AD #4330 - Military Procurement Squeezing Auto Components; EREV Sales Crater In China; Polestar U.S. Dealers Likely to Sue Company
Autoline Daily
AD #4330 - Military Procurement Squeezing Auto Components; EREV Sales Crater In China; Polestar U.S. Dealers Likely to Sue CompanyAutoline Daily · Jul 1, 2026
A math formula that takes one month of car sales and predicts how many cars will be sold in the entire year, adjusting for the fact that people buy more cars in certain seasons.
The Ram is a large, popular pickup truck built for carrying heavy loads and driving on tough terrain. The specific model being discussed uses a special system where the truck is powered by electric motors, but carries a built-in gas engine that acts as a generator to recharge the battery on the go. This means you can drive it like an electric car but easily fill it up with gas when you cannot find a charging station.
An electric car that also has a small gas engine on board. The gas engine never turns the wheels; it only runs to generate electricity to charge the battery so you can keep driving without stopping to plug in.
An electric version of the popular Ford F-150 truck that also has a small gas engine on board. The gas engine doesn't turn the wheels; it just acts as a generator to recharge the battery so you don't run out of power on long trips.
Instead of plugging your electric car in and waiting for it to charge, you pull into a station where a machine swaps your empty battery for a fully charged one in just a few minutes.
Rules made by governments that say a car must be built using a certain amount of parts made locally in that region to get tax breaks or avoid extra fees.
The newest version of BMW's popular luxury SUV. It is designed to be sold as a gas car, a hybrid, or a fully electric vehicle, with the electric version having a huge battery for long driving range and very fast charging.
BMW's brand-new design blueprint for its future cars, built from the ground up to support advanced electric vehicle technology while still allowing for gas and hybrid models.
A feature that lets an electric car act like a giant backup battery, allowing you to use the power stored in your car to run your house during a blackout or power camp equipment.
A sleek, fully electric luxury SUV made by Polestar, a brand closely related to Volvo. It is designed to offer high performance and modern technology.
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Speaker 1: This says Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Sean is still out on jury duty,
but should be back again tomorrow. You know. As militaries
around the world ramp up weapons and munitions production, the auto industry is inevitably getting pulled into it all. In Europe, Mercedes, Volkswagen,
renaut and Daimler Truck are launching initiatives to make drones and land vehicles. The Trump administration recently accused byd and
by DEW of cooperating with the Chinese military, which both companies vehemently denied. In the United States, General Motors is
ramping up its defense business unit, and the Trump administration has asked both GM and Ford to explore getting into military production now. Reuter's reports that defense startups are slashing
the time and cost of making missiles by taking off the shelf tech like the chipsets and sensors that are used by automakers for their eight ass or Advanced driver Assistant systems. There's already a chip shortage emerging because of
the ramp up in data centers, which are cornering the market for d rams, specifically DDR four chips and I don't know about you, but twenty twenty six is starting to feel like nineteen fourteen or nineteen forty. And if
you have an uneasy feeling about what's going on, join the club. Okay, Now for some brighter news. It's the
beginning of a new month, which means we're starting to get June sales numbers from some of the automakers. The
Hondai group had a terrific month. Hondai sold more than
seventy seven thousand, five hundred vehicles, up eleven percent, and Kia sold more than seventy thousand, up ten percent, and that was all thanks to their hybrids. Honday's hybrid sales
shot up seventy four percent, Kia's skyrocketed one hundred and eighty seven percent. Hondai and Kia are both on pace
to set record sales in the US for a fourth consecutive year, and their luxury brand, Genesis also did well.
Sales were up ten percent. Honda is the only other
automaker that's reported so far. It was up seventeen percent
last month. Accurate was up thirteen percent. June sales are
forecasted to be up four to eight percent. And the
SAR is expected to hit somewhere between sixteen point one and sixteen point five million units, and we'll get a clearer picture of what's going on in the market once other automakers start to report their sales. RAM is supposed
to come out with a range extender pickup this year, for it is said to be working on a steel bodied F one fifty e REV at its Tennessee truck plant.
Because erevs are thought to be the perfect EV technology for full size pickups and SUVs because you can drive or tow all day long and never worry about range anxiety.
But the latest e revnues coming out of China is worth paying attention to. Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty five,
EREV sales in China grew an astounding seventy eight percent each year. Last year, sales hit one point two million units,
but this year the segment hit a brick wall. EREV
sales fell twenty five percent last month and they're down ten percent for the year. Gascou reports there's three reasons
for this number. One, there's fast charging available almost everywhere
in China. Second, the price of batteries has fallen so
much that erevs are no longer cheaper than BEVs, and third, erevs in China are now required to deliver at least one hundred kilometers of range and deliver thirty percent better fuel economy than an equivalent pure gasoline version even when the battery is depleted. You know, even though the entire
Chinese car market is down, experts at the China Passenger Car Association say the drop in EREV sales is not a blip and it lightly signals a change in the marketplace.
