Honda is shifting focus from pure electric vehicles to hybrids, cutting $21 billion from its EV investments while enhancing hybrid technology and software for hands-free driving by 2027. Subaru is raising U.S. vehicle prices amid market pressures and appointing a new American CEO. Rivian is innovating to reduce wiring complexity and costs in its upcoming R2 SUV. Battery makers like CTL and GDI are securing significant funding to advance energy-dense and fast-charging battery technologies. Additionally, GM halts exports of American-made luxury vehicles to China due to trade uncertainties, and BMW and Chinese automaker Cherry are testing solid-state batteries for future EVs.
Topics:honda hybrid strategyev investment cutssubaru price increaserivian wiring innovationbattery funding and techgm china export haltsolid state batterieshands free driving techelectric motorcycle growthlong haul ev trucks
- Honda Slashes Its EV Investment - CATL Raises Billions in Stock Debut - GDI Sees More Interest in Silicon Anodes - Subaru Raising Prices in the U.S. - Subaru Announces New Head of North America - GM to Close Durant Guild in China - Rivian Designs Cost Out of the R2 - All-Solid-State Batteries Find Test Partners - Volvo's Massive Batteries for Long-Haul Trucks - What Are All These Teslas Doing Here?
"...et GM is going to continue importing Chinese made Buick Envisions into the US. Rivian keeps doing impressive work t..."
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Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Honda is slashing its investment in
pure electric vehicles and will instead put more focus on hybrids.
It previously forecasts that it would hit thirty percent EV market share by twenty thirty, but the company blames a slowdown in the expansion of evs for no longer expecting to hit that goal. In order to reach that thirty
percent EV share, Honda was planning to invest nearly seventy billion dollars through its twenty thirty one fiscal year, but now it's slashing almost twenty one billion dollars from that total.
The cuts come in the form of delaying its EV hub in Canada, as well as delays and investment for building evs and other factories and quote optimization of its lineup.
But one area where it's not making any cuts is software.
Honda is developing its all new aid ass system that will be able to navigate hands free on expressways in surface streets, and it says it will start rolling it out to its lineup in Japan and North America around twenty twenty seven. As we said, that lineup is going
to include a lot more hybrids. By the end of
the decade, Honda expects to sell roughly three point six million vehicles, and about two point two million of those will be hybrids. The ramp up really comes around twenty
twenty seven, when it introduces its all new hybrid setup, which kind of acts more like a range extender, so the system operates more often in EV mode. Honda says
it will improve fuel economy by over ten percent, while costs will be down more than thirty percent compared to the current hybrid system. The company is also working on
a hybrid system specifically for larger vehicles that are aimed at the North American market and will be out in the latter half of the twenty twenties. Honda sees motorcycles
as another growth area as well. Right now, about fifty
million motorcycles are sold around the world. By twenty thirty,
Honda expects that to grow by another ten million units.
So the company is going to improve both its IC and EV motorcycle lineup with the aim of grabbing even more market share and a better return on sales. And
while many automakers like Honda are scaling back EV plans battery companies are raising some serious cash. Last week, battery
maker CTL raised four point six billion dollars in its Hong Kong trading debut, which is the world's largest listing this year. Its shares also increase sixteen percent earlier today,
and because of that success, CTL can exercise an option to increase its fundraising to five point three billion dollars.
And US battery materials startup GDI says it raised an additional eleven point five million dollars to scale up production of its silicon anodes for EV batteries in the US and Europe. The company has now raised more than twenty
million dollars. GDI says its anodes are thirty percent more
energy dense than graphite anodes and can help charge an EV in less than fifteen minutes. It expects them to
be in battery cells for non automotive products in the next twenty four to thirty months and in electric vehicles by twenty thirty. Subaru is raising prices of its vehicles
in the US. While the automaker said it's doing so
because of quote current market conditions and didn't cite tariffs, we can only assume those are the market condition Subaru is talking about. The company will raise prices starting next
month anywhere between seven hundred and fifty and two thousand and fifty five bucks, depending on the model and trim.
