AD #3651 - UAW Threatens to Expand Strike; Toyota's Factory Ideas to Battle Tesla; Ford Fires Back at Fain

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It's day five of the UAW strike, and it sure looks like it's going to ratchet up even more. UAW President Sean Fayne says he's going to

ask more union locals to stand up and walk out by noon this Friday unless the Detroit Automakers meet the union's demands. That means automakers will likely lay off

more workers at plants that are not on strike but can't get the parts that they need from the ones that are on strike. Faine accuses the automakers of

using layoffs to intimidate as members, but it seems unrealistic for the car companies to keep plants open when they can't get the parts to make anything. So

what happens to those laid off workers? They can file for state unemployment if

their state will pay for workers who are idled because of a strike. Michigan,

for example, will pay unemployment to laid off workers for fourteen to twenty weeks. We estimate that a full time traditional UAW worker would probably qualify for

about six hundred and fifty dollars a week. In unemployment, while attempt worker

may get around four hundred and fifty dollars. Fayne says the union will pay

about five hundred dollars a week to those workers from its strike fund, which will get them to about eighty percent of their take home pay. Under the

old contract, the automakers were required to pay supplemental unemployment benefits to laid off workers, but since that contract has expired, the car companies won't be paying any sub benefits, which is why the union needs to divert some of its strike pay to laid off workers. Meanwhile, the Ford Motor Company is publicly

firing back at Fain. It points out that the cost to the company of

an average UAW worker is one hundred and twelve thousand dollars a year, and that its latest contract proposal would bring that to one hundred and thirty three thousand dollars, including ninety two thousand dollars in cash alone. While Fayn focuses on

the base pay his members, earn Ford points out that over the last four years, traditional UAW workers earned forty seven thousand dollars in profit sharing bonuses and yearly payments to cover inflation. Ford also notes that total CEO compensation for Jim

Farley is up twenty one percent, not the forty percent average the UAW and faynlike to use, which is largely due to Carlos Taveras taking over Stellantis.

And so we're seeing the strike moving into a new phase. In phase one,

Fayne dominated the media narrative. Now, at least with Ford, we're

seeing a new phase where the company is ready to publicly counter what the union is saying. A couple of countries are pressuring Elon Must to build gigafactories.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla in Saudi Arabia are in early talks to open a factory there. However, Elon Must quickly shot down the

report, tweeting or maybe I should say xing that it was quote utterly false, And yesterday Elon Must met with the President of Turkey who asked him to open a plant there. Tesla currently has six plants and is building another one

in Mexico. Elon has set a goal of selling twenty million vehicles a year,

and it's going to need more factories to hit that target. The taging

automotive technologies, we combine world class composite materials expertise with cutting edge designs because frankly, there are better ways to lightweight vehicles, so lighten up with taging automotive technologies the formula for better mobility. Toyota has been criticis sized for its

slow transition to evs, but as we've learned, Toyota typically takes longer to make up its mind, but then uses its manufacturing expertise to quickly pivot.

In June, Toyota laid out its plans for the future, and in some cases it's already implementing those plans. But it's also giving us real life demonstrations

of others, much like Tesla is doing now. Toyota plans to build vehicles

in large sections, including a front, a middle, and rear. It

will also take advantage of large castings to cut the number of parts. This

process allows people to work all around the car without things like pillars, doors, and a roof getting in the way. Then those sections can be brought

together. Toyota clearly needs human hands to make its evs, but it's also

developing processes that will eliminate some workers. It says it wants self propelled production

to account for half of the manufacturing process. That includes small autonomous robots that

can carry things like seats to build stations, as well as the use of conveyorless assembly. Instead of cars getting dragged down the line, they use their

own in car technology and sensors in the plant to drive themselves through different stations.

It's already using this on some welding lines, but also shows how cars could drive themselves through various checkpoints. Other interesting uses of robots are for seat

installation, which is something humans normally do, and a new vehicle logistics robot.

It's used to move stuff around like the seat robot, but it's big enough to move a whole car around. Moving vehicles around a manufacturing yard or

shipping lot is another thing a person usually does, but it looks like several of these robots could handle the task. And lastly, we'll touch on battery

development. Toyota is already working on bipolar battery that are more compact and energy

dents, as well as solid state batteries. It's aiming to come out with

the bipolar batteries by twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven, and solid state by twenty twenty seven or twenty twenty eight. And is this a sign that

big oil will join the EV revolution. Shell just open its largest EV charging

station in China, which was built in partnership with BYD. Located near the

Shenzhen Airport. It has two hundred and fifty eight public fast chargers and during

its trial run it was able to charge thirty three hundred vehicles a day.

The station uses solar panels which generate three hundred thousand kilowatt hours annually to charge the vehicles, and also features dining lounge areas and a convenience shop. If

the station proves to be successful, maybe Shell will open more of them, and not just in China but also Europe and who knows, maybe even us.

All of the metal in cars gets recycled, but almost all of the plastic ends up in landfills. So Honda's partnering up with a company in Japan

called Torrey Industries to test a closed loop recycling process of nylon resin from use cars, which is usually used for things like intake manifolds. They're going to

build a pilot facility that will have a processing capacity of five hundred metric tons of resin a year, and they aim to get it up and running around twenty twenty seven. They've developed a process that's faster, results in a higher

yield, and is more environmentally friendly than current conventional methods. After the new

Passat, Volkswagen is showing off its second new vehicle to ride on, the updated version of its icebayse platform, previously called MQB, now called MQB EVO.

Styling of the new Tiguan is ald evolution of the current model with signature elements from VW's other SUVs thrown in. One of the big things for US

is the addition of a new PHAV variant, which provides nearly one hundred kilometers or sixty two miles of range. It's likely to be the same setup in

the Passat, which combines a one and a half leader four cylinder engine, an electric motor that comes in two power outputs, and a nearly twenty kilowatt hour battery pack. The other big update went to the interior. It's available

with a large fifteen inch center display screen and a cool pixelated pattern that's picked up on the door and dash. VW says the new tig One will start

hitting dealerships early next year, but Volkswagen wasn't the only automaker to show a new PHAV model, Ford revealed that it's coming out with a plug in hybrid Ranger for Europe. The setup will combine the automaker's two point three Leader Eco

Boost end with an electric motor and battery pack. While it didn't give any

specs for the hardware, it says it will have an estimated forty five kilometers or roughly twenty eight miles of range and the same towing capacity as any other Ranger, which is thirty five hundreds or seventy seven hundred pounds. However,

while Ford is showing off the new Ranger p have today, it won't go into production until late next year and won't go on sale until early twenty twenty five. That brings us to the end of today show. Thanks for making

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AD #3651 - UAW Threatens to Expand Strike; Toyota's Factory Ideas to Battle Tesla; Ford Fires Back at Fain

Toyota Laid

Volkswagen Passat

Volkswagen Tiguan

Ford Ranger

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