AD #2686 – Toyota Takes Bigger Stake in Subaru, Hyundai to Make Passenger Drones, Nissan Refreshes the Titan
September 30th, 2019 at 11:48am
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Runtime: 8:10
0:07 Toyota Takes Bigger Stake in Subaru
0:40 Shanghai to Ban Diesel Trucks
1:06 Hyundai Plans to Make Passenger Drones
2:07 Nissan Refreshes the Titan Pickup
3:28 UAW Strike Continues
4:31 You Said It!
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TOYOTA TAKES MORE STOCK IN SUBARU
We start out today’s report in Japan, where Toyota is taking more control of Subaru. It will now own 20% of Subaru’s stock, up from 17%. Thanks to Japan’s financial system, Toyota can now include Subaru’s sales and profits on its own income statement, which will add nearly half a billion dollars in profit to its bottom line. This is going to massively help Subaru which does not have the resources to develop electric or autonomous cars on its own.
SHANGHAI TO BAN DIESEL TRUCKS BY 2022
OK, now over to China. Shanghai is going to ban all diesel trucks in the city by 2022. That’s about 120,000 trucks that only account for about 3% of all vehicles in the city, but produce one third of all NOx emissions and almost half of all particulates. And that is going to create tremendous demand for battery electric trucks.
HYUNDAI PLANS PASSENGER DRONES
And now we move to South Korea. Autoline did its first show on autonomous drones two years ago. At the time not many automakers had much interest in the concept, but that sure is changing. And now Hyundai is the latest to get in on the action. It just formed a new division within the company called Urban Air Mobility. It will be run by Dr. Jaiwon Shin who spent 30 years at NASA, most recently he ran the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. Hyundai says it believes the market for passenger drones could grow to $1.5 trillion in the next 20 years.
2020 NISSAN TITAN REFRESHED
Sales of the Nissan Titan are down by more than 28% so far this year. Maybe a fresh new look will help? The 2020 Titan gets several cosmetic changes, starting with a new grille and headlight design, which includes heaps of chrome on the Platinum Reserve model. The rear tailgate and taillights have also been reworked. Interior upgrades are highlighted by a new 9-inch touchscreen. The truck also receives Nissan’s advanced driver assistance technologies and a new 9-speed automatic transmission. The new Titan goes on sale in early 2020.
We’ve got a great Autoline After Hours coming up later this week. We’ll have Bob Kruse, the chief technology officer at Karma on the show and he’ll be bringing the completely revamped Revero along with him. Though it looks a lot like the Fisker that it’s based on, this is now a very different car and you’ll want to learn about all the changes. We also have Steve Lietaert, the president of Hella’s Corporate Center in the US coming on the show. Hella is working on some intriguing ideas of how to use automotive lighting in innovative ways. That’s this Thursday, live, at 3 pm eastern time right here at autoline.tv or on our youTube channel.
UAW STRIKE CONTINUES
That UAW strike continues to drag on. We were hoping that it would get wrapped up over the weekend, but obviously it’s going to go on for a while longer. If you look at the package that GM put on the table, union workers would make about $20,000 more over the life of the new 4-year contract than they did over the last contract. And that does not include profit sharing or benefits. That was GM’s opening offer, so no doubt that will get negotiated up. And I sure hope this strike is not getting dragged out because union leaders know that once all these negotiations are over the new contracts have been ratified that all eyes will turn right back to all these corruption charges. And I’ll have more to say about the UAW because coming up next it’s time for You Said It!
All right, it’s time for You Said It! where we respond to some of your comments. And you had a lot to say about our coverage of the UAW strike.
cwolf thinks my criticisms of the UAW has to do with the sponsors of our shows. “You have to understand that “Autoline” is driven by its sponsors, so showing any support for a union is like committing Hari-kari.” cwolf, we have some great sponsors because they know our shows are watched by the people in the industry they want to get their message to. They have never once tried to influence our editorial coverage. My criticisms of the UAW are purely based on the fact that the union only looks out for its own interest, not for the interest of the entire auto industry which is our mission at Autoline.tv.
Michael Embry wrote in to say that the union is not dragging out these negotiations. “I’ve been a UAW worker for quite a while. The timetable is exactly the same as it has been. The real difference is the media’s getting to learn some of the tactics that the UAW uses. Also leaders from each local have always been present when contract discussions have been going on. Nothing new.” Michael I truly appreciate your feedback, but I think this could have already been settled.
