AD #3689 - Biden Backs UAW’s Unionization Efforts; VW To Offer Sub-$35,000 EV In U.S.; BMW To Offer L3 Autonomous Driving

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Pollstar held its Polestar Day yesterday, where it laid out the company's plans in future technology and it will finally be adding another car to its lineup when the Polestar three starts rolling down the line at a Gili plant in China early next year, as well as at Volvo's US plant in South Carolina in the summer twenty twenty four. The three will be followed by the Polestar four,

with production starting in the second half of twenty twenty five. The model will

be made at Renault's plant in South Korea, which will be the first EV that plant has ever made. No word on how many examples it expects to

build, but the plant has a capacity of three hundred thousand vehicles a year.

This move comes from Renault's partnership with Jili, which I thought was mostly an IC partnership, but it clearly will extend evs as well. The three

and four are going to be followed by the Polestar five, which is based on the precept concept and also starts production sometime in twenty twenty five, and Before we go on to the tech Pollstar showed off. I just wanted to

add a little side note that I think it's naming is a little odd because the Polestar four will slot between the two and three in both size and price.

Okay, onto the tech. The company says it's testing bi directional charging

with the Polestar three. Specifically, it talked about setting up a virtual power

plant that can look at the total battery capacity of all of its evs that are plugged in the demand on the grid and then charge or discharge the batteries.

Tesla has been doing the same thing with its stationary storage or power walls for years, and it's generated hundreds of millions of dollars for those that have opted into the program. Polestar is also working to bring more automated driving into

the four. It's partnering with Luminar for ldar and Mobile Eye for its chauffeur

platform, which it says will allow for eyes off, hands off driving on the freeway and eyes on, hands off driving for other environments. And the

last bit of news is a couple of battery deals. Polestar is working with

Skon for high nickel battery cells and store Dot for its extreme fast charging technology for the Polestar five. Instead of a traditional lithium ion graphite anode, store

Dot replaces it with nanoparticles and other organic compounds to allow a battery to add one hundred miles or one hundred and sixty kilometers of range in just five minutes.

And while Polestar was able to nab a new contract manufacturer in Renault, Fisker says it's still looking for other partners to help make its next models.

Its current model, the Fisker Ocean, is produced by Magna in Austria, and it's supposed to have a deal to build a smaller crossover called the Pair with fox Con in Ohio, but CEO Henrik Fisker says it's in talks with five traditional car companies to get even more production capacity. As of September,

Fisker had only made about five thousand Oceans, so it will be interesting to see if it can support building more vehicles. Yesterday we reported that the UAW

is going to target all non union autoworkers in the US, and it just received a big endorsement for that effort. President Biden said he quote absolutely backs

the uaw's efforts to unionize Tesla and Toyota, and he said he wants all auto workers to receive the same deal the UAW just made with gm Ford and Stillantis. Biden made the remarks before a rally with UAW workers at Stalants' plant

in Belvidere, Illinois. Biden also supported the UAW store right back in September,

joining the picket lines. But even with the President's support, it's gonna

be an uphill battle. The UAW has unsuccessfully tried to organize the transplants and

evy startups for the last forty years, which is why union president Sean Faine said it's going to quote find creative ways to get to workers. BMW announced

it's going to offer SAE Level three hands free driving to its customers in Germany.

The automated driving technology will be available in the new seven series starting next year and costs six thousand euros or about sixty four hundred bucks. The system

only works at speeds up to six d kilometers an hour or about thirty seven miles per hour undivided highways. BMW plans to roll the technology out to other

markets, but it didn't say when it would do that. As you probably

remember. Mercedes was the first automaker to offer Level three driving, which is

also available in Germany as well as California and Nevada, and like BMW system, Mercedes Drive Pilot only works at speeds below forty miles an hour. Electric

vehicles are one of the fastest growing segments of the auto market, and because consumers aren't buying as many ice vehicles, it's driving down the price of palladium, which is used in catalytic converters. SPOT palladium is down forty five percent

so far this year and is now at nine hundred and forty three dollars an ounce, which is a five year low. A surplus is expected next year,

which is causing the price to tumble, and if EV sales continue to grow, demand for palladium is expected to continue to drop. Earlier this summer,

Protera, a startup that made electric buses and battery packs, filed for bankruptcy because it was unable to reach manufacturing scale, and now Volvo Trucks will scoop up its battery business. The truck maker said it won an auction to

buy the unit for two hundred and ten million bucks as part of pro Terra's Chapter eleven bankruptcy process. Valvo says it expects to finalize the deal sometime next

year. Volkswagen wants to sell affordable electrics in the US instead of scaling back

the number of evs for the market. VW says it wants to offer an

electric model for under thirty five thousand dollars in the next three to four years.

It would have to be built somewhere in North America, likely the US or Mexico, and VW will also look to source the batteries from the region so the vehicle will qualify for IRI tax credits. Ford Trucks, the automaker's

international heavy duty commercial truck brand that operates in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, is partnering with a German company called Quantron to study fuel cell technology. Quantron's technology, including eaxls, high power batteries, fuel cell stacks,

and energy management systems, will be tested in Ford's F Max vehicles starting next year. Ford Trucks is aiming to be zero emissions in heavy duty truck

production by twenty forty. It sounds like the Hyundai Group maybe making a similar

move as Toyota. It's opening the first of what it calls a smart urban

mobility hub in Singapore. Basically, it will come up with new production methods

and customer experiences, and one specific example, it says production methods will be significantly evolved from traditional conveyor belt manufacturing, and to me that sounds very similar to how Toyota will have vehicles drive themselves down certain sections of the production line.

No word on one Hundai will start testing the system, but Toyota plans to launch it on its next gen EVS in the next few years. Tesla

isn't just opening up its supercharger network in the US. Car News China reports

that GM and its Chinese joint venture partner SAIC are getting access to Tesla's charger network in China before the end of the year. Evs from Buick and Cadillac

will be the first to be able to use them. While it's not as

big as it's network in North America, Tesla operates more than eighteen hundred supercharger stations with roughly eleven thousand individual chargers in China. That brings us to the

end of today's show, and this week, thank you for tuning in.

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AD #3689 - Biden Backs UAW’s Unionization Efforts; VW To Offer Sub-$35,000 EV In U.S.; BMW To Offer L3 Autonomous Driving

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