AD #3715 - Reuters Expose: Tesla’s Defect Cover Up; Kia Canada Hides Sales From Kia Korea; Ford Finds 20-HP Under Raptor R Hood

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

Twenty twenty three has been a great year for Tesla shareholders. The stock

is up one hundred and thirty seven percent and the company has a market cap of over eight hundred billion dollars. But twenty twenty four may not be as

kind. Some versions of the Model three and Y are about to lose their

eligibility for the federal EV tax credit in the US, and Wall Street analysts worry that Tesla will be forced to cut prices, which would hurt profits.

Analysts forecasts for fourth quarter earnings are down fifty five percent compared to where they were a year ago. Profit forecasts for twenty twenty four are down forty three

percent, and that worry seems to be hurting the stock. Though Tesla is

up one hundred and thirty seven percent for the year, it's down six percent over the last six months. Even worse, there's an investigative report in Reuters

that accuses Tesla of covering up flaws and defects with suspension and steering components.

Reuters managed to get its hands on thousands of internal Tesla documents, It also conducted interviews with nine former Tesla managers and service texts, and with twenty customers whose cars suffered catastrophic failures. Some of the documents that found have instructions for

texts to tell customers that the broken parts on their cars were not defective.

In other cases, test La blame customers for previous damage to those parts like control arms, drive shafts, steering racks, and wheels, and then it forced them to pay for the repairs. There's a lot more in the report,

and we'll provide a link to the whole story if you'd like to read more. The slowdown in the EV segment in the US just claimed another casualty.

Panasonic is opping plans to build another battery plant in Oklahoma. Even so,

it is building new plants in Nevada and Kansas. But the outlook for

evs doesn't look as rosy as it did just a year ago. While this

isn't a good look for Kia, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Kia is not delivering vehicles to customers in Canada because it already met its sales target for the year. Top Kia executives reportedly told regional managers to delay deliveries until the

new year because they didn't want to appear too successful to upper management in Korea.

They were worried their marketing budget would be cut in twenty twenty four because it would look like they didn't need to spend that much. The executives told

dealers to blame the delays on delivery and logistics issues. Kia Canada is not

saying a thing. A spokesperson told the CBC it would not comment on quote

financial internal business matters. While this was inevitable. After most of its competitors

already adopted testless chargers, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and Scout announced they'll do the same starting in twenty twenty five. Their evs will use the North American

Charging Standard or next Charging Port. Customers will now have access to more than

fifteen thousand superchargers beginning in twenty twenty five, and for vehicles with CCS ports, the brands say they're looking into adapter solutions. VW's charging network Electrify America

already announced it will offer NAX connectors at its stations in twenty twenty five.

In the US, pickups are king and numbers mean everything in this War.

That's why the Ford F one fifty Raptor R was somehow seen as less than when it launched in twenty twenty three was seven hundred horse power, a figure that should excite most enthusiasts, But that's two less horse power than the RAM fifteen hundred t Rex, which had already hit the market. So some wondered

why four didn't squeeze out a few more horsepower to top its rival. Well,

that's exactly what it did for the twenty twenty four model year. Thanks

to an improved air inlet system and a new calibration for the supercharged five point two liters V eight, the Raptor R now makes seven hundred and twenty horse power and the same six hundred and forty pound feet of torque as it did before. Rams somewhat famously put an Easter egg under its hood of a t

Rex eating of a Lassi Raptor. So maybe Ford will now have a pack

of Raptors taking down a t Rex. Canada could be hammering another nail into

the ic coffin. It's coming out with new regulations that mandate that all new

cars, crossovers, SUVs, and light trucks must be zero emission vehicles by twenty thirty five. Right now, evs have about twelve percent market sharing Canada,

but it wants to grow that to twenty percent by twenty twenty six and sixty percent by twenty thirty. However, like other regions of the world,

automakers and their advocates are pushing back. They say the regulations are too ambitious,

in part because eve's costs more and there's a lack of a charging infrastructure, and hybrids and plugin hybrids can still qualify as zero emission vehicles right now, and Canada will continue to allow phabs beyond twenty thirty five that have at least eighty kilometers or roughly fifty mine of range. Almost half of Buick dealers

in the US have no interest in selling electric vehicles and are ditching the brand.

Earlier this year, General Motors offered buyouts to dealers, and almost half opted out because they don't want to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on tooling, equipment and training to sell in service eves. There were one nine hundred

and fifty eight Buick dealers in the US at the beginning of the year, but now that's tumbled to only one thousand, or forty seven percent fewer.

Bwick says the dealers that left the brand represent about twenty percent of its sales in the US, but despite having fewer dealers, the brand sales are up fifty eight percent this year through November. Buick will unveil its first EV for

the US next year, and it's planning on going all electric by the end of the decade. AUDI is actually a mashup of four different companies, which

is represented the rings of its logo, and throughout the year it's been celebrating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of one of those companies, NSU. We've

reported on a few of these highlights, and its last installment for the year also caught our eye. It's all about NSU's early days of aerodynamics in use

of a wind tunnel. The methods were primitive. Pictures show one model with

little pieces of yarn taped all over its body, but the results were impressive, especially for its motorcycles. One of its first prototypes, called the Dolphin,

set a world speed record of two hundred and ninety kilometers an hour or one hundred and eighty miles per hour in nineteen fifty one. A later design

called the Blue Whale, won several races in even a World Championship, and it helped developed a radical motorcycle which required the rider to lay down that went on to break eleven world records. We'll throw a link in the transcript and

description box if you'd like to see more. At the top of the show,

we reported on a buzz off problems that Tesla is running into. But

could the cyber truck change Tesla's fortunes. We'll get a better idea tomorrow when

we have Sandy Monroe coming on Autoline after Hours to talk about all the breakthrough technologies that are on the CT. Whether you hate the styling or not,

under the skin that truck is blazing new ground. And to make sure the

whole discussion stays grounded, We've got Joe White from Reuter's and two Leave from Sino Auto Insights coming on the show. Be sure to tune in. This

show is going to be a good one, and a programming note, Tomorrow is the last day of the year for the Autoline crew, but we'll be back at it on January third, as we mobilize our forces for our attack on cees. But that's all for today's show. Thanks for making auto Line

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 CS January ninth through twelve, twenty twenty four, in 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

AD #3715 - Reuters Expose: Tesla’s Defect Cover Up; Kia Canada Hides Sales From Kia Korea; Ford Finds 20-HP Under Raptor R Hood

Ford F

F-150 Raptor

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