes fly across and they got to keep going, they extend the range of aircraft. So we borrowed that

name for the program. Hey, look, we got to take a quick

commercial break. We're gonna come back. I don't want to get into even

more details on us. When the yelling means said working you skinski, being

confident in your grip on the road is what really matters. Breach through a

lens of tires, Improved acceleration in wet conditions. All right, we're back

with Mickey Bli talking all kinds of propulsion things. Back to the range extender.

You've got a pretty big engine as the range extender. Why well,

when we saw we went through a lot of sizing, so we wanted the very efficient engine. So we actually picked the Pinnastar or okay, a variant

of the Pinnastar to be that engine. Four. That's what point actually aspirated

superfficient kind of earlier conversation, lower reving engine, super efficient, well balanced, good costs. So we've lowered the cost of the system. And uh

so we we But the reason why we need to make sure of when you don't have the battery power on board, that engine has to produce enough power to still haul your tobind trailer, your bow to whatever, ten twenty thousand pounds of trailer. If some people of our customers do horse trailers are things

like that going up mountains. So the customer will not give up any capability

of their and you couldn't do that with a force cylinder engine. You could,

but you'd have because I said, we have force yones make threehundred horsepower now, but those force cylones will be really up on the rev limiters to get that power. So the Pennistar and naturally askedpray makes its power much lower,

so a lot less noise and noise in vibration. That's a really issue.

That's a trade off. How do you like? You know, the

to toe get places. It's a really neat system, but it feels so

inefficient to me. Right, you have all this equipment and I'm like,

okay, what are we trying to do? Is it just like we want

to drive around in electric mode? That's it? Right? Well, electric

is obviously we talked about efficiency of the electric system. So if you want

to be electric ev driver ninety nine percent of your time. Most of our

ram driver ram urban drivers are not long trips, they're not towing, they're not going wherever they where they need very long range. So you're going to

be electric all the time. So you can do that, and those that

want to tow, they can toe without worrying about it. So run down

electric battery keep going over six hundred. I think we said it is about

six hundred and eighty miles ninety miles of total range per filip which is electric then gas. So there's other concepts out there. We're not the first new

range extender, but I think this was going to really really change the discussion around what is a truck eb Well, you worked on when you mentioned it earlier in your career, the system in the Chevy Vault, but that was slightly different than this, a little bit different, similar concept. You know,

we could have a lever diagram of how the transmission hooks up or doesn't hook up inside of that one. But it's very similar. You know,

you run, but they had a much smaller battery, only sixteen kilo what hour battery. This thing's going to have over eighty kilo what hours of battery

capacity, and so it goes a lot further electrically. What led to your

thinging are the companies thinking to do that? Because two years ago, if

you had asked me, you know, how should you do above, it would have been real simple, pure dedicated platform built in a dedicated plant.

That's where you're going to get the most efficiency. Because if you're going to

put in multiple powertrain options. Now you're going to carry extra mass, you're

not going to be as efficient. But now we're ev sales are not growing

at seventy percent a year, and I want to get there's a back, a secondary question to this. You're going into a market pickups very conservative buyer,

probably the most antiev people that there are. So what was the company's

thinking that was like, Yeah, you can get the most efficiency with the dedicated platform, but we're going to do this range extender flexibility. So when

we formed the company for Salantis and we brought together all the product plant, first thing that Carlos brought the team together and said, listen, we need to simplify our platforms. We've brought together really more than two companies because PSA

and Citron combined, Fiat and chrystl are combined. Opal was thrown in there,

so we had like six or seven companies floating around. So we went,

what I I really like about Stlantis is simplicity. Right, We've we've

announced that our platforms Stella small, medium, large, and frame. Everybody

gets it. We got a couple more. We got the Maseratis and we

got light commercial vehicle. But this Stella frame, which is where we wanted

where this platform is going to be on is how do we make it as flexible as possible in the North American environment because it's pretty much a North America platform for us. We needed flexibility because we didn't know where the truck market's

going. You know, Ford made their announcement and you know the Ford light.

