AD #3350 – Plasma Ignition Better Than Spark Plugs; Ford Tries Direct Sales in China; EV Production Updates
June 21st, 2022 at 12:08pm
Listen to “AD #3350 – Plasma Ignition Better Than Spark Plugs; Ford Tries Direct Sales in China; EV Production Updates” on Spreaker.
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Runtime: 9:54
0:07 BrightDrop Makes 1st Deliveries to FedEx
0:40 Daimler Using LFP Batteries for Long Haul Truck
1:14 Honda Breaks Ground on New EV Plant in China
1:48 VW Test Helps Increase Renewable Energy Use
3:19 EV Production Updates
3:56 BMW Digitizing All of Its Production Plants
4:29 GM Drops 4-Year Degree Requirement for Salaried Workers
5:10 Ford Tries Direct Sales in China
6:39 Plasma Ignition Proves Better Than Spark Plugs
7:54 R.I.P. Maryann Keller
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BRIGHTDROP MAKES 1ST DELIVERIES TO FEDEX
BrightDrop, GM’s electric commercial van service, delivered the first 150 of its Zevo 600 vehicles to FedEx. BrightDrop will supply FedEx with 2,500 vans over the next couple of years. The van is designed for last-mile delivery and has an estimated range of 250 miles. By 2040, FedEx plans to convert its entire fleet to electric and to help support all those EVs it started to build a charging network at its facilities across the country.
DAIMLER USING LFP BATTERIES FOR LONG HAUL TRUCK
Speaking of electric commercial vehicles, Daimler Truck will soon unveil the LongHaul version of its electric Actros truck. It features an LFP or lithium iron phosphate battery pack that’s estimated to return 500 kilometers or 310 miles of range. LFP batteries tend to have a longer life and Daimler claims the eActros LongHaul will be able to charge from 20 to 80% in “well under 30 minutes.” Customer trials start next year.
HONDA BREAKS GROUND ON NEW EV PLANT IN CHINA
Honda is greatly expanding its EV production capacity in China. It broke ground on a new EV production plant with joint venture partner GAC. The plant will make its e:N series of vehicles, like the SUV we showed off yesterday. It’s expected to be online by 2024, which is the same time another plant will open with its other JV partner Dongfeng. Those two plants will have a combined annual production capacity of 240,000 units.
VW WANTS MORE EVs CHARGED WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY
More renewable energy, like wind and solar, can help offset the demand the growing number of electric vehicles will put on the grid, but in Germany, around 6,200 GWh of green electricity had to be switched off in 2020 due to the limited capacity of its power system. That would be enough energy to drive around 2.6 million EVs for a whole year. So, VW wants to tap into that. It’s now testing a pilot program in Germany with about 20 ID owners that will plug into an app when they plan to charge their vehicle next. Based on that info, a charging plan will be determined so the most amount of renewable energy is used. This helps ensure it doesn’t go to waste and more green electricity is used. VW says there will also be financial incentives, like free public charging.
EV PRODUCTION UPDATES
We’ve got a few updates on the start of production for a couple of upcoming electric vehicles. According to AutoForecast Solutions, production of the Genesis GV70 kicks off in the U.S. in December at Hyundai’s plant in Montgomery, Alabama. Production of the next-generation GV70 starts in January of 2028 at Hyundai’s new $5.5 billion EV plant in Georgia that it announced last month. And production of the Ram 1500 BEV begins at Stellantis’ Warren Truck plant in Michigan in November of 2024.
BMW 3D SCANNING ALL OF ITS PLANTS
Assembly plants are complicated and changing one over for a new vehicle can seem like a herculean task. That’s why BMW is taking 3D scans of all of its production sites. By moving the layout of its plants into the virtual world it will more easily be able to plan and make changes for future vehicle programs. It will also greatly cut down on the time needed to do this. By early 2023 BMW says it will have digital scans of all of its plants.
