AD #3976 - Hyundai Supplying GM w/ Commercial EVs; VinFast Losing Billions; Cadillac Adds 1st V-Series EV

Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. We're getting more details of how

GM and Hyundai are going to work together. Hondai says

the first step involves supplying GM with electric commercial vehicles.

GM will simply rebadge the Hondai vehicles and sell them in North America. Now the question is which vehicles will

Hondai sell the GM. Currently, Hondai's commercial lineup of electric

vehicles includes fuel cell powered Class six and seven trucks and a city bus, as well as a battery version of the city bus. Hondai is also working with Iveko

in Europe, which will use Hondai's ELCV, or Electric light commercial Vehicle platform for a vehicle called the Emovie. Also,

Kia has designed a modular family of electric commercial vehicles called PBV that are suppose to go on sale this year.

Those vehicles would seem to compete directly with GM's Bright Drop vans, but we don't know if they're part of the deal yet. We think that GM and Hyundai could

end up cooperating on fuel cells, since it looks like GM's joint effort with Honda could evaporate as Honda pivots to merge with Nissan. Cadillac is coming out with its

first V series EV, a version of the Lyric, and the specs look pretty good. Six hundred and fifteen horse power,

six hundred and fifty pound feet of torque or eight hundred and eighty newton meters standard all wheel drive zero to sixty in three point three seconds using what Caddy calls Velocity Max mode. It comes standard with a one

hundred and two kilowat hour battery pack and two hundred and eighty five miles of range, and it's priced at just under eighty grand. Additional standard equipment and include's Brembo

brakes on the front, continuous damping control, supercrews, an augmented reality HUD, and a twenty three speaker sound system to set it apart from other Lyrics, it gets unique facias, badging, and wheels, as well as a specific Eaty sound signature.

The Lyric V will be sold globally and it goes on sale in a matter of months. The cost of

a new car is just too high for many buyers, so Honda is going to start making more of its lower trim models. It says those vehicles will be a

small portion of the overall sales pie, but it will help with the affordability of a new car. Dealers are

also calling on Honda to add more hybrids to its lineup, especially some of its larger models. They feel it's a

way to bring affordability to electrified vehicles. While hybrids typically

cost more than IC only vehicles, they're cheaper than pure electrics.

Canadians that are considering a Tesla better act fast. Without

giving a reason, the EV maker said it's raising prices on all of its models except the cyber Truck at the start of February in Canada, and it's raising them a lot. The models Action and Y we'll see prices

go up by four thousand Canadian while the Model three sees the biggest bump of nine thousand Canadian dollars, and that's on top of a thousand dollars price increase that the Model Y saw in Canada earlier this month. The

timing is especially impactful because Canada ended its federal EV incentive program, which offered five thousand Canadian off the purchase of an EV had a schedule last week due to a surgeon EV demand. Although there are still several provinces

that offer their own EV purchase incentives. But to us

this sounds crazy. So why do you think Tesla is

re raising prices at the same time that Canada is slashing EV subsidies.

Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with heavy metal, hiy light enough, but with world class composite material taging automotive technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.

Speaker 1: Toyota has to be getting more and more concerned with BYD.

As we reported earlier this month, BYD outsold Toyota with evs in Japan last year for the first time ever, and now BYD has taken the sales crown from Toyota in Singapore. Last year, BYD sold nearly six two hundred

vehicles in Singapore compared to five thousand, seven hundred for Toyota, which makes BYD the number one brand in the country.

And while those numbers are small, we think BYD's surging growth has gotta be concerning to Toyota. Investors are worried

that Vietnamese EV maaker VinFast financial troubles are going to start to harm parent company vin Group. The company has

invested thirteen point five billion dollars into vin Fast as of October, and in November it pledged another three and a half billion, But through the first nine months of last year, vin Fast lost two billion dollars, and since the ev maaker went public in August to twenty twenty three, vin Group's market share has been cut in half to around six billion dollars. As a result, the value in

vin Groups for an investment has dropped by nearly sixty percent.

But despite the concern from investors, vin Groups says it's going to continue to support vin Fast. Volkswagen says europe

submission standards will cost it one and a half billion euros this year. The automaker's head of investor relations said

the costs include penalties for missing stricter CO two targets, as well as having to sell fewer profitable IC models in favor of evs, and that could be made all the more difficult since the VW brand isn't launching any new evs this year. The ACEA, which represents the European

auto industry, has previously estimated that the EU's emission rules this year will cost automakers fifteen billion euros. It's about

two years behind schedule, but FORMULAE is finally introducing mid race ultra fast charging. Teams will be supplied with chargers

that are capable of charging at six hundred kilowatts, which is nearly double the fastest public EV chargers. They'll be

able to add about ten percent charge, or just under four kilowatt hours in thirty seconds. And it's that last

part that's going to make things interesting. Every team has

to do one of these mid race charges, which are called pit boost, but team cars can't charge at the same time. Pit boost last thirty four seconds, so it's

significantly longer than a car just changing its tires, and only two crew members can work on the car during that time, so there will be a lot of new pit strategies this year and Formula ethings it will be more entertaining to watch. Jack Hollis, the chief operating officer

of Toyota North America, has decided to retire. He's only

fifty eight years old, which is somewhat young for retirement, and in a written statement, Hollis said he's ready to take on other challenges. Automotive News reports that Toyota dealers

were shocked by the announcement, since Hollis was one of their favorite executives. He'll be replaced by Mark Templin, who's

sixty four years old and who has extensive experience at Toyota Lexus and signed on. And you're not gonna want

to miss Autoline after Hours today, especially if you're involved in making evy batteries or have anything to do with manufacturing.

Speaker 2: We have MJ.

Speaker 1: Hasham, the head of R and D from a company called Vivet, coming on the show. He's come up with

a concept called RLP or repeated layering process that does away with the linear assembly process that's been around for over a century. It's modular, it's low cost, and it

can be easily scaled. Even more interesting, it uses a

slower cycle time than today's battery assembly processes, but is still more efficient. There's a lot to unpack on how

it all works. So join John and Gary as well

as Brett Smith when the show goes live at three pm Eastern Time today, and that brings us to the end of this show. I hope to see you later.

Speaker 3: Autoline Daily is brought to you by Intrepid Control Systems over the Air Engineering Boost Your Game and by Tagent Automotive Technologies. The formula for better mobility.

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Zevo Bright Drop

Honda Pivots

Cadillac Lyric

Toyota Crown

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