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Runtime: 10:51
0:00 Attack on Tesla Berlin Called Terrorism
1:20 BYD Cuts Seagull Price to Only $9,700
2:11 Chinese EVs Could Hurt Toyota & Ford in Australia
2:59 EU Preps for China EV Tariffs
4:09 Sen. Rubio: Hike China Car Tariffs By $20,000
5:03 Nissan Fleet Sales Hit 44% Of Total
6:13 # Of EVs with 300 Mile Range Surging
6:51 U.S. EV Chargers Surpass Breakeven Point
7:38 GM Develops Silverado FCEV
9:04 Rivian R2 Details Leak
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
ATTACK ON TESLA BERLIN CALLED TERRORISM
That attack on a power station near Tesla’s assembly plant in Berlin has one German politician calling it a “form of terrorism.” And German police believe that a note claiming responsibility by extreme environmentalists called the Volcano Group is authentic. The attack shut down electricity to the plant and to the surrounding area, and it’s going to be costly. Tesla says the plant will be shut for at least a week, meaning the company will lose at least 6,000 units of production worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even scarier, Tesla had to go into emergency mode to shut down aluminum smelters for gigacastings before the aluminum in them solidified, which would have caused enormous damage. This was the second attack on the electric supply to the plant, and there was a third attack on a nearby rail system. And Tesla was not the only one affected by the latest attack. Electricity was cut to tens of thousands of people in the area, including hospitals and retirement homes. And German police are pulling out all the stops to find the culprits.
BYD CUTS SEAGULL PRICE TO ONLY $9,700
We’ve been talking about that price war in China and BYD just launched a full-frontal assault. You know that electric BYD Seagull with a base price of only $10,200? Well now it only costs $9,700, after another 5% price cut. We don’t see any changes to its major components or hardware, so we’re guessing added scale allowed BYD to cut the price. It sold over 280,000 examples of the Seagull last year and it continues to expand the model globally, where it’s called the Dolphin Mini in some markets. If you’d like to learn more about this EV, we’ve got a video that gets into some of the specs, other ways BYD is able to keep the price so low and we even take it on a test drive in the parking lot.
CHINESE EVs COULD HURT TOYOTA & FORD IN AUSTRALIA
Speaking of that global expansion of Chinese EVs, they’re surging in Australia, which could have a big impact on automakers like Ford and Toyota who really don’t have many EVs to sell to customers. Not surprisingly, BYD is leading the surge. While Tesla was first to the market in 2014 and dominated with 53% of the EV segment last year, BYD has increased its share of the EV segment to 14% in just two years and it plans to launch three new models this year, which will bring its total to six. It’s also going to expand its dealer network in Australia and MG, which is owned by Chinese automaker SAIC, will add three new models to the market as well.
EU PREPS FOR CHINA EV TARIFFS
China’s success in exporting EVs has got politicians in Europe and the U.S. clamoring for trade restrictions. In Europe, government officials say they have evidence the Chinese government is subsidizing EVs exported to Europe through a “direct transfer of funds” and government supplies of goods and services “for less than adequate remuneration.” From a legal standpoint, that is important language. The EU will start customs registrations of Chinese EVs this week, which means they could be hit with retroactive tariffs if the EU decides to impose them. The EU says that Chinese EV imports have increased 14% since it launched its investigation last October. And if they continue at that rate, the EU says it could harm Europe’s auto industry. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce shot back saying it’s disappointed in the EU’s decision and the boost in EV imports just reflects growing demand for Chinese EVs. The EU is expected to finish its investigation by November.
SEN. RUBIO: HIKE CHINA CAR TARIFFS BY $20,000
Meanwhile, over in the U.S., Republican Senator Marco Rubio is proposing legislation to boost tariffs on Chinese made vehicles. He wants to increase import tariffs by $20,000, extend tariffs to vehicles made by Chinese automakers in other countries like Mexico and limit subsidies for EVs that don’t meet North American free trade rules. Even though there aren’t many Chinese made vehicles exported to the U.S., with this being an election year, we can expect a lot of other politicians to jump on the anti-China bandwagon.
NISSAN FLEET SALES HIT 44% OF TOTAL
Nissan is struggling to sell new cars to retail customers in the U.S. and so it’s turning to fleet sales to keep its volume up. Selling new cars to fleets can be an attractive business as long as it only constitutes about 10% or less of a company’s sales. But Automotive News reports that last month fleet sales accounted for 44% of all of Nissan’s sales, and that is a clear danger signal. Nissan’s goal is to get fleet sales to about 15%, but it’s been running around 25%, until this latest surge. When fleets, like the daily rental companies, buy large amounts of cars, they get sold at a discount, which hurts a car company’s profit margins. Worse, the rental companies like Hertz, Avis and Enterprise, typically keep cars for only 6 to 8 months and sell them just before they hit 30,000 miles. Then they sell those cars, which dumps a bunch of nearly new cars on the market, which hurts the residual value of brand new cars. Clearly Nissan needs to boost its retail sales, and that means a lot of sales incentives are on the way.
