AD #3645 – UAW Negotiations & Two More Offers To Go; Tesla Headed For $1.4 Trillion Market Cap; Chinese OEMs Target Brazil For BEVs
September 11th, 2023 at 11:59am
Listen to “AD #3645 – UAW Negotiations and Two More Offers To Go; Tesla Headed For $1.4 Trillion Market Cap; Chinese OEMs Target Brazil For BEVs” on Spreaker.
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Runtime: 10:01
0:00 UAW Negotiations & Two More Offers to Go
1:14 Morgan Stanley: Tesla Headed For $1.4 Trillion Market Cap
2:29 Chinese OEMs Target Brazil for BEVs
3:39 Gotion To Build Another U.S. Battery Plant
4:15 BMW Backs Off Charging for Heated Seats
4:53 MINI EVs To Be Built in UK
5:58 VW Rushes Out Performance ID.7
7:23 Tesla & McDonald’s Offer Cyber Spoon
7:51 Tesla Might Increase Model Y Price in China
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UAW NEGOTIATIONS & TWO MORE OFFERS TO GO
Three more days. That’s what we’ve got until the UAW contract expires at midnight on the 14th. And we’re starting to see the negotiations intensify. GM, Ford and Stellantis have each made an offer and a counteroffer to the union. UAW President Shawn Fain called Stellantis’s counteroffer “deeply inadequate.” He called the counter offers from GM and Ford “shameful and insulting.” But guess what? That’s actually progress. When he got their first offers, he dramatically threw two of them in a waste basket and punctuated it with profanity. So that’s why we say we’re seeing progress. Here’s our Autoline Insight. In contract negotiations, it usually takes three offers and counteroffers before both sides get to a final agreement. So, we’ve probably got two more offers to go. And the final offers likely won’t hit the bargaining tables until Thursday, which means we won’t know if there’s going to be a strike or not until midnight on September 14.
MORGAN STANLEY: TESLA HEADED FOR $1.4 TRILLION MARKET CAP
Tesla’s current market cap is $778 billion. But it could jump by another $600 billion. That’s how much value Tesla’s supercomputer called Dojo could add to the company’s market capitalization, according to Morgan Stanley. Tesla’s stock is currently trading at $248 a share, but Morgan Stanley says it could hit $400 a share over the next 12 to 18 months, giving it a market cap of almost $1.4 trillion. It also made Tesla its top stock pick over Ferrari. Dojo is going to play a key role in getting to true self-driving autonomy. Tesla switched from using machine learning to develop autonomous cars and is now using neural nets instead. That means that instead of using millions of lines of code to teach a car how to drive itself, Tesla is now using millions of images and artificial intelligence so a car kind of learns to drive on its own. Morgan Stanley says Tesla could be earning $335 billion a year by 2040 by selling services to customers and licensing its autonomous technology to other automakers.
CHINESE OEMS TARGET BRAZIL FOR BEVs
Toyota says developing countries are not ready for electric vehicles because they don’t have the proper infrastructure. It points to Brazil as a market that is committed to biofuels, not EVs. But someone forgot to tell that to BYD and Great Wall. The Chinese automakers are both selling EVs in Brazil. The base version of Great Wall’s Ora Good Cat is priced at $30,000 and has a driving range of 310 kilometers, or about 192 miles. BYD already offers 6 BEV models in Brazil and is outselling all the other BEVs combined. It already has 4,000 orders for its model called the Dolphin in just two months, which is probably going to come as something of a surprise to Toyota.
GOTION TO BUILD ANOTHER U.S. BATTERY PLANT
Chinese battery maker Gotion is going to build yet another battery plant in the US. Gotion is building a battery plant in Michigan that’s expected to start production in 2025, and now it announced it will build a $2 billion factory in Illinois. That plant is expected to begin production next year and will have the capacity to produce 10 GWh of lithium-ion battery packs and 40 GWh of lithium-ion battery cells. Gotion has faced criticism from some politicians over its ties to the Chinese government.
BMW BACKS OFF CHARGING FOR HEATED SEATS
Good news for BMW owners. The company is no longer going to charge you for features that are already installed in your car. As you may remember, last year BMW started charging $18 a month or $180 a year to activate heated seats, which upset customers. Obviously, the backlash was enough that BMW decided to reverse course. But while the company will no longer charge for features already installed in the car, BMW says it will continue to offer subscriptions for software based services like driving or parking assistance.
