AD #3597 - Lordstown Goes Bankrupt; Tesla Should Start Its Own Finco; Chinese Could Clobber Legacy OEMs

This is on Aligned Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Two years ago, evie startups were all the rage on Wall Street.

Today is a different story. Lordstown Motors just filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy

and it's hoping someone will buy the company. But it also filed a lawsuit

against Foxcon, accusing it of breach of contract. It claims Foxcon is refusing

to purchase additional shares in the Evie maker that it promised to and that it misled the company about collaborating on vehicle development. The two companies signed a one

hundred and seventy million dollar investment deal, but so far Foxcon has only handed over fifty two million dollars. Foxcon says Lordstown breached their agreement when it shares

fell below a dollar and that's why it's withholding the rest of the investment.

This will be an interesting court case, but it looks like the end of the road for Lordstown Motors. Last year, Ford Credit, the in house

finance arm of the Ford Motor Company, made a two point six billion dollar profit. GM Finance made a three point eight billion dollar profit. In house

finance companies or what they call fincos, can make a lot of money, which is why Morgan Stanley says that Tesla should start its own finco. Up

until now, many Tesla customers have paid in cash, But if Tesla wants to ramp up to its ultimate goal of selling twenty million vehicles a year, it's going to have to go after customers who need to finance a vehicle with monthly payments. Morgan Stanley says Tesla has the cash flow to start its own

finco and could make a lot of money by offering finance to those customers.

Legacy automakers better get rid of their legacy mindset or they're going to get clobbered by the best Chinese EV startups. That's according to Alex Partners, which says

legacy automakers are two engineering driven instead of being customer focused, and they're slow to catch on to the things that the customers really care about. For example,

traditional car companies will delay a program to perfect ride in handling and NVH, which is important, but it isn't as important to customers as consumer electronic technologies and driver assistance features. Alex Partner says the traditional approach to product development

and sourcing has led to inflexible and slow product launches, or still it says, legacy automakers are asking traditional teams to develop software defining vehicles who have little experience doing that. Alex Partner says the legacies had radically changed their business model

or they're not going to be ready for Chinese style competition. Automotive News released

its annual rankings of the top automotive suppliers in the world, and Bosch is once again number one, with over fifty billion dollars in global revenue in twenty twenty two. It's followed by Denso, z F and Magna, and thanks

to the growth and electric vehicles, Chinese battery makers Ctl made the top ten list for the first time, coming in at number five. It made about

thirty three billion dollars in twenty twenty two, which is more than double the year before, and rounding out the top ten is Hondai Mobis Ason four via Continental, and Lear, which is the highest ranked American company. It made

just under twenty one billion dollars last year. Toyota revealed the all new next

gen version of the HR. Styling of the small crossover is still fairly radical,

especially the rear end treatment, but the front end design is much more similar to other new Toyota models like the Beezy four X and the Prius.

It's also available with a two tone paint job that accentuates the rear end, as well as Toyota's first flush mounted door handles. Interior highlights include available dual

twelve point three in digital displays, and we like how the dashboard wraps across the door panels, which draws your eye to the round air vents just below the A pillars. The new HR is only offered as a hybrid. There's

a one point eight leader and a two leader hybrid available, and a two lead plug in hybrid option. Toyota didn't provide much info about the setups,

but it says the hybrid two Leader will be offered with all wheel drive and the two leader p have will automatically switch to EV only mode when it enters a low emission zone. Toyota says the new HR was designed and developed four

Europe and will be built exclusively in Europe, so right now we don't know if other markets like the US will get the new second gen version. The

chip shortage is easing up, but it's still hurting production. Auto Fourcast Solutions

says automakers have lost three hundred and twelve thousand units of production this year and the total impacted volume for twenty twenty three could hit two point four million vehicles.

