AD #3707 - Safety Experts Criticize Cybertruck; Porsche Jumps into Carbon Capture; Ford Sets Record Exports from China

Just as Outline Daily. The show's dedicated to enthusiasts up the global automotive industry.

In like a lamb, out like a lion. That's the story of

the Chinese car market this year. China started out the year with a big

slump in new car sales, but last month sales were up twenty five percent compared to a year ago. Total sales were just over two million units,

and that's on top of a ten percent increase In October. Sales of new

energy vehicles shot up forty percent and hit a milestone. It's the first time

they topped forty percent market share, with customers buying five hundred and fifty two thousand BEVs. One reason sales are up so much is that a tax credit

for higher price b evs expires at the end of the month, so more people are buying those models, which means we could see a slump again in January. China's economy has been a bit wobbly this year, with worries over

a big drop in real estate prices and high levels of institutional debt. But

it looks like someone forgot to tell that to car buyers. In sense,

everyone wants to know how Tesla is doing in China. It had a pretty

good month. It sold over eighty two thousand, four hundred cars from its

Shanghai plant, with eighty percent of them going to Chinese buyers. For the

first eleven months of the year, Tesla sold over five hundred and twenty thousand cars in China, up thirty two percent, while it exported over three hundred and twenty five thousand units, up twenty six percent. And Ford is another

foreign automaker that exports out of China. It's set a record this year by

shipping more than one hundred thousand vehicles out of the country. They mainly go

to South America, the Middle East in Southeast Asia. Ford has had a

rough time in the Chinese market. In twenty seventeen, it sold over one

point two million vehicles, but last year that dropped to only four hundred and ninety five thousand. So Ford, like many other Chinese automakers, is exporting

vehicles to keep its production volume up. And along those lines, BYD just

started selling its model called the Seal in Mexico. You may remember that the

Seal is one of the finalists for the European Car of the Year and BYD has testless Model three directly in its crosshairs. It's selling two versions of the

Seal in Mexico, our rear drive model with two hundred horse power, a range of four hundred and sixty kilometers or two hundred and eighty five miles and a price of nearly forty five thousand dollars, and an all wheel drive version with five hundred and twenty two horse power, a five hundred and twenty kilometer range or three hundred and twenty miles and a price of fifty two thousand dollars.

That compares to fifty six thousand dollars for a Tesla Model three with all wheel drive and sixty six gants and for the performance version. Mexico is emerging

as an important market for Chinese automakers. They already have nine percent market share,

and many analysts believe they're going to use Mexico as a springboard into the US market. Volkswagen's troubled software and technology division, called Cariad, has fallen

way behind in development goals, and that delayed multiple new car launches, so it's turning to the Chinese for help. Cariad is forming a new joint venture

with Horizon robotics to develop driver assistance and autonomous technology. Volkswagen invested two point

four billion euros to get a sixty percent stake in the new company, which they're calling carries On. VW will appoint the CEO, while Horizon chooses the

Chief technology officer. And one of the models delayed by Cariad slow Pace is

the Porsche macn EV. So Porsche started developing critical technologies on its own,

and one of those areas is vehicle communication. It's already working with a supplier,

Bosch, to develop six G networks, which isn't expected to be out until about twenty thirty. Six G will use satellites and balloons at different orbits,

as well as AI to transfer data at much faster speeds in better reliability than five G. This could potentially allow cars to talk to one another at

the same time they use the six G radio waves to detect objects around them, which could drastically improve vehicle safety. However, experts say there's still a

number of hurdles to jump, which is why six G isn't expected to be out until the end of the decade. But speaking of Porsche, it's taking

a unique approach to reduce pollution. It signed a letter of intent to set

up a direct air capture system in Germany. These systems pull CO two directly

out of the atmosphere, so it can be used as a raw material to make things like synthetic fuels and graphite for battery production. The structure Porsche intends

to build looks quite large, but it doesn't give any indication about how much CO two it can remove. Stilantis is attacking the California Air Resources Board on

several fronts. Yesterday we reported that it's filing a petition against the agency,

and today it warned that it's cutting a shift at its MAC assembly plant in Detroit and cutting jobs at its Toledo plant in Ohio because it expects lower sales of gas powered vehicles in order to comply with California's emission standards. Both plants

build jeeps, and two thousand, four hundred and fifty five jobs could be eliminated at the MAC plant in one two and twenty five jobs in Toledo.

We think Stilantis is playing its cards rather well by threatening job losses. It

could get the UAW to watch its back as it fights the California Air Resources Board. Safety experts are worried about the Tesla cybertruck. They think it's too

strong. Writers spoke to six safety professors and officials who say the truck could

be dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists and even other vehicles in a crash because of its angular design and stiff structure. They think that stiff structure will plow right

through other vehicles and do a lot of damage. Of course, Tesla doesn't

agree. Elon Mus says the truck not only meets all US safety standards,

he says it will be safer per mile than other trucks for both occupants and pedestrians. However, even Tesla admits that the cyber truck could face problems trying

to meet Europe's pedestrian safety standards, which require crumple zones on the hood to protect bicyclists and pedestrians. Speaking of Tesla, Bloomberg reports that the head of

its Dojo supercomputer project left the company last month. He had been with the

company for the last five years, but no one is saying why he's leaving.

Tesla is developing the Dojo supercomputer to help train machine learning models for its autonomous systems, which will improve its algorithms faster. Tesla is spending a billion

dollars to develop Dojo through the end of twenty twenty four, and Morgan Stanley estimates that it could add five hundred billion dollars to Tesla's value. And when

Tesla introduced the cyber truck last week, we said one of its most important aspects is its forty eight volt system for its power electronics, and now the automaker is sharing the details of that system with other automakers, and Ford's CEO Jim Farley even sent a tweet thanking Elon Musk for making the documents available.

A forty eight volt system allows you to send more power to the electronics without raising the current, which means you can use thinner and lighter wiring. Tesla

is sharing this information because it needs the industry to adopt forty eight volt technology because repair costs will be high if Tesla is the only company using it, so more volume is needed to bring down costs for those parts. At the

beginning of this year, Driftking Ken Block tragically lost his life in a snowmobiling accident, but we're getting one last new video in his Jim Kanna series, now called Electric Kana thanks to the all electric Audi S one Huna Trani drives.

In this installment, he spends nearly eight minutes tearing up different landmarks in Mexico City. Block started making these videos in two thousand and eight and has

drifted some really cool and specialized machines over the last fifteen years. I think

the first Jim conn of video I saw was in twenty ten, and I still find myself watching videos from time to time in this series when I just need to shut my brain off. But that brings us to the end of

today's show and this week I hope that you have a great weekend. Auto

Line Daily is brought to you by bridgetone Solutions for your Journey and by Intrepid Control Systems over the Air Engineering Boost your game at CES January ninth through twelve, twenty twenty four, and Trumpet's looking forward to seeing you at our booth three six sixty sixth Las Vegas Convention Center in the West Hall. We'll be

demonstrating the latest and greatest in the software defined vehicles and journal architectures, automotive ethernet technologies like ten based two one s and multi gigbbit cus cs. Twenty

twenty four, Las Vegas Convention Center in West All Booth three six sixty six, or visit interpretcs dot com slash sales. Wards is the industry leader for

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AD #3707 - Safety Experts Criticize Cybertruck; Porsche Jumps into Carbon Capture; Ford Sets Record Exports from China

Porsche Macn

Tesla Cybertruck

Chevrolet Volt

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