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Runtime: 10:24
0:00 Tesla Unleashes v12 of FSD
1:15 UAW Wants National Strike Day
1:55 Nissan Cutting U.S. Production
2:47 CATL Wants to Work with More U.S. & EU OEMs
3:30 USPS Finally Starting EV Transition
4:57 Akio Toyoda Predicts Only 30% EV Market Share
5:41 OEMs Need to Develop Software in Slices
6:38 Hyundai/Kia Test Active Aero on EVs
7:47 German Suppliers Struggling with EV Transition
8:12 Buick Teases Next-Gen Enclave
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
TESLA UNLEASHES FSD v12
Social media outlets lit up yesterday when Tesla announced it was releasing version 12 of its Full Self Driving software to a select number of customers. Tesla did make it available to a number of employees a couple of months ago, but it seems to like to limit early software releases to people who have a clear understanding of what it can do and who are also less likely to criticize any problems. Tesla fans are excited because v12 runs on neural nets that were trained with millions of video clips instead running on hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code. Elon Musk has been promising full autonomous capability for years and told customers they would be able to make money with their cars by entering them in a robotaxi fleet. The potential revenue from that is a key reason why Tesla has such a high market valuation. It’s unlikely v12 will deliver on that promise, at least not yet. But the value of neural nets is that they learn over time, and so FSD should only get better.
UAW’S FAIN WANTS NATIONAL STRIKE
UAW President Shawn Fain wants to copy European unions and shut the United States down on May 1, 2028. He’s calling for a national strike on International Solidarity Day, or May Day, in which all unions across the country stop work for a day. And that just so happens to be the same date when the current UAW contract with the Detroit Three expires. Speaking at a UAW conference in Washington D.C., Fain also said the union would get the Detroit Three to reinstate pensions for all its hourly workers, or it would get the federal government to foot the bill.
NISSAN TO CUT U.S. PRODUCTION
Two years ago automakers were screaming that they couldn’t get enough inventory because of the chip shortage. But that was then. Now Nissan is cutting production in the U.S. in the first quarter due to high inventory. Automotive News reports it will slash production by 6% or about 10,200 vehicles, and that’s on top of a cut of about 1,200 vehicles in December. The Rogue accounts for over half the cuts and the Pathfinder and Frontier will also be trimmed. Nissan had a 106 days’ supply of vehicles at the end of last year, which is 50% higher than any other full-line brand. But dealers aren’t happy with the cuts because nearly a third of Nissan dealers in the U.S. lost money last year. So, they say they need to sell more cars, not fewer..
CATL TO WORK WITH MORE U.S. AND EU OEMS
Chinese battery maker CATL is going to license its battery technology to more American and European car companies. It currently has a partnership with Ford, assisting the automaker in building batteries. The battery maker’s chairman says that collaboration is going well and it wants to offer similar assistance to other companies to help boost battery production.
USPS FINALLY GOING ELECTRIC
Four years ago the U.S. postal service said it couldn’t justify buying electric delivery vans because they were not cost effective. But as part of its assessment, it assumed that a gallon of gasoline would cost an average of $2.18 a gallon over the next 30 years. Last year it was $3.76 a gallon. Now the USPS is kicking off its EV transition. It opened its first charging station at a Sorting and Delivery Center in Atlanta, Georgia and revealed new Ford E-Transit delivery vehicles. It says it will install chargers like these at hundreds of Sorting and Delivery Centers this year and will have at least 14,000 chargers at 400 locations across the country by the end of the decade. And here’s what you can expect to be delivering your mail. The USPS EV fleet will consist of 21,000 commercial off-the-shelf electric delivery vehicles, like the E-Transit, but it will only buy a little more than 9,000 from Ford. And it will also get 45,000 all-electric versions of the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle made by Oshkosh. But it’s not only electric, there will be new ICE versions as well. And drivers will have a lot more room. The E-Transit has three times the cargo capacity compared to today’s Grumman mail truck.
AKIO PREDICTS EVs WILL NOT TOP 30% SHARE
Toyota chairman, Akio Toyoda, has been very vocal about transitioning to electric vehicles too fast because he’s skeptical they’ll catch on in a significant way. During a business event Akio said he thinks electric vehicles, at most, will only reach 30% market share, with ICEs, hybrids and fuel cells accounting for the rest. He said that customers and not regulations or politics, should make the decision on the transition to EVs. Last year, Toyota CEO Koji Sato said the automaker is aiming to sell 1.5 million EVs a year by 2026 and 3.5 million by 2030, which would be about 30% of Toyota sales.