# OF EVs WITH 300 MILE RANGE SURGING
When it comes to electric cars, Americans seem to have a fixation on range anxiety, and so automakers are reacting to it. Bloomberg reports there are now 30 different EV models that offer more than 300 miles of range, or 482 kilometers. That’s a 500% increase in long range EVs over the last three years. And another 20 EVs with over 300-mile range will hit the market this year. But the demand for longer range comes at a price. They require bigger batteries that add a lot of cost and weight to a car.
U.S. EV CHARGERS SURPASS BREAKEVEN POINT
And in a related development, public EV charging stations in the U.S. are seeing a big surge in usage. Their utilization rate doubled last year from 9% to 18%, which is actually something of a magic number because once a charging station hits a 15% utilization rate it becomes profitable. So many stations are making money for the first time. Some parts of the country have even higher usage rates, with Illinois being the highest at 25%. Bloomberg reports that the U.S. now has one fast charging station for about 16 gas stations, and that by the end of last year, every fast-charging cord in the country was plugged in for an average of nearly five hours a day.
GM DEVELOPS SILVERADO FCEV
GM got $26 million in funding to help it demonstrate real-life applications of fuel cell technology. It’s launching a pilot project to test out an entire hydrogen-based microgrid at a power company in the U.S. in Georgia. Medium-duty trucks, built on a similar frame to the Chevy Silverado 5500, will be used for the tests and feature a HYDROTEC fuel cell system, which produces up to 300 kW of power and over 300 miles of driving range. They also operate on a native 800-volt architecture and have a 19,500-pound gross vehicle weight rating. Fuel-cell powered EV chargers to charge up other electric vehicles at the company will be used as well, but we think the most important part of the test is on-site hydrogen generation. GM partnered with Nel Hydrogen to incorporate its electrolyzers into the microgrid, which can produce green hydrogen for the vehicles. And a recent guest on Autoline After Hours thinks producing hydrogen on-site could be a big business in the future. Larry Burns, former head of R&D at GM and someone who led groundbreaking work on fuel cells, sees a day when Amazon produces hydrogen at its distribution centers and brings canisters right to you, not only for your car but your home as well.
RIVIAN R2 DETAILS LEAK
Rivian will reveal its new R2 compact crossover tomorrow but some details about the model have already leaked. A Tesla and Rivian owner posed on X that he found source-code data on Rivian’s website with info about the EV. It says it will have a starting price of $47,500 before shipping, a range of 330 miles and will be about the same size as a Tesla Model Y. Other details include a maximum ground clearance of 9.8-inches, a 0-60 MPH time of 3 seconds and seating for up to five people. Rivian declined to comment on the leak. The R2 goes into production in 2026 at Rivian’s new plant in Georgia that is still under construction.
Even though there’s a price war raging in China, in the U.S. there’s a problem with affordability. So how does the auto industry solve it? Be sure to tune in to Autoline After Hours tomorrow, when Jim Hall, Jack Keebler and Chris Thomas tackle the problem. We invite you to learn about who they are, and what they have to say.
But that’s a wrap for today. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day.
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I’m not sure how viable it is to have Amazon making and distributing Hydrogen at its distribution centers. Everyone around here heard felt or saw the recent building that was selling NOX bottles in Macomb county Michigan go up in flames. Some tanks were found 1.5 miles from the site. Add in all the things that Amazon might have in their warehouse and it could make for a hell of a fire.
Maybe Nissan just needs to reduce the discount its giving on its fleet sales. I mean a sale is a sale and if it isn’t generating the revenue, you need, you raise the price. Fleet buyers are buying Nissans for a reason, and I doubt it’s because they are such high quality or such great vehicles. Most likely cause of the price. I do know that manufacturers will pick and choose what vehicles go to fleet sales. It’s like their version of a scratch and dent sale. When they have a run of vehicles with maybe a slight defect that a consumer might complain about but a fleet company wont (mostly cosmetic) they are destine for fleet sales. Hopefully Nissan quality isnt so bad they just have that many vehicles they are willing to discount and sell to fleets.
NIssan will need a remarkable product transformation to be sold to retail consumers. In the short term they will likely throw incentives to move their cars, but it will not matter much long term without significant improvement. Their cars are all unreliable penalty boxes. If it isn’t CVT failures, it is engine failures. If it isn’t engine failures, it is electrical gremlins the likes nobody has seen since the brittish leyland era. Gone are the days when Nissan used to be fun, cheap, and reasonably reliable. Those days have long since passed.
The rental fleets are a double edge sword. They are moving metal which is good, but it is crushing their resale values. That isn’t the biggest problem though. The biggest problem is that people who would otherwise not think about buying a Nissan get to experience them as a rental. That is a problem because a huge slice of the population is being introduced to the Nissan of today, which is a complete penalty box no matter what you rent. I ‘ve rented them all and none are impressive in the least. I even rented an Infiniti QX80, top of the line model and was the first renter. I have never been so disappointed in a car in all my 40+ years of owning cars. An 80s Suburban would have been a huge upgrade. Even the people at the rental agency admitted that it is the worst car they have on the lot and none of their customers like them. They had base model Gladiators on the lot and the Inifniti still beat it for worst vehicle on the lot. That is something!
