Tesla unveiled ambitious plans for its unsupervised Full Self-Driving system and introduced the Cybercab robotaxi priced around $30,000, aiming for availability by 2026. CEO Elon Musk also revealed the Robovan for autonomous deliveries and a humanoid robot concept. Stellantis announced CEO Carlos Tavares will retire in 2026, triggering leadership changes. The episode covers chip supply recovery after Hurricane Helene, Nissan's upcoming bidirectional EV charging in the UK, GM's home energy storage system, and Volkswagen's potential plant closures in Germany. Additionally, BMW's limited-edition Skytop roadster and China's rising EV sales were highlighted.
Topics:tesla robotaxifull self-drivingstellantis leadershipchip supplybidirectional charginggm energy storagevw plant closureschina ev salesbmw skytop roadster
- Tesla to Sell Robotaxi for $30,000 - CEO Carlos Tavares To Retire from Stellantis in 2026 - Quartz Miner Resumes Operations - Nissan To Offer Bi-Directional Charging in the UK - GM Offering Energy Storage Solutions - Future of VW Plant in Germany Up in The Air - NEV Sales in China Up 51% Last Month - BMW Unveils Skytop Roadster
"...nergy Home System bundle, which also includes the charger, the inverter and everything to operate it, costi..."
Select text to request an explanation
Speaker 1: This is autolne Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry, and let's dive right into Tesla's big event last night that it called we Robot. Its
top hands free driving system right now is called supervised FSD, but Elon must says that Tesla will launch unsupervised FSD next year in the Model three and hy. He expects
it to first be available in Texas and California and will expand to wherever regulators will allow it. All of
its models will be capable of having the feature, which will still be based on an AI and vision system.
But Elon says, you could fall asleep behind the wheel and wake up at your destination. That would mean to
me that Tesla is going from a level two plus system with supervised FSD up to level four or five with unsupervised. The company will also put what Elon called
an overspect version of the system into the cybercab that it revealed at the event. To me, it looks like
the model is based on the Model three and why, but it won't have a steering wheel or pedals, so it too could be limited by regulators. It also won't
have a charging port and will instead rely on inductive charging.
Tesla will make the cybercab available for purchase, estimated to start in the low thirty thousand dollars range. Elon believes
that it could be used five to ten times more than a regular car and will one day be ten times safer than a human and cost twenty cents a mile to operate. He predicted it could be available in
twenty twenty six, but then quickly said before twenty twenty seven.
Beyond the cybercab, Tesla pulled the wraps off the Rooboven.
It's spelled Robovan, but Elon pronounced it roboven. The autonomous
vehicle can deliver packages or other goods or carry up to twenty people. Elon thing that could one day operate
at five to ten cents a mile. There was no
time given for when the Roboven will launch, but Elon says it will build it and it will look like this, to quote the CEO, the future should look like the future.
The last highlight of the Wei Robot event was Tesla's actual robot. Optimists Musk envisioned to future where the robots
cost less than the price of a car and people might have one or even two of them in their house, serving drinks and doing chores like mowing the lawn. But
like any Tesla event hosted by Elon Musk, we'll have to wait to see if the company can pull it off in the CEO's projected timeline and for it to operate at the level of capability talked about during the presentation.
That big shake up at Stalantis we reported about yesterday happened today. The headliner is that the contract of CEO
Carlos Tavares will not be extended beyond twenty twenty six, so the company is hunting for a new leader, and maybe that person is one of the other people that it just promoted. At the top of our list would
be the CEO of JEEP, Antonio Filosa, who just added COO of North America to his title, replacing Carlos Arlanga, whose next position will be quote subject to a further announcement.
The same was said about the CEO of Alpha and Maserati, who was also replaced as well. The COO of Europe
and the CFO were also replaced, but they decided to leave the company rather than take another position. Tavarrez's contract
expires in early twenty twenty six, so he has just over a year left at Stalantis. Good news for automakers,
it looks like the industry will avoid another chip shortage.
There was concern after flood damage from Hurricane Helene down to companies that mine high purity courts in North Carolina.
