AD #3649 - OEMs Likely to Retaliate Against UAW; Tesla Makes It Harder for Legacies to Compete; Mercedes Faces Defeat Devices Accusation

This was Auto Line Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. It is on The UAW launched its strike against GM, Ford and

Stellantis by shutting down three assembly plants and the wee hours of the morning.

That includes GM's plant in Wentsville, Missouri, which makes the midsize Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks, the Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, which makes the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator, and Ford's assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, that makes the Bronco and Ranger. By choosing plants in three different states,

the UAW is making sure it's going to maximize its leverage and media coverage.

GM and Ford complain that they never got a serious counteroffer to their final proposals, while the union says they did so. If they can't even agree

on who offered what, no wonder they couldn't come to an agreement before the contract expire. So what comes next? UAW Sean Fain will likely be personally

visiting these workers who are on strike, keeping their more rale high, and he'll be threatening to shut down more plants to slowly increase the pressure and pain on the automakers, but the car companies are probably not just going to sit down and take it, No doubt, they're rallying the troops. Yesterday on

Auto Line after hours, Merrick Masters, a labor expert and professor at Wayne State University, laid out what the automakers may do. What they could do

is they could say, maybe not a lockout per se, but they say, if they're going to strike certain plants, we need to shut down the others because we've got to protect our property, we've got to protect our facilities, and we're going to shut them down so that you just can't pick us off. And you know, we're writing, we don't want to take new

orders, we don't want to start new processes, and then you have your strike the next day right in the middle of this, lose product and have to go through that and suffered the additional losses. So because we can't plan

and adjust, you just don't shut it plant down and reopen it, you know, easily. So I would say you'd want some more predictability in your

operations and say, if you really want to make this a test of economic wils, let's make it a test of economic wheels. By the way,

Merrick Masters gave us a lot more insight into this labor struggle, and you can learn about everything he said by watching that show on our website or YouTube channel. One of the biggest concerns about this strike is that hundreds of small

Tier two and Tier three suppliers who are already under financial distress could collapse completely.

These are suppliers who are financially crippled because of the big drop in production volume due to the COVID pandemic and chip shortage. With interest rates so high

right now, they can't even afford to borrow the money they need to keep their operations going. And the UAW strike could be the straw that breaks the

camel's back. So the Biden administration is looking at providing these suppliers with emergency

low interest loans from the Small Business Administration, or it may ask the Labor Department to provide grants to those companies to cover the cost of their workers.

The strike is putting the Biden administration in a bind. President Biden says he's

the most pro labor president ever, but a prolonged strike could hurt his re election chances. So if this strike goes on for more than two weeks,

it's going to spill over into the political arena. And while the legacy automakers

are struggling with a legacy union, Tesla is showing the world that it's a lot more than just a car company. Tesla operates a platform called auto Bidder

that uses AI to trade electricity stored in its energy assets around the world, including power packs, power walls, and mega hacks. The system controls over

seven gigawatt hours of battery storage, and according to a LinkedIn post by the head of auto Bidder, it's returned over three hundred and thirty million dollars in trading profit to owners and operators, which includes Tesla itself. So if Tesla

and its partners build up a big enough storage system, it could be electric utilities that are paying them to store and supply power. And it's moves like

these that are going to make it even harder for legacy automakers to compete against Tesla. We want to know what drives you're testing. OTA Connected Car Diagnostics,

remote testing Intrepid Control Systems is here to help you work from anywhere.

Intrepid control systems driven by your data sustainability. That's one of the biggest buzzwords

you'll hear in the auto industry, and the latest example is that Bosch entered into an agreement with the German based truck and rental company high Lane to buy back fuel cell stacks it made for their hydrogen trucks once they've reached their end of useful life. Bosch will then have the stacks recycled by a third party

to recover the platinum inside. Then the supplier will use that platinum to make

new fuel cell stacks. The recycling process can recover at least ninety five percent

of the platinum, and Boss says recycling can save more than ninety five percent of CO two emissions generated by platinum mining. Hyundai's performance brand called N just

celebrated its eighth birthday. The automaker poached the head of BMW's M division,

Albert Bierman, who's now a technical advisor with the group, to build up the N brand, which is becoming popular with enthusiasts. And it's those enthusiasts

that are the ones providing feedback to the company and that directly led to some of the improvements being made to the new Elantra N. One such thing is

reprogrammed engine software that optimizes the use of high octane gas for better performance.

The software for the suspension and stability control systems were also changed, and there's a bunch of other improvements, including to the steering, the cooling for the engine and brakes, to the spoiler, and to various mounts and bushings.

This new Alantra N will be the first end model that Honda offers in China, which joins the US and Australia as Honda's other performance markets. Sales of

the new Elantra N should kick off soon. Ev startups are struggling to gain

traction in the US due to Testla's price war and legacy automakers introducing more electric models, but Rivian is doing the best among the startups. According to Experience,

two thousand, seven hundred and fifty rivans were registered in July, and in the first seven months of the year it was more than eighteen thousand, and that doesn't include the vans that Rivian builds for Amazon. Since most startups

don't report monthly sales, the registration numbers helped tell the story of what's going on, and Lucid Motors registered three hundred and forty eight evs in July and nearly three thousand, eight hundred from January to July. VinFast only had nineteen

in July, and its seven month total is just one hundred and seventy and Fisker, which delivered its first vehicle in the US in June, had thirty registrations in July. But while the startups are struggling, evs are growing fast

in the US. Of the nine point one million vehicles registered through July,

evs accounted for seven point two percent of them, which is up from four point nine percent last year. This is something that's surprising to still see happening

in twenty twenty three. Mercedes may be forced to recall vehicles in Germany because

they have a mission defeat devices. Germany's Transport Authority KBA says it found three

devices installed in cars built under the Euro six standard, which is the eve's most recent and strictest limits. The European Court of Justice says the devices are

illegal under certain conditions and ordered Mercedes to fix the problem or face a recall.

Mercedes says it's cooperating with the investigation and believes it has a software update that can take care of the issue, but I wonder if this would have any impact on vehicle performance like the VW diesel software updates did, and if it does, it could lead to another lawsuit from customers. With the new

traffic Etech, Renault now has an all electric version of its vans in each size segment. It will be offered in two lengths and two heights. All

versions are powered by a nine kilowatt or one hundred and twenty two horsepower electric motor, which gets its juice from a fifty two kilowatt hour battery pack.

It has a range of two hundred and ninety seven kilometers or one hundred and eighty four miles, or with an ECO mode that limits power and top speed to ninety kilometers an hour or about fifty five miles an hour, the traffic Etech can go three hundred and twenty two kilometers or two hundred miles. At

the moment, the battery is only able to charge with AC power of up to twenty two kilowatts, but Renault says DC charging of fifty kilowatts will be available next year. Orders open next month and delivery start before the end of

the year, but that brings us to the end of today show. Thanks

for making auto Line a part of your day and I hope that you have a great weekend. Aldo Line Daily is brought to you by Bridgetow Solutions for

your journey Intrepid Control Systems over the year engineering boost your game, Scheffler We Pioneer Motion and by Tajin Automotive Technologies. The formula for better Mobility 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 moves.

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AD #3649 - OEMs Likely to Retaliate Against UAW; Tesla Makes It Harder for Legacies to Compete; Mercedes Faces Defeat Devices Accusation

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Hyundai Elantra

Trafic Traffic Etech

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