AD #3552 - Lithium Prices Crashing; CATL Profit Up 557%; UAW Lays Out Contract Goals

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Sean Fain, the new president of the UAW, signaled his top priorities in reaching a new labor contract with GM, Ford and Stellantis this fall.

In an interview with the Automotive Press Association last Friday, Fain said the union wants to get back COLA, or automatic cost of living adjustments for its members.

He also wants to eliminate the so called tiers where new workers start at a lower wage rate and take several years to earn equal pay with legacy workers.

Fain said it was unacceptable, a word he used often in his speech, for the base pay at GM's Ultium battery plant in Ohio to start out at only sixteen fifty an hour and top out at twenty dollars. And he

also said the UAW is going to take a more aggressive approach to organizing ev startups as well as the plants operated by foreign automakers in the US. And

we've got a link in today's transcript or description box if you'd like to watch that entire interview. Even though Tesla already has two assembly plants in the US

it's going to export model wise built in China to Canada. Writers reports that

the entry level rear drive models will be priced at forty four thousand, two hundred and seventy five dollars, which is over seven thousand dollars cheaper than the long range model why that's sold in Canada now. The Chinese version will also

qualify for a five thousand dollars Canadian ev subsidy. Delivery should start in another

month or two. Speaking of Tesla, it's VP of engineering recently answered questions

about the company's efforts to produce forty six to eighty battery cells. It currently

makes them on a pilot line in Fremont and is seeing some impressive improvements with its structural battery packs. It's spending fifty percent less to manufacture the packs and

they require sixty six percent less space to output the same amount of gigawatt hours.

But it will eventually switch to making forty six eighties in volume at its new cell factory in Texas. It says it's part way in fully building out

that plant, which it hopes to get steady production from next year. This

year, part of its goal is to have material production for its cathodes complete, which will include lithium supplied from its Corpus Christi mine that breaks ground next month. Tesla hopes by twenty twenty six that it will be spending seventy percent

less per gigawatt hour than a typical battery sell factory. We want to know

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your data. GMC is expanding the Hummer EV lineup for both the pickup and

the suv. Until now, only the addition one, which has all the

bells and whistles, was available. It says it's going to continue offering that

package, but is also adding the three X trim line. The main differences

are the three X comes standard with twenty two inch wheels and thirty five inch all terrain tires instead of eighteen inch wheels and thirty five inch mud tires, and it comes without the Extreme off Road package, which includes that eighteen inch wheel entire setup, skid play and underbody cameras. However, three X owners

can still order that package if they want to. Hardware wise, the addition

one and the three X are the same, same two hundred and ten plus kilowatt hour battery pack, same trimotor setup that makes about a thousand horsepower in the pickup and eight hundred and thirty horsepower in the suv. But the standard

three X with those twenty two inch wheels must be a bit lighter because it offers one thousand pounds more of towing eighty five hundred instead of seventy five hundred pounds and more range. The pickup goes from three hundred and twenty nine to

three hundred and fifty five miles, while the suv goes from two hundred and ninety eight miles to three hundred and fourteen. However, it's going to be

a while before people get their hands on a new Hummer EV. Orders are

full right now and GM only made two Hummer evs in the first three months of the year. Autocar has some bold claims about the all electric version of

the Audi A eight that is supposed to go on sale in Europe next year.

It says the styling will be ultra slick and much more closely related to the urban sphere concept that debuted a few years ago. It predicts it will

ride on the biggest version of the PPE platform that was developed by both Portia and Audie. It's an eight hundred volt architecture that allows charging of up to

two hundred and seventy kilowatts and can accommodate one hundred and twenty kilowatt hour battery packs. It could offer quote one of the longest ranges of any ev on

sale. Audie's head of User Experience says the electric AA interior won't overload passengers.

Instead, it will quote give you more of a digital experience with less physical architecture. Now I'm even more excited to see what Audie actually has to

show off. A video of a police officer directing an autonomous Weymo vehicle to

pull over went viral on TikTok. The incident occurred a little over a week

ago in Phoenix, Arizona. The vehicle encountered a parade, and an officer

in the road directing traffic tells the Weymo car to pull to the side so oncoming traffic could pass through. In the video, you can see the officer

try to direct the car, and you can also hear the passengers try to explain they can't move it because they're not driving. The Weymo did respond to

the officer's direction, eventually pulled to the side of the road, then performed a multipoint turn and moved out of the blocked lane within ninety seconds. The

passenger also received a call from Weymo's support, who stayed on the line until the passenger reached their destination. God Schiffler we pioneer Motion Electrifying mobility, manufacturing

smart, reducing CO two emissions, making energy production clean Scheffler Pioneer's motion to advance how the World moves. Last November, lithium prices hit a record eighty

six thousand dollars per ton, but last month they took a nosedive and fell to fifty two thousand dollars, and this month they collapse further to only twenty five thousand, and it looks like prices could fall even more. Reuters reports

that Argentina is about to bring mining online that could triple the country's lithium production over the next two years. That would push Argentina had a China in lithium

production and put closer to Chile. Australia is the world's largest producer the bottom

line is that all this is going to bring down the cost of making batteries for electric vehicles. That's good news for everyone, and those collapsing lithium prices

probably played a big role in boosting the financial performance of coatl, The world's largest EV battery producer, saw its profits shoot up five hundred and fifty seven percent in the first quarter of this year to about one point four billion dollars.

Its revenue jumped eighty three percent to twelve point nine billion, and it generated three billion dollars in free cash flow, which is going to let it invest in even more R and D in battery plants. In twenty twelve,

California set a goal of getting one and a half million b evs, fuel cells and plug in hybrids on its roads by twenty twenty five. That sounded

pretty ambitious at the time, but Governor Gavin Newsome announced that the state passed that goal in the first quarter of this year, two years ahead a schedule.

California leads the nation in EV adoption, and what happens in California usually spreads to the rest of the country. But that brings us to the end

of today's show. Thank you for joining US Autoline Daily is brought to you

by Bridgestone Solutions for your journey, Intrepid control systems over the year engineering boost your game, and by Scheffler we Pioneer Motion

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