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Runtime: 9:33
0:00 Ram Pickup to Get Fuel Cell Range Extender
1:39 200 Countries Agree to Ban Oil, Gas & Coal
2:41 Battery Swapping Taxis in China
4:10 GM Says There’s Safety Problems with Car Play & Android Auto
5:20 U.S. OEMs By EV Market Share
6:24 Stellantis Battery Competition Targets University Talent
7:12 Scout R&D Locating in Michigan
8:00 Kudos to You Who Knew Terex
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
RAM PICKUP TO GET FUEL CELL RANGE EXTENDER
Ram stunned the industry when it unveiled its electrified Ram pickup called the Ramcharger, with a 3.6 liter V6 as a range extender. That range extender gives the electric truck a claimed 690 miles of range, or 1,110 kilometers. But it looks like that V6 could just be a stop gap measure. We think the long-term plan is to replace the V6 with a fuel cell. Last week we reported that Stellantis had started making fuel cells at a new plant that will eventually go into Ram pickups and now we have a bit more information. That new plant is in France and will be made by a company called Symbio, which is a joint venture between Stellantis, Michelin and Forvia. Symbio also has a joint-venture with Schaeffler to make fuel cell components. The target is to start building fuel cells in 2025, though it’s unclear if they would go into Ram pickups at that time. Symbio is also targeting vans and medium and heavy duty trucks and it’s searching for a U.S. manufacturing site as well. Forvia’s contributions are fuel cell components and hydrogen fuel tanks. It’s working on a rectangular tank instead of using cylindrical ones, which would make packaging far easier. Forvia is also working with another vehicle manufacturer in the US but it declined to name who it is.
200 COUNTRIES AGREE TO BAN OIL, GAS & COAL
Well, here’s what could be a seismic change. At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from oil, gas and coal. The goal is to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The countries also agreed to triple their renewable energy use by 2030, accelerate efforts to cut coal and promote carbon capture and storage. The deal is aiming to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial times. However, it’s now up to individual countries to implement and invest in the goals of this deal. As we’ve seen in the past, the ambitious goals set forth in these climate conferences usually fall well behind their deadlines. But even so, when the countries of the world decide it’s time to start getting rid of fossil fuels, that’s a seismic change.
BATTERY SWAPPING TAXIS IN CHINA
There’s a lot of skepticism over whether or not battery swapping makes any sense. But we keep seeing more and more automakers looking into it. Venucia, a Chinese brand that is part of the Dongfeng Nissan joint venture, is partnering with the city of Guangzhou, to provide it with battery-swapping taxis. The automaker just delivered 150 taxis and will provide the city with 700 in total. Venucia says its taxis provide more than $3,200 in savings compared to gas-powered vehicles. And we’re also starting to see battery swapping spreading beyond passenger vehicles. You may remember that earlier this year, CATL formed a partnership to build swapping stations for long-haul trucks in China. And Stellantis is working with Ample to develop battery swapping for its EVs.
GM SAYS THERE’S SAFETY PROBLEMS WITH CAR PLAY & ANDROID AUTO
GM says one of the reasons it’s dropping Android Auto and Apple CarPlay from its vehicles is safety. Motor Trend spoke with GM’s head of product for infotainment who said that connection issues between those apps and the vehicle causes people to pick up their phone too often to see what the problem is. That was one of the motivations for GM developing its own software platform, called Ultifi, which integrates Google directly into the vehicle. That means interactions between humans and cars should be more seamless and the system will have more capabilities. Not only will users be able to make phone calls, send texts and set navigation, they could also adjust most of the HVAC settings with voice commands. But safety and better interactions are not the only factors for making the change. GM will get access to more of the data generated by people inside its cars as well. And there’s other benefits of Ultifi, like the ability to buy stuff from your car. By the end of the decade GM thinks people could spend as much as $25 billion a year on subscription services.
