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Runtime: 11:05
0:00 Luca de Meo Quits Renault
0:43 Nissan To Sell More Renault Stock
1:21 Farley Says Ford “Day to Day” On Rare Earths
2:03 Stellantis Stuck with CARB ZEV Mandate
3:40 Chinese Suppliers Skeptical of OEM Payments
4:36 JLR Lowers Outlook on U.S. Tariffs
5:10 Nio Officially Drops U.S. Plans
5:56 U.S. EVs Stuck At 8% Share for Years to Come
6:30 Peugeot E-208 Gets GTI Treatment
7:31 Chinese Researchers Say Akio Is Wrong About EVs
8:26 Ian Callum & The Queen’s Hearse
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
LUCA DE MEO QUITS RENAULT
Five years ago, Renault named Luca de Meo as CEO. He quickly set out to transform the company. He turned it from a money loser to a solidly profitable automaker. He spun off its ICE operations into a new company called Horse. He created a new software and EV company called Ampere. And yesterday, he decided to quit Renault and join a company called Kering, which owns a bunch of luxury brands, including Gucci. That sent shock waves through the industry and the Renault board is scrambling to find a new leader.
NISSAN TO SELL MORE RENAULT STOCK
Hot on the heels of that announcement, Nissan says it’s going to reduce its investment in Renault. The Japanese automaker currently owns 15% of Renault. But both companies have an agreement to cut both of their cross-ownership holdings down to 10%. However, we already knew that. Nissan is choosing to say it again on the day that De Meo is quitting. Nissan should be able to raise about $640 million by selling off 5 percentage points of its holdings in Renault, and it promises to plow that money back into developing new models and shoring up its shaky finances.
FARLEY SAYS FORD “DAY TO DAY” ON RARE EARTHS
Ford CEO Jim Farley says the automaker is critically low on rare earth supplies. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said its rare-earth supply is “day to day” and that it’s had to shut down plants because of the shortage. Last week, China agreed to grant temporary licenses for rare earths to suppliers of Ford, GM and Stellantis. However, Farley says that it hasn’t seen an improvement in supply yet and that China is only approving applications for rare earths “one at a time.” China, which controls 90% of global rare earth production, began restricting supplies in April in retaliation to U.S. tariffs.
STELLANTIS STUCK WITH CARB ZEV MANDATE
Last week, President Trump signed legislation revoking an EPA waiver that allows California to set its own emission standards. However, Stellantis still has to follow California’s mandate because of a deal it signed with the state last year. Stella was struggling to comply with the state’s emission regulations and it didn’t want to buy credits to meet them. So it made a deal to avoid penalties in the short-term in exchange for agreeing to meet California’s zero-emission vehicle or ZEV requirements starting with the 2026 model year through 2030. The rules require 35% of new car sales to be ZEVs in 2026 and it ramps up to 68% in 2030. And as part of the deal, Stellantis said it would follow California’s rules regardless of any “judicial or federal action” preventing them from going into effect. And it’s going to be tough for Stellantis to comply with the rules. While plug-in hybrids are allowed to account for 20% of its requirement, PHEVs only accounted for 8% of Stellantis’ sales nationwide last year. And it only has three EVs on sale, which accounted for less than 2% of its sales in the first quarter.
CHINESE SUPPLIERS SKEPTICAL OF OEM PAYMENTS
Last week, automakers in China agreed to make payments to suppliers within 60 days. But suppliers say they’re skeptical the companies will follow through on their promise. Car companies typically pay suppliers in 60 days but in China that has stretched to hundreds of days in some cases. So the government stepped in last week to help speed up payments because suppliers, especially smaller ones, are struggling financially. But some suppliers are concerned automakers will find workarounds. One practice automakers could use is to issue promissory notes, which delays cash recovery for an additional period. Of the 17 automakers that pledged to speed up payments, only BAIC and SAIC, agreed to not issue promissory notes. The others didn’t specify how they will make payments.
JLR LOWERS OUTLOOK ON U.S. TARIFFS
Despite the UK negotiating a 10% tariff on the first 100,000 cars it imports to the U.S., instead of 25%, JLR is still considering raising prices to offset the higher fees. While Range Rovers are made in the UK, its Defender brand is built in Slovakia, which is part of the European Union and subject to the 25% tariff. As a result, JLR also lowered its EBIT margin forecast from 10% down to a range of 5-7% for the year.