And since January of twenty twenty one, automakers have lost over eight point eight million vehicles in production glow by due to the chip shortage. The biggest

shortfall is in North America, which has lost almost as much vehicle production as Europe and China put together. Stilantis is creating an EV charging ecosystem that will

include home, commercial, and public charging units. It will be operated as

a separate business unit under the Freedom Move brand, and this new business unit will launch in the US and the EU by the end of the year.

Stillantis wants to bring together a large number of public charging outlets with its partners, so a user can use any of them seamlessly with a nap but Stillantis also makes it sound like it will build its own public charging outlets, like the Jeep units that it has located at some off road trails. Chevrolet revealed

it's not going to offer a forty thousand dollar version of the Silverado EV work truck or w T, which was its original estimated base price, but Chevy joins Ford, who started selling the F one fifty Lightning Pro at roughly forty one five hundred dollars but it now sits at nearly sixty two grand, and Elon Musk recently indicated the base forty thousand dollar version of the cybertruck won't happen either. Tom maloney our recent ah guest reports on Inside evs that Chevy says

it will eventually come out with quote competitively priced versions that start at fifty grand, which means, with incentives, it could push the price back into the forty thousand dollar range. However, the first versions of the Silverado EVWT to

launch will be priced much higher. Already in production is a version with a

bigger battery pack that offers up to four hundred and fifty miles of range, which starts at roughly eighty grand, and another version will follow not long after that at with a smaller battery pack that knocks five thousand dollars off the price.

Right now, it looks like the commercial versions of the Lightning and Silverado ev are priced pretty well against each other. The Chevy has a big range

advantage, but the Ford has it easily bested in payload. Now, if

you want to talk about Rivian, it doesn't offer a commercial version of the R one T, but if you wanted to compare, it starts at seventy three thousand dollars. Certain versions offer more towing capacity than both about the same

payload as the Chevy, but the Chevy beats it in range. Former Outie

CEO Rupert Stadler was just sentenced and fined for his role in the Volkswagen Group's diesel cheating scandal. A German court handed him a suspended sentence of one year

and nine months and find him one point two million dollars. He's the first

former VW Group board member to be sentenced for the scheme. Stadler originally denied

the allegations, but later confessed in order to avoid going to jail. When

it comes to selling heavy duty pickups, bigger is better and if you've got the biggest numbers, you brag all about it. And Ford wanted to make

sure the media didn't miss the fact that it's super duty trucks have the highest payload and towing capacity, so they put giant numbers on display when it showed off the new trucks to the media. It loaded up eight thousand pounds of

concrete in the back of an F three fifty, and it hitched a forty thousand pound trailer to the back of an F four fifty. Journalists could then

drive the trucks up and down steep hills at Ford's proving grounds to experience it for themselves, and while the trucks handle the loads, you're really aware that you're hauling a heavy load. Volkswagen t is the concept version of an all

electric Beatle that will be featured in an upcoming kids movie, which had us wondering if it had something in the works, but VW brand CEO Thomas Schaeffer says the Beatle won't be making a comeback because Volkswagon doesn't think it makes sense to bring it back, and Shaffer also threw cold water on the Sharrocco, saying it had its day in the sun. Performance station Wagon fans will be

happy to hear that BMW is bringing back a touring version of the seventh generation M five. It hasn't had one since the fourth gen, launched in two

thousand and seven. The new M five Touring will feature a new powertrain that

it says is partially electrified, but it didn't give any technical stats. Both

the sedan and station wagon versions are undergoing tests right now and should be out next year. And a programming note here. Line will shut down next week

for our summer break, so there won't be any Autoline dailies or an after hours, but we'll resume our normal schedule on the tenth of July, and with that we wrap up today's show. 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. At Scheffler We Pioneer Motion,

electrifying mobility, manufacturing smart, reducing CO two emissions, making energy production clean, Scheffler Pioneer's Motion to advance how the world moved. We want to know

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AD #3597 - Lordstown Goes Bankrupt; Tesla Should Start Its Own Finco; Chinese Could Clobber Legacy OEMs

Toyota Prius

Chevrolet Silverado EV

Ford F-150 Lightning

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