A writeoff is when a company admits that some past spending isn’t going to pay off. Here, it’s tied to electric-vehicle plans, so Honda took a big financial loss.
Honda is the car company in this story. They said they lost money recently, and they’re planning to spend a lot over the next few years on different kinds of powertrains—especially hybrids.
Next gen hybrids are the next generation of cars that use both a gas engine and an electric motor. The idea is to make them more efficient and easier to drive than older hybrid designs.
This is a smart charging strategy that uses AI to manage how the battery gets charged. The idea is to charge quickly but in a way that’s gentler on the battery so it lasts longer.
Fast charging means charging an EV quickly using higher power. It can be harder on the battery, so the goal is to charge in a smarter way to help it last longer.
The Buick Century is a car model that Buick made as a mid-size sedan. It was designed to be a comfortable, everyday family-style car. It may be mentioned when people talk about older car lines and whether they still fit what buyers want.
This is Ford’s plan for how it designs a car and then gears it up to be built at scale. The idea is to make the process faster by having one team own the work end-to-end.
BorgWarner is the company of the CEO guest. They’re expected to talk about business challenges and tech trends.
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Speaker 1: This is Utoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. A poor performance in its most
recent fiscal year, fueled by massive EV writeoffs, is going to cost Honda CEO Tosha hero Mebe some of his influence over the company for the first time since going public in nineteen fifty seven. Honda posted an operating loss
a two point six billion dollar deficit for the fiscal year which ended in March. That's a huge drop from
last year's operating profit of seven point six billion dollars and can almost entirely be blamed on the company writing off nearly ten billion dollars in EV related investments. CEO
Mibe is no longer listed as the chairperson of the board of directors. That title has now been transferred over
to one of the other directors, which we think is a result of Honda's financial performance, but maybe there's a chance he can earn the position back. The company laid
out a new three year plan that it thinks will return its automobile business to profitability. It will invest nearly
forty billion dollars over the next three years into gas, hybrid and electric vehicles as well as software. However, the
vast majority, almost thirty billion, will go towards producing more gas and hybrid vehicles. By the end of the decade,
Honda plans to launch fifteen next gen hybrid models, mostly in North America, and will also get into larger hybrid vehicles.
It previewed two of those fifteen models, with a new Honda Sedan and an Accurate SUV prototype, which will ride on a new platform with a next gen hybrid system and a newly developed all wheel drive unit. Robotaxi services
continue to gain steam around the globe. Chinese autonomous vehicle
company we Ride released its first quarter earnings and its revenue shot up fifty eight percent to sixteen point eight million dollars, its gross profit increase fifty six percent to five point eight million, and its gross margin reached thirty five percent. In the same period, we Ride's number of
registered robotaxi users in China nearly double compared to a year ago. In each robotaxi vehicle in its domestic fleet
handled more than seventeen orders per day on average, with peak daily volumes reaching twenty eight rides per vehicle. Globally,
we Ride's robotaxi fleet is nearly thirteen hundred vehicles, and the company expects to deploy two hundred thousand autonomous driving vehicles, including robotaxis, over the next five years. Speaking of robotaxis,
Weimo announced it will expand its services in Miami, Austin, Atlanta, Houston, and the San Francisco Bay Area, boosting its coverage to fourteen hundred square miles in eleven cities. That's a twenty
seven percent increase from its current footprint. Weimo now has
a fleet of about thirty eight hundred vehicles, providing around five hundred thousand paid trips a week, and it's targeting a million paid rides a week by the end of the year. And in one last bit of self driving news,
Chinese automaker Shaomi introduced an open source autonomous driving AI system that combines multiple models and reasoning within one framework, which it claims delivers stronger performance while also improving speed in accuracy. The company plans to fully open source both
the model and its underlying codebase so developers and researchers can help advance autonomous driving with AI.
Speaker 2: Knowing that a little rain won't slow down your day, That's what really matters. Bridgetone toronts of hyattract hires confident
control in wet conditions.
Speaker 1: AI could potentially add years of life to an EVY battery.
Researchers Technology University in Sweden developed a new AI based charging method that optimizes the electrical current going into a battery during fast charging sessions. They claim a battery can
be fast charged an additional seven hundred and three full cycles with their technology, a nearly twenty three percent increase, and this is definitely an area that automakers are looking into.
We know the Hondai Group has said it's working on an AI based battery management system for its next gen ev architecture. Almost all legacy automakers are organized into silos. Design, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, sales, marketing,
and finance are organized into departments that typically don't interact enough with each other, and that century old business structure just isn't competitive in today's fast moving industry. So Ford
and the Hundai Group are reorganizing to break down the silos and move to cross functional product teams. Hyundai's chairman
A U Sung Chunk says that organizing into teams that are formed with people from different departments will help engineers understand what designers are envisioning, and salespeople will provide faster feedback to product development. Meanwhile, have you seen the interview
we posted with Ford's chief operating officer. We interviewed them
to get a better understanding of Ford's reorganization called product creation and Industrialization, and it's about getting rid of the silos too, because it's a structure that moves too slow.
Design hands off to engineering, which hands off to manufacturing, which hands off to purchasing, and so on and so on.
Not anymore, one unified team is responsible for a vehicle from the initial sketch until it rolls off the assembly line.
It's all about speed to market, quality control, and cost reduction.
Kumar gl Holtras says, for it is still committed to EVS, but the new organization will develop vehicles that can pivot between IC hybrids and extended range of electrics based on market demand. The new organization is a massive cultural shift
for Ford, but the COO says it's necessary to compete with Tesla and Chinese OEMs. There's a lot of great
info in that interview, which is on the Auto Line website and on our YouTube channel and By the way, the Auto Line Stock Index shows that Ford stock was up more than thirteen percent in pre market trading. Investors
really warmed up to the idea of Ford creating an energy storage business after Morgan Stanley put out a report saying Ford Energy could generate twenty five percent gross margins and three hundred and forty six million dollars in EBIT earnings.
By twenty twenty eight, the stock was trading at thirteen dollars and fifty seven cents, giving the company a fifty four billion dollar market cap. And we've got a great
Auto Line after Hours coming up this afternoon. Joe Faduel,
the CEO of Borg Warner, is our gap and we'll get into everything from competing in China to the potential impact of humanoid robots. Chris Hops from The Wall Street
Journal will also be on the show, So join John and Gary when we go live at three pm Eastern Time today. That's rap for this 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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Speaker 4: We help businesses respond decisively to their most critical challenges, from urgent performance improvement to enterprise wide transformation. We work
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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.
About this episode
Honda’s latest financials and EV writeoffs set the stage for its hybrid push, with plans to roll out fifteen next-gen hybrid models by the end of the decade. The discussion then pivots to robotaxi momentum, where we Ride reports strong daily order volumes per vehicle. Hyundai and Ford are also reshaping how they build EV tech—breaking down silos and moving toward cross-functional teams. Finally, researchers say AI-based fast-charging could help extend EV battery life.
- Honda Plans 15 New Hybrids - WeRide Posts Gross Profit in Q1 - Waymo Expands Footprint 27% - Xiaomi Opens AI AV System to Everyone - AI Could Extend EV Battery Life - Hyundai Talks Breaking Down Silos - Massive Cultural Shift at Ford - Ford's Stock Shoots Up
