Toyota is opening its dealer network in Japan to U.S. automakers, a major shift aimed at boosting foreign EV sales in a tough market. GM reports nearly doubling its U.S. EV sales in early 2024, with plans to expand its lineup further. Nissan unveils significant upgrades to the third-gen Leaf, focusing on mainstream appeal with improved powertrain and suspension. Meanwhile, Hyundai's strategic rare earth stockpiling shields it from China's export restrictions. The episode also covers Toyota's competitive EV pricing in China, a truck company merger in Japan, and challenges facing U.S. battery plant construction amid tariff impacts.
Topics:toyota dealer network japangm ev sales growthnissan leaf redesignhyundai rare earth strategytoyota ev pricing chinatruck company merger japanbattery plant tariffsev market challengeselectric vehicle developmentchina ev sales data
- Toyota Opens Japan Dealers to U.S. OEMs - Toyota Launches $18,000 EV In China - GM Doubles EV Sales in U.S. - Tesla Model Y #1 SUV In China - Toyota and Daimler To Merge Japan Truck Ops - Hyundai Stockpiled Rare Earths - AESC Pauses Battery Plant In South Carolina - 3rd-Gen Nissan Leaf Gets Big Changes
"...ssan dropped another video of its redesign of the Leaf EV and we finally have got some real numbers on t..."
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Speaker 1: This is outlying daily the show dedicated to enthusiasms of the global automotive industry. We start out in Japan today,
where those trade negotiations with the US have yielded a completely unexpected development. Toyota says it's willing to let US
car makers use its dealer network in Japan to sell cars.
Foreign cars, with the exception of luxury and exotics, have never sold well in Japan. One key reason is it
is so difficult to build a national dealer network. Land
is very expensive and all the good locations in major cities are taken. Hyundai has tried using a direct sales model,
but with little success. So for Toyota to offer its
dealer network to companies like GM and Ford is a major concession. One thing, though, just having access to Toyota
showrooms will not be enough. American automakers would have to
offer something different from Toyota's lineup. You know, GM is
doing a pretty good job with evs, and there isn't a very good selection of evs in Japan so far, so maybe this could be a golden opportunity. But Toyota
isn't exactly sitting on its hands when it comes to developing EV's. We're probably a year or two away from
seeing the results of its BEV Factory, which is the name of Toyota's semi skunk works EV operations in Japan.
And even before those evs hit the market, Toyota just launched the BZ five Electric in China that we told you about last week, but now we've got more info.
It's a mid size suv with four trim lines that are priced from only eighteen thousand dollars to twenty two thousand.
There are two LFP battery pack options from BYD a sixty five kilowat hour and seventy four kilowa hour pack which deliver three hundred and forty one miles to three hundred and ninety one miles of range. That's based on
the COLTC test cycle. You know, that's an awfully aggressive
price and it shows that Toyota is serious about competing in evs and in China. Okay, now over to the States,
where to emphasize how it's growing its EV business, GM said it sold sixty two thousand, eight hundred and thirty evs in the US for the first five months of the year, almost double of what it did last year.
A lot of that growth comes from GM adding more models to its EV lineup, and it will add more this year. Cadillac alone is adding four of them. We
think that a loose rule of thumb is that automakers need to sell fifty thousand evs a quarter to start turning a profit on them. That means GM needs to
increase its EV sales by another twenty five percent to hit that number, but that would probably you give it profitable economies of scale, at least with its batteries, EV motors and inverters. And here's some relatively good news for Tesla.
Even though it's sales in China were down thirty percent last month, the Model Why emerged as the best selling suv.
This is based on registration data for car insurance. The
Model Why squeaked past the BYD Song Plus, or maybe we should say the Song Plus sank below the Model Why.
Sales of the Y were actually down thirty eight percent from a year ago, so it's amazing to see it was still the best selling suv in China.
Speaker 2: Knowing that a little rain won't slow down your day, that's what really matters. Breach done to runs of Why
attract tires confident control in wet conditions.
Speaker 1: Toyo and Diamond Truck announced they finally agreed to merge their truck companies, Heino Motors and Mitsubishi Fuso. They announced
their plans to merge the truck companies in twenty twenty three, but Heino got caught up in and emissions and fuel economy scandal, so the plans were put on hold. But
Heino resolved those issues and the mergers back on. The
companies say the combination will create and I quote here, a new strong Japanese powerhouse which will collaborate on commercial vehicle development, procurement, and production. The new company will have
forty thousand employees and it's expected to begin operations in April of twenty twenty six. The global auto industry has
been warning for weeks that China's restriction on rare earth supplies will soon cripple car production, but Hyundai is not phased at all. It did a great job of reading
the political wins and started stockpiling rare earth minerals. It
has nearly a year's worth on hand. Also, it diversified
its supply chains and took advantage of a recent period when China relaxed export restrictions, and that gives Hyundai an advantage since it's going to be able to produce evs and hybrids for about a year with no production disruptions.
As President Trump gets rid of subsidies to buy evs and build battery plants, we're seeing an immediate impact. Battery
maker AESC is pausing construction on a one point six billion dollar battery plant in South Carolina that was supposed to supply battery cells to BMW. The company made the
decision based in part on Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports, since the machinery in the plant will mostly be brought in from China, plus tariffs on steel and aluminium will raise costs on the equipment. AESC says it's already invested
more than a billion dollars in the plant and that it's still committed to opening it, but let's see what happens.
Nissan dropped another video of its redesign of the Leaf EV and we finally have got some real numbers on the car. The third generation Leaf is aimed at mainstream customers,
not early adopters. It's based on Nissans CMF EV platform,
which gets rid of the torsion beam rear axle that was previously used and goes with an independent multilink suspension instead.
That increased lateral rigidity by fifty seven percent. The powertrain components,
including the motor, gear, reducer, and inverter, have been combined into one unit that's ten percent more compact than before.
The motor generates one hundred and sixty kilowatts of power or two hundred and fourteen horsepower and three hundred and fifty five newton meters of torque that's two hundred and sixty one pound feet. The air conditioning unit was moved
from behind the instrument panel into the engine compartment to provide more interior room in the car now has a turning radius that's ten centimeters smaller or about four inches.
Nissan has got a lot riding on the leaf. It
was one of the first mass market Eves when it hit the road in late twenty ten, but Nissan squandered its lead and it's clearly trying to make up for lost time with this new generation. And that brings us
to the end of today's report. Thanks for watching, and
a hearty shout out to all you Patreon and YouTube members who are supporting the work that we do.
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