AD #3201 – Automakers Boost EV Investment; Buick Teases New GL8; Ford Moves Back to Vertical Integration with EVs
November 10th, 2021 at 11:44am
Listen to “AD #3201 – Automakers Boost EV Investment; Buick Teases New GL8; Ford Moves Back to Vertical Integration with EVs” on Spreaker.
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Runtime: 9:15
0:08 Bosch Leads Consortium on Silicon Carbide Chips
1:08 Automakers Split on UN Climate Pledge
2:04 Auto Industry Boosts EV Investment
3:17 NHTSA Pays Millions to Hyundai Whistleblower
4:16 Buick Teases New GL8 Flagship Concept Van
6:02 Ford Explains Move Back to Vertical Integration with EVs
7:53 Ford & Purdue Developing More Efficient Charging Cable
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BOSCH LEADS CONSORTIUM ON SILICON CARBIDE CHIPS
As we reported yesterday, onsemi, one of the largest U.S. semiconductor companies, says the global chip shortage is going to last longer than most analysts have predicted. That’s in part to automakers wanting chips made from silicon carbide, which are more efficient but take longer to produce than regular silicon chips. So to help tackle the problem, the supplier Bosch is leading a consortium of 34 companies, universities and research institutes to create a supply chain in Europe for silicon carbide chips. The project has a budget of 89 million euros and runs through 2024. The partners will work on developing new silicon carbide technology and production processes. And they’ll also work to secure the proper machinery for suppliers to make the chips. Between now and 2025, the global silicon carbide chip market is expected to grow 30% on average annually to over 2.5 billion dollars.
AUTO INDUSTRY SPLIT ON UN CLIMATE PLEDGE
A group of automakers earlier today signed a pledge to aim for all new vehicle sales to be zero emission globally by 2040. It’s part of the United Nations Climate Change summit taking place in Glasgow, Scotland right now. Ford, GM, Volvo, Daimler, BYD and Jaguar Land Rover signed the pledge, as did several countries including India, Poland and New Zealand. The goal is to cut carbon emissions to curb global warming. However, it’s not too clear how much teeth the pledge has, since Volkswagen, Toyota, Stellantis, Honda, Nissan, BMW and the Hyundai Group did not sign it. Nor did the U.S., Germany or China. Some automakers were hesitant to sign the pledge because it doesn’t require governments to make sure the proper charging and grid infrastructure will be built to handle the transition to electric vehicles.
AUTO INDUSTRY BOOSTS EV INVESTMENT
But either way, the auto industry is stepping up its commitment to electric vehicles. According to Reuters, carmakers are investing $515 billion globally through 2030 on EVs and batteries. That’s up from $300 billion, less than three years ago.
NHTSA PAYS MILLIONS TO HYUNDAI WHISTLEBLOWER
It pays to be a tattletale. In 2016, a then Hyundai engineer flew from South Korea to Washington DC to inform U.S. regulators that his employer of 26 years was withholding defect information, related to issues with the Group’s Theta II engines. That directly resulted in an investigation and a fine of $210 million, $80 million of which was paid in cash. And because NHTSA had set up a whistleblower award program a year earlier, it entitled the engineer to a large payout. Over $24 million to be exact. It’s the first time anything has been paid out since the program was set up and was the maximum amount allowed by law. NHTSA says whistleblowers play an important role in that they can share information that is hidden from the agency, which can have an impact on public health and safety. It’s also a helluva incentive to tattle.
BUICK TEASES NEW GL8 FLAGSHIP CONCEPT VAN
It might surprise you to know that Buick has over two decades of van experience in China with the GL8 that it first introduced in 1999. I know we’ve shown the vehicle before, but if you’ve never seen it, you might be equally surprised at how luxurious it can be. And it plans to push the boundaries of the high-end luxury van segment even further. Just take a look at this futuristic, lounge-like interior of the new GL8 Flagship Concept that will debut at the Guangzhou auto show on November 19th. It’s the only picture Buick shared but it says the model is close to production and will also preview the van’s new styling. So, stay tuned. More to come soon.
And hey, be sure to join us tomorrow for Autoline After Hours. Our guests will be Ron Harbour and Dean Weston from a startup called Rite Angle, which developed a new process to make hydrogen from water cheaply and safely. If you have any questions for them, email us at viewermail@autoline.tv or tweet us @Autoline. And join us this Thursday afternoon to learn more.
