AD #4199 - Volkswagen Shares Small, Affordable EV Details; Brazil #1 In Armored Car Sales; China Issues New Rules to End EV Price War

Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Whenever you want a loan, the

bank always wants something in return. So JP Morgan Chase

is going to give its wealthy customers in Europe the option of using their classic car collections as collateral. It

already allows clients in the US to do this, and now it's expanding to six countries in Europe. It turns

out wealthy individuals are increasingly using car collections to diversify their fortunes. That's because prices for classic cars from Ferrari

to Portia and Mercedes have outperformed the stock market in recent years, and high on cars are the most popular asset with young rich people, ranking ahead of private jets, super yachts, as well as wine and art collections. Brazil

has some of the highest violent crime rates in the world, and that propelled it into the top armor car manufacturer in the world. For example, it sells four times as

many armor cars as Mexico, which is number two in sales.

The business is now worth six hundred and sixty million dollars a year in Brazil and is projected to grow by a third in the next two years. Customers generally

buy a regular vehicle from a dealership then take it to an armoring company, which costs about fifteen thousand dollars.

Armored car production is expected to increase sixteen percent this year in Brazil to forty thousand units, and there are now nearly four hundred thousand armored vehicles on Brazilian roads.

More details are coming in on Volkswagen's new family of small evs for Europe that will cost under twenty five thousand euros. They're all using the updated MEB plus platform,

which is front wheel drive based and features a newly developed electric motor that is lighter and has fewer components.

It comes in four power outputs, ranging from eighty five to one hundred and sixty six kilowatts or about one hundred and fifteen to two hundred and twenty five horse power.

The two less powerful motors can be paired with a thirty seven kilowad hour LFP battery pack. However, we haven't

seen any range figures for these setups yet. The two

more powerful motors are paired with a fifty two kilowat hour NMC battery pack and will provide up to four hundred and fifty kilometers or nearly two hundred and eighty miles of range. The new Volkswagen ID Polo will be

available with all of these setups when it launches in April of next year, and is expected to have a starting price under twenty five thousand euros. Cooper's version, called

the Revolt, will actually come out a month earlier, but it will only have the more powerful motors, so it will have a starting price of twenty six thousand euros.

The ID Polo and Revolt will be built at one plant in Spain, which could eventually have the capacity to build six hundred thousand hybrids ICE Ease and b EV's a year, while another facility in Spain will build an additional VW model as well as a sco to EV on the same MEB plus platform. The company hopes to

grab twenty percent of Europe's small EV segment with this new family of vehicles. General motors decision to remove Apple

CarPlay and Android Auto from almost all of its new electric.

Speaker 2: Vehicles didn't sit well with some customers.

Speaker 1: It's also planning to remove the feature from its upcoming gas powered cars too, But if you really want the feature, there's now a new third party hack to bring it back. However,

the process does seem a bit complicated, especially if you're not tech savvy. It involves buying a fifty five dollars adapter,

and there are some limitations. It only works with Apple

CarPlay wirelessly. But if you really want a GM car

and you really want Apple Car Play, there is a workaround.

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.

Speaker 1: BYD is developing interesting technology to make electric motors more efficient at higher vehicle speeds. CARNWS China reports that it's

filed several patents for what's called a variable flux permanent magnet synchronous motor. From the way I understand it, there's

adjustable or movable components inside the housing that regulate the magnetic field of the motor so it's more efficient across all operating conditions. Conventional electric motors provide a lot of

torque at low speeds, but consume a lot of energy while cruising at higher speeds. That's what BYD is trying

to improve. But no figures on what kind of improvement

we could expect we're given. However, BYD does have a

bit of a leg up on the competition. From what

I could find, it only looks like Stilantis and Gli are working on similar technology. Sales of evs are still

growing in China, but that growth has slowed dramatically. They

were up only three percent in November. That's making exports

all the more important for Chinese automakers, and to keep sales strong, they're taking their price war to other markets.

In Thailand, SAIC cut the price of its MG four EV by twenty seven percent, BYD cut the price of the Seal EV by thirty eight percent, and Cherry's Jco J five hit the showroom floors with promotional discounts. Bloomberg

reports that some dealers are selling evs at or even.

Speaker 2: Below cost, and as a result, EV.

Speaker 1: Sales in Thailand shot up twenty percent in the last two months, and Chinese automakers are great market share away from the Japanese automakers who have dominated that market for decades. Meanwhile,

back in China, the government is deeply worried that the price war will cripple its auto industry. It even gave

its worries a name involution, which refers to a shrinking down.

So the government is proposing guidelines to stop automakers from selling cars below the cost of production, and it wants to stop dealerships from offering discounts or rebates. The government

promises quote significant legal risks if they don't comply. Well,

here's our Auto line insight. It's gonna be fascinating to

see how this plays out. China has massive overcapacity, enough

to satisfy the US and European markets put together.

Speaker 2: That's the root cause of the price war.

Speaker 1: Automakers need to slash prices to keep sales going so they don't have to close their assembly plants. But the

result is that fewer than a handful of automakers are profitable.

And yet if prices start to go up, sales will go down and factories will start to close. And so

the government's moves to try and prevent the auto windustry from shrinking is likely going to kick off a restructuring that's going to see the elimination of dozens of automakers and tens of millions of units of capacity. And in

early warning here Auto Line is going to shut down for the last two weeks of the year to give the crew here a well deserved break. We'll be here

for the rest of the week and back at it early in the new year, right in time for cees, and we hope to see you back here again tomorrow for yet another report from Autoline Daily.

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