This is Autoline Daily reporting on the global automotive industry.
GHOSN CHARGED ONCE AGAIN
Man, those Japanese prosecutors are tough! They just arrested former Nissan CEO, Carlos Ghosn, once again. This is the fourth time he’s been arrested. He’s accused of causing $5 million in losses for Nissan between July 2017 and July 2018. Nissan is suing him. Ghosn denies all the charges and says he’s been backstabbed by former Nissan executives, who wanted to prevent a closer partnership with Renault.
JOSE MUNOZ JOINS HYUNDAI
Meanwhile, one of Ghosn’s top lieutenants, Jose Munoz, who saw the writing on the wall and quit his job at Nissan, was just named the Chief Operating Officer of Hyundai. He was also named the head of the company’s operations in North, Central and South America. Munoz joins Hyundai on May 1st and will be based in California.
TESLA TO UNVEIL NEW VERSION OF AUTOPILOT
Tesla is going to unveil its latest version of Autopilot later today. Presumably it uses the Artificial Intelligence chips that the company is making in-house. Elon Musk claims AI chips will increase the framerate of video cameras 100x over chips the company gets from NVIDIA. He says AI chips eliminate the need for LIDAR in autonomous cars.
TESLA INVESTOR DAY
This is investor day for Tesla, when it brings in stock analysts for a presentation on the company. Tesla shareholders will be praying the analysts love what they see. In January, Tesla stock was at $347 a share. Now it’s trading at $273.
LINCOLN CORSAIR DETAILS
Did you see our coverage of the new Lincoln Corsair on Autoline After Hours? It’s so different from the outgoing Lincoln MKC that Lincoln does not even consider it a replacement. Lincoln calls it an all-new entry. The Corsair sits on a new architecture that is lower and wider and offers more interior room than the MKC, especially for back seat passengers. The interior is defined by long horizontal lines, especially on the instrument panel, to make it look even wider. One especially notable feature is the animations that appear on the gauge cluster to indicate the 5 different driving modes that that can be selected. Lincoln’s suite of safety systems, called Co-Pilot 360, which includes automated braking, is standard equipment. But if you want adaptive cruise control and automated parking, you have to choose the optional 360-plus. Power comes from a 2-liter turbo that puts out 250 horsepower and 275 pound feet or torque, or an optional 2.3-liter turbo with 280 horses and 310 pound feet. A plug-in hybrid will launch at a later date and all-wheel drive is optional. No word on pricing yet, but Lincoln is targeting the Acura RDX, the Lexus NX and the Cadillac XT4, which would put it in the $36,000 range for a base price, or about $2,000 more than a MKC.
HYUNDAI EV PERFORMANCE CONTROL TECHNOLOGY
Most smartphone apps for your car allow you to remote start it, lock and unlock the doors and use it as a vehicle locator. But Hyundai and Kia are going much further. Owners of future electric vehicles will be able to customize primary settings, like maximum torque output of the motor, acceleration and regenerative braking rates, maximum speed limit, responsiveness, and energy use of the climate control. You can then share this information online with other users, so they can use your settings or you can use theirs and Hyundai/Kia will have recommended settings as well. The automakers also see this being useful for car/ride-sharing. Users just have to download their personal settings from the server into the next vehicle they’re using, which is kept secure through blockchain technology.
Speaking of electrics, we have a great Autoline After Hours coming up this Thursday, when our special guest will be Robert Bollinger, the CEO and founder of Bollinger Motors. We’ll be talking all about his all-aluminum, all-wheel-drive, all-electric, off-road truck.
BYD CREATES ELECTRIC SUPERCAR
Chinese company BYD is the world’s biggest producer of electric vehicles, known for making electric buses and everyday passenger vehicles. But it stepped out of its shell at the Shanghai auto show. The E-SEED GT concept is an electric supercar that brings you into the interior through gullwing doors. And it has perhaps the coolest name for its design language, Dragon Face. It’s said to get inspiration from elements of a Chinese dragon. Unfortunately, BYD did not provide any more details on the shapely E-SEED GT.
AUTOMAKERS CUT PRODUCTION IN NORTH AMERICA
Automakers are cutting back on production in North America. Wards reports that they built 102,000 fewer cars and trucks in the first quarter, down 2.3%. Sales for the quarter were down 2%, so they’re cutting production slightly faster than sales are dropping. And that gives them some breathing room to avoid adding more incentives to move the metal.
HONDA CUTS ACCORD PRODUCTION
Along those lines, Honda is eliminating the second shift at its giant assembly plant in Marysville, Ohio. That will reduce production of the Honda Accord by 55,000 cars a year, even though sales of the Accord are up 6% so far this year. But Honda must have been worried that it would have to prop up sales with more discounts.
But that’s it for today, thanks for watching and please join us again tomorrow.
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Comments (14)
April 22nd, 2019 at 11:56 am
Oh please. The CORSAIR is 100% and obviously a replacement for the MKC, it just looks better than the MKC and the Escape clone thereof. and this is ALL it is, it LOOKS better. WHether it actually IS better, I will wait for the CR and the enthusiast mags tests.
