Tesla is cutting 10% of its workforce, including key leaders like Drew Baglino, due to project delays and hiring inefficiencies. Stellantis faces supplier disputes that threaten plant shutdowns, while GM plans a headquarters move in Detroit. Nissan advances solid-state battery development aiming for 2028-29 vehicle launches. Honda's new China-exclusive EV lineup draws from past concepts, and Maserati reveals a powerful new electric Grand Cabrio. Jaguar Land Rover develops a portable battery storage system using second-life hybrid batteries. Alfa Romeo is forced to rename its new Milano CUV to Junior after Italian government objections over the name's foreign production ties.
Topics:tesla layoffsstellantis supplier disputesgm headquarters movenissan solid state batterieshonda china ev lineupmaserati electric grand cabriojaguar land rover battery storagealfa romeo name changeautomotive industry politicselectric vehicle development
- Key Leader Leaving Tesla - Suppliers Fight Stellantis Over Prices - GM Gets a New Headquarters - Nissan Making Progress w/ Solid-State Batteries - Honda Reveals New EV Series for China - Maserati Drops Top on Sporty EV - JLR Develops Portable Charger for Testing - Alfa Forced to Change New CUV Name - Why VW Has Bentley and BMW Has Rolls-Royce
"...hicle that debuts later this year. The Alfa Romeo Milano, which just debuted last week, is already dead. B..."
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Tesla said it's laying off ten percent of its workforce because of quote hiring inefficiency due to rapid growth, but there's a number of key people included in those leaving the company. Most importantly is Drew Baglino, who's the head of
Powertrain and Energy Engineering and led projects including forty six eighty battery cell production and the cathode factory at Austin, Texas. He was one of four people listed
in the leadership position on the company's website, right next to Elon Musk, one of Baglino's senior managers at the Cathode factory, is also out the door, as is Tesla's head A Policy and business development, and several other members related to a data center expansion in Austin. It's reported that most of these
projects have seen delays, which is likely the reason for them moves, but it also likely means that Tesla is behind on development of those projects. There's
a battle brewing between Stalantis and its suppliers. Crane's Detroit Business reports that at
least two Tier one suppliers in the US have stopped shipping parts to the automaker because of disputes over prices. Suppliers are seeking cost relief from inflation from Stalantis,
but it's refusing to pay for any increases in the cost of parts.
The automaker filed lawsuits against the suppliers to force them to start shipping parts.
In one case in February, a judge ordered a fastener supplier to resume shipments because it caused the shutdown of Stalantis's to lead an assembly plant. But in
a separate case, a judge this month denied the automaker's motion to force a supplier to resume shipments of gears and pinions needed to make transmissions. Because of
that, Stialantis may be forced to shut down more plants, and if the supplier doesn't resume shipments, the automaker claims, the financial impact will be quote catastrophic and cause tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in damages.
General Motors is getting a new home. The automaker announced it's moving out
of its headquarters at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit to the new Hudson Detroit building next year. This is GM's fourth headquarters in Detroit since nineteen eleven.
GM has invested more than a billion dollars into the Renaissance Center complex since it acquired it in nineteen ninety six. But GM's workforce in the city has dwindled
from fifty nine hundred employees in twenty eighteen to just twenty eight hundred last year, so it didn't need all that extra office space and decided to move to a new location. Nissan is making progress with solid state batteries. It showed
off the continuing work it's doing on a pilot line for all solid state batteries at one of its plants in Japan. The company says it's aiming to launch
vehicles with these batteries by twenty twenty eight or twenty twenty nine. Intrepid's NEOVIPI
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 Pi compute module. The NEOVIPI
is designed for automotive environments, allowing use with relative power ranges and applications.
In addition, the neovipi enables you to use the Raspberry Pie 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 concepts that Honda first showed off in twenty twenty one have inspired a new lineup of evs that will launch this year in China. The YE series clearly takes
design cues from the een concepts that it revealed three years ago, and the result is a look that's much different from Honda's current cars. The models will
ride on a new dedicated EV platform that was developed in China. The P
seven and S seven SUVs, which go on sale before the end of the year, will be offered in a single motor rear wheel drive setup or as a dual motor all wheel drive model. The next Y series car will come
out before the end of twenty twenty five and will be a production version of the GT concept. While it calls it a concept, I don't think the
production GT will be that far off from this car. However, there's ver
actually no details on the car at the moment, but in all, Honda says it will launch six Y series models in China by twenty twenty seven.
Like many other automakers, Maserati isn't making the transition to electric as fast as it thought it would just a few years ago, but it's still showing off its next all electric car, a b EV version of the Grand Cabrio.
Like the hard top Grand Turismo Ful Gorret, it's based on an eight hundred volt architecture, features an eighty three kilowatt hour battery pack, a tri motor set up with up to six hundred and ten kilowatts or eight hundred and eighteen horse power, and it'll do zero to one hundred kilometers an hour in two point eight seconds. Orders for the Grand Cabrio Full Gorre will start in August,
followed by sales in the fourth quarter, and starting price is expected to be around two hundred thousand dollars. Sustainability is a big goal in the auto
industry, and that's why Jaguar land Rover has developed a new portable battery storage system with used range Rover and range Rover Sport plug in hybrid batteries. The
automaker partnered with energy storage startup ally Energy to create the system. Each one
contains seven second life batteries that can store up to two hundred and seventy kilowatts of energy and can recharge up to nine range Rover plugins at once. The
automaker's engineers will be the first to use the battery storage system during testing for the new range Rover electric vehicle that debuts later this year. The Alfa Romeo
Milano, which just debuted last week, is already dead. But don't feel
bad, because it's only changing the name and we're getting one of the greatest automotive stories that I've heard in a long time. The Italian government has been
pretty pissed off at parent company Stilantis and CEO Carlos Tavares for originally announcing job cuts and plans to scale back production in the country. It has since made
commitments to boost production in Italy, but not all new products are going to be made in the region. One of those products being made elsewhere is the
new Milano, a name that was crowdsourced, is one of the most popular by Italian residents. It was announced that it will be made in Poland,
and then Tavares ticked off the Italian government even more by saying it would cost ten thousand euros more if the Milano had been made in Italy. So the
Italian government turned to a law that was enacted in the early two thousands that prohibits the use of foreign made products from using Italian sounding names. Officials came
out after the Milano's debut saying that the name violated the law. So Alpha
obliged and it changed the name to Junior. It's used that name Junior for
past models from the nineteen sixties to the nineteen seventies, and it was another favorite of the crowdsource names. The company says it would also like to thank
the Italian government for the free publicity brought on by the debate. And this
reminds me of another story that's come out during my lifetime, and that's why Volkswagen has Bentley and why BMW has Rolls Royce. In the late nineteen nineties,
VW chairman Ferdinand Piek went on a buying spree trying to corner the market on luxury brands that included paying seven hundred and eighty million dollars for Rolls Royce and Bentley, or at least what he thought was Rolls Royce. At the
time, BMW and Rolls Royce the Jet Company collaborated on making jet engines, and BMW's then CEO knew that Rolls Royce the Jet Company actually owned the Rolls Royce name, So he waited as PX paid all that money, and he quietly cut a deal to legally get the name for sixty five million bucks.
Even so, PK was so impressed that he eventually hired that guy as VW CEO, a dude named burn Piecechitz Reader. But that's a wrap for today.
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