Lambo, I suspect well-run IEMs manage a profitable balance between retail and fleet sales. They know which fleet sales are profitable and which fleet customers require a reliable source to turnover their vehicles.
35 years ago, the UAW jobs bank created an environment that pushed the domestic OEMs to keep producing vehicles well beyond market demand. The excess production was dumped on daily rentals, and as Sean said, the influx of nearly new and cheap vehicles chased customers away from new vehicle… further accelerating the downward spiral of deteriorating resale values.
It takes strong medicine to rebalance supply and demand… a couple of generations of more appealing products and a few lean years of production restraint. All other efforts to fix it are just smoke and mirrors.
Are Nissans really that unreliable? They are about mid-pack in CR’s reliability survey results, ahead of Ford, Chevy, Audi, Lincoln, and far ahead of Mercedes -Benz.
I’d expect politicians in states with a lot of union workers to be going after Chinese cars, more than Little Marco in Florida. I wonder if he even knows that “American” cars Buick Envision and Lincoln Nautilus come from China.
I agree Nissan needs to make more retail sales to boost their profits, but car rental companies need more new cars so they can get of the high-mileage cars that dominate their fleets now. I’ve worked for the “Big E” since 2008, and yes, cars would be “deleted” with 15-20K miles back then, but then the mileage of “deletes” became 30k miles, then 40k miles, and now a car sometimes won’t be deleted until 60k-70k miles! Not everyone wants an SUV either, and with most auto manufacturers abandoning sedan sales, somebody has to step-in, thus more Nissans, Hyundais, and Kias in the fleets!
Kit — To answer your last question from yesterday about a four door Mustang, years ago and for several years, there as been rumors of Ford creating a sub brand of the Mustang and a four sedan being one of the products. It has been said that some have seen versions of a four door Mustang prototype, driving around Dearborn, Michigan. No one thought Ford would seriously do it, but then came the Mach-E and now the two door and four door Charger, that will have an electric version AND be AWD! Could Ford move that direction and act on some of those rumors?
I wonder if GMs Hydrotech could be the replacement gas stations of the EV future? Run on eco hydrogen, they wouldn’t have to be attached to the grid and produce their own electricity.
I have a range issue with EVs. I make trips that require driving for 8-9 hours a day. If you average 60 mph then you need a range of about 500 miles if you don’t want to stop for a long time to recharge. In my ICE vehicle, i may not get 500 miles on one tank of gas but i can stop at a gas station and fill up in 10 minutes tops including a pit stop and be on my way. So, from my perspective, until charging stations are as available as gas stations, and until charging times are below 10 minutes for a full charge then i will be sticking with my ICE vehicles. Does anyone else see it this way?
ChasXK8, I’d heard that daily rental companies never change the oil in their cars, just don’t let them run out. Is that true?
Kit- I’m sure some shady manager somewhere might have scammed a few bucks by not getting the oil changes, but I doubt that’s the standard. I had a good friend that was a manager at Enterprise and is now District Manager. Anyway, most of her stores only had two bays to just clean and detail the cars. Service work was contracted and done pretty close to their scheduled require date. What I mean by close was if a vehicle was due for an oil change in 1000 miles, but a person rented it for a week and took it to Florida and back it could be 1000 miles over its due mileage. I’ve even had rentals that the oil change indicator came on while I was on a week-long rental. I brought it in, and they swapped me out with another similar vehicle. So, I think they take fairly decent care of the service.
Thanks for info, Lambo. I couldn’t imagine that it would be routine to not change oil, unless they had the cars only 10K miles or so.
What are most of these Nissan rentals, Sentras? Maybe most are Rogues and Muranos in today’s world. I’d think Altima might have been in a lot of rental fleets at one time, but it won’t be much longer, as it is being discontinued.
I would get lots of Altima’s and I actually liked them. They feel much lighter than they are behind the wheel and have decent power. Can’t speak to the reliability as I never had one break down but also never had one for more than a week at a time. Maybe that light feeling gives people a sense of cheapness because a smaller car like Chevy Cruise felt heavier, but I liked the nimble feeling the Altima had.
Just read an interesting article on the EV Semi’s. Similar to my sentiments on the EV car I think the heavy truck industry still has a place for the EV semi. I just don’t think over-the-road long hauls is it. I think local delivery and short route daily deliveries will make more sense. Construction sites and activities that are local make sense but this article really questions the feasibility of long haul semi EVs.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/electric-18-wheelers-are-even-stupider-than-electric-cars/ar-BB1jneKr?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=648e6c9b917642ab87912cd378f55f35&ei=79
I had a Sentra as a loaner a while back while a recall was being done on my Camry. I was pleasantly surprised. It was early in the current generation, and the interior was actually pretty nice for a cheap car like that. Also, it drove ok, it least around town. I had it only a few hours, and didn’t have it on the highway.