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: Vtalls, or vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, could be the next big thing in transportation, and a number of automakers want a piece of the action. Toyota and the vtall
startup Jobe Aviation announced they formed a joint venture to manufacture air taxis. They'll initially focus on establishing the groundwork
for commercial production, and in particular they're going to focus on improve productivity, quality, and cost. The jv will have
two directors from Jill and three from Toyota and Joby will grant the JV exclusive rights to manufacture its aircraft and license some of its intellectual property on a royalty free basis. Joby still needs government approval before it can
launch commercial operations in the US, but everyone expects it to get it. With fast charging in China that can
fill up above and five minutes becoming common, you'd think that battery swapping would become passe, but CATL, the largest TV battery maker in the world, is aggressively expanding its battery swapping network. Late last year, its network had seven
hundred stations in thirty nine cities, but in the second quarter of this year, CTL installed two hundred stations per month on average, and at the end of June the network grew to two thousand stations in one hundred and eighty cities. By the end of the year, CATL is
aiming to have three thousand stations in one hundred and ninety cities. The ACEA, which represents all the car companies
in Europe, is telling the EU that it should allow the UK, Turkey and Morocco to qualify for local content regulations, even though the UK embraced Brexit and left the EU, and even though Turkey and Morocco are not EU members.
The ACEA says this would protect manufacturing jobs in Europe and reduce the continent's reliance on Asia. And you know
who they're talking about when they say Asia. The EU
is pushing a maid in Europe plant that would require all ev incentives and government procurement to apply only to cars made with seventy percent European content. Bringing the UK,
Turkey and Morocco on board would make that target all the easier to hit. BMW launched its fifth gen X
five yesterday. It's built off the company's NEU class platform,
which accommodates ICE, PHEV and HAVE powertrains. The battery version,
by the way, uses one hundred and twenty millimeters cylindrical cells in a big one hundred and forty four kilowatt hour pack, which delivers four hundred and thirty five miles of range, offers fast charging thanks to its eight hundred volt electric architecture, and provides for bi directional charging. That
big pack helps explain why the electric version of the X five costs over eighty one thousand dollars. That's ten
thousand dollars more than the base ICE version. BMW put
out a ton of information about this vehicle, far more than we can squeeze into today's newscast, but we do have a link to the press release in today's show notes.
By the way, the X five is made at BMW's plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Not only is it BMW's
largest plant in the world on a dollar value basis, it's the largest exporter of vehicles in the United States.
Full Star dealers are devastated that the company will be prohibited from selling cars in the US with the twenty twenty seven model year. That's because its cars rely on
Chinese hardware and software involved with connectivity. Even though the
Polestar three is made at the Volvo plant in South Carolina, there are thirty two Polestar dealers in the United States, and they each invested millions of dollars to set up their franchises, and they claim that Polestar assured them its future cars would be compliant with US regulations. So we
can only imagine that the lawsuits are going to fly fast and thick. One rumor is that Pollstar actually wanted
the US Commerce Department to kick it out of the country.
According to this line of thinking, sales are so dismal that this would allow Polestar to walk away from the US market without having to compensate it stealers. But that
rumor also ignores the fact that Polestar will continue its operations in Canada. One thing's for sure, though sales our dismal.
Pollstar only sold a little over thirteen thousand cars globally in the first quarter, and the company is losing billions.
And that brings us to the end of today's report.
A reminder, out of Line will be off the air next week for our summer break, but please join us again here tomorrow and thanks to all our members for your critical support that makes this show possible.
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About this episode
Global military procurement is squeezing automotive component supply chains as defense startups snap up ADAS chips. Meanwhile, extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) sales are cratering in China due to rapid charging expansion and falling battery costs. In the U.S., Polestar dealers face a bleak future and potential lawsuits over upcoming Chinese software bans, while Hyundai and Kia celebrate massive hybrid-driven sales gains. Additionally, Toyota partners with Joby Aviation on air taxis, CATL expands its battery-swapping network, and BMW reveals the high-tech, high-voltage fifth-generation X5.
- Military Procurement Squeezing Auto Components - Hyundai, Kia, Genesis Sales Up Strong - EREV Sales Crater In China - Toyota, Joby to Make VTOLs - CATL’s Battery Swapping Boom - ACEA Wants UK, Turkey and Morocco in Local Content - BMW X5 Lauches Neue Klasse X5 - Polestar U.S. Dealers Likely to Sue Company
