This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES
The other day it was trains, now its planes. GM is partnering with a German-Swiss company, Liebherr, to make fuel cells for aircraft. Liebherr makes aircraft equipment and it will use GM’s fuel cell called HYDROTEC. It will be developed at a Liebherr lab in France. Earlier this week, GM formed a partnership with Wabtec to develop fuel cells for trains.
BOSCH TO SUPPLY FUEL CELL COMPONENTS TO DAIMLER & VOLVO JV
And Bosch will supply a joint venture between Daimler Truck and Volvo Truck with fuel cell components. That includes electric air compressors with integrated power electronics. The compressors govern the fuel cell system’s oxygen-supply. These compressors are part of the whole system that are used in heavy trucks or stationary units that generate electricity and heat. Bosch will mass produce the compressors by the middle of the decade. It’s making a big bet on fuel cells and is investing 1 billion euros between now and 2024.
CHINA ROLLS OUT 5-YEAR SEMICONDUCTOR PLAN
The Chinese and the U.S. government are taking action to address the chip shortage that is crippling automotive production. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology laid out its 5-year plan that ends in 2025. It wants China to develop world-class companies that make semiconductors and integrated circuits. It also wants the transportation, electronic communications, internet, and car companies to collaborate on 5G V2X connected vehicles.
U.S. SENATORS PROPOSE TAX CREDIT FOR CHIP MAKERS
Meanwhile, in the U.S., a group of Democrat and Republican senators proposed a 25% tax credit for companies that make chips in the U.S. Last week the Senate approved $52 billion for production and research on semiconductors, including $2 billion specifically for the automotive industry. The Commerce Department expects these moves to create 7 to 10 new chip plants in the U.S.
VOLVO TO TEST FOSSIL-FREE STEEL
Back in April, Volvo Trucks partnered with Swedish steel maker, SSAB, to make trucks using fossil-free steel. Now Volvo Cars wants to do it, too. The steel is made by replacing coking coal with fossil-free electricity and hydrogen, which leaves virtually no carbon footprint. Volvo will use the steel for testing purposes and maybe a concept car. By 2026, SSAB hopes to have it ready for commercial scale and Volvo wants to be the first to use it in production. There’s a big push in Europe to produce metals that are CO2 free. Audi, BMW and Mercedes plan to use sustainable steel and aluminum.
SCHAEFFLER TESTS DRIVE-BY-WIRE SYSTEM IN DTM RACING
Motor racing is one of the best ways to develop new technology. That’s why Schaeffler is turning to the German DTM racing series to test out its drive-by-wire system. It’s installing it in an Audi R8 LMS GT3, a Mercedes-AMG and a BMW M6 GT3. Schaeffler calls it Space Drive and there is no steering column in these cars. All the steering inputs are transmitted as digital signals. This is all about getting ready for autonomous cars. Schaeffler predicts by 2035 about one in three vehicles on the road will have some degree of autonomy. And it says motor racing provides the most extreme conditions to prove that drive-by-wire works.
BAIDU INTRODUCES NEW LEVEL 4 ROBOTAXI
Autonomous cars keep making impressive improvements. In China, Baidu is going to launch 1,000 Level 4 robotaxis over the next three years. BAIC is going to make the electric cars under its Arcfox brand, and the model is called Apollo Moon. Most impressively, the cars will cost 480,000 RMB, which is about $75,000. Baidu claims that’s about one-third the cost of other L4 AVs. It expects the cars to have a 5-year life cycle. So our simple, back of the envelope calculations say that it would take about $41 a day in ride fares to pay for the car. Baidu Apollo is already offering robotaxi ride-hailing in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and other cities. And it claims it’s becoming a dominant force in autonomous driving.
FORD ACQUIRES ELECTRIPHI
One hurdle for EV adoption from commercial vehicle operators is making sure they can charge up their fleets every day. So Ford is acquiring Electriphi, a California company that’s developed software for charging management and fleet monitoring of electric vehicles. Ford will integrate the technology into Ford Pro, a new global business to help develop charging and energy management experiences for commercial customers. The acquisition is part of Ford’s $30 billion investment by 2025 in electric vehicles.
DAIMLER SPEEDS UP NEW EV INTRODUCTIONS
The other day we ran a story about how environmental group, Transport and Environment, called out several European automakers, including Daimler, for not having “ambitious phase-out targets” for ICEs. Well now we’re seeing some action from the German automaker. Manager Magazin reports EVs that were scheduled to come out in 2024 or 2025 will be moved up a year and that their ICE counterparts will be dropped from the lineup. An official announcement could come before the end of summer.
AUDI WON’T LAUNCH ANY NEW ICE MODELS BY MID-DECADE
Meanwhile, Audi is going to take an axe to its internal combustion engines. From 2026, it will no longer introduce any new gasoline or diesel cars. Not even hybrids. Audi will keep on building the engines it makes, but won’t introduce any new ones. We figure that in another design cycle or so, sometime in the early-2030’s, Audi will no longer sell ICEs.
MAZDA LAYS OUT EV PLANS
Speaking of the move to EVs, Mazda laid out its plans through 2030. Starting next year through 2025 the plan includes 5 hybrids, 5 plug-in hybrids and 3 EVs. We suspect those are the same 5 models with 3 different powertrains with the hybrid being supplied by Toyota. Then Mazda will use a new scalable EV architecture to come out with several models of various sizes and body types between 2025 and 2030. It figures that by 2030, BEVs will make up a quarter of its sales. Interestingly, it also says it will come out with a new in-line 6-cylinder engine, but didn’t provide any details.
VW ID.4 CORRECTION
And before we wrap up, viewer Phil pointed out we made a mistake in yesterday’s show. We said the ID.4 is made at VW’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. While there are plans to start making the EV there next year, the ID.4 is currently produced in Germany. Thanks for catching that Phil.
