AD #3832 - 46% of EV Owners Want ICE Car Back; Ford Skunkworks Up to 300 Employees; Honda and Mitsubishi Form EV Joint Venture
0:00
13:17
LIVE
This is out Aligned Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Uh oh, this is not a good sign for electric vehicles. A new survey from McKinsey found that forty six percent of EV owners in the US say they will dump their EV and go back to an IC for their next purchase.
Mainly they're unhappy with the charging infrastructure, the high cost of ownership, and not being able to easily travel long distances. But it's not just the US. Twenty nine percent of EV owners globally say they want to switch back to an IC car.
Only nine percent of people surveyed around the world think the charging infrastructure is adequate, and twenty one percent of global respondents say they'll never purchase an EV. But it's not all doom and gloom.
Thirty eight percent of IC owners say they intend to buy a BEV or p HAVE for their next purchase, which is up one percent from twenty twenty two. By the way, b EV's p haves, hybrids, and ices are going to be the topics on Autoline After Hours Today.
We've got Muhammad Forttori, the head of engineering for BOSH North America, coming on the show, and Bosh is ready to go whichever way their customers tell them to go. So what are automakers telling Bosh They want?
Tune in to find out when the show goes live on the Autoline website and our YouTube channel at three pm Eastern Time today. As we reported yesterday, the EU slapped higher tariffs on imported Chinese EV's, but investors shrugged off the news.
Shares of BYD were up eight point eight percent. Leap Motor and Glie We're up four percent, and that's because investors believe those companies can easily absorb the tariffs and continue to grow in the European market.
BYD could also pivot to plug in hybrids because the new tariffs only apply to pure b EV's. Chinese automakers can also build cars in Europe to avoid the tariffs, and some are already building plants there.
But investors worry that SEIC will be hurt because it was hit with the highest tariffs of all thirty eight point one percent, and it shares fell three percent on the news. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is really mad about those tariffs.
It wants the EU to drop them immediately, and European automakers worry that China will retaliate against them. Even so the situation could heat up even more. France is calling for tariffs on other Chinese made goods, not just electric cars.
It worries that excess manufacturing capacity in China will be directed towards Europe, which already accounts for one third of all Chinese EV exports. France's finance minister says the EU needs to re establish the balance of power with China, and if the EU does add more tariffs, we could have a full blown trade war.
Opponents to the EPA's new fuel economy rules just received some support from two unlikely rivals, joining to fight them. Oil and ethanol groups are filing petitions to challenge the new standards in court.
They say the agency overstepped its authority and that it's unlawful to force consumers to purchase evs. The rules have already faced pushback from the auto industry and car dealers, and in April, Republican attorney generals in twenty five states sued the EPA to block the rules from going into effect.
The EPA already scaled back its original proposal because of the pushback. At first, it wanted to cut tailpipe emissions fifty six percent by twenty thirty two, but it reduced that to forty nine percent in its final rule.
However, opponents say that's effectively an EVY mandate that will require fifty six percent of new cars in twenty thirty two to be all electric. 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. Honda is converting one of its gas powered k vans to pure electric. The n vane launches in about a month in Japan for both commercial and personal use.
Thanks to a compact battery pack and no need to worry about an engine or exhaust, the electric version actually has more cargo space than the gas van. There's four versions available, with seating for one to four people.
Honda does not give the motor output or the size of the battery, but it does say it will fully charge in four and a half hours at six kilowatts or in thirty minutes at fifty kilowatts. That would put it at a twenty five to twenty seven kilowat hour battery pack which sounds about right for its two hundred and forty five kilometer or one hundred and fifty two mile WLTP range.
That battery can also be used as a mobile power device with up to fifteen hundred watts of output or vehicle to home functions with its bi directional charging capabilities. Prices range from about fifteen thousand, five hundred to eighteen thousand, five hundred dollars, but there is a way to get it even cheaper.
However, that requires me to first jump to our next story about a new joint venture established between Honda and Mitsubishi Corporation, the parent company of Mitsubishi Motors, the car company. The new JV is called Altna or ALTNA, and it's all about making it easier for people to switch to electric cars.
