Stellantis surprises the industry by ousting CEO Carlos Tavares amid a challenging year marked by falling sales and low morale. Meanwhile, Chinese automaker BYD is rapidly climbing the ranks, on track to become the fourth largest automaker by 2025, fueled by strong EV sales and tech expertise. Toyota announces performance upgrades to the Supra, enhancing handling and power without changing its looks. The episode also covers emerging tech like quantum positioning for navigation, regulatory battles over ICE vehicle bans in Stockholm, and innovations in automotive semiconductors using synthetic diamonds.
Topics:stellantis ceo changebyd sales growthtoyota supra upgradeselectric vehicle marketworker conditions in automotive plantsquantum navigation technologyvehicle emissions regulationsds automobiles concept carsynthetic diamond semiconductorssynthetic fuels development
- Tavares Out at Stellantis - BYD On Track to Be 4th Largest Automaker In 2025 - BYD Makes Tablets for Apple - BYD Investigated for Worker Abuse in Brazil - Toyota Upgrades the Supra - U.S. Military Backing GPS Alternatives - Stockholm Scraps ICE Ban - DS Automobiles Reveals New Vehicle Name - Aramco Takes 10% Stake in Renault and Geely JV - Diamond Chips Could Improve EVs
"... some upgrades to the six cylinder version of the Supra. I'm sure unfortunately for some of you this does..."
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Speaker 1: This is out Aligned Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. It feels good to be
back and see you after our short little break for the Thanksgiving holiday. And usually when we're gone for these
weekends and come back on Monday, there's not a lot of news to report, but not Yesterday. Stilantis dropped a
bombshell that at CEO Carlos Tavares is out, and he's out after a disruptive year with so many things going wrong. Sales,
profits and the stock price have plummeted.
Speaker 2: Employee morale is at rock bottom.
Speaker 1: Car dealers, especially in the US, are in open revolt against Tavares. So are the UAW and unions in Europe,
as well as the Italian government and suppliers despise.
Speaker 2: The way the company is treating them.
Speaker 1: So with all that in mind, seeing Tavares go isn't really much of a surprise to us. The real surprise
is that the board kept him on when it was obvious things were spiraling out of control, and that suggests the board did not have a plan b. It announced
it will form a committee to run the company for now and it will hire a new CEO sometime in the next six months. Okay, Now over to China, where
we're getting early sales reports for November, and one set of numbers is going to shock the entire industry. BYD
reported sales of just over five hundred and four thousand cars for the month, up sixty seven percent from last year.
That includes over one hundred and ninety eight thousand bvs and almost three hundred and six thousand peebs.
Speaker 2: BYD's sales target this year was three.
Speaker 1: Point six million vehicles, but it's already past that and actually is on track to sell four point three million.
If it hits that number, it's going to surpass Nissan, Honda, and Ford to become the sixth largest automaker in the world.
And if BYD could maintain that November sales rate through the rest of next year, it has every chance of surpassing General Motors and Stilantis to become the fourth largest.
We've been predicting that BYD could become the largest automaker sometime in the next decade, but maybe we were a bit too conservative because at this rate it could happen before the end of this decade. You know, we've heard
of Chinese tech companies like Wawei and Jomi getting into the car business.
Speaker 2: But now it's going the other way.
Speaker 1: BYD is assembling iPads and making iPhone parts for Apple in China.
Speaker 2: It has ten.
Speaker 1: Thousand engineers and one hundred thousand workers developing and making tablets and parts for Apple. In fact, BYD also makes
phones for Wawei and Jomi. Some people say that cars
are becoming comput uters on wheels, but others say no, they're actually becoming smartphones on wheels, and having expertise in both phones and cars is turning out to be a very powerful combination. But not everything is going great for BYD.
Speaker 2: It's being investigated.