April 22nd, 2019 at 11:58 am
Many people seem to really want to see Telsa to fail. That video out of China looks extremely suspicious. The closed-circuit camera “pans” left as the fire starts to ignite to fully capture the smoke and flames. Hmmm.
April 22nd, 2019 at 12:40 pm
Just hope Lincoln doesn’t restrict the safety tech to the top trim levels as they have done heretofore. Previously had to get the Reserve or Black Label just to have access to adaptive cruise control.
April 22nd, 2019 at 12:56 pm
I am seriously still sad after hearing Lincoln dealers in China are way better than in the United States.
I accept the fact that Lexus dealers are better in Japan-home field advantage. But to see that Lincoln is not giving home field advantage in the United States.
I thought Lincoln might have been getting back on track, but to know that their home market is not their best showing?!?!
Is annoying and frustrating…as a luxury brand shouldn’t just do the minimum, especially in its home market.
I bet the German brands have better dealers in Germany too.
April 22nd, 2019 at 12:59 pm
https://ktla.com/2019/04/17/california-gas-prices-hit-average-of-4-highest-in-the-state-since-2014/
This can only help make CA the EV capital of the US, already half the EVs are sold there.
April 22nd, 2019 at 1:01 pm
Pity for the Accord, it is a far better sedan than its rivals, esp if you include the fun to drive vs the Camry factor. But Honda has always been a cheapskate and instead of discounting them to increase sales, or sell them to fleets like the Camry and the Altima and all those Hyundai-Kias, they prefer to cut production.
April 22nd, 2019 at 3:49 pm
Blockchain is not needed to save settings on a server securely. You just need standard secure technology to do that. Blockchain is almost a joke of a buzzword.
Visiting any dealership can be painful as you know there objective is to extract every last dollar from you, irrespective of the service they give you.
Lincoln is now doing what Cadillac should have done but oh how Lincoln products have been pathetic until recently. Ford shares could be a good buy in the next 6 months.
April 22nd, 2019 at 4:00 pm
5 The latest Camry handles and drives better than earlier ones, about equal to Accord, according to CR, but Car and Driver and MT like the Accord better, partly because you can still get a manual transmission. The enthusiast magazine people are starting to get over hating CVTs, because they mostly like the CVT equipped base 4 cylinder Accord better than the 8-speed automatic Camry.
April 22nd, 2019 at 4:04 pm
6 Ford is ending their racing program for the Ford GT. That should help stock prices. The program cost a lot of money, and probably didn’t sell a single car, or F-150. Even though the Cadillac racing program is doing very well at winning races, it’s hard to see how they are getting their money’s worth from it.
April 22nd, 2019 at 4:06 pm
To me, neither Accord nor Camry are doing very well in the looks department; I like both Malibu and Fusion better, but the Honda and Toyota still rule the mid-size sedan market, what there is left of it.
April 22nd, 2019 at 8:21 pm
I have not driven recent compact and mid-sized sedans like the Civic, Accord and their rivals. Car and Driver had the Accord in their top 10 for a huge number of years, while they never had the Camry. Having Buick-like Steering in Toyotas and the early Lexus LS400s I drove, with no steering feel, is a major turnoff to me.
I like the Accord styling fine, it is great value for the $ and is tasteful and smooth, while the Camry has weird double grilles as if it was born next to a nuclear waste dump (that leaks).
As always, the Germans have the best styling besides having the best and safest cars too), other than exotic Italian design studios, the Mercedeses of 30 years ago are as pleasing to the eye today as they ever were, and some look even better than today’s Mercs. Same for VW, Porsche, and esp. Audi.
April 22nd, 2019 at 10:06 pm
10 I’m not too crazy about the wide “chrome” strip across the front of the new Accord, but yeah, it looks better than the somewhat strange Camry front end. If I bought either, though, it would be the hybrid, and would be the Camry with its simpler powertrain that works so well. The new Accord hybrid matches the mpg of the Camry, but with some extra complexity that doesn’t add anything.
Most Benzes over the years have looked pretty good, but recent ones are getting carried away with fake exhaust tips.
April 23rd, 2019 at 9:44 am
Pretty basic to offer as full suite of safety features, but Lincoln the “luxury” division of FoMoCo can’t even offer that to its customers. I can get a full safety package in a base Corolla but not in a base Lincoln Corsair. What is wrong with the product planners at Ford/Lincoln? They didn’t even offer emergency braking, even as an option, until 2019. Only their pathetic pre-charged brakes, whatever that is/was! Pretty sad that they are so behind the times.
April 23rd, 2019 at 10:15 am
It seems that Toyota is leading most others, both “domestic” and European in offering safety features. A base Prius has auto emergency braking, (and adaptive cruise control), but unless things have changed recently, a Corvette doesn’t offer it at all. The last I checked, probably 2018 model year, it took an expensive option package to get it on a Mini.