This is Autoline Daily reporting on the global automotive industry.
DAIMLER STUMBLES IN Q1
Despite the slowdown in the Chinese market, the United States is where Mercedes-Benz is seeing its biggest fall in sales. Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz posted surprisingly weak earnings for the first quarter as wealthy customers bought fewer Benzes. Sales were down in Europe, in China and especially in the United States. Sales of heavy trucks and vans were up, however. Daimler managed to rake in nearly 40 billion euros in revenue, about the same as last year. But its earnings before interest and taxes fell 16%, for a variety of reasons, including investigations into the company’s cheating on diesel emissions.
JAPANESE NOT THAT INTERESTED IN EVs
Japanese people are known for their keen interest in new technology. But apparently that does not apply to EVs or plug-in hybrids. Merrill Lynch surveyed Japanese consumers and found they are reluctant to buy used EVs and plug-ins because they’re worried about the performance and reliability of the batteries. And that’s dragging down residual values of new electrics. Merrill Lynch says it looks like the blame largely goes to the first generation of the Nissan Leaf. It had limited range and some of the batteries were known to degrade rather quickly.
ANOTHER MERCEDES ONE-TWO
In Formula One racing over the weekend, Mercedes finished 1-2 yet again. In fact, that’s how all four races this season have played out. But in Azerbaijan, it was Valtteri Bottas who came in first. He and his teammate Lewis Hamilton are now runaway leaders in the driver’s championship.
CHEVY SWEEPS TALLADEGA
In NASCAR, Chevrolet swept the top three positions at Talladega, with Chase Elliot taking the win. Prior to this, Ford won the last 7 races at the track. But once again it was a wreck-filled race with one third of the field taken out.
DC CHARGERS FOR COMMERCIAL TRUCKS
They say that electric vehicles will only catch on when there’s enough charging stations around. So Penske Truck Leasing opened 14 chargers at four of its facilities in Southern California. And they’re the first DC fast charging stations in the U.S. specifically for heavy-duty electric commercial trucks. DC chargers are faster because batteries can only store Direct Current electricity. So these chargers don’t have to convert from AC to DC, which is more efficient and faster. Penske plans to add at least six more chargers in the future for a total of 20. The 50 kW to 150 kW chargers, can fully charge a class 8 tractor in less than half a shift.
FORD UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR EMISSIONS CHEATING
The Department of Justice is investigating Ford over possible emission violations. Earlier this year, Ford said it hired an outside firm to investigate whether incorrect computer modeling caused it to misstate fuel economy and emissions for some vehicles. It notified the EPA of its investigation at the time, which was prompted by a whistleblower at the company. Ford revealed the DOJ investigation in a regulatory filing last week, which it says is just in the preliminary stages. Good thing Ford notified the DOJ that it may have violated emissions testing. The Justice Department is likely to go a lot easier on Ford. Remember, FCA just paid nearly a billion dollars in fines for bending the rules a little too much…and at first denying that it did anything wrong.
THE ULTIMATE KNOCK-KNOCK JOKE
With friends like these who needs enemies? Check out this video of a mechanic having some fun with a co-worker repairing a truck, by making it sound like there’s a major engine problem. And listen for the reaction from the driver at the end of the video. And thanks to long time viewer Charles LeGreca for sending that video our way. If you see anything that you think would be fun to have on Autoline Daily, send if our way, too.
WHY BOLLINGER WILL REMAIN LOW-VOLUME
On last week’s Autoline After Hours we were joined by Robert Bollinger, the Founder of Bollinger Motors, a company that’s making an all-electric, off-road truck. They will be made in low volume and during the show Robert explained why he wants to keep it that way.
(The AAH preview is only available in the video version of today’s show.)
I’m super impressed with Bollinger and how he’s going about developing his electric truck. By keeping it simple to build he doesn’t face massive tooling costs. In fact, you could call it a maker truck. And by keeping it low volume he should easily hit his targets. This should be a lesson from for other startups like Elio, Fisker and Faraday Future. Remember the start-up mantra. Start small. Think big. Move fast.
And with those words of wisdom we wrap up today’s show. Thanks for watching and please join us again tomorrow.