Part of that includes a new battery leasing option, which is first available on the new n Van E. The option allows ALTNA to keep total ownership of the battery and it can keep track of its usage in health but it also requires you to return the car when the lease is up, which is six years, or that can be extended.
The benefit for ALTNA is that it can do whatever it wants with the car. After the lease, which will include building second life storage systems with batteries that are no longer suitable for automotive use.
The benefit for you is a cheaper lease. The most basic package starts at about one hundred and eighty dollars a month, but you have to cover taxes, fees, and maintenance, or for roughly two hundred and ninety dollars a month.
ALTNA will take care of everything beyond battery leasing. ALTNA will also develop a battery recycling business and a division to leverage its bi directional charging capabilities. Chinese automakers outsold American brands globally for the first time last year.
According to Jato Dynamics, Chinese car makers sold third eighteen point four million passenger vehicles compared to eleven point nine million for American brands last year. Chinese brands now account for eighteen percent of the global market, while American brands control fifteen percent.
Japanese car companies maintain the number one spot with more than twenty three million passenger cars sold, or nearly thirty percent of the market. European brands are number two with a twenty five percent share and overall more than seventy eight million passenger vehicles were sold last year globally, which is a ten percent gain from twenty twenty two.
When Renault revived LPING with the launch of the A one ten, we expected it to be a brand for limited production sports cars, but it looks like Lpin has bigger plans. It just launched the A two ninety in all electric hot hatch.
This is its version of the Renault five, but the Lpine offers two per performance levels one hundred and eighty horse power or two hundred and twenty which can accelerate the car to one hundred kilometers an hour in six and a half seconds.
The base model is priced at forty one thousand dollars and it comes with a fifty two kilowat hour battery pack that delivers three hundred and eighty kilometers or two hundred and thirty six miles of WLTP range.
Obviously, Lpene is going for higher sales by offering a hatchback, and it's even shown teasers with a lineup of up to four vehicles. Alpine's goal is to hit eight billion dollars a year in sales by the end of the decade, and we've got more info on Ford's Skunkworks team in California that's developing low cost evs.
Tech Crunch did some slick detective work on LinkedIn and found that Ford has hired engineers from Rivian, Tesla, Canoe, Lucid, Apple, and even some aero dynamicis from Formula one. It also picked up some people from vital startups Joby, Archer and Supernal.
There are now three hundred people in the group called Ford Advanced ev including one hundred engineers from a company called Automotive Power or AMP, which Ford bought last year. The California company has a complete energy management system for evs, including bi directional charging.
Ford is using the skunk Works to move far faster in developing evs than its traditional operations could ever deliver. BMW revealed the refresh two series coup styling is not all that different, and the engines are a carryover from the previous year.
The biggest change is to the interior, where a long fin display stretches across the dash. The updates for the Performance M two are also pretty subtle, but its three leader twin turbo inline six cylinder engine does get about a twenty horse power bump, which shaves a tenth of a second off a zero to sixty time, which is three point nine seconds for the automatic and four point one seconds for the manual transmission.
In the US, the two series coup starts at just over forty thousand dollars including destination charges, while the M two starts at sixty six thousand. Which automaker has the most employees on the payroll In recent times, it was always Volkswagen, which has six hundred and eighty four thousand people making cars and parts for the company, but byd is blown past those numbers.
It has over seven hundred and three thousand people on the payroll. Thanks to its high level of vertical integration, it makes just about everything in house. And that's just some of the fascinating insight in the Auto Line industry report card.
And we've got all the raw data in the report available for sale on the auto Line website autolne dot tv right now for only forty five dollars. And that's a wrap for this show, but hopefully I get to see you for the live show later today.
Auto Line Daily is brought to you by bridge Stone Solutions for your journey. Intrepid Control Systems over the air, Engineering, Boost your Game, MEDC where Michigan businesses are powering the future of mobility, Tagent Automotive Technologies the formula for Better Mobility and by z F Michigan is leading the charge in mobility and innovation.
And I can't think of a better state to band. There's nothing wrong with heavy metal high light enough, but with world class composite material Taging Automotive Technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.
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 Pie 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 Divine Vehicles
0:00
13:17