That courts is used to make semiconductor chips, and the sites in North Carolina are one of the only ones in the world that mine it. But one of the companies,
the Sibyl Code Group, announced that it has restarted operations and is ramping up to full capacity. The other company,
the Courtz Group, says it's too early to tell when it can resume, but it doesn't expect any disruptions in supply to customers, so it looks like the auto industry can breathe a sigh of relief. Nissan says it's going
to start offering bi directional charging with its evs starting in the UK in twenty twenty seven. Customers will be
able to use energy stored in their EV's battery to power their home, or they can sell it back to the grid. The system requires a special home charging unit,
but Nissan says it's trying to get the cost comparable to a one way home charger. While the UK is
first in twenty twenty six, other markets in Europe will follow after that. And one way to really take advantage
of bidirectional charging is with home energy storage. Not only
can use wind and solar to charge the unit, which you can also use to power your home or sell electricity back to the grid, but your bi directional charging EV can be added in for even more storage capability or to charge the home storage unit itself. And GM
is launching its own solution that it calls Energy Power Bank.
They have either ten point six or seventeen point seven kilowat hour units available that can also be combined together for more storage. The Energy Power Bank is part of
the Gas Energy Home System bundle, which also includes the charger, the inverter and everything to operate it, costing twelve seven hundred dollars, or you can just buy the storage unit if you already have the home system, but we weren't able to find the price for that. Last month, Volkswagen
shocked the auto industry when it warned it will likely have to close factories in Germany, something it has never done in its history. And now it looks like we
know one of the plants that could be shut down. Portie,
which is part of the VW group, announced that it's halting production of the caman and boxter at VW's Osnabrook plant in Germany. It will instead produce them at its
main factory in Germany starting in twenty twenty six. The
Osnabrook plant also builds the VWT Rock, but that's going out of production next year, which puts the plant's future up in the air. It has the capacity to build
one hundred thousand vehicles a year, but last year it only may twenty eight thousand. The site employees twenty eight
hundred workers, but Germany's Manager magazine reports that VW could cut up to thirty thousand jobs in Germany, so that's why more closures are expected. Car sales in China were
up last month. According to the China Passenger Car Association,
Retail sales of new passenger vehicles totaled more than two million units in September, up two percent from a year ago.
It was also the first increase in retail sales in China in the past five months. Not surprisingly, new energy
vehicles or anyvs fueled the growth sales of BEVs, PHAs and e Revs reached one point one to two million units, a fifty one percent gain. Through the first nine months
of the year, automakers have sold fifteen and a half million vehicles in China, up two percent, with electrified models accounting for seven point one million sales, up thirty seven percent from last year. BMW is showing off an open top,
two seat roadster that it calls the sky Top. Its
design is highlighted by a spline that extends all the way from the hood to an aluminum bar on the trunk.
The illuminated twin kidney grill also adds a nice pop.
The roof consists of two removable sections that are stowed in a special compartment in the trunk. The Skytop is
powered by a gas burning four point four liter V eight that's mated to an eight speed automatic transmission, which sends its power through an all wheel drive system. It
cranks out six hundred and twenty five horse power and can move from zero to one hundred kilometers an hour in three point three seconds. But the Skytop is a
limited edition model, with only fifty examples being built. But
that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks
for making autoline a part of your day and I hope that you have a great weekend.
Speaker 2: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Bridgetone Solutions for your journey, Intrepid Control Systems, over the air engineering boost your game, Tajan Automotive Technologies the formula for Better Mobility, and by z F There's nothing wrong with heavy metal.
Hey right enough, but with world class composite material, Tajan Automotive Technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.
Speaker 3: Developing today's vehicles, issues can happen in an instant. What
good is knowing your problems without the data to solve them?
EAT Wireless neova Cloud your secure off the shelf solution, empowering real time collaboration for quick resolution. With Wireless neov Cloud,
your team can prevent issues before they can escalate. Driver
communication data and remote diagnostics to analyze and resolve your problems using OTA, allowing your executives to oversight throughout the process.
Wireless neovi Cloud your vehicle update solution in production and on the road. Intrepid control systems driven by your data.
Speaker 2: Making a life full of memories, one road trip at a time. That's what really matters.
Speaker 1: Rich don't weather peak tires with.
Speaker 2: A seventy thousand mile women at warranty. Wards is the
industry leader for news data and analysis. That's why companies
across the globe subscribe to our premium service. May be
even your own log in for subscriber access. Now check
your company's intranet for details and rely on Wardsauto dot com to keep you informed.
Request an explanation for:
2 cars
2 cars featured
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark.
Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
