AD # 2887 – GM & EVgo Partner to Add More Fast Chargers; Chinese Car Demand Still Weak; Ford Bronco Door Design
August 3rd, 2020 at 11:53am
Listen to “AD # 2887 – GM and EVgo Partner to Add More Fast Chargers; Chinese Car Demand Still Weak; Ford Bronco Door Design” on Spreaker.
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Runtime: 10:42
0:07 Consumer Demand in China Still Weak
0:34 Chinese Auto Industry Headed for Major Shakeout
1:11 Russia Considers Breathalyzers for Cars
2:40 Opel Adds Off-Road Capability to Its Vans
3:13 GM & EVgo Partner to Add More EV Fast Chargers
4:19 PSA Group Introduces New EV Platform
5:11 Wuling Unveils New Victory Van
7:04 Ford Bronco Door Design
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CONSUMER DEMAND IN CHINA STILL WEAK
At first glance, sales in China look like they recovered from the pandemic. LMC Automotive reports that sales were up 6.6% in June. But it says those are wholesale numbers, meaning they’re deliveries from the factories to their dealers, not retail numbers. It says that inventory is piling up and is 26% above a year ago. And that means consumer demand is still weak.
CHINESE AUTO INDUSTRY HEADED FOR MAJOR SHAKEOUT
And it sure looks like the Chinese auto industry is headed for a major shakeout. LMC says that the top 30 car brands command 90% of the market. That leaves 75 brands to fight over the remaining 10%. Even more telling, the top 10 brands have 60% of the Chinese market. And the shakeout will also hit the electric car segment. 50 EV startups jumped into the segment, but LMC says all but 5 of them have seen their funding dry up and it wonders if any of them will survive.
RUSSIA CONSIDERS BREATHALYZERS FOR CARS
Russia has a reputation for being a nation of heavy drinkers and with that comes drunk drivers. But now the government is considering a mandate to equip cars with breathalyzers to help curb drunk driving. Around 17,000 Russians were killed in traffic accidents last year and a large number of those were caused by drunk drivers. Russia is hoping to have a plan by the end of the year but past attempts to require alcohol interlocks have been unsuccessful. Carmakers in the country are likely to oppose the new rule as well because it will add cost to vehicles, which could hurt sales.
OPEL ADDS OFF-ROAD CAPABILITY TO ITS VANS
Last month, Ford of Europe introduced Active versions of its Tourneo and Transit Connect vans. The trim adds things like rugged SUV skid plates and cladding as well as a raised ride height. And now Opel is making its vans a bit more off-road capable. The Combo Cargo and Vivaro vans are now available with all-wheel-drive, a higher ground clearance and underbody protection. It’s a 6,400 euro option for the Combo and a 6,600 euro option in the Vivaro.
GM & EVgo PARTNER TO ADD MORE EV FAST CHARGERS
General Motors is collaborating with EVgo to triple the number of public fast charging stations in the U.S. They will build 2,700 fast chargers over the next five years. The chargers will be installed in areas that most people go to frequently like grocery stores, retail outlets, and entertainment locations. Each station will be able to charge four vehicles at a time, with 100 to 350 kilowatt capability, and all the electricity will come from renewable sources. Strangely, GM did not mention the partnership it announced a year ago with the giant construction firm Bechtel to build thousands of EV charging stations across the U.S. They announced they were going to create a separate corporation to lead the effort. But it never happened. Autoline contacted GM to find out what’s going on and we were told that GM and Bechtel “continue to explore opportunities.” But with the EVgo announcement, it sounds to us that the other deal is dead.
PSA GROUP INTRODUCES NEW EV PLATFORM
In other EV news, the PSA Group will move away from the two platforms its vehicles are currently built on to two fully electric platforms. The first will be the Electric Vehicle Modular Platform or eVMP for C- and D-segment sedans and SUVs, which will start hitting the market in 2023. The battery is mounted in the floor of the architecture and provides 60 to 100 kWh of capacity. That’s expected to return a range of 400 to 650 kilometers or roughly 250 to 400 miles based on the WLTP test cycle. While most of the vehicles that use the platform will be electric, PSA says hybrid versions will be offered in certain markets.