TIM Flugaur-Leavitt heard me say that UAW strikers are now causing employees at supplier companies to get laid off and that they don’t get any kind of strike pay. He says, “Why should workers not paying dues get benefits? The benefits of strike pay comes out of the dues paid. Obviously a union hater.” No, not a union hater. Just someone pointing out that the strike is hurting a lot of other working men and women, which gets back to my earlier point that the UAW is only looking out for its own interests.
Danny Turnpaugh wants to know, “What happened to the weekends racing results?” Well, Danny, a couple of weeks ago we asked for the input of all our viewers on what they liked and did not like about Autoline Daily. We got a lot more complaints about reporting racing results than we did from people who liked them. And so, even though we’re hard core racing fans here, we decided not to continue reporting those results.
JDubbs07 heard me says that Hyundai hasn’t done much developing autonomous cars. He says that’s not the case. “Hyundai group has actually been working on autonomous tech for years. They’ve had that fleet of Ioniqs in Vegas, were developing low cost lidar, and have also been looking into v2x tech as well.” Thanks for pointing that out, JDubbs.
And finally, elliott wadsworth scoffs at my report that electric cars will take more than a decade to reach 25% market share. “10 years to reach 25%? Really? I’m a hard core car fan but I’m not that silly. More like 50-60%.” We shall see Elliott, we shall see. In the U.S. I think we’ll be lucky to reach 15% market share for EVs in a decade. And most automakers will tell you it’s going to be hard to even achieve that.
And with that we wrap up today’s report, thanks for watching.
Thanks to our partner for embedding Autoline Daily on its website: WardsAuto.com
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Comments (31)
September 30th, 2019 at 12:12 pm
I can easily see Shanghai’s ban of diesel trucks being picked up by cities like L.A. Hopefully the availability of vehicles and infrastructure will be in place prior to the laws being passed.
Passenger drones; to me still seem like a pipe dream. I think they may find some uses for police and hospitals to replace current more expensive Helo’s but for actual taxi like service, I think it will become a nightmare of “careful what you wish for”. The constant buzzing of lots of drones would make city living horrible.
John; glad to see the “You said it” segment back.
September 30th, 2019 at 12:12 pm
I was in Shanghai about 20 years ago, and the millions of 2-stroke mopeds and small motorcycles were fouling the air, probably as much or more than the old, smoky diesel trucks and buses. If anyone here has been there recently, are the 2-stroke bikes gone now, or mostly gone?
September 30th, 2019 at 12:34 pm
Those passenger drones will be a hot item for those who can afford to pay $1000 for a two mile taxi ride. Beyond that, I don’t see much use. If they are battery electric, as ones I have read about in the past seem to be, they will have little range/run time. Also, if there are very many of them in big cities, the collisions will be frequent, killing people in the machines, and on the ground.
September 30th, 2019 at 12:39 pm
” That’s about 120,000 trucks that only account for about 3% of all vehicles in the city, but produce one third of all NOx emissions and almost half of all particulates. ”
A rational decision to ban them. Beijing, who has worse pollution than Shanghai, should not be far behind. OR have they banned them there already? Imagine being the all-powerful president for Life of the Worlds 2nd (and soon 1st) biggest economy and have to breathe that god-awful air and walk only wearing those masks on your nose!
“And that is going to create tremendous demand for battery electric trucks. ”
As much as I wish this to be true, it will not necessarily be so! They only banned the 120,000 DIESEL trucks. They do not have necessarily to be replaced by BEVs. Some will, but others will just replace the engine by a gas engine.
September 30th, 2019 at 12:41 pm
3 we already have had these for more than a century or so, they are called helicopters. If you can afford to pay 10 times the super-fast ferry ticket, you can take one of these from Hong Kong to Macau, and in all kinds of other big, prosperous business centers.
September 30th, 2019 at 12:50 pm
Even in my first visit to Shanghai in May-July 2006, there were thousands of EV scooters, as i have stated here many times, popular with young women students, who used to ride two on each, the passenger behind the driver holding an open umbrella, rain AND shine (they protect their skins), and when I asked how much they cost, I got the ridiculously low (by US and Europe standards) price of $500-600 US.
I was back there in 2016, May-June, and hope to go back November this year for the entire month, and will look to see how many BEV cars there are, in 2006 and 2016 I did not see one.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:03 pm
6 I’m surprised you saw EV scooters 13 years ago. Here in the states it seems like EV cars were ahead of scooters and motorcycles, but maybe just not as popular here is why.
