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AD #3556 - North America Is Saving Nissan; Hertz Buying 340,000 EVs; Daimler Building U.S. Charging Network For Trucks

AD #3556 - North America Is Saving Nissan; Hertz Buying 340,000 EVs; Daimler Building U.S. Charging Network For Trucks

Autoline Daily Apr 28, 2023 11 min
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About this episode

North America is proving crucial for Nissan's profitability, contrasting sharply with Toyota's losses in the region. The episode covers the decline of New York taxi medallions due to ride-sharing services and Hertz's massive EV fleet expansion with orders from Tesla, Polestar, and GM. Daimler launches its Rising electric truck brand in the U.S. alongside plans for a large commercial EV charging network. Legal battles over EV charger installations on Germany's autobahn and innovative automotive designs and technologies, including GM's open-source software initiative and Mitsubishi Electric's advanced navigation system, round out the discussion.

Topics: nissan profitability in north america toyota financial losses new york taxi medallions hertz ev fleet expansion daimler rising electric trucks commercial ev charging infrastructure german autobahn ev charger lawsuit gm open source vehicle software mitsubishi electric navigation system automotive design competition
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
Toyota and Nissan have two very different stories to tell in the American market.
Toyota is losing money in North America, while Nissan North America is saving the company. As we reported earlier this month, Toyota lost five hundred and
fifty eight million dollars in North America last year, after regularly posting profits of about four billion dollars a year. Meanwhile, North America is where Nissan makes
eighty five percent of its profits. It's also the company's biggest sales region,
even bigger than what it sells in Japan and China combined. We can't explain
why Nissan is doing so well in the American market while Toyota is losing money, but it sure is interesting to see the difference. New York taxi drivers
really got grewed. A New York Court of Appeals says they can't sue the
city because it let Uber and Lyft destroy their business. Taxi drivers have to
buy a license to operate a cab in New York. They call them medallions.
Before Uber and Lyft showed up a medallion costs an average of one point three million dollars, but since the ride sharing services, the value of medallions fell to about three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. So the cab companies
sued the city, claiming the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, which hands out the medallions and regulates taxis, breached its contracts because it did not limit the number of ride hailing cars. But the appeals court ruled that the cabbies can't
sue the city because the commission never guaranteed it would protect the value of the medallions. Cab drivers would take out bank loans to buy the medallions, which
they thought would keep going up in value because they always had until Uber and Lyft showed up. That is, rental car companies buy a lot of cars
nearly two million a year in the US market, and they could represent a significant percentage of EV sales. Hurtz now has fifty thousand evs in its fleet,
or about ten percent of its vehicles. The company expects to do two
million EV rentals this year, which is five times more than last year, and Hurtz has a lot more evs coming its way. It ordered one hundred
thousand from Tesla, sixty five thousand from Polestar, and another one hundred and seventy five thousand from GM, but it's going to be several years before all of those evs enter its fleet. We want to know what drives you're testing.
OTA Connected Car Diagnostics, Remote Testing. Intrepid Control system is here to
help you work from anywhere. Intrepid Control systems driven by your data. Daimler
is launching a new brand for medium duty electric trucks in the US called Rising.
This is really just a rebadged version of the Fuso E Cantor and it will be sold in Class four in five configurations. The batteries are LFP or
lithium iron phosphate, and it revealed two pack sizes eighty three and one hundred and twenty four kilowatt hours depending on the configuration. The small pack provides seventy
five to one hundred and ten miles of range, while the big pack is rated at one hundred and ten to one hundred and sixty miles. The Rise
in trucks will be distributed by the Velocity Group, a company that sells trucks and truck parts and boasts eighty outlets worldwide. Velocity will act as a one
stop shop for customers who will start taking delivery in the fourth quarter of this year. And obviously, all these electric trucks are gonna need a place to
charge, so Daimler also announced its teaming up to build an EV charging infrastructure for large commercial vehicles in the US. The joint venture is called green Lane