MINI EVs TO BE BUILT IN UK
In other BMW news, all of MINI’s new models that launch in the next couple of years, the all-electric Cooper as well as the Countryman and Aceman, are going to be built at either BMW’s plant in Germany or China. That left some concern about what might happen in MINI’s home country, but the Group announced it will invest 600 million pounds or over $750 million into its Oxford plant in the UK. And by 2030 it will have invested over 3 billion pounds or nearly $4 billion in its 3 UK facilities. The investment in the Oxford plant will allow it to make up 200,000 BEV and ICE vehicles a year. In 2026, it will get the all-electric versions of the Cooper 3-door and Aceman, which could be made on BMW’s Neue Klasse platform. And then by the end of the decade, MINI will only make electrics in the UK. The move also ensures that its vehicles won’t get hit with a tariff in its home market because of Brexit.
VW RUSHES OUT PERFORMANCE ID.7
Volkswagen is putting a little excitement back into its EV concepts and I think it’s also giving us a little peek at upgrades coming to its ID family of vehicles. The ID.X Performance is a souped up version of the ID.7 sedan with bigger wheels, tires and brakes as well as a sport suspension, fender flares and a rear wing. But the things I want to focus on are the AWD system and the charging. The ID.X Performance pairs the new in-house developed 210 kW or roughly 280 horsepower electric motor that drives the rear wheels of the ID.7 with an asynchronous motor on the front axle. Combined they produce 411 kW or about 550 horsepower, but no acceleration figure was given. VW has said it will come out with EVs that have 500 kW or 670 horsepower, so I could easily see a toned-down version of this setup making it to production. It has also said it wants to boost the charging rate that its MEB-based EVs are capable of, which currently sits at 135 kW, up to 200 kW. And that’s exactly what this concept is rated. That signals to me it’s testing the higher charging rates right now in hopes of implementing the upgrades in future models.
TESLA & MCDONALD’S OFFER CYBER SPOON
Tesla is known for coming out with odd accessories, like flamethrowers, surfboards, belt buckles and branding irons. And now the latest is the Cyber Spoon. The company partnered with McDonald’s to create a spoon inspired by the Cybertruck to use for McFlurries. They plan on selling 50,000 of them and will charge $4 for it but it will only be available in China.
TESLA MIGHT INCREASE MODEL Y PRICE IN CHINA
Speaking of Tesla, CarNewsChina reports it’s making some changes to the Model Y in China. It says a buyer’s incentive of nearly $500 will end this week and that Tesla might increase prices of the Model Y after that by $1,100 – $1,400. It also adds that the rear-drive version could be dropped from the Chinese market. A reason for the price increase could be that the Model Y is said to have gotten all the same upgrades as the new Model 3, but there’s no mention of any styling upgrades or this being the refreshed version of the Model Y, which is nicknamed Juniper.
But that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day.
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Comments (16)
September 11th, 2023 at 12:18 pm
Really glad to see that BMW saw what a horrible idea it was to try and charge customers for features already installed in their cars. Hopefully this trend will continue and send a clear message to the manufacturers that this is not a viable revenue stream.
September 11th, 2023 at 12:31 pm
Kit, In response to last Friday’s comments about GM working on Acura vehicles. I’m pretty sure when the Executives at Acura makes statements about not using GM they are solely looking at the bottom dollar and not wanting to share that revenue with GM. I doubt they care much about your neighbor having a 1 or 2 month wait to get service at a specific location. They are that disconnected from what’s happening at the actual service centers. Even if customers do a have a long wait that doesn’t justify sending customers to GM. It might happen anyway due to the long wait but Acura still isnt going to endorse it.
September 11th, 2023 at 12:38 pm
I think there will definitely be a strike. Then when they do come to an agreement the members of UAW will vote against it because Shawn Fain has set the expectations so high. So, the strike will last for months and the big 3 will be force into an agreement that puts them at a big disadvantage with their competitors.
September 11th, 2023 at 12:50 pm
How long will it take for someone to put A Cyber Spoon on eBay for $100? It will be like selling crack cocaine for a Musketeer!
September 11th, 2023 at 1:04 pm
It’s good to see that BMW saw the light, or the backlash, on their plans to charge for the use of pre-installed hardware. The only “subscription” I’ve ever paid for on a car is satellite radio, and that is only marginally worth the price to me, even after downwardly negotiating the price.
