Listen to “AD #3305 – How GM Blew Launch of Bolt EV; Russian Auto Industry Collapsing Over Sanctions; Judge Hands Musk a Setback” on Spreaker.
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Runtime: 10:34
0:08 Federal Judge Hands Musk a Setback
1:11 France In Uproar Over Tavares Pay Package
2:02 Russian Auto Industry Collapsing Over Sanctions
3:20 Volvo Invests in Fast Charging Startup
4:15 Lexus RZ 450e Debuts on Wednesday
4:44 Tesla, Kia No Longer Offer Charging Cables
5:26 Who Uses the Most Gasoline?
6:54 Shanghai OEMs Able to Open Again
7:19 How GM Blew Launch of Bolt EV
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FEDERAL JUDGE HANDS MUSK A SETBACK
“False and misleading.” That’s what a federal judge said about tweets in 2018 from Elon Musk saying he had the financing to take Tesla private. Back when it happened, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Musk and Tesla $20 million over the tweets, and ordered Musk to get his tweets approved by a lawyer before he sent them out. And some Tesla investors are suing for damages because they say it hurt the stock price. Musk now says he actually did have the money to take Tesla private. But the investors asked a judge to force Musk from talking about it because they claim he’s just trying to sway public opinion and influence potential jurors in an upcoming trial in May. This story is rich in irony. Elon is trying to take over Twitter claiming it’s all about preserving free speech, at the same time a judge says his tweets, in this case, were false and misleading.
FRANCE IN UPROAR OVER TAVARES PAY PACKAGE
Eighty million bucks. That’s how much money Stellantis is giving its CEO Carlos Tavares. And that’s just his pay package for last year. The French are up in arms about it. France is in the middle of a presidential election and the top two candidates have both come out criticizing how much money Mr. Tavares makes. Stellantis is based in Paris, which is why it’s such a big deal there. Tavares got $20 million as his base pay package. He got over $32 million in stock, and over $27 million as part of his long-term compensation. By comparison, GM’s Mary Barra made about $24 million last year and Ford’s Jim Farley made about $23 million.
RUSSIAN AUTO INDUSTRY COLLAPSING OVER SANCTIONS
Here’s a good indicator of how hard sanctions over the war in Ukraine are slamming into the Russian economy. Wards Intelligence reports that sales of new cars and trucks in Russia dropped a devastating 62% in March. Some automakers did worse than others. Honda was down 70%, Jaguar Land Rover was down 74%. And there was no sign of support for the home team. The Russian car company Avtovaz, which is owned by Renault, was down 64%. Just you wait. As bad as these numbers are, we think they’ll probably be even worse when we get the results for April.
VOLVO INVESTS IN FAST CHARGING STARTUP
Volvo is investing in a company that will help its electric vehicles charge much faster. StoreDot is an Israeli startup that uses a unique battery anode material and related software to provide a faster charge to an EV. It claims it’s capable of adding 160 kilometers or roughly 100 miles of range in just 5 minutes. The batteries are lithium-ion that use silicon-dominant anode technology and come in either pouch or 4680 cylindrical cell designs. Daimler, Samsung and VinFast are other investors in StoreDot and it hopes to be in mass production by 2024. After that it plans to bring out semi- and full-solid state batteries that will provide 100 miles of range in 3 minutes by 2028 and 100 miles in 2 minutes by 2032.
LEXUS RZ 450e DEBUTS ON WEDNESDAY
The Toyota bZ4X already made its debut and so did Subaru’s version, the Solterra. And they’re about to be joined by another member of the family. Lexus will pull the wraps off the RZ 450e on a special website this Wednesday, April 20th. Mechanically and electrically speaking, we think it’s going to be exactly like the other two. But we’ll tune in to watch the launch and see if there’s any significant differences.
TESLA, KIA NO LONGER OFFER CHARGING CABLES
Bad news for new Tesla and Kia customers. Tesla is no longer providing charging equipment when you buy one of their cars. Elon Musk said on Twitter that its stats show the usage of the 120-volt chargers is “super low, so seemed wasteful.” The good news is Tesla does sell mobile connectors and is lowering the price from $275 to $200 for 120-volt ones. But Tesla isn’t alone, Kia isn’t providing any charging equipment for the new EV6. And to us, this is kind of akin to automakers getting rid of spare tires.
WHO USES THE MOST GASOLINE?
The state of Washington is kicking off an interesting study. It wants to learn about gasoline super-users, or people who buy at least 1,000 gallons of gas and drive more than 30,000 miles a year. Super-users only make up 10% of light-duty vehicle drivers in the U.S. but they use 32% of all gasoline. Washington state wants to find out who these people are, where they live, what they drive and what it would take to get them to switch from gas to electric and the results will be given to the Governor and state government at the beginning of next year. The hope would be not to compel super-users to buy an EV. Rather provide vehicles and infrastructure that fit their needs and maybe even offer bigger EV incentives based on how much gasoline a person uses.
SHANGHAI OEMs ABLE TO OPEN AGAIN
There’s good and bad news for automakers in China. Shanghai is starting to ease COVID lockdowns, which means companies like Tesla and Volkswagen, can begin to resume production, which has been shut down for nearly three weeks. But the bad news is, workers will have to live on site for the time being to keep the plant open, while the rest of the city remains lockdowned.
HOW GM BLEW LAUNCH OF BOLT EV
Did you know the Chevrolet Bolt EV is one of the most efficient electric cars on the market? The EPA rates it at 28 kilowatt hours per 100 miles. Only the Tesla Model 3 and Y and the Lucid Air do better than that. So GM got a lot of things right with the car. But it also got things wrong. Mark Reuss, the president of GM, was our guest on Autoline After Hours, and he spoke very openly of how GM blew it when it came to marketing the car. Take a look.
“I’d also say the way we went to market with the Bolt was a company that did not believe that battery electric were going to become mainstream. And I say that very transparently and very clearly because we did not get behind the car from a marketing and retail standpoint. We had a lot of people who didn’t believe in it–sort of a self-fulfilling thing. And that’s not the way we should have done that. And so lessons learned on that piece of it as well. Very little advertising. Very little awareness of what the car could do and what it was, other than in the EV media community. And, you know, to be honest the market was very different when we introduced the car, too, from the acceptability and the readiness to buy an EV. That was not what it is today. Having said that, the Bolt EV community is one of the most loyal, passionate communities that we have in Chevrolet. It’s almost Corvette-like in terms of the passion for the car. And that’s something that we want to have happen across all our products that are EVs. And I think it can. I go to the site a lot, the Bolt EV and Bolt EUV website, the owner’s site. And they have pictures of the Bolt being transported from Orion (the assembly plant) to the dealerships. And then they go to the dealerships and they want to buy the new car. And this happened (the battery recall and production stop) just as we were launching the mid-cycle enhancement of the Bolt, and the Bolt EUV with Supercruise. And so, unfortunate timing. It’s the way it is. We did the right things. Tried to do it as fast as we can, with care and do it once and do it right, and then move on and re-launch the car, which is what we’re doing.”
This show probably has the most comprehensive information about GM’s EV strategy you’re going to find anywhere. The soundbite we just showed you is just a fraction of what Mark Reuss talked about. And you can watch the entire show at our website or on our YouTube channel.
But that’s it for today, thanks for watching.
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Seamus and Sean McElroy cover the latest news in the automotive industry for Autoline Daily.