AD #2895 – Hyundai Rejects Nikola; U.S. Production Recovery at Risk; Ford Bronco Customer Lifestyle Concepts
August 13th, 2020 at 11:52am
Listen to “AD #2895 – Hyundai Rejects Nikola; U.S. Production Recovery at Risk; Ford Bronco Customer Lifestyle Concepts” on Spreaker.
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Runtime: 9:22
0:07 Hyundai Rejects Nikola’s Bid to Collaborate
0:33 New Trading Platform for Low Carbon Aluminum Proposed
1:21 U.S. Production Recovery at Risk
2:12 Coronavirus Impacts GM in Brazil
3:18 GM to Hand Off Ventilator Production
3:59 Challenger Gets Another Performance Variant
5:49 Ford Reveals Bronco Customer Lifestyle Concepts
7:47 Farout Concept is a Gladiator Geared for Overlanding
8:31 Ram Going After Raptor with 1500 TRX
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HYUNDAI REJECTED NIKOLA’S BID TO COLLABORATE
Trevor Milton, who started Nikola, can’t say enough good things about Hyundai. But Hyundai is not returning the love. Reuters reports that Milton made two proposals to Hyundai to collaborate on hydrogen trucks, but Hyundai rejected both of them. Even though Hyundai is a major proponent of fuel cell cars and trucks, it sees Nikola as a potential competitor to its heavy truck business.
NEW TRADING PLATFORM FOR LOW CARBON ALUMINUM PROPOSED
Aluminum can help make cars lighter so they use less fuel or battery power. But making aluminum is more energy intensive than making steel. It’s also more energy intensive to recycle. In fact, steel makers claim that on a life-cycle basis, steel has a lower carbon footprint than aluminum. Maybe that’s why the London Metal Exchange, the world’s largest metal market, is proposing a selling mechanism for low carbon aluminum. Producers would log in the carbon content of their aluminum for customers who want to buy sustainable materials. The London Metal Exchange wants to expand this market to other metals including lithium, and it will launch this trading platform by the middle of next year.
U.S. PRODUCTION RECOVERY AT RISK
The auto industry in the U.S. has made an impressive comeback since COVID lockdowns forced them to stop production earlier in the year. Plants are now up and running again. But Bloomberg reports the recovery is at risk because of absenteeism, distancing protocols, quarantines and parts shortages. According to Orbital Insight, foot traffic at plants hasn’t rebounded to pre-lockdown levels. While some automakers are downplaying the challenges, others say it’s been difficult to keep them running. Toyota, for example, has had mixed results with its plants and says it doesn’t anticipate production returning to normal for some time. Another reason output likely won’t return to normal this year is due to weak demand from rental companies and government agencies.
IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS HITS GM IN BRAZIL
But it’s not just a U.S. problem. Reuters reports GM is offering buyouts to workers in Brazil, because its struggling with the impact of the coronavirus. GM also plans to extend furloughs, which were scheduled to end in September, by another two months.
GM TO HAND OVER VENTILATOR PRODUCTION TO VENTEC
At the outset of the COVID outbreak in the U.S., the country was facing a shortage of ventilators. So to help out, GM partnered with Ventec to produce ventilators at the automaker’s plant in Kokomo, Indiana. The two companies received nearly $490 million from the U.S. government to build 30,000 ventilators by the end of August. So far, they’ve delivered more than 20,000 and are on track to complete the order. But once that order is fulfilled, GM will hand off control to Ventec to continue manufacturing ventilators at the Kokomo plant, as well as at Ventec’s headquarters in Washington state.
CHALLENGER GETS ANOTHER PERFORMANCE VARIANT
Say is Dodge selling cars, or selling horsepower? As you know, it has priced out its performance cars in terms of dollars per horses. And now it has even more horses for sale. Meet the 2020 Challenger SRT Super Stock, which Dodge claims is the world’s quickest and most powerful muscle car. It’s powered by the same supercharged 6.2-liter HEMI V-8 in the SRT Hellcat Redeye, but it’s been tuned to crank out 807 horsepower. The Hellcat Redeye “only” has 797 horses. Dodge says the Super Stock will go from 0 to 60 in 3.25 seconds and turns the quarter-mile in 10.5. It costs over $80,000 including destination charges and goes on sale later this year.
