JSW Group is a large Indian company with many businesses. The idea here is that Volkswagen could partner with them so it doesn’t have to pay for everything by itself.
ADAS is the set of systems that help the car drive—like keeping you in your lane or helping manage speed. It’s not fully autonomous, so the driver usually still has to pay attention.
Term
Level two plus hands free driving
This describes a car that can do more of the driving for you—like steering and speed assistance—while you still have to watch the road. You’re not supposed to fully disengage.
Lane keep Assist is the feature that helps keep you from drifting out of your lane. It uses the car’s sensors to nudge steering when it detects you’re getting off-center.
Mobileye is a company that makes vision-based driving-assist technology. They’re mentioned here because they help support the kinds of systems cars use to “see” the road.
It means the AI system is built like LEGO blocks—separate parts that can be swapped or reused. The goal is to make it easier to apply the same robot “brain” across different factories and tasks.
Spatial awareness is how well a robot understands its position and the position of objects around it. It helps the robot pick up and place parts accurately.
It’s a type of AI that can use what it sees and also use language-like understanding to decide on an action. For robots, that means turning perception into “do this next” behavior.
A diagnostic trouble code is like an error message stored by the car. When something goes wrong, the car records a specific code so you (or a shop) can figure out what system needs attention.
DTCs are short for diagnostic trouble codes. They’re the specific “error codes” the car stores that can be checked to see whether the vehicle has a problem.
Non-compliant vehicles are vehicles that don’t meet required rules or standards. Here, they’re using software and data to spot which cars aren’t passing the required checks yet.
Term
cloud based data
Cloud-based data means the information is stored and analyzed on internet-connected servers. That makes it easier to collect results from lots of vehicles and compare them in one place.
LIVE
Speaker 1: This is Autoligned Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Could Mercedes be banned from the
US market? Sounds crazy, but it is possible. Earlier this year,
a bipartisan bill was introduced that would prohibit the sale of connected vehicles by automakers that are more than fifteen percent owned by a Chinese entity. Bloomberg reports its lobbying
to raise that threshold to twenty five percent, but Mercedes meets the current requirement since Chinese automaker Baiic owns nearly ten percent of the company and GILI chairman Li Shufu also has a nearly ten percent stake. However, Mercedes points
out that no stockholder has direct representation on its board and no say over its operational decisions. If the bill passes,
Mercedes would have until twenty thirty to come into compliance, and it better hope its efforts payoff because the US is one of its largest and most important important markets.
GM reported its second quarter results, showing growth and key areas, but also the impacts of its ev restructuring plans. Globally,
the company sold over one point four million vehicles, a drop of more than seven percent compared to last year, but it was a ten percent jump over Q one, and GM was able to raise its average transaction prices.
As a result, its revenue top forty eight billion dollars, an increase of nearly two percent. The companies adjusted ebit
also shot up almost thirty percent to about four billion dollars. However,
GM has now taken nearly eleven billion dollars in EV related write offs in the last year, which is impacting its bottom line. Q two net income hit one point
three billion dollars, a drop of more than thirty one percent compared to last year, but the company has probably paid off a good chunk of those EV bills and expects its EV related law to improve through the rest of the year. China was once a key market for
German automakers, but in the last few years they've seen their market share decline due to fierce competition from Chinese brands.
As a result, exports from Germany to China has significantly dropped.
According to the Status, German exports of vehicles and car parts totaled four point seven billion euros in the first five months of the year, which is down twenty five percent from a year ago and way down from a peak of thirteen point six billion euros in the same period in twenty twenty two. Until twenty twenty four, Vehicles
and car parts accounted for the largest share of exports to China from Germany, but have been passed by machinery and electrical equipment, and it doesn't look like the German automakers struggles will end soon. Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW and Portia
all saw their sales in China dropped by at least thirty percent in the second quarter.
Speaker 2: The automotive and industrial sectors are undergoing a historic transformation electrification, digitalization, supply chain reinvention, regulatory shifts. The pace is accelerating and
the pressure to adapt is real. This is not a
time for hesitation. It's a time for bold decisions backed
by fast, effective execution. You need a partner who understands
complexity from factory floors to boardrooms and delivers measurable results.
That partner is Alex Partners. When it really matters.
Speaker 1: VW's board of directors recently shot down CEO Oliver Bloomer's plan to slash one hundred thousand jobs and close four plans in Germany, along with having its global lineup so now.
Part of its news strategy is to base production on what's best for the group, not its individual brands. It
will prioritize plants and models based on what's most competitive, while also requiring the least amount of investment to manufacture.
As we've reported before, Volkswagen was able to slash its factory costs in Germany last year by twenty percent, but it's still well short of its goal. The company is
reportedly targeting a per vehicle production cost of no more than three thousand euros. However, right now its factory costs
are about four thousand euros per vehicle. And in somewhat
related news, Bloomberg reports that Volkswagen is in advanced talks with Indian conglomerate JSW Group to sell part of its India unit. This is not VW trying to exit India,
rather form a partnership so it doesn't have to pay for everything on its own. But that's about all we
know for now. Stillantis is turning to mobilize to help
develop its advanced driver assistance tech. Next year, selects Stalanta's
vehicles will be equipped with mobilized hardware and road management technology.
The system uses a forward facing camera to capture data about the vehicle's environment, which is sent to the cloud, processed, and then sent back to help support driving features from lane keep Assist to Level two plus hands free driving.
The first applications will be in the US, but Mobile Eye also operates in the rest of North America, Europe, South America, and parts of Asia. Speaking of Stilantis, it
just hired new executives to lead two of its most important brands. Matt Van Dijk has been named the new
CEO of the RAM brand. Most recently he was president
of marketing firm Shift Digital, and prior to that, he spent fourteen years at Ford, where he had several high level marketing roles. The company also named Brendan Cody as
the new CEO of Jeep. He was most recently brand
president of AutoNation and also held leadership roles at Aston, Martin Canoe and Mercedes Benz USA. BMW is doubling down
on humanoid robots, and one of its plants in Germany is leading the charge. On the software side. The factory
is developing a modular, open platform AI ecosystem designed to give humanoids the motor skills and spatial awareness needed for complex parts manufacturing. By blending traditional programming with vision language
action AI models, BMW aims to help robots perceive environments and make decisions on their own, complementing ongoing Humanoid Robot testset two of BMW's other plants. The ultimate goal is
to create a robotic skill set that can easily transfer to different manufacturing processes and hardware, and that brings us to the end of today's show. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 3: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by alex Partners.
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About this episode
Hosts connect manufacturing cost targets and software strategy to the growing role of cloud-connected systems. They explain an ADAS setup that uses a forward-facing camera, sends data to the cloud for processing, then returns it to support lane-keeping up to “Level two plus hands free driving.” BMW’s German plant is also building a modular, open AI platform for humanoid robots’ motor skills and spatial awareness. The discussion adds a compliance workflow that uses software versions, analytics, and diagnostic trouble codes to isolate non-compliant vehicles in real time.
- U.S. Could Ban Mercedes - GM Spends $11 Billion on EV Write-Offs - German Auto Exports to China Plummet - VW Prioritizes Group, Not Brands - VW Wants to Sell Stake in India Unit - Stellantis Turns to Mobileye for ADAS Tech - Stellantis Hires New Jeep and Ram CEOs - BMW Developing Robot Teaching Software