GM DROPS 4-YEAR DEGREE FOR SALARIES WORKERS
In an effort to broaden its talent pool of potential hires, General Motors is dropping its four-year college degree requirement for salaried workers. Instead, the automaker will focus on real-world experience for certain roles and has started a new approach for hiring. It includes a focus on diversity, inclusion and equity as well as on workplace innovation. The effort is part of GM CEO Mary Barra’s goal of becoming the most inclusive company in the world. Nearly half of the 500 new employees it has hired in recent months come from “underrepresented categories” in the auto industry.
FORD TRIES DIRECT SALES IN CHINA
China has big import tariffs on American-made vehicles and that’s reflected in the price of the 2022 Ford F-150 Raptor. The performance truck just went on sale in China with a starting price of just over $102,500. For comparison, the Raptor sells for just shy of $70-grand in the U.S. But even at that price, we bet Chinese consumers will be happy to snap them up. This will also be the first time Ford tests out a direct-to-consumer sales model. So, no need to go through a dealer.
PLASMA IGNITION BETTER THAN SPARK PLUGS
Longtime Autoline viewers may remember a company we talked to a few years back called Transient Plasma Systems. Its developed a plasma ignition system to replace spark plugs, which uses fast pulses of plasma, an electrically charged gas, at a low temperature to ignite the fuel. It improves thermal efficiency and the whole process requires less energy and provides better emissions. And now the company is sharing validation results conducted by the FEV Group. It tested the plasma ignition system in a Toyota 2.5L four-cylinder engine with direct and port injection, which is commonly used in Camry’s, and compared that to the stock ignition. The results show a brake-specific fuel consumption improvement of 6% with the plasma system. That’s the rate of fuel consumption divided by the power produced. And there was no degradation of combustion with increased exhaust gas recirculation and the plasma ignition showed an improved tolerance to lean burn than the stock one. The system could improve fuel economy by as much as 20%.
R.I.P. MARYANN KELLER
A sad note here. Maryann Keller, one of the best known analysts on Wall Street, died last week. Maryann made her name in the auto industry as a Wall Street analyst at Kidder Peabody when in 1979 she predicted that Chrysler was going to go bankrupt. No one believed her and she was roundly ridiculed until Chrysler’s CEO Lee Iacocca finally admitted that the company was out of cash and needed a bailout from the government. She was the first woman to win the title of Institutional Investor’s Top Analyst award, and went on to win it for 12 years in a row. She wrote several books and her first, called Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall and Struggle To Recover At General Motors, won the prestigious Eccles Prize from Columbia University. She was also a guest a number of times on Autoline. Maryann Keller probably had more influence on the auto industry than any other Wall Street analyst and the industry owes her a debt of gratitude.
Do car designers really need to use clay models to design new cars, or can they do it all digitally? That’s the topic on Autoline After Hours this Thursday. The designer John Manoogian will be joining us, and so will Doug Grieg, the CEO of a company called Tarus that makes clay milling machines. So join John and Gary as they dive into one of the most controversial topics in today’s automotive design.
But that wraps up today’s show, thanks for watching.
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Comments (16)
June 21st, 2022 at 12:33 pm
Plasma ignition looks pretty good for an ICE to BEV transition link. The article says it’s cost effective but no percentage of what a current ignition to ‘plasma’ was revealed. Other noted plusses included lower NOX and CO2; those would go a long way to making it acceptable as a bridge to the future. I’m still a little afraid of what it might cost and the compatibility of existing ignition architecture.
June 21st, 2022 at 12:35 pm
When did GM ever require 4 year degrees for salary jobs, except maybe engineers? A lot of technicians, secretaries, production supervisors and other salary employees didn’t have 4 year degrees when I was there.
June 21st, 2022 at 12:36 pm
Very sad to hear that MaryAnn has died. She was one of the most intelligent and accurate analysts.