Don’t forget to join us for Autoline After Hours this afternoon. John and Gary will be talking with SEMA on how to recalibrate ADAS sensors after a vehicle has been modified. Todd Lassa from Automobile Magazine will also be on the show and it all goes live at 3 pm eastern time.
FORD SHOWS BRONCO CUSTOMER LIFESTYLE CONCEPTS
As we teased at the beginning of Tuesday’s show, I was at an off-road event for the new Ford Bronco and now I’m able to talk about a few of the things that were shown there. The big display was a number of customer lifestyle concept vehicles. Essentially, these are vehicles with aftermarket parts and pieces that show how a customer might upgrade their Bronco or Bronco Sport. This being an off-road event and an off-road focused vehicle, bumpers, lights and winches were obvious accessories. But some of our favorites include this Bronco 4-door with a fishing platform concept that bolts across the hood handles. It’s able to hold 4 fishing poles and even a human’s weight if someone wanted to fish right from the hood of their Bronco. Ford must also think mountain bikers will be on its shopping list because it took every chance it got at the event to tell us that the Bronco Sport can fit two mountain bikes in the back with their front tires off. This Bronco Sport comes with some aftermarket upgrades I think will be popular choices; a 1-inch suspension lift and more aggressive tires. Another popular choice is likely to be tube doors, shown here on a two-door Bronco. I think the door handles on these would be a perfect application for 3D printing and a nice spot for customers to add a little personalization. It’s important to note that some of these accessories are concepts and not locked into the parts catalog yet, but it does give you an idea of what’s possible. Plus many of them are likely to be added anyway because Ford says from the moment the first one rolls off the assembly line there will be over 200 accessories available for the Bronco 2- and 4-door and over 100 for the Bronco Sport. We’ll have more to report on the new Jeep-killer… I mean Bronco in the coming days.
JEEP REVEALS GLADIATOR FAROUT CONCEPT
And I make fun of Jeep a little bit because it seems to be drowning in all this Bronco news. It tried to steal headlines before the Bronco reveal by debuting the Wrangler 392 concept; a Wrangler with 450 horsepower V8 shoved under the hood. Now it looks to be doing the same with the Jeep Gladiator Farout Concept. It’s an EcoDiesel-powered Gladiator that geared toward the overlanding space. Highlights include a two-inch lift kit with Fox shocks, 37-inch tires to fill the extra space in the wheel wells, modified bumper with winch and custom rock rails. While this is still a concept, the Gladiator diesel will go on sale soon.
RAM LIKELY GOING AFTER RAPTOR WITH NEW 1500 TRX
And not to be outdone, Jeep’s stablemate, Ram, teased the new Ram 1500 TRX. It’s a performance off-road truck and in this teaser video you can hear what sure sounds like the whine of a supercharger, which likely means a Hellcat engine under the hood. And look, another FCA brand is going after Ford. It sure seems to us the TRX is aimed directly at the Raptor.
But that bit of performance news wraps up today’s show. Thanks for watching and we hope to see you again tomorrow.
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Comments (35)
August 13th, 2020 at 12:09 pm
Making new aluminum is very energy intensive, because it involves melting ore, and then electrolyzing it to get aluminum metal. It does not make sense that recycling aluminum would be more energy intensive than recycling steel, since aluminum has a much lower melting point than steel. I guess maybe Aluminum has a higher heat of fusion.
August 13th, 2020 at 12:31 pm
Aluminum production requires a lot of electricity up till now that has been hydro like in Quebec Canada but with solar power being the least expensive source will aluminum start being made in sunnier locals by the way both use very little carbon.
August 13th, 2020 at 12:34 pm
https://youtu.be/YDXNwYn1OF0
August 13th, 2020 at 12:37 pm
Do will still need all the ventilators? Strange how that panic for them just died.
Bronco: Looks like Ford spent a lot of time making sure they had tons of accessories for the new Bronco. In the video today it really looks like a Rover. Look forward to your impressions on its capabilities and comfort. Sean I assume you’ve spent some time in a Wrangler to give us a fair comparison?
August 13th, 2020 at 12:48 pm
@Lambo – Yes, I have experience with the Wrangler.
August 13th, 2020 at 1:05 pm
Super Stock, you mean SS?
Sounds like GM has a copyright law suit in the wings.