Anyway, that wraps up this week’s worth of show. I hope you have a great weekend.
Share
Permalink
Comments (16)
June 18th, 2021 at 12:26 pm
It’s too bad it takes a world pandemic or a supply market to crash – or both- to get politicians to pay attention to what experts have been telling them. That many countries are too reliant on countries, some aren’t exactly our friends, for a lot of key medicine and electronics and other things. Would be nice if they spent less time trying to get re-elected and more time dealing with issues.
June 18th, 2021 at 12:52 pm
1) And the US is the worse offender by buying from China and look what has happened! This is more the publics fault than the gov’ts.
June 18th, 2021 at 1:28 pm
2. I don’t know… The average consumer (like myself) just goes out and buys electronics, clothing, and other consumer items without even realizing that most of them are made in China. In fact, I would venture that our food and other perishables are about the only things we consume without Chinese origin. And it isn’t because Americans were clamoring for Chinese goods. They just started flooding our store shelves until, before we knew it, they all were made there.
June 18th, 2021 at 2:06 pm
1,2 & 3. It doesn’t matter they’ll give away all this tax credit stuff and as soon as it is no longer financially beneficial they’ll go right back to buying every thing from slave wage South East Asian countries. We can’t compete equally with countries that virtually pay nothing for their labor and have zero safety and emission concerns.
June 18th, 2021 at 2:09 pm
We want cheap stuff, and companies want to make lots of money for CEOs and stockholders, so the brand owners and sellers oblige. Of the clothes I’m wearing now on this 94 degree Indiana day, Levi shorts from Mexico, an Aeropostle tank top from Guatemala, and Crocs flip flops from Vietnam. Also handy to check was a Gildan T-shirt from Dominican Republic. This isn’t even cheap stuff, though I got most of it “on sale.” Then, there is all of the electronics we get, most of it from China, though my most recent Samsung smart phone is from Vietnam.
June 18th, 2021 at 2:20 pm
3 I’ve heard that most of our broccoli comes from China, but probably most other fresh food is domestic. Some things, like mandarin oranges come from different places, based on where they are in season. I always have mandarin/clementine oranges around, and the ones I get come from California about half/two thirds of the year, and Peru during most of our summer.
June 18th, 2021 at 2:46 pm
I really like where they are going with fuel cell technology. It makes a lot of sense for planes/trains/large trucks/ and even ships. Basically anything that requires the transport of substantially heavy cargo.
June 18th, 2021 at 3:54 pm
Even when/if there is a lot of cheap hydrogen from wind and solar, fuel cell airplanes would be only for slow, short range operation. Faster, but short range airplanes could just burn hydrogen in jet engines. Trains would be a great application for hydrogen fuel cells. Just add extra cars to the train for the fuel cell, batteries, and those 10,000 psi tanks of gas.
June 18th, 2021 at 4:05 pm
1,2,3,4,5,6 Only on Autoline Daily can a car forum digress so quickly from autos to clothing to food – LOL
June 18th, 2021 at 4:36 pm
9 International trade with autos and food are inter-related, given the chicken tax.
June 18th, 2021 at 7:39 pm
mazda needs to lay out an ev plan after failure of sky activ x. what a black eye, these things were so embarrassing were a no-show in north american market. failure to launch.
June 18th, 2021 at 7:59 pm
If Mazda would sell a Mazda 6 wagon with a Toyota hybrid powertrain, I’d be interested.
June 19th, 2021 at 9:20 am
#11.) Have to remember that Mazda is a small, independent automaker, with limited resources compared to other OEM’s. They probably have as many successes and failures as any other automaker, but being so small, when they things don’t go to plan, I’m sure they feel it! They don’t have as much to invest and when that investment doesn’t bear the fruit, not only foes it look bad and frustrate fans of their products, it would’ve taken needed resources from other things! I mean, if they had half of the money time and other resources back that they had invested in sky activ x, they may be further along in the the development of BEV’s. Now it seems, in the short term for the time being at least, they will be leaning on partnerships from bigger OEM’s to play catch-up in the move to EV’s.
June 19th, 2021 at 2:20 pm
It looks like Ford has sold all of their part of Mazda, but Toyota now owns 5%. Toyota’s sharing powertrain technology should be useful for Mazda.
June 21st, 2021 at 9:39 am
IMO the world has become a lot smaller and almost everything is now competing in a global market. That makes it really hard for countries like the US to compete when it comes to labor. Which is why over the last 50 years we have been losing manufacturing jobs to other countries with cheap labor. The only way to protect our standard of living is to level the playing field with tax breaks for local manufacturing or taxing imported products or both. Sadly this would likely result in higher priced consumer products. However its that or we just compete with a global market and plan be ready to pay similar wages for the same job in other countries. Yet a large majority of people want a minimum wage of $15 an hr.
We will just see a much larger gap of wealthy and poor and the decline of the middle class.
I agree that providing tax breaks to manufacture micro-chips here in the US will be a huge money grab for some company to start up resolve the current problem and soon as those tax breaks run out they will move the manufacturing overseas and we will have paid for a temporary fix to be repeated.
June 21st, 2021 at 11:09 am
I agree with you, Lambo, for the most part.
Tax breaks solidify the manufacturing foundation only if they are not diverted to raises for the higher ups. Perhaps any business accepting tthese incentives shoud agree, in return, to make everyone employed get the same monitary raises without anyone also given stocks as payment. Also, tax breaks should only last as long as it takes to get a plant operational and profitable for a short number of years and not 10 to 20.
As long as profits are put back into the company, profits will not be large enough and the tax incentives will continue.
Our tax dollars then should get a better return on our investment.