WULING UNVEILS NEW VICTORY VAN
Chinese automaker Wuling, which is joint venture partners with GM, revealed more information about its all-new Victory MPV, the first to wear the brand’s new silver logo and a vehicle that sounds like it will be offered in markets outside of China. It looks to be a nicely styled vehicle with three rows of seating and a body made mostly from high-strength steel, which helps allow the Victory to brag it has the largest sunroof in its segment. The interior is clean and simple, highlighted by a flat bottom steering wheel, which gives a bit of a sporting feel, and a floating LCD screen. Note how it curls up between the two-tone dash, almost like a weed growing through a crack in the cement, an interesting take on the “floating” screen design I’m not sure I’ve seen before. When the Victory launches, which hasn’t been announced yet, it will also come with a number of driver assist features, like adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking.
Every year we go to the Management Briefing Seminars, or MBS as everyone calls it, which is put on by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. But because of the Covid pandemic, this year MBS is going virtual, and so will our coverage of the conference. We’ll be providing condensed wrap ups that hit the highlights of what was discussed. We call them the Cliff Notes of the conference, and we’ll start posting them tomorrow afternoon so you can learn what the industry experts are talking about.
FORD BRONCO DOOR DESIGN
The Ford Bronco sure is attracting a lot of attention. And on Autoline After Hours we learned a ton of how Ford went about designing those models because our guest was Paul Wraith, the Chief Designer. One of the topics we got into was how they went about designing the doors for easy removal. It’s actually a lot more involved than you might think. And they got the idea of how to do it by watching a customer who loves off-roading, in this case a young woman who works as a nanny. Take a look.
Paul Wraith, Chief Designer, Ford Bronco
“What if we can put them inside the vehicle? Then there’s always a place for them to go. In order to do that, you got to make them small enough to go in the vehicle. And that took us to the frameless doors. So the process of removal is you drop the glass down into the door, you swing the door open and now the door is nice and small. There’s a few things we have to do to make the door really slim. So coming back to that comment about stiffness into the metal using the design. But also some real efficiencies on how we engineered the doors out. But then she’s not a huge person, so how’s she going to go and do this? So we need to carry the weight of the door and make the door as light as possible. It’s alloy, it’s light as we can make it. But then we put the right contact points onto the door. We need to make sure the removal process of the door is really easy. So it’s like one tool. The electrical connection to the door doesn’t require a degree in electrical engineering. It’s just a simple plug, it’s no more complicated than taking a socket out of the wall. The check arm doesn’t require a second process to remove because the check arm for the check is built into the door. So that just comes straight off with it. It’s a real simple process. And then the bags came in as a means of not only protecting the door while they’re being handled because we saw lots of scratched up doors from other manufacturers. But also as a way of shouldering the weight of the door and making it easy to manhandle around. Because you can lift it with your hands but if you can support it equally on your shoulder as well, that makes it a much more easy process. That’s one end of that whole kind of process but the other side of it is in order to make the door small enough we needed to take the mirrors off them. And we need to put the mirrors onto the body. Now you can say there’s nothing new under the sun about that because old vehicles always had the mirrors on the fender. But they didn’t have to deal with the legislation that we have to deal with. So the legislation on mirrors is extremely detailed and exacting and you got to get it right.”
There’s a lot of great insight like that in the rest of the show, and if you want to learn more about the Broncos, you can watch the entire show on our website or YouTube channel.
And then be sure to catch this week’s Autoline After Hours when our guest will be Mark Del Rosso, the CEO for Genesis in North America. Hyundai botched the launch of Genesis and it’s Del Rosso’s job to get it straightened out. He has a ton of automotive experience having worked at Toyota, at Bentley and at Audi. So we invite you to join us, to learn how he is going to rebuild Genesis in the American market.
And that wraps up today’s show, welcome to a new week, and a new month, of Autoline Daily.
Thanks to our partner for embedding Autoline Daily on its website: WardsAuto.com
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Comments (23)
August 3rd, 2020 at 12:10 pm
Would be nice to know if Ford will sell Bronco two doors with the triangular shaped hole in the side (lower portion). Or is that merely a concept vehicle flight of fancy??
August 3rd, 2020 at 12:20 pm
Sean; Does the new Bronco have an all aluminum body or just the doors as mentioned in todays clip? A bit surprised I haven’t heard much on it being an alloy if it is.
August 3rd, 2020 at 12:40 pm
Sean, your PSA piece got me thinking. Car cos tell us that model/body design is a huge expense. During the transition from ICE to EVs, would it make sense to design bodies that can do both? I’m thinking an EV with a large battery bay that can also be an ICE hybrid with a smaller battery that fills part of the battery bay and a small flat 4 ICE that fills the rest. Have you heard of anyone who has prototyped this yet?
August 3rd, 2020 at 12:41 pm
… the Volt was sort of like that, wasn’t it?
