AD #3852 - EV Chargers Will Outnumber Gas Stations Soon; Tesla Could Drop 4680 Battery Cells; Hybrids Drive EU Sales Growth
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This is out Aligned Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Despite all the complaints about there not being enough public fast chargers,
the EV charging network in the US continues to expand. Bloomberg reports that seven
hundred and four new public EV fast chargers were installed in the second quarter, up nine percent over the first quarter. The US now has nine thousand public
fast chargers, and at the current pace, the outnumbered gas stations in eight years, but that could probably happen even sooner because the installation rate has been accelerating. EV charging operators will spend six point one billion dollars on the charging
infrastructure this year, double what it did last year, and by the end of the decade that's expected to double again. Another area that's expected to grow
significantly is battery recycling. According to the Argon National Lab, battery recycling capacity
in the US was about thirty five thousand tons in twenty twenty three, and in the next two to four years another seventy six thousand tons of capacity will come online, bringing the total to one hundred and eleven thousand tons per year.
We don't know how many EV batteries that represents because of different sizes and weights, but it's estimated to be a six digit number of battery packs.
As we reported last week, Jaguar is dropping the XI xf F type Eyepace and Epace from its lineup because it can't make money on them. Only the
f Pace will remain as it plans to go all electric next year. And
remember, the Iepace and the Epace are made by Magna Steyer and it will stop making them in December. This is another blow for Magna, which also
just lost the Fisgarotian So now. Automotive News reports that Magna is in talks
with Chinese automakers to build vehicles for them, but beyond that, Magna currently produces the Mercedes G class, BMWZ four and Toyota Supra at its factory in Austria. Tesla could give up on its forty six eighty battery cells, according
to a report in The Information. It cites three sources who say earlier in
the year, Elon Musk wanted the team working on the cells to scale up dry coating of the cathode, which would allow it to eliminate a step from the battery making process and cut costs, and then more recently. It says
that Musk also wants a solution to a problem where the batteries can collapse on themselves while in use. But if there's not a fix by the end of
the year, Tesla could give up on trying to scale production of the cells.
There's nothing wrong with heavy metal, hey light enough, but with world class composit materi taging automotive technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer and more eco friendly.
We've got good news out of Europe. New car sales in June were
up three point six percent, though the results varied a lot by country.
Automakers sold one point three million cars, trucks and vans in the EU, the Scandinavian countries and the UK, and all the growth came from hybrids, which were up twenty four percent. Gasoline and diesel cars lost sales, while
sales of PA has plummeted thirteen point six percent and EV sales were flat and saw their market share drop to fourteen point four percent, down from fifteen point one. Volva reported its second quarter earnings and the numbers look good. Sales
of new cars by the Swedish automaker were up fifteen percent and that drove strong earnings. Even though revenue was down one percent. Volvo posted a record operating
profit and its net profit was up a whopping sixty percent. Valvo's goal is
to have Bev's account for fifty percent of its sales by the end of next year, and it's about halfway there. B EV's accounted for twenty six percent
of sales in the second quarter, and they hit twenty percent gross margins, largely thanks to higher sales volume and falling raw material prices for batteries. Volkswagon
is launching a new EV sub brand in China called idun y X, which we think is pronounced uniques, and its first model is a fastback SUV.
The company says it was created at its new innovation and development center in Eastern China, but really this is only a slightly modified version of the Cooper Taviascan, which is based on VW's MEB platform. The only real differences we see
between the two are some mild styling changes to the lower front rear faces, new lighting signatures, and VW badges. That's it. Even the interiors are
the same. It does get its new in house developed electric motor, which
sends about two hundred and eighty horse power to the rear wheels, or nearly three hundred and forty horse power to all four wheels when it's combined with an additional motor on the front axle. Both are fed by a seventy seven kilowaate
hour battery pack that returns up to six hundred and twenty one kilometers or three hundred and eighty five miles of range on the Chinese test cycle. Car News
China reports that the model will start just below thirty thousand dollars, and VW says the id Uniques brand will also get an suv and a couple of sedans, while the rest of the VW brand in China will get twelve new idevs, six new Pheaves and twelve new ices by the end of the decade.
BMW is working with the startup called deep Drive to launch a new kind of electric motor. In a conventional motor, the stater moves either an internal or
external rotor, but Deep Drive came up with a way for the stater to move both rotors at the same time, or what it calls a dual rotor concept. It claims the motors are the most efficient on the market and offers
cost savings and that they can be used for either an in wheel setup or as a more centralized power unit. BMW has been helping to test the in
wheel motors and says the next step is to test various versions in real world driving in actual BMW vehicles. Deep Drive shows three versions on its website that
vary in size from nineteen to twenty inches, in weight from thirty two to thirty seven kilograms, an output from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty kilowatts and fifteen hundred to twenty four hundred newton meters. That's about seventy
to eighty pounds, two hundred to three hundred and thirty five horse power, and eight hundred and sixty to fourteen hundred pound feet of torque. But BMW's
not the only one. Deep Drive says it's working with eight of the top
ten automotive manufacturers in the world and hopes to start series testing in the next year or so. BYD has got the pedal to the metal. Car News
China reports that in the next three years it's going to make its proprietary aid ASS technology standard equipment on cars. In the twenty thousand dollars range that includes
automatic and valley parking, blind spot detection, automatic emergency braking, adaptive headlamps, lane departure warning, rear cross traffic braking, and door opening warnings of oncoming traffic. Byd says, it gets new tech onto the market by avoiding
working on concepts and focusing on productionizing instead, and then it works on iterations for rapid upgrades. That brings us to the end of this show. But
don't forget to tune into Auto Line after hours at three pm Eastern Time today to see how a company called Pure Forge can make breake roads last the life of a vehicle. I hope to see you there. Autoline Daily is brought
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