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Comments (39)
April 29th, 2019 at 12:05 pm
Pretty riske reaction on pretend joke on owner….I’m.fine with it but wow I was surprised you ayed it on the air. We certainly all been there in life..hehehe.. great show and Mercedes drop in sales is in my opinion a direct result of Tesla’s success…JMO
April 29th, 2019 at 12:19 pm
1 I agree, and wonder if BMW has suffered an even bigger loss, esp in its 3 and 4 series segment, with the mass sales of the Model 3, which just beat the pants off the M3 in this Top Gear Track Video:
https://www.topgear.com/videos/video/video-tesla-model-3-vs-bmw-m3
April 29th, 2019 at 12:22 pm
in your other news:
A. Nissan makes junk cars and junk Leaf Batteries. Tell me something new.
B. Knock-knock. If I was the owner of the truck, the imbecile prankster would also have a well-deserved broken nose.
C. Bollinger. I am not as enamored of this amateur as John is. Bollinger has a degree in fine arts (design). He has no clue about engineering OR management. Those who give him $ will lose it all. Unless if he is spending his trust fund $, in which case no harm done.
April 29th, 2019 at 12:44 pm
There seems to be a lot of evidence that Ford is misstating fuel economy for some of the “ecoboost” turbo engine applications. In both CR’s fuel economy tests, and in some other reports of real world fuel economy, the Fords do worse in real-world mpg relative to their EPA numbers than many other vehicles.
April 29th, 2019 at 12:49 pm
2, BMW 3- and 4-series sales have been down to about half the ~140K volume of 2014-2015.
http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/bmw/bmw-3-series-4-series/
April 29th, 2019 at 12:53 pm
4 and most of this was done under the crooked “leadership” of Ford’s “Fuel Econ Czar”, that guy Nair who got kicked out of Ford recently for other reasons (probably me too stuff).
April 29th, 2019 at 12:56 pm
You mentioned Elio, the three wheel commuter car start-up. What happened to this company? I have not heard of one delivery to the “All In” buyers!!
April 29th, 2019 at 1:02 pm
7 Elio was a total, worthless joke from day one. a $8k one-seater with no trunk that was truly unsafe at any speed, as it did not have to satisfy car safety standards (it pretends to be a bike)
April 29th, 2019 at 1:17 pm
5 thanks, no surprise there.
April 29th, 2019 at 1:18 pm
4) In my Eco-Boost F150 I am getting substantially less fuel economy than what ford states. Even driving it with low RPM and keeping the turbo off boost never got to where Ford states it should be. If it wasn’t a lease I would be livid. Luckily I will be replacing it soon with a model that will be more fuel efficient and likely not a turbo.
April 29th, 2019 at 1:25 pm
10 A former colleague bought a base Mustang couple years ago, new, for $37k, it had the 4-cyl ecoboost with high advertised MPG, but if you drove it like a Mustang should, you would never get that MPG. If you drove it like an old lady taking her Buick Regal to church, you might.
April 29th, 2019 at 1:30 pm
over the weekend, I saw the usual huge number of Subarus in this area, but also a lot of Lincolns, which sell only 8-9,000 a month vs the 55,000-60,000 Subarus a month (US-wide). Employees here used to get a Ford discount (earlier also a Mazda identical discount) which may explain it. Lots of Civics, not many Accords, barely any Fit. Some Camrys, no Corollas, and a ton of old and newer Prii. No tesla this weekend, but I did not park in the charging floor where one always sees a ton of Volts, a few Leafs and Bolts, and some Teslas.
April 29th, 2019 at 2:47 pm
Pertaining to Ford’s alleged emissions cheating; when you are dealing with arbitrary figures of a vast and complicated nature, unless proven fraudulent shenanigans are involved, the benefit of the doubt should be exercised in invoking fines when misrepresentations of a innocent nature are apparent. I’m not particularly a fan of Ford, in fact as Chevrolet fan I guess you could call Ford an antithesis for me, but let’s keep this fair. And if guilty, well that’s another story.
April 29th, 2019 at 3:22 pm
13 We’ll no doubt hear more about this. If they actually cheated on the “road load,” whether using lighter dyno flywheel setup than they should have for the vehicle being tested, or something else, that sounds pretty serious. I still think the EPA should do the testing, and let the car companies pay for the cost. They are now paying in-house people or contractors to do it, so there shouldn’t be much difference in actual cost.
Interestingly, the specific vehicle mentioned in the article was the Ranger. Car and Driver just did a comparison test of 4WD Ranger, Colorado, Ridgeline, and Gladiator. The Ranger has a 3 mpg higher EPA combined rating than the Chevy, and one mpg higher than the Ridgeline, but those three tied at 15 mpg for the magazine’s apparently rather severe test. The Gladiator got one mpg lower in their test. CR hasn’t tested the Ranger or Gladiator yet, but it will be interesting to see their mpg from the Ranger.
April 29th, 2019 at 4:50 pm
EPA Numbers are more like guidelines but some people recite them as gospel so it is an important number for comparison. Even if EPA doesn’t do the tests themselves maybe all manufacturers should be required to use the same certified approved laboratory(but not themselves). Maybe with economies of scale testing might even be cheaper.