June 21st, 2022 at 12:42 pm
1 It sounds complex, and expensive to fix, but if plasma ignition actually improves fuel efficiency 20%, or even 10%, it could be worth it. It might allow regular gas to work better in high compression and/or high boost engines that now need premium for best performance.
June 21st, 2022 at 12:55 pm
Chrysler only hit the government to guarantee loans from private sources not direct loans but the government made out like bandits on the money they got for just backing the loans
June 21st, 2022 at 2:06 pm
Kit, that had been a requirement for a number of years for non-secretarial salaried jobs when I was hired in 1984. There were a number of folks I worked with that were hired before that became a requirement. As secretarial jobs were eliminated in the 90′s, the requirement became effective for all salaried positions.
It was a silly requirement and seemed to only protect the HR department from criticism. They hired quite a few incompetent people that were somehow able to obtain a 4-year degree, and missed out on some highly capable people that would have been an asset to the company.
They also took advantage of a loophole, hiring people without degrees through a staffing company. This meant they did not have to pay benefits and were able to fill positions more easily when the applicant pool got thin.
June 21st, 2022 at 2:12 pm
They probably don’t need to do clay , but still should . What a 3D model can’t show is how light falls on a surface. Where with clay you can see how the light plays with the lines of the vehicle.
June 21st, 2022 at 2:28 pm
6 I started in 1977, and there were a number of very good technicians without degrees. The secretarial jobs were gone by the time I retired.
June 21st, 2022 at 3:24 pm
If I remember correctly, start-stop ignition saves only about 1-2% of fuel. If that’s good enough, then 20% for plasma should be a given. Wonder what happens when you exceed 88 mph? Exciting!
June 21st, 2022 at 3:26 pm
Do you know if the plasma ignition could potentially be a retrofit for older vehicles or only a design for new vehicles? I read the link for the plasma ignition, but I didn’t see an answer to my question.
June 21st, 2022 at 3:44 pm
9 Probably to get the 20% increase in efficiency, you need to make other modifications to the engine, like maybe you can run higher compression ratio. If an easy retrofit would give an extra 20% efficiency to my Highlander hybrid, which happens to have a retuned version of the 2.5L Toyota engine in their tests, someone should sell a kit to do that.
I tend to skeptical of any claims of huge efficiency improvements with a new and different spark plug, or replacement for a spark plug, but if the 20% improvement is for real, we will be hearing more.
June 21st, 2022 at 4:46 pm
I talked with an HR representative about the 4-year degree requirement once. There reasoning boiled down to laziness. They knew they would get flooded with applicants for any job opening, so just increase the qualifications to thin the heard a bit. They also made a comment that if we were staffing a position at $X salary, and we had our choice on a degreed or non-degreed candidate, we would be getting more for our money with the degreed candidate. Completely out of touch with reality. Some of the finest engineers that I have worked with in my career did not have degrees. They worked their way up from mechanic to technician to engineer due to their capacity to learn as well as solve problems with the tools in their inventory.
June 21st, 2022 at 6:22 pm
When I transfered South because my GM plant closed, I was encountered with formens from the South who didn’t even graduate high school. Some of the real engineers, like myself, who transfered were ashamed of these individuals when an mportatant meetings took place Those foremens were used to do the dirty management work and as you can imagine, the atmosphere was not a good one. Eventually that plant also closed down.
June 21st, 2022 at 7:27 pm
13 Shreveport?
June 21st, 2022 at 9:01 pm
I started at Ford in 1968. I had a masters degree in M.E. At that time, many of the management level employees did not have college degrees, but they were very good engineers. Over time, they retired and were replaced with degreed engineers. They were no better or worse than the ones they replaced. In a few cases, the new engineers thought they should be on a fast track to management positions.
June 21st, 2022 at 9:13 pm
15 When I started at GM, there were two PhDs at the facility, and they were very much “fast track” at the time, in the ’70s. By the time I retired, there were a larger number of PhD engineers, and their advancement prospects were little better than other engineers with comparable performance.