August 3rd, 2020 at 1:22 pm
1 Don. My understanding is the door will be an aftermarket accessory offered after sale.
2 Lambo2015 I heard the doors, hood and tailgate are aluminum and the rest of the body steel alloys.
August 3rd, 2020 at 1:54 pm
3) BMW is reportedly trying that concept. Not sure if they will be successful.
August 3rd, 2020 at 2:40 pm
3,6. I guess time will tell how things work out in the end, but it seems like packaging is hugely different for an ICE or hybrid car, and an EV. An ICE car, or hybrid, has a big “lump” at one end, normally in the front, but has other smaller parts of various shapes, like a gas tank and exhaust system underneath. The motor(s) and single speed gear reduction of an EV are small enough that you can put one at each end of the car without raising the floor too much. It seems that the best way to package batteries for a pure EV, where you need a lot of battery, is in a big, flat thing covering much of the underside of the car.
Regular hybrids have only small batteries, which can go various places, like under the rear seat cushion, as in my Camry hybrid. Plug-in hybrids, of course, need bigger batteries, but typically about 1/4 the size of what is in a pure EV. The quick RAV4 Prime with 42 miles of electric range has only an 18.1 kWh battery, which is apparently under the rear floor, costing some cargo space.
4. The front drive Volt had all of the powertrain under the hood, pretty much like a regular front driver. The battery was partly in a tunnel between the seats, making the car a 4 seater with a fairly large center tunnel.
August 3rd, 2020 at 2:56 pm
I bought both the Munro BMW i3 report, $10, and their sample Model Y report, $5. The BMW i3 report shows how badly BMW engineering are failing at trying to re-enter the EV market. BMW is still using ICE design rules that condemned the i8. In contrast, the long departed BMW i3 team did a ‘blank sheet’ design and our 2014 BMW i3-REx is still the best BMW has done.
As for designing bodies for both EV and ICE, the Model Y report compares it to a Volvo XC40. The Volvo has a mix of steel grades including a massive dash of “HS Steel” to prevent an engine and transmission from becoming a battering ram into the cabin. In contrast, the Tesla Model Y uses just “UHS Steel” protecting the passenger compartment; “VHS Steel” floor pan and “Mild Steel” dash, and; aluminum to reduce weight and for crush structures. Worse, the Volvo XC40 has a legacy floor hump that prevents lateral ribs while the Tesla has a rail-to-rail, floor pan ribs for a lighter and strong structure.
The compromises to make a combination EV and ICE body will: (1) burden the EV with excessive weight and poor crash structure, and; (2) burden the ICE with excessive weight to handle battery loads. The shell can be made identical like the Hyundai Ioniq series except they will always be 75% of what they should be.
August 3rd, 2020 at 3:13 pm
“Chinese auto industry … major shakeout” reminds me of what is happening in the EV market. Byton is “reorganizing.” But we’re seeing a lot of small, ‘one trick pony’ companies competing for investor dollars: Lordstown, Rivian, Nikola, and Fisker come to mind.
Any of us can build a prototype with clever graphics and a onetime team. Homebuilt aircraft people do it all the time. But as Tesla showed, making a production line cost tens of billions of dollars and extraordinary commitment to work. There is possibly tens of billions of investment dollars out there but with too many startups, it gets frittered away … a “shakeup.”
August 3rd, 2020 at 3:41 pm
8 The very slow selling VOlvo XC40 is much smaller than the Model Y. If they really wanted to pick some loser from Volvo for comparison, they should have picked the correct size, the 60 or 70.
In other news, Musk, after receiving all kinds of kudos for his outstanding job with SpaceX (Cspan had nothing else on all day long yesterday) from NASA and others, today said Tesla could or should develop a van and a compact car BEV.
The van (assuming it is a private vehicle, not a fleet cargo or passenger van) should have a limited market and potential,but the compact could be an even bigger blockbuster than even the mass market Model 3 or Y, if he can price it as attractively for what it will offer. Much will depend on the continuing decline of battery prices, Li-ion or also different battery types he is considering, that do not depend on exotic materials.
August 3rd, 2020 at 6:23 pm
The ability to stow the Bronco doors inside the vehicle sounds like a pretty nice differentiator to me. I certainly hope Ford capitalizes on this advantage over Jeep Wranglers in their ad campaigns. Seems worth mentioning to the masses, if you ask me.