2 If the shops can’t keep up, and Acura are losing even a few sales because of it, this seems a strange strategy. I never worked in marketing, though.
September 11th, 2023 at 2:10 pm
One slight correction, the flame thrower was from the boring company. UAW is getting the money now, but will loose the jobs when the company is forced into bankruptcy, like the freight company.
September 11th, 2023 at 2:28 pm
What Shawn Fain fails to recognize is a job is a job and pays according to the going rate.
If a landscaper charges $300 to plant a tree at a business, it makes no difference if that company is making a thousand dollars a year or 200 million a year. So, his reasoning for such high demands and tying those demands to the company profits is silly to me. The job is only worth a certain level of pay. Now if they can get a pension back and other benefits that were given up in 07 then good for them. But placing the company in a position to fail at the next downturn doesnt help anyone.
September 11th, 2023 at 2:36 pm
Maybe Sean meant the SpaceX package, proposed for the new Roadster, whenever it finally comes to market.
Tesla has now revealed a performance upgrade that might come on the Tesla Roadster: the SpaceX Package. This package will add a set of rocket thrusters to the car’s rear, which will propel the supercar from 0-60 MPH in 1.1 seconds
September 11th, 2023 at 2:38 pm
The web link is to Sandy Munro swinging a sledge hammer. Well worth the time.
September 11th, 2023 at 2:38 pm
If BMW gave you the heated seat option for free and gave you the option of paying a monthly fee to have it active, it would make more sense. Charging a monthly fee for something your competitors do not is just a bad (and embarrassing) marketing idea.
September 11th, 2023 at 3:44 pm
9.Here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeL82DX-BnQ
I wonder if Sandy would like to comment on poorly made castings?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/tesla-model-y-owner-finds-scary-cracks-in-gigacast-front-end/ar-AA1fQZkB?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=e811b909c92240178b17e5faabd8fc12&ei=23
September 11th, 2023 at 3:52 pm
I just read that all except the bottom trim level Chevy Trax have heated seats, and there’s no monthly fee to use them. BMW was dreaming to think they’d get by with charging a fee to use something like that.
September 11th, 2023 at 6:11 pm
@7 I don’t agree at all and in practice that’s not true either. If you’re working at a small business it is quite reasonable for them to tell you “ we can’t afford to our staff more”, profits just don’t allow. That is a reasonable argument to make, we simply don’t make enough to pay staff more. Well…. In contrast if a company IS making good profit, maybe tons of profit, then the same argument would work in the opposite.
Does a baseball player deserve to get paid 90 million a year??? Not really but the sport allows for it.
September 11th, 2023 at 8:30 pm
To me, multi-million dollar sports figures can make more sense than multi-million dollar CEOs. Michael Jordan was a one in millions of basketball players, but it would have been easy to find a better CEO for GM than Roger Smith.
September 12th, 2023 at 7:50 am
12 You just invalidated your own argument with your last sentence. Does a baseball player deserve 90 Mil. Yes! He/she is getting what the going rate is for an exceptional athlete and has nothing to do with the profits of the ball club. That pay is based on the current going rate and nothing to do with profits.
Besides Athletes are a poor example as they use an employee empowerment model union. They use a collective bargaining agreement that outlines the basic job (including minimum salaries), but workers negotiate their salaries and bonuses as individuals. Allowing for the standouts to make crazy amounts of money.
The UAW negotiates for an equal tiered pay across the board.
Same as nurses’ union who negotiate for the best pay but within the range or going rate for what a nurse should make. Doesn’t matter if the hospital makes millions or billions, they only get what nurses make. Historically union shops always paid better than the non-union because of that collective bargaining ability. Most also provide the workers training and claim to offer a better workforce than just joe off the street. But it still comes back to getting paid for the job at hand and what should that job pay? Makes no sense to try and base it on company profits. Especially when the workers already get profit sharing checks. So honestly if they feel they deserve more because the company is doing so well they should negotiate for a larger percentage of profit sharing. Keeps the pay competitive and affordable while paying the workers well when the company does well.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:03 am
I just got gas at a Sunoco station where regular was $3.599, mid-grade was $4.999 and premium was $5.999. Has anyone else seen such a huge difference among grades? This is in Kokomo, IN.