AD #3447 – Audi Wants Your Cell Phone Batteries; Huawei EV Peels Open Like a Can of Sardines; Mercedes Smashes Nurburgring Record

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

CHINA CAR EXPORTS BOOMING
China’s auto industry has pretty much shaken off Covid lockdowns and chip shortages. Sales and production are nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. Automakers are on track to make about 27 million vehicles this year. Even more impressive, exports are booming. Last month 337,000 vehicles were shipped to other countries, which is an all-time high and is 46% higher than a year ago. Even more impressive, nearly one third of those exports were New Energy Vehicles, meaning plug-in hybrids, battery electrics or fuel cells. Chinese automakers, and there are so many of them, are starting to saturate their home market, so they need to export to grow their sales and profits.

GEELY IS BUILDING AN ICE EMPIRE
Chinese automaker Geely seems to have a plan to dominate production of internal combustion engines. It formed a company called Aurobay that is going to make engines for all of Geely’s brands. Volvo cars, which is part of Geely, already dumped all its ICE operations into Aurobay, and now Renault is going to do the same thing. Renault’s CEO Luca de Meo is chopping the automaker into 5 different business units, and the one that makes piston engines, called Horse, is going to merge with Aurobay. This is a smart strategy and was the main topic on Autoline After Hours yesterday so check that out if you’d like to learn more. As BEV sales go up and ICE sales go down, at some point automakers are going to lose economies of scale in making internal combustion engines. By merging these ICE operations into Aurobay, Geely is going to grow its manufacturing volume with engines and transmissions. And while that business will have to ride into the sunset some day, for now it’s going to have a competitive advantage. We’ve got a link in today’s transcript and description box to that After Hours episode.

 

EURO 7 TIGHTENS UP EMISSIONS REGULATIONS
Last month, the European Union reached a deal to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles by 2035. And now the EU has issued a proposal for stricter emission rules automakers must follow in the meantime. The new Euro 7 standards would apply to all new passenger vehicles, vans, trucks and buses sold in the EU. And in addition to tailpipe emissions, the new rules also regulate brake and tire particulate emissions. The EU says by 2035, the Euro 7 rules will lower total NOx emissions from cars and vans by 35% and by 56% for trucks and buses compared to Euro 6 standards. The EU wants to implement the new regulations in 2025 for cars and vans and 2027 for trucks and buses. It wants stricter regulations because many of the new ICE vehicles sold before the 2035 ban will still be on roads well after that.

GM SUPERCRUISE DOUBLES ITS MILEAGE 
GM SuperCruise is doubling the miles of roads that it can handle in the U.S. and Canada. It’s going from 200,000 miles to 400,000, and the first vehicles with the expanded capability will start reaching customers in the middle of this month. Those vehicles include the higher trim levels of GM’s large SUVs; the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban, Cadillac Escalade and GMC Yukon. Vehicles with GM’s VIP electrical architecture, which allows for over-the-air updates, will get access to the expanded road network in “the coming months” at no additional charge to the customer.

MERCEDES SUPERCAR SMASHES NURBURGRING TRACK RECORD
Mercedes’ wicked AMG ONE supercar, which is basically an F1 car wrapped in body panels, set a new lap record on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife for a road-legal production car. Driver Maro Engel lapped the historic track in just over 6 minutes and 35 seconds. Amazingly that’s a full 8 seconds faster than the previous record. And perhaps more impressive is the record lap was done under less than ideal track conditions. It was still damp and dirty in some sections, so they could go back and do better. But as we alluded to at the beginning of this story, this is no ordinary car. It produces over 1,000 horsepower from its combustion engine and four electric motors, only 275 will be made and each one costs $2.7 million. 

VOLVO TARGETS 70% SALES GROWTH 
Volvo is doubling down on its ambitious goals for the middle of the decade. By the end of 2025 it wants to sell 1.2 million vehicles globally. That would be a big increase from the nearly 700,000 it sold last year. It says it wants half of those vehicles to be fully electric and sell half of all vehicles through online channels. That will help the company realize an annual EBIT profit of 8-10%, which we don’t think is all that great for a premium vehicle maker. But all those EVs will help it reach its climate goals. It’s on track to lower CO2 life cycle emissions per vehicle by 40% compared to 2018 levels.

 

AUDI WANTS YOUR CELL PHONE BATTERIES
If you’re looking to recycle any electronic device with a lithium-ion battery, like an old cell phone, you can now take it to an Audi dealer. The automaker has partnered with EV battery recycler Redwood Materials to launch a battery recycling program at select Audi dealers across the U.S. People can bring their old batteries and devices to dealers, which will be recycled by Redwood to use in EV batteries. Less than 5% of devices with lithium-ion batteries get recycled today and with demand for those batteries expected to grow by 500% in the next decade, it’s important to tap any source for those materials to meet that demand.

HUAWEI EV PEELS OPEN LIKE A CAN OF SARDINES
Huawei is that controversial Chinese electronics company that U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of being funded by China’s spy agencies and the Chinese army. Huawei makes 5G communications technology, but it’s also dabbling in electric cars. And while the company makes top notch communications equipment, it looks like it’s back to the drawing board when it comes to cars. China’s Insurance Research Institute just crashed a Huawei crossover, the Aito M7 EREV, and while it did well in most of the barrier tests, the 40 mile an hour, small-offset crash test peeled the car open like a can of sardines. It tore off the left front wheel and fender, bent the A-pillar, buckled the roof and made it impossible to open the driver’s door. These kinds of results were not uncommon 15 years ago, but the rest of China’s automakers have figured out how to pass these crash tests.

VTOLS TO FLY AT 2024 PARIS OLYMPICS
Passenger drones or what are known formally as vertical takeoff and landing aircraft or VTOLs, could soon be transporting people. Aeroports de Paris, which operates the city’s major airports and Skyports and is a UK based company, have just opened a hub at a Paris airfield to test VTOLs. The goal is to start flights in time for the 2024 summer Olympics in Paris. The site features takeoff and landing areas, a passenger terminal, a maintenance hangar and control areas. As part of the launch, VTOL company Volocopter demonstrated a flight that was integrated into conventional air traffic. As part of the project five more vertiports, which are what the VTOL bases are called, will be opened in the Paris region.

That brings us to the end of this week’s worth of reports. And before we go, let’s remember this Veterans Day, which as you know marks the end of World War I, which ended in 1918 on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, on the 11th month of the year.