This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
TESLA SHAREHOLDER MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
Tesla held its annual shareholder’s meeting yesterday and here are some bullet point highlights from Elon Musk:
• He said Tesla will eventually make 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, and the truck goes on sale this year. But he also hinted that the price will not start at $40,000 as originally promised.
• Tesla is working on two all-new models that could collectively sell 5 million units a year. Presumably at least one of those models is the $25,000 model that will slot in below the Model 3.
• The Roadster is getting delayed again with production “hopefully” starting sometime next year.
• Tesla will experiment with some advertising. Musk did not say when or where, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see ads appear on Twitter, which he owns.
• He said the global economy will be difficult over the next year and that Tesla will be affected by that.
• And he said he will not be stepping down as CEO of Tesla
HENRIK FISKER DISSES GIGACASTINGS
Meanwhile, Henrik Fisker, the CEO of Fisker Inc, dissed gigacastings. He told the Reuters Automotive Conference yesterday that his company won’t use large castings because cars using them could get scrapped after an accident since they’re expensive to repair. Instead, he said Fisker will combine multiple steel stampings into a single stamping. The CEO also said he’s looking for additional business partners to boost scale and market share faster. He said he’s interested in talking to automakers, suppliers or tech companies to get on board.
U.S. & CANADA TO BUILD EV CHARGING CORRIDOR
The U.S. and Canada are going to build an EV charging corridor between the two countries that will stretch nearly 900 miles. Called the Binational EV Corridor, it will run between Quebec City and Kalamazoo, Michigan. EV chargers will be placed every 50 miles or 80 kilometers along the route. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and government officials from Michigan and Canada made the announcement. But they did not say when they’ll start building the corridor or how much it will cost. We just have one question, why does it stop at Kalamazoo and not run all the way to Chicago?
THACKER PASS LITHIUM MINE GETS APPROVAL
General Motors just got some good news. It got the go-ahead for a lithium mining project at Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. A big concern in the U.S. is getting through regulatory red tape to open new mines to get raw materials for EV batteries. Lithium Americas, which is GM’s partner on the project, says there’s enough lithium in that mine to make 1 million EVs a year.
LYFT CEO SAYS AVs ARE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
There are plenty of people who are skeptical that autonomous vehicles will become a reality. But Waymo and Cruise recently expanded their services in the U.S. And now Lyft’s new CEO, David Risher, says self-driving cars aren’t that far off. Risher says Lyft doesn’t have plans to introduce autonomous vehicles to its ride-hailing fleet in the near term but it is preparing for the technology. In an interview with CNBC Risher said “it’s not going to be tomorrow, but you might be surprised that it comes over the next couple of years a little faster than you think.”
MERCEDES REVEALS NEW EV PLATFORM FOR VANS
Mercedes revealed an all-new dedicated electronic architecture for future mid-size and large vans. And not only that, it’s going to launch proper Mercedes passenger vans, meaning they’ll come with the same kind of luxury appointments you’ve come to expect from its cars and SUVs. The new VAN.EA platform features three modules. The front module is consistent across all variants. It features an electric powertrain and front axle. The center section will house the battery packs, which will come in different sizes and provide up to 500 kilometers or 310 miles of range. And the rear module has two versions; one without a motor for FWD models and one with a motor for AWD. VAN.EA also supports OTAs and autonomous driving of Level 2 to Level 4, depending on the segment the van is launching into. By using a common platform, Mercedes says it will be able to cut the number of variants in its van portfolio in half. VAN.EA models start launching in 2026 and by the end of the decade Mercedes want to have a 50% share of the EV van segment. To do that it’s expanding in the U.S. and China, which will get one of those personal luxury vans. Mercedes says other plants will follow behind Poland, Germany and Spain, where it currently makes vans, and we wouldn’t be surprised if that expansion includes the U.S. and China.
VW & HYUNDAI OUTSELL FORD IN U.S. EV SALES
Tesla dominates sales of EVs in the U.S. market but how is everyone else doing? We combined first quarter registrations from Experian that were reported by Automotive News and dug into company sales numbers to come up with this chart. The real surprise for us is that the VW and Hyundai Groups are outselling Ford. Another surprise is that the Volvo Group, which includes Polestar, is outselling Nissan. At the current sales rate, EV sales are on track to top one million units in the U.S. by the end of the year.
