AD #3708 - Free EV Charging Hogs the Chargers; Hyundai’s Mind Blowing Tire Chains; Our Next Energy Demotes CEO

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

Many automakers offer free charging as a perk for buying an EV, and a new study from the Department of Energy found that owners are really taking advantage of it. If it's free, owners spend seventy eight minutes charging their EV.

If they have to pay, they only spend forty two minutes on average.

If it's free, EV owners use forty point seven killowat hours of energy.

If they pay, they get an average of twenty two kilowat hours.

The ones who charge for free are probably charging their batteries much closer to one hundred percent than the ones who are paying, and as you know, charging to one hundred percent goes a lot slower. You may remember we had charging

expert Tom mclagney on auto Line after hours begging automakers not to offer free charging because it encouraged owners to hog the chargers. And by the way, all

these figures we cited are based on two point three million charging sessions over the last three years, but it doesn't include Tesla's supercharger network, and Tesla says that its owners only spend about twenty seven and a half minutes charging their vehicles batteries. Start Up Our Next Energy, or One kind of out of Nowhere,

abruptly replaced its CEO yesterday. It announced that Paul Humphreys, who has

been with the company since it was founded in twenty twenty, will take over the leading role. The guy who actually founded the company and was acting CEO,

Mujibajazz, will now serve as the vice chairman of the board and chief Technology officer. It's not unusual for startups to move their tech savvy founder into

a CTO role and a point a business savvy c but it's got to sting, Mujib said, quote. Change is necessary for growth and we believe this

is our opportunity and the time for growth. But One is facing some setbacks

as well. A UK fund canceled a one hundred million dollar investment because of

a difference of opinion on the company's viability that resulted in the startup laying off twenty five percent of its workforce last month. One is also responding to lower

demand for evs and will only make test sells at its new battery factory in Michigan until it has a solid order from a customer, and until that happens, Automotive News reports it will buy battery cells from BYD to use in its products. Anyone who's driven in major cities knows how bad the traffic can be.

The average trip across Manhattan averages just about eight miles an hour, so in June the city he wants to implement a congestion charge on any vehicle driving into the lower part of the borough. Passenger vehicles will be hit with a

fifteen dollars charge, trucks with twenty four to thirty six dollars depending on their size, and even motorcyclists will have to pay seven point fifty and that doesn't include bridge or tunnel charges, which can add another thirteen to seventeen dollars to a trip. The whole idea is to make it so expensive that traffic drops

off dramatically. Needless to say, motorists and truck and taxi drivers are dead

set against it. That happened in other cities that added congestion charges, like

London, Singapore and Stockholm, but that opposition died down when traffic dropped off significantly. However, despite the initial drop off in traffic in London, it's

crept back up. It's now five percent higher than pre COVID levels, and

that shows that congestion chargeages alone are not enough to free up traffic in major cities. Last year, the California Department of Motor Vehicles accused Tesla of falsely

advertising its autopilot and full self driving features for overstating how well the systems work.

But Tesla says, hang on a moment. It points out that autopilot

has been around for a decade and that the DMV never said anything about it.

In fact, Tasla says the DMV implicitly approved the name because it did not take any action or tell the company it couldn't use it. Even so,

the DMV could suspend tesless license to sell vehicles in California, and it could force the company to make restitution to owners, and if it does, no doubt this one will be going to court. In other Tesla news,

the US Department of Energy officially approved the cyber truck for the full seventy five hundred dollars federal tax credit, but it's only available for models that don't cost over eighty grand, and we're quite certain that the truck qualifies for the credit because its batteries made in the US. At CS January ninth through twelve,

twenty twenty four, and Trepid's looking forward to seeing you at our booth three six sixty six 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 gigibbit CUS CS twenty twenty four, Las Vegas Convention Center in West Hall, Booth three sixty sixty six or visit intrepidcs dot com slash sales. At first, GM was going to

scrap the Chevy Bolt at the end of this year, but after a number of complaints from owners and EVY advocates, GM changed its mind. Besides,

the Bolt is the best selling ev in the US outside of task LA, so why walk away from that? CEO Mary Barra declared that not only would

the Bolt return in twenty twenty five, it would come back with an altium battery. And now we've got some more details. Only the larger Bolt EUV

will return. Bigger vehicles sell better in the US, and we think the

EV's longer wheelbase makes it easier to package the altium battery pack. It's also

possible not much else will change, since that will allow GM to use almost all the existing tooling, which will help keep the price down. Slowly,

but surely, we're starting to see legacy suppliers adjusting to the transition to electric vehicles. Bosch announced it will cut fifteen hundred jobs at two plants in Germany

by twenty twenty five. Even though it's difficult to reduce headcount in Germany,

Bosch is reacting to the current market. One of those plants makes EGC pumps

and components, and the other make engine control units or ECUs. It's likely

that Bosch decided to eliminate those jobs based on a drop in future orders coming from car companies. Part of China's master plan to develop its EV sector was

to offer generous subsidies to consumers and car companies in the beginning, but then slowly wean them off government handouts until the market was self sustaining. This year,

the government had a change of mind, with overall economic growth slowing.

China will maintain consumer subsidies for most evs, but they have to meet certain specs evs have to have a range of at least one hundred and twenty five miles, while pehevs must offer an electric range of at least thirty seven miles and they can't lose more than thirty five percent of the range in cold weather.

The government is committing seventy two billion dollars to this program, and keep in mind this does not include subsidies that major cities provide for evs. For

example, people who buy an EV don't have to pay for a license plate in Shanghai, which can cost over fourteen thousand dollars at the current exchange rate.

Anybody that's ever driven with chains on their tires or just snow tires knows that you really don't need them all the time unless you live in an area of constant deep freeze. It would really be best to change them out for

a regular set of tires during those warmer days that get sprinkled throughout the winter months, but that would be highly inconvenient, so most people just leave them on. However, the Hyundai Group is developing a new product that would change

that. It's using shape memory alloy built right into the wheel and tire package,

so you could deploy snow chains. At the push of a button,

you might be asking yourself what are shape memory alloys. Basically, they're metals

that react to electricity. During normal driving, the shape memory alloy does not

contact the road at all by sitting in grooves built into the tire, but when a current is applied, it returns to its original shape, which causes it to stick out above the tire tread so when all of them are deployed together, they act like little flaps that help gain more traction. Hyundai says

it has patents pending on the technology and is considering launching it on future models.

A couple of premium VW Group brand names are coming together for small collaboration.

Dukatti and Bentley are launching a limited series of motorcycles. They're based on

an existing Dukati bike, the DVLV four, but they have styling and materials inspired by the Bentley Bitur. The DVL for Bentley will be limited to five

hundred examples, and Bentley will hand craft et on its own, and additional fifty examples will be made exclusively for Bentley customers to personalize in their own way.

The standard Ducati starts at just under twenty seven thousand dollars, but this version will cost a reported seventy thousand dollars before any other add ons. But

that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for making autoline a

part of your day. Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Bridgestone Solutions

for your journey and by Intrepid Control Systems over the air engineering boost your game.

AD #3708 - Free EV Charging Hogs the Chargers; Hyundai’s Mind Blowing Tire Chains; Our Next Energy Demotes CEO

Chevrolet Bolt EUV

About this episode

Original notes