NIO OFFICIALLY DROPS U.S. PLANS
NIO recently announced that it’s expanding into 7 new European countries, but electric-vehicles.com reports that it’s giving up on one very important market. The Chinese automaker has suspended plans to enter the U.S., which was part of a global expansion first revealed in 2021. NIO had already operated an innovation center in San Jose, California for 5 years by the time of that announcement and in 2022 expanded the facility even more. But over the last year the company has eliminated many of the teams working there and the new report says it accelerated its decision not to enter the U.S. market due to trade tensions between the U.S. and China as well as new tariffs on Chinese imports.
U.S. EVs STUCK AT 8% SHARE FOR YEARS TO COME
And if Bank of America analyst John Murphy is right, a lack of market share could be another reason for backing out of the U.S. Murphy predicts EV market share will stick at about 8%, roughly where it was at the end of last year, for the next 5 years to come, blaming inconsistent support from the government. However, Murphy also predicts that overall sales will grow to 16.5 million this year and to a possible 18 million by 2028, which means that overall EV sales will grow as well.
PEUGEOT E-208 GETS GTI TREATMENT
For the first time ever, Peugeot is applying its sporty GTi badge to an all-electric vehicle. The E-208 GTi is 30 mm or just over an inch lower, comes with larger front rotors, 4-piston front calipers, springs and shocks with specific hydraulic stops, a rear sway- or anti-roll bar and unique 18-inch wheels that widen the track. Power comes from a single electric motor that makes 280 horsepower, which will accelerate the car from 0-100 km/h, which is similar to 0-60 MPH, in 5.7 seconds. CATL supplies the 54-kWh battery pack for E-208 GTi, which provides 350 kilometers or about 215 miles of range on the WLTP test cycle. While no pricing is available yet, the model is expected to hit the European market before the end of the year.
CHINESE RESEARCHERS SAY AKIO IS WRONG ABOUT EVs
Akio Toyoda has famously defended hybrid cars by saying one EV puts out as much pollution as three hybrids. But university researchers in China say he’s wrong. One University did a study which found that EVs emit 20-30% less CO2 over their lifetimes than hybrids. That even takes China’s coal-heavy generating infrastructure into account. And it’s not just Chinese researchers who are saying this. The Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S. did an extensive study that found that EVs were cleaner than the average gasoline powered vehicles after both have been driven 19,000 miles. And they’re cleaner than hybrids after they’ve been driven about 28,000 miles. Moreover, EV manufacturing and electrical grids continue to get cleaner, while ICE production does not.
IAN CALLUM & THE QUEEN’S HEARSE
Ian Callum, the former head of design at Jaguar, and who also worked for Ford, Aston Martin and Tom Walkinshaw racing was in Detroit this weekend to receive the prestigious Eyes on Design Lifetime Achievement Award. It’s voted on by the top designers in the industry, as well as previous winners. During the course of the evening it came out that Ian was the one who designed the state hearse for Queen Elizabeth II. It was based on a Jaguar XJ and the Queen personally approved his design and added her own input. This was in 2013, but Callum was told to never talk about the car, which was put in a box, and only removed until her funeral in 2022. It’s the first time he’s gone public with the story. And so there’s your automotive anecdote for the day.
But that’s a wrap for today’s show. Thanks for tuning in.
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It seems that Ford is content with just doing one-offs with their EVs, as they have done little to improve their current BEVs and only talks about the skunkworks project that seems to be still years off from debuing! While GM on the other hand just keeps cranking out more product.
Sean/John, has Monroe, the EV tear down specialists, done any tear downs of the Lucid Air? I would love to see what he thinks about what they have done, how it compares to Teslas engineering what, were there any similarities in each of their approaches and, especially, where did they go in different directions and his thoughts as to why. Maybe they he did done one sometime ago and I just missed it.
The OEM Payments to Chinese suppliers by Chinese OEMs is a big deal. It is also the real reason why nobody but Chinese suppliers want to work with Chinese OEMs. All the Chinese OEMs do a form of severely delayed payment but we will look at BYD For the moment.