Speaker 1: In Brazil for mistreatment of workers at the assembly plant it's building there. Almost half of the construction workers at
the site were brought in from China, and some are reportedly working twelve hours a day, seven days a week without safety helmets. Bathrooms are also said to be filthy,
while living accommodations are cramped and dirty, and there are reports of foremen resorting to violence to get workers to work faster. One problem is that construction is behind schedule,
but that doesn't justify the treatment. BYD blames the issues
on one of the three contractor groups that hired to build the plant, and it sounds like the Brazilians working at the site don't have it that bad.
Speaker 3: There's nothing wrong with heavy metal, hi light enough, but with world class composite material taging automotive technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.
Speaker 1: Toyota is making some upgrades to the six cylinder version of the Supra. I'm sure unfortunately for some of you
this does not include any changes to the car's looks, but if you're a driving enthusiast you might be able to appreciate what Toyota has done. It revised shock tuning,
added a stiffer front swaybar, gave it stronger rubber bushings, and improved body rigidity with a beefier underfloor brace, which changed the chassis characteristics of the car. So then it
slapped on bigger front disc brakes and optimized the electronic power steering active diff in alignment angles to help reduce understeer and improve handling. Toyota says the upgraded Supra will
start launching in the spring of next year, and for our friends in Europe and Japan, you could be able to get your hands on an even more extreme version of the Supra called the A ninety Final Addition, but it will be limited to just three hundred examples. Thanks
to freeing up airflow in the intake and exhaust, Toyota was able to boost output to nearly four hundred and thirty horse power, which is an increase of over forty five horse power. The car also gets upgrades to the engine,
oiling and cooling system, bigger brakes, body and suspension tweaks, lighter wheels, stickier tires, arrow enhancements.
Speaker 2: And unique styling features.
Speaker 1: No word on pricing, but it also launches in the spring of next year.
Speaker 2: Many different forms of transportation use.
Speaker 1: GPS, and a lot of people would be lost without it, but the technology is becoming more vulnerable, so the US military is turning to startups developing quantum technology that can be used as an alternative. The Department of Defense just
awarded eleven million dollars to a Colorado based company called Inflection to develop its quantum positioning technology, while another startup called Sandbox AQ has a contract with the US Air Force to develop its magnetic navigation system, which doesn't use satellites at all, but it would be a long time before we see any of this tech in consumer products.
Many cities are banning gas powered cars from driving in downtown areas to help reduce congestion and emissions. At the
end of the month, Stockholms, Sweden, was planning on only allowing electric cars, some hybrid trucks, and fuel cell vehicles in a section of the city's downtown, but that decision was appealed and a county board has rejected Stockholm's ice vehicle ban. DS Automobiles, which is part of Stilantis, revealed
the name of the concept car that it first teased a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: It's called Number eight.
Speaker 1: In fact, future models will also adopt the number naming strategy, but instead of the word number, it will use shorthand with a capital N and a little O in the corner, like the degree symbol, but in this instance, instead of the little O, it used a diamond because DS says it helped symbolize elegance and expertise. The actual number in
this case, eight corresponds with the size and segment of the model, and we'll be interested to see how close the production car sticks to this concept, because that interior is a big styling change. Earlier this year, oil giant
a Ramco announced plans to buy a ten percent Steak and Horse, the powertrain jav between Renaul and gel and now it's completed its acquisition of that Steak, which is valued at seven point four billion euros. In addition to
developing next gen ic and hybrid power trains, Horse will also focus on developing synthetic fuels and lubricants instead of catalytic converters. In the future, these might be more interested
in your car's computer. A French startup called dime Fab
is testing semiconductor chips that are made with lab grown synthetic diamonds. The company says that chips can handle higher
voltage and temperature, so they could replace silicon and silicon carby chips and cars. It expects high volume production to
be ready in about three years, and as you might expect, diamond chips are more expensive. It didn't say how much more,
but believes the number of chips in a car could be reduced from one thousand to three thousand down to two hundred and fifty to seven hundred and fifty, which would help lower costs. And that brings us to the
end of today's show. Thanks for making autoline a part
of your day.
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