OEMs NEED TO DEVELOP SOFTWARE IN SLICES
Yesterday we ran a story about how legacy automakers are running into software problems because they’re going about it all wrong. Here’s another example of that. ETAS, a subsidiary of Bosch, uses a tech industry methodology that allows OEMs and their tiers to develop software together. Called DEV OPS, they upload everything to the cloud at the end of every day and evaluate it to eliminate bugs. ETAS works with AWS to handle these cloud services. And it says this is the way the tech industry does it, developing software in slices. Traditional OEMs, on the other hand, tend to build the entire stack and then start testing it. But that’s too slow. Besides, ETAS says, by putting everything in the cloud, you look at a vehicle from a total systems standpoint, not just at individual components or systems.
HYUNDAI-KIA GO WITH ACTIVE AERO ON EVs
Hyundai and Kia are going to start putting active aero technology on their EVs to improve performance and range. They’re testing an Active Air Skirt that deploys from the bottom of the bumper just in front of both front wheels. It comes down at 80 km/h or about 50 MPH, which is when the aerodynamic resistance becomes greater than the rolling resistance of the tires and the air skirt helps reduce that drag. A Genesis GV60 with this tech saw its drag coefficient go down by nearly 3%, which would equate to about 6 more kilometers or about 4 more miles of range. Hyundai/Kia say the benefits are even more the bigger the vehicle is and it can also improve traction and high-speed stability. And one thing I find interesting. Active Air Skirts are not new, but we’ve mainly seen it applied to big pickup trucks. And they say they don’t need an air skirt that goes across the entire front bumper because it would actually make the aerodynamics worse since the floor of its EV architecture is entirely flat.
GERMAN SUPPLIERS STRUGGLING WITH EV TRANSITION
It’s not a great time to be working in the German auto industry. Suppliers ZF, Bosch and Continental have all announced thousands of jobs that will be cut over the next couple of years. And VW said last month it would be making big cuts in Germany as well. Suppliers are being hit the hardest because of high upfront costs for new EV programs as well as weaker than expected EV demand.
BUICK TEASES NEXT-GEN ENCLAVE
Buick is going to launch its next-generation Enclave this year and is showing off a couple of design sketches and a teaser image of the new model. It looks a little more aggressive than today’s Enclave and takes inspiration from the Wildcat and Electra EV concepts. We don’t have any other details but Buick thinks the new Enclave will help it build on last year, which saw its sales go up by 61%.
GM’S FUEL CELL GURU CHARLIE FREESE ON AAH
Honda recently announced that it’s going to build fuel cell versions of the CRV in the United States, using the latest fuel cell stack that it developed with General Motors. But yesterday the CEO of the truck company MAN said fuel cells will never be viable because green hydrogen is simply too expensive. And if you can’t get green hydrogen, he said, then a fuel cell is no more sustainable than a diesel engine. That’s why Autoline After Hours on Thursday will be all about fuel cells. We’ve got Charlie Freese, the executive director of global fuel cells at General Motors coming on the show. And if you’ve got fuel cell questions, leave them in the comments section, or send an email to viewermail@ autoline.tv
But that’s all for today’s show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day.
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Fain needs to take a pill. Why the hell should anyone else pay for UAW pensions. Get a 401K like everyone else. This guy has balls a s big as basketballs. The pensions is one of the things that nearly drove the Detroit 3 out of business. It is a failed business model. Look you just got your raises invest it in your own retirement, Don’t steal from everyone else to support you.
“CATL is going to license its battery technology to more American and European car companies.”
Oh really. Why don’t we just reverse engineer and take it, like Chinese companies have done with so much of our technology and media in the past?
Nissan is going to cut production of Rogue, Pathfinder, and Frontier because they have excessive inventory, but they are going to drop Altima and Versa, which apparently don’t have excessive inventory. Hmmm
I understand Fain has to keep saying something to make it look like he’s justifying his job. But the days of the company pension plan has gone bye-bye. Offer a match on the 401K and stop crying Fain. And to have the work stoppage on May1st, aka as May Day is the day the Communists celebrate I remember seeing photos from Moscow of the parade with all the military hardware in review. NOT in America Fain.
When I heard that Fain was going to copy the european unions I thought, wow, the UAW just might make sense. Then the rest of the story was the typical Fain drivel that will make the UAW even more unpopular with the american public than they are right now. Especially saying that tax payers will foot their retirement bill. This at a time when people are concerned that after struggling to make ends meet their entire life, their SSI will not be available and they will be struggling hard in retirement also. This guy thinks all these people should pay the retirement of highly paid auto factory workers? See you in the dustbin of history UAW. The american tax payers will dance on your grave.
Other than an international distress call used for boats and airplanes, yeah, May Day is known as a time the Soviets, and now Russians have their big military parade, though it’s on May 9, not May 1. The distress call is one word, Mayday.
May Day, May 1 originated hundreds of years ago as a time of early spring festivals in Europe. Much later, it became a day of labor activism, not to be confused with the May 9 “victory day” military parade in Russia.