When you say scooter, do you mean like Vespa scooter or the skateboard with handles type of scooter? I assume the first only cause I could not imagine riding two on the later version.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:05 pm
7 they were like small vespas, piaggios, not the little EV scooters of today in the US.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:08 pm
7 anyway today’s skateboard “scooters” did not exist even in the US in 2006, much less in China.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:18 pm
A trillion plus for passenger drones; don’t think so (ever). And agree, if this was such a upcoming technology there would be a cacophony of helicopters littering our skies.
And I agree with all your responses on “You Said It” pertaining to your union retorts John (keep up the good and fair reporting).
September 30th, 2019 at 1:23 pm
Wow! +$20K + benefits over 5 years.
I work as an engineer in the aerospace industry, I will be very lucky to hit $20k in salary in the next 5 years. My benefits are definitely going to keep going down too. i.e. I will have to pay more of my healthcare. As every year I have worked (16 years) benefits keep getting less and less.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:24 pm
What’s surprising about the strike to me, is the news is saying GM is losing 25 Million a day when they still have inventory and are not paying wages right now. Seems like they would be rolling in cash until they start losing out on sales.
If the average worker makes $64 an hour with benefits the workers are losing $2560 a week. Now going into the third week they will have lost $7680 of that $8000 signing bonus GM was offering. They hold up much longer and anything they do get wont make up for what they are losing now.
They also say that the lost wages of the workers at GM and suppliers equates to an estimated $68 million in lost federal income and payroll taxes so far.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:27 pm
12 Sorry “they” was the Detroit Free Press.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/john-gallagher/2019/09/30/general-motors-uaw-strike-costs/3786688002/
September 30th, 2019 at 1:49 pm
12 What surprises me is that GM made them such a generous offer, I would not offer them one tenth what GM offered, and it did not even need to.
Let the strike continue, it will only improve GM’s inventories. Unfortunately it will ruin the suppliers and their workers.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:49 pm
Boeing slipped in a badly designed, automated, anti-stall system and two fatal crashed grounded the whole, Boeing 737 Super fleet. The first time one of these drones augers in wiping out families, they will share the Boeing 737 fleet fate as grounded art.
#11 – correctly points out that ‘health benefits’ are constantly being eroded. The first time my wife’s prescription was rejected because it was the ‘wrong dosage’, I realized 1/3d of the insurance companies are there to say “NO” while 2/3d of the office medical staff are insurance clerks trying to process the insurance red-tape.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:51 pm
As for that loser “Titan” brick… it needs more chrome on the grille.. about as much as Jennifer Lopez needs a bigger posterior.
September 30th, 2019 at 1:58 pm
Don’t get me started on Health benefits. Here we are supposed to have a “Caddilac” plan which costs the U and families a pretty penny. When it got started in the 80s, you had three FREE visits and every visit after the co-pay was an utterly insignificant $4. Today there are NO free visits, and the co-pay is $30. Every 15-30 min visit is priced at over $250, and we pay $30 of that in addition to our monthly fees, and the U contributes a multiple of that too. We have one free (no co-pay) annual checkup with our primary doctor, BUT we have to schedule it ONE YEAR in advance, and if we, with 99% probability, have to miss it a year later, we CANNOT reschedule it with the doctor, but only with her nurse. I had to do that once, the nurse had me cough 25 times and still was not sure so she had me get a chest xray which, as I knew, having never smoked in my life, was perfect.
But the Hospitals take the cake. Why are there no demonstrations in the streets when they charge you $20 for a piece of cotton you can buy at CVS for a quarter? ($0.25)? A 10-min outpatient cataract bill was $10,000 per eye 4 years ago, $20,000 (!!!), and the co-pay was the same $30 you pay for a worthless visit!!!!!
September 30th, 2019 at 2:03 pm
17 “we have to schedule it ONE YEAR in advance”
This is almost as bad as the joke about the USSR Reagan loved to say: Over there, the wait to get a new car (and a lousy one at that) was 10 years, IF you paid in advance. SO some poor Joe accumulated, with lots of sacrifices, the correct amount, and went to the ‘dealer’ to schedule the delivery.
“Your car will be ready for you in exactly ten years from now” he was told.
“Morning or afternoon”? he asked.
Annoyed, the bureaucrat replied “WHat difference does it make?”
“It sure does! That day, in the morning I have an appointment with the plumber”.