They went very fast, took took their vehicle, just electrified it and they got to the market first in the space. And then of course we

got some other BV competitors out there, but we wanted to make sure we took a chance to learn from and to be honest, we had to catch up in some areas we were we were running fast right before the merger and right after we went in turbocharge. So another follow up question, as I

said, pick up buyer, most conservative, most anti EV there is are they going to buy a range extender? Suck? I'll build on you what

our marketing guys, and you know Tim Kiniskus now has Ram and Dodge, great brand leader CEO for that. You know, he's done a lot of

teaching me about kind of the brand side of it. What we're seeing is

that electrifying these platforms are the trucks. The fifteen hundred is actually bringing new

buyers into these markets, and that we're converting some plan on converting some, but it actually is an opportunity for new curious buyers to come into the truck platform. So I think we'll grow some of that. And the concert will

the concert will they take a RAM charger. I don't know yet. Right

I'll be the engineer for this and just give it to Tim and say go sell it. You go sell it, sell it well. But you guys

are also coming out with fifty one hundred r V and which is a pure which we first pure battery electric. So it's that flexibility, it really is,

you know, even the Stellar Large and we'll come maybe come back to that, but our Stellar Frame we're going to have the full ice with the Hurricane in there, which we launch right now. So the Hurricane engines launching

in the RAM today and then we kind of we flip over to the Stellar frame platform into this end of this year and we're we're gonna have the BEV as you mentioned, launching in there with a great system. By the way,

it's scale of the same thing we're doing instell a large, So we're using the battery supply where we're using the e d ms two hundred and fifty kilo d ms in the front, so those are electric drive modules drive electric drive modules, so we're using a lot. So we're getting huge scale out

of this thing. If you think about Stellar Large, that platform is being

industrialized for our Dodge, our Jeep, our Chrysler brand, and some other ones. I don't think we've anounce said, so I won't talk about that.

So we're going to have huge scale in that ability and flexibility on that still a large platform which we're launching literally right now, and then we're moving that into the frame, so flexibility on the frame will be above a range extended RAM. I love the name Tim pick ram charge. I said,

oh my god, you know he's creative marvel of how do you get a very simple concept, right, a ram charger, very simple fuel cells Because you guys have also talked of using fuel cells as a range extender. You

tell us, what do you think, Well, it's a tech that won't die. Yeah, and it's ten years away. Yeah, So we're in

production of fuel cells today. You know, the North America crowd doesn't maybe

doesn't realize that we've been in production for about a year and a half in Europe in our ELC light commercial vehicles and it's just it's getting traction right.

We believe that light commercial vehicle to heavier commercial vehicles is a really good sweet spot for fuel cells. It's expensive still, you got the fuel stack and

you've got the hydrogen hydrogen tanks UH to do it, so we see growth.

We've announced that we'll be coming to North America with with with some versions of that vehicle. I'll let the brands roll that out a little bit.

But we also invested in a fuel cell company, so we're partial owners and Symbio which is their partners of French startup for fuel cell technology for se Michelin and US or the three owners of that company. So we're in. We're

committed. We believe it's a place that we need to be in and go

forward with. We're on the road today. Not many of our competitors are

a lot of they've made a lot of announcements. Our competitors have, but

there's not many on the road. We're selling them right now. Where what

applications does the fuel cell make the most sense? Light commercial vehicles and up

why fleets fleets well, fleet's high use, high turnover because you have a data come back to a yard where there's hydrogen. That is the simplest reason

why. You know, you take a delivery company, you name it company,

A company, D company, whatever, and you want to have that refueling station in your port or in your home station. So these are in

constant use. They don't have to sit to charge. Well, hydrogen charges

very quickly. Hydro just I mean over an electric vehicle. That's why I

feel so it makes more sense, it makes sense. Yeah, and it's

a very good efficiency for them. Hey, we got a couple of questions

here from some viewers. Dave Todd owned in. Well, they wrote in,

you know, because we've been promoting that you'd be on the show.

Here. One thing he wants to know is do you think gasoline pe haves

plug in electric vehicles are going to be competitive with diesels in three quarter ton trucks and above. Dep's what competitive means if you made from a cost of

ownership total cost of ownership, which is important by some. I think it

could be because if you look at the price of a diesel system, the after treatment the after treatment is more expensive than a four cylinder engine these days by all the NOx emissions, the particular missions we have on there. So

I think from a from a total cost of ownership, it can be from an efficiency point of view debatable to matter how much you plug it in.

