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Runtime: 10:40
0:00 Tesla Aiming for Robotaxis In California
0:42 Waymo Hits 200,000 Rides/Week
1:20 Stella CEO Tavares Walks Away with Only $36.4 Million
2:00 Trump Promises Car Tariffs on Tuesday
3:39 Mercedes Says AI to Replace Car Designers
4:21 Xiaomi 1500 HP Porsche-Killer Priced At $73,000
5:27 BMW Going with Dedicated EV Plants
6:27 Ford Scraps EV Inventory Plan
7:14 Lightweight Speaker for EVs
8:06 Autoline Poll on Paddle Shifters
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
TESLA AIMING FOR ROBOTAXIS IN CALIFORNIA
Tesla is taking the first steps to get approval to operate its robotaxi service in California. Elon Musk previously said it hoped to start offering robotaxi rides in California by the end of the year. While Tesla is supposed to start the service in Austin, Texas in June. The company actually applied for the California permit in November, but Bloomberg broke the news yesterday. This story comes at a time when the company desperately needs something to get it back on track. Its sales and profits have dropped significantly and its stock price is down sharply.
WAYMO HITS 200,000 RIDES/WEEK
Meanwhile, Waymo posted on X yesterday that it’s now providing 200,000 paid rides a week with its robotaxis in Phoenix, LA and San Francisco. It says that represents 20x growth in less than two years. And it’s soon going to start operating in Austin, Atlanta and Miami. Then sometime later this year, Zoox, which is owned by Amazon, is supposed to start paid robotaxi rides in Las Vegas, and also has plans to operate in San Francisco, Austin and Miami. So the robotaxi business could be about to really take off.
STELLA CEO TAVARES WALKS AWAY WITH ONLY $36.4 MILLION
Carlos Tavares is getting a $24 million pay package as he walks away from the mess he left at Stellantis. That’s a big drop from the $39 million he was paid in 2023. But Tavares is also getting another $12.4 million as part of his severance package, bringing his total compensation to $36.4 million. Even so, as far as big-time CEO severance packages go, that’s not much of a payout. For example, when Mark Fields left Ford as CEO in 2017, his severance package was $50 million, or four times what Tavares got.
TRUMP PROMISES CAR TARIFFS ON TUESDAY
President Trump reaffirmed his plan to slap 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada next Tuesday. He also announced an additional 10% tariff on China, in addition to the 10% tariff that was imposed at the beginning of the month. Trump says he’s moving forward with the tariffs because the countries aren’t doing a sufficient job of curbing fentanyl from entering the U.S. As we’ve reported, the tariffs on Canada and Mexico could increase vehicle prices by as much as $10,000.
MERCEDES SAYS AI TO REPLACE CAR DESIGNERS
Automotive designers will be obsolete by 2035. That’s not just me saying that. It comes directly from the chief of design at Mercedes-Benz, Gorden Wagener. He says the company has been working with artificial intelligence. Right now, 99% of what it spits out is crap and then his team has to sift through to find what’s good. But the AI is getting better every day, which is why Wagener says “I think in 10 years maybe most of design will be done by AI and it will make designers obsolete.” And he’s not just talking about low-level designers. “My successor will be a machine and will be much cheaper than my salary.”
XIAOMI 1500 HP PORSCHE-KILLER PRICED AT $73,000
So far it looks like Xiaomi has done a pretty good job of going from making cell phones to also building electric cars. And its first performance model, a tricked-out version of its SU7 sedan, called the Ultra, will start hitting customer hands in China in March or April. While the pre-sale price was listed at nearly $112,000, base versions of the SU7 Ultra are much cheaper. They start at about $73,000. But even at that price you still get the tri-motor setup, which produces over 1,500 horsepower and helps accelerate the car from 0-100 km/h in roughly 2 seconds. Xiaomi set a sales target of 10,000 units for the SU7 Ultra this year and hit that goal within the first two hours of the model going on sale. It will be interesting to see if this car can buck the trend of most performance models, which typically sell pretty well at first, but once everyone that wants one has one, sales start to fall off. At least, until the next new model comes out.
BMW GOING WITH DEDICATED EV PLANTS
It looks like BMW has extreme confidence in its upcoming Neue Klasse next-gen BEVs. The automaker announced it’s shifting its EV production strategy from plants that build multiple powertrains to plants dedicated to building fully-electric vehicles. All of BMW’s production locations are able to build ICEs, PHEVs and pure electrics on a single line. But the company expects a “significant increase in the market shares” of BEVs by the end of the decade. So, it’s planning to convert its plant in Hungary and its main plant in Munich to fully-electric factories. The plant in Hungary will start building Neue Klasse vehicles by the end of this year and the Munich plant will be fully electric in 2027. BMW’s plant in South Carolina will start building BEVs alongside other powertrains in 2026 and its plant in Mexico will do the same the following year.