September 30th, 2019 at 2:06 pm
5 Regular helicopters run on gas or kerosene, and the ones taking passengers for Hong Kong to Macau carry several passengers, and fly under regular air traffic control rules. These “drones” being discussed are small multi-rotor things carrying one passenger, and maybe, or maybe not a pilot, between places in the middle of big cities. I don’t see it happening much. I guess time will tell, but I probably won’t be around long enough to see it.
September 30th, 2019 at 2:12 pm
6,7,8 The scooters in 2006 probably used lead acid batteries, had a top speed of maybe 20 mph, and would not have had much range. I remember a few of those being sold in the U.S. The new ones would have lithium batteries, and have a lot more range, and are probably faster, or could be if they want them to be.
Do people take them in their homes, mostly apartments to charge them? That would work if you are on the first floor, or have an elevator.
September 30th, 2019 at 2:16 pm
Those 2006 scooters looked like 3/4ths or 7/8ths scale models of a Vespa. I did not see them in 2016 but I was in a very different location.
September 30th, 2019 at 2:20 pm
19 My understanding is the drones will have the Autonomous features to detect other aircraft in the area and be programmed to maneuver around those and any obstacles. So not needing air traffic control. So a bunch of un-regulated self flying choppers flying in all directions. Or do you suppose they expect it to be like in the movie “Total Recall” where the flying cars still follow the roads which would seem ridiculous and a waste. The fastest way is a direct route but how that’s going to be managed will be interesting.
September 30th, 2019 at 3:43 pm
You are now supposed to register any “drone,” or model airplane, weighing over 0.55 pounds. Fortunately for model airplane flyers like myself, you only need one registration per person, even if you have multiple flying machines.
https://www.droneregistration.com
September 30th, 2019 at 4:00 pm
These are probably the “state of the art” electric scooters, but are apparently not sold in the U.S., at least not yet.
https://electrek.co/2018/06/01/gogoro-launches-two-new-electric-scooters/
September 30th, 2019 at 5:06 pm
16 Big pickups is one market segment that the “Detroit Three” still dominate, deservedly so. The Titan and Tundra both lag behind in multiple ways. At least the Tundra is reliable.
I still don’t understand about 10 times as many people buying these things as have any use for them, but that’s another story.
September 30th, 2019 at 5:15 pm
GM’s generous offer did nothing to address the main issues. Temp workers can work years without any type of representation, job security, medical benefits and at a base pay of $15/hr. For any family having kids, this is poverty level! These people deserve a clear realistic path to full time employment.
And the promised new jobs at future EV plants isn’t much better. If GM gave assurances those jobs were under a UAW contract, which included a something close to a middle class income and benefits the strike may have been settled by now. GM’s initial offer of alternating 2% raises and lump sum payments to workers was nothing more than political one-up-man ship for the media.
Like them or not, the UAW is trying to keep the middle class alive. If the middle class continues to deteriorate, so does the 70% of GDP of our economy the represent.
Its as clear as that!
October 1st, 2019 at 8:18 am
26 I totally agree with your point and glad the UAW is fighting for workers that are not even union members. I can understand GM having these temp workers to fill the gap as the industry fluctuates a lot. Rather than hire a bunch of people to lay them off in a year or so the temp workers make sense. However those workers should be paid a closer wage to the union workers to prevent GM from just having a bunch of temps on the floor for years and years basically replacing a union worker with a lower paying temp that stays for years. If the job is needed then hire someone.
October 1st, 2019 at 10:38 am
26, 27
I cannot believe this. Especially after what happened in 2008.
Can anybody tell me why, under these circumstances, I would want to own even a SINGLE Share in GM?
Can you explain to me why GM went broke in 2008 and Toyota did not?
Can you explain to me why the Imports, from Japan for mass market models, and from Germany, for luxury models, beat the US companies and GM in particular, in home games, 40 years in a row?
26 is a good explanation to all my questions.
If GM (and Ford and FCA) go broke again (and the way things are going, it very likely will, soon), will the US Taxpayer bail them out again, even though Major suppliers, through no fault of their own, also went broke and Nobody bailed them out?
There is NO HOPE in this industry, with this mentality. (there has been none in 50 years, but now it is obvious)
October 1st, 2019 at 10:44 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnoaWO3KDIA
The world’s most perfect parade. I will have to miss it by a month.
October 1st, 2019 at 11:36 am
29 That must have taken some serious practice.
October 1st, 2019 at 12:21 pm
30 for sure. The Chinese are also naturally more flexible, better acrobats, and have better body control than westerners, so that helps too.