April 29th, 2019 at 5:04 pm
Yep, using the same lab, with good oversight, should be good.
I think the tests themselves should be changed, with higher speed for the highway test, and more vigorous accelerations in the city test. The current tests are too “easy,” so they downwardly adjust the test results for the window stickers. That seems to result in too-high published numbers for turbos and hybrids, and too low for the few diesels available.
April 29th, 2019 at 6:27 pm
7&8 Elio was actually a two seater vehicle where the passenger was positioned behind the driver. There was a trunk in the front and airbags. Not saying it would have been safe as any car because it wasnt, but safer then a motorcycle. Many people thought it was going to be an EV but it had developed a 3cyl engine and claimed something like 75mpg. At this point they probably would have done better as an EV offering.
April 29th, 2019 at 7:00 pm
Some of the latest from Elio:
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1119027_elio-motors-to-buy-engines-abandons-building-its-own
April 29th, 2019 at 7:46 pm
https://youtu.be/zPboAEiRa7Q
I filmed this a few weeks ago. You may have a reason for this radio being this way.
April 29th, 2019 at 8:18 pm
19 That’s wild. If Chrysler had been part of VW group, it would make more sense, but…
April 30th, 2019 at 7:14 am
18 humm they still keep saying they’re gonna build it. The momentum has to be nil. They should partner with a EV manufacturer as it would probably get decent range being so light and aero.
April 30th, 2019 at 7:48 am
18,21, I don’t see Elio gaining any traction even if it buys an engine from a outsourced party. Similar motorcycle three wheelers (Elio without a roof) are rare (Slingshot and Can-Am, for 2); so I just dont see a market, even a nitch market.
April 30th, 2019 at 8:12 am
I see a few Can-Am Spyders, and very few Slingshots. Most seem to be ridden by people who no longer feel comfortable holding up a 900 pound motorcycle. The Slingshot may need to switch engines soon. I read somewhere that they had about used up their supply of Pontiac Solstice powertrains.
April 30th, 2019 at 8:22 am
17 I don’t have any evidence the Elio is much safer than a motorbike of the same weight or price, but I suspect its drivers may have a false sense of security that, just because it has them enclosed in its thin sheetmetal, it is as safe as a lightweight car that has to satisfy all the safety reqs in the US.
15 EPA numbers are very poor guidelines for many comparisons, even just for comparison and knowing that their absolute values are rarely accurate. The whole test needs to be a much more scientific, real world test, not in the lab and adding arbitrary correction coefficients, AND should be supervised and approved by both the EPA, the automaker, AND some independent body like these accountants, Deloitte etc, who validate other tests, records etc.
April 30th, 2019 at 8:32 am
18 the article says the Elio types have been at it since 2009, 10+ years now, with no success. Maybe they should get the hint.
April 30th, 2019 at 9:05 am
The problem with Elio was it was conceived when gas was around the $4 mark. The ultra high mpg is of less interest when gas is $2.50. The idea of a three wheeler that was weather proof set it apart from the slingshot and spyders. The timing was all wrong for them and had they set out to offer the same vehicle as a under $20k EV they would probably have some interest. Just not sure anyone will be interested in a gas commuter. The safety portion I can get past knowing it’s not much if any safer than a bike. Obviously it is just for the simple fact of three wheels prevent the many spills bikes have on loose gravel spills. Plus the enclosure has to provide some protection even if it’s only a low speed. Either way ten years of promises has to leave buyers and investors scratching their head.
April 30th, 2019 at 9:42 am
Elio, if it existed, would be going after a non-existent market, low cost, not-very-safe commuter vehicle. Spyder and Slingshot go for a completely different market, a motorcycle replacement that you don’t have to hold up. There is a market for some of those, even at fairly high prices. For Elio to have a chance at all, they should make it electric. It’s small enough that it wouldn’t take a huge, expensive battery to have adequate range for most commutes.
April 30th, 2019 at 9:53 am
24 While “your mileage may vary,” the EPA numbers work reasonably well for comparison of similer vehicles, like Camry, Accord, and Altima, or Rav4, C-RV, Equinox, and Escape. For dis-similar vehicles, they work less well. From my experience, small engine cars, like my Mini consistently beat their city rating in my version of city driving, but underperform the highway rating. My big engine Corvette does the opposite. The Prius underperforms on both, but I’m still happy with its 45 mpg “no matter what” mileage.
April 30th, 2019 at 10:24 am
28 Talking about similar vehicles… this morning I went out my door to drive to the office, and saw a nice white Ford Escape on my left, and then saw my other neighbor’s silver-beige RAV4 to my right. These two vehicles look so similar, it is ridiculous and I wonder they have not sued each other. If you look at them from the side-rear, they have exactly the same kind of rear window design/styling as well as the pillar at the side-rear has exactly the same shape for both. Ridiculous, really.