Subaru relies heavily on imports for the US. According to
SMP Global Mobility, the automaker imports forty five percent of the vehicles it sells in the region. And In other
Subaru news, the automaker named a new chairman and CEO of its American operations, Yoichi Horri. Horiy actually started the
new role on April first, but the company is only making the announcement now. Hory has been with Subar Route
since nineteen ninety six and has held numerous positions in the US and Japan, including product and corporate planning.
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Speaker 1: Hey there, Enjoy what you're watching, then consider becoming an autolne member. Just click the join button on the Autoline
Network YouTube homepage or We've also set up a Patreon account under auto line Now. Absolutely nothing will change with
the content that we already provide you, but we're giving exclusive access to even more like early viewing of autoline exclusives, behind the scenes videos, and even live Q and a's with John and I. We've got another automotive casualty of
President Trump's trade war with China. General Motors is going
to stop exporting American made Cadillacs, GMCs and corvettes to China.
The vehicles, like escalades, tahoes, and hummers were being sold through a new sales outlet in China called the Durant Guild, named after Billy Durant, the entrepreneur who started GM. Even
though the sales numbers would be rather low, GM saw this as an opportunity to increase the market share for its most profitable vehicles. China recently lowered its terrace on
US made cars from one hundred and thirty to ten percent, but it's just a temporary reduction, and GM decided there was too much uncertain to keep the exports going. And
yet GM is going to continue importing Chinese made Buick Envisions into the US. Rivian keeps doing impressive work to
design costs, complexity, and assembly time out of its vehicles.
R J Scringe the founder and CEO posted the latest improvements they made to the wiring harness of the R two, the forty five thousand dollars mid size suv that's supposed to launch in the first half of next year. Compared
to the wiring harness of the second generation R one, which the company showed off last year, the new harness on the R two cuts weight by an impressive twenty kilos or forty four pounds, and it gets rid of two point three miles of wiring as well as sixty percent of wiring connectors. And keep in mind that wiring
connectors typically are a high warrant item, so the fewer you have, the better your quality should be. This is
all thanks to Rivian's centralized zonal compute system, the one that the Volkswagen Group is paying nearly six billion dollars to use in its cars. And speaking of the R
one S and R one T, it looks like Rivian needs to keep them in production for at least another six years to amortize the investment cost. Auto Fourcast Solution
says the next gen R ones don't go into production until twenty thirty one. Not long ago, Stilant has made
headlines that it was testing solid state batteries in one of its evs, but those were semi solid state batteries. However,
there are a few tests going on with full solid state batteries, which have better energy density, storage charging in safety.
BMW revealed that it's testing large format versions of the cells from a US based company called solid Power, which also includes Ford and sk Innovation as investors. The batteries
have been integrated into a BMWi seven and it's the first time the two companies have done any road tests which they'll use for data collection. And Chinese automaker Cherry
was spotted testing a model from one of its brands with an all solid state battery, which is expected to return up to fifteen hundred kilometers or about nine hundred and thirty miles of range on the Chinese test cycle.
The model is currently scheduled to hit the market sometime in twenty twenty seven. And speaking of EV batteries, the
packs involve those new long haul electric truck are massive.
It can have up to eight packs that combine for seven hundred and eighty kilowatt hours, which provides up to six hundred kilometers or about three hundred and seventy miles of range. The trucks, which can be ordered in the
second half of next year, comes standard with megawatt charging capability that allows them to charge from twenty to eighty percent in forty minutes, which also happens to be the same amount of time that truckers in the EU are required to rest between halls. We want to give a
shout out to our viewer, Brennan Harvath, who is cruising around the suburbs north of Detroit. When he ran across
all these teslas parked door to door in a parking lot of a strip mall. He wanted to know what
the heck all these teslas are doing there, which are not near any tesla's store or distribution center. Well, we
have no clue whatsoever, but if any of you have an idea, we'd love to hear from you. And by
the way, if you know the Detroit area, this parking lot is on the southwest corner of fourteen mile in Orchard Lake Road. But that wraps up today's report. Thanks
for watching.
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