and they're investing six hundred and fifty million dollars to install stations along busy freight routes, the first one going into southern California. The plan also includes hydrogen
refueling stations and possibly light duty vehicle charging in the future. And speaking of
EV charging, Tesla and Fastened, a Netherlands based charging company, are suing for the right to install their chargers along the autobonn in Germany. Right now,
a company called tank and Rast holds the rights to nearly all of the rest stops and gas stations along the autobon, which allows it to pick who gets in and where they go. Tank and Rast also claims this authority extends
to EV charging and has only allowed a select number of charging operators to install stations and as you can probably guess Tesla and Fastened weren't one of them, so they're now suing to break up the near monopoly. This is not our
usual story, but I was really impressed with the winners of a recent Stillantis design competition where to twelfth graders were asked to sketch a next gen ram Evy truck and much like today, utility is key with add ons for lights, tie downs for ATVs, and the top prize went to a twelfth grader who designed a reconfigurable bed that turns into stadium seating. You know, it's always
cool to see what designers can come up with when there's not many limitations.
And here's a car you may never ever see. To celebrate selling the one
hundredth version of the super A GT four for customer racers, Toyota is going to offer a commemorative super A GT four one hundred edition, which comes in an exclusive color and features unique front bodywork and special badging. But it's only
going to build three of them, and we wouldn't be surprised if one of those is for Akio Toyota. At Schiffler, we pioneer emotion, electrifying mobility,
manufacturing smarter reducing CO two emissions, making energy product auction clean Scheffler pioneer's motion to advance how the world moves. Cetroan wants thirty percent of its global
sales to be outside of Europe by twenty twenty five, and it's got its site set on several developing markets. It's launching a version of the C three
air Cross, a B size crossover in India, Southeast Asia, and South America that comes with exclusive styling. It was developed with input from each of
those markets, and it's going to make it in India and Brazil, available as a five or seven seat model. It will be offered with features and
packages tailored for each of those markets. Satroan didn't reveal what engine options are
available, but the European model is offered with both gasoline and diesel engines that can be made it to manual or automatic transmissions. The new C three air
Cross goes on sale in India and Brazil later this year in Indonesia next year.
Automakers around the world are racing to develop software defining vehicles. That's where
every operation and function in the vehicle is controlled by software. It's a technology
that Tesla pioneered and now everyone else is trying to catch up, and in a fascinating move, General Motors is trying to set the standard for the software that the industry will use to develop software defind vehicles. GM introduced an open
source code called U Protocol that can be used with any operating system as well as with any vehicle, smartphone, and cloud service. Amazingly, GM is
not patenting this or even trademarking U Protocol. It wants to offer this to
the industry to speed up software develop helpment. Otherwise, it says, the
industry will be stuck in an ecosystem where apps and software for each automaker require custom code that will slow everything down. And it's going to be interesting to
see if others actually adopt this. Some of the best innovation in the auto
industry comes from suppliers, and this new system from Mitsubishi Electric caught or I.
They call it Jabiru, and it takes navigation and aids to a new level. Take a look. In addition to its incabin capabilities, this next
gen cockpit also integrates with road facing cameras and lasers to display road condition information valuable to the driver. The system can detect slippery roads, black ice,
and other weather related issues, and show slip and grip levels using augmented reality overlays up to twenty five meters ahead. Augmented reality is also used to show
the driver potential hazards on the road. Hazard detection can highlight traffic cones,
potholes, stop signs, pedestrians, and other objects in or near the path of the vehicle, giving the driver an added measure of awareness. We really
like that the nav system shows you when a road is covered in black ice.
That's something that we hadn't seen before. We're just showing you a fraction
of what the Jaburo prototype is all about, and we'll try to show you more of that next week. That's a rat for this week. Thanks for
joining us, and I hope you have a great weekend. Autoline Daily is
brought to you by Bridgetone Solutions for your Journey, Intrepid Control Systems over the Year, Engineering Boost Your Game, and by Scheffler We pioneer motion. Wards
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