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Runtime: 10:41
0:00 Skoda EVs Outsell Tesla in Europe
1:13 South Africa OEMs Face Strikes
2:11 Ford Commits to Embattled Battery Plant
3:10 GM’s Next-Gen EV Pickups Coming in 2031
3:35 Uber & Waymo Launch Robotaxis in Atlanta
4:11 Pony.ai Disses Tesla Robotaxi
5:12 OEMs In-Source Battery Packs in China
6:06 Tesla Inventory Kicked Out of Suburban Parking Lot
6:33 Burning Ship with EVs Sinks
6:54 Zero-Mile Used Cars Exported from China
7:54 NIO Firefly Battery Lease for $55/Month
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
SKODA EVs OUTSELL TESLA IN EU
Tesla continues to lose ground in Europe. According to Dataforce, Tesla’s sales fell 28% in May, to 14,055 units. But despite the slump, the Model Y is still the best-selling EV in the region. The Volkswagen brand was number one in BEV sales last month, with more than 23,000 sold, up 50% from a year ago. Skoda, which is part of the VW Group, saw its BEV sales soar 181% to 14,920 units, making it the number two brand in Europe. And BMW was just ahead of Tesla in third place with just over 14,900 BEV sales, up 2%. Overall, automakers sold nearly 194,000 BEVs in May, up 26% from last year.
SOUTH AFRICA OEMs FACE STRIKE
We don’t talk about South Africa much, but it’s actually a fairly important automotive manufacturing center. At least 9 automakers build vehicles there, including BMW, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, Mercedes, Nissan, Hyundai, Mahindra and Isuzu. While BAIC and Stellantis have plants under construction. All told, those automakers have the capacity to make over 650,000 vehicles a year. They’re mostly pickup trucks, but it includes some sedans as well, and most of them are exported. But there’s trouble brewing in the South African industry. Auto workers want raises and are threatening to strike. Worse, the economy is weak and the market is getting flooded with imports, primarily from India. And so, there’s yet another place in the global automotive industry that is coming under intense pressure.
FORD COMMITTED TO BATTERY PLANT WITH CATL
We’ve talked a lot recently about the EV battery plant Ford is building in Michigan with help from CATL. That plant has come under withering political fire, from local politicians who call it a Chinese national security threat, to national politicians who want to gut all EV subsidies, and even from some local citizens who don’t want an industrial factory in their rural community. But Ford says that it’s committed to building that plant. “When we invest, we stick behind our investments,” Ford VP Lisa Drake told reporters on a tour of the construction site. “Ford is a company that will weather the storm until we get there,” she said. Ford is licensing CATL technology to make prismatic LFP batteries for EVs but will also consider looking at making batteries for energy storage if EV demand is soft.
GM NEXT-GEN EV PICKUPS IN 2031
General Motors is another automaker committed to moving forward with EVs. Its next-gen Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra electric pickups are scheduled to go into production in 2031. Autoforecast Solutions says both trucks, built in GM’s BT1 platform, will continue to be made at its Factory Zero assembly plant in Detroit.
WAYMO & UBER LAUNCH ROBOTAXIS IN ATLANTA
There’s been a flurry of activity with robotaxis recently and today is no exception. Uber and Waymo announced they’ve launched an autonomous ride-hailing service in Atlanta, Georgia. Starting today, Uber riders will have the option to ride in a Waymo self-driving Jaguar I-Pace at no additional cost. Riders are able to unlock the doors, open the truck and start the trip all through the Uber app. The service will initially cover 65 square miles of Atlanta, but will expand in the future.
PONY.AI DISSES TESLA ROBOTAXI
And in other robotaxi news, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Chinese autonomous ride-hailing company Pony.ai blasted Tesla’s robotaxi. He says “Tesla hasn’t yet taken a seat at the L4 poker table.” L4 is short for Level 4 which the SAE defines as a vehicle that can handle all driving tasks in most conditions. And according to the CTO, in order to be at the “L4 table” a company needs to achieve driverless operation and scalability. He says only three companies meet that standard, Waymo, Baidu and Pony.ai.
OEMs IN-SOURCE BATTERY PACKS IN CHINA
Automakers in China now assemble more battery packs than the actual battery makers do. According to Gasgoo, in-house production of battery packs was more than 50% of the total volume in the first quarter of the year. BYD’s FinDreams Battery is firmly in the number 1 spot, while Tesla is in third and Leapmotor came in at number 9. Even though battery maker CATL has a good grip on second place, seeing several automakers on the list, shows a greater amount of in-house development. CATL and BYD also dominate total battery cell production in China. Between the two of them, they supplied nearly 70% of all the cells made in the first quarter. And when you add up all top 10 companies, they accounted for nearly 95% of the battery market in China.
TESLA INVENTORY KICKED OUT OF SUBURBAN PARKING LOT
We’ve got a couple of quick follow ups to previous stories we reported on. All those Teslas, over 200 at one point, that were being stored in a parking lot not too far outside of Detroit have officially been removed. Their storage was said to violate city code, but still required a court order to compel the property owner to remove them. And there’s no word on where all those Teslas were moved to.
BURNING SHIP WITH EVs SINKS
Next up, the car hauling ship that caught fire earlier this month has sunk in the Pacific Ocean. It was carrying about 3,000 vehicles, including 800 EVs, from Chery and Great Wall that were headed to Mexico. The shipping company said that smoke was first seen coming from the deck holding the EVs.
ZERO-MILE USED CARS EXPORTED FROM CHINA
Earlier this month we reported about a growing controversy in China over what’s known as “zero-mileage” used cars. It’s a practice where automakers sell new vehicles to their dealers, who then turn around and sell them as used cars, even though they have very few or no miles on them. And now Reuters reports that local Chinese governments have been backing the exports of “zero-mileage” used cars since 2019, which go to markets like Russia, the Middle East and Asia. Automakers do this to meet sales targets and to unload inventory they wouldn’t be able to sell in China. While local governments are promoting the scheme in order to meet economic targets from China’s central government. According to the China Automobile Dealers Association, of the 436,000 used passenger and commercial vehicles exported in 2024, 90% are estimated to be “zero-mileage.”
NIO FIREFLY BATTERY LEASE ONLY $55/MONTH
Like it’s done with other models, NIO is going to let customers of its entry-level Firefly brand rent their battery pack through a monthly fee, which can lower the starting price by over 30%. Instead of paying for the entire vehicle outright, Firefly will let you rent the battery pack for $55 a month. So rather than a starting price of $16,500 the vehicle can be had for just over $11,000. While this is currently a deal for Firefly’s Chinese customers, NIO announced it will offer the entry-level brand in Europe and NIO already offers its battery rental service to European customers as well.
But that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for tuning in