AD #3309 – Audi Wants to End PHEV Incentives; Renault May Merge ICE Ops w/ Geely; GM & Honda Plan New EV Platform

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

FRANCE ISSUES ARREST WARRANT FOR GHOSN
Carlos Ghosn needs to keep his head on a swivel. Now the French authorities want him arrested. They accuse the former head of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance of funneling millions of dollars from Renault to a dealership in Oman. That money was used to buy a 120-foot yacht, and other things. Ghosn denies the accusations. He’s currently holed up in Lebanon, where he fled in late 2019 after escaping from Japan, where authorities also charged him with other financial wrongdoings.

RENAULT COULD MERGE ICE OPS WITH GEELY
Meanwhile, Renault is in deep trouble. Its second biggest market and production site was Russia, and those operations have ground to a halt because of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Renault is taking a 2.5 billion euro charge to close down those operations. And to help pay for it, it may sell off a chunk of its stock in Nissan. Renault owns 43% of Nissan shares worth 7 billion euros. Renault may also spin off its EV operations with an IPO. But here’s the big bombshell. Bloomberg reports Renault may merge the ICE part of the company with another automaker, possibly Geely. The two are already in talks to collaborate in China and South Korea.  

AUDI CALLS FOR END TO PHEV INCENTIVES
While Audi won’t stop selling vehicles with combustion engines until 2033 at the earliest, CEO Markus Duesmann is really boring in on EVs. He’s in favor of Europe phasing out incentives for plug-in hybrids at the end of the year. This would push more buyers into EVs. And it doesn’t stop there. Duesmann says European automakers should get off fossil fuels entirely by 2040. And he doesn’t like the idea of using hydrogen in vehicles, because it wouldn’t leave enough hydrogen to be used to reduce emissions in other areas, like the steel industry. 

 

CAR SALES PLUMMETING IN CHINA
Car sales are plummeting in China. The China Passenger Car Association says year-over-year sales will fall 32% this month, which is a massive drop. It expects automakers to sell only 1.1 million new cars and trucks, which means that sales of new cars in China will temporarily fall below those in the US. While sales have been weak globally mainly because of the chip shortage, the sudden drop in China is likely a direct result of the drastic Covid lockdowns the government put in place. While some automakers have maintained production by having workers sleep and live at their assembly plants, consumers can’t get out to buy those cars.

TESLA IS CATL’S #1 CUSTOMER
CATL is the world’s biggest battery supplier. And guess who its biggest customer is? Tesla. Makes sense. The biggest EV maker in the world buys from the biggest battery maker. Tesla bought over $2 billion in batteries last year, which was about 10% of CATL’s total revenue. 

TESLA PROFITABLE WITHOUT ZEV CREDITS
There’s still a perception out there that Tesla is only making money because it’s selling billions of dollars in EV credits. That used to be true, but it’s not anymore. While it’s true that Tesla is making good money selling EV credits, it would be solidly profitable without them. Last quarter Tesla sold $679 million worth of credits, but even if you took them out the company still would have posted $2.6 billion in net profit. 

FORD’S SMALL COMMERCIAL EV VAN
Ford’s new commercial vehicle division, Ford Pro, teased a new all-electric van for Europe. It didn’t really reveal anything about the model other than to say it will make its debut on May 9th, making it the second electric van in its lineup behind the E-Transit. But here’s a little Autoline Insight. Ford previously revealed it will have four full-electric models in the Transit family by 2024. Well, the Transit family also includes the Transit Custom, Transit Courier and the Transit Connect. Our money is on this being the Transit Connect.

BRIGHTDROP VAN SETS RANGE RECORD
And speaking of vans, GM’s electric commercial van business, Brightdrop, just made a bit of history. It, along with FedEx, just set a Guinness World Records title for longest distance traveled by an electric van on a single charge. It drove 260 miles from New York City to Washington DC in a Zevo 600. In case you were wondering, Zevo is the new name for Brightdrop’s vans. It transported a shipment of cleaning products but the companies didn’t mention if it was a full-load. The Zevo 600 has a payload capacity of 2,200 pounds. Brightdrop delivered its first vans to FedEx in December and GM says it now has 25,000 reservations.

GM & HONDA TO DEVELOP NEW EV PLATFORM
We already knew that General Motors and Honda are collaborating on EVs using GM’s Ultium platform. But Reuters reports they are also going to develop another EV platform, for smaller, less expensive EVs. The two automakers have not decided if it will be on a GM or a Honda platform, but it will use the next generation of GM’s Ultium battery. Bloomberg reports that GM and Honda are also working together on solid state batteries. The new small EV will also use the same build process so that they can be built at either GM or Honda assembly plants. The build process refers to the steps in which a car is assembled. For example, you want the suspension, or the windshield, or the headlamps to go onto the car in the same sequence as the car goes down the line. As long as you have the same build sequence and common attachment points, you can run just about any vehicle down an assembly line.

 

GAC OPENS BATTERY SWAPPING STATIONS…
Battery swapping is picking up pace in China. GAC just opened its very first one in the city of Guangzhou. It says it can swap a battery in under two and a half minutes from one of five EVs in its all-electric brand, which is called Aion. GAC plans to open 219 more this year and over 1,000 battery swap stations in Guangzhou by 2025. From there it says it will expand to other Chinese cities as well as overseas. 

…AND SO DOES CATL
And this follows a recent report of CATL opening its first four battery swapping stations on an island in China. The station can swap out up to three LFP or lithium iron phosphate modules, which are supplied by CATL and have 26.5 kWh of energy. It says a single module can be changed in about a minute, but right now the only vehicle using the module is a taxi from the FAW Group. CATL will have 30 swapping stations by the end of the year and plans to expand more after that.

STELLANTIS PUSHES INTO FUEL CELLS
Stellantis is pushing forward with fuel cells. It already has a number of commercial fuel cell vans on sale in Europe and Stellantis just hired a military guy, a former Naval Group executive, as its CTO for hydrogen fuel cell vehicle development. It also announced Opel’s CEO will take on the additional role of leading commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles worldwide.

GM WILL NOT SPLIT OFF EV OPS
Ford is going to split into two different business operations, one for BEVs and one for ICE. So what’s General Motors going to do? We asked GM’s president Mark Reuss if they have looked at doing the same thing. Here’s a snippet of what he said.

(The AAH soundbite is only available in the video version of today’s show.)

So, obviously, GM has no plans to split its BEV and ICE operations, and Mark goes into even more detail explaining why. So if you’d like to watch that entire interview, check out the link in today’s show notes, or you can find that Autoline After Hours episode on our website or YouTube channel.

But that brings us to the end of this week. Thanks for tuning in and I hope you have a great weekend.