August 13th, 2020 at 1:54 pm
Jeep Killer! Love it!
August 13th, 2020 at 1:58 pm
4. A lot of ventilators have been made over the last few months. Time will tell how many will be needed over time, but the virus hasn’t gone anywhere. Indiana, where I am now, has been setting records for daily new cases and deaths.
I’m sure the Bronco, like the Wrangler, will have very good off-road capability, that almost no one uses. It will probably be more comfortable than Wrangler on-road, but that wouldn’t take much. The big unknown is how the two will compete in the” image” and “cool” departments, which is what sells most of those 200K+ Wranglers a year in the U.S.,and tens of thousands other places around the world.
6. Doesn’t GM’s SS mean super sport, rather than super stock?
August 13th, 2020 at 2:06 pm
Kit Yes , Chevy’s SS stands for Super Sport. Now if they just badge it as a SS there might be trouble. Since Chrysler absorbed AMC and all of it’s names they could resurrect the old SST moniker
August 13th, 2020 at 2:18 pm
Sean the Demon is out and no longer in production, so the SS fills the slot.
August 13th, 2020 at 2:27 pm
Kit- Yes. SS means Super Sport.
August 13th, 2020 at 2:59 pm
8 Time will tell? Its been 7 months and they have found 3 months ago that the ventilators often times do more harm. https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2020/ventilator-use-older-coronavirus-patients.html
Also due to the fact that you obviously just believe whatever your told without doing any research. a normal flu season will claim about 140K in the US any single year. According to the CDC we are currently at 168K but that number has been proven to be artificially inflated due to money given to hospitals that have a CV patient. Few have made the news like the guy killed on motorcycle accidents and death was counted as Covid. The testing numbers are also inflated .
I’m not just spewing conspiracy theory’s its based on research and personal experience and I can only post one link per post so I’ll add one more that is from the CDC in May that shows the death rate to be 8 to 15 times lower than they were initially telling everyone. its more like 0.25%.
August 13th, 2020 at 3:01 pm
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/27/cdc-suggests-coronavirus-fatality-rate-higher-than-flus-but-at-least-8x-lower-than-initial-estimates/
There you can read it yourself and I know they say the numbers are higher now but almost every study now includes deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza as well as Covid. Just to muddy stuff up further.
August 13th, 2020 at 3:17 pm
11. You are, indeed spewing conspiracy theories and misinformation. If anything, the numbers Johns Hopkins and FT show are low, not high.
I don’t dispute that ventilators are, well, highly over-rated for some patients.
August 13th, 2020 at 3:33 pm
12. Someone is assuming nearly everyone is infected, to come up with that .26%.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
August 13th, 2020 at 3:45 pm
The China story was exceptional for ignoring Trump’s “winning trade war.” He decimated American farmer exports to China and put a Federal ‘tariff sales tax’ on Walmart products. You successfully ignored the elephant in the room.
August 13th, 2020 at 4:47 pm
13 Kit you can think its political and maybe it is. So keep believing the garbage your being told. This isn’t the site to debate this topic and I was just saying I don’t believe all the ventilators are still needed by GM. You think the HCQ is a farce too, and I’ll leave you one last link on that. https://s3.amazonaws.com/lrc-cdn/assets/2020/07/Screenshot_20200717-0803122-620×341.png
You can do some research and find the truth or continue to be one of the sheep that just goes along with what your being told. Honestly don’t care either way, just felt the need to let people know the truth or at least question what your told. I have lots of family and friends working in large hospitals like Yale, Cleveland clinic, UCLA, Southern Cal, UofM, Baylor, and others throughout the country and tend to believe the people I know. The ones that are seeing what’s really going on.
August 13th, 2020 at 5:37 pm
17. I agree that this isn’t the place to discuss this, but you brought it up in #4, and then continued it big time, with links to Breitbart, of all things, in response to my #5. BTW, what is the source of the last chart you linked? Who compiled that “data”? Something is seriously fishy with those numbers. Peru was low on your chart, but almost leads the world in deaths per million population. I guess that means everyone in Peru is considered “infected”?
