This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
Are we seeing the first cracks in the Chinese auto industry. A dramatic
slowdown in sales last month, coupled with a raging price war, seems to be crippling a couple of the weaker auto makers. The luxury carmaker High Fi
stopped building cars last week. Hi Fi says it's merely pausing production for six
months, but the employees who remain will take a thirty percent pay cut and after March eighteenth, they'll be paid minimum wage. And another car company,
Netta Auto, is delaying bonus payments to employees. That sure sounds to us
like the two companies have severe cash flow problems. But while some of the
smaller Chinese car companies look like they're starting to flounder, BYD continues to expand.
The biggest car company in China is now jumping into the two wheel market, but it's not gonna make eastcooters or motorcycles. Instead, it will make
batteries for them. BYD currently makes batteries for cars in stationary storage, and
it's the second largest EVY battery maker in the world with a nearly sixteen percent share of the market. Adding the two wheel market to its portfolio is only
going to help BYD achieve even greater manufacturing scale. And that's not the only
new market that BYD is expanding into. It's now going to compete in the
luxury segment in Europe with its yang Wang brand. It just unveiled the U
eight SUV at the Geneva Motor Show, which will compete with high end SUVs like the Mercedes G Wagon. The U eight is an extended range electric vehicle.
Its two liter turbo engine charges the battery and does not drive the wheels.
It also features a roughly forty nine kilowad hour LFP battery pack and four electric motors that each have two hundred and twenty kilowatts of power or nearly three hundred horse power. The suv has a combined range of one thousand kilometers or
six hundred and twenty miles, and in China it has a starting price of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and over the weekend, yang Wang also unveiled its second model, the U nine, which is a high performance electric car that can compete with Ferrari and Lamborghini. It can move from zero to one
hundred kilometers an hour in two point three six seconds and has a top speed of three hundred and nine kilometers an hour or one hundred and ninety two miles an hour. The model has a starting price of more than two hundred and
thirty three thousand dollars and it will only be sold in China. It goes
into production in the second quarter and deliveries will start in the middle of the year. A lobbying group called the Alliance for American Manufacturing is urging the US
Congress to block imports of Chinese cars made in Mexico. In fact, it's
calling those imports a quote extinction level event for the American auto industry. But
what we're trying to find out is who is the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
It claims that some leading manufacturing companies are members, but we can't find any info on who its members are, except for the United steel Workers Union.
We've reached out to the Alliance and hope to learn more about it, and when we know more, we'll report on what we found. We want to
know what drives your testing. Ota Connected Car Diagnostics remote testing. Intrepid Control
Systems is here to help you work from anywhere. Intrepid Control Systems driven by
your data. Toyota is practically giving away the Maria in the US. The
automaker is offering a forty thousand dollars sales incentive for the fuel cell powered model, which drops its price to just twelve grand. Toyota is offering the discount
because Shell recently announced it's closing seven hydrogen stations in California, and the Mara is only sold in California, and Wards reports there's only two dozen left in dealer inventory. Toyota also offers a complementary fifteen thousand dollars credit for hydrogen fuel
that's good for six years, so you can pretty much drive for free during those years with the discount. Well, if you can find a place to
fill up now. That is EV's startup. Lucid is planning to open an
R and D center in the Detroit area. According to Crane's Detroit Business the
company will invest ten million dollars and will create two hundred and sixty jobs.
Lucid is seeking state incentives for the project, and representatives from the company are traveling to Michigan tomorrow to speak with public officials. Loocid is based in californ
and we find it interesting that it chose to open an R and D center in Detroit and not Silicon Valley. It seems like every automaker is developing an
affordable electric car, and this is what Renault plans on introducing to the European market early next year. The all new Renault five. Its styling stays very
true to the concept, which itself takes inspiration from the original version that debuted in nineteen seventy two. The platform for the car was developed by Renault's new
EV and software division Ampier, who completed it in three years instead of the usual four. The platform is called amp are Small and it's dedicated to B
segment sized eves. It's a connected platform that offers technology like Google, built
in bi directional charging, OTAs and up to level two autonomous driving. One
electric motor that comes in outputs of seventy ninety and one hundred and ten kilow available, which is ninety three, one hundred and twenty and one hundred and forty seven horse power. The new Renault five will come with an up to
fifty two kilowa hour battery pack that provides up to four hundred kilometers or about two hundred and forty eight miles of range on the WLTP test cycle. Renault
says it will even be able to tow up to five hundred kilograms or just over eleven hundred pounds. The interior is pretty simple without a lot of clutter,
but there's a modern touch with digital screens, and we like the use of fabrics, as well as the similar styling of interior and exterior air vents.
