AD #4059 - Honda Places Big Bet on Hybrids; Subaru Raising Prices in the U.S.; How Rivian is Designing Cost Out of the R2

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.

Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with heavy metal, Hey, light enough, but with world class composite material Tagent Automotive Technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.

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.

Speaker 3: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Intrepid Control Systems Over the Air Engineering Boost your game, tajin Automotive technologies the formula for mobility and.

Speaker 4: By developing today's vehicles, issues can happen in an instant.

What good is knowing your problems without the data to solve them. Meet Wireless neovi Cloud your secure off the

shelf solution, empowering real time collaboration for quick resolution. With

Wireless Neova 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

AD #4059 - Honda Places Big Bet on Hybrids; Subaru Raising Prices in the U.S.; How Rivian is Designing Cost Out of the R2

Chevrolet Corvette

Cadillac Escalade

Buick Envisions

About this episode

Original notes