You know, if you're a customer plugs in your very high usage of plug in, I think you can exceed it. But if you're one that doesn't

plug it in a lot of time, or you have a smaller battery, it could be underperforming. What do you think about plugins in general? Now

there's a big you know, a lot of talk in the media that plug ins are the way to go or even hybrids. We're glad to see others

recognize what we've done for the last four years. Well, you've had you've

had the PACIFICA Hybrid for quite some time twenty twenty seventeen, roughly before I got there, Bob Bob launched that with the team. So we're actually number

one in sales, number two in sales, and number in three in sales and plugins in North America. So from the PACIFICA Hybrid to the four by

ease that are in the jeeps. Okay, What are the differences between these

two systems, I mean, what were the learnings that you guys were able to gain from the Pacific experience. I would say they're very different the plug

in hybrid that's on the PACIFICA. It's a front will drive first of all,

front wal drive system with a PTU power takeoff unit to go to torque to the rear. It is i'd say very much geared for normal road driving

capability capacity which you know, the customer doesn't want to be interfered with the minivan functionality that we have in there. And it's going good. We're selling

more. I think some months we're some fifty fifty mix of plug in hybrids.

When actually right after I came in, we said we needed to electrify the Jeeps and that was really the push for four y E completely different system reilal drive system. So you have a gas four cylinder gas engine through an

electrified transmission and then having four wheeled all wall capability. And the mantra for

the Wrangler was don't give up any capability of off road performance of that vehicle.

So the team had to go in a totally different mindset set of how do you drive I have this iconic vehicle still on the Rubicon Trail and Moab and the sand dune racings up up Glenarboro and everywhere else. So it's a

completely different system. But it's surprising most people that you have all that off

road capability. But it's really a nice driving street vehicle. You go on

on ramps and you're going sixty fifty eight sixty miles an hour electrically and a Jeep Wrangler, and people like, wow, this is really different for that.

And then the off road capability. You know, we have a couple

of our guys on the team when they do the Rubicon Trail, can they make the whole thing electrically? You know? And pretty much we can do

it. You may have to have a little charging at one spot before you

get on some of the steep obstacles, but it's no compromise. And then

what we found out is the jeep lover, the Wrangler lovers this quiet sensation of off roading. And I didn't even know that. So I went out

with some of my guys on the test trip. It was it's pretty good.

It's cool if you've got a Wrangler with the doors off and everything and you're off on the trail and it's all you hear is the crunching of the gravel under the tires and the birds scrape in the bottom of the frame.

So you know, how far can you take the ice engine? Do you

think what kind of life is left in it? I don't mean from increasing

its efficiency. How long do you think it's going to live in the marketplace?

I think, you know, I have the global footprint, and so different markets will be different different markets And I use this sometimes and I get corrected because I say it wrong, but it's it's geographically close. Southern Hemisphere

is going to be ice for a very long time. We call it our

third engine. So North America is our first engine of profitability. Europe's are

second engine. Now we've created a third engine, which is Brazil or say

South America, Africa, Middle East and in India. India is technically not

Southern Hemisphere. That's where I get corrected. But we see it growing for

a very long time in that space, and we want to exploit that.

We believe that's the third growth engine of the company Europe. Who knows what's

going to happen in the fall elections. You know that may change their trajectory.

They want to be out of ICE by twenty thirty ish, we'll say that we're ready for it. We'll be fully bev if that's what they mandate

wants in the regulators and then US, like we said, fifty percent, ICE is going to be for a very long time. Wow, fifty percent.

You'll think Stalantis will be in the US market. Well, we said

in twenty thirty we'll be fifty percent. Bet, I didn't know if you've

meant a global number there. Oh, I don't think I've ever done the

global number. They've seen the global number. But we will. We will

be prepared Northern Hemisphere electrification. If US was a click of switch, we

have a little time to ramp up capacity. But if you look at our

cell, a large eight evs are going to be launched on that the next year, you got the the Wagoner S is coming out right now. Right

after that, we're going to follow with the Dodge Challenger excuse me, and then we're going to have the Jeep Recon. Then we're gonna have the Chrysler's

and then we got the fifteen hundreds coming there. We could go that way

if that's what the customers and the market demanded that's going to be pretty good value of good scale. Big scale could be a third of our it could

be a third of the market. What about low carbon fuels, there's you

know, Porsche's really hype in this thing, right and in Europe they created you know, an exception for ice engines as long as they were running on low carbon fuel. Do you see that being realistic at all? The fuel's

real well, I know that, but the price of it and the availability that's the real issue. And I think some of the big fuel producers have

tried to figure out what is their future and the synthetic fuel, low carbon fuel, whatever you want to call it, it works. We have now

