The episode covers BYD's new Song L EV undercutting Tesla's Model Y by $10,000 in China, intensifying the EV price war. Tesla shifts to a $1,000 non-refundable Cybertruck deposit to gauge serious buyers. GM faces turmoil with executive departures and layoffs tied to the Bolt EV and Camaro production ends. Honda and Acura launch used car leasing to improve affordability. Cadillac teases a new EV model, while Volkswagen previews affordable electric vehicles for 2025-26. Chinese brand MG's MG5 fails Australian crash tests, highlighting safety concerns. Mercedes previews an AI-powered virtual assistant debuting at CES.
Topics:byd song ltesla model ycybertruck depositsgm layoffsused car leasingcadillac evvolkswagen affordable evmg5 crash testmercedes ai assistant
- BYD Song L Undercuts Tesla Y By $10,000 - Want A Cybertruck? Fork Over $1,000 - GM Cruise Axes 900 Jobs - GM Layoffs at Orion and Grand River - Honda To Lease Used Cars - More “Icks” From Cadillac - VW ID.2 All, The Beetle of EVs - Zeekr Launches New LFP Battery - Mercedes Brings AI into the Cockpit - MG 5 Gets Crushed in Crash Tests
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This is out Aline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. It looks like Tesla is going to have to cut the price of
its Model Y again in China, and that's because the BYD song L, which is targeted directly at the Model Y, just debuted with a starting price of twenty six seven hundred dollars. That's ten grand cheaper than a Model Y
in China. The base version of the BYD song L comes with a seventy
one point eight kilowat hour battery pack and a one hundred and fifty kilowatt motor, which is two hundred horse power. BYD already out sells Tesla with pure
evs in China, and this new model will probably increase its sales lead even more. Tesla was the company that kicked off the EV price war in China
at the beginning of the year, and now it looks like BYD is giving Tesla a taste of its own medicine. Speaking of Tesla, it wants you
to fork over a non refundable one thousand dollars deposit if you're serious about buying a cyber truck. A reported two million people paid the refundable one hundred dollars
deposit to reserve the electric truck. But now Tesla is looking for the more
serious buyers and this is also going to help Tesla gauge what the demand actually is for the cyber truck. GM Cruz keeps making headlines and for all the
wrong reasons. Just weeks ago, the CEO and the chief product officer resigned.
Two days ago, Cruz fired nine executives, and yesterday it announced it's cutting nearly a quarter of its workforce, or about nine hundred jobs. Most
of the layoffs are related to corporate functions, not engineering. Cruz lost seven
hundred million dollars in the third quarter and more than eight billion bucks since twenty sixteen, but GM CEO Mary Bari said she still believes that crews will ultimately turn the corner and become an extremely profitable business. GM is also laying off
people at two other plants in Michigan. It's cutting nine hundred and forty five
jobs at the Orient plant, which builds the Bolt Evy, which is going out of production until twenty twenty five, and GM will cut three hundred and sixty nine jobs at its Lancing Grand River plant. Where the Camaro is going
out of production, but that plant will continue to build the Cadillac CT four in CT five. GM will offer the laid off workers jobs at other plants
as soon as they're available. Honda and Akurra just launched a new marketing campaign
that we think everyone in the industry is going to copy. They're offering to
lease CPO cars. CPO stands for certified pre owned. They're used cars that
get inspected, fixed up, and sold with a warranty. Honda and Acur
are also offering free roadside assistance and cheap one point four nine percent financing, except that now Honda and acur will lease with the target of first time in young buyers. Some car dealers have been pleading for years with automakers to provide
them with the financing tools to lease use cars, and this may be one of the answers to deal with the affordability issue since car price is skyrocketed because of COVID shutdowns and chip shortages. Though leasing is not a gift to the
consumer, it does lower the monthly payment, and in the US market, car buyers pay far more attention to the monthly payment than to the overall price.
Automakers have been reluctant to least use cars because they're afraid it would cannibalize new car sales. But now that Honda and Acura are doing it, we
think everyone else will jump on board. At see as January ninth through twelve,
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 in multi GI Gibbit c us CS twenty twenty four, Las Vegas Convention Center in West Hall, Booth three six sixty six, or visit intrepidcs dot com slash sales. There's a new ick coming
to cadillacs EV lineup. First came the Lyric, then the Celestic, then
the Escalatic. Yes, I know it's Escalate IQ, but I think it's
dumb that all the other ones are IX but it but anyways, back to the IX. More recently came the Optic and now it's just revealed the all
Nuvistic. It's listed as a twenty twenty six model year vehicle, which means
the earliest it will come out is sometime in twenty two twenty five, and when it does, it will slot between the Lyric and the Escalatic. That's
about all we have to go on for now, but Cadillac says we'll get more details sometime next year. In March, Volkswagen revealed a new entry level
EV concept called the ID two all that's a preview of a production car that's coming out in twenty twenty five, and now it's teasing an suv version that will come out a year later in twenty twenty six. Both models ride on
its new MEB entry platform, which is front wheel drive based, and while VW didn't share any other details about the suv, here's what we can tell you about the car version. It has about the same wheelbase and with as
a current Golf, but overall it's about nine inches shorter. It will be
powered by a roughly one hundred and sixty six kilowatt or two hundred and twenty two horsepower electric motor, which is enough to power the vehicle from zero to one hundred kilometers an hour in about seven seconds, and it will have about four hundred and fifty kilometers or two hundred and eighty miles of range. VW
says the ID two All SUV is an important step to bringing affordable evs to the masses. Chinese automaker Gelee's premium EV brand, Zeeker, unveiled a fast
charging lithium iron phosphate or LFP battery. Its upcoming Double O seven Sedan,
which has an eight hundred volt architecture, will be the first model to use it. The battery is able to provide three hundred miles or five hundred kilometers
of range in just fifteen minutes of charging. The Double O seven has a
seventy five point six kilowatt hour pack, a motor that produces three hundred and ten kilowatts or four hundred and fifteen horse power, and it provides six hundred and eighty eight kilometers or four hundred and twenty seven miles of range. Virtual
assistants are about to get a lot lot better. It just so happens that
I shot a video of myself interacting with mercedes current Virtual assistant in a recent test car, and Mercedes just showed off a teaser video of its new AI based virtual assistant that will debut at CES in January, and the difference between the fluidity of speech is really obvious. Here's me asking the current system a
question. Hey, Mercedes, how may I help you? Can you tell
me a joke? Please? I haven't slept for ten days because that would
be way too long. And here's the teaser video of the new system.
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas except me the new NBUX Virtual Assistant meet me at CES twenty twenty four. I know the joke the current car tells
is not that great, but I did get a better response off camera a day earlier, which was you can't trust any atoms because they make up everything.
But with mercedes new AI based system, which we think uses chat GPT, interactions should be much more natural. Seic or The Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation
bought MG in two thousand and seven and it's done a terrific job with the brand, especially with exports so far this year. MG is the number six
EV brand in Europe. In the UK it's number two, only behind Tesla.
But not all mgs are electric. There's IC versions too, and in
Australia it's the seventh best selling brand in the whole market, including all vehicle types. But Australia just crash tested the MG five Sedan and it failed miserably.
The Australian end cap gave it zero stars in head on collisions, side impact and poll tests. The car did not do well and this comes as
something of a shock. Twenty years ago, Chinese cars were famous for folding
up in an accident, but that was then. Today, most Chinese cars
are well designed to meet craft standards, but clearly the MG five was not.
And that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for making
autoline a part of your day and I hope that you have a great weekend.
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