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=bra&areas=gbr&areas=esp&areas=ita&areas=per&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&areasRegional=usaz&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usin&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=1&values=deaths
August 13th, 2020 at 7:42 pm
Sean (and #1 here), aluminum recycling is much lower energy intensive vs steel, the argument is that the aluminum ore (bauxite) reduction is extremely energy intensive, so in lifecycle basis steel may fare favorably, depending on number of times it is recycled. In US Aluminum is recycled at a rate of 65%, not bad actually. In some countries such as Brazil, 96% of aluminum is recycled. I personally doubt this argument by the steel industry holds water.
12 – please share a reference to your point on hospitals getting money for inflating covid stats, my understanding is that hospitals are in a huge budget crunch this year for many cover related reasons, one of which is the uncertainty about recovery of expenses to those patients, another is the fact that profitable elective procedures are all on hold.
August 13th, 2020 at 8:29 pm
Saw a Porsche Taycan of some kind, white, looked long and low, but we were driving at opposite directions at a RELATIVE speed of 100 MPH and could not see it in detail.
Was on my way to my first CV test, I am flying overseas to my summer home, with a connecting flight in Amsterdam on Sunday, and that caused me to lose half a day today, the destination location requires a negative CV test even if you are just a transit thru Holland, AND 72 hours before the departure, or less. BUT the results in most sited take 3-5 business days, SO I had to waste the whole morning until they overrode their policy at my U medical center, so I could take it even with no symptoms.
The test itself was a breeze, DRIVE IN under a white tent, took all of 20 seconds or less, after it I sneezed 3 times and drove back. Results in 1-2 days.
August 13th, 2020 at 8:32 pm
PS while I saw the requirement on the web, my travel agent called Delta and both have NO CLUE, or Delta misunderstood the question, but in their email their long list of EUro nations requirements does not at all include my destination nation and its very stringent requirements for visitors transiting from Holland and a few other bad areas in the EU.
August 13th, 2020 at 8:37 pm
18, 19 without having seen the post you reply to, a good way to see the death toll of CV will be only after a year or so, when ALL 2020 deaths will be tallied. US deaths annually have been around 3 MILLION or 1% of the population, and due to the population growing by at least 1% eveery year, they should be 30,000 or so more than last year, if CV did not exist.
It should be interesting to see if the TOTAL deaths in 2020 are NOT any greater than the 3 million plus the 30,000 one would expect. If they are NOT, then, at a MINIMUM, it will prove that most of the CV victims, which are over 80 and have pre-existing conditions, would have died anyway from one of these conditions.
I will await for those stats with GREAT interest, but they will arrive way too late, even in the case it takes MONTHS to tally all the mail in and abesntee (like myself for the first time ever) votes.
August 13th, 2020 at 8:58 pm
22 Here’s a little about “excessive deaths” in Florida, with some mention of the northeast, which was hit early. This article only has info to mid-April. Florida was seeing some excessive deaths by mid-April, but probably a lot more since then. Mass had 100% excessive deaths for part of April.
https://tallahasseereports.com/2020/05/12/is-covid-19-causing-excessive-deaths-in-florida/
August 13th, 2020 at 9:35 pm
22,23. Here’s some data from the CDC, with week-by-week data from Feb through Aug 8, with “percent expected deaths” in the 4th column. Data for the most recent few weeks would be way off, because of delays in CDC receiving the data, but overall, it looks a lot as expected, with high percent of expected when things were really bad in the NYC area. Also, there is data, by state, for weeks ending Feb 1 to Aug 8.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
August 13th, 2020 at 9:59 pm
19. It’s too bad we can’t do a lot better than 65%. Aluminum is probably the most worthwhile of all materials to recycle, given the huge difference in energy usage between recycling and getting new aluminum from bauxite. The beer cans that people throw from vehicles into my yard in Indiana get recycled.
August 13th, 2020 at 10:56 pm
20. They seem to have been generally ” careful” at Amsterdam Schiphol for a while. In 2008, I flew through there on the way to Luxembourg, I think from BWI. On the way back, I was asked several questions before getting on the airplane. The Covid thing would be different, but I suspect “carefulness” is part of their mode of operation at Amsterdam.
BTW, why are you so secretive about the actual country of your “summer home”?
August 14th, 2020 at 8:23 am
26 Holland and Belgium did far worse than even the US with CV, initially, and it seems that Holland has had a resurgence, thus the EU nation where my summer home is, requires a CV negative test 72 hours or less before departure, even if, as I do, am just transiting thru Holland and will not step out of the airport.
