Ford is developing a low-cost EV platform led by a former Tesla engineer, aiming for affordable electric trucks, SUVs, and ride-hailing vehicles by 2026. The UAW seeks union representation at VW's Tennessee plant amid past voting challenges. Fisker faces financial struggles with halted production and quality issues. The US DOE and EPA are easing fuel economy and emission standards to help automakers adjust. Nvidia introduces a powerful automotive chip adopted by Chinese automakers. Bentley delays its EV launch and shifts focus to plug-in hybrids due to technical and financial setbacks. GM plans a major increase in Altium battery EV production. Meanwhile, Chinese EV maker Neo opens a solar-powered battery swap station.
Topics:ford affordable ev platformuaw union vote vw tennesseefisker financial troublesus fuel economy and emission standardsnvidia automotive chipbentley ev delaysgm altium battery productionneo solar battery swapping station
- Ford Developing Compact EV Truck and SUV - UAW Ready for Union Vote at VW - Fisker Stops Production, Almost Out of Money - U.S. DOE Gives Automakers a CAFE Break - Gotion Sues Michigan Township Over Battery Plant - Chinese OEMs Sign Up for Newest NVIDIA Computer - Bentley Delays EVs, Pushes PHEVs - NIO Opens Solar Powered Battery Swapping Station - GM Plans Huge Ultium Growth This Year
"... vehicle that could be used for ride hailing. The Maverick has been a surprise hit for Ford, so a compact el..."
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This is Underline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
The need for more affordable vehicles is causing Ford to make some key shifts.
Last month, CEO Jim Farley revealed that the automaker created a top secret skunk works program to develop an EV platform that significantly slashes cost, and Alan Clark, the person who led engineering on the Tesla Model Y, is heading up the program. According to Bloomberg, his team is less than one hundred
people and the first models will debut in late twenty twenty six, priced around twenty five thousand dollars. There's going to be a compact electric truck, in
suv and possibly another vehicle that could be used for ride hailing. The Maverick
has been a surprise hit for Ford, so a compact electric truck makes sense and in small SUVs are one of the fastest growing segments. But a ride
hailing car is a surprise, and we wonder how big Ford's plans could be.
Remember GM CEO Mary Barra thinks that crews could generate fifty billion dollars a year in revenue by twenty thirty. Jim Farley says he wants the new models
to turn a profit within the first year of hitting the market, so it'll do things like use LFP batteries, which are about thirty percent cheaper than traditional lithium batteries. With its focus on more affordable evs, Ford is delaying plans
for a price year three row electric suv. The UAW says it's ready to
rumble at Volkswagen's US assembly plant in Tennessee. The union claims that a super
majority of the plants four thousand workers signed cards saying they want to be represented by the United Auto Workers, and so it filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election there. The union lost to vote there
in twenty nineteen, when fifty two percent of the workers voted against the union.
Only sixteen hundred workers voted in that election. Now comes the tricky part
for the union. Workers will often sign a card saying they're in favor of
a union just to get organizers to stop pestering them. Then when they vote
in secret at the ballot box, they vote against the union. But this
time it could be different, and everyone in the US auto industry will be waiting with anticipation to see the results of the vote. Fisker is in serious
trouble. The company has practically run out of money. It's stopped production of
the Ocean Suv, and it says there's quote substantial doubt that it can continue without raising more capital. The company started shipping vehicles last year and built roughly
ten thousand units, but it still has about five thousand units in inventory, and we've seen reports of quality problems and other software issues. Fisker says it's
trying to raise one hundred and fifty million dollars, but we think it would need more like a billion dollars or someone to take it over to have any chance of surviving. The US Department of Energy is giving automakers a break.
It's expected to announce revised fuel economy rules today that will give car companies more time to adjust to the stricter standards. It originally proposed to lower the fuel
economy equivalency of electric vehicles by seventy two percent and twenty twenty seven, which the Detroit Automakers warned would result in fines of ten and a half billion dollars for not complying with the standards. Instead, the DOE will reduce the fuel
economy ratings through twenty thirty by sixty five percent in total. To give companies
more time to adjust, and in another win for automakers, the EPA is expected to issue revised emission rules that will soften the requirements of its original proposal.
However, the easing of the standards is front loaded, and by twenty thirty two they're expected to be as strict as the original proposals. When the
elements are working against you, being confident in your grip on the road is what really matters. Breach through the lens of tires, Improved acceleration in wet
conditions. Chinese battery maker Goshen is suing a US township in Michigan, where
it wants to build a plant. Township board members voted to prevent extending the
city's water supply to the plant's location, even though the township already entered into a contract to provide that water. A year and a half ago, the
company and state officials announced plans to build the two point four billion dollar plant, but there was local opposition to the construction due to tax incentives used for the project and concerns over Goshen's alleged ties to the Chinese government, which the company has denied. Last year, five members of the township's board who approved
the project were were called by voters and another two resigned. And it's the
new board members who are trying to prevent the plant's construction. So Goshen is
filing a lawsuit to get the township to honor the contract that was originally signed.
And Video, which makes some of the most powerful computer chips in the world and has a market cap of two point two trillion dollars, came out with a new centralized computer for cars called drive Thor, and it signed up a slew of automakers and autonomous mobility providers who want to use it. All
the automakers are Chinese buyd x, pong Le, Auto Zeker, and Hyper will begin using the Generative AI compute system when it comes out next year.
And Vidia says drive Thor is perfect for quote feature rich cockpit capabilities and highly automated and autonomous driving. It can perform one thousand terra flops of processing per
second and keep in mind that a high end gaming console has about thirteen terra flops. And if you wanted to know why Chinese automakers are on the leading
edge of technology. This is a good example, and Vidia is based in
Silicon Valley while its chips are made by TSMC and Taiwan. Bentley is tapping
the brakes on its transition to electric cars. First off, it's delaying the
sales of its first beev by two years until twenty twenty seven, which the company blames on technical difficulties with software development. Since Bentley is part of the
Volkswagen Group, that sounds like another Cariad victim to us. But Bentley is
also backtracking on its commitment to go all electric by twenty thirty and will put more emphasis on pluggin hybrids instead. But its main competitor, Rolls Royce already
has its all electric coup the Specter on sale, and Role says it's still committed to going all electric by twenty thirty. One factor in Bentley's delay is
that its sales, revenue, and profit fell last year. Sales fell eleven
percent, revenue dropped thirteen percent, and profits came in seventeen percent lower.
CEO Adrian Hallmark blamed rising interest rates. He said customers who were leasing their
cars saw the cost of their monthly payments triple Chinese evmaker Neo opened its first solar powered battery swapping station in China. The station's power modules achieve a peak
efficiency of ninety eight point two percent and a discharging power of sixty two point five kilowatts. The modules are also bidirectional, meaning that electricity can be shared
with the power grid. GM plans to significantly ramp up production of its altium
batteries and the evs that they go into. It sold fewer than thirteen thousand
altium based evs last year, but this year its planning to make two hundred to three hundred thousand examples, or twenty times more. That would be a
massive jump, but still behind previous forecasts. However, GM says that it
thinks the challenges it had in scaling up aultium is behind it, and that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for tuning in. Auto
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