Autoline Daily May 20, 2026

AD #4301 - Stellantis and JLR Look to Join Forces; Mercedes' Insane AMG EV; All Chinese Brands Have U.S. Ambitions

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Company

Stellantis

Stellantis is a big car company. Here, they’re trying to improve their business and they’re working with other brands to build cars and share costs.

Concept

memorandum of understanding

A memorandum of understanding is basically a “we plan to work together” document. It usually doesn’t lock everything in legally, but it shows the companies are serious about cooperating.

Brand

Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover is a car brand group known for luxury and SUVs. In this story, it’s teaming up with Stellantis to work on new cars and technology for the U.S.

Company

Leap Motor

Leap Motor is a Chinese car company. The segment says Stellantis will help build Leap Motor electric cars in Europe, and they’ll be sold under the Leap Motor name.

Concept

joint venture

A joint venture is when two companies team up to run a project together. In this case, they share work like engineering and manufacturing and split ownership.

Company

dong Fung

Dong Fung is the other company in a joint venture with Stellantis. They’re splitting ownership and working together on things like engineering and manufacturing.

Brand

Voya

Voya is a car brand name. The segment says the joint venture will produce cars that are sold under the Voya label, not under Stellantis’s usual brands.

Term

FSD

FSD is Tesla’s self-driving software package. They test it both on special test tracks and on real roads, and they keep improving it based on what goes wrong or right.

Company

Tesla

Tesla is an EV company. In this segment, they’re working on self-driving software (FSD) and testing it in China while waiting for approval.

Term

Validation tracks are controlled test environments used to evaluate automated-driving software under repeatable conditions. The segment ties them to Tesla’s process for checking FSD performance and identifying problems that may show up after software updates.

Company

Geely

Geely is a Chinese car company. The segment says it wants to make cars in the U.S., using a Volvo plant in South Carolina.

Company

Great Wall

Great Wall is a Chinese car maker. Here they’re saying the U.S. is their top target market.

Company

Cherry

Cherry is a Chinese car company mentioned as trying to enter the U.S. market. The host says its leadership believes Chinese brands all want to sell in the U.S.

Term

plug-in hybrids

A plug-in hybrid can run on electricity like an EV, but it also has a gas engine as backup. If you don’t plug it in often, it ends up using the gas engine more than you might expect.

Term

generative AI

Generative AI is the kind of AI that can create answers or outputs, like a conversation. In cars, it’s meant to help the car understand what you ask and respond in a more natural way.

Term

cameras

Here, cameras are the car’s eyes. They help the AI figure out what’s happening around the car, like signs and lane lines.

Term

MEB plus front wheel drive platform

MEB plus is Volkswagen’s shared “EV building system” that multiple models can use. Using front-wheel drive helps keep the design simpler and can make the cars cheaper to build.

Car

Volkswagen ID Polo

Volkswagen ID Polo is a new electric model aimed at being more affordable. In this segment, they mention it starts under 25,000 euros and is part of Volkswagen’s new EV lineup.

Car

Volkswagen ID Cross

Volkswagen ID Cross is the next electric model they say will come after the ID Polo. It’s part of Volkswagen’s push into more affordable EVs.

Term

WLTP test cycle

WLTP is a standardized testing method that carmakers use to estimate how far a car can go. It’s done in a lab, so real-world range can be different.

Car

Skoda Epic

Skoda Epic is an EV they just revealed, and they talk about different battery sizes. They also give estimated range and motor output numbers (based on a standard test).

Term

kilowatt hours

Kilowatt-hours (kWh) tell you how much energy is stored in an EV battery. Bigger kWh usually means more potential range.

Car

Hyundai Palisade

The Hyundai Palisade is a larger SUV with three rows of seats, meant for families or groups. It’s made to be comfortable for everyday driving and longer trips. The podcast mentions it because Hyundai has offered different gas engine options on this kind of family SUV.

Term

axial flex motors

These are a type of electric motor. The key idea is that they’re designed to be compact and deliver a lot of power, which helps the car feel fast.

Term

kilowatts

Kilowatts are a measure of power. In EV talk, it can describe both how strong the motor is and how quickly the battery can charge.

Term

active air suspension system

This is a suspension system that can automatically change how high the car sits and how it absorbs bumps. It helps the car stay stable and comfortable depending on what you’re driving over.

Term

underbody active arrow elements

These are aerodynamic flaps under the car that can move. They deploy at certain speeds to help the car grip the road and cut through the air better.

Term

four wheel steering

Instead of only the front wheels steering, the rear wheels can steer too. That can make the car easier to maneuver and more stable at speed.

LIVE

Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Antonio Fillosa is leaving no stone

unturned and figuring out how to turn around Stilantis. This morning,

he announced that Stella and Jaguar land Rover have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop new products and technology in the United States. It's all part of the

global trend we're seeing of automaker's joining forces to cut the cost of developing new products. No other details were released,

but we sure think it could be a natural fit for Jeep in land Rover to collaborate and get into segments where they wouldn't have the volume to do it on their own. It's also pretty clear how Fellosa plants

to turn things around in Europe, and it's all about building Chinese cars that some of its underutilized plants. Two

weeks ago, Stilantis announced it will build electric cars for Leap Motor in Spain, and yesterday it announced its forming a joint venture with dong Fung in Europe to share sales, purchasing, engineering and manufacturing, probably at one of its plants in France.

Stillantis will hold fifty one percent of the joint venture, while dong Fung will hold the other forty nine percent.

This is an important turning point. Stillantis is going to

be making cars that are branded as Leap Motor and dong Fung's Voya brand, and not any under its own brands.

In the short term, it's a win win win situation.