FORD SCRAPS EV INVENTORY PLAN
Ford is scrapping a plan to store and distribute EVs through regional hubs. The automaker launched the pilot program last year with the F-150 Lightning to help reduce expenses for dealers and to make the company more competitive with automakers that use a direct sales model. These hubs or EV centers were loaded with vehicles instead of dealer lots and then shipped to stores within two weeks of being ordered. But by doing this, the EVs were still owned by Ford and not the dealer, so this meant the vehicles were only listed on Ford’s website and not on popular third-party sites that many consumers visit. And because of that, dealers never got on board with the scheme, so Ford is reverting back to its traditional sales process.
LIGHTWEIGHT SPEAKERS FOR EVs
A company called Warwick Acoustics out of the UK is applying high-end headphone technology to car speakers, all with the promise of increasing EV range. It’s using what’s called an electrostatic speaker, which features a super thin diaphragm between two stators and when the audio signals come in, the diaphragm vibrates between the stators, creating sound. Not only are these speakers much smaller, noise cancelling tech allows them to create sound zones within the car, the diaphragm comes to rest much faster than a typical speaker cone which cuts down on buzzes, they’re lighter and use a lot less power, which is why Warwick says they can increase EV range. The company claims weight and power use can be cut by up to 90% compared to a typical car audio system.
AUTOLINE POLL ON PADDLE SHIFTERS
OK, we’re posting another poll. And we want you to help the auto industry decide what it should do with paddle shifters. They first started appearing in mass market cars a little over a decade ago, mainly when automakers started introducing DCTs, or dual clutch transmissions. Paddle shifters were also marketed to enthusiasts as a way to shift a car themselves since manual transmissions were slowly going away. But the evidence suggests that most drivers who have them, never use their paddle shifters. And now automakers are wondering if they should get rid of them as a way to cut costs. So what would your advice to automakers be?
1. I love them and use them a lot, so keep ‘em.
2. I rarely use them, but want them when I need them.
3. I never use them, get rid of them.
4. Who cares? I drive a stick.
You can vote by going to the Post tab on the Autoline Network home page, and we’ll post it in the comments section for today’s show on the Autoline website. And on Monday we’ll review the results and we’ll make sure the automakers hear what you have to say.
And that brings us to the end of this week. I want to take a second to acknowledge again that we hit show #4000 on Wednesday and to say another thank you to all of you that have tuned in. Thanks and have a great weekend.
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Paddle shifters? I never use them. Maybe keep them on the sportiest variants if there is no manual option.
My advice: #3 – Get rid of them
THE AUTOLINE POLL FOR THE DAY
Most drivers who have paddle shifters in their cars never use them. Automakers are wondering if they should get rid of them to cut costs. What would your advice to the automakers be?
1. I love them and use them a lot, so keep ‘em.
2. I rarely use them, but want them when I need them, so keep ’em.
3. I never use them, get rid of them.
4 Who cares? I drive a stick.
I am not a real math wiz but if Carlos Taveres got $36 million and Mark Fields got $50 million why is Fields four times as much as Taveres?
I am not a real math wiz but if Carlos Taveres got $36 million and Mark Fields got $50 million why is Fields four times as much as Taveres?
P.S. this the first time I have commented. Someone doesn’t want me to post apparently.
4. Who cares? I drive a stick. (If I could get one). Tried driving an automatic using the floor shifter +- feature, but I lost where I was without the physical shifter location feedback.
3. I never use them, get rid of them.
2. I rarely use them, but want them when I need them. Side note – We do have 2 vehicles with paddle shifters.
Anyone who can use Google knows that more than 10 times as much fentanyl comes IN to Canada from the US than goes the other way. In the ‘from Canada’ case, the number is 19.5 kilograms. Only an idiot would over-react to that. The amount from Mexico is measured in tonnes!
I’d like to hear more details about how the car tariffs and the ‘dealer requirement’ work. Specifically, is the tariff based on where the car was manufactured, where it was shipped from or the percent Canadian/Mexican content? If a Mexican made car was shipped to the Bahamas and then reshipped to Florida, but had 51% US content, is it shill subject to tariffs? (since it did not arrive from Mexico and is mostly US anyway)
Also, for the ‘requirement to use dealers’ is it based on who made the car, or who sold the car? ie Could Ford sell a version of the Lucid Air as a Lincoln, without using a dealer. Could Lucid sell a version of the F150 Lighting as a Lucid without using dealers. More to the point, could Lucid sell CKD kits from Xiomi as a Lucid model and get around the tariffs and the dealer requirement
I drive only automatics, an E-cvt. I don need to shift at all. Shifting around town is a nuisance and on the road are unnecessary. More to dust and needless contrivances. Get rid of the paddle shifters.
