AD #3730 - Legacy OEMs Don’t Know How to Write Software; Sales People Make +$200,000/Year at Car Dealerships; CEO Of MAN Says Hydrogen Truck

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

It sure pays to sell cars at a dealership. According to Automotive Newses

Dealership Salary Survey, the average salesperson at a US car dealer made just over two hundred thousand dollars in wages, commissions, and bonuses last year, and most of them are optimistic about their future wages, with fifty three percent of respondents saying they expect to get a pay raise in the next three years.

Even so, they have to put in long hours to make those big bucks.

Most salespeople work nearly fifty two hours a week, and there's gross inequality on the showroom floor. Men make an average of seventy four thousand dollars more

than women. Uh oh, this doesn't look good for hydrogen fuel cells and

heavy duty trucks. The CEO of m An, which is a part of

Volkswagen's giant Tratton truck group, says hydrogen trucks are not viable. He says

that trucks need to run on green hydrogen or they're not even sustainable. Compared

to ice trucks running on diesel fuel, green hydrogen is made using renewable sources like solar and wind, but it's only available in very small quantities and is very expensive. The CEO says it's cheaper to make electricity from renewable sources than

making it from hydrogen, saying you capture seventy five percent of the renewable energy with electricity versus only twenty five percent with hydrogen. Even though other companies like

Bosch, Hyundai, Volvo Truck, and more are working on fuel cells for heavy trucks, Nan believes they won't be viable until twenty thirty five at the earliest. Honda is splitting its automotive operations into three separate groups, and it's

all about getting the legacy auto maker ready for the transition to electric vehicles.

The business units include a group called Automobile Production Operations, which will handle all manufacturing and manufacturing engineering. Another unit called Supply Chain and Purchasing Operations, will

especially concentrate on getting the parts and system it needs for EVS and software to find vehicles, and a third unit called Quality Innovation Operations is tasked with maintaining high quality standards as the company transitions to EVS and will also take on cybersecurity responsibilities. Our take is that Honda felt that top management needed more visibility into

these operations and having them buried within its automotive division could have hit problems that needed to be dealt with quickly, but none of these changes will go into effect until the first of April. Traditional automakers are struggling with software because they're

doing it all wrong, said Jan Becker, the CEO of apex AI.

Becker is an expert in autonomous technology and he knows software. He says,

you need a small, highly efficient team of only eight to twenty exceptional software engineers, and you better be ready to pay to get that rockstar talent at least a million bucks a year per engineer, because that's the going rate for top talent in the valley. Outsourcing software development to low cost countries is not

the answer, he says, adding that traditional OEMs focus too much on cost and need to focus more on value. Moreover, those software engineers need to

operate outside of the existing corporate organization. They need short development cycles. They

need a single depository for all the data for all the vehicle lines, and OEM has ie no more data lakes strewn across the company. Also they need

to write and see plus plus or rust, but definitely not in C.

So what do you think will legacy automakers be willing to pay a million box per software engineer or will they continue to scour the world for low cost odors.

Stillant has revealed a bunch of details about it stell a Large platform, but first a quick recap. Instead of going with dedicated EV platforms, Stillant

has created four architectures called Stella Small, Stellar Medium, Stella Large and stell A Frame, and they can support most powertrain types and will cover all of its major vehicle segments. Stella Large will handle D and E segment vehicles from

family oriented to high perform mis to off road to luxury. Eight vehicles will

feature this platform from twenty twenty four to twenty twenty six. The first will

be Jeep and Dodge models in North America, including the Jeep Wagonyar s shown off last week, as well as cars from Alfa, Romeo, Chrysler, and Maserati. As we said, Stella Large can support a number of different

powertrains, including IC hybrid, plug in hybrid, and pure electric. Engines

and motors can drive the front, rear or all four wheels. All electric

versions will have either four or eight hundred volt electronic architectures as well as ota capabilities, which will include performance updates. Battery sizes will range from eighty five

to one hundred and eighteen kilowat hours, providing up to eight hundred kilometers or about five hundred miles of range, and its targeting acceleration from zero to one hundred kilometers an hour in the two second range. That says it will have

forty eight BEVs on the market by the end of this year and it's investing over fifty billion euros by the end of the decade to meet at sales goals, which will also require roughly four hundred gigawatt hours of battery capacity. But

it says its flexible architectures allow it to replicate production at its plans all around the world, so it will be able to offer models at a competitive price without having to make price cuts, and CEO's Carlos Tavares things price cuts are a race to the bottom, which quote will end up in a blood bath.

Ford and Lincoln are coming out with a new and improved infotainment system and compared to today's system, the new Ford and Lincoln Digital Experience has five times faster processing, fourteen times faster graphics, processing, four times the memory, and eight times the storage. The big change for customers will be how they

view and interact with their vehicle's infotainment system, including an available forty eight inch pillar to pillar display in the new Lincoln Nautilus. Google and Amazon are built

into the system, and it will also have integrated Apple CarPlay in Android Auto, Google Assistant can help aid voice commands, or Alexa can be used as an alternative. Users will also be able to make updates, download apps to

play games or watch TVs or movies, including third party apps, and this is the start of Ford's attempt to bring more of its software development in house, which it says will allow it to offer services and updates even faster.

Acura announced pricing in the US for its first ever EV, the ZDX.

It starts at sixty four five hundred dollars for the rear drive version. The

dual motor ZDX starts at sixty eight five hundred dollars. The more powerful Type

S version starts at seventy three thousand, five hundred and if you want performance wheels and tires, it will cost you an extra thousand bucks on that type s The prices do not include destination charges or other ev incentives. Accur is

also offering customers three charging packages to choose from, which is included in the MSRP. It's a combination of public charging credits, charging equipment and installation credits.

Chinese brands aren't the only ones boosting exports out of China, so we're foreign automakers. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, eighteen foreign brands

exported nine hundred and ten thousand vehicles from China last year, or twenty two percent of the total four point one million vehicles exported. Tesla was the largest

with three hundred and forty four thousand. GM and Ford were also among the

leaders, with their exports increasing a combined twenty one percent last year. As

many foreign automakers see their sales drop in China, they need to explore to keep their assembly lines humming to protect their profitability, and one of the reasons exports are increasing is because there's too much capacity in China, but that could change. China's Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology admitted that overcapacity is a

problem and vowed that the government will take quote forceful measures to prevent superfluous projects.

According to consultancy firm Automobility, there's anywhere between five to ten million units of overcapacity in China. While many experts expect consolidation in the Chinese car market,

most assembly plants will likely never close because local governments rely on them for the jobs they provide, and that means all that over capacity could be in place for a long time to come. At a time when GM Crews has

halted all of its autonomous ride haling services in the United States, Waimo is into more cities. Weimo has been operating for years in Phoenix, Arizona.

Last year it expanded into San Francisco, and it just applied to operate in Los Angeles and after that it will add Austin, Texas. GM has kind

of given robotaxis a black eye in the US, but Weimo has shown that its approach is working with politicians, first responders, and most importantly with the public. But that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for

tuning in. Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Bridgestone Solutions for your

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AD #3730 - Legacy OEMs Don’t Know How to Write Software; Sales People Make +$200,000/Year at Car Dealerships; CEO Of MAN Says Hydrogen Truck

Renault Wind

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