AD #4336 - Ford Reimagines 1964 Concept Using AI; Rising Costs Drag Down Chinese Automakers; Range Rover Sport Electric Coming Soon

AD #4336 - Ford Reimagines 1964 Concept Using AI; Rising Costs Drag Down Chinese Automakers; Range Rover Sport Electric Coming Soon Autoline Daily · Jul 17, 2026

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Term

chip shortage

Cars need computer chips for lots of functions. When there aren’t enough chips available, it can make cars cost more and be harder to build.

Term

generative AI

Generative AI is a type of computer program that can create new responses or content, not just follow fixed commands. In cars, it can power smarter voice conversations and help you set up options.

Term

electroluminescent inserts

These are small light-emitting pieces built into the car’s body. When powered, they glow to make the trim stand out, especially at night.

Term

yoke

A yoke is a different steering shape than a round steering wheel—more like a U-shaped handle. It changes how you grip and steer the car.

Term

electrochromatic technology

Electrochromatic glass can darken or change its tint when you apply electricity. That helps block bright heat and sunlight without you needing to add a separate shade.

Term

LFP battery pack

An LFP battery is a type of lithium battery chemistry. It’s generally valued for being stable and lasting a long time, and it helps determine the car’s driving range.

Term

NMC pack

An NMC battery is another type of lithium battery chemistry. It’s commonly used to help achieve more energy in the battery, which can influence how far the car can go on a charge.

Term

Supplier Cost Reduction effort

It was a Chrysler program that encouraged its parts suppliers to find ways to cut costs. If the suppliers found savings, Chrysler shared that benefit with them.

Term

Supplier Product Enhancement Reward

SUPER is a program that rewards suppliers for making better products or improvements. The goal here is to get suppliers more cooperative by sharing the benefits of cost-saving ideas.

Term

hypercar program

WEC hypercar is the top racing class in endurance racing. It’s a set of rules that affects how manufacturers build their fastest race cars for long events.

Term

coyote V eight

The Coyote V8 is Ford’s V8 engine used in some Mustangs. They’re using it as the starting point for a race version, then changing it heavily for the hypercar.

Term

hybrid system

A hybrid system means the car uses more than just gasoline power. It combines the engine with an electric part to help the car accelerate and manage energy.

Car

The Ford Mustang is a sporty car made by Ford, and it can come with a strong V8 engine. The “Coyote” V8 mentioned in the podcast is an engine that can be changed to make more power. People talk about it a lot because it’s popular for performance upgrades.

Concept

EV segment

The EV segment just means the market for fully electric cars. The speaker is saying they don’t think EVs will grow to dominate right away, but they still plan to compete in the future.

Car

Honda Prologue

The Honda Prologue is an all-electric SUV made by Honda. The podcast is saying Honda plans to stop selling it, which can affect whether you can find new ones and how long support will be available. If you’re considering one, it’s important to check warranty and service coverage for the model year you buy.

Term

interior door trim

Interior door trim is the inside panel on the door—where you see the materials and decorative pieces. This segment is talking about special inserts used there.

Term

backlighting

Backlighting is when light is put behind a panel so it looks like it’s glowing. Designers use it to make interior pieces look lit up at night.

Term

three layer process

It’s a way of making parts with a 3D printer by building them layer by layer. That layering helps the part look like bamboo, even though it’s actually printed plastic.

Term

mass manufacturer

A mass manufacturer is an automaker producing vehicles at high volume rather than in small, boutique runs. The comment suggests the 3D-printed parts are large enough to be practical at scale, not just a one-off prototype.

Car

range Rover Sport EV

This is the electric version of the Range Rover Sport. The big deal is that it uses a modern high-voltage EV setup (an 800-volt system), which is meant to help with charging and power delivery.

Car

Land Rover Range Rover

The Range Rover is a luxury SUV made by Land Rover. The podcast is talking about the lineup adding an all-electric version, which means it would be powered by a battery instead of a traditional engine. That matters because electric cars can have different maintenance needs than gas cars.

Term

plug in hybrid setup

A plug-in hybrid has both a gas engine and an electric motor. You can charge it from a plug, and it can run on electricity for shorter trips.

Term

bespoke eight hundred volt platform

An 800-volt EV is designed to move more power with less current. That can make charging faster and the electronics more efficient.

Term

EPA test

The EPA test is a standardized lab test the U.S. uses to estimate how far an EV can go on a charge. Your real range may be different, but it’s useful for comparing cars.