FORD EXPLAINS MOVE BACK TO VERTICAL INTEGRATION WITH EVs
Over 100 years ago the Ford Motor Company set the stage for vertical integration. For over half a century automakers typically made 70% of everything in-house and bought 30% of their parts and components from suppliers. Then came the outsourcing craze of the 1980’s and ‘90’s, which flipped everything around. Today, most automakers only make 20-30% of a vehicle in-house and buy the rest from suppliers. But with the move to electric cars, we’re seeing a big move back to vertical integration. Lisa Drake, the COO of Ford in North America, is on Autoline This Week, and she explains why the company is going back to being vertically integrated, at least when it comes to EVs.
“To be quite frank, you have to decide what’s the most important part of the vehicle that you want to control. And given the battery cost, given the supply of these raw materials, especially the domestic supply and what I’ll call the ethical supply of these materials, you have to control that. And now that we have the scale that we have, we’re able to do that. We’re able to come to the table, whether it’s with government, whether it’s mining companies, whether it’s cell suppliers. And we have the scale and commitment and frankly the product, the exceptional product, that it’s giving them the confidence that, yep, they want to invest with Ford. And they’re allowing us to be a deeper part of that value chain. In the past we didn’t have that volume necessarily. So we had to transact with our cell suppliers. And we’re in a very different place today.”
Ford is not the only one doing it. So is GM. And Tesla is more vertically integrated than anyone. But it’s so interesting to see the industry returning to a practice that it pioneered well over a century ago.
FORD & PURDUE DEVELOPING MORE EFFICIENT CHARGING CABLE
Speaking of Ford and EVs, it’s working with Purdue University to increase charging speed. Right now if you want to make charging faster you have to increase the current, but if you increase current it produces a lot of heat and if you don’t do anything with that heat, charging slows down. That’s why some of the more powerful stations are using liquid-cooled charging cables to get rid of that excess heat. Ford and Purdue are working on a new cable that still uses liquid cooling, but they have come up with a way to change the coolant from a liquid to a vapor and say it can extract even more heat from the cable, compared to the liquid-only system. They think they can deliver significantly more power this way, but it’s still going to require a lot of R&D. Purdue plans to begin testing a prototype cable in the next two years.
And that wraps up today’s report, thanks for watching.
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Comments (25)
November 10th, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Outsourcing is great for accountants (& executive bonuses) as you deduct a lot costs but naturally you lose control and when you have an emergency it can be painful.
Have ridden in a nice minivan in China and it was a great luxury ride.
Hopefully the Whistleblower outcome will encourage companies to be honest/direct. But it will likely also encourage some bogus claims too.
November 10th, 2021 at 12:39 pm
About EV investments of auto Co.s , Just read a quick story in Toronto Star newspaper, Chyrco Bramton plant townspeople and local govt fears for that factory future and its over 3000 employees, they build only ICE Sedans like the Chrysler 300 , Dodge challenger and Demons, and Stelatis is quiet.
I think most legacy auto are reluctant to go all in into BEVs, hard to balance the job of keeping ICE and their Profits while funding BEV switchover, then how to keep dealers alive when BEVs need less maintenance? Maybe John McElroy and AD can address this in the future.
November 10th, 2021 at 12:54 pm
I don’t know of any Automaker more commited to fully electric transportation than Tesla, Having its own charging network on 4 continents ,and their own battery factories and even building the chargers themselves, and deploying them, others like VW and GM and Ford are being dragged kicking and screaming to the transformation to BEVs,Toyota is #1 objector to change, lobbying govts both in Japan , the US and Europe too, hecause they dont have the technology and the will to change.
November 10th, 2021 at 1:00 pm
It’s hard to believe that just a year ago Autoline had Warren Browne on predicting the future of BEVs and said that there would be no trucks that were BEV and we now have Rivian delivering the first production pick ups perhaps we need a show with a pro ICE and another one pro BEV and let the sparks fly
November 10th, 2021 at 1:30 pm
vertical integration is great when the item you need is in short supply, because you control all of the output. However, vertical integration creates the ‘legacy’ that we all complain about from legacy OEMs. Even Tesla, should the optimal battery chemistry change, would be a legacy OEM.
