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AD #3560 - White House Praises Tesla and Toyota; Kia to Double EV Leasing; Waymo Expands Robotaxi Service

AD #3560 - White House Praises Tesla and Toyota; Kia to Double EV Leasing; Waymo Expands Robotaxi Service

Autoline Daily May 04, 2023 10 min
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About this episode

The discussion covers major automotive industry shifts including significant job cuts at GM, Ford, Stellantis, and Volvo despite improving market conditions. The White House praises Tesla and Toyota for their EV efforts, highlighting Tesla's open supercharger policy. Kia plans to double EV leasing, leveraging new tech in the EV9. BMW's profits dip but EV sales soar. Freightliner expands electric trucks, and Bosch creates a new mobility division. Waymo grows its robotaxi service in Phoenix and San Francisco. Platform sharing enables Stellantis to roll out improved EV powertrains across brands.

Topics: automotive job cuts white house ev praise kia ev leasing bmw ev sales freightliner electric trucks bosch mobility division waymo robotaxi expansion stellantis ev platform sharing epa e15 gasoline waiver green hydrogen production
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
Seriously, what the heck are the car companies worried about right now that has them getting rid of so many employees. The chip shortage is starting to
ease up, inventory levels are building back up, car sales are decent and so are profits. Yet gm Ford and Stellantis are getting rid of at least
they combined ten thousand employees through voluntary buyouts. And now it's Volvo turn as
well. It's going to cut thirteen hundred white collar jobs, or about six
percent of its workforce in Sweden, and it won't stop there. Volvo wants
to cut more jobs in its global operations, as well as get rid of most of its consultants. And here's something that we didn't expect to hear.
The White House is praising Tesla and Toyota for their work on electric cars.
Writers reports that John Podesta, a senior advisor in the White House, recently met with Toyota and said that with the company under new leadership, it's now firmly committed to evs. Podesta and another White House advisor also met with Elon
Muskin January, which is when Musk opened up Tesla's superchargers to other brands of evs. They describe Tesla as very open and workable and called it a great
partner. Toyota and Tesla are not unionized in the US, so it's unusual
to hear the Biden White House praise non union companies. Gasoline prices should ease
up somewhat this summer in the US. The EPA issued an emergency waiver that
allows E fifteen gasoline to be sold across the country this summer. E fifteen
is gasoline with fifteen percent ethanol, whereas most gasoline is E tes The EPA says E fifteen will stretch out supplies that have been disrupted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. BMW's net profit plummeted fifty eight percent in the first quarter, which
it blames on higher raw material prices, sharply higher R and D spending, and higher sales and administrative costs. It posted a net profit of five point
one billion euros compared to twelve point two billion last year, But last year it also booked a one time seven point seven billion euro gained by taking over BMW Brilliance, its joint venture partner in China. Take that out and BMW
would have posted about a thirteen percent increase in profits. One place the company
is booming is with electric cars. Sales shot up eighty two percent after growing
eighty six percent last year. They now account for eleven percent of all BMW
sold. Freight Liner is expanding its electric truck line up in the American market.
The company unveiled its EM two truck, which goes into production this fall at Daimler's plant in Portland, Oregon. Offered in both Class six and seven
versions, the trucks are powered by an ePower train from Detroit Diesel, which is now simply just called Detroit. The Class six truck features a single electric
motor that produces one hundred and ninety horse power and a one hundred and ninety four kilowatt hour battery that provides up to one hundred and eighty miles of range.
The Class seven version has a dual motor setup that combines for two hundred and fifty five horse power, a two hundred and ninety one kilowatt hour battery pack, and a two hundred and fifty mile range. More green hydrogen is
on the way. Norwegian company Now will build a four hundred million dollar plant
in Michigan to produce up to four gigawatts of alkaline and PEM electrolyzers. Now
plans to build the plant in phases to make sure supply meets demand. The
company says it looked at several sites across the US, but it chose Michigan because of financial incentives, it's highly skilled workforce, and cooperation with universities and research partners, but also because the plant will be located near GM, who it's collaborating with to bring down the cost of its electrolyzer technology. The biggest
automotive supplier in the world, Bosch is shaking up the structure of the company.
It's creating a new standalone division called BOSH Mobility that will focus on software and mobility. By establishing it as a standalone unit with its own board,
Bosch wants to move at a faster pace, and by twenty twenty nine, Bosch Mobility should generate more than eight four billion dollars a year. We want
to know what drives you're testing. OTA, Connected Car Diagnostics, remote testing,
Intrepid Control Systems is here to help you work from anywhere intrepid control systems driven by your data. The Biden administration provided a massive loophole for foreign automakers
whose evs don't qualify for the seventy five hundred dollars tax credit in the US.
As long as that EV is leased, it can qualify for the credit.
So Kia is going to put the pedal to the metal on EV leasing.
Its lease rate is expected to jump from fifteen percent today to thirty to forty percent in another year or so, and one of the vehicles that Kia will push leasing with is the EV nine, which launches in global markets before the end of the year. It will first ship the EV nine to the
US, but Kia as making updates to its plant in Georgia to build the electric SUV there next summer. It also says the EV nine will lead the
company into the software defined vehicle era. It has a more centralized computing system
with wireless communication. This gives the EV nine expanded in vehicle ota capabilities that
not only update core components, but allow for convenience features to be added as well. That includes things like its hands free Level three system called Highway Driving
Pilot, as well as features that you can purchase when you need or want them, like remote smart parking assist or lighting pattern which allows the user to pick from five different display modes for the pixelated lighting clusters on the front of the car. Kia says the updates will expand to other areas like entertainment,
gaming, and sound. We could start to see robotaxis everywhere next year.
GM's Cruise expects to expand dramatically and Weymo two. Weymo announced it's greatly expanding
its autonomous ride hailing service in Phoenix, Arizona. It's now operating in one
hundred and eighty square miles of the metro area, which Weymo claims is the largest fully autonomous service area in the world. Anyone there can hail a ride
with its app. It's also giving more access to its approved customers in San
Francisco, which it calls quote trusted testers. It's waiting for a permit from
California to start charging for rides without a safety driver on board. Weymo is
currently serving ten thousand trips per week to public riders in both cities, and by next year it expects that to grow to one hundred thousand trips and at some point, Weymo plans to offer its service in Los Angeles, but it hasn't set a date on that yet the main benefit of platform sharing is getting bigger scale so you can drive down costs, and with so many brands, Stellantis can really take advantage of that, and now it's showing off how it
can spread EV updates across its brands thanks to platform sharing. Poojo is coming
out with a new two thousand and eight and Citron is coming out with a new C four and C four X that share the exact same upgrades to their all electric power trains. They get a new more powerful and efficient electric motor
that produces one hundred and fifteen kilowatts or one hundred and fifty six horse power, as well as a new more nickel rich battery. That pack is fifty
four kilowatt hours, which is bigger than the old fifty kilowatt hour pack, but the range jump is still fairly significant, going from up to three hundred and sixty kilometers to four hundred and twenty or two hundred and twenty three to two hundred and sixty miles. Look for the new Poujou and Certron's to go
on sale soon and that brings us to the end of today show. Thanks
for tuning in, and don't forget to check out Autoline after hours this afternoon at three pm Eastern Time. Now May the fourth be with you. 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 God Schiffler We pioneerm Motion Electrifying mobility, manufacturing smarter, reducing CO two emissions,
making energy production clean. Scheffler Pioneer's Motion to advance how the world moves

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