AD #3778 - BYD Spends More Than GM and Ford Together; Fisker Slashes Prices Up to $24K; Baltimore Bridge Collapse Impacts Car Shipping

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

BYD, China's biggest car company, is spending on new plants and equipment at a rate that the auto industry has never seen before. It already has

thirty industrial parks worldwide and is building new assembly plants in Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, and Hungary, as well as a bus plant in Toronto, and it's even scouting for a new site in Mexico as well. Get this.

Last year, BYD's capital expenditures came to nineteen billion dollars. That's more than

General Motors and Ford put together. But maybe BYD is starting to get worried

that it's growing too fast. Reports out of Vietnam say that the company is

slow in construction of a new EV plant there because of concerns that global EV sales are slowing down. Even so, spending nineteen billion dollars on capex is

the highest we've ever seen in the history of the auto industry. Desperate times

call for desperate measures, and Fisker is desperately trying to survive. It slashed

the prices of its ocean suv by thirty nine percent. In a last ditch

attempt to raise enough money to avoid bankruptcy, it cut the base price of the Ocean by fourteen thousand dollars, which now goes for twenty five grand.

The top trim line was cut by twenty four thousand dollars and is available for thirty seven thousand, five hundred bucks. Fisker has about five thousand Oceans on

hand to sell, and we estimate that could raise about one hundred and sixty million dollars, but that's if it can sell them. The reason it has

five thousand cars on hand to sell is because it couldn't sell them before.

Now the question is will people be willing to buy cars from a company that's on the brink of bankruptcy. You can put us in the skeptical column.

Nissan plans to significantly grow sales of pure electric vehicles in Europe. Last year,

it's sold more than twenty eighty six hundred evs there, or about ten percent of its European sales. CEO Makoto Yuchetah says they want to grow that

to more than forty percent by early twenty twenty seven. But at the same

time, it's pulling back on some of its EVY goals in Europe. Last

year, Nissan said all of its vehicles will be electric by twenty thirty, but now it's planning a mix between evs and hybrids. Globally, Nissan expects

evs to account for twenty percent of its sales by twenty twenty seven and is aiming to boost that to forty percent by the end of the decade. That

bridge at the Port of Baltimore that collapsed when a ship ran into one of its supports will impact the auto industry more than any other sector. Baltimore is

the number one port in the US for car imports, with Mazda, the Volkswa Group, Mercedes, Jaguar, Land, Rover, Mitsubishi, and Volvo using it as their main point of entry into the American market. Everyone is

now scrambling to reroute incoming ships to other East Coast ports, and shipping rates are expected to spike in the short term, but DHL CEO, speaking on Bloomberg TV, says workarounds will come faster than most people expect, and General Motors says it will have a minimal impact on its operations. Even so,

global shipping has been impacted by several crisises. Missile attacks from Yemen in the

Red Sea are forcing ships to bypass the Suez Canal and travel around Africa instead.

That can add weeks to delivery times, which has especially impacted the European auto industry. And a drought in Panama has cut shipping traffic through the canal

by one third because water levels are low. While global shipping can be wonderfully

AFFAI, we can now see that it's also very vulnerable. Keeping your heart

racing in and out of the gym, that's what really matters. Bridge don't

pretends to sport as tires with a fifty thousand mile limited warranty. The New

York Auto Show is underway and Hyundai and KI have been busy with new reveals.

Hyundai pulled the wraps off the refreshed Tucson. The exterior changes are subtle,

but the interior sees a more significant upgrade. A layered look extends from

the dash to doors and is highlighted by dual screens incorporated into one display unit on the dash. The Santa Cruz, which is basically the pickup version of

the Tucson, also gets the same updates. The smallest truck is still offered

with one of two two and a half liter four cylinder engines, while the Tucson is available with gas hybrid and plug in hybrid power tr Both refresh models will be on dealer lots in the US by the summer. Kia gave us

a full look at the K four, which it's been teasing for a little bit. The compact sedan replaces the fourte seed in Serrato, but right now

Kia is only providing the specs for the US version, which arrives in the second half of this year. The base engine is a two liter four cylinder

unit that makes one hundred and forty seven horse power, or customers can get a one hundred and ninety horse power one point six liter turbo four cylinder.

