AD #2502 – Congress Won’t Extend EV Credit, Carlos Ghosn Might Make Bail, European Industry Entering a Crisis

On today’s show… Congress will not extend tax credits for electric cars… Carlos Ghosn might make bail… and the European auto industry enters something of a crisis. All that and more coming right up on Autoline Daily.

This is Autoline Daily the voice of the automotive industry.

CONGRESS WON’T EXTEND EV TAX CREDIT
Bad news for Tesla and GM. Congress won’t extend the $7,500 tax credit for EVs, which means it will be cut in half for Tesla buyers on January first and will be phased out by the end of 2019. And GM is closing in on the limit for the full tax credit as well. The Senate also decided to not approve a bill that would speed up the adoption of self-driving cars. Reuters reports that the two bills had to be included in a measure to fund government operations but they were not, so that means we’ll have to wait ‘til next year.

CARLOS GHOSN COULD MAKE BAIL
Good news for Carlos Ghosn. A court in Tokyo rejected a request from prosecutors to keep him in jail, which gives him a chance to make bail. If so, he could be set free as early as tomorrow. However, he will likely be restricted to his home or a hotel and would have to get permission to leave the country. Ghosn has been in jail for over a month after he was arrested for allegedly under reporting his income. The court also rejected to extend jail time for Greg Kelly, Ghosn’s right hand man, who was also arrested.

NISSAN ARRESTS A “POWER GRAB”
At the time of the arrests, we said it looked highly suspicious. And we’re not the only ones. Bloomberg reports that Greg Kelly’s wife called the accusations a “power grab” by Nissan executives and says her husband and Ghosn did nothing wrong.

MORE SIGNS OF INDUSTRY SLOWDOWN
We’re getting more signs that the global auto industry is slowing down. RBC Capital predicts that global automakers will manufacture about 2.5 million fewer vehicles in 2018 than they did last year. And it predicts that production will drop by another half a million vehicles next year. Most of the drop is occurring in China. But it says that starting in 2020 global production will start to grow slightly. There’s no question the auto industry has been on a tear for the last decade. Wards reports there are now nearly 1.4 billion vehicles on the planet. In the US there are now 276 million vehicles on the road. That’s about 25 million more than there were a decade ago.

Still to come… Toyota comes up with a new program to get more owners to replace defective Takata airbags.

TOYOTA RESORTS TO PEER PRESSURE FOR RECALL
Automakers are sometimes criticized for getting recalls completed. But that’s because some people just ignore them. With the Takata airbag fiasco automakers have tried everything from recall letters to dealer interventions to even sending people door to door to get owners to get their airbag replaced. But according to a company called Carma Project, one out of every three affected vehicles have not been fixed. So, Toyota has teamed with Carma Project, which is a peer-to-peer technology platform. They’re enlisting friends, family and others to pressure owners to get their cars fixed. All someone has to do is sign up and then start sharing Takata airbag recall information with friends and family. There’s also a place to upload a license plate photo or type a VIN into a recall lookup tool on Carma Project’s website, which allows affected owners to book an appointment for the free repair. And if the owner gets the repair the referring person can earn rewards points to put towards gift cards. It doesn’t say how much, but Carma Project hopes more automakers will join, which would allow it to increase the incentives.

BMW & MERCEDES JOIN FORCES
BMW and Mercedes are bitter enemies, at least when it comes to selling cars. But as the auto industry moves into this new world of mobility, autonomy and electrification, those arch enemies have decided to join forces. They’re merging their mobility services for car sharing, ride sharing, EV charging and parking. Owners will be able to use one app that will aggregate these services from different mobility providers. But the collaboration goes beyond that. Bloomberg reports that the BMW 2-Series coupe and Mercedes A-Class sedan could end up sharing the same platform and lots of components. This is happening because the European auto industry is in somewhat of a crisis. Daimler and BMW have both lowered profit projections for this year and next. And a stock index of European automotive companies is down 26% this year. This is also why Volkswagen and Ford are in talks on collaboration. Here’s our Autoline Insight. The auto industry is about to undergo its greatest change in 100 years, and these are the first signs that it’s already starting to happen.

Coming up next, a look at the concept car that Kia will show at CES.

Don’t forget to join us later this afternoon for Autoline After Hours. Our special guest will be Bill Kozyra, the CEO of TI Automotive and a total gear head. You’ll love hearing his insights on what’s going on in the auto industry. Drew Winter from Wards will also be joining us for that show. So join Gary and John when the show goes live at 3 pm eastern time at the Autoline.tv website or on our YouTube channel. And a programming note here. Autoline Daily will be off all next week as the Autoline crew takes a well deserved holiday break. But we’ll be back on January 3rd, and by the way, we’ll also have Sandy Munro back on Autoline After Hours that very same afternoon, and that you won’t want to miss. OK, back to the news for one more item.

KIA WANTS TO R.E.A.D. YOUR EMOTIONS
Vehicles in a fully autonomous world will be much different than what we know today and Kia is showing off in-car technology of the future that it will have at CES next month. Called Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving or READ for short, the system uses artificial intelligence to monitor the passenger’s emotional state and will modify interior conditions to create a more joyful experience. I’ve got to say I’m all for anything that will get people to chill out when they’re in their car.

But that wraps up today’s report, thanks for watching and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow.