Strong US car sales defy recession fears despite high interest rates, with GM and Ford optimistic about the market. Florida's new law restricts legacy automakers from direct sales, sparing Tesla, and mandates dealer revenue from OTA updates. Lithium demand is soaring, with new extraction tech promising efficiency gains. Chinese robotaxi services expand without safety drivers. Volkswagen updates its MQB platform with improved PHEV range and battery tech. Tesla cuts Model 3 prices to clear inventory ahead of a refresh. Mercedes introduces ChatGPT voice AI and unveils the futuristic Vision One Eleven sports car concept showcasing advanced electric motors and AR tech.
Topics:us car sales outlookflorida direct sales lawlithium extraction technologyrobotaxi expansion chinavolkswagen mqb evo updatestesla model 3 pricingmercedes chatgpt integrationmercedes vision one eleven concept
- U.S. Car Market Doing Better Than Expected - Florida Handcuffs Legacy OEMs To Franchise Dealers - DLE Is the New Way to Mine Lithium - Baidu Expands Robotaxis to Shenzhen - VW Updates MQB, Adds PHEV Range - VW Using Dry Coating for Electrodes - AEHRA Reveals Wild EV Sedan Concept - Tesla Adds Incentives to Model 3 In China - Mercedes Makes World First with Chat GPT In Cars - New Mercedes Concept Inspired by Old C-111 Test Car
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This is online daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
Back at the beginning of the year, Elon Must predict that the US economy was headed for a serious recession. This week, Cox Automotive came out
with its latest survey of car dealers, who are complaining that high interest rates and lower credit availability are holding back car sales. And yet new car sales
came in stronger than expected in May. Inflation is dropping fast, job growth
is at historic highs, and now GM and Ford say the outlook is far better than what they thought at the beginning of the year. GMCFO Paul Jacobson,
speaking at a Deutsche Bank investor conference, said GM could significantly outperform the guidance that it gave to analysts in January. Florida just passed a law that
essentially base's car companies from selling directly to consumers, but it only applies to automakers that already used franchise dealers, which means Tesla is free to continue selling directly. The law was designed to prevent legacy automakers from trying any kind of
direct sales, which Ford CEO Jim Farley wants to do with the company's electric vehicles. It also prohibits automakers from establishing no haggle pricing, and what's more,
it stipulates that dealers will get eight percent of any revenue for any kind of over the air updates that an automaker sells to a customer for two years after the sale of a new car, and not surprisingly, automakers are completely against this. Their lobbying group, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, says this
forces legacy automakers to deal with restrictive, costly and com plex franchise laws while exempting startups. Lithium demand is soaring it's expected to hit two point seven million
metric tons by the end of the decade, which is four times higher than in twenty twenty two. So companies ranging from oil to mining to tech startups
are all racing to extract lithium using a new process. Currently, lithium is
sourced from evaporative ponds, but only fifty percent of the metal can be extracted this way. By using new direct lithium extraction, or DLLE, producers can
get ninety percent of lithium from brines. The DLLE process doesn't take up as
much space, and it can deliver lithium in hours or days as opposed to several months with the evaporative ponds, and it saves a bunch of water.
The first commercial DLLE projects are expected to launch in the next twelve to eighteen months, and by twenty thirty, thirteen percent of the world's lithium will be produced with dl technology. Autonomous cars keep making progress. Chinese tech giant by
Dou is expanding its robotaxi service called Apollo Go. It's now available between seven
am and ten pm and Shenzen in a one hundred and eighty eight square kilometer area of the city. The service is also available in Wuhan, Chong King
and Beijing. No safety drivers are required on board and users can book a
ride with an app. By Due first launched the fully driverless service in August
to twenty twenty two and has now provided more than two million rides through the end of the first quarter of the year. God Schiffler we pioneer Motion Electrifying
mobility, manufacturing smarter, reducing CO two emissions, making energy production clean.
Scheffler Pioneer's Motion to advance how the world moves. Volkswagen is making updates to
the platform that it uses for most of its ice vehicles, which it now calls MQBEVO and will first appear on the all new tig One. It supports
gas, diesel, mild hybrid and plug in hybrid setups. Plug inversions will
now have up to one hundred kilometers or about sixty two miles of range, as well as faster AC charging and DC charging for the first time. Volkswagen
also made improvements to the adaptive suspension system, and high def matrix headlamps will be available too. Interiors will feature more upscale materials, digital screens, and
a rotary control knob with its own little screen in the middle. We wouldn't
be surprised if most models adopt a similar look to the new Tiguan, including the upright gloss black face of the dashboard, which also includes a nice little design element that's picked up in the door panel as well. The uncamouflaged version
of the Tiguan will debut sometime in the autumn, and then it launches on the market sometime in twenty twenty four. In other VW news, the company's
battery division, called Powerco, is switching to a dry coating process in Europe and North America. Others do this as well, like Tesla with its forty
six eighty battery cells. Applying more dry rather than wet electrode material to copper
or aluminum foil eliminates two steps from the cell making process and in turn fifteen percent of floor space. VW says a plant that could make twenty gigawatt hours
of batteries a year could get rid of four coating and drawing lines, which also reduces the plant's energy consumption by about thirty percent. We've got a quick
follow up on a new ev we reported about at the end of last month.
Startup Era revealed its sedan concept. It has sleek styling wild doors in
a wild interior. As we sat in our last report, Era had recently
secured its battery supplier, a company called Miba Battery Systems, So the company is clearly progressing along and we're rooting for them, but it is still way too early to tell if it will make it. Earlier this month, the
Tesla Model three became much more affordable in the US, with the entry level version now qualifying for the full seventy five hundred dollars federal tax credit, which can drop its price to just over thirty two thousand dollars for qualifying buyers, and now Tesla is making the model more affordable in China. Two. It's
offering eleven hundred dollars worth of insurance and loaned incentives for the rear drive version of the three, which brings the out of pocket cost of the car down to thirty one four hundred bucks. But it is a limited time offer that's
only available to the end of the month, and analysts are speculating that Tesla is dropping the price of the three, as well as other incentives like offering several months of free supercharger charging in order to clear inventory before it launches the refresh version of the three, which is expected to happen sometime soon. Would
you like to get Chat GPT in your car? Well, if you've got
a Mercedes with a Mercedes Me Connect package, all you have to do is tell it, Hey, Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.
Mercedes is rolling it out in the US by using Microsoft's Open AI to bring artificial intelligence to voice commands. Mercedes says that most voice assistants are limited to
pre defined tasks and responses, but Chat GPT is less restrictive and talking is more natural, and it can even engage in conversations. The beta program starts
today and will run for three months. Interestingly, Mercedes, not Microsoft,
will run all the it and collect all the data. Then it will figure
out how to offer the service in other languages in different markets around the world.
Speaking of Mercedes, it's reinterpreting an icon from its past. The C
one eleven was an experimental mid engine sports car that the company used as a test bed for new technology around in the nineteen sixties and seventies. The C
one eleven at times featured Winkel and turbo diesel engines and new polymer body panels with gullwing doors. And now the all new Vision one eleven concept has a
new age wedge shaped look and will again act as a test bed for future technology. That includes two axial flux electric motors that are a third the size
and weight of a typical motor with the same output. The batteries are new
liquid cooled cylindrical cells that have quote a novel chemistry. Mercedes is also exploring
how augmented reality could change the user experience and how technology could change driving.
The Vision one eleven has a race mode where the driver is in full control, but there's also an autonomous lounge mode where the seats slide back to merge with the rear sillin center tunnel. Mercedes calls it ac completely new approach for
the sports car of the future, and that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you have a great
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