AD #3137 – Audi Unveils skysphere concept; EV Battery Costs Plunge; There’s More Inventory Than What’s Been Reported

This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.

U.S. SENATE PASSES BIG INFRASTRUCTURE BILL
The U.S. Senate passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill yesterday, which includes $550 billion in new spending, to fix bridges, roads and other parts of the infrastructure. $7.5 billion of that will go towards building EV charging stations and $5 billion will be spent on electric school buses and hybrids. The bill needs to be approved by the House of Representatives but some Democrats are already saying it falls short when it comes to improving the EV infrastructure. They want to spend $85 billion, in order to meet the Biden Administration’s goal of electric vehicles accounting for half of all new car sales by the end of the decade.
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EV BATTERY COSTS PLUNGE IN LAST DECADE
Battery costs for EVs fell 90% in the last decade, and there’s still more to come. That’s according to a report from consultant Paul Eichenberg. In 2010, lithium ion batteries cost over $1,100 per kilowatt hour. Today it costs $137 for the full pack, with cells accounting for $102 of the total cost. Eichenberg says CATL will get its cell cost down to $65 per kilowatt hour this year. General Motors will get it down to $85 next year, and Tesla will get it down to $60 in 2023. Costs are falling thanks to surging manufacturing scale, massive investments, technological breakthroughs, as well as downsizing and the elimination of non-core parts. 

Be sure to join us for Autoline After Hours tomorrow. John and Gary will be speaking with Jim Bardia, the CEO of the Change Wind Corporation. It developed an EV charging solution that combines solar and wind towers that can be located almost anywhere and can recharge multiple EVs at the same time. This gives you green power without having to hook up to the grid. So is this the kind of breakthrough we’ve been looking for in EV charging? Tune in tomorrow afternoon at 3PM eastern time to find out.

THERE’S MORE CAR INVENTORY THAN WHAT’S BEEN REPORTED
We all know that automakers and their dealers have very tight inventory, right? Yet sales in the U.S. market have been surprisingly healthy. That’s because there’s a lot more fat in the system than what’s been reported. That’s according to consultant Warren Browne who tracks production, sales and inventory. While automakers reported their dealers had about 1.4 million vehicles in inventory at the end of June, Warren Browne says the real number was closer to 3 million. He includes vehicles that have not been shipped from the factory yet, those that are still in ports and those that are in transit. Even so, he says the chip shortage is going to drag inventory down lower. And he predicts automakers will deliberately keep inventory tight once the chip shortage ends because profits are soaring thanks to slashing sales incentives. He says going forward automakers will keep around 50 days of inventory instead of the 80 days most of them used to have. 

BRIDGESTONE EXPANDS POTENZA TIRE LINEUP
Bridgestone is expanding its Potenza tire lineup. It developed a new tread compound that utilizes soybean oil and ultra-high-silica content to improve performance. The all-new Potenza Sport ultra-high performance tires enhance cornering capability, improve dry braking by 6% compared to previous generations of Potenza Sport tires and upgrade wet acceleration and handling, which provides 3% faster lap times than competitors on a wet track. The performance is good enough that they were picked as the original equipment tires for both the Maserati MC20 and Lamborghini Huracan STO. The other new tire is an all-season tire, called the RE980AS+. It uses the same tread compound to offer enhanced ride comfort, improved snow performance and better treadwear all year round. Both tires are on sale now in the U.S. and Canada and come in lots of different sizes, enough to cover more than 81% of the sports car and sedan market.

FORD USING ROBOTS TO TEST IN EXTREME CONDITIONS
While robots aren’t currently capable of taking over all aspects of vehicle manufacturing, they can alleviate some of the burden on their human co-workers. Ford is bringing two new robots into its Weather Factory center in Germany to help simulate use in extreme conditions. They are especially useful for altitude tests that require oxygen bottles, medical equipment to monitor health and a paramedic on-site if a human performs it. The robots are also able to operate the accelerator, brake and clutch pedals as well as the gear selector and stop/start button in negative 40 to 80 degrees Celsius or minus 40 to 176 degrees Fahrenheit. Ford says engineers have nicknamed the robots Shelby and Miles after Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles.

ONSTAR EXPANDS PARTNERSHIP WITH RAPIDDEPLOY
GM announced it’s expanding its investment in RapidDeploy, a company that provides cloud-based data to improve emergency response. To give you an idea of what it does, earlier this year OnStar and RapidDeploy launched a program that supplied every 9-1-1 call center in California with OnStar’s Automatic Crash notifications. It provides information like location of the crash, possible severity of the accident and make and model of the vehicle, which would be especially useful to first responders if it’s an EV. GM is part of a new $40 million investment round in RapidDeploy, which will help it accelerate programs like the one we just talked about.

AUDI TAKES WRAPS OFF SKYSPHERE CONCEPT
Audi took the wraps off a sleek roadster concept called the skysphere. It’s the first model in a new family of concepts the automaker will show off. It wasn’t designed in Germany but instead at Audi’s design center in California. It’s a fully-electric, two-seat convertible that Audi says is a preview of its future design. It has an adjustable wheelbase, either for sporty driving or for autonomous cruising. With the touch of a button, electric motors and a mechanism with body on frame components slide into one another to adjust the length of the car by 250 millimeters or almost 10 inches, while ground clearance is adjusted by 10 millimeters or less than half an inch. The smaller wheelbase is for “Sport” mode and the cruising or “Grand Touring” mode is the longer wheelbase. While in cruising mode, the steering wheel and pedals retract to give riders more space. The skysphere concept is able to move from 0 to 100 km/h in four seconds. And it features an 80-kWh battery pack, which provides 500 kilometers of range or about 310 miles, based on the WLTP cycle. It will be displayed at the Monterey Car Week in California starting this Friday.

But that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for watching and I hope you have a good rest of your day.