An independent brand is a car company that runs on its own and is not controlled by a bigger company. This can change how they sell their cars.
Car
Volvo EX60
The Volvo EX60 is a new electric car that has been designed to be efficient and powerful. It offers different battery sizes and options for how the wheels are powered, making it versatile for different driving styles.
The SPA 3 platform is a special framework that Volvo uses to build its electric cars. It helps make the cars better and easier to produce by allowing for different designs and battery setups.
A battery pack is what stores energy in an electric car, allowing it to run. The Volvo EX60 has different sizes of battery packs to give drivers options for how far they can go on a single charge.
Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful a car's engine or motor is. The Volvo EX60 has different versions that can produce different amounts of horsepower, affecting how fast it can go.
Zero to sixty time tells you how fast a car can go from a complete stop to sixty miles per hour. The Volvo EX60 can do this in just 3.9 seconds, which is quite fast for an electric vehicle.
Air suspension is a system that uses air instead of metal springs to support the vehicle's weight. It can change the height of the car, making it more comfortable to drive on different types of roads.
Ride height is how high or low a car sits above the ground. Changing it can help the car handle better or make it more comfortable to drive.
LIVE
Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Last month, the state of Colorado
granted a dealer license to Scout Motors, which will allow the brand to sell directly to consumers. But now Volkswagon, Audi,
and Portia dealers in Colorado are suing the state, claiming it misrepresented the law when granting the license. The heart
of the issue is whether Scout should be considered independent from VW or not. The VW Group, which Scout is
a part of, claims it's an independent brand and therefore can sell direct to consumers, but dealers say Scout isn't independent since it has financial backing from VW and should be the same as its other brands like Audi and Portie.
Similar lawsuits have been filed by dealers in California and Florida, but unlike Colorado, those dealers aren't suing the states. They're
suing Scout and the VW Group. And speaking of Scout,
not going to want to miss today's Auto Line After hours, We've got Ryan Decker, the company's VP of Brandon's Strategy, coming on the show. He was the second person hired
at Scout, so he should be a great mind to tap to learn more about the company, join us when the show goes live at three pm Eastern time today.
Now going back to Volkswagen, it's in full slash and burn mode to cut costs, and it's already showing results.
It ended twenty twenty five with seven billion euros in free cash, a full billion more than analysts expected, and it's stock jump nearly six percent on the news. But
VW generated that cash by delaying EV programs, by delaying payments to suppliers, and by cutting R and D and capex.
Going forward, it's cutting twenty billion euros from its five year plan. VW is also cutting its board of management
from twenty nine executives down to nineteen, with control of all product development, procurement and manufacturing now being centralized in Wolfsburg, Germany.
In all, VW says it will eliminate thirty five thousand jobs in Germany by the end of the decade. Canada's
Prime Minister Mark Karney wants to allow Chinese evs into the country, but the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, is flat out against it. He's calling for a boycott of
Chinese cars, and he's not alone. The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers
Association is completely against it too. It represents gm Ford's
to Lanti's, Toyota and Honda, which make cars in Canada.
We'll have to see how this plays out. The USMCA
gets renegotiated this year, and Mark Karney may have decided to use the threat of Chinese imports as a bargaining chip with the Trump administration. The Chinese government already had
to step into force automakers to pay their suppliers in a timely manner, but it sounds like suppliers are still getting squeezed in other ways. In China. Gascou reports that
is common for automakers to request price cuts over ten percent, and that's eating into suppliers profit margins. Margins currently sit
around four point four percent, but that's expected to drop to two to three percent, and it's particularly bad for interior suppliers, with some already dropping below that three percent profit margin. On top of that, brand consolidation among automakers
in China could force the same thing to happen in the supplier industry. One executive said that the top five
automakers in China control about thirty to thirty five percent of the market, but with consolidation, expects that to jump to fifty to sixty percent by twenty thirty and pressure on four and tier ones is ramping up two because more foreign automakers are turning to local suppliers in China.
