Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. While it's official, thousands of port
workers are now on strike in the US, which has the potential to have a big disruption on automotive imports, especially for European automakers. The union import operators weren't able
to come to an agreement before their contract expired late last night. The union is seeking higher wages and wants
less automation than it sees as a threat to jobs.
The strike affects ports along the East and Gulf Coast in the US and involves forty five thousand workers. JP
Morgan estimates that it will cost the US economy about five billion dollars a day, while Oxford Economics estimates that the strike will cost four and a half to seven and a half billion dollars a week. So the longer
that it goes on, the bigger the impact. Twenty twenty
four was posed to be the year that the US new car market finally started getting back to pre COVID levels, but that's not happening. Edmunds is forecasting that automakers sold
three point nine million vehicles in the third quarter, down two point three percent from last year and down four point seven percent from the second quarter of this year.
Amongst the full line manufacturers, Edmunds says only Honda and Ford increased sales, and stunningly, it reports that Stalantis, which saw the biggest drop off in sales, now trails behind GM, Toyota, Ford, Hondi, Kia, and Honda. The only good news looking ahead is that
edmund says the rate cuts by the Federal Reserve will help boost sales. It also expects more buyers to get
back into the market once the presidential election is over, which will eliminate a degree of uncertainty. And we'll add
one more item to the list. Hurricane Helene, which battered Florida,
Georgia and the Carolinas, wrecked tens of thousands of cars in its path, and those will all have to be replaced, and Sense Insurance will pick up most of the bill.
We're going to see a surge in new car demand over the next couple of months. And let's go back
to Stilantis for a moment. Its jeep brand is sliding downward,
and yet two of its best selling vehicles, the Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee, will not get redesigned until the end of the decade. Auto Forecast Solutions reports that the
next gen Grand Cherokee will first go into production in India, Egypt, in Thailand in late twenty twenty eight, and the next gen versions of the Jeep, Wrangler and Gladiator will not go into production in the US until twenty thirty one.
And that's an awfully long time for one of Stalantas's most profitable brands to get new versions of vehicles in its showrooms. To help make owning an EV more attractive,
Ford is now offering a free home charger when you buy or leaset one of its evs, and it will have it installed for free. It's a pretty nice offer,
and it's on top of money that's already available to consumers for EV chargers. The Inflation Reduction Act covers thirty
percent of the cost of the charger, parts and components and installation up to a grand and some states also offer incentives for EV chargers. In Michigan, for example, DTE
offers a five hundred dollars rebate for installing a level two charger. Renault will reveal the all new Renault four
in about two weeks at the Paris Auto Show. The
original model dabuwed in nineteen sixty one as a small, entry level family car that still offer decent interior space, and the company is trying to replicate that with the new Renault four Etec. You'll even notice some design nods
to the original as well, but it's now an all electric model and shares its platform called amp R Small with the Renault five. Like the five, the four is
a four door model, but it's also a little longer and looks like it has a higher ride height. Renault
is only showing off these teaser shots right now that show things like a retractable fabric roof, but since it's based on the same platform as the five, the four should have a similar setup. And the Renault five offers
three motor outputs of seventy ninety and one hundred and ten kilowatts up to a fifty two kilowatt hour battery pack that provides four hundred kilometers or nearly two hundred and fifty miles of range, and it also offers bi directional charging capabilities. We would also expect pricing for the
four to be similar as the five, which is supposed to start under twenty five thousand euros, and Renault is hoping for much better sales with its affordable electric car than Stalantis is experiencing with the Fiat five hundred E.
Due to weak orders, the company is extending a production stoppage of the model where it's made in Italy. It
previously said Fiat wouldn't resumed production of the five hundred E until October eleventh, but now it's pushing the shutdown into November. This and other production cuts in the region
has already created tension with the Italian government, which wants the automaker to increase its Italian output to a million units, up from seven hundred and fifty thousand last year, so no doubt they're not happy about this extended stoppage. But
Stalantis says CEO Carlos Tavares is going to address a committee next week about its production plans for Italy. He
will likely reiterate the company's intent to invest one hundred million euros into the plant that makes the five hundred, which includes upgrades for a new high performance battery and getting ready for the hybrid version of the five hundred and twenty twenty six teslas are now being used to help solve crimes. As you probably know, all Teslas are
installed with cameras for autopilot and FSD, but they're also used for its Century Mode, which is triggered by movement and can record almost anything around the car. So now
police departments are increasingly using footage from Tesla's park near a crime scene to help solve investigations. Currently, Rivian is
the only other automaker that offers a feature like Century Mode, but Mercedes, BMW, Mini, Toyota, and Lexus do offer limited security features with exterior cameras. And in other Tesla news,
it's facing a growing strike in Sweden. Last year, the
technicians part of the if Mattal union went on strike after Tesla refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement, and now a union that maintains its supercharger network is supporting that strike and says it will no longer repair service or maintain Tesla's EVI chargers in Sweden. Tesla's shipments to
Sweden have also been disrupted because doc workers in Denmark, Norway and Finland have joined the strike in solidarity with the repair workers. Automakers are scrambling to redesign their cars
as software to find vehicles where almost every function and operation is controlled by software. But how do century old
legacy automakers whose expertise is in the mechanical world find the software they need and do it quickly. Well, there's
a new marketplace for automotive software called sdvver, where software companies can sell their software and automotive companies and suppliers can buy it. So far, General Motors, Renault, Magna for Via,
Bosch Commons, NXPE we Pro have joined. Sd Verse says
its marketplace can slash the time from discovering a new software product or getting a request for a quote by eighty percent. Automakers are reportedly spending as much as thirty
percent of their R and D budgets on software, and this marketplace can help them find what they need so they don't have to do it themselves. Unfortunately, the design
community recently lost one of its icons, Bruno Saco, has passed away at the age of ninety. He was chief
designer at Mercedes from nineteen seventy five until nineteen ninety nine, and one thing I found interesting in reading about Saco is that he's known for models like the G Class in the SLK, but he was most proud of the company's first compact car, the Mercedes Won ninety or what's also called the Baby Benz. It debuted in nineteen eighty two,
offered a Cosworth modified engine and sold more than a million units worldwide. If you'd like to learn more about
Bruno Saco's influence on the auto industry, we'll provide a link in the description box and the transcript. But that's
it for today's show. Thanks for making autoline a part
of your day.
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About this episode
The episode covers major disruptions in the automotive industry including a US dock workers strike impacting vehicle imports, especially from Europe, and Fiat extending production stoppages on the 500e due to weak demand. It highlights Jeep's delayed redesigns, with new models not expected until 2028-2031, and Ford's new offer of free home EV chargers to boost electric vehicle adoption. Renault teases its all-electric new Renault 4, while Tesla faces strikes in Sweden affecting service and shipments. The episode also discusses a new automotive software marketplace, SDVver, and pays tribute to legendary Mercedes designer Bruno Sacco.
- U.S. Dock Workers Go On Strike - Q3 U.S. Sales Forecast to Fall - Crucial Jeep Redesigns Still Years Away - Ford Offering Free Home Charger and Installation - Renault Teases All-New Renault 4 - Fiat Extends 500e Production Stoppage - Police Using Tesla Cameras to Catch Criminals - OEM-Backed Software Marketplace Launching - Bruno Sacco, Mercedes Design Icon Passed Away