U.S. OEMs BY EV MARKET SHARE
Could this be a look at how automakers will rank in the US market in the future? Experian, the data and credit-reporting company, published a list of automakers based on their EV market share. Not surprisingly, Tesla tops the list with over 56% of the EV segment. But it lost almost eight-and-a-half points of share compared to last year. The Hyundai Group did some of that damage with 8% share, which includes Hyundai, Kia and Genesis. General Motors is next with 6.7% followed by Ford at 5.8%. Volkswagen and Audi combined, have 5.3% and Rivian rounds out the top 6 with 3.7%. BMW and Mercedes are also doing well selling EVs but we don’t have market share numbers for them. And these numbers ought to cause concern for other legacy automakers who are not on this list, because it represents a whole new ranking in the U.S. market.
| U.S. EV MARKET SHARE, JAN-OCT, 2023 | |
|---|---|
| Tesla | 56.3% |
| Hyundai Group | 8.0% |
| General Motors | 6.7% |
| Ford | 5.8% |
| VW, Audi | 5.3% |
| Rivian | 3.7% |
| Source: Experian | |
STELLANTIS BATTERY COMPETITION TARGETS UNIVERSITY TALENT
Stellantis is kicking off a competition that could help it find a new generation of battery talent. Along with the U.S. Department of Energy and Argonne National Lab, Stellantis announced the Battery Workforce Challenge, which is a three-year competition where participants have to design, build, test and integrate an advanced EV battery into a future Stellantis vehicle. 12 universities and vocational schools have been selected and in 2026 the winning teams will get dozens of awards, $100,000 in prize money and the chance of getting a job at one of these companies. Stellantis says the vehicle used for the competition will be announced early next year, which we expect to be revealed at CES.
SCOUT R&D LOCATING IN MICHIGAN
Scout Motors is opening an R&D center in Michigan, something that will bother other automakers in the state since Scout will undoubtedly start raiding them for talent. It already nabbed Chris Benjamin away from Stellantis to become its chief designer, and will be after other top talent as well. Scout is locating in the suburb of Novi because it’s so close to so many other engineering sources. GM, Ford, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai have large engineering and R&D campuses in the area, as do almost all the global Tier One suppliers. Michigan has also landed $14 billion in EV and battery investment which is creating a large EV talent pool.
KUDOS TO YOU WHO KNEW TEREX
Looks like I need one of those Komatsu 930E’s to hand out all the bonus points we offered to anyone who could name the division of General Motors that made mining trucks from 1953 to 1981. Lots of you were quick to point out the name of the company is Terex. It was founded by GM in the late 1960’s and later sold off, but Terex is still making big trucks to this day. And I should award extra-extra bonus points to anyone who brought up Euclid. It also made big trucks and GM owned it before Terex. Euclid was founded in the early 1900’s and was purchased by GM in the early 1950’s. But due to an antitrust lawsuit, GM was eventually forced to sell Euclid. And that’s when it formed Terex.
And with that little history lesson, we end today’s show. Thanks for tuning in.
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Glad to see GM drop Car play and Android auto. Apple has no one to blame but themselves. They purposely design their phones to work well ONLY with Apple software. Trying to open google maps on a connected I-phone always gives me problems. Hopefully GM software will be more seamless and offer faster conductivity, but I have my doubts. Hopefully with OTA updates GM will maintain this software as well as the cell phone manufacturers do.
VW/Audi has a tech center in Auburn Hills about 45 min from Novi. Guess they couldn’t fit Scout in the same building. Maybe they will build it big enough to move the folks from Auburn Hills.
GM lost any possibility that I would buy one of their cars. Apple CarPlay is by far the best most well developed interfaces of any product.
See you laterGM
2I think the realm of battery-swap vehicles should be centered on fleet usage; not ready for individuals yet in my opinion. So Japan’s taxi adoption can/may make sense.
Too early to rule any of the OEM’s out of the EV race; still way early, and there’s going to be a lot of juxtaposition in the next 20 years between them and the start- ups in any case.
For some reason, German brands seem to have Apple CarPlay but not Android Auto. My phone is Android, and I rarely use Android Auto, even in cars that have it. For navigation using google maps, I just use the voice turn-by-turn from the phone. If CarPlay works from iPads, I’ll have to try it and see what it’s like.
Stellantis must expect there to be a lot more hydrogen filling stations, since they are doing that fuel cell thing.
Thought the idea was to keep engineering as close to the line or whatever is being engineered as possible which is what Tesla is doing VW obviously has other ideas.
Battery Swapping:
Sure looks like history might repeat itself with Venucia taxis. One only has to look back 100 years ago to see the same concept played out in NYC with the aptly named Electric Vehicle Company (EVC), an EV taxi company that employed battery swapping as its key business differentiator.