3. I never use them, get rid of them.
No need for them.
3. I never use them, get rid of them.
3
This seems like an easy one for automakers looking to save money. Chrysler minivans had them. Why would anyone need them in a minivan? Rather than paddle shifters, I have a manu-matic in my Jeep Grand Cherokee. Never use it. My mother’s Cadillac XT5 has one as well. On occasion, I tap the shifter with my hand accidentally and it goes into the manual shift mode. Its an irritation, just like the entire shifter is on that Caddy. Can’t understand why GM thinks that is so great. It’s very annoying, and an overly complicated solution to a problem that didn’t exist. I would rather have four buttons like GMC has and have the additional console storage room.
4, all my cars are manual transmissions. I have never owned a CAR with an automatic.
I vote 3. I don’t use them. I could see a use for them during towing, but the tow/haul setting on my truck is just as good as me selecting the gear so these gear selectors just sit there with no useful purpose.
Fun Fact, if you have a GM Silverado/Sierra/Tahoe/Yukon/Escalade with AFM/DFM…putting the transmission into manual mode and selecting 1 gear lower than the max number de-activates AFM/DFM. A whole lot of GM drivers put their truck into manual mode every single day and preselect L9 for the 10 speed or L7 for the 8 speed. They can’t stand AFM/DFM from a vibration point and the hope is that deactivating it prevents extremely expensive lifter failure($7-10K repair cost). Putting it into L9, or L7 if you have an 8 speed, just tells the transmission to shift up to that gear and do not allow any shifts into the highest gear. The transmission shifts normally otherwise.
2. I rarely use them, but want them when I need them, so keep ’em.
I only use the shifter to down-shift during steep descents. My Mercedes E400 has paddle shifters but the 3 liter gasoline engine has so little torque that the engine cannot slow down the vehicle during descent.
My Jeep Wrangler does not have paddle shifters but the Diesel engine has the torque to slow down the vehicle during descent. By lack of paddle shifters I use the Manual feature of the normal shifter.
I’d say about 2.9 on the paddle shifters. The only time I ever used them on C7 and C8 Corvettes, was when passing on two lane roads. I’d like to use quite a bit of throttle, but downshift only one or two gears, not four or five gears like it would do if you floor it at 50-55 mph. The left paddle would do that. You could downshift a gear or two, use lots of throttle, and it would stay in the same gear and return to “drive” after a few seconds when you return to cruising speed. The reason paddles are put in so many vehicles where they will rarely, or never be used, is that it’s a gimmick some people like, and it’s cheap to do with an electronically controlled automatic transmission.
My current fleet is two E-CVTs, and one manual.
Paddle shifters? Get rid of them, I drive an EV, no tranny and nearly always got plenty of ‘go’.
Besides, now days with turbocharged motors on over half of cars, turbo lag is just as long as trans-shift lag.
I wonder where in China someone can do 0->100km in 2.x seconds with the SU7? If there’s a place where “pod Robo taxi’s’ will blossom, it’s overcrowded road city’s and countries.
I wonder where in China someone can do 0->100km in 2.x seconds with the SU7? If there’s a place where “pod Robo taxi’s’ will blossom, it’s overcrowded road city’s and countries.
My sport mode has made my paddle shifters moot.
I want to say 1.5
Great to down shit for passing, you can be on Eco or Comfert mode and when you want to pass or get going quick you can down shit and you are in control of how many gears to downshift vs when you neil the gas you you never know how many gears it will downshift.
1. I love them and use them a lot, so keep ‘em.
2. I rarely use them, but want them when I need them.
3 get rid of them. Pointless with a good auto trans. That what auto means no?
My C7 is a stick which is very good like motorcycles I have had however my other car has no transmission and with only 1020 HP what can I say the Corvette stays mostly in the garage since the “other” car is more complimentary to our aging bodies with more than enough horsepower one has to be careful.