JAPANESE OEMs PARTNER TO DEVELOP HYDROGEN IC ENGINES
Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha are all coming together to research the development of hydrogen-powered IC engines. As you could probably guess these would be used in small vehicles, like motorcycles and kei cars and they hope to tackle issues like unstable combustion and a refueling system. There’s no indication of how long they plan to study hydrogen-powered ICEs, but once they’re done, Toyota will take all the research results and apply it to developing engines.
TOYOTA INTRODUCES ELECTRIC MINI COMMERCIAL VANS
Speaking of Toyota, it’s also working with Suzuki and Daihatsu to come out with all-electric mini commercial vans for the Japanese market. Daihatsu will produce the vehicles, which go on sale before the end of Q1 next year. Each company will get their own version and the vans feature Toyota’s EV tech, which provides up to 200 kilometers or 124 miles of range. That’s about all the details we have for now, but the vans make their global debut sometime between tomorrow and Sunday.
And that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day.
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Comments (24)
May 17th, 2023 at 12:29 pm
Fisker raises the same concern I have with giga castings. Often times in manufacturing a great idea to reduce manufacturing costs is not feasible for other reasons like repair or service. Consolidating parts makes sense when reducing costs to build. Doesn’t make so much sense when your little accident that could have been fixed for $1500 turns into a $14,000 repair bill.
So whats more difficult? Getting a lithium mine approved or oil drilling permit? Both seem to be a limited resource.
Hey Lyft CEO AVs are already in use so what does he mean its closer than we think? Expanding the coverage outside of select cities? Yea I’m sure thats not far off. Tell me when you think it will work all year around in Detroit.
May 17th, 2023 at 12:32 pm
EV on track to sell 1million, who loose market share? Ice car sales has to decline as the total market is not increasing.
May 17th, 2023 at 12:43 pm
@ #1 yeah it’s hard sell for me to plunk down what they want for EV knowing that it is pretty much disposable if involved in a wreck. I saw a video of a Rivian pick up involved in a very minor accident and they basically had to take the entire rear off of it and rebuild it . It cost about 15k to fix and was out of the owner’s hands for months. Had that been a couple years old it would have been a total write off
May 17th, 2023 at 12:45 pm
Speaking of Fisker anticipating changing techologies if gigacasting don’t get into accidents don’t need to fix them alas they can be welded according to some youtubes I’ve seen as well 1990 Toyota Previa had to drop the whole front end to do a valve job I predicted doom at the time Well turned out they rarely needed valve jobs so in practicality I was wrong and the Previa turned out to be one of the best mini-vans
May 17th, 2023 at 12:49 pm
The lies Elon says; 250K cybertrucks a year with a 1.8M waiting list; maybe out of Austin? Elon says best vehicle ever made, better than the model Y. What can I say. How many do you think they will make?
May 17th, 2023 at 1:57 pm
@5 – Lies are based on deception. Hype is based on exaggeration. Hope is based on faith. The auto industry has a history of hype and hope. Lies are rare.
May 17th, 2023 at 2:03 pm
@6 Lies are when you KNOW it isn’t going to happen. Hope is when it COULD happen. Hype is when you don’t CARE if it happens. Elon doesn’t care but is still lying.
May 17th, 2023 at 2:15 pm
Bizarre charging corridor announcement end point, I agree! Looking forward to the day the announcement will be a charging infrastructure along all US interstates. That would be an exciting announcement
Until that day those who live in Kalamazoo and commute regularly to Quebec City will be well served, that is if chargers are fast and reliable.
May 17th, 2023 at 2:18 pm
5-6 The best way to know if Elon is lying or not will be when production starts. It cost money (lots of money) to build for a capacity of 250K. After the initial ramp up (3 months max) if Tesla isn’t kicking out 20,833 trucks a month then he lied. With a waiting list that justifies the first 7 years of production he should build for that capacity unless he doesnt trust those reservations will result in sales.
Either way if he puts his money where his mouth is then we wont hear any noise about not making 250K trucks a year due to capacity constraints.
Thats not to say they wont blame batteries as a constraint.
May 17th, 2023 at 2:51 pm
The solution for unfixable cars is to pay for insurance that gives you full value on write off for, in our case, 5 years. When we had a car written off (much loved VW Corrado), we happily collected what we paid for the car and bought something else. The added premium wasn’t much.
