AD #4111 - Musk Kills Dojo Project; Lordstown Assembly Plant to Become Data Center; Yangwang Supercar Boasts +3000 HP

Speaker 1: This is out Aligning Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. In a stunning move, Elon

Musk is closing down Tesla's Dojo supercomputer project. Bloomberg reports

that twenty people who were working on Dojo quit their jobs and moved to a competitor called Density Ai, which itself was started by former Tesla employees who had been working on Dojo. The rest of the team working on

the supercomputer project will be assigned to other jobs at Tesla, and it will now rely on outside tech companies like Nvidia to continue.

Speaker 2: With the work.

Speaker 1: Elon has been bragging about Dojo for years, claiming it would give Tesla a big advantage over any other automaker, especially for developing autonomous vehicles. Two years ago, Wall Street

firm Morgan Stanley predicted that Dojo would add half a trillion dollars to Tesla's market cap. So far, the market

seems to have rugged off the news. Tesla stock was

up in pre market trading, but with its car sales and profits falling, this is yet another piece of bad news for Tesla. It looks like the assembly plant in Lordstown,

Ohio will never build another car again. Earlier this week,

fox Kind announced that it sold the plant to a company called Crescent Dunes, which it described as an existing business partner. Now Bloomberg reports that Japanese investment firm SoftBank

was part of that transaction and will be taking ownership of the plant.

Speaker 2: SoftBank wants the.

Speaker 1: Facility to jumpstart its AI joint venture with Open Ai and Oracle. The jv is called Stargate and is investing

five hundred billion dollars to build data centers and related infrastructure across the US. Fox Con will operate the plant

for its own AI server manufacturing business, and SoftBank could use the site to host a data center.

Speaker 2: Years ago, Ford.

Speaker 1: Broke ground on its Blue Oval City assembly plant with great fanfare and with all the top management on hand, including its battery partner Skon. The Blue Oval project represents

a five point six billion dollar investment, but now it's being put on the back burner. Ford confirmed that a

full size electric pickup scheduled to be built there will be delayed.

Speaker 2: Until twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 1: Initially it was supposed to debut this year, then it was pushed back until twenty twenty seven, and now it's being pushed back by another year. With electric pickups selling

in small numbers, we wonder if it's ever gonna get built, and Ford's next gen electric transit van, which was supposed to be built in Avon Lake, Ohio, will also be delayed until twenty twenty eight. Car sales in China were

up more than six percent in July compared to last year, hitting one point eight million units, but they were down six percent compared to June, indicating the market growth is slowing down. Sales of nevs were up twelve percent to

just under a million units as the segment continues to boom, and exports jump twenty five percent to four hundred and fifty five thousand units. The China Passenger Car Association expects

sales to keep picking up pace because a tax break for buying new cars expires.

Speaker 2: At the end of the year.

Speaker 1: Chinese ev maker Shaomi poached another BMW designer, Kai Langer, the head of design for BMW's I series of electric vehicles, announced on LinkedIn that he joined Shaomi. Langer worked at

BMW for more than two decades, but he didn't reveal what role he'll have at Shaomi or where he'll be based.

Shaomi's current had a design Lee Tian Yuan, was also a designer at BMW for nine years before joining the ev maker in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 3: Developing today's vehicles, issues can happen in an instant. What

good is knowing your problems without the data to solve them.

Meet Wireless Neovia 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 Neovia Cloud your vehicle update solution in production and on the road in trapid control systems driven by your data.

Speaker 1: This might be the closest thing you can get to an aircraft carrier jet taking off, which will do zero to one hundred and sixty five miles an hour or two hundred and sixty five kilometers an hour in about two seconds. A Chinese regulator revealed that byd z Yangwang

brand is coming out with a new version of its U nine hypercar that will have roughly three thousand horse power.

The Track Edition features four five hundred and fifty five kilowatt electric motors, one at each wheel, and a more aggressive arrow package. It also looks like there could be

some upgrades to the brakes, wheels, and tires, and a sportier interior wouldn't be surprising either. The version of the

U nine that's already on sale in China has nearly thirteen hundred horse power and does zero to one hundred kilometers an hour in under two point four seconds, so the new Track Edition should challenge or beat other hyper cars like the Rimmet Novara, which only has about nineteen.

Speaker 2: Hundred horse power.

Speaker 1: Or maybe it's trying to take back the nurburg Ring lap record from Shao me and. The same regulator that

revealed the Yang Wang also detailed ranges for the new six seat version of the Tesla Model Y and the new rear drive long range version of the Model three.