Kit, I was wrong in my statement, thank you for enlightening me and others.
I think a lot a people associate the Russian thing with May Day. I thought they were different, but wasn’t sure until I looked it up.
Kit — In harmony with your comments yesterday, I agree that the software in my and I would imagine most, vehicles operate as intended, for the most part. This “software in slices” can only be for the various things the vehicles of the future will have baked in as standard, though most will not be available until the OEMs ‘unlocks’ it, I would also imagine! The ability for over the air updates, autonomous driving, AI, etc., may all be required building blocks of today, to be ready for tomorrow. Do we need it? That’s debatable, for, while an over the update may be convenient and desirable, scheduling an appointment with the dealer is okay and what most are use to. Yet, if the vehicle of tomorrow is to purchased online and delivered to me, with little to no dealership involvement at all, like say a Tesla, Lucid or Rivian, comes with streaming services and other digital niceties, then a vehicle that can get updates over the air or address other tech issues wirelessly is the way to go, for you have no choice! It seems, though, that a lot of the things that a vehicle today handles mechanically, will soon be directed electronically, by a series of sensors and semiconductor chips, closer to the point of activation and articulation, controlled by a megabrain in the vehicles CPU and connected to the cloud! It will process information a trillion times a second and will have the computing speed of the most powerful supercomputers, but will small enough to fit on your figure tip and be three times thinner then the average strand of hair! Most of this I’m being facetious about and making up, but will we need all of it to drive from point “A” to “B”? Probably not! But no one wants to build a vehicle that’s perceived to be behind the times. Like most off reading todays SUVs do, is to backyard party, manicured campsites and late night runs along the beach, the vehicles of tomorrow will “have to have” more tech then the average drive will ever need!
Glad to see that Akio Toyoda sees EVs the same way I do. With a 30% take rate of overall sales. I been saying it for a while that as much as they like to think of EVs being a 100% replacement for the ICE it’s not. They have their place and make great cars for certain applications, and we need to capitalize on where they excel. But there are lots of areas where they fall very short, and no regulation or incentive is going to fix that. Buyers need to drive it and if its a better product it doesn’t need regulation or incentives. Which is why I have no doubt Toyota will invest wisely into this EV transition. Meanwhile GM is positioning Cadillac for bankruptcy.
I hope Cadillac will reconsider going completely EV, and will keep selling at least one or two cars. They still have work to do on their IC powertrains, though. A CT4 with the 2.0 turbo is both slow and thirsty compared to a similar size and weight BMW 3 series with a 2.0 turbo. That shouldn’t be.
Comrade Fain is about as demented and power-mad as anyone so far this century. He is doing a disservice to his union brothers, his industry, his region, and his nation.
F the UAW. You pathetic imbeciles. You’re supporting a President who has been in politics for over 50 years and is still making promises???? My God, you fools. Why hasn’t Biden done what he’s promising AGAIN, while he’s been in office for 50plus years? Oh, that’s right, he’s a CON MAN and you keep believing his lies. You can thank Biden for not securing the border. Allowing rapists, murderers, drug dealers, TERRORIST cells, people crossing our border are bringing new strains of COVID, Dengue fever, Malaria, HIV, Lice in our public schools, Rabies, they are smuggling animals and hurting them while crossing the border, yes, smuggling cats, dogs and wild animals and causing them to die, they are smuggling young girls for sex trafficking, little girls and boys ages 2-17 crossed over the border and then SOLD in the USA because our border is so out of control so FU you idiots who vote for a pathetic President who has sold the USA out and is sending YOUR tax dollars to Foreign countries so HIS family can benefit, NOT YOUR families here, not our homeless vets, not our children, not anyone here in America, nope it’s all for BIDEN do you not know this man has numerous LLCs that hides the money he got from CHINA when his coke head son made deals while his pops was VP? WHAT are you traitors thinking supporting such a POS so called “president”? You fools!!!!!!!!!!!! Arizona and Texas and California are overrun with illegal aliens who are coming from TERRORIST countries to kill us and you want to vote for Biden who has done NOTHING to secure our border? IDIOTS!!!!!!!!! Biden doesn’t even know what’s going on! He’s got 24 hr security while you have to worry about your family. Our law enforcement are under attack while Biden and Harris applauded BLM looters while they killed people threw bricks at firemen, assaulted police, burned down buildings, but hey sure, go ahead and vote for Biden, the man who has been in politics for OVER 50 years and yet KEEPS PROMISING YOU SOMETHING HE SHOULD”VE ACCOMPLISHED YEARS AGO! My God how many times will you be fooled by these people? Biden is a career politician who has never delivered on the promises he says to get your vote. He burned a ton of people last time, will you get burned again?
@Beny
Wake up. There is no political solution.