May 17th, 2023 at 3:15 pm
10 I’d be a lot better off if I’d never bought collision insurance at all, since I’ve never had a claim in ~55 years of driving.
May 17th, 2023 at 3:16 pm
Elon says they will build 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, but I’m wondering if they will build even one. It was announced almost 4 years ago, and so far, nothing.
May 17th, 2023 at 3:21 pm
Here’s a question for an engineer like Sandy Munro about Gigacastings – how much would these large pieces restrict a significant redesign of a vehicle? Could this be one of the reasons why Tesla has only done ‘bumper’ redesigns? Payback period would seem to be much longer with Gigacastings, but I’m not an engineer so can only guess.
May 17th, 2023 at 4:55 pm
12. All that flat glass on the Cybertruck has to create very distracting reflections that echo to vanishing points. Further, the flanks will be visually blind, requiring complete reliance on the mirrors/cameras. It is just different for the sake of being different… not for real function.
May 17th, 2023 at 6:03 pm
14 Flat glass should be illegal. The reflections from Jeeps with it can be awful.
May 17th, 2023 at 6:13 pm
@1 Concessions are not the bottleneck. The U.S.-based oil companies have over 6,000 purchased yet unused leases for exploration and production. They lack financing. The banks are the bottleneck. After the 2008/9 and the 2020/21 bail-outs to prevent bankruptcies the banks consider the oil and gas sector high risk and limit their exposure.
May 17th, 2023 at 6:33 pm
16 With their huge profits, shouldn’t the oil companies have “money in the bank” for exploration, if they want to?
May 17th, 2023 at 7:28 pm
Perhaps Tesla and others should retreat from giga-castings, and instead, use so called mega-castings using a more modular assembly. It would retain most of the ‘wanted’ rigidity but allow for easier repair. I would think it would be easier to produce a less than ‘huge’ single unit with a somewhat less complicated casting tool. I’m not an engineer, just trying to logic out a better way without causing a repair nightmare for those that could be affected.
May 17th, 2023 at 8:30 pm
What percent of cars get crashed seriously enough that repairability matters? Just curious, if there is any data.
May 17th, 2023 at 10:41 pm
Fisher contracted with Magna Steyr to manufacture his EV. Fisher has no ability to order a gigapress for his EV. An EV that is barely sold in the EU. Building up parts from pieces does not require the capital expense of a gigapress. So he throws shade on the market leader.
I remember his ‘Prius killer’ that introduced synthetic engine noise. He seems attracted to form and performance art over real products.
May 17th, 2023 at 10:58 pm
Once upon a time, April 7, Autoline Daily wrote:
“Tesla just cut the prices of its cars, again. This is the fifth price cut since the beginning of the year. Analysts were expecting Tesla to report strong sales in the first quarter thanks to the prior price cuts, but sales only rose 4%. That has us wondering if its sales would have gone down . . .”
Then recently, May 16, Autoline Daily wrote:
“Tesla’s price cuts really worked their magic in the U.S. Or, at least with the Model Y they did. Based on registration data from Experian, Tesla’s U.S. sales shot up 37% in the first quarter. But the Model Y was up 79%. …”
My suggestion is premature speculation about Tesla having trouble selling their EVs based on the price is unwise. Elon has already indicated Tesla changes prices to reflect cost savings, lower prices, and delivery delays, prices up to reduce excessive demand. Wishful thinking that Tesla price changes reflects having trouble selling their EVs is risky.
May 18th, 2023 at 8:09 am
The Tesla store near me has actual inventory, but few, if any Ys. They have Models S and X, both with and without steering wheels. A sales person said a steering wheel is now standard, and the yoke and extra cost option.
May 18th, 2023 at 10:57 am
1) That rivian repair bill was $45,000. The original estimate based on the very minor damage to the bumper cover was $1600. Once they removed the bumper cover they found that they had to replace nearly the entire rear half of the truck due to the way it was designed, including the rear window which was part of yet another ridiculous sub assembly that had to be replaced. Rivians will be total write offs in 2 years time and the insurance rates will reflect that accordingly. Same will occur with TESLAs with all their GIGA this and Mega that. Insurance will quickly escalate the more vehicles like this that are on the road.
May 18th, 2023 at 11:20 am
23 A friend bought a Rivian recently. Hope it doesn’t get crashed.