AD #3339 – Ranking Traditional OEMs By EV Sales; New Ford Bronco Could Face Recall; Toyota’s Future CEO?

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

NEW FORD BRONCO COULD FACE RECALL
Ford is really struggling with warranty and recall issues and now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it’s investigating the Ford Bronco due to, and I quote, “catastrophic engine failures.” NHTSA says it received 32 complaints about vehicles losing power without warning at highway speeds and not being able to restart them because of a faulty valve in the 2.7L EcoBoost engine. More than 25,000 Broncos may be affected and NHTSA’s investigation will determine if Ford has to recall all those vehicles.

MERCEDES RECALLS 1 MILLION VEHICLES
And speaking of recalls, Mercedes-Benz announced it’s recalling nearly 1 million ML, GL and R-Classes worldwide built between 2004 and 2015 because of problems with the brake booster. The company says the brake booster could be affected by corrosion, which could increase the amount of braking force needed to slow the vehicle down.

CAR SALES IN INDIA HEALTHY & STRONG
Car sales are tanking all over the world but one country is bucking the trend. LMC Automotive reports that total light vehicle sales in India were up 7% in April compared to a year ago, hitting 338,000 vehicles. But that’s mostly due to the light commercial segment, which was up 37%, passenger vehicles only saw a 3% increase in April. Even so, sales in India are expected to remain strong this year. LMC estimates they’ll hit nearly 4 million units, which is a 13% gain from 2021. One key reason is that vehicles sold in India tend to be simple machines without a lot of technology. So automakers in India have not been impacted by the chip shortage.

ELON MUSK TWEETS CREATE BACKLASH
Elon Musk is sending out very confusing messages. Last week he said that if employees don’t spend at least 40 hours a week at the office, Tesla would assume they resigned. Then he set off a firestorm when he sent an email to executives, saying he was super worried about a recession and that Tesla needed to cut 10% of its salaried workforce. Then he started to walk back those statements. He Tweeted out that the number of salaried workers would actually “stay fairly flat,” and even said that “total headcount will increase…” Much of the pushback from the original announcement came from Germany and the Netherlands, where it’s illegal to fire employees without first negotiating a severance package. Women are also complaining that the 40-hour mandate is targeted against them since it doesn’t provide a healthy work-life balance. 

RIVIAN MAY NEED TO RAISE PRICES AGAIN
Speaking of backlash, Rivian got a ton of that when it raised prices on all models, even ones that people had pre-ordered and locked the price in. While all new models now reflect the raised prices, which now starts at about $80-grand for the R1T pickup, Rivian is still losing money according to industry experts. Lucid CEO, Peter Rawlinson speculated that Rivian needs to charge $95,000 to turn a profit and teardown specialist Sandy Munro agrees. He says it “should be selling for $100,000. It’s way underpriced for what it is and what it does.” But even though Sandy thinks Rivian should charge that much he adds that the R1T has “buckets of cost reduction opportunity.” But maybe you expected that from a guy that makes a living showing OEMs how they can remove cost from their manufacturing. 

BMW UNVEILS ITS LMDh RACE CAR
We’re only about 6 months away until the new LMDh race cars start hitting the track. This is a new class of car that shares a number of components like the hybrid system, gearbox and motor/generator, which allows them to run in both the WEC and IMSA racing series. Acura and Porsche recently teased their cars and now BMW is showing off its racer. Although, the livery you see here is a camouflage wrap. Soon Cadillac will reveal its car. That comes on the 9th. Alpine, Audi and Lamborghini are also participating in the series, so there should be some competition. Plus, these cars will also be going for the overall win in races like Le Mans. But one crazy thing. Even though racing is 6 months away we think Porsche is the only team to get on a real track so far.

RANKING TRADITIONAL OEMs BY EV SALES
The EV race in the American market is starting to heat up. Tesla still dominates the EV segment with 67% market share so far this year. But who’s the best of the rest? We decided to rank the different automakers based on what percent of BEVs make up their total sales. That gives us more of an apples-to-apples comparison of which traditional automaker is doing the best job of selling electric vehicles, since the bigger automakers may sell more EVs, but have that represent a small percentage of their total sales. 

And on that basis, Porsche is doing the best. Over 16% of its total sales are the electric Taycan. Then comes Volvo, including Polestar, with over 14% of its sales going to battery power. Audi is in third place with over 7%, followed by the Hyundai Group, which includes Kia, at 5%, and Ford is right behind it at 4%. Then comes BMW, including Mini, at 2.6%, and a tie between Nissan and Mercedes-Benz. Volkswagen is only at 1.5%, as sales of the ID.4 slowed dramatically last month. JLR is at the bottom of this list. It only sold 51 i-Paces last month, which is a dangerous situation for Jaguar since it plans to only sell electric vehicles by 2025. We’ll have to take another look at this list at the end of the month since GM only reports its sales on a quarterly basis. Now that it’s delivering the Hummer EV and relaunched the Bolt with a big price cut, it will be fascinating to see how it does.

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U.S. BEV SALES AND % OF TOTAL SALES May 2022
COMPANY	SALES	% OF TOTAL
1. Porsche	896	16.2%
2. Volvo/Polestar	1,454	14.6
3. Audi	871	7.4
4. Hyundai/Kia	6,359	5.2
5. Ford	6,254	4.1
6. BMW/Mini	755	2.6
7. Nissan	1,123	2.0
7. Mercedes-Benz	586	2.0
9. Volkswagen	417	1.5
10. JLR	51	1.0
Source: Wards Intelligence

TOYOTA’S FUTURE CEO?
Last week Toyota’s U.S. ops held what it calls its HQ Confidential, where it invites media from all over the country to its headquarters in Plano, Texas to show off its latest products, plans and strategy. You’ll probably remember these renderings of future Lexus electric vehicles. What you can see on the screen here is a convertible on the right-hand side in the background, with a crossover in front of it, and a 2-door and a 4-door sedan in the foreground.  We don’t know if these renderings are what Lexus plans to put in production, but you’ll note the spindle grille is long gone and that these vehicles represent a radical departure from the kind of styling that Lexus uses today. By the way, the guy on stage is Koji Sato. He’s the head of Lexus on a global basis. He’s also the head of Gazoo Racing, the chief branding officer for Toyota as well as its Chief Operating Officer. Remember that name, Koji Sato. Sources tell us he’s probably going to be the next CEO of Toyota, when Akio Toyoda, the current CEO, inevitably gets promoted to Chairman. And we want to thank our media colleague Roosevelt Gist for providing us with these screenshots.

But that’s a wrap. Thanks for joining us.