Unfortunately for EVC, they ran into trouble with having enough packs on hand to satisfy turnover/ demand (as you need to have more batteries charging than there are taxis driving). As a result, EVC often sent out batteries far less than fully charged or, worse, defective altogether.
While no single event took EVs out of “the race” in the first half of the automotive boom, many believe EVC had a significant role in public perception of EVs after EVC taxis were seen as unreliable. What was once a third of the car market, EVs quietly slipped into obscurity for decades, only a few years after EVCs demise.
For the record, I’m a huge EV advocate not too bullish on battery swapping.
Losing Apple CarPlay will be a deal breaker for me.
Perhaps the lack of automotive engineers, electrical engineers, etc. in South Carolina pointed Scout to Novi. Nearly all of the top auto brands have safety and engineering centers in Southeast Michigan even if their assembly plants are hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Sometimes you just have to fish where the fish are.
I expect that most of the customers for the hydrogen fuel cell equipped RAM products will be fleets. They will have hydrogen refueling at their depot where the trucks will sit overnight. This powertrain may be more popular in their Promaster vans than in the pickups.
Tesla engineering headquarters is at:
1501 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
…but their highest volume manufacturing is in Shanghai, China. The engineering headquarters is not even at the same location as manufacturing in CA. I would expect their engineering headquarters to move to the Austin area, but so far, it hasn’t. In any case, it is not now near their largest manufacturing facility.
Yeah, as GM Veteran says, maybe Scout is setting up engineering where more employees they need might be available. I’m not very sold on the viability of Scout, though. Are people really out their waiting for a revival of another Jeep-like brand, that most people wouldn’t even remember in its original life?
I’m curious did China and India agree to that climate deal? I highly doubt it as China cranks out coal powered power plants at a rate of 2 a week . I suspect that India isn’t far behind .
Huge Tesla recall for Autopilot. Fortunately for them, it’s a OTA fix.
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-recalls-more-than-two-million-vehicles-over-autopilot-safety-concerns-274eb6e6
China is the world’s largest builder of both solar and wind power generation by far. Nuclear soon too: they just finished the first next-gen reactor, with plans to build 6-8 every year. While they’re still relying heavily on coal, the aim is to phase it out roughly by mid-century, IIRC.
India is trying to accelerate photovoltaics. Electric two and three-wheelers are a giant part of the market now.
Nearly half of the world’s low-carbon spending took place in China, according to a recent analysis from market research firm BloombergNEF. The country spent $546 billion in 2022 on investments that included solar and wind energy, electric vehicles and batteries.
That is nearly four times the amount of U.S. investments, which totaled $141 billion. The European Union was second to China with $180 billion in clean energy investments.
China also dominated in low-carbon manufacturing, accounting for more than 90 percent of the $79 billion invested in that sector last year, according to the report
Unquote. Source Scientific American, BNEF
Sean Wagner, thanks for the info.
Those 200 countries are in favor as long as the USA foots the bill.
Well, they’ll be more in favor if the USA makes an attempt to comply, maybe not likely, given the influence of the oil and coal companies on congress people.
Who can forget the picture of the Terex truck with the Chevy LUV in the bed? I was a Terex fan as a kid, back in the ’60s.
Steve, I don’t remember that ad, but remember some Terex ads. They must have been intended to make people feel good about the corporation, like GE ads back when GE sold consumer products.
“…when the countries of the world decide it’s time to start getting rid of fossil fuels, that’s a seismic change.”
And then the COP elite got into their gas-guzzling private jets and flew home, with 80% or more of most countries’ electricity generation still fossil fuel based.
I was just at the Porsche dealer, and decided to take a look around the Mercedes dealer next door. Some of the window stickers were interesting. They had several C-Class sedans. The final assembly was in South Africa, the engines were from Romania, and the transmissions from Poland. Even if the quality is ok, I don’t think I’d want to pay German car prices of $50-60K for a small-mid size sedan with those countries of origin. Alabama would be bad enough for an expensive “German” car.
Keep in mind that China imports oil but has its own supply of energy coal. It is natural for China to favor electric vehicles over ICE. China will only do what is best for China. It has nothing to do with saving the planet.
JoeS