Speaker 2: 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: Used evs are coming off lease at record rates in the US market. Cox Automotive reports that in twenty twenty five,
five percent of the cars coming off lease were evs.
This year that number will more than double the twelve percent, and by twenty twenty eight it will nearly double again when it hits twenty three percent. This is going to
present consumers with much more affordable evs, and you can bet that everyone in the industry will be watching to see how well they sell. After teasing the model for
the last couple of weeks, Volvo fully revealed the all new Ex sixty. As we previously reported, it rides on
parent company gl's SPA three platform, which brings a number of upgrades to Volvos evs that includes things like faster charging, large aluminum castings, and sell the body technology where the battery becomes part of the vehicle structure. Sell the body
provides manufacturing advantages, reduces park count, which also reduces cost, and allows Volvo to stuff more batteries into the pack.
The EX sixty has three batteries, eighty ninety one and one hundred and twelve kilowat hours of usable energy, and that last pack is actually bigger than the one in the EX ninety, even though the EX ninety is a larger vehicle. The two smaller batteries both provide about three
hundred miles are roughly four hundred and eighty kilometers of range, give or take twenty miles depending on the wheel size.
Because one is paired with rear wheel drive and the other is paired with all wheel drive, the big battery provides up to four hundred miles or about six hundred and forty kilometers of range. The EX sixty has three
main setups, a rear drive version that makes about three hundred and seventy horse power, an all wheel drive version with just over five hundred horses and another all wheel drive version with roughly six hundred and seventy horse power.
The latter does zero to one hundred kilometers an hour, which is similar to zero to sixty and three point nine seconds, and it can toe up to twenty four hundred kilograms or nearly fifty three hundred pounds. There's two
suspension setups for the Ex sixty as well. The standard
features hydraulic shocks, but an active system that comes with air suspension is also available. That air suspension system is
standard on the new cross Country trim, but it has the ability to add another twenty millimeters or about three quarters of an inch of ride height on top of a twenty milimeter lift that the cross Country already comes standard with. Orders are open for the Ex sixty in
Europe right now, and the US is set to follow in late spring. As we reported yesterday, investors are bullish
on Hundai's plans to sell humanoid robots and integrate them into its assembly plants. Its stock is way up since
the beginning of the year, and it now has a larger market cap than General motors. But not everyone is
excited about Hyundai's plans. The automaker's union in South Korea
is warning the company about deploying the humanoids in plants without the union's approval. Hundai is aiming to start using
the robots in twenty twenty eight, first at its plant in Georgia, but its Korean union says that without an agreement quote, not a single robot using new technology will be allowed to enter the workplace. Chinese automaker Jili is
aiming to become a top five automaker by the end of the decade. The company, including all of its brands,
says it's aiming to sell six and a half million vehicles globally by twenty thirty, and it expects one third of those sales to come from outside of China. Based
on twenty twenty four sales, that would put Jili ahead of General Motors and behind only Toyota, the VW group in the Hondai Group. Jili says it and all of
its brands sold four million vehicles in twenty twenty five, which already puts it in the top ten globally. That
brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for
tuning in, and I hope to see you later today.
Speaker 3: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Alex Partners.
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About this episode
A significant legal battle is brewing in Colorado as Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche dealers sue the state over Scout Motors' direct-to-consumer sales license. The episode also covers Volkswagen's aggressive cost-cutting measures, including job reductions and delays in EV programs, while Hyundai faces pushback from its union regarding plans to introduce humanoid robots in assembly plants. Geely aims to become a top-five automaker by 2030, and the rising trend of used EVs coming off lease is highlighted, promising more affordable options for consumers.
- VW, Audi Dealers Sue Colorado - VW's "Slash and Burn" Cost-Cutting - Canadians Who Are Against Chinese EVs - Automakers Squeeze Suppliers in China - Used EVs Hit Market at Record Rate - Volvo Unveils EX60 EV - Hyundai Union: "Not a Single Robot" - Geely's Roadmap to Overtake GM
