The discussion covers a range of automotive industry developments including ARC Automotive's refusal to recall defective airbags, George Soros' shifting investments in EV stocks like Tesla, Rivian, and Ford, and the impact of the US Inflation Reduction Act on foreign EV makers. Leasing programs to qualify for tax credits, rising used EV sales, and Tesla discontinuing right-hand drive Model S and X are highlighted. BMW's switch to electric ovens for gear heat treating and Honda's ambitious carbon neutrality and hydrogen fuel cell plans also feature. The episode explores supplier roles amid EV transitions and regulatory scrutiny of Tesla's Autopilot.
Topics:airbag recall disputegeorge soros ev stock movesinflation reduction act loopholesused ev market growthtesla right hand drive discontinuationbmw electric heat treating ovenssupplier roles in ev transitionhonda carbon neutrality planhydrogen fuel cell truckstesla autopilot investigation
- Auto Supplier Refuses Airbag Recall - George Soros Dumps Auto Stocks - Kia Launches EV Lease Program - Buttigieg Says Don’t Call It Autopilot - Used EV Sales Booming - No More RHD Tesla S and X - BMW Converts to Electric Ovens - Some Suppliers Safe from Vertical Integration - Honda Launches Carbon Neutral Plan - Honda-Isuzu FCEV For HD Trucks
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I don't think that we've ever seen an automotive supplier refused to participate in a recall before, but airbag supplier ARC Automotive, which is based in Tennessee, told NITZA that it will not recall its airbags. NITZA wants ARC to
recall sixty seven million airbag inflators because it says they could explode and project SHRAPNELT occupants. It says two people have died already and another seven were injured.
But Arc is refusing to recall the inflators because it says there is no defect and that it's just an isolated manufacturing issue. It also says that NITZA only
has the legal authority to force recalls for car companies, not suppliers. Nitza's
next step is to schedule a public hearing and then it could take ARC to court. Billionaire investor George Soros was all in on EVS until he wasn't.
Soros invested heavily in Tesla, Ford and Rivian, but according to the financial news outlet The Street, he dumped all of his Tesla stock and sold off seventy five percent of his shares in Rivian. He also sold all the bonds
he held in Ford and then bought a million put options to short Ford stock.
And he did all of this by the end of the first quarter this year. But Soros also bought a million call options on Rivian, which means
he thinks that stock will go up in the future. Germany, Japan,
and South Korea were visibly upset when the Inflation Reduction Act prevented their car companies from getting the seventy five hundred dollars tax credit. The IRA stipulated that evs
and their batteries had to be made in the US to qualify, so the Biden administration, which needs the support of those allies, gave them a loophole.
It said that if those evs were leased, that it would count them as a commercial transaction and that they could qualify for the seventy five hundred dollars.
So Kia just launched a new lease program, knocking another seventy five hundred dollars off the price of a car. If customers lease in EV six through
Kia Finance, they have to put down five grand and pay five hundred bucks a month for thirty six months. If they decide to buy the car,
they'll get thirty seven hundred and fifty bucks off the price. The lease program
runs until July fifth, but we think it's likely it will get extended.
In fact, we expect every automaker to offer lease programs until they build evs in the US with batteries that qualify for the federal credit. Now next year,
Keel will start making the EV six in the US. He seems a
little late, but US Transportation Secretary Bootages says Tesla should not call autopilot autopilot.
He's concerned at how the system is depicted because it's not a fully autonomous system like the name implies. Nitza's investigating Tesla because of dozens of crashes involving
vehicles suspected of operating on autopilot, which hit parked emergency vehicles and semi trailers.
Will people actually buy used evs, Why, Yes, they will.
According to Cox, Automotive, used EV retail sales through licensed dealers hit nearly forty three thousand units in the first quarter of the year, which is up nearly a third from a year ago, and at the same time, used EV prices fell four percent to an average of forty three four hundred dollars.
The average new EV sells for nearly sixty grand, but while used EV sales were up strong, they still only accounted for one percent of all used vehicle transactions. However, as more evs enter the used market, Cox expects sales
to keep growing. Tesla is killing off right hand drive versions of the model
sn X. It's no longer taking orders in places like Japan, Australia,
Singapore and Thailand. Tesla also sent an email to people with existing orders and
said they could either get a full refund or get a left hand drive version instead. Tesla does sell a lot of s and xes, it only delivered
about ten thousand, seven hundred globally in the first quarter, so we think there wasn't enough demand to justify keep on making right hand steer versions. There's
a lot of controversy about the EPA wanting households to convert from gas s doos to electric but BMGW just spend big on a new electric oven for heat treating gears instead of using thirty three gas powered flame heaters to bake things like gears.
For EV transmissions up to nine hundred degrees celsius. It uses the same
number of electric heating elements to do the same thing, and by using electricity instead of gas BMW will eliminate up to three hundred tons of CO two per year. The new furnace cost about seven million euros, but it has a
service life of forty years and can heat treat about a million years a year.
Suppliers were going to be in big trouble during this ev transition, so the thinking when at least the belief was that legacy automakers would copy Tesla and start vertically integrating to pocket the profits that the suppliers made. But that's not
exactly happening. Automotive News reports that automakers are actually giving suppliers more control over
certain commodities like seats, and that's because automakers have to concentrate their resources on developing software to find cars, new electronic architectures and data management. Meanwhile,
suppliers have thousands of engineers to concentrate on what they make best, so automakers are still relying on that expertise rather than bringing it in house. Honda is
jumping onto the carbon neutrality bandwagon it's officially rolling out its Triple Zero plan, which includes making sure all Honda's products and corporate activities don't have an overall negative impact on the environment, that the company creates a material loop through recycling, and that it produces more products that run on clean energy like electricity and hydrogen.
Honda will come out with a fuel cell version of the CRV next year, and it's making fuel cell power generation stations, which both utilize the system it developed with GM. And it announced it plans to start real world tests
of a heavy duty fuel cell truck with a Suzu. The two actually started
research into hydrogen powered heavy trucks in twenty twenty, but say they'll finally get to on road tests sometime before the end of March next year. The initial
agreement said they would leverage Honda's fuel cell no how so, it will also likely use the fuel cell system that it developed with GM after the testing, as Suzu plans to introduce a hydrogen powered truck to the market in twenty twenty seven. But that brings us to be end of today show. Thank you
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