Volkswagen faces potential exit from a Chinese region amid forced labor allegations, while BYD expands aggressively with plans for a Mexico plant and new electric pickup. Sony and Honda's joint venture aims to launch three new models by 2030, featuring advanced infotainment and autonomous driving tech. Meanwhile, Great Wall Motors targets luxury segments with new EV limousines and SUVs. Ford revamps commercial vehicles with sportier trims, and Forvia introduces an innovative electronic fuse box replacing traditional fuses for smarter, fail-safe vehicle power management. Plus, legal and regulatory updates involving emissions and Volkswagen's diesel scandal surface.
- VW In Talks with SAIC Over China Plant - BYD To Build Plant in Mexico - BYD To Sell Pickups in Australia - Sony and Honda To Launch 3 Models By 2030 - California Rejects Stellantis Bid to Overturn Emissions Deal - Former VW CEO Winterkorn Denies Involvement in Diesel Scandal - Great Wall Targets Rolls-Royce - Ford Launches Race-Inspired Commercial Vehicles in EU - Forvia Replaces Fuse Box with Electronic Controls
"... MSRT trim line to the commercial versions of the transit custom and Ranger. They come with bigger, more stylish w..."
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Volkswagen may be forced to leave a region of China. It operates a
plant in the country's Sheinjiang Province with its joint venture partner SAIC. A local
minority group called the Wigers say they've been put into force labor among other rights violations, including to build a test track near that plant. VW hired a
German audit firm to look into the accusations and at first said it found no evidence of forced labor, but soon after six executives from the audit firm said they had nothing to do with the report and did not support it. And
now Hondel's Blot reports that another independent researcher says they did find evidence of forced labor at the site, including documents and pictures to back it up. So
now Volkswagen says it's in talks with SAIC over its future involvement at the plant, but it's hard to see how it can carry on byd is on a tear expanding outside of China. Yesterday we reported it's exporting its most popular ev
in China, the seagull to South America, where it will be called the Dolphin Mini, and now nick A reports that BYD will build a plant in Mexico. It's already kicked off negotiations with officials and is looking for a site
to build a factory. The company is spending six hundred and twenty million dollars
to build a new industrial complex in Brazil as well, but no doubt a Chinese auto maker setting up shop just south of the US border will raise a number of eyebrows. BYD could also have its eye on popular pickup truck markets.
Back in October, it filed patent pictures for a new pickup and now spy shots of prototypes are starting to pop up in China. Car News China
reports it will likely be offered in write hand drive and sold in Australia before the end of the year, possibly followed by South Africa. It looks to
be either a mid or full sized truck, and it's expected to be offered as both a plug in hybrid and pure electric vehicle. Sony and Honda's joint
venture will launch three models before the end of the decade, according to nick A. Sony Honda Mobility previously announced that it will start delivering a sedan under
its Afila brand name in North America in early twenty twenty six, and now the reports say it will also launch an suv the following year in twenty twenty seven, and a compact vehicle in twenty twenty eight or later. The Afela
sedan is said to use Qualcom's snap Dragon platform to run its infotainment system and enable up to Level three autonomous driving in some conditions. Production is expected to
be somewhere in North America as well. We want to know what drives you
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The California Office of Administrative Law rejected a petition from Stilantis to overturn an emissions deal the California Air Resources Board, or CARB, made with several other automakers. The agency said the automaker can file a lawsuit or take the matter
up with CARB instead. Stillantis filed the petition in December because it claimed the
deal favored its competitors and put it at a competitive disadvantage. In twenty nineteen,
CARB made separate voluntary agreements with Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Honda, and later Volvo to reduce emissions. Stillanta says those automakers only have to meet
standards based on national sales, while IT and other automakers have to follow rules based on sales in the fourteen states that have adopted California's vehicle emission standards.
Because of that, Stalantis says it has limited shipments of some IC models to those states in order to comply with the rules, which is where it says the disadvantage comes from former Volkswagen CEO Martin Wintercorn is still claiming he had no involvement in the company's diesel emission cheating scandal. Wintercorn, who's seventy six,
testified in a German court earlier today as part of a nine billion euro investor lawsuit that claimed he did not inform financial markets in a timely manner about the diesel defeat devices. Wintercorn says he didn't find out about the cheating until later,
and that he was not given all the details. He said if he
had all the info, he would quote not have hesitated to take the right steps, and that he quote would have traveled to the USA myself to negotiate with authorities, and this was the first time that winter Corn appeared in court for his role in the cheating which cost him his job as CEO eight years ago. Chinese automakers sure are ambitious. They're not afraid to tackle any segment
in the market. And now great Wall Motors, which has specialized in affordable
SUVs, is going right after Rolls Royce and Bentley. It's coming out with
a four door limousine later this year with a long hood, chopped greenhouse and short trunk, and it's working on an SUV that will compete with the Rolls Royce cullin In. Both vehicles will be any v's, but it's unclear if
they'll be be evs or pehebs or both. Ward's reports that great Wall sold
over one point two million vehicles last year in sixty markets around the world.
The commercial version of any model is usually the ugliest, most boring example the automaker has to offer, often coming with steel wheels, panel sides, and extends roofs. But Ford doesn't think it has to be that way. In
Europe, Ford pro is expanding its MSRT trim line to the commercial versions of the transit custom and Ranger. They come with bigger, more stylish wheels,
design elements like the lower air intakes that you might expect to see on sportier models, and better looking interior materials. The Transit custom also features bright paint
colors and even a spoiler on the back. Ford says both models can be
ordered now and deliveries kick off in the middle of the year. Automakers are
working on new ways to simplify their electric and electronic architectures and cars. Whether
it's zonal computing, edge computing, forty eight volts or ethernet connections, they're all working on it. And now for Vas come up with a way of
eliminating the fuse box in a vehicle and replacing it with electronic controls. Ben
Cohen, the VP of Strategy, Sales and Marketing, told us what it's all about out Yeah, So now we can do it through what we call efuse in our intelligent power distribution model. So if you think about things today
where you have a traditional fuse box, and traditional fuses are literally designed to fail. They melt and they cut off power to the system. Years ago,
we had this in our houses and we've even replaced that in our house.
Today, we're driving on a giant computer. We has a lot of
electronics going in a vehicle, and we're still using melting fuses. So what
we've done is we've come up with this unit where we can monitor the whole system through electronics. We have an e fuse in there with redundancies built in
because as we think about more autonomation, we can have fail operational services.
What this also allows us to do is not wait till something breaks, not wait till it fails, but we can be monitoring the whole system. We
can reroute power as it's needed, we can turn off something if it's malfunctioning, and we can be connected to a digital twin so that way we get prevented maintenance. So I'm not waiting till something breaks. The system can be
monitoring everything, and if something seems out of spec or out of line, we can throw a check engine light or however the OEM decides, and then you can fix things before they break. The other nice thing also is that
if you want to add something to the system, it's not you have to find a plort in your fuse box and run all the cabling we can connect over there, update and then the system is now able to scan for whatever you've just added, so say it's a trailer toe module or something like this.
So we bring you know, fail operational, service oriented architecture, and preventative maintenance all through this one module here. And by the way, Ben
Cohen says they're working with an OEM to develop this approach and that we're going to see it on cars very soon. 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.
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