AD #3614 - Did EVs Cause That Ship Fire?; Legacy Auto to Challenge Telsa Charging Network; LG Sees Slower EV Sales

This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.

A powerful consortium of automakers are banding together to form an EV charging joint venture in North America. BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia,

Mercedes and Stilantis want to build and operate a network of at least thirty thousand stations, with each site offering multiple DC fast chargers that can accommodate both ccs and nacs. The stations will offer plug in charge technology and will first

go into more populated areas and along highways that have restrooms, food, and retail stores nearby. They will also operate a few flagship stations that offer even

more amenities. The companies plan to power the network solely with renewable energy,

and they say it will be about a year before the first stations open in the US and later in Canada. Speaking of ev charging, Tesla confirmed that

the newest version of its supercharger, called V four, can charge at up to three hundred and fifty kilowatts. While none of Tesla's current vehicles are able

to charge at that rate, It's believed the new cybertruck will and Tesla is opening up its charging network to other automakers, and that's probably the same reason why V four's charging cable is longer, and it seems like it will have other new features to accommodate different brands, like a screen and credit card reader.

But here's a question for you. Do you think that a charging war

between Tesla and pretty much everybody else is brewing in North America? We have

more details about that cargo ship carrying nearly three thousand cars that caught fire off the coast of the Netherlands while traveling from Germany to Egypt. Automotive News reports

around twenty five of the vehicles were electric, about three hundred and fifty were from Mercedes, but the models haven't been confirmed yet. VW says it's still

investigating if it had any vehicles on board. GM and BMW weren't able to

provide immediate information. Stilantis, Toyota, and Renault said it's unlikely they had

any vehicles on there. Ford and Nissan confirmed they did not, and Tesla

didn't respond to our requests for comment. Everyone wants to know if electric cars

caused that fire, but at this point no one knows, so we're going to have to wait for a formal investigation to settle the question. Kyle Vote,

the CEO of GM Crews, dropped some impressive safety stats during GM's earning call with analysts this week. Cruise now operates a fleet of three hundred and

ninety autonomous bolts in several cities, he said, and they get in fifty four percent fewer accidents than cars driven by human who operate in similar situations to Cruises vehicles. That includes accidents where the autonomous car was sitting still and got

rear ended by a distracted driver. Take those out, and those autonomous bolts

get in ninety two percent fewer accidents than cars with a human behind the wheel, and if you only look at severe collisions, they get in seventy five percent fewer crashes. Impressively, GM Cruise is handling ten thousand riders a week

right now, and it's growing at forty seven percent a month. Vote says

that in the next few months they're going to expand their fleet and the number of cities they operate in, but he says the real impacts will come when they launched the Cruise Origin purpose built av later this year. Meanwhile, in

Washington, DC, the head of the auto industry's lobbying group, is warning lawmakers that the US is in danger of falling behind China in autonomous technology.

John Bozella, who heads up the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said the US could find itself behind China in a V technology, just like it's behind China in EV technology. The auto industry wants regulations from Congress so they have a

clear legal path forward, but trial attorneys who represent car crash victims, safety advocates, and unions like the Teamsters are opposed to autonomous cars. They say

the technology is not ready and that the threat from China is just fear bating fiction. 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. Yesterday we reported that registrations of locally made cars were up two

and a half percent in China last month, and that seemed to suggest that the Chinese car market was getting back on its feet. But the China Passenger

Car Association is forecasting that automakers will only sell one point seven million vehicles in July and eight point six percent dropped from June and nearly a five percent drop from a year ago, and it says the second half of the year may not be much stronger as Chinese consumers cut back on buying big ticket items like cars, and there's a similar story going on in Europe, but this involves electric vehicles. The EV battery maker LG Energy Solution is warning that it faces

weaker EV demand in Europe than it previously was expecting. It even sees weaker

EV demand in China, but it hasn't cut its forecast for the US.

LG says EV demand in Europe is sluggish due to high inflation. The company

also reported a lower quarterly profit than it forecasted, but that was due to a one off cost to pay for GM Chevy Bolt recall. It's going to

get more expensive to buy a new car in the US. The Federal Reserve

raised its benchmark rate by a quarter of a point to five point two five to five and a half percent, and according to Edmonds, that's going to push the interest rates on car loans to about seven point two percent and use car rates will hit about eleven percent. To counter that, automakers increased incent

is spending to an average of a more than two thousand dollars per vehicle, but even with higher rates, Edmunds doesn't expect that to hurt sales due to pent up demand. In twenty twenty six, Mercedes Benz Vans is going to

come out with a new lineup of vans on its all new, all electric architecture, what it calls van EA. It says we can expect to see

the same levels of luxury that we see in its passenger cars, and it expects evs to account for more than fifty percent of its sales by the end of the decade. But until then, it's bridging the gap with updated versions

of its midsized van lineup. Overall styling is not changing that much, but

we want to point out that the grills look more upscale, you can even get a Mercedes hood ornament, and the wheel designs look much nicer. The

interiors also get a better looking steering wheel and display screens, so in general, look for nicer Mercedes vans. Volvo unveiled the Ex thirty in New York,

and this is its new small electric crossover that will start with a base price of only thirty four thousand, nine hundred and fifty bucks in the US market, and that's a pretty aggressive price considering that the car is made in China, which means that Volvo is probably eating a portion of that twenty seven and a half percent import tariff. It didn't provide a lot of details on

the EV, but here are some of the highlights that we have. The

base single motor model will come with two hundred and sixty eight horsepower, a sixty nine kilowatt hour battery pack, and two hundred and seventy five miles of EPA driving range. With all wheel drive, the range is two hundred and

sixty five miles. It can charge from zero to eighty percent and twenty five

minutes at one hundred and fifty three kilowatts. A twin motor four hundred and

twenty two horsepower version will also be part of the lineup. To simplify the

interior and to cut cost, there is one twelve point four inch screen and a soundbar that sits on top of the instrument panel. The back seat is

rather cramped and the interior looks kind of cheap, but that's not a surprise with the size and price of this car. The e X thirty comes with

five G connectivity and you can do things like use a phone to locker unlock the car. It also uses a lot of recycled steel, aluminum, and

plastics, and Volvo says it has a twenty five percent smaller carbon footprint than any other vehicle that it manufactures. The EX thirty goes on sale in Europe

this fall and in the US early next summer. And hey join us for

Autoline after Hours this afternoon, when one of the topics will be the story that Reuters broke of how Tesla had teams of employees trying to discourage owners from bringing their cars in for service because they were not getting the driving range that they expected. Joe White from Ruters will be on the show, and so

will Tom Libby from SMP Global Mobility, and along with John and Gary, they'll get to the bottom of what's going on. But that's a rap for

this show. Thanks for tuning in. Altoline Daily is brought to you by

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