Term

kilowatt hour battery pack

A kWh battery pack is basically the battery’s storage size. Bigger usually means more potential range, but driving conditions still matter.

LIVE

Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Even though China controls the market

for many raw materials, its automakers are still vulnerable to rising commodity prices. Six major Chinese automakers have issued earnings

forecast for the first half of the year, and four of them expect losses mainly due to rising prices of raw materials and components, while the other two expect to remain profitable, they've seen their net profits tumble by sixty percent or more. Unlike other global automakers, Chinese companies are

also dealing with the chip shortage caused by growing demand from data centers, which is leading to higher chip prices.

In addition to the rising costs, car sales in China slump twenty percent in the first half of the year, and that's putting even more pressure on automaker's cash flow and margins. Did you know that yesterday was National AI Day?

We didn't, but generative AI sure is showing up in all parts of the auto industry. Yesterday, Honda announced its

adding Google Gemini to most of its lineup in the US for more conversational voice assistance in their cars. Today,

BMW announced it's using chat GPT for customers to configure cars using their smartphones, tablets, or laptops. And Ford is

using Genai to bring a nineteen sixty four concept car back to life. The Aurora was a futuristic station wagon

that Ford showed off at the nineteen sixty four World's Fair in New York, yep The same World's Fair where the Mustang made its debut. So Ford used Jenai to

bring the car back to life and show off how forward thinking its designers were sixty two years ago. The

Aurora had twelve headlamps for great nighttime visibility. It had

electroluminescent inserts on the body side to highlight the trim.

Instead of a steering wheel, it had a yoke half a century before Tesla thought of using one. The glass

canopy used electrochromatic technology to block out hot sunshine. It

demonstrated the possibilities of onboard navigation well before GPS was invented.

There was an onboard TV to keep the kids entertained on a long trip, and there was an intercom so the people in the back could easily talk to the driver.

It's really valuable to go back and look at the ideas designers and engineers had long ago. They pretty much

thought of everything, even if they didn't have the modern electronics and materials to put it into production. There's probably

some forgotten gems out there that we could use for inspiration today. Volkswagen is now taking pre orders in Europe

for the entry level ID Polo. The more affordable version

starts at just under twenty five thousand euros and features a thirty seven kilowad hour LFP battery pack, which provides three hundred and thirty four kilometers or two hundred and seven miles of range. VW also offers a larger fifty

two kilowad hour NMC pack, which starts at just under thirty four thousand euros. That version launched a few weeks ago,

and VW says it already has twenty thousand orders.

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: Back in the nineteen nineties, Chrysler had a supplier purchasing program it called SCORE, which stood for Supplier Cost Reduction effort.

It encouraged suppliers to come up with cost savings ideas and Chrysler split the savings fifty to fifty with them.

The program was wildly popular with suppliers, and back then Chrysler had some of the highest profit margins in the industry.

But then came the Daimler Chrysler days and the company went back to beating up suppliers to get the lowest possible price. As a result, supplier relations went down the

drain and they got even worse at Stilantis under CEO Carlos Stavares, who put even more pressure on suppliers to cut prices. But now the company has come full circle.

Automotive News reports that Stillantis has a new program called the Supplier Product Enhancement Reward or SUPER for short, and it's revived the idea of splitting cost savings ideas fifty to fifty. You watch if this is properly implemented, Stillantis

is going to dramatically improve its supplier relations. Ford is

going to compete for the overall victory at the twenty four Hours of Labah for the first time since the early nineteen eighties, and it just hit a major development milestone since first announcing it would enter the twenty twenty seven WEC hypercar program. At the begin getting a twenty

twenty five, the racing team fired up the engine inside of the chassis for the first time. That power plan

is based on the Coyote V eight that you can get in a Mustang, but it's bored out to five point four leaders and heavily modified in house by Ford and Michigan. It's also paired with a hybrid system which

was all installed to the chassis that's being co developed with Areca. And the good news for you and I

is that this is meant to be a direct link to the company's production performance vehicles. Ford's new hypercar will

start track testing in just a couple of weeks. You

may have noticed a lot of media coverage today that Honda is getting rid of the Prologue EV. As you know,

we get some of the top executives in the industry on our shows, and yesterday on Autoline After Hours, we had Lance Wolfer, the vice president of sales for American Honda.

