AD #4115 - Geely Catching Up to BYD; Lucid Gravity SUV Falls Flat; Tesla Sales Soar in Norway Despite Musk Bias

Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. And here's an interesting development. Car

buyers in Norway have shrugged off their anti Musk feelings and are ordering Tesla's, especially the new model. Why in

the first half of the year, sales shot up twenty four percent. Reuter's reports that buyers seem to be willing

to turn a blind eye because they love Tesla's supercharging network and the ease of using the cars tech. However,

sales in Europe have been a disaster so far this year, down forty percent. So now the question is will the

rest of Europe follow Norway's lead and start buying more Teslas or is this just something that's unique to Norway.

BYD is the shining example of China's booming automotive industry.

Everyone seems to be talking about it. It's always BYD

this and BYD that. Last year, at passed Honda and

Nissan in global sales, and it surpassed Ford in operating profits.

But guess what now, Gili is catching up to BYD.

In the first half of the year, Jilie sailed past the Volkswagen Group and is now the second largest car company in China. Even though BYD's sales grew thirty three percent,

Jilie's grew even faster, up forty seven percent. In July,

jili was only sixty one thousand units behind BYD, and analyst believe it will continue to maintain its growth as more new models hit the market. You know it's hard

being a startup car company. Now comes word that VinFast

founder fam Nat Vuang is pouring another one and a half billion dollars of his own money into the company as it continues to post losses. And this will be

on top of the two billion dollars that he's already put into the company. In return for his latest investment,

he's gonna get vin Fast R and D assets, which will be spun off into a separate company. Vinfaest is

on a major expansion push into India and Indonesia as it pivots away from the US and Europe, where its sales have largely failed to materialize. And that makes us

wonder if it will ever build its two billion dollar US EVY assembly plant in South Carolina, which was supposed to open a year ago. Now VinFast says it will

open in twenty twenty eight, but local media reports that absolutely nothing is happening at the construction site and talk about hard luck EV startup stories. Lucid Motors kicked off

production of its Gravity Suv in December, but car buyers don't seem to be very interested. According to S and

P Global Mobility, only nine Gravity SUVs were registered in the US in the first half. By comparison, Lucid's Air

Sidan had forty seven hundred and eighty registrations. Lucid doesn't

dist S and p's numbers, but it says they're misleading because there's a lag between when vehicles are sold in when they're registered. It says sales of the Gravity are

actually in the multiple hundreds. It also blames production delays.

Even so, that's a pretty low number, and Loocid is counting on that suv to dramatically boost its sales.

Speaker 2: Performance. That shines even in the rain. That's what really matters.

Rich don't pretends to tires improved grip in wet conditions.

Speaker 1: Autonomous vehicle company pony Ai only reported a small amount of revenue in its second quarter results, but we're impressed by its rate of growth. Revenue came into roughly twenty

one and a half million dollars, which was up over fifty percent compared to Q one and up nearly seventy six percent OVERLA next year. Its robotaxi operations generated only

one and a half million dollars in the quarter, but that was also up almost one hundred and sixty percent compared to last year, and pony Ai has the potential to keep this growth going too. It currently has over

five hundred robotaxis in its fleet, but it expects to reach one thousand before the end of the year, and its newest generation of vehicles are cheaper and longer lasting as well. It slashed its autonomous hardware costs by seventy

percent compared to the previous system, and the new vehicles offer a design lifespan of ten years or six hundred thousand kilometers, which is about three hundred and seventy three thousand miles.

Speaker 2: This has got to.

Speaker 1: Be a nightmare scenario for Stalantas CEO Antonio Filosa. He's

under enormous pressure from the Italian government to boost Fiat's production in Italy, but the company's sales and production are falling, and now comes news that Chinese automaker Done Fung is making a big push into Italy. It just got an

order from an Italian distributor to sell nine thousand vehicles a year and is also growing its sales network. It

currently has twenty dealerships in Italy and by the end of the year it plans to have forty. To help

grow awareness of the brand, Dong Fung is setting up pop up stores across the country and is also demonstrating technology like its driver assistance system, and for everyone it sells it probably means that Fiat will build one fewer car.

Shanghai Hydrogen Propulsion Technology, or Shipped for short, seems to be unfazed by any trade war going on between the US and China. It got what it calls a quote

bulk order from a US client for its fuel cell stack and says it just delivered the first small batch.

The unnamed client is using the stack in mobile power generators, so now Shipped is trying to expand into the same area in Germany, Switzerland and the UAE. Those fuel cells

can be used as mobile charging stations for evs, as well as for providing power at events like concerts or fares.

Yang Wang made headlines when it boasted that a version of its U nine hypercar would come with nearly three thousand horse power. But there's at least one skeptic, the

founder and CEO of Rimat Mate Rimat says he doubts whether the vehicle can actually deliver all that power due to battery, motor inverter entire limitations. He estimates that the

car would already have to be going one hundred and fifty miles an hour or over two hundred and forty kilometers an hour to unleash all three thousand horse power at once, So Rimat might be onto something. We think

this car is more about setting track records because the standard version of the U nine with nearly thirteen hundred horse power is still about thirteen seconds slower on the Nurburgring compared to cars from Rimet and show me. You

all heard about Ford's new universal EVY platform that was developed by its skunk Works team in Silicon Valley. The

platform significantly cuts costs and can support multiple body types.

Part of the cost savings come from a new production process that reduces parts and assembly time. But we want

to know what you think about the program. Will it

succeed or will it fail or will it be something in between. We have a poll right now on our

YouTube channel that's open to everyone. If you'd like to participate,

just click the post tab. By the way, this is

going to be a major topic on Autoline after hours later today, the show goes live at three pm Eastern Time on our website and YouTube channel, and I hope to see you there, but that's a rap for this show.

Thanks for tuning in.

Speaker 3: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Bridgetone Solutions for your journey CSP the composites solution partner Intrepid Control Systems over the air engineering boost your game and thanks to the following YouTube and Patreon members.

Speaker 4: Developing today's vehicles, issues can happen in an instant. What

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

Meet Wireless Neova 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 un license resolve your problems using OTA, allowing your executives to oversight throughout the process.

Wireless nearby cloud. Your vehicle update solution in production and

on the road in trepid control systems driven by your data.

Speaker 3: 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.

Lucid Gravity

Lucids Air

About this episode

Original notes