AD #3617 - Big Oil Gets Into EV Batteries; Mach-E a Sales Flop in China; Toyota Reports Break-Out Earnings

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

Big oil is getting into the EV battery business. Bloomberg reports that Xon

Mobile is in talks with automakers including Tasla, Ford, and Volkswagen to supply them with lithium. It's also in talks with battery makers Samsung and Skan,

and with two companies that have the technology to do direct lithium extraction from brine, which is also called DL Xon is getting its material from a one hundred thousand acre piece of land that it bought in Arkansas, which has lithium rich brine. Any production is still years away from fruition, but this is another

major oil company indicating that it wants to get into the EV business. Ford

is giving up on trying to sell mock ees directly to consumers in China.

It's been a complete flop. Gascou reports that Ford is olly selling about three

hundred makis a month right now in China. So now Changan, which is

Ford's Chinese partner, will take over the sales operations. The first thing that's

gonna do is retrofit all customer cars with Qualcom's third generation chip, which will instantly boost the responsiveness of the car's electronic systems, and presumably, with a more traditional approach to selling Changan will be able to sell more machis. Toyota

reported its financial earnings for the last quarter, and it saw a massive improvement.

The Japanese juggernauts sold two point three million vehicles worldwide, up a solid fifteen percent from a year ago, and that volume must have pushed the company solidly above its break even point. Revenue jumped twenty four percent to nearly seventy

four billion dollars. It posted an operating profit of seven point eight billion,

up a whopping ninety four percent, and its net profit hit nine point two billion dollars, up seventy five percent. That's a net profit margin of twelve

and a half percent, which is better than Tesla's and is probably the best in the industry for any major automaker. Even so, Toyota's North American operations

are still a drag on the company, with a profit margin of only two point nine percent. It's the lowest at Toyota. Meanwhile, at Nissan,

it's completely the opposite. Its North American operations are what's keeping the company alive.

Nissan is still losing money in Japan, but it makes nearly twice as much profit in North America as it does in Asia, Europe and the rest of the world combined. Nissans sold three point seven percent fewer vehicles in the

last quarter, only a little under seven hundred and eighty nine thousand. Even

so, Nissan saw its revenue jumped thirty six percent to twenty billion dollars.

It's operating profit shot up ninety eight percent to eight hundred and ninety nine million dollars, and its net profit jumped one hundred and eleven percent to seven hundred and thirty seven million. Kia posted its US sales for July, and if

this is an indication for the rest of the industry, it's going to be a great month. Kia set at July sales record with nearly seventy one thousand

vehicles sold, up fourteen percent from a year ago, and it's the twelfth consecutive month Kia has posted year over year sales growth. Sales of its electrified

models soured seventy two percent, but it only sold about two thousand units of the EV six, which is about two hundred units more compared to a year ago, and the rest of the car companies will be reporting July sales over the next couple of days. The Taging Automotive Technologies we combine world class composite

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Maybe China's speed isn't everything that it's cracked up to be. China's new energy

vehicle or ANYV market has exploded, with hundreds of brands and hundreds of new models on the way. If there's even several domestic brands that are only a

few years old but already have multiple vehicles on the market. But that mad

rush to the market is also causing quality problems. According to a report in

Car News, China owner complaints about any vs shot up one hundred and thirty seven percent compared to last year. It broke the complaints into three main categories,

including general quality and service issues, with general issues accounting for the most, but it didn't provide details of what those types of complaints might be.

Chinese brands in particular also perform poorly they accounted for eighty percent of all complaints about an evs, followed by the Germans and then the Americans, which is mainly Tesla legacy. Automakers like GM are struggling to ramp up battery production for

their evs, so to try and avoid that problem, Stilantis is sending its team of engineers and technicians that will work at its new battery factory in Canada to train at LG Energy Solutions facilities in Poland, China and South Korea over a four month period. The company says the training is expensive, but it's

necessary in order to make sure the start of production runs smoothly. Stilantis is

jointly operating that battery plant in Canada with LG Energy and it's scheduled to open next year with a capacity of forty five gigawatt hours. And in other Canadian

battery news, ev battery recycler life Cycle, which is headquartered in Canada, is kicking off commercial operations at its first recycling center in Europe, which is located in Germany. Once that is running at full speed, it will have

the capacity to process thirty thousand metric tons of lithium ion battery material a year, bringing its global output to eighty thousand tons. Life Cycle has created a

sustainable process that allows it to process all forms of lithium ion waste without the need for discharging, dismantling, or thermal processing of the battery packs. Chevy

says that the Blazer EV will start being delivered to customers soon, so we're getting a better idea of pricing on fortun in Itly Inside evs confirmed with GM that there will no longer be the base one LT front wheel drive trim, which was supposed to start around forty five thousand dollars. Instead, the new

base will be a front wheel drive two LT, but we don't know the price because that version isn't available yet. What is available is a two LT

all wheel drive, RS rear wheel drive and RS all wheel drive. The

two LT all wheel drive, with two hundred and seventy nine miles of range, starts a little under fifty seven thousand dollars before any incentives, and for some reason, the RS rear wheel drive has a higher price than the RS all wheel drive. The all wheel drive is listed at just over sixty grand,

while the rear wheel drive has a nearly sixty two thousand dollar price tag that seems a little strange. Oh and if you're wondering about the range for

those RS models, they're listed at a GM estimated two hundred and seventy nine and three hundred and twenty miles of range, respectively. The Nissan Z car

is getting a little boost. It launched the updated version in Japan, where

it's called the fair Lady Z, which also now includes the new Nismo model.

That car's three leader twin turbo v six has been tuned to four hundred and twenty horsepower and three hundred and eighty four pound feet of torque. That's

an increase of twenty horsepower and thirty four pound feet compared to the bay Z.

The Nismo also features an upgraded chassis, suspension, tires, and seats, but unfortunately it's only available with the nine speed automatic transmission. This car

will be available in the US as well this fall, and while it didn't reveal pricing for the US, it will start a little over sixty four thousand dollars in Japan. The Z in Japan also gets two new colors and a

package that has a unique bumper, decals and wheels that brings us to the end of today show thank you for making autoline a part of your day.

Autoline Daily is brought to you by Bridgestone Solutions for your journey, Intrepid Control Systems over the year engineering boost your game, Scheffler We pioneer Motion and by taging automotive technologies the formula for better mobility. We want to know what drives

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AD #3617 - Big Oil Gets Into EV Batteries; Mach-E a Sales Flop in China; Toyota Reports Break-Out Earnings

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