The new Renault five is expected to go on sale early next year, with a starting price that's said to be around twenty five thousand euros. Jeep
is abandoning its plan to create Wagoneer as a separate brand. When the current
Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer debuted three years ago, they didn't have any Jeep logos or branding on them. The plan was to create a new, more upscale
brand within the Jeep family, but it didn't work out, so now it's bringing the Wagoneer brand name back into the fold. In the second half of
this year, Jeep will come out with the Wagoneer S and electric crossover built on the stella large platform with six hundred horsepower and a zero to sixty time under three seconds. It will have Jeep logos on it and they hope to
sell ten thousand of them. Antonio Filosa, the new global CEO of Jeep,
is launching a flurry of initiatives to energize the brand, which has been losing sales and market share. He brought in a new management team, is
boosting advertising, cutting prices, adding content, focusing more heavily on product quality, and is streamlining dealer programs. Those price cuts cover ninety percent of Jeep's
lineup. The Compass gets a twenty five hundred dollars price cut, which brings
the base price under twenty sixth thousand dollars. The Grand Cherokee gets a four
thousand dollars price cut, the Wrangler gets three thousand dollars worth of equipment made standard, and the Gladiator gets that plus a seventeen hundred dollars price cut.
Fellosa is also going to expand the product line with more models. In addition
to the Wagoneer s, Jeep is coming out with a model called the Recon Ev that looks to be about the size of a Ford Bronco Fellosa says the new model will take Jeep from sixty percent market coverage in the suv segment to eighty five percent. Fiat is showing off a new lineup of concepts that hint
at its future. The family of vehicles are inspired by the Panda, although
they are a bit larger, they're all built on the same platform. Some
models will share up to eighty percent of their parts, and they can accommodate IC, strong hybrid or pure electric powertrains. The models will be offered in
Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, and Fiat says it thinks it can be successful with a pickup in Europe as well. More
production intent versions will be shown starting this year and then every year until twenty twenty seven, but Fiat isn't saying when they'll go on sale yet. Neo
has a new intern on the production line. It's testing out a humanoid robot
from a Chinese robotics company called Ubi Tech. They showed how the robot,
called Walker S, could be used to perform quality checks on things like door latches, seat belts, and light covers. It also uses obstacle detection to
move around the plant and to possibly install precision parts like the company's logo.
A lot of training and development still needs to be done, but Ubtech says it's the first bipedal humanoid robot to complete a specific workstation task on a mobile EV production line, and that brings us to be an of today's show.
Thanks for tuning in. Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Bridgestone Solutions
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About this episode
The episode explores significant shifts in the global auto industry, highlighting struggles among smaller Chinese automakers amid a sales slowdown and price wars, while BYD expands aggressively into luxury EVs and battery production for two-wheelers. Toyota drastically cuts the Mirai's price due to shrinking hydrogen infrastructure. Jeep abandons its Wagoneer standalone brand plan, refocusing on integrating it with Jeep and launching new electric models. Lucid plans a Detroit R&D center, and Renault unveils an affordable electric Renault 5 for Europe. Fiat previews a new modular vehicle family, and Neo tests humanoid robots for EV production quality control.
- First Cracks Appear in China’s Auto Industry - BYD Jumps Into 2-Wheel Market - BYD’s Yangwang U8 Targets Mercedes G-Wagon - Yangwang U9 Targets Ferrari, Lamborghini - Lobbying Group Calls for Blocking Chinese Imports from Mexico - Toyota Drops Mirai Price to Only $12K - Lucid Turns to Detroit for R and D - Renault 5 Goes All-Electric - Jeep Abandons Wagoneer As Separate Brand - Jeep CEO Slashes Prices to Boost Sales - New Fiat Concepts Hint at Future - NIO Using Humanoid Robot on The Production Line
