AD #3709 - UAW Attacks Honda, Hyundai and VW; Ford Slashes Lightning Production; Renault and VW Could Co-Develop Cheap EV

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

The UAW just fired its first shots in its organization battle against non union automakers in the US. Yesterday, it filed unfair labor practices against Honda,

Hyundai, and Volkswagen with the National Labor Relations Board. It says the automakers

are using illegal tactics like putting union organizers under surveillance and stopping them from passing out union material and non working areas during non working times. The car companies

deny this and say they welcome the opportunity to defend themselves through the legal process.

But the board of the NLRB currently has a majority of pro union Democrats and could be very sympathetic to the UAW. Here's what UAW president Sean Fain

said it in its latest video. Don't auto workers at Toyota, Honda,

Hondai, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda deserve a record cut of those record profits? And how about the German three, Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes.

They've made almost the same as the Japanese and Korean companies four hundred and sixty billion dollars in the past ten years, the Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes workers not deserve their fair share of this booming auto industry. The UAW is trying

to get workers at all non union car companies in the US, including Honda, Hondai, and VW, to sign union cards, saying they want them there. If thirty percent of the workers sign the cards, the union will

publicly announce it. If they hit fifty percent, FAME will personally hold a

rally at the plant to get more. And if seventy percent sign the union

will demand the company recognize the union or it will hold an election. And

it's going to be fascinating to see how this develops. In the past,

the union was able to pressure workers into signing union cards, only to see them vote against the union when they could vote in secret at the ballot box.

We've got some key executive changes to report. Julie Freeme is stepping down

from the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, which is the main lobbying group for the automotive suppliers in the US. The OSA is part of MIMA, or the

Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, a larger lobbying group for manufacturing companies Freem, who is sixty years old, is leaving to pursue other opportunities and will be replaced by Colin Shaw, who, like Freeme, has extensive experience in the auto industry. And Lucid's chief financial officer, Sherry House, is also leaving to

pursue other opportunities while the company searches for a replacement. It's been a tough

year for Lucid. Sales are down thirty percent, it missed the guidance it

gave to Wall Street, its stock is down forty four percent, and it's getting dropped from the Nasdaq one hundred, which is a list of the top one hundred companies on the exchange. Of course, Lucid isn't the only one.

eBay and Zoom are also getting booted off the Nasdaq one hundred. There

simply aren't enough public ev charging stations in the US, but the first one funded by government money just open near Columbus, Ohio. The Infrastructure Investment and

Jobs Act earmark seven and a half billion dollars to build a network of charging stations across the US. Even though it was enacted two years ago, the

work is just getting going. Vermont, Pennsylvania and Maine also broke ground on

new stations. The US currently has one hundred and sixty five thousand charging ports,

but the Biden administration wants to grow that to five hundred thousand by twenty thirty and have them placed no more than fifty miles apart along highways and interstates.

That could go a long way to answering complaints about a lack of a charging infrastructure. Renault promised to give Nissan more of an equal footing in its

alliance. So the French automaker is selling five percent of its Nissan stock and

Nissan is buying those shares and retiring them. Renault will book a one point

six billion dollar loss from the transaction. The stock sale is actually part of

an agreement that two automakers made earlier this year, in which Renault will reduce its stake in Nissan from forty three to fifteen percent. Renault plans to sell

off its stake gradually. And speaking of Renault, German newspaper Hondelsblot reports that

the French automaker is in talks with Volkswagen to develop a low cost beev to compete against Chinese imports in Europe. The talks are still in a quote very

early stage, but the two companies want to share a BEEV platform for models that cost below twenty thousand euros. VW also has an EV partnership with Ford,

where some of Ford's European models will use VW's MEB platform, and no wonder they're doing that. Chinese automakers are really making a push into Europe.

The euro n CAP, which rates the safety of new vehicles crash, tested nine Chinese evs this year and all of them received five star safety ratings.

The models were the byd Dolphin Seal Seal You and Tang, the Japong G nine and P seven, the Neo EL seven and ET five, and the Smart Number three. While Smart isn't completely Chinese, it's partly owned and built

by Gli and China. And not only was the Neo ET five the safest

among all the Chinese vehicles tested, it was the safe this vehicle tested by the euro and CAP this year. Here's another sign that Warren Brown, our

recent guest on Auto Line After Hours, might be right about electric pickup adoption being a lot lower than expected. Ford will cut production of the F one

fifty Lightning and half at the start of next year due to quote changing market demand. Automotive News reports that Ford told suppliers to plan for about sixteen hundred

Lightnings to roll down the line each week at its Rouge evicenter in Michigan.

That means it will make about seventy five thousand electric trucks for the full year instead of a planned one hundred and fifty thousand, and Ford says it will continue to match production of the Lightning to meet customer demand, so that new output number could easily change in either direction. And while you might joke that

the Lightning is barely keeping its head above the water, it looks like the Tesla cyber truck will have no problem mixing water and electricity. Some of the

first owners are showing that the truck has a wave mode in its off road settings that raises the ride height of the truck and pressurizes the battery when driving through water. I have not seen anyone test these capabilities yet, but Elon

Musk previously said he wanted the cyber truck to be able to cross the water between space Ax's starbase and South Padre Island in Texas, which is about eleven hundred feet or three hundred and sixty meters. General Motors in Kamatsu are collaborating

to develop fuel cells for mining trucks. Specifically, they're for Komatsu's nine thirty

E mining trucks, which are as big as a house and can haul three hundred and twenty tons per load. The fuel cells for those trucks will generate

two megawatts of power, or the equivalent of two thousand, six hundred and eighty two horse power. GM wouldn't provide any other information about the fuel cells

except to say they're far bigger than anything it's shown to date. The nine

point thirty E is a diesel electric where the diesel runs a generator to power the electric motors that drive the wheels, so the fuel cell would merely replace the diesel and generate electricity directly. No word yet on when these fuel cell

trucks will be available to customers, and we're offering bonus points to anyone who can name the division of GM that made mining trucks from nineteen fifty three to nineteen eighty one. And that's right. GM used to make some of the

biggest mining trucks in the world. Mercedes has now how applied its AMG specific

e Performance Hybrid setup to five of its models, which pairs a twin turbo four liter V eight engine with an electric motor for eight hundred plus horse power, and the setup instantly made some of them the most powerful version of that model ever, and the new SL sixty three S performance is no different.

With six hundred kilowatts or eight hundred and four horse power and one thousand and forty seven pound feet of torque, this is the most powerful SL ever and will do zero to one hundred kilometers an hour in two point nine seconds.

The model is actually a plug in hybrid and all wheel drive, with the engine in the front and the motor, two speed transmission, limited slip diff and six point one kilowatt hour battery pack in the rear. Other highlights include

all wheel steering, active arrow ceramic brakes, and a semi active suspend system that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for making online a

part of your day. Auto Line Daily is brought to you by bridge Stone

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. Intrepid'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

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AD #3709 - UAW Attacks Honda, Hyundai and VW; Ford Slashes Lightning Production; Renault and VW Could Co-Develop Cheap EV

Byd Seal

Volkswagen Gli

Ford F-150 Lightning

Tesla Cyber Truck

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