gone public last October September that we have twenty eight engines that are fully capable tomorrow. If it was in the tanks, could run it without any changes

on the car. So we went through a whole validation from emissions, from

durability, from performance, zero impact to them, so you have to do nothing to your car. So if the world wanted to change the most CO

two footprint and use the carbon capture system to capture the carbon, then then the process it to create this synthetic fuel. We're ready for it. The

availability is going to be very expensive, you know, and well will some of the big oil companies put the money behind it. We don't know,

but we've said we're certified, ready to go. Well you said earlier,

certificed excuse me, we're capable get the cost curve of pakilo whte hours flattened out and you know, it's one of the things we hear about the widespread adoption of battery electric vehicles is the cost heavily subsidized. Now, so where

do you see that cost? I mean it's flattening out? Then how how

are we going to make a BEV that's that's a good value for the masses, which is what you can have when you want half of your cars to be bbs. Right, Yeah, to your first question about flattening out.

When I started an electric electrification two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, roughly a battery costs one thousand dollars per kilo one hour, YEP, part of the sourcing side of it. Crazy, right, And now we're

in that magic you hear the number thrown around one hundred dollars per kilo what hour you can confuse everybody in the industry by saying that number, because is it the cell, is it the module? Is it the pack? Let's

just use that kind of a well, you've heard the thing. There's liars,

damn liars and battery engineers. Right, yeah, we say battery suppliers.

But let's just say there's somewhere between one hundred hundred and fifty dollars per kilo one hour right now. The movement of that is controlled by the commodity

pricing of the raw material. It has more influence than anything, right because

it last year we saw nickel prices go up, liftium prices went up.

They've come back down massively, massively in less nimas, and that was a little bit of there's this pent up market grabbing going on and minds were being brought online or not bring broad online fast enough. So the pricing. Can

we get to fifty I don't see fifty in my lifetime working on battery fifty dollars per kilo? What hour I see? Can we get to seventies or

eighties? I think there's a pathway there, and then there's this whole breakthrough

it is there a new technology coming and right in the right around the horizon.

There's two or three technology, whether it's a sodium ion, whether it's sulfur lithium sulfur, whether it's solid state. These could be the game changers,

but most people think they're new inventions. They're actually old technology that had

limitations that now some very smart people in startups in California and startups in Boston who were invested in some of them are trying to figure how do they make it auto capable? And that's really the break. It's not new fufu dust

that they're inventing, it's just how do they make it auto capable? Do

you think it's a charging gets quicker and more plentiful, then the customers won't won't be so range anxiety. I mean, it's hard to justify a three

hundred mile range and a massive battery pack on some of these cars when we all know most people don't drive more than fifty miles a day. So do

you think that's an education process where people accept lower range for cost? There'll

be tears? How do you see that shaping out? I mean the Tesla

thing where you're carrying around all the weight but you don't get the capability unless you pay. I mean that it almost feels nefarious to me. But you

know, so where do you see that chacking out? I would change it.

I don't hear the word range anxiety other than most of the media guys.

It's really like charging. Let's use the word as charging anxiety, I

think is what's happening? Right? Can I charge right? And that's got

to be solved today. You drive away any neighborhood, any place, there's

a gas station in every corner, bright lit twenty four hours a day.

You just pull in up and you're ready to go. It's a pretty simple

concept that people have learned over one hundred years. The charger Tesla's done a

good job. The Tesla charging network is where people need it. They got

good geotracking in their cars for it. The rest of us have been using

the industry to develop that charging system and it hasn't gone as smoothly for us.

And you know, installation has been random, and then maintenance has been even worse for those. So now we most of the OEMs have collaborated together

and said we're going to go in in North America with a joint venture of all seven of US and OEMs we formed what's called IONA, and we're going to create our whole infrastructure to go out there together. So we partner together

and we said we're going to fix this problem. And if you really read

what's behind the IONA agreement, that we have thirty thousand chargers will be out there in the next couple of years, so it's massive scale up for all of us to use that we've standardized now on a plug that we want to do for DC fast charging. So I think it's coming, but we got

to just we got to make it so no one's ever worried about charging.

It just happens. So okay, if we're still going to have fifty percent

ice, okay, And the industry as a whole, not just you guys, but I mean, the whole industry is just shoveling boatloads of money into electric vehicles. To what extent will there be technical developments for ICE engines going

forward? Or is it? Or I mean I think he is. Hurricane

is I think the hurricanes are. I think Hurricane is a great technology.