Each setup has a different automatic transmission, but both send power through the front wheels. Kia has a reputation of offering a lot of tech compared to the

segments where its vehicles are in, and in that department, the K four comes with a thirty inch display unit, eleven standard eight ass features with the option for up to twenty nine, as well as connectivity in Ota capabilities.

Kia also revealed the hatchback version of the K four, which I think looks really good, but all it said is this would be the next model, and it didn't provide any details. The European auto industry is worried about an

onslaught of Chinese evs flooding the market, and now x Pong is entering Germany, but instead of going with entry level cars, it's selling two of its premium models, the G nine suv and the P seven sedan. Sales and

test drives start in May, and x Pong will use a traditional dealership model to sell its vehicles. The G nine will start at fifty seven thousand,

six hundred euros or just over sixty two thousand dollars, and that's a significant price hike from China, where the model starts at thirty five thousand dollars, and the P seven sedan will start at forty nine thousand, six hundred euros or more than fifty three thousand bucks, and that again is a big price hike compared to China, where the model starts at twenty eight thousand, two hundred dollars. So clearly x pun sees a real opportunity to boost its profits

Moreover, the Volkswagen Group bought five percent of X Punk and will rely on it to develop electric cars. That's going to make it difficult for anyone to

protest X Punk's entry into the German market. It already sells vehicles in Norway,

Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, and it plans to expand into France, Italy and the UK. It seems like everyone is concerned about sustainability these

days, and so is the biggest heavy metal band in the world. For

its European tour that kicks off this May, Metallica is partnering with truck maker ive Eco to use its electric and natural gas trucks and minibuses to transport the band and its equipment to concert venues. The vehicles feature Metallica's logo and a

livery with the colors from the band's latest album, seventy two Seasons. Most

people hate going to the dealership for service, but it seems like they have no problem with the service coming to them. Ford offers customers a service where

it will come and pick up your vehicle to take it in for repairs or send a technician right to you, and it says that business is booming.

Last year, it completed more than two point four million appointments this way around the world, and now it has about three hundred and seventy five thousand customers a month going with the pickup and delivery or remote repair options. That's four

times more than when the services were launched in twenty twenty two, and it's even more popular with premium car buyers. One in five Lincoln owners are choosing

to have their repairs done remotely, like at their house or work. Is

cybersecurity a big problem in the auto industry, more than you realize, and that's why we'll have Jason Masker from Upstream on Autoline after Hours this afternoon.

You'll be stunned to see how many cyber attcks the auto industry has to fend off every single day, and that's something that doesn't get talked about much publicly.

So join John and Gary when the show goes live at three pm Eastern Time on the Autoline website or on our YouTube channel. That's a wrap for

today. Thanks for tuning in. Auto Line Daily is brought to you by

bridge Stone Solutions for your Journey and by Intrepid Control Systems over the air engineering boost your game Intrepid's Neovipie allowing automotive engineers to interface, capture, and monitor vehicle data using Raspberry Pie. As a matter of fact, it's the automotive

industry's first robust platform for Raspberry Pie, featuring Intrepid canefting technology and Raspberry Pie compute module. The neovipie is designed for automotive vironments, allowing use with relative

power ranges and applications. In addition, the NEOVIPI enables you to use the

Raspberry Pi for compute while avoiding additional development to adapt to network environments. That

makes the NEOVIPI powerful enough to solve your vehicle network problems, yet small enough to fit in your backpack. One of many Intrepid tools used for developing zonal

architecture and software divined vehicles.

AD #3778 - BYD Spends More Than GM and Ford Together; Fisker Slashes Prices Up to $24K; Baltimore Bridge Collapse Impacts Car Shipping

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