Stillantis gets to boost its plant capacity, the Chinese automakers get to avoid terrace, and Europe gets to preserve some factory jobs. But in the long run, well let's see

how it goes. Tesla is counting on selling FSD subscriptions

in China to greatly boost the revenue it generates in a market where it's losing market share, So it just launched a hiring spree across nine of the biggest cities in China, aiming to recruit ninety technicians to drive its autonomous technology at validation tracks and on the open road.

They'll evaluate how FSD performs, looking for ways it can be improved, and watching out for problems or issues that crop up with software updates. Last year, Elon Musk said

FSD would get approval in China in February of this year, but that didn't happen. Some analysts believe that's why Must

joined President Trump in China last week. Now, Tesla says

FSD will be approved in China in the third quarter. Yesterday,

we were talking about Geely's plans to build cars in the US at Volvos plant in South Carolina, and that Great Wall says the US is the number one market that it wants to break into. Well, today Cherry said

it also wants to get into the US at what it calls a quote suitable time. In fact, the president

of Cherry International told reporters that all Chinese automakers want to get into the US market. And all this talk

comes about a week after President Trump visited China. So

it makes us wonder what was talked about behind closed doors.

Speaker 2: Making the life full of memories, one road trip at a time, that's what really matters.

Speaker 3: Rich done Weather Peak tires.

Speaker 4: With a seventy thousand mile women at warranty.

Speaker 1: A recent study of plug in hybrids in Europe found they pollute more in the real world than in the lab.

It's the result of owners not charging on a regular basis, which means they're running on their gas engines more often, but in North America, it's the opposite with Toyota and Lexus owners. The Toyota Research Institute just conducted a study

to find out how often plug and hybrid owners charged.

It analyzed data from six thousand p has in the US and Canada and found that on average, Toyota owners plug in seven out of every ten driving days and Lexus owners charge between eight and nine times per ten driving days. Only nine percent of those Toyota owners and

four percent of Lexus drivers were found to rarely charge.

The next big thing in cars is generative AI that people can talk to. It's already a hit in China

and it's spreading fast everywhere else. GM is deploying Gemini,

Tesla has Grock, Mercedes and VW are offering chat GPT, while Ford has its own AI assistant.

Speaker 2: Now.

Speaker 1: Volvo is demonstrating Google's Gemini in an Ex sixty at a Google conference this week with the driver's permission. The

feature allows Gemini to see and understand its environment from the perspective of the car by using its cameras. It

can help the driver remember what a road sign said, makes sense of lanemarkings, or provide information about a landmarker.

Restaurant gen Ai and Cars is in its infancy, but it's only a matter of time before it becomes standard equipment in every new car made. Some forecasts predict the

small electric car segment in Europe will be around four times bigger by twenty thirty three, and the Volkswagen Group hopes to snag twenty percent of those sales with its new electric urban car family. These are meant to be

more affordable evs that are all based on its updated MEB plus front wheel drive platform. Volkswagen recently launched the

ID Polo with a starting price under twenty five thousand euros.

It will be followed by the ID Cross. Coopra has

the Revolt, which starts around twenty six thousand euros. Scota

just revealed the Epic, and even Audi will have its own version called the A two E Tron. The Epic

comes with two battery sizes thirty seven point five and fifty one point five kilowatt hours, which provide an estimated three hundred and ten and four hundred and forty kilometers or one hundred and ninety two and two hundred and seventy three miles of range on the WLTP test cycle, and there's three motor outputs, with the most powerful making one hundred and fifty five kilowatts or two hundred and seven horse power. We haven't seen pricing for the Epic

yet or the Audi A two, which is doing some of its on road testing now. Audi says it will

unveil the model sometime this fall. The all new Kiaceltos

is now arriving in most major markets around the world.

It rides on a brand new platform. It's bigger than

the outgoing model, and it's kind of styled like a baby palisade. There's three gas engine options, including a hybrid,

expanded eight as functions, and new digital display screens. Mercedes

revealed the AMG GT four or Coop, which is its new all electric performance car that uses those axial flex motors we've talked so much about. It will feature three

of those motors, two at the rear and one at the front. There will be two versions at launch, one

that will make six hundred kilowatts or about eight hundred and fifteen horse power, and another that will make eight hundred and sixty kilowatts or nearly one thousand, one hundred and seventy horse power. But Mercedes says the architecture was

designed to handle over one thousand kilowats or thirteen hundred and forty horse power. The batteries for the AMGGT have

a unique chemistry and a special cooling system which allow it to charge add up to six hundred kilowats, going from ten to eighty percent in eleven minutes. A few

of the other highlights include an active air suspension system, four wheel steering, and two underbody active arrow elements, a front one that deploys at one hundred and twenty kilometers an hour or about seventy five miles an hour, and a rear one that deploys at one hundred and forty kilometers an hour or roughly eighty seven miles an hour.

Mercedes says orders will open and quote the coming days and pricing should start a bit over one hundred thousand bucks.

That wraps up today's report. Thanks for watching Autoline Daily.

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0:00

10:09

AD #4301 - Stellantis and JLR Look to Join Forces; Mercedes' Insane AMG EV; All Chinese Brands Have U.S. Ambitions

Stellantis

memorandum of understanding

Jaguar Land Rover

Leap Motor

joint venture

dong Fung

Voya

FSD

Tesla

validation tracks

Geely

Great Wall

Cherry

plug-in hybrids

generative AI

cameras

MEB plus front wheel drive platform

Volkswagen ID Polo

Volkswagen ID Cross

WLTP test cycle

Skoda Epic

kilowatt hours

Hyundai Palisade

axial flex motors

kilowatts

active air suspension system

underbody active arrow elements

four wheel steering

About this episode

Original notes