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Runtime: 11:57
0:00 Cybertruck Called a Flop
1:18 GM Banned from Selling Customer Data For 5 Years
2:19 NHTSA Says 877,000 GM Engines Potentially Defective
2:43 China Burns Record Level of Coal
3:22 EVs Are 9% Of China’s Car Fleet
4:06 Battery Storage Is Soaring
5:11 Virtual Power Plants Expand to Texas
6:36 EU Suppliers Ax 54,000 Jobs
7:26 Porsche Uses AI for Better Paint Jobs
8:10 BYD Adds Another Cargo Ship
8:29 BYD Enters South Korean Market
9:13 EV Charger Sharing Gains Popularity
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
CYBERTRUCK CALLED A FLOP
Is the Cybertruck a flop? That’s what Karl Brauer, the executive analyst at iSeeCars is saying. Tesla is now offering a $1,600 discount on new orders, and $2,600 if you buy one out of inventory. The fact that Tesla even has an inventory backload calls into question its build-to-order strategy. The company reportedly stopped production of the truck for 3 days last month, and is now reassigning workers from Cybertruck assembly over to production of the Model Y. Cox Automotive reports that Tesla sold just under 39,000 Cybertrucks last year, which isn’t a bad number, except that Tesla tooled the Gigafactory in Austin, Texas to make 125,000 a year. That means the line is only running at 31% of its capacity, which almost certainly means the truck is losing money. Just a few years ago Elon Musk bragged that they would sell 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, but at this point that looks highly unlikely.
GM BANNED FROM SELLING CUSTOMER DATA FOR 5 YEARS
General Motors is having a bad day. Previously, it was caught selling customer data collected in their cars by OnStar to third parties like insurance companies. And it wasn’t anonymized data. It was data specific to millions of individual drivers. So, now The Federal Trade Commission has banned GM from disclosing sensitive geolocation and driver behavior data to outside parties. The FTC says GM misled customers because the signup process for OnStar was so confusing that consumers didn’t know GM would sell their data to third parties. But the settlement with the FTC is not the end of the story. The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, is suing GM for “false, deceptive, and misleading business practices.” And if that lawsuit is successful, we wouldn’t be surprised to see other states pile on with their own lawsuits.
NHTSA SAYS 877,000 GM ENGINES POTENTIALLY DEFECTIVE
Meanwhile NHTSA is opening a probe into potential failures with GM’s V8 engines that go into the company’s most full-size profitable pickups and SUVs. NHTSA says a bearing failure could cause the engines to seize up. The recall involves over 877,000 engines made from 2019 through 2024.
CHINA BURNS RECORD LEVEL OF COAL
While China is the global leader in EVs, it is burning record amounts of fossil fuels to power those vehicles and its other energy needs. According to China’s National Bureau of statistics, the country’s fossil fuel power plants set a power generation record last year with output increasing 1.5% compared to 2023. Production of coal and natural gas hit record highs and crude oil hit its second-highest total last year. And while China is leading in renewable energy deployment, it’s not keeping pace with the growth in fossil fuels.
EVs ARE 9% OF CHINA’S CAR FLEET
As we said, China is the leader in EVs, but they’re still a small part of China’s total car fleet. Car News China reports there are 353 million vehicles on Chinese roads and of those 31.4 million are NEVs, which includes BEVs, PHEVs and EREVs. Fully-electric cars account for 22 million of the NEV total or a 70% share. However, the share of electric cars is only going to continue to grow. Last year, NEVs accounted for 41% of China’s new car sales and this year, they’re expected to account for more than half of sales.
BATTERY STORAGE IS SOARING
Global battery storage is seeing significant growth. According to Bloomberg NEF, total global energy storage capacity reached 89.6-GWh in 2023, up from just 17.5-GWh in 2020. China is the leader and overtook the U.S. as the largest energy storage market in 2023. China was expected to add 36-GWh in 2024, compared to about 13-GWh in the U.S., mostly in California and Texas. And while this isn’t really an automotive story, the growth in battery storage should help volumes and economies of scales for EVs.
VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS EXPAND TO TEXAS
We’re starting to see an expansion of Virtual Power Plants or VPPs. Basically, any residence or business with solar panels and/or energy storage devices are combined together into one big power provider and then the operator of the VPP sells that energy back to the grid. Tesla has operated its own VPP for years and now a couple of companies are offering Texas homeowners free solar panels, two 20 kWh stationary storage batteries and a discounted energy rate if they sign up to join their VPP. Homeowners will pay 12-cents per kWh, which is lower than the 19- to 20-cents that is typically charged in Texas. For the VPP operators the benefit is being able to sell all that energy back to the grid and in this case in Texas, they’ll use that to cover the costs of the solar panels and batteries. So, the more people, the bigger the VPP, the more money it makes and it helps stabilize the energy grid. As of September of last year, the Texas Virtual Power Plant had committed over 40 megawatt-hours of residential battery power to the Texas market. And in some cases, EVs with bidirectional charging are getting added into the mix, so these VPPs are only going to grow.
EU SUPPLIERS AX 54,000 JOBS
The European auto industry is going through a tough time, and that’s especially true for suppliers. New vehicle sales in Europe are 3 million units lower than they were before the pandemic. And last year European suppliers got rid of 54,000 jobs. According to CLEPA, which is the European Association of Suppliers, two-thirds of suppliers lack the finances to invest in new technology or plant modernization. Since 2019 the European supplier sector has a net loss of 94,000 jobs. CLEPA says that unless the market picks up and suppliers achieve a turnaround, the job losses will continue for years and will put the industry in a dangerous position.
PORSCHE USES AI FOR BETTER PAINT JOBS
On yesterday’s Autoline After Hours, Ed Marchese from ABB automotive robotics talked about how robots are being used more and more to make the cars we drive. Porsche says it’s not only using robots to paint its cars, which are more efficient than humans, but it’s also using robots to inspect the robot paint jobs. Two robotic arms with sensors attached are used to scan an entire car body and then AI scans the roughly 100,000 pictures for any defects. Porsche says it only takes about 72-seconds to scan a car and if any defects are found, that’s when it finally needs to be touched by human hands.
BYD ADDS ANOTHER CARGO SHIP
BYD just launched another car-hauling ship and this one’s even bigger than the rest. The ship can haul up to 9,200 vehicles, which is about 2,000 more than its next-biggest. BYD launched its first one a year ago and now it has 8 ships in its fleet.
BYD ENTERS SOUTH KOREAN MARKET
One of the models it’s going to be shipping is its Atto 3 SUV. BYD just announced it will start selling vehicles in South Korea this year, beginning with the Atto 3, which will then be followed by two other models. The electric SUV will have a starting price of just over $21,000. Initially that might seem like a really low price, but the Atto 3 is over $5,000 cheaper in China and as we reported the other day, Hyundai is charging about $19,000 for its Inster EV in South Korea. So, it won’t be the most affordable electric, but it will be interesting to see if consumers are accepting of BYD.
EV CHARGER SHARING GAINS POPULARITY
Even though more and more public EV chargers are opening, there’s still a lack of at-home EV chargers which is said to be holding back EV adoption. According to a survey from ChargeLab, 14% of EV owners are unable to charge at home and two-thirds of owners use public chargers every week. So to help driver’s charge their EVs, there’s a growing number of what’s called “friendly neighbors” or people who allow others to charge at their home. According to PlugShare, a company that maps public charging infrastructure, there are now 31,000 residences across the U.S. that offer charging to anyone who needs to plug-in. The trend is especially popular with first time EV buyers, who want to help grow EV adoption and for those living in urban areas, where at-home charging isn’t available.
And that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day and I hope that you have a great weekend.
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Given that there was some pent-up demand for the CyberTruck, last year may actually represent the high point of the annual sales for this vehicle. An awfully expensive lesson for Tesla. This vehicle should have never made it past the drawing board.
So much for the billions and billions of dollars GM was going to make from selling data. They may have to actually rededicate themselves to designing, engineering and building good quality vehicles.
Why would anyone be a “friendly neighbor”? Are the people charging at their home paying them for the electricity? If they are, why don’t they just go to a public charging station? Same level of convenience (or inconvenience) and they are not blocking someone’s driveway. Is there more to this story?
I wonder if the effected engines are the 6.2L V8. In owner groups they are reporting a very high failure rate. The 6.2L replacement engines are on back order for several months. That backorder can indicate that there is a massive fail rate with that engine as GM can’t build them fast enough.
GM vet,
It was reported that they sold this data to insurance companies which netted GM $0.45 per person. It will cost them thousands to appease that customer into buying another GM product. Greed shooting them in the foot, as it should have.
The Cyber truck might deservedly be a flop, but that does not mean the mechanicals are. I would be shocked if Tesla does not respond to failing Cyber truck sales by introducing more variants. It would require some re-engineering but cab and chassis only would be the obvious choice, since it could be used to make vans, buses, box trucks, RVs, maybe even limos, hearses or military troop carriers. Depending how difficult it is to put a different body on the Cyber truck, maybe Tesla could interest some of the EV startups to launch models based on the bare chassis. That has got to be cheaper than designing and building an entire truck yourself.