BTW, you have asked this before. If I wanted to disclose it, I would. It has done fantastic with CV, BTW, due to its extremely stringent measures, but its local economy, unlike the US was not much to lose to begin with, when they shut it down.
August 14th, 2020 at 8:23 am
26 Holland and Belgium did far worse than even the US with CV, initially, and it seems that Holland has had a resurgence, thus the EU nation where my summer home is, requires a CV negative test 72 hours or less before departure, even if, as I do, am just transiting thru Holland and will not step out of the airport.
BTW, you have asked this before. If I wanted to disclose it, I would. It has done fantastic with CV, BTW, due to its extremely stringent measures, but its local economy, unlike the US was not much to lose to begin with, when they shut it down.
August 14th, 2020 at 8:24 am
23-24 Not much there. I will only get a convincing picture when, as I wrote, the total 2020 deaths are in for all 50 states and the US as a whole, which should be around mid-2021.
August 14th, 2020 at 9:03 am
27. Yes, I know I asked before, and still don’t understand your secrecy. You seem to like to offer a lot of other, less interesting information. Yeah, Belgium, Holland, and Spain did very badly early on. Holland has had a resurgence of cases, but not deaths, though that may be coming.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=swe&areas=usa&areas=bra&areas=bel&areas=esp&areas=nld&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&areasRegional=usaz&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usin&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=1&values=deaths
29. How is there “not much there,” at least with the CDC link, except that data is slow to come in from some places, like, conspicuous, West Virginia and North Carolina. Yeah, the full year’s data, allowing time for it to be reported, wil tell a more complete story.
August 14th, 2020 at 9:39 am
Challenger SRT SS. Snooze. Nothing tells me that your platform is old and stale like having yet another special edition to try and keep it alive. Dodge continues to kick that dead horse to try and get more life out of a platform that needs to be replaced.
Reminds me of when Bugatti did the same thing with the Veyron as it aged. It was getting tiresome year after year with yet another “special edition” Veyron to keep interest up on an aging platform. To me it proved that the Veyron was dead long before it actually went out of production in 2015.
At least the Veyron only lasted 10 years though. The platform of the challenger is at 15 years old now. That is ancient in car years.
August 14th, 2020 at 10:02 am
19 Medicare will pay hospitals a 20% “add-on” to the regular DRG payment for COVID-19 patients. That’s a result of the CARES Act, the largest of the three federal stimulus laws enacted in response to the coronavirus, which was signed into law March 27. Its available on may locations just requires some reading.
August 14th, 2020 at 10:25 am
31. The more recent Challenger special editions seem to be “turn key” drag racing cars. Yeah, the Challenger is ancient, and heavy, and needs a lot of power to be fast. To me, the best version of that car is the R/T with the 5.7 V8. For about $34K, or $36K with automatic, it’s a big, V8 powered sporty looking two door, with a semi-usable back seat, and a big trunk. Mustang and Camaro are much sportier driving, but lack a usable back seat, and have significantly smaller trunks.
August 14th, 2020 at 10:34 am
31 Id have to agree that I’m not sure another variant of what is actually the same engine re-tuned for more HP is going to provide much is moving product. There will be a few of the folks that have to have the latest highest HP version but for those with that much money they can probably take a Hellcat or Redeye and have the tuning along with other modifications and get close to 1000 hp. So Dodge has probably reached the extent of the high HP buyers out there. But sales arnt hurting yet.
People love that car and the wide body as a good option but a complete redesign could really kill it. Its a niche car anyway and sales started slow with 2008 only 17,400 picked up in 2009 to 25,800 and then didn’t break 40k until 2012 at 46,788 but then in 2013 and 14 hit like 51k and jumped to 66,365 in 2015 and sales in 2018 peaked with 66,718 but did them drop to 61k in 2019 and I’m sure 2020 wont be good. But 2019 was the first decline in sales so with a decent 60k in sales… if it aint broke don’t fix it.. When sales drop back down to 30K yea they will probably change something.
August 15th, 2020 at 6:07 am
I’ve liked the styling of the Challenger since I saw the first one back in the 60′s. It’s been redone a few times, but still has the basic look. I still like it better than any version of either Mustang or Camaro. If I didn’t need a truck and 4-doors, I’d probably own one, pretty much as Kit described.