He said it's backing out of the EV segment for now, but are not giving up on it. Here's what he

had to say.

Speaker 3: We don't anticipate the market getting beyond ten percent in any kind of hurry. I think that it will grow,

and we plan, you know, in the future, to be able to be competitive in that part of the market.

But two years ago, I would have told you was going to get there in a much bigger hurry than it is today.

Speaker 1: Speaking of EV's, yesterday we reported on the Lexus es EV.

One tidbit to add about that car is that Lexus is making a big deal about the inserts it's using on the interior door trim. They look like bamboo and

feel like bamboo, and Lexus says the inserts recreate the depth and flow of bamboo. But the key word there

is recreate. That's because it's not real bamboo. It's three

D printed plastic. Lexus designers wanted to backlight the inserts

at night, but they couldn't do that with natural bamboo, so they turned to a three D layering process that allows for backlighting yet makes it look like bamboo. We'd

love to see how they print that. These are fairly

big parts, and we think these might be the largest three D printed pieces used by a mass manufacturer before the end of the year, the range Rover Sport lineup will expand to include an all electric version, joining a powertrain lineup that already includes both gas and diesel six cylinders, a gas V eight, and a plug in hybrid setup.

Styling Wise, they all look pretty much the same, but the range Rover Sport EV is reported to be based on the same eight hundred volt platform as the larger range Rover EV, which is scheduled to go on sale soon.

The Sport EV will come in outputs of roughly four hundred and forty and five hundred and forty horse power, and will feature a one hundred and eighteen kilowat hour battery pack that will return an estimated three hundred and thirty miles of range on the EPA test. Pricing is

expected to start around one hundred thousand pounds or roughly one hundred and thirty five thousand and that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for tuning in,

and I hope that you have a great weekend.

Speaker 4: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by alex Partners.

When it really matters CSP, the Composites Solution Partner, Intrepid Control Systems Over the Air Engineering Boost your game and thanks to the following YouTube and Patreon members.

Speaker 5: We help businesses respond decisively to their most critical challenges, from urgent performance improvement to enterprise wide transformation. We work

across the full value chain, in automotive and in industrials, helping clients navigate disruption, drive innovation, and unlock sustainable growth.

Alex partners when it really matters.

Speaker 6: At Intrepid, we produce network hardware and software solutions, enabling vehicle manufacturers to innovate and design the next generation of modern mobility. Delivering scalable next generation solutions requires thorough testing

and validation of vehicle platforms. Intrepid specializes in network interfacing,

data logging, simulation, and gateway capabilities. Intrepid's Doovi cloud platform

provides real time data collection, instant cloud upload, intelligent detection, advance issue analysis, root cause identification, and remote update deployment.

All of these steps ensure vehicles are cleared for production and ready for the road, taking your fleet testing into the future of mobility. Intrepid Control Systems, driven by your Data.

Speaker 4: WARDS is the industry leader for news, data and analysis.

That's why companies across the globe subscribe to our premium service may be even your own log in for subscriber access.

Now check your company's intranet for details, and rely on wardsauto dot com to keep you informed.

About this episode

Rising commodity and chip costs are squeezing automakers, while AI is moving from novelty to real customer tools—BMW is using chat GPT to let shoppers configure cars from their devices, and Ford is using Genai to revive its 1964 Aurora concept. Stellantis is also reviving supplier cost-sharing through SUPER. On the EV front, Volkswagen’s ID Polo pairs pricing with LFP vs NMC battery options, and Land Rover’s Range Rover Sport EV is reported with an 800-volt platform, an 118 kWh pack, and about 330 miles EPA range.

backlighting bespoke eight hundred volt platform chip shortage coyote V eight electrochromatic technology electroluminescent inserts EPA test EV segment generative AI hybrid system

Ford Mustang Honda Prologue Land Rover Range Rover Land Rover Range Rover Sport

Original notes

- Rising Material Costs Drag Down Chinese Automakers - Honda Adds Google Gemini To U.S. Lineup - BMW Launches ChatGPT Vehicle Configurator - Ford Reimagines 1964 Aurora Concept Using AI - Volkswagen Launches Affordable ID. Polo Electric - Stellantis Revives 50-50 Supplier Cost Saving Reward - Ford WEC Hypercar Engine Fires Up Successfully - Honda Backs Out of EV Segment Temporarily - Lexus Uses 3D Printed Faux Bamboo Trim - Range Rover Sport Electric Coming Soon

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