AD #3217 – Hyundai Mobis Driver Assistance Tech; The Story Behind Tundra’s Composite Bed; Lucid Subpoenaed by SEC

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

VW BOARD STILL DISCUSSING CEO’S JOB STATUS
What the heck is Volkswagen’s supervisory board going to do with its CEO Herbert Diess? The labor representatives on the board don’t like how he’s taking VW head first into electric cars. They especially don’t like his warnings that 30,000 workers could lose their jobs. And they would rather just see him go away. But labor reps only make up half the board. And the management side wants him around. And so both sides are negotiating. Reuters reports that there’s a big meeting today and maybe we’ll know what’s going on this Thursday when VW is supposed to present its next 5-year plan.   

FORMER TESLA WORKERS SAY MUSK MISLED PUBLIC ABOUT AUTOPILOT
There’s a big story in the New York Times today about how Tesla compromised safety to develop Autopilot. The Times talked to 19 people who worked on the system, and they say Elon Musk repeatedly misled the public about what Autopilot can do. Some of them even questioned the benefits of over-the-air updates for Autopilot because car owners are never quite sure what it allows them to do. And while the team developed Autopilot versions using radar, sonar and lidar for better safety, Elon Musk insisted on using only cameras. Now Tesla is facing lawsuits from families who lost loved ones from accidents involving Autopilot, and from owners who say Autopilot never delivered on what Elon Musk promised. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA is investigating accidents where Tesla’s using Autopilot crashed into cop cars, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles with their flashers on, in at least a dozen different accidents.

LUCID SUBPOENAED BY SEC OVER SPAC DEAL
Tesla isn’t the only EV company that could be in hot water. Lucid Motors is being subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding its $24 billion SPAC deal. Apparently, the SEC is concerned about “certain projections and statements” the company made. The SEC is also investigating Nikola and Lordstown Motors.

VINFAST PLANS U.S. IPO FOR NEXT YEAR
Vietnamese automaker VinFast wants to be a player in the global EV market and to help make that happen it will launch an IPO in the U.S. in the second half of next year. It thinks the market will value the company at $60 billion and expects to raise $3 billion for itself. VinFast is aiming to sell 42,000 EVs globally next year.

HYUNDAI MOBIS SHOWS OFF LATEST DRIVER ASSISTANCE TECH
All these driver assistance systems keep getting a little bit better and a little bit better. Hyundai MOBIS, which is the parts and technology arm of the Hyundai Group, is showing off the latest generation of its Parking System. It now includes a Narrow Space Assist feature that can guide the vehicle within 40cm or close to 16in of other objects and obstacles. We could see how this would be useful in a tight parking garage. And it’s not just in a straight line. Narrow Space Assist can help cut around tight corners as well. And since backing up can be stressful for some people, the MOBIS Parking System now features Reverse Assist. Again, like the last feature, it’s not just going to pull you straight out of a parking spot or something like that. This video shows how it can navigate a fairly narrow S-curve. But patience will be a necessary virtue. It looks pretty slow.

TESLA CAMP MODE
Have you heard of Tesla’s Camp Mode? It’s a feature that launched a few years ago, but thanks to a newly released video on YouTube, it’s helping to spread the word even further. When in Camp Mode owners can still use interior lighting, set cabin temperature, charge devices and play music, but it will use less power. Owners have been camping in their Teslas ever since they realized a mattress would fit in the back with the seats down. But in those early days you couldn’t run the HVAC system for very long, which is why Tesla eventually came up with Camp Mode. We’ll likely see more upgrades like this as more people incorporate EVs into their lives.

THE STORY BEHIND THE TOYOTA TUNDRA’S COMPOSITE BED
Did you know that the new Toyota Tundra pickup has a composite bed? We found that pretty interesting. But what’s even more interesting is the backstory on why Toyota went with the composite bed. It all started when Toyota found a customer who put a million miles on his Tundra and traded his truck for a new one. Mike Sweers, the executive chief engineer on the Tundra takes the story from there.

Mike Sweers, executive chief engineer, Truck Products, Toyota: 
“Victor’s truck was really interesting. When they asked me ‘What do you want to see?’ I told them, ‘I want to see the front seat.’  He was a big guy. I was talking to him when we exchanged trucks because we gave him a truck for his truck. I asked him, ‘How many hours do you think you sat in that seat driving this truck?’ And he said, ‘Oh I spent more time sleeping in that seat than I ever did driving it.’ And so you have a 425 pound guy that’s been in the seat for a million miles, who knows for how many hours, and I just figured that every weld in that seat frame was going to be broken, and I really wanted to see it. But the thing that came out of it, when you look for things to improve, because we tore the body and the frame apart, you know, every nut and bolt we looked at. We went through cut checks on the body welds because he used his truck as a truck, and 70% of the time he was either hauling or towing something. He ran hot shot delivery. The bed looked like he used it as a work truck, it was just beat up. The exterior of the truck looked great, the inside of the bed looked like somebody dropped a building on it or something.“

Joe Dematio, Hagerty: “Did he have a liner in it?

Mike Sweers: “No, it was a steel, exposed deck. There wasn’t a lot of corrosion because he was from Louisiana, but there were a lot of paint scratches and dents where you could see the bed reinforcements where he was putting pump motors in or dropping them in. So this was an area where we really wanted to focus on, how do we improve that? We have a steel deck now and we looked at aluminum, and we looked at high strength steel.  The aluminum gives you the light weighting but doesn’t have the dent prevention that the high strength steel has, but the high strength steel also has corrosion issues. So as we started looking at it one of our body guys came back and said, ‘How come we don’t use a composite deck like Tacoma?’ Well, I guess we really hadn’t thought about that. But it does fix the corrosion issue, it does fix the dent issue. And it’s one of those great ideas that really enhances any customer’s experience of owning a truck.”
 
Autoline After Hours is one of the few shows where you can hear first-hand from the top people who make things happen in the auto industry.

And that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll be right back here again tomorrow.