August 3rd, 2020 at 8:21 pm
The number of Teslas in this area has increased a lot lately. I went out briefly and at the same intersection (a mile from my home) I saw two different Model 3s, a dark gray one (not a good color) and a black one (much better).
I am listening to a few mins from an interview AutoNews got with Musk. Even after the Texas gigafactory, he sees a third US plant. Surprising to me, because I expected the US to be the THIRD most important market for Tesla in the Future, after China and W Europe.
August 3rd, 2020 at 8:21 pm
12 maybe the reason for the increase is the existence (already?) of that Tesla Store in MI which is also allowed to do deliveries?
August 3rd, 2020 at 8:28 pm
Just checked the markets and my portfolio, they continued their upward movement today, and my biotech fund especially had a huge day, up $23.5k for the day.
I heard on the news that one huge change due to the CV, which I expected months ago, was that consumers’ Savings Rate has skyrocketed from a mere 0.8% to 20% (!!!!!). They attributed it to the 85% of people still working (or is it 88%?) AND all the retired people, who cannot spend or waste their $ on restaurants, casinos, horseraces, Sports Stadiums and the like.
I am curious as to what those stats mean by “savings rate”, is it in the narrow sense ($ wasted in savings accounts earning 1% and IN FACT LOSING 2% of its value due to the INFLATION? OR is it wide sense, including stocks and bonds and mutual funds and all that?
August 3rd, 2020 at 8:51 pm
From last week’s AAH, and mentioned in today’s show, it sounds like nannies will be a market for Bronco. I guess nannies are better paid than I realized, being a potential market for new $50K trucks.
August 3rd, 2020 at 8:56 pm
In lieu of ‘weed from a crack’, perhaps ‘inverted waterfall’ might be a kinder description!
Cheers!
August 3rd, 2020 at 8:56 pm
12. I see almost no Teslas where I am, in central Indiana, even though a lot of people live in houses with garages, where there would be easy home charging. I guess it’s because most of the non-doctor/lawyer/financial advisors making a living wage or above work for Chrysler, or what’s left of GM/Delphi. Also, Teslas probably do better in a university town.
August 3rd, 2020 at 9:02 pm
14. Would the “official” savings rate include the extra money that is building up in my checking account, automatically deposited from SS, a pension, and IRA distribution, now earning an effective ~-3%?
August 3rd, 2020 at 9:06 pm
11. The door storage would be a selling point if nannies without garages, as the Ford guy mentioned, are actually potential Bronco customers. The Wrangler owners I know all have multiple vehicles, and garages, and would park their Wrangler in a garage if the doors are off.
August 4th, 2020 at 8:25 am
Having owned a Wrangler, the only advantage of stowing the doors on-board would be if the weather got bad while you were away and you wanted to make the truck weather tight again. Which means you would need to have the soft top as well. The whole interior was able to get wet so as long as the top was up even with the doors off you didn’t get too wet.
Plus we typically had the doors off while camping which mean the back was filled with water toys towels change of clothes and a cooler. If that space has 4 doors stowed I doubt there is room for those other items.
Personally I would opt for a canvas door that could snap in but stow in a small space and not haul my hard doors around.
What would be a more valuable item to me would have been a tray to put the doors on while off the vehicle. I always had a scrap piece of carpet on the garage floor to set them on but while camping I had to find a stop to not damage the bottom of the door and bungee them so no wind gust would blow them over and risk busting the windows. I really doubt they will find many Bronco owners that will keep the doors with them. Nice feature to have as an option but one that wont get used very often.
August 4th, 2020 at 10:36 am
“Around 17,000 Russians were killed in traffic accidents … drunk drivers.” Russia reports 14,327 COVID-19 deaths this year, ~1.7% fatality rate. The US rate is ~3.3%.
August 4th, 2020 at 10:53 am
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/ford-ceo-jim-hackett-retire-jim-farley-named-successor?utm_source=breaking-news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200804&utm_content=hero-image
You all remember how critical I have been of clueless Hackett at Ford.
Today he was fired, but don’t go buy Ford stock yet, he was replaced by the pathetic Farley, a Ford insider who comes across as a cheerleader with no brains, despite all his claims of being a car nut and all that.
I am surprised that I, who was so critical of clueless and disastrous Hackett, derive no pleasure at his well deserved firing.
Ford’s problems are in no way over.
August 4th, 2020 at 11:35 am
I’m no Hackett fan, and don’t particularly like Ford as a hole, however Hackett was at the helm for the Bronco project. I wonder if he inherited Bronco or actually was part of the decision. Credit, IF, credit it due; don’t know, just asking.