I remember saying before the Cybertruck launched that once the initial fan boys got theirs the sales would drop like a rock and I’ve said the same for that super expensive ID Buzz and the Scout. They certainly have a following of fans that want them and will buy them even at a higher than value rate. But those buyers are limited and they fail to see that. Had Tesla offered a more traditional design they would likely see sales continue to grow. But due to its love it or hate it design its going to flop. The love it folks have em and thats it. Sorry Tesla but I suspect they are or should be scrambling for a redesign asap. Re-launch the truck with a more conservative design and that might help but I think EV sales are going to struggle anyway as I suspect gas is about to be back closer to $2 a gallon soon.
In 2024 I remember a few journalists writing about how Cybertruck was going to be a niche product and lucky if it sold 10,000 a year personally thought it did quite well selling very expensive models with over 38K sold. Also without selling a single defective gas engine. Soon 2025 will have come and gone and we’ll see how the automotive industry has changed especially with AI’s influence.
I’m with Karl Brauer. I close my eyes to avoid the visual, which I consider impossible to justify. That’s just me. Or maybe not. I try not to close them while driving.
I hadn’t heard of the “friendly neighbor” thing, but if they sold power to the user for utility rate, or even 25% more, it would be a very good deal for the person with the car, compared to 2-3 times utility rate for most public charging.
For Tesla to maintain sales of Cybertruck, or even the good stuff, like Model Y, they need to attract Trump fan boys, which have historically been anti-EV. Since Elon bedded down with Trump, Tesla has lost many of their former fan boys and girls, at least in the U.S.
Is much of Cybertruck, other than the powertrain, really relevant for other types of vehicles? The suspension, and rear wheel steering could be useful for other, especially long wheelbase vehicles, but there isn’t a chassis, per se, like with a regular pickup truck, is there.
If GM sold data from my Corvette with my name attached, I wouldn’t like that, if available to insurance companies. I’m surprised they would do that, kind of like I was very surprised that VW would cheat on diesel emissions like they did.
KIt,
Sadly for you, the Corvette was the vehicle that they piloted the customer information sales scheme on. So yes, your insurance company bought that data at some point. It was discovered as certain insurance companies raised rates on their customers citing the data that they purchased from GM. Not all insurance companies have been forthcoming about them purchasing that data though. So you may or may not have heard about it. But yes, your corvette was the exact car that debuted the entire scheme.
I haven’t had the Corvette for a couple years, so maybe the insurance companies have forgotten.
Sure people will try and blame cybertruck sales dropping due to Elons involvement with Trump. But I believe they would be dropping simply because of the limited attraction and niche market it appealed to. This would have happened regardless of what Elon has done. Ask any cybertruck owner if Elon was any part in their decision and I doubt that’s the case. Most people especially when spending 50k or more are smart enough to base the decision on best value for the money with a few buying simply cause it’s what the wanted. The few that say they won’t buy typical can’t afford to anyway and just like to try and make a statement.
Lambo, Elon/Trump might not be much of a factor in Cybertruck owners decision to buy, but it was a factor in some friends being non-buyers of 3 and Y. It helped Hyundai, though.
Most here know that the CT might not be in production, were it not for the Tesla semi. Then when you consider that the CT was Tesla’s first real application of its 48 volt wiring architecture, as well as their drive-by-wire systems and we begin to see that, while the vehicle may not be hitting the sells targets they were hoping for, the application is from from a flop. Tesla is looking at building as mean as 250,000 units of the semi a year, at the new plant that they are building for it. So, the CTs contribution to that program, however small, will go a long way and mean a lot more to the company’s bottom line them whether the CT is a success or not.
What I’m seeing is 50,000/year target for Tesla Semi, in a few years. So far, it looks like fewer than 100 exist, a few to Pepsi and some used by Tesla to move stuff locally, and between Fremont and the Nevada factory.
Kit sounds like your friends are typical left wing whiners that will avoid a good product based on what the CEO does. Probably stopped listening to Carrie underwood too. Those folks crack me up but to each their own.
Lambo, my friends don’t want to support an oligarchy of fascists, but also, Hyundai has some very good EVs, in appearance with good performance. Check out Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6. They are great EVs. While Teslas have among the most efficient powertrains, they continue to have awful operator interface. At least the new Model Y, for China, has a turn signal stalk.
Who is Carrie Underwood?