November 10th, 2021 at 1:41 pm
#5 Kevin, Tesla will control its own destiny,Eon Musk will see to that with a Trillion market cap, legacy auto will also control their destiny , by switching to BEVs,or not
November 10th, 2021 at 2:34 pm
3 Toyota certainly has the technology to make BEVs, which are much less complex than what they are making now. Supply of batteries could be a problem, though, if they aren’t lining up sources for when they need them.
November 10th, 2021 at 2:43 pm
Everyone moved to the JIT Philosophy only to find it’s more NIT( Never In Time) . It’s killing productivity . I’ve been in manufacturing for 40 years and that is one of if not the biggest reason for failing to make shipping schedules is parts not arriving on promised dates. Now with what is going on with the supply chain it is the worst i’ve ever seen.
November 10th, 2021 at 3:32 pm
#7 kit , it is more than just batteries tho it is a major problem, there’s also that software and its integration, as VW is finding out, Tesla has now outsold Mercedes in Premium car sales category,in the USA, not only in BEVs but overall,ICE included, BMW and Lexus brands are next.
Giga Texas will have their own Tesla 4680 battery lines,some of the production machinery are now onsite, shipped 50-60 kms from me , Markham, Canada
November 10th, 2021 at 3:38 pm
Kit, we will see how the Toyota BZRX will do in sales,I expect them to go mostly to Europe & US compliance states as I dont think there will be enough numbers to go around and the platform is to be shared with Subaru.
November 10th, 2021 at 4:21 pm
9 The software for Toyota hybrids is much more complex than software for BEVs. There are hardware differences, to be sure, as a BEV needs much bigger power handling capability for the MGs than hybrids, but the powertrain software itself for BEVs is relatively simple.
I wouldn’t count out Toyota in being ready to sell BEVs, when the market is there. Toyota is not strong in the region with the biggest EV market share, Europe, with only ~300K total annual sales of Toyota + Lexus. They currently sell ~1.5M in China, though, and China is the biggest BEV market in units. If Toyota wants to keep those sales, they will need EVs. For North American, I don’t see that they need to be in a big hurry with BEVs. EVs still have only 2.5% of market share.
November 10th, 2021 at 7:08 pm
@9 & 11 – Actually, Toyota entered into an intellectual property swap with a competing legacy OEM (American!) to gain access to vastly superior software to refine the transitions between EV and ICE mode.
Separately, I haven’t seen any discussion about Tesla’s catastrophically failed OTA update that caused unexpected high speed autonomous braking… and the equally catastrophic “fix” to disable AEB. I do recall Tesla’s resident spin doctor using the initial OTA update as an example of Tesla’s “superior speed of thought”… but that update can’t be too smart if they had to disable AEB.
November 11th, 2021 at 4:58 am
#12 Tesla fixed that glitch ASAP all witih 48 hrs and via ota, unlike a co. That had to hzve a TOTALL RECALL and sue its supplier for reimbursement, the glitch was a nonevent, of course haters will hate me, & the company , oh and Mary Barra is mystyfied how a startup can be more valuable than her 100 yr old company, and it was not evrn Tesla, she does not know her company has stranded assets and has the STEALERSHIPs to get rid of if that company is to succeed , even Rivian is going direct sales, so is Lucid, now i dont know if those two will succeed , im hoping they do, America needs those two to if America is to battle The Chinese Auto industry. Cadillac 30% of themdealers dont want to invest in BEV , i guess they see no profits in BEVs, going forward GM has to dicch Dealers if they are to survive, we know that but that aint gonna happen, same with Ford and others USA is unique in having NADA , and Canada is also stuck in the same boat, almost, Enjoy your ICE and your Legacy auto while you can, the Chinese will come, they are starting with Europe, in two years they’ll be here, correct that, They are here already, with Geelys Volvo and Polestar and BYD s buses,and BYD is trying its Han in Central America.
November 11th, 2021 at 5:19 am
#11 kit, Toyota i presume will sell its coming BEVs Europe,or be forced to buy E credits from you know who or pay a fine, i understand Honda had to buy such credits,Toyota has been selling itscompliance BEV the lexus UX 300 in Europe to avoid the penalties. In other publication Mercedes has lost the sales crown in the USA to Tesla in the premium or uxury market, and the BEV sales are starting to take hold as Tesla has lost a % of EV sales, and more like Lucid and Rivian coming to take a bite of mod S & X sales,those are very good BEVs but they do start close to $100,000 & more. The BEV cat is out of the bag, so to speak, there aint no putting it back.
