Listen to “AD #3161 – Cadillac Lyriq Design Highlights; Rivian Builds 1st Customer Pickup; Lucid Air Rated at Over 500 Miles” on Spreaker.
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Runtime: 11:40
0:08 Rivian Builds First Pickup for A Customer
0:32 Chery Introduces Small EV To Take on Wuling
1:31 Baidu Expands Autonomous Ride Hailing Service
3:12 AEB Could Drastically Reduce Car Crashes
4:06 Ford, Argo AI & Walmart Launch Autonomous Delivery Service
6:43 Cadillac Lyriq Exterior Design Highlights
10:07 GM Won’t Use Ultium Name in China
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RIVIAN BUILDS FIRST PICKUP FOR A CUSTOMER
EV startup Rivian made a bit of history yesterday. CEO RJ Scaringe revealed in a tweet that the first R1T electric pickup for a customer rolled off the assembly line. Rivian plans to start delivering the pickup to customers sometime this month, which will make it the first automaker to put an electric truck in customer hands in the U.S.
CHERY INTRODUCES SMALL EV TO TAKE ON WULING
Despite its tiny size and puny range, the Wuling Hong Guang MINI EV is tearing up the sales charts in China and is the number one EV in the country. That’s mainly due to it costing only a little more than $4,000. But it’s about to get more competition with Chery Automobiles introducing its own tiny electric called the QQ Ice Cream. As you can see, it looks similar and is about the same size as the Wuling model. Its specs are a mirror image, too. The Ice Cream has a top speed of 100 km/h or 62 MPH and its range is 175 kilometers or about 109 miles. It looks like these small, cheap EVs could become a big part of the market. And that would be a headache for automakers selling higher priced electrics, since they need that volume to help bring down costs.
BAIDU EXPANDS AUTONOMOUS RIDE HAILING SERVICE
And in other China news, Baidu continues to gain a lot of experience offering taxi rides with autonomous cars. It’s now operating in 5 cities in China and plans to offer the service in 25 cities over the next three years. The taxis have a safety driver and they operate on fixed routes stopping at specific stations. But Baidu is clearly learning a lot about how to operate large-scale robot taxis. While it did not provide specific figures, it says it has cut the cost of taxi rides by 60% with its latest generation. IHS Markit forecasts that autonomous ride sharing will be a $200 billion business in China by the end of the decade.
AEB COULD DRASTICALLY REDUCE CAR CRASHES
Traffic deaths are on the rise in the U.S. but a good chunk of those could be prevented if vehicles were equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking according to Bosch. The supplier just released new data that shows the technology could mitigate or avoid 649,000 crashes with injuries or fatalities each year in the U.S. if every vehicle was equipped with AEB. That’s a reduction of 35%. Currently, less than 5% of vehicles in the U.S. have the tech. To get more vehicles equipped with it, Bosch wants NHTSA to add crash avoidance to its New Car Assessment Program, which currently rates vehicles based on crashworthiness and other factors. By including crash avoidance in ratings, Bosch says it could boost consumer awareness and adoption of the technology.
FORD, ARGO AI & WALMART LAUNCH AUTONOMOUS DELIVERY SERVICE
Ford and its AV partner Argo AI eventually plan to roll out a large-scale autonomous vehicle service and it’s taking a few more baby steps to reach that goal. The two companies, along with Walmart, are launching an autonomous delivery service in Miami, Florida, Austin, Texas and Washington, D.C. Ford vehicles equipped with Argo tech will be integrated with Walmart’s online ordering platform via Argo’s cloud-based infrastructure that will then route the orders and schedule deliveries to customers. The service starts later this year and at first will be limited to a defined area, but there’s plans to expand in the future. Walmart ran a previous AV delivery test with Ford in Miami that started in 2018 and announced a collaboration with GM’s Cruise unit in Phoenix, Arizona in November of last year.
CADILLAC LYRIQ EXTERIOR DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS
Cadillac’s top designers took Autoline on a comprehensive walk-around of the Lyriq, its first all-electric model that will come out next year.
The designers took advantage of the fact that this is a completely new car with zero carry-over parts. And they took advantage of the design flexibility that BEVs offer.
In today’s report, we’ll concentrate on the exterior design. One of the first things you’ll notice is the stance and proportions. The Lyriq has very short front and rear overhangs, quite a long hood, and rather squat haunches. That gives it classic proportions. The body side has simple, clean, horizontal lines, yet a lot of surface movement.
And notice how the character line below the belt line fades out at the wheel wells, then picks back up again. It’s a design trick that keeps your eyes moving down the body and gives a feeling of motion to the design.
These days car have to be designed to protect pedestrians in front end collisions. There has to be enough crush space under the hood so it will deform if a head hits it. Think of crushing an empty beer can on your forehead. With an engine under the hood there usually isn’t enough crush space, so designers have to raise the cowl at the base of the windshield which in turn raises the trailing edge of the hood, and that provides more crush space.
But with EVs, especially if there’s a frunk, there’s plenty of crush space under the hood, so Cadillac’s designers lowered the cowl. That makes the hood lie horizontal, which makes it look even longer.
And the front end is dominated by the grille, which of course is not a grille, but rather provides a dazzling light display as you approach the vehicle. And it also hides the radar and other sensors.
There is a tremendous amount of detail work in that grille, involving laser etching to get the fine detail work in the lighting. Notice too, the new Cadillac logo which the designers say was inspired by the abstract artist Piet Mondrian. The lines in the logo are picked up time and again in the detail work in the lighting.
The rear tail lamps deserve special notice because they were designed to cleverly hide the cut lines on the liftgate at night. Note how the lights are segmented, which create a black and red pattern.
And there’s a black segment right at the cutline. It’s a simple design trick that works really well.
One other clever feature is the design of the rear roof spoiler. It actually sits above the backlight and directs air across the glass and that allowed the designers to eliminate the rear wiper.
And finally, take a look at the detail work in the wheels. The grooved blades that fit between the spokes are there to improve the aerodynamics. Cadillac says it picked up 8 to 10 aero counts with them, which is a small benefit, but when you’re trying to eke out the most efficiency with an electric vehicle that’s well worth doing.
There is a tremendous design story in the Lyriq and in another episode, we’ll go over the interior styling.
GM WON’T USE ULTIUM NAME IN CHINA
And speaking of the Lyriq, it’s going to be the first Ultium-based vehicle to launch in China, which will happen sometime next year. But GM revealed it’s not going to use the name Ultium in China. Instead the Chinese name for Ultium will be Ao Te Neng. I hope I pronounced that right. And if anybody out there has some insight into the name, why it might be used and its correct pronunciation, we’d love to know. A lot of times names of the same product can differ from one market to another because it has a different meaning or will not resonate with consumers.
Hyundai may have the fastest product cadence in the business. It’s amazing to see how many new products it’s coming out with. So how does it do it? That’s why we invited Olabisi Boyle, the vice president of product planning for Hyundai Motor America, to join us on Autoline After Hours this Thursday. If you’ve got a question you’d like us to ask her, tweet it to us, or send an email to viewermail@autoline.tv
But that’s it for today, thanks for tuning in.
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Seamus and Sean McElroy cover the latest news in the automotive industry for Autoline Daily.