AD #4070 - Ford Could Outsource Engines; Ram Revives the HEMI; UK Production Hits 70-Year Low

Speaker 1: This is on Aline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Back in April, when we

reported that China was clamping down on exports of rare earth minerals, we predicted that it could really hurt car production outside of the country, and well that's happening. Yesterday

several suppliers in Europe had to stop production because of a shortage of rare earth magnets. Today, Suzuki had to

do the same thing for the same reason with the Swift and that Suzuki's best selling car in the US, Mima.

The Supplier Association called for immediate and decisive action to address the shortage. It said suppliers could have to stop

making automatic transmissions, throttle bodies, alternators, various motors, sensors, seat belts, speakers, lights, motors, power steering, and cameras. China stopped exporting these critical materials

in retaliation to President Trump's tariffs, but so far, the White House has not said anything about the rareer shortage.

Speaking of shortages, could the US fracking boom be hitting a peak production at the Permian Basin, a massive oil and gas reserve in Texas has flatline for the last year.

One reason is the price of oil. A year ago

it stood at seventy five dollars a barrel. Today it's

at sixty three. Frackers drilling new wells and the Permian

basin need about sixty one dollars to be profitable, and with global oil prices on a downward slide, there's little wiggle room left. A decade ago, Sergiomarcione, then CEO of

Fiat Chrysler, published a paper called Confessions of a Capitol Junkie.

In it, he argued that different automakers were crazy to spend billions of dollars to build so many engines and transmissions that were almost exact clones of each other. He

said the industry could save billions by consolidating its powertrains.

Renault must have heard that message and spun off its powertrain operations as a separate company called Horse. Geely quickly

signed up to be a partner, and now Ford's vice chairman John Lawler says, quote ice powertrains over time are gonna need to consolidate. We think a logical step would

be for Ford to partner with Horse or maybe even Volkswagen in Europe, Ford's passenger car sales in Europe are now under half a million a year, yet it has engine capacity in the region of well over a million a year. Last year, the Washington Post filed a lawsuit

against Nitze to get access to records about crashes when driver assistance systems were in use. The newspaper says that

the agency does release some info, but it quote withholds critical details about the technologies in use and the circumstances and locations of the crashes. And now Tesla is asking

a judge to keep that data from going public because it says the information is confidential and would allow competitors to assess its technology. But lawyers for the Post say

that the information they want about Tesla's hardware and software is not private, arguing owners can access the info within their vehicle.

Speaker 2: Knowing that a little rain won't slow down your day.

Speaker 3: That's what really matters.

Speaker 4: Breach done to runts of Qui attract hires confident control in wet conditions.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got a Hemi again, Ram CEO Tim Kiniskus said, the brand quote screwed up when we dropped the Hemi and the fifteen hundred pickup. So it's bringing back the

five point seven liter V eight for the twenty twenty six model year. The move was one of the first

things that can Discus did when he returned to the company after former Stalantas CEO Carlos Tavares left in December of last year. His concern was losing customers who already

have a hemy that return to buy another, only to find there's not one. The turbocharged inline six cylinder, which

is still the standard engine for the truck, actually makes more power and torque and gets better fuel economy than the V eight, but Kiniscus says HEMI is almost like its own brand, and trying to get back any customers that leave would be really expensive, so it's actually more efficient to bring the HEMI back. However, the trucks will

no longer have the h Emi logo on their fender. Instead,

designers came up with what they call a protest badge.

It's an outlined version of the RAMS head whose body looks like a HEMIV eight. The engine comes standard with

a forty eight volt mild hybrid system or what RAM calls e torqu and the entire power train set up makes three hundred and ninety five horse power and four hundred and ten pound feet of torque. The HEMI will

be a twelve hundred dollars option except on two of the higher trim models, which comes standard with the high output version of the inline six cylinder turbo. BYD isn't

fool and around when it comes to what it perceives as online defamation. The automaker says it's taking legal action

against thirty seven influencer accounts and has placed another one hundred and twenty six others under internal monitoring. BYD is

even paying people between six nine hundred dollars and six hundred and ninety thousand dollars for defamation leads. The automaker

says it has faced repeated online attacks over the last several years involving false or misleading info that has heard its brand image. BYD says it welcomes criticism, but says

it won't quote tolerate defamatory cond ten or false accusations.

While BYD is called the attacks coordinated, it hasn't provided any public evidence yet. Even so, BYD has already won

several cases, with some social media users being fine nearly fourteen thousand dollars Chinese automaker Neo struggled in the first quarter.

Its revenue and operating profit miss projections, and its gross margin hit a new low. It only has one point

three billion dollars in net cash, and that prompting some analysts to warn that Neo has less than a year to stabilize its financial situation. But despite that, the company

continues to expand, entering fifteen new markets this year and its planning to launch its low cost Firefly brand in the UK in October. Its only model, a small hatchback,

went on sale in China in April with a starting price of sixteen five hundred dollars, and so far thirty nine hundred year units have been sold Incircling back to the UK, the auto industry is begging for quote urgent action to help boost car production. According to the Society

of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, automakers built just over fifty nine two hundred vehicles in April, down sixteen percent from a year ago, and that's the lowest level since nineteen fifty two. When you dote include disruptions caused by the

pandemic in twenty twenty, US terrafce access production in March and a late Easter all contributed to the drop. One

of the benefits of bidirectional charging is the ability to use an EV's battery pack as a source to help support the electrical grid. The idea is to charge the

vehicle when rates and demand are lower, and then provide the stored electricity back to the grid when demand and rates are higher. There's even the chance as an evy

owner to earn a little extra money since you're providing a service to the energy providers. Car News China reports

that several pilot programs are underway in China, and one owner that's been participating in a program since twenty twenty two has provided over fifteen thousand, five hundred kilowatt hours of energy back to the grid and estimates he earns about seventy dollars or about sixty one euros a month.

And along similar lines, Renault says it's providing a fleet of five hundred evs to a car sharing business in the Netherlands that will use the vehicle's bi directional charging capability to help balance the grid in one of the country cities. The fleet will specifically be used to store

and distribute renewable energy. Since thirty five percent of the

city's rooftops already have solar panels, which means there will be access to green electricity even when there's no wind or sun. When combined together, the evs can store up

to ten percent of the renewable energy generated in the region, and when they're not being used to support the grid, the vvehicles can be rented out by people in the area.

But that brings us to the end of today's show.

Thanks for making autoline a part of your day.

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