AD #3769 - GM Sued for Selling Customer Data; VW Develops €20,000 ID.1; Honda and Nissan Explore Joint EV Efforts
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This is Auderling Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
Okay, this story has something of a big brother aspect to it.
General Motors has been collecting info on how people drive their cars and selling that data to a company called Lexus Nexus, which in turn has been selling that data to insurance companies. And now GM is getting sued because a Cadillac owner
saw his insurance rates double based on the data that GM sold. He calls
it an invasion of privacy. Turns out that GM on Star can collect info
on how fast a car accelerates, how hard it breaks, and whether or not at speeding and insurance companies love to get that data to determine what to charge customers to ensure their cars. GM is not the only automaker that does
this, and Lexis Nexus and another company called Verisk say they have data on milis millions of cars that Cadillac customer, a guy named Romeo Chico, who lives in Florida, claims he never signed up for on Star or another program called Smart Driver that provides feedback to car owners on how they drive, and so he's suing General Motors. The new York Times quotes a Georgetown law professor
who says this will trigger an FTC investigation as well as more lawsuits. Quote,
just wait for the avalanche, he said, it's coming. Ford and
its dealers in the US have a trust problem, as in, the dealers don't trust where the company is going, especially when it comes to electric cars and quality problems. So Automotive News reports that Ford's CEO, Jim Farley,
will be visiting dealers across the country over the next couple of months. In
fact, he's taking most of Ford's top leadership with him and they're there to listen, not to make presentations. But Ford definitely has quality problems. Check
out the video that we did that looks at warranty and recall costs, which shows that Ford's warranty costs come to one thousand dollars for every vehicle that it sells. That is substantially higher than Tesla, General Motors and Stilantis. Mercedes
AMG is developing its first ever dedicated EV platform and just finished up winter testing in Sweden. Right now, the details are light, we can tell you
the car here hints at the future design and that it will have a new high performance high voltage battery, as well as a power unit that's based on axio flux motor technology, which it claims has a quote unparalleled mix of power, density, size and weight. Hopefully we'll learn more soon. Volkswagen is
making the push to launch more affordable evs in Europe. First will come the
ID two and twenty twenty six, with a starting price under twenty five thousand euros. It rides on a modified front wheel drive based version of the MEB
platform, which should also spawn an SUV variant and provide up to four hundred and fifty kilometers or about two hundred and eighty miles of range. Brand CEO
Thomas Schaeffer says a less expensive model, it calls the ID one, will come out a year later in twenty twenty seven and have a starting price around twenty thousand euros. However, he says it's extremely economically challenging to figure out
where to build the car and the only way to hit its price goal is to mass produce it because of the battery costs, so it doesn't sound like it will be easy to pull off over In the US, VW is going in a bit of the opposite direction and announced it's going to come out with a new larger electric suv, but it is offering least discounts of up to thirteen thousand dollars on certain versions of the ID four as well. Atomas vehicle
startup Zeokes got the go ahead to expand its robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
Last year, it started offering rides in its purpose built shuttles with no manual controls on public roads in Foster City, California, and Las Vegas, and now it's expanding the geo fenced area where it operates in Vegas. That will
include driving on three lane roads, which is more complicated because of the need for lane changes, and it will also have to handle double right and left hand turn lanes in both cities. It's now allowing the shuttles to travel up
to forty five miles an hour in light rain and at night, compared to only thirty five miles an hour before. Even so, the shuttles are capable
of driving at speeds up to seventy five miles an hour. Keeping your heart
racing in and out of the gym, that's what really matters. Bridge don't
pretends to sport as tire with a fifty thousand mile limited warranty. Developing evs
is an easy and it costs a ton of money, so Honda and Nissan are exploring ways to collaborate their studying partnering in automotive software platforms, core components related to evs and other complementary products. Late last year, Honda scrap plans
to make more affordable EVS with GM and said each would search for a solution on their own. But Honda must have decided that doing it alone wasn't all
that great of an idea. Chinese automaker Neo is making its battery subscription service
more competitive by offering lower prices and new incentives. Specifically, it's lowering the
cost of leasing a battery, what Neo calls battery as a service. A
subscription for a standard range battery is now just one hundred and one dollars a month or thirty five dollars cheaper than before, and a long range battery is now one hundred and fifty six bucks a month or seventy seven dollars cheaper.
Neo is also now allowing both old and new customers to use the rent they've already paid to offset the cost of purchasing the battery outright and its offering incentives for sixty free battery swaps. Neo launched the battery subscription service in twenty twenty
and it has over one hundred thousand users. And speaking of Neo, it
formed a partnership with battery maker CTL to develop batteries with a longer life.
Currently in China, the standard warranty for batteries and new Energy vehicles or nyvs is about eight years. Between twenty twenty five and twenty thirty two, it's
estimated that twenty million NEV batteries will expire. Neo and CATL want to develop
longer life batteries to avoid the higher cost of replacing a battery and get them closer to having the same lifespan as the vehicle. Neo currently uses a battery
management system to measure the temperature, usage, and frequency of the battery, which it says helps its batteries retain eighty percent of their charge after twelve years of use. Bentley has always used materials like metal, wood and leather,
but in the future, it says light will play a much more significant role in its designs, and today it's showing off a new dynamic puddle light that's available on the Beatore. It uses DLP technology that's usually found in headlights and
head up displays to project the profile of the car on the ground, along with an animation that looks like it's twinkling in the light. And I do
find it somewhat funny that in order to clearly see the animation of the bore twinkling in the light, it has to be dark. People who live in
apartments and condos can't charge an EVY at home, so they don't buy electric cars, right, That's what everyone thinks. But we had KC. Boil
on Autoline after Hours yesterday who works for a company called Escalinth that does really good consumer research, and he completely debunked the idea that people in apartments don't buy evs as. And this is by percentage, not total number. But
there are more ev owners as a percentage of people in multifamily, and more ed and tenders in that live in multifamily. So you're sending people in apartment
buildings, And which is the greater day? Which is exactly the opposite,
is what we thought. Casey Boyce also talks about PEVs hybrids, electric pickups,
and a whole range of ev issues and you can watch that show on the Autoline website or on our YouTube channel. But that brings us to the
end of today's show. Thanks for tuning in and I hope that you have
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