On China's test cycle, the Model YL, which is one hundred and fifty millimeters or about six inches longer, gets seven hundred and fifty one kilometers or four hundred and sixty six.

Speaker 2: Miles of range.

Speaker 1: That would be about three hundred and fifty miles of range on the EPA test. The Model three Plus, which

combines a more powerful single rear motor with its more powerful battery pack for the first time, is rated at up to eight hundred and thirty kilometers or five hundred and fifteen miles of range. That's about eighty kilometers or

about fifty more miles of range compared to the all wheel drive version of the Model three with the same battery pack.

Speaker 2: Both models should be going on sales soon in China.

Speaker 1: The all new Dodge charger won't be evy only for much longer. Gas powered versions with Stalantis's turbocharged inline six

cylinder Hurricane engine will start hitting dealerships before the end of the year. They'll be available as two or four

door models and with both the standard output four hundred and twenty horse power version and the high output five hundred and fifty horse power version. The engines are madeed

to an eight speed automatic transmission and all wheel drive is standard. However, there's a driving mode that allows owners

to send one hundred percent of the power to the rear wheels, as well as a line lock mode for burnouts.

Speaker 2: Straight line performance.

Speaker 1: Is pretty good, with the high output version doing zero to sixty and three point nine seconds with the cooling and exhaust requirements for the combustion engine. Obviously, there's a

few changes to the front rear styling, but the interior looks mostly untouched. The standard eye output version of the

charger will start at just under fifty grand, while the high output version is five thousand dollars more. And speaking

of stillantis brands, Jeep revealed a single picture for the refreshed version of the Grand Wagoneer. The front end looks

a little more squared off and the grill appears to be inspired by the all electric Wagoneer S. Although we'll

have to wait and see if there's any new powertrain announcements, Jeep says the new Grand Wagoneer is coming out later this year. Ford is gonna get LFP batteries for its

evs from a plant it's building in the US with CTL, and now comes word that GM will import LFP batteries made by CATL in China for the new Chevy Bolt, though GM has a deal with LG Energy Solution to make LFP batteries in the US. The Bolt will go

into production late this year and the LG plant will not be ready for nearly two years. LFP batteries are

up to thirty five percent cheaper than NMC batteries, but any batteries imported from China get hit with a twenty five percent tariff, so that will wipe out a good chunk of the savings, and next year the tariff could go to eighty two percent.

Speaker 2: GM is not the.

Speaker 1: Only automaker looking to import Chinese EV batteries into the US, though, so is BMW.

Speaker 2: The battery company.

Speaker 1: AESC was building a plant in South Carolina to supply BMW with batteries, but with the EV segment in the US expected to stall out or even shrink, AESC halted construction.

BMW will start making its new class evs at its assembly plant in South Carolina late next year, so that's why it's considering a Chinese supplier, but it will undoubtedly want to find a.

Speaker 2: US source at some point.

Speaker 1: Last year, AESSE also stopped building another plant in Kentucky which was going to supply Mercedes Benz, so we could see a similar move from BMDA use German rival. And

one more quick note on batteries, Lighten, the American company that's developing lithium Solfur Batteries is buying up the assets of Norfolk, the European battery maker that went bankrupt. Though

Lighton didn't disclose what it paid for the assets, it sounds like it got a mega deal and it says this will help it expand more rapidly into the European market.

We're looking for some of your help. We've got a

survey we'd like you to fill out to help us do a bit of market research with a new sponsor we've got coming on board, Alex Partners. You can find

it on the postab on our YouTube channel, or we've got a link in today's transcript.

Speaker 2: There's only six questions and we.

Speaker 1: Just want your answers right off the top of your head, no need to research anything. Thanks, and that brings us

to the end of this week's reports. Have a great

weekend and we'll see you on Monday.

Speaker 4: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Bridgestone Solutions for Your Journey CSP, the composites solution partner Intrepid Control Systems over the y Air Engineering boost your game and thanks to the following YouTube and Patreon members.

Speaker 5: At CSP, we work with OEM engineers across the country on their journeys to lighter, safer, and more eco friendly vehicles.

Learn more at vcsp dot com.

Speaker 1: Making the life full of memories one road trip at a time, that's what really matters.

Speaker 2: Bridgetoon weather Peak Tires with.

Speaker 4: A seventy thousand mile womited warranty. Wards is the industry

leader for news data and analysis. That's why companies across

the globe subscribe to our premium service. Maybe even your

log in for subscriber access. Now check your company's intranet

for details and rely on Ward's auto dot com to keep you informed.