I mean, but I mean beyond hurricane. I mean, you see what

I'm saying, It's just like cilinder version. So the little hurricane But now

the other thing that to keep in mind, and I think this cons back to your your point learry about affordability. I mean, I've had some pretty

serious people who follow the stuff tell me they think the crossover point and cost BEV to ICE is twenty twenty seven ish. And one thing to keep in

mind is battery costs continue to come down. In fact, the whole electrical

powertrain system cost continues to come back. ICE is only going to go up.

These latest emission standards aren't going to make ICE engines cheaper. They're only

going to make them more expensive. That's a key point. And you don't

never hear that whole story. Like I said, a diesel emission system on

the back of the diesels are expensive by themselves, but if you look at what's on the backside, the emissions control devices, they're costing thousands of dollars now on the heavy duty or the larger diesel engine. So by default they're

raising their prices. Gasolines doing it with uel or gasoline particular filters we're going

to have to put on most of our cars now in the US and the future with the Tier four regulations that are coming. So I'm not saying it's

good that we're raising the price of a gas engine. But the reality is

the crossover is not when does battery electric vehicles cross ice from three years ago?

When do they both cross or get equal because they're both kind of ones going up and one's coming down. And where that point will the point will

be? Does that twenty twenty seven timeframes that sound reasonable for a decade?

It really depends on what you're talking about. Performance car? Okay, you're

probably already there, right, I mean, you know, whereas with you know, a turbo four, a turbot one six, that's that's late in the decade. Yeah, do you do worry about without having the hemy you

know, you talked about the conservative pickup truck buyers very comfortable with a let's call it a low tech engine push rods, not a lot of acceilliaries like intercoolers and turbos and all this stuff. Do you worry about that bread and

butter pickup byren not wanting all that tech? Are we worried about? Now?

We're trying to make sure that we can This is that flexibility is talking about. We're not going to give up either one of those On the fifteen

hundred. So we're gonna have the BEVs, we're gonna have the RAM chargers,

and we're gonna continue to have some mice variance in there also. So

giving up I don't think they have to give up anything at all. Even

the announcement the Dodge just made last last week, you know, we finally revealed that we're going to do the Challenge the Charge excuse me, which is going to be a fantastic BEEV vehicle. It's also going to have the Hurricane

in it one year later. So that's always been that part of our story

is make the BEVs, which were fully committed to those BEVs. We're going

to have those folks that want to have an ice engine in there too.

You know, I think Ford answered that question a decade and a half ago.

Whenever they introduced the Eco Boost engine into the F one fifty, there was all this, our truck buyer is going to give up their V eight for a turbo six. Seventy percent of them went with the Eco Boost,

And it's hard to beat the driveability of a turbo engine versus a naturally aspirating yeah, unless it's you know, you know, a super really high compression, really good. Naturally aspirated, the turbos just give you that instant response,

not quite like electric does, but nonetheless, Man, the driveability of a turbo engine is so much better than a naturally aspirated one. We still

have the pentastar for the RAM. Yeah, the Pinnastar engines, the three

six in there. We've talked about that will be a part of the the

RAM charger system in there. And I don't know if we've come out with

the whole portfolio of engines that will be in there, but the hurricanes in there. You can assume that the pinastar will be one of the entry points

for the for the truck buyers, so Larry's driver would not have to worry.

Yeah, this will be a push right around. We'll good. Well,

I think we ought to wrap this up. But Mickey, what a

pleasure man. I mean here, you're just a fountain of information on all

these different propulsion systems. Thank you. It's it's it is a challenging but

exciting time. You know, the engineers and the propulsion system powertrain side,

they're not losing you know, they're not getting a lot of sleep these days because we're all having fun. It is It is an amazing time in the

industry and every day we get another challenge where it's rag changes, whether it's portfolio changes, whether it's competitive changes, and looking forward to the next decade.

Lori Webster, thanks so much for coming on. It's been a long

time, but it's great to have you back on the show. Great to

be here everybody. If I can remind you, please go to Haggarty dot

com for all of our regular articles and our YouTube channel. We make some

really fun videos and actually have my own podcast. Ca'll never stop driving,

so take a listen and thanks for having me out. And you won't object

if they want to get insurance from Haggardy either, right and Gary, you and I will just keep on doing this, certainly will. We'll good.

So I want to thank all of you out there for having tuned in.

I'll online after hours. It's brought to you by bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your Journey

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