Then there is Peter Rawlinson who lost a lot more money for lucid, and paid in the hundreds of millions per year, Carlos Taveres needs to take some lessons
Something completely different. Stumbled over interesting data amassed by Swiss Re (once of the world’s biggest reinsurers) regarding WAYMO’s safety stats. Quote:
Notably, the Waymo Driver’s safety advantages hold true even when compared to newer vehicles (2018-2021 models) equipped with modern safety technology. This includes advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) such as automated emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane keeping assistance, and blind spot warning. When compared to this group, the Waymo Driver showed an 86% reduction in property damage claims and 90% reduction in bodily injury claims.
Unquote, source:
https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo
Sean Wagner,
Not a very high bar for waymo. They operate in locations with massive amounts of unlicensed and uninsured drivers. The reasons for all these unlicensed drivers are many, but the results are the same, very high claims in those areas. You are actually seeing the benefits of trained/disciplined drivers versus untrained/non-disciplined drivers.
MERKUR DRIVER, do you think unlicensed and uninsured drivers have access to the latest cars? I doubt that. Rather, it seems to me that any autonomous vehicle that really works (cost being a separate item) will clearly benefit from constant 360 degree monitoring, and unflagging attention.
My experience, while very limited, with driver aids is that they are near useless. My wife’s ‘19 TourX has the rear back up, cross traffic system. When backing out of the garage it alerts that the garage door frame is near, alerts that my truck is on the other side. Once you get past that, it alarms that the fence 2’ off the driveway is there, then the same for our house that is on the other side. After you past the house it alarms that there is a tree 2’ from the driveway. When you get to the street it alerts that the road is there because the apron of the driveway slopes to the street. Complete alarm overload. Thus my wife and the neighbor across the street backed into each other in the middle of the street. When we bought the car there were 2 to chose from at the same price. One with the “safety system” and the other with a sunroof. She determined she did not choose wisely.
The rear cross traffic sensors on my ’22 and ’24 Toyotas seem to sense only things that are moving. It’s useful, sensing even people walking in parking lots. The proximity sensors on the corners of the Prius make a lot of needless noise when going in and out of the garage.
#3 my car doesn’t have paddle shifters but the ability to manually shift using the center console stick with a bump fwd or back when pushed to the right in manual mode. I’ve used it a couple times in the 10 years I’ve owned the car and it’s a novelty item. Would maybe want it in a sports car like a Vette but not needed in much anything else. They are typically rpm limited and will up or down shift anyway if pushed too far up the rpm range or if you slow down they revert back to down shifting for you.
It seems that my recent automatic transmissions do the right thing, and there is little reason to over-ride them. I generally like low gain throttle for normal driving, so use “eco” mode or similar with most cars. With the right pedal on the floor, at least with the Toyota hybrids, you get full available acceleration in any mode. The tip in is just “softer” at small right pedal deflections, good for driving smoothly. With the Mini, eco mode shifts too early in normal driving, feeling like it is lugging the engine, so I use normal mode. Sport mode just holds gears too long and wastes gas. Maybe it would be good for track days, but not for normal driving. I don’t think I ever used the paddles in the Mini.
The bottom line is that it’s cheap to put paddles and other “manual” modes with today’s autoboxes, so car companies do it. Some people like gimmicks, the more the better.
#1!
Sean Wagner,
ADAS systems have been available in the USA for a very long time. So yes, unlicensed drivers have access to them. They have access to any car that they want in the USA. The myth that an unlicensed uninsured driver is rolling around in a rusty heap from the 80s/90s is just that, a myth.
The big question to ask is, how come ADAS equipped vehicles are getting into accidents? The article claims that electronics are supposed to be super awesome and make everything safe. Why are these vehicles equipped with this super awesome electronic equipment having accidents in enough numbers to include in their review? Isn’t preventing accidents their entire reason for existing? And yet here we are talking about how ADAS equipped vehicles are not preventing accidents but we are to believe that more ADAS will. It is a logical fallacy driven by the authors trying to relate two things which are completely unrelated.
1. I love them and use them a lot, so keep ‘em.
Sorry I’m a bit late to this.. I love paddle shifters, but I do think the have to be done properly, and I think the Italians do them right.
Firstly, the big metal shifters in a Guilia, Ghibli or Ferrari are a joy to touch, and you’ll find yourself running your fingers along them constantly even when you’re not using them just for the sake of it.
Being fixed to the column is probably a help too.. I’m either way on this, but it does mean you always know exactly which way is up the ‘box and which way is down.
It’s very important that the gearbox reacts instantly to the paddles, and also that they can be used directly without selecting a “manual mode” first. And then there’s that lovely mechanical “click”..
Even when I’m not in much of a hurry it’s really nice to just surf the torque and short-shift up the ‘box with the big shiny paddles.. why wouldn’t you ..!