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Runtime: 7:28
0:29 GM Earnings Soar Despite Sales Drop
1:22 Faraday Future in Trouble
1:53 Faurecia Buys Clarion
3:13 Hyundai And Kia To Offer Solar Panels on Cars
3:50 New Manufacturing Process from Ford
5:03 FCA Reveals 1,000 Horsepower Crate Engine
6:36 Honda’s Rugged Open Air Vehicle
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On today’s show…GM posts a big drop in sales but profits soar…Hyundai and Kia will start putting solar panels on cars…and Mopar wants to sell you a crate engine with 1,000 horsepower. All that and more coming right up on Autoline Daily.
This is Autoline Daily the voice of the automotive industry.
GM EARNINGS SOAR DESPITE SALES DROP
GM stock took a nice bounce upward after it announced its third quarter earnings. Here’s why Wall Street liked what it heard. Even though GM sold 342,000 fewer vehicles than it did a year ago, revenue was up by $2 billion as customers ponied up more money to buy the cars and trucks they wanted. Interestingly, the drop in sales had nothing to do with GM dropping Opel. It simply saw sales fall in every market in the world. GM’s operating profit was up 2%, but net profits skyrocketed by more than 2000%. But that’s because last year GM took a massive charge to take Opel off its books. GM is now on track to make more than $8 billion in net profits this year, and that’s the kind of music that investors like to hear.
| GM Q3 2018 EARNINGS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Sales | 1.97 M | -14.7% |
| Revenue | $35.8 B | +6.4% |
| Operating Profit | $1.6 B | +2% |
| Net Profit | $2.5 B | +2,123% |
| Source: GM | ||
FARADAY FUTURE IN TROUBLE
Ah, the perils of trying to become an automotive startup. Chinese EV maker, Faraday Future is bankrupt. Its most important executive, co-founder and chief engineer Nick Sampson, just quit the company. Another co-founder quit earlier. Faraday is placing some employees on unpaid leave through December and is also planning salary cuts. But we say, get ready for the funeral march unless some billionaire steps in to bail them out.
FAURECIA BUYS CLARION
Big news in the supplier industry. Faurecia, the French supplier that makes seats and cockpits, just paid over $1 billion to buy Clarion, the Japanese supplier famous for sound systems and ADAS safety technology. Hitachi had owned a controlling interest in Clarion, and now Faurecia and Hitachi will form a partnership to develop autonomous technology. You may remember the Autoline After Hours we did with Chuck Cauchy, the CEO of Thermavance, a start-up using graphene to heat and cool car seats. Well, Faurecia also has a partnership with that company.
Hyundai and Kia are going to put solar panels on their cars and that’s coming up next.
Be sure to join us on Thursday for Autoline After Hours. We’ll have Tim Herrick, the chief engineer of the all-new Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck. And we’ll take a deep dive into how he ran that program. That’s Thursday live at 3 pm eastern, though you can always catch that show on our website or YouTube channel.
HYUNDAI AND KIA TO OFFER SOLAR PANELS ON CARS
Hyundai and Kia will start putting solar panels on the roofs of its hybrid cars to help charge the batteries. They’re capable of charging 30 to 60 percent of the battery during the day, depending on weather conditions. A second-generation system will be for internal combustion vehicles. It will be a semi-transparent solar system that’s integrated with the panoramic sunroof. And a third-generation will be for battery electric vehicles, which will go on both the hood and roof. Hyundai and Kia will start offering the system after 2019.
NEW MANUFACTURING PROCESS FROM FORD
Ford is showing off its new fully automated hot-forming process to make the all-new Focus safer. Sheets of boron-impregnated, high-strength steel are put in furnaces and subjected to temperatures of 930-degrees Celsius or over 1700-degrees Fahrenheit, then they are loaded into a hydraulic press and then stamped and cooled in just 3-seconds. The pieces are used to form the safety cell of the Focus, but it’s so strong the steel can only be trimmed using high-energy lasers. The result is a 40% improvement in the car’s ability to withstand head‑on crashes. And this shows how the steel industry is keeping itself relevant in a world of aluminum and carbon fiber.
Say, how’d you like to drop 1,000 horsepower into your car? That’s coming right up.
FCA REVEALS 1,000 HORSEPOWER CRATE ENGINE
The big news at SEMA yesterday was Mopar’s new Hellephant crate engine. It produces an eye-popping 1,000-horsepower and 950 lb-ft of torque on pump gas. It gets its name from the 2nd-gen 426 HEMI, which was nicknamed the ‘elephant engine’ due to its size, weight and power. Here’s a quick clip of what the Hellephant sounds like… If you’d like to learn more about the engine, we have a video up right now on our YouTube channel. But a few facts for you to geek out on that aren’t in the video. It has a 4 ⅛-inch bore and 4-inch stroke, all the internal rotating assembly is forged and they saved 100 lbs. by using an aluminum block.
HONDA’S RUGGED OPEN AIR VEHICLE
And speaking of SEMA, automakers like to use the show to give customers an idea of how they can modify their vehicle. But who would have thought you could go this far with a Honda Ridgeline? Taking elements from Honda’s Pioneer side-by-side, the Rugged Open Air Vehicle features big off-road tires, skid plates, a full safety cage and seats from a Civic Type R that were reupholstered in waterproof material. And don’t worry, there’s even a special cell phone holder.
But that’s it for today, thanks for watching and please join us again tomorrow.
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John McElroy is an influential thought leader in the automotive industry. He is a journalist, lecturer, commentator and entrepreneur. He created “Autoline Daily,” the first industry webcast of industry news and analysis.
