AD #2686 – Toyota Takes Bigger Stake in Subaru, Hyundai to Make Passenger Drones, Nissan Refreshes the Titan

This is Autoline Daily reporting on all aspects of the global automotive industry.

TOYOTA TAKES MORE STOCK IN SUBARU
We start out today’s report in Japan, where Toyota is taking more control of Subaru. It will now own 20% of Subaru’s stock, up from 17%. Thanks to Japan’s financial system, Toyota can now include Subaru’s sales and profits on its own income statement, which will add nearly half a billion dollars in profit to its bottom line. This is going to massively help Subaru which does not have the resources to develop electric or autonomous cars on its own.

SHANGHAI TO BAN DIESEL TRUCKS BY 2022
OK, now over to China. Shanghai is going to ban all diesel trucks in the city by 2022. That’s about 120,000 trucks that only account for about 3% of all vehicles in the city, but produce one third of all NOx emissions and almost half of all particulates. And that is going to create tremendous demand for battery electric trucks.

HYUNDAI PLANS PASSENGER DRONES
And now we move to South Korea. Autoline did its first show on autonomous drones two years ago. At the time not many automakers had much interest in the concept, but that sure is changing. And now Hyundai is the latest to get in on the action. It just formed a new division within the company called Urban Air Mobility. It will be run by Dr. Jaiwon Shin who spent 30 years at NASA, most recently he ran the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. Hyundai says it believes the market for passenger drones could grow to $1.5 trillion in the next 20 years.

2020 NISSAN TITAN REFRESHED
Sales of the Nissan Titan are down by more than 28% so far this year. Maybe a fresh new look will help? The 2020 Titan gets several cosmetic changes, starting with a new grille and headlight design, which includes heaps of chrome on the Platinum Reserve model. The rear tailgate and taillights have also been reworked. Interior upgrades are highlighted by a new 9-inch touchscreen. The truck also receives Nissan’s advanced driver assistance technologies and a new 9-speed automatic transmission. The new Titan goes on sale in early 2020.

We’ve got a great Autoline After Hours coming up later this week. We’ll have Bob Kruse, the chief technology officer at Karma on the show and he’ll be bringing the completely revamped Revero along with him. Though it looks a lot like the Fisker that it’s based on, this is now a very different car and you’ll want to learn about all the changes. We also have Steve Lietaert, the president of Hella’s Corporate Center in the US coming on the show. Hella is working on some intriguing ideas of how to use automotive lighting in innovative ways. That’s this Thursday, live, at 3 pm eastern time right here at autoline.tv or on our youTube channel.

UAW STRIKE CONTINUES
That UAW strike continues to drag on. We were hoping that it would get wrapped up over the weekend, but obviously it’s going to go on for a while longer. If you look at the package that GM put on the table, union workers would make about $20,000 more over the life of the new 4-year contract than they did over the last contract. And that does not include profit sharing or benefits. That was GM’s opening offer, so no doubt that will get negotiated up. And I sure hope this strike is not getting dragged out because union leaders know that once all these negotiations are over the new contracts have been ratified that all eyes will turn right back to all these corruption charges. And I’ll have more to say about the UAW because coming up next it’s time for You Said It!

All right, it’s time for You Said It! where we respond to some of your comments. And you had a lot to say about our coverage of the UAW strike.

cwolf thinks my criticisms of the UAW has to do with the sponsors of our shows. “You have to understand that “Autoline” is driven by its sponsors, so showing any support for a union is like committing Hari-kari.” cwolf, we have some great sponsors because they know our shows are watched by the people in the industry they want to get their message to. They have never once tried to influence our editorial coverage. My criticisms of the UAW are purely based on the fact that the union only looks out for its own interest, not for the interest of the entire auto industry which is our mission at Autoline.tv.

Michael Embry wrote in to say that the union is not dragging out these negotiations. “I’ve been a UAW worker for quite a while. The timetable is exactly the same as it has been. The real difference is the media’s getting to learn some of the tactics that the UAW uses. Also leaders from each local have always been present when contract discussions have been going on. Nothing new.” Michael I truly appreciate your feedback, but I think this could have already been settled.

TIM Flugaur-Leavitt heard me say that UAW strikers are now causing employees at supplier companies to get laid off and that they don’t get any kind of strike pay. He says, “Why should workers not paying dues get benefits? The benefits of strike pay comes out of the dues paid. Obviously a union hater.” No, not a union hater. Just someone pointing out that the strike is hurting a lot of other working men and women, which gets back to my earlier point that the UAW is only looking out for its own interests.

Danny Turnpaugh wants to know, “What happened to the weekends racing results?” Well, Danny, a couple of weeks ago we asked for the input of all our viewers on what they liked and did not like about Autoline Daily. We got a lot more complaints about reporting racing results than we did from people who liked them. And so, even though we’re hard core racing fans here, we decided not to continue reporting those results.

JDubbs07 heard me says that Hyundai hasn’t done much developing autonomous cars. He says that’s not the case. “Hyundai group has actually been working on autonomous tech for years. They’ve had that fleet of Ioniqs in Vegas, were developing low cost lidar, and have also been looking into v2x tech as well.” Thanks for pointing that out, JDubbs.

And finally, elliott wadsworth scoffs at my report that electric cars will take more than a decade to reach 25% market share. “10 years to reach 25%? Really? I’m a hard core car fan but I’m not that silly. More like 50-60%.” We shall see Elliott, we shall see. In the U.S. I think we’ll be lucky to reach 15% market share for EVs in a decade. And most automakers will tell you it’s going to be hard to even achieve that.

And with that we wrap up today’s report, thanks for watching.