AD #3801 - New Rule Makes Auto Braking Standard; Tesla Cuts Headcount Even More; Tough Q1 for EU Automakers
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Difficulties reducing headcount and falling sales are irritating testleas CEO Elon Musk. According
to a publication called The Information, they're referencing the evmaker's Q one sales, which were down nine percent to under three hundred and ninety thousand units, as well as its efforts to get rid of ten percent of its global workforce.
But that amounts to roughly fourteen thousand people, or nearly the same as Rivian's entire workforce, and is probably taking a little longer than expected. So now
Musk is fueling more layoffs himself on top of the ten percent. Two executives,
one the senior director of EV Charging, the other the director of Vehicle Programs and New Product Initiatives, and most of their staff, which includes roughly five hundred employees at the EV Charging Group, are being let go. No
word on what will happen to the various projects they were working on, so we'll have to wait and see if these layoffs have an impact on Tesla.
Just a few days ago, Hyundai announced a shift to focus more on hybrids in North America, including making them at its new plant in the US, and Georgia, which was only supposed to make evs, but its shift to hybrids is more global than that. The Hondai group, including Kia, also
planned to launch hybrid cuvs in India by twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven.
India, which has the largest population in the world, is quickly becoming an important market for the group. It plans to sell nearly nine hundred thousand
vehicles in the country this year and produce one and a half million vehicles in India by next year, and the hybrid plans come on top of its EV expansion in the country. Hondai will mass produce its first EV in India by
the end of the year and have five by twenty thirty, and Kia will start EV production there next year. The group says it's all about being committed
to a future of electrified mobility. It was a tough first quarter for Volkswagen,
Stalantis and Mercedes Benz. All three reported a drop in sales and profits.
At Stalantis, sales were down ten percent to one point three million vehicles, which brought down revenue twelve percent to forty one point seven billion euros, but it did not release any profit numbers because Stilantis only reports full financial results at the end of each half. At the Volkswagen Group, sales came in
at two point one million vehicles, down two percent. Revenue dropped by less
than one percent to seventy five and a half billion euros, but its operating profit fell by twenty percent to four point six billion euros. VW says that
sales at Audi and Porsche were down five percent, which helps explain why operating profits fell so much. Mercedes Benz sales fell eight percent to four hundred and
sixty three thousand units, though sales of vans were up seven percent. Evs
were down eight percent, but pebs rows six percent. Revenue fell four point
three percent to thirty five point eight billion euros, and net profit plummeted twenty five percent to just a shade over three billion. All three companies say they
expected to do a lot better in the second half of the year, which suggests that the second quarter results may not be that good either. The National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NITZE, finalized a rule making automatic emergency braking technology standard on all new vehicles in the US by twenty twenty nine, all new light passenger vehicles must be equipped with forward collision warning, pedestrian detection braking, and automatic emergency braking. Around ninety percent of new vehicles today are available with
emergency braking under a voluntary agreement with automakers, but there are no performance requirements.
The new rule sets those standards. The systems must stop a vehicle with
another vehicle in front of it at speeds up to sixty two miles an hour.
It also has to apply the brakes automatically at speeds up to ninety miles an hour when a collision with a lead vehicle is imminent, and up to forty five miles an hour when a pedestrian is detected. The systems must also
work at night. NITZA estimates that the mandate will add eighty two dollars in
cost per vehicle, but it will save three hundred and sixty two lives and prevent twenty four thousand injuries a year. And speaking of safety, the Insurance
Institute for Highway Safety or IIHS, is calling on automakers to offer more standard safety features for light delivery vans based on federal crash data from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty one one. The IIHS estimates that equipping every light van with front
crash prevention, lane departure prevention, blind spot detection, and intelligent speed assistance could address twenty six percent of all police reported crashes, twenty two percent of injury crashes, and thirty seven percent of fatal crashes involving light vans. Thanks
to the growth in e commerce, more delivery vans are on the road now.
About five hundred thousand light vans are sold in the US every year.
When the elements are working against you, being confident in your grip on the road is what really matters. Breach through a lens of tires, improved acceleration
in wet conditions. Rivian is opening up its charging network to all evs later
this year. It will start installing new chargers that are taller, have longer
charging cables, and can charge evs with either a four hundred or eight hundred volt architecture. At first, they will feature CCS connectors, but will also
be compatible with Testless connector with an approved adapter I know. Both Rivian and
Ford have already started making those adapters available to the customers. And Rivian says
later versions of the new charger will also come with the Tesla Connector, which is also known as the North American Charging Standard or NAS or sae J thirty four hundred. Rivian's network currently has about four hundred DC fast chargers in North
America, but it plans to grow that to thirty five hundred fast chargers and ten thousand plus Level two chargers. Pollstar and ev battery startup store Dot just
demonstrated fast charging that's almost as fast as filling up with gas. A Pollstar
five prototype equipped with a seventy seven kilowae hour battery pack was able to charge charge from ten to eighty percent in just ten minutes, adding two hundred miles of range. The charging rate of the vehicle started at three hundred and ten
kilowatts and then peaked at over three hundred and seventy. Store Dot's fast charging
battery technology features silicon dominant cells that have an energy density that's on par with NMC cells without the need for a special cooling system. It uses software to
help achieve the fast charging times, and the companies say the pack could be increased to at least one hundred kilowatt hours, and in other evy battery news, Chinese automaker Neo announced that its semi solid state battery will launch in June.
It's a one hundred and fifty kilowat hour battery that has the same dimensions as all of Neo's other batteries, so thanks to its battery swapping technology, all of its customers can use it. However, Neo is only renting the
battery to customers because it's believed to cost just as much as Neo's E T five model. Owners with a seventy or seventy five kilowad hour battery can rent
the new pack for twenty one dollars a day, and those with one hundred kilowad hour pack only have to pay fourteen bucks. The semi solid state battery
has a range of one thousand kilometers or six hundred and twenty one miles based on the Chinese test cycle, and it has the highest energy density of any mass produced battery pack in China right now. Porsche continues to pioneer the use
of synthetic or E fuels. The upcoming season of the Porsche Mobile I super
Cup racing series will run exclusively on E fuels for the first time. The
fuel, which comes from a pilot plant in Chile, will allow the up to thirty two cars in the field to drastically cut their CO two emissions.
And this is all about keeping ice vehicles around, not just on the racetrack, but all past and present gas burning porsches. The EU recently eased up
on ICBAW thirty five to allow vehicles that run on e fuels, so the testing and development in the Porsche Racing series will be useful. The biggest hurdle
currently looks like building out an infrastructure for e fuels so prices can come down.
We've heard it costs three times as much as standard higher octane fuel.
That brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for making autoline a
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