BYD takes up to 360 days to pay an invoice. The way BYD does it is that they only allow you to submit an invoice after they “approve” the parts for quality, whatever that nebulous process is as it is undefined. After that they submit the invoice but BYD takes up to 4 weeks to approve that. Then a 90 day clock starts, so that BYD can say that they pay suppliers in 90 days. Then it comes time to pay, at which point they pay them in a completely made up currency called D-note or something like that. It is not cash but a promissory note, which you would think is what the purchase order is. The suppler can redeem the note after a 250 day window has passed for the full value, if BYD is still a thing at that time. If the supplier needs money earlier, then BYD will pay the note but at 10 cents on the dollar value of the note. BYD has “preferred suppliers”, basically suppliers like CATL that could care less about BYD so BYD pays them in cash immediately. Smaller suppliers are stuck with the BYD bucks nonsense. Thus a ton of Chinese suppliers are going broke funding BYD for up to a year with 0% interest loans on parts supply. BYD could care less because the more suppliers they drive out of business and paying notes 10 cents on the dollar, the cheaper they can sell their pile of crap cars. They just find someone else to force into bankruptcy and the circus continues. Nowhere in this nonsense process will parts be any good. I can guarantee that you cannot maintain any kind of quality standard by constantly resourcing parts from one supplier to the next on a whim. I would not drive a BYD if you paid me to do so.
Here is a video explaining the Lucid powertrain. It’s pretty cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBC2WYR3CPI
Thanks Kit!
wmb, YW
Wow, Stellantis really signed a suicide pact with that one. I wonder if it would be cheaper to just not sell in CA to avoid all those billions in fines and/or imaginary credits they’ll have to pay Tesla for. I doubt any of their products are super huge sellers there – or at least not enough to overcome those costs. If they were kicking butt with EV, that would be another story, but that EV Charger is an unmitigated disaster.
I don’t know how the Charger is an unmitigated disaster. Car and Driver liked it pretty well, except for being improperly marketed. Maybe they can work on that. Anyway, Stellantis did kind of screw themselves. What they need to do in California is sell Charger, Jeep and Pacifica plug-in hybrids, and however many other Jeeps they can sell without paying fines. Of what I’ve seen when in California, unlike Indiana and Florida, there aren’t a lot of huge pickup trucks of any brand. Let Ford, GM, and Toyota have that market.
It’s a disaster because owners are dealing with widespread “bricking” issues where the car shuts down and won’t start and has to be towed to a dealership where no one knows how to fix it. They’ve already discontinued one of the trim levels due to low sales. Seems like it was not ready for prime time.
There’s some red wrench symbol that pops up on the cluster when it’s about to crash out and they call it the “death lobster .” Pretty funny stuff unless you’re the guy paying the loan, I guess.
Remember a couple years back when Stellantis laid off all their North American programmers and replaced them with centers in South America and Mexico? Sometimes you get what you pay for.
Yeah, if Charger doesn’t work reliably, that’s not good. If they wanted low cost, but very good engineers, they should have gone to India or China. Hopefully they can fix the “bricking.” Also, they need to get the gas version on the market, and drop the mandatory 4wd. Also, maybe they need to put the “hemi” in the gas one, though it sounds like the turbo six works very well. Maybe it isn’t reliable, though.
So the Queen (and I don’t mean Elton) was driven to her resting place in a cheap Jag? What a tragedy!
I drove about 21 miles each way yesterday afternoon, took me from 6:45 to 8:00 to go and from 11:10 to only 11:45 to return, to see a visiting cousin who lives on a large island 180 miles from here, and was staying with a classmate of hers, and we were joined by one of our nieces, and went to a new cultural center complex and had a cocktail each and caught up with our news. I did bring up the apparent paradox of this place having virtually no supercharger network, yet there are a ton of Teslas and smaller numbers of other pure EVs running around there. It was unanimously agreed that NONE of these pure EVs is the owner’s single and only vehicle, but all of them are affluent to very affluent owners, who own multiple, even fleets of, cars each, one of which is often a pure EV.
I was surprised at the time that Queen Elizabeth was driven to her final resting place in something other than a Rolls-Royce, unless a horse drawn vehicle was used.
Yeah, probably most of the people you mention have more than one car, but if they have home charging, and their car trips are not more than 100-125 miles each way, an EV would work quite well as an only car for them.
The queen used a Jaguar for a few reasons. The primary reason is that she has loved Jaguar/Land Rover cars for her entire life. So her hearse was going to definitely be a Jaguar or Land Rover and nothing other than that. As to this particular model Jaguar, it was because an XJ model was used by the queen mother for her funeral in 2002. Thus using an XJ model for this funeral is paying homage to the queen mother. There are many other reasons that she used this particular vehicle, but those are the big reasons.
I remember the queen’s husband being a Land Rover fan.