Re the MPGs, if one is looking for a fuel efficient non-BEV vehicle and compares a diesel like mine to a Hybrid, the EPA comparison could not be more inaccurate, and it was even worse before EPA’s 2008 correction of their own MPGs. These two may not be ‘similar’ vehicles, but they are both fuel efficient vehicles many consumers may want to comparison shop.
April 30th, 2019 at 11:00 am
26 This unsafe Elio contraption would have failed if gas prices were $4, $8, or $10, which they sure are in Europe. Ask why a similar vehicle did not make it over there. The problem is that MPG is a poor way to measure fuel efficiency, because when you become better, the MPG looks astronomical, but actually is not a big deal. So if you drive an Elio and do get the 88 or whatever MPG they claim for it, or, much wiser, if you drive a 2014 Merc E class diesel with its unreal 435 MPG Hwy, and that from an ultra-safe, luxurious 5 seater family car with a huge trunk, which looks like a million bucks inside and outside, and which you can ALSO get for a similar amount (no more than $15k), the savings in gas $ are NOT as huge as they seem! The correct way is to measure Efficiency in Gallons per mile, or liters per 100 km, and then the more fuel efficient vehicles are not as impressive.
April 30th, 2019 at 11:03 am
30 correction I meant its unreal 45, not.. 435, MPG HWY, for the 2014 E Bluetec diesel, in CR tests.
Sean, John, how difficult would it be to adjust this comment page so we can edit our posts before they are published, as we are able to do in all the other forums on the Web?
April 30th, 2019 at 11:08 am
29 Yep, comparing diesels and hybrids is the ultimate case of EPA mpg numbers not being good for comparison. My 2004 Jetta TDI wagon, and 2010 Prius got very similar real world highway mpg, and the Jetta got within about about 20% of the Prius for my version of mixed/city driving. The EPA numbers don’t reflect that.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=25357&id=41032&id=39941&id=40424
Of course, actual operating cost was much higher for the Jetta, because diesel fuel cost 30-40% more than gas for most of the time I had the VW.
April 30th, 2019 at 11:13 am
31, CR got 35 highway, and 24 city for your car. It’s not 45, but still great for a car like that, and it turned a decent 8 second 0-60 time.
April 30th, 2019 at 11:30 am
33 I was not talking about my car, which is a 2007 and a 2008 in the old country, but specifically about the 2014 Bluetec, which does not have my 3.0 lt 6 but a 2.1 lt 4. I remember distinctly a CR issue where they tested that one and got 45, not 35, HWy and similarly impressive city MPG.
I also have Michael K., a friend and colleague, at Rutgers in NJ, who traded in his low-mile, low-age 5 series for exactly this 2014 diesel and reports getting much higher than 45 MPG!
April 30th, 2019 at 11:38 am
34 The 2014 E-Class diesel got 41 highway, 21 city, and 30 overall in CR’s tests. It did 8.3 seconds 0-60.
April 30th, 2019 at 11:40 am
Might what was done to make it cleaner, have lowered the city mileage, relative to yours with the bigger engine?
April 30th, 2019 at 11:44 am
35 41 HWY then. From a 4,000 lb sedan. Pretty good. In 2016, when I went shopping for an E bluetec, the 2014s were asking $22k or higher, with low miles, but because at that time I estimated I’d use the car at most 3 months a year, in the summer place, it made more sense to buy the 2007 and 2008 for $10.5k and $11k respectively. But now I may be able to spend much more time there, esp. in 2020 and beyond, and fuel prices there are over $7/gal gas and over $5 for diesel, and in fact I do more miles there in 3 months than I do here in 9!
April 30th, 2019 at 11:46 am
37 by comparison, my 1990 Accord Coupe 5-sp manual got 31 MPG highway and on long trips, with 1-2 PSI over its recommended in the tires, I barely got 32-35 at best. And this was a 2822 lb much smaller car with a puny 125 HP, 137 lbft 2.2 lt engine.
April 30th, 2019 at 12:00 pm
37 The 2007 would be a better buy, and maybe a better car, as long as the road salt hadn’t gotten too much of a start on it from the extra years up north. The older one would be simpler, not having the after treatment fluid, and the six cylinder engine might be a little smoother.
38 Cars have made huge progress over the last 28 years. A new, gigantic compared to your 1990 Accord, with the 1.5 turbo and CVT got 42/21 highway/city in CR’s tests, and turned a 7.7 second 0-60 time.