AD #4067 - Battery Prices Drop Significantly; VinFast Shuts Half of Canada Stores; Honda Wants to Refuel Satellites

Speaker 1: This is Outoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Elon Musk is stepping away from

the work he was doing with President Trump, and he's going to have his hands full repairing the damage his political announcements did in driving customers away from Tesla. We're

starting to get May sales results in Europe, and the numbers are terrible for the company. Sales plummeted in France, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal,

Spain and the Netherlands. But there is one bright spot.

Sales of the new Model Why shot up two hundred and thirteen percent in Norway, which is where it debuted in Europe. Now we'll have to wait and see if

the same thing happens in other countries as the new Model Why becomes available. Reuter's reports there's confusion in Tesla's

management ranks over whether or not the company is going to make a twenty five thousand dollars car. Insiders say

that Musk canceled the project, but when Reuter's previously reported that it was canceled, Musk said Reuters is lying in a post on x That's when Tesla managers then asked Musk if the project was actually back on again, he told them it was still canceled. So, as we've reported before,

instead of an all new low cost model, it looks like Tesla's working on a stripped down version of the model Y. And the reason it looks like Tesla is

not doing a new low cost car is that it's pivoting to robotaxis, where it sees a lot more upside.

Tesla is reportedly targeting June twelfth for a limited launch of its Robotaxi in Austin, Texas, but keep in mind that Austin is the most left leaning and liberal city in Texas, a place where anti Musk protests were held out a Tesla's showroom there, so it will be interesting to see if the residents of Austin show any interest in using Tesla's robotaxis. There's a growing controversy in China

over what's known as zero kilometer use cars. It's kind

of a scam where some automakers sell new vehicles to their dealers or to third party companies, who then turn around and sell them as use cars, even though they've never been driven or have very few miles on them.

They're sold for as much as thirty percent off the new price, and automakers do this to goose their sales and it also helps dealers get rid of inventory. But

it destroys the residual value of used cars as well and distorts what's really happening in the market. The chairman

of great Wall Motors is speaking out against it, and last week the Chinese government held a meeting with major automakers to put an end to the practice. Battery prices

saw a decent drop last year, so hopefully that starts translating to cheaper evs. According to the International Energy Agency,

the cost of lithium battery packs fell twenty percent in twenty twenty four, the biggest drop since twenty seventeen. There's

a couple of factors at play here. There was a

lithium surplus last year, which led to lithium prices hitting their lowest level since twenty fifteen, and more automakers are turning to less expensive LFP or lithium iron phosphate battery packs as well. Diving a little deeper into the numbers,

China saw the biggest drop in battery prices and was also responsible for making eighty percent of all the cells in the world last year. One last interesting finding, despite

being smaller, hybrid packs spread their component costs across fewer cells, So a twenty kilowat hour battery and a plug in hybrid vehicle was about the same price as a sixty five kilowad hour BEEV battery pack last year.

Speaker 2: Knowing that a little rain won't slow down your day, that's what matters. Breach done, torns of yattract tires confident

control in wet conditions.

Speaker 1: Honda already provides mobility solutions for the land, sea, and air, but now it has its site set a little higher.

The company's R and D division is trying to co develop a way to refuel satellites that have already been launched into low Earth orbit. Obviously, refueling an orbit is

a little harder than pulling up to the pump at your local gas station. So Honda is specifically working on

the connecting system between the refueler and the satellite. And

it's not filling up with eighty seven octane either. In

this case, they're transporting hydrazine, which the satellites use as a propellant for thrusters. There's starting to be a little

bit of a satellite traffic jam in space, so this solution could reduce the need to send up new ones.

Vin Fast is struggling in Canada. The EV startup from

Vietnam says it's closing five of its ten showrooms in the country to quote, refocus resources and enhance long term performance.

VinFast started selling vehicles in Canada in twenty twenty two, and though it doesn't report sales numbers, data from Canada's incentives for zero emission vehicles shows that about two thousand rebates were claimed for its VF eight model last year.

The company also sells its VF nine model in Canada, but it didn't qualify for the incentives. Despite closing half

of its stores, VinFast says it's committed to selling vehicles in Canada. However, those EV subsidies were phased out at

the beginning of the year, which has hurt sales of electrics in Canada even more. As we reported last week,

India's auto industry warren production will soon come to a halt because China is restricting supplies of rare earth magnets, and now automakers in the US are raising the same concerns.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers in the US, sent a letter to the Trump administration last month warning that production will be impacted by the rare earth shortage. The letter was also signed by MIMA,

which represents suppliers in the US. Rare earths are used

in many components, including motors, power, windows, and speakers. China,

which controls ninety percent of global rare earth production, restricted supplies of rare earths in April in retaliation to Trump's tariffs.

We've heard that the cost of moving fuel during military operations can be astronomical, so that's why we were interested to see that a division of MAC Trucks was awarded a contract to build two hybrid prototypes for the Marine Corps.

The hybrid tech used in the medium tactical trucks will not only improve fuel economy and range, but allow for silent operation as well. These trucks are also meant to

be a new family of vehicles that can handle many tasks, so they'll come in several variants that have multiple bedlengths and configurations. And we have the results from our latest poll,

which was available to our Patreon and YouTube members. We

wanted to get your input on battery swapping for evs and whether it will spread from China to other parts of the world. Fifty five participated and simply twenty four

percent of you said yes, but sixty percent said no, and sixteen percent had other opinions. And here's some of

what you had to say. Dave believes that battery swapping

makes sense. It's just a matter of which applications, regions

and timeframes we swap double A, triple A power tools, E bike batteries for example. Kyle Robinson sees the good

side to swapping too. He says, I believe swappable batteries

would be a good alternative for fleet vehicles and for people who don't live at a location that can charge overnight.

But Irvin Wright says, quote so many things wrong with this idea standardized design, required wear and tear on connections, high cost of inventory, facility is much costlier to install than chargers, and all things considered, not much faster, never gonna fly. And ac Held made a point that quite

a number of you pointed out. Forget the swapping. He says,

if you can get a battery that charges in one hundred seconds, who would need swapping and thanks to all of our members that participated in the poll. We appreciate

all of your support and feedback, but that brings us to the end of today's report. Thanks for watching.

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