November 11th, 2021 at 5:32 am
#12 Drew ! Rivian IPO yesterday beat expectations by a big margin ,climbed from $80 to over $100, i was almost as shocked as GMs Mary Barra, I should have bought the stock, at least for a day or week, me thinks Rivian is going to succeed in the BEV world,Mary Barra is GREEN with envy, pun intended.You can see it in her words and face, i mean a company that hasnt made or delivered a hundred cars to customers having value beyond GM?
November 11th, 2021 at 6:03 am
It remains to be seen if Rivian will have the staying power of Tesla and if CEO Scaringe has Elons pulling rabbits out of a hat magician tricks, i must say they have a good product in that Quad Motor Pickup, and many Tesla owners are buying Rivian, we will see when Fords lightning and GM e Pickup comes, i think them ae Trucks will sell well as well, GMs leadership needs to have a good strategy for BEVs , dont think of making 30 different ones ,no need to spread the company too thin w/ 30 lines of cars andtrucks, slim down the product line one Pickup , one SUV based on , it, a Caddy, and get rid of the Bolt and sell only the EUV in its place @ the same price, get rid of one or two more lines like Buick or Chevy or the Hummer brand, but that is just my opinion, we will see in 2025-26 if Mary’s promises are kept ,OVERTAKING Tesla in BEV sales by 2025 ? Like to know what she is smoking.
November 11th, 2021 at 6:50 am
Rivian has dreams of a million/yr SUVs and SUTs by 2030 and wants 4 factories, they just acquired more land near the current plant and I expect them to start building by next years end or the following,
Lucid is targeting the rich ,$80,000 & beyond, they will be a niche player for years, but Saudi PIF might have deep pockets, one would hope.best ofluck to all, as Tesla starts making their own 4680 Battery Cells inhouse, and buying from whoever will sell @ a great price.
November 11th, 2021 at 7:27 am
For those that enjoy Jay Leno’s Garage, here’s a review of the C8 ZO6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRU3UDvhF0s
November 11th, 2021 at 7:48 am
I know a lot of people who drive pickup trucks, but I don’t hear any of them talking about wanting an electric one. Are these companies, both startups and legacy brands, going too heavy on pickup trucks as their next new EV?
November 11th, 2021 at 8:29 am
18 Interesting video. Leno must have good rapport with the local police. He probably had the car over 100 mph multiple times, as he wound it out in 3rd gear, and maybe 4th.
November 11th, 2021 at 8:45 am
#19 kit, I guess you have not come into contact with Ford 150 Lightning reservations people, nor close to the 1,000,000 Tesla CYBRTRK reservation holders, will be interesting when GM shows those figures interested in theirs, GM hopes they show up or else their sales projections of overtaking Tesla are screwed.
November 11th, 2021 at 8:59 am
#19 kit a E Pickup that has 200 miles range and $40,000 base price like Ford promises for fleet users will cost about $20 in electricity daily if driven 120 to 200 miles to its maximum Rdtrip daily, maybe you can tell me how much a gas pickup cost brand new and and cost of gas.several times I rented Ford and GM vans from UHaul cost to go 120 to 150 kms ( 60 to 80 miles) was on average was about $25-$35@ $1.00/ liter of gas, today gas is $1.50 average here in Toronto, Iran see why the small Maverick Pup will be popular @ 35MPG
November 11th, 2021 at 9:08 am
22 We’ll see how many of those no-obligation reservations become sales. Both the Lightning and Maverick could be good work trucks, except they are both directed to “life style” buyers, with 4 door crew cab as the only body style.
November 11th, 2021 at 10:02 am
22 Actually, I’m seeing a lot more vans, and fewer pickup trucks used as work vehicles by plumbers, HVAC people, cable TV crews, etc. Ford might have a winner for commercial use with the electric Transit, though the range is short, 126 miles. That would be enough for many users, charging overnight, and it will be easy to add more batteries if they want to.
November 11th, 2021 at 10:44 am
#24,there’s a boom in New subdivisions right in my neighborhood here in Oshawa, both pi kups and vars ard popular with vans roughly 60% of them in sites, having a covered truck is a must for tools and stuff, open trucks good for long items like ladders and 12 of plumbing pipes, there are a minimum of 6 subdivision construction within 6 kms of me, the one 4 blocks from me are $800,000 houses, and all sold out, it is boom town here,people fleeing Toronto million dollar Real Estate Tesla and houses