AD#4014 - Honda Getting Batteries from Toyota; Audi Cutting Jobs After Weak 2024; China Exports Continue to Grow Rapidly
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Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts a global automotive industry. Twenty twenty four was a rough year
for Audi. The brand sold one point six seven million
vehicles last year, which was a drop of nearly twelve percent.
Electric vehicles fared a little bit better, but sales still fell almost eight percent to about one hundred and sixty four thousand, five hundred units. And even when you look
at the entire Audi group, which also includes Bentley, Lamborghini and Ducati, sales were down eleven point seven percent and twenty twenty four only Lamborghini saw it sales and profits go up last year, So with overall sales tumbling, revenue was dragged down by just over seven and a half percent to sixty four point five billion euros. The group's
operating profit hit three point nine billion euros, a drop of almost thirty eight percent, and its net profit totaled nearly four point two billion, which was down by thirty three percent. Like me, you don't have to be a
finance wizard to know that wasn't a good performance. So
in an effort to turn things around, Audi is making a number of changes. While the company is investing eight
billion euros into its German manufacturing sites and extending a job protection plan for German union workers until twenty thirty three.
AUDI will caught up to seventy five hundred jobs in indirect areas by twenty twenty nine and look for ways to reduce the workload with digital solutions. It's also reducing
bonuses for board members and profit sharing for employees. In
the medium term. AUDI expects these changes to save it
more than a billion euros a year. That's part of
the reason it's forecasting to earn back most or all of the revenue that it lost in twenty twenty four.
The other part is a slew of new models launching over the next few years, especially in the US and China.
Toyota is nearly fourteen billion dollar battery plant in South Carolina won't just be supplying its own electrified vehicles. The
company broke round at the site in twenty twenty two, where it will make up to thirty gigawatt hours of batteries a year for both hybrid and pure electric vehicles.
Shipments of those batteries start next month, and according to a Nicke report, Honda will be one of Toyota's customers.
Honda currently uses batteries for its hybrid vehicles that come from Japan and China, which could put it at risk of getting hit with additional tariffs under the Trump administration, So that's why it's turning to Toyota, who is also getting a large contract out of the deal. Last year,
Honda sold a little over three hundred thousand hybrids in the US, and while its evs are currently made by GM, Honda plans to start making its own electrics in the US soon, so there's the possibility for the partnership to expand even more. You know, we think this is big
news for the world of battery skias in our opinion, there are really only two players in battery swapping, NEO and CTL, and now they're coming together. CTL is investing
over one point seven billion dollars into Neo to help it grow its battery swapping network. The two companies are
also working to develop technical standards for battery swapping technology, or in other words, making a single battery pack that can fit into a full range of products. Some of
this will be based on catl's new Choco battery, which is specifically designed for swapping Neo already has the biggest network with over thirty one hundred swapping stations and partnerships with a bunch of other automakers including Chang'an, Gelie, Cherry, Jac, gac, FAW and Lotus.
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Speaker 1: Byd unveiled a new platform that it says can charge an EV just as fast as you can fill a car with gas, called the Super E platform. It's one
thousand volt architecture with a peak charging speed of one thousand kilowatts, which provides four hundred kilometers or two hundred and forty nine miles of range in just five minutes.
For comparison, Tesla supercharger can add two hundred and seventy five kilometers or one hundred and seventy miles of range in fifteen minutes of charging, while the all new Mercedes CLA that was revealed last week, which rides on an eight hundred volt architecture, is capable of adding three hundred and twenty five kilometers or two hundred and one miles in ten minutes of charging. BYD plans to install four
thousand chargers across China to accommodate vehicles with the new platform, and in addition to fast charging, the new platform has impressive performance. BYD says models are capable of hitting one
hundred kilometers an hour in just two seconds. We think
Shaomi's growth has been nothing but impressive. The smartphonemaker only
started selling vehicles about a year ago, but it already delivered two hundred thousand cars, and that's with just one model in its lineup, the SU seven Sedan. Its second model,
the Yu seven suv, goes on sale this summer, and Shaomi must feel confident about it because it just raised its sales forecast for the year by fifty thousand units to three hundred and fifty thousand vehicles, and thanks to those booming sales, Shaomi's revenue in the fourth quarter surged almost fifteen percent to more than fifteen billion dollars. Chinese
car exports have grown significantly the last several years, and they're expected to continue growing through the end of the decade.
In twenty twenty, Chinese automakers exported fewer than a million vehicles, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, but last year exports hit four four point nine million vehicles and increase of twenty percent. And while Europe and the US
are concerned about Chinese made evs and have slapped tariffs on them, the majority of exports eighty percent were gas powered vehicles, and thanks to big growth in areas like Africa, the Middle East, Latin and South America, global market share for Chinese automakers outside of China is expected to reach thirteen percent and twenty thirty up from just three percent last year, and in Africa and the Middle East alone, the share is forecast to hit thirty nine percent by that time. Stalantis is kicking off its annual Drive for
Design contest for high school students in the US. The
automaker is asking students to design a Chrysler vehicle of the future. Stillantis will post weekly updates on social media
and wants final designs submitted by April twenty fifth. The
grand prize winner receives a summer internship at the Ram Truck Design Studio, the chance to be as student judge at the Eison Design Car Show and Apple iPad, and more.
Two additional finalists will also be selected and win prizes.
If you or someone you know might be interested, visit Stalantis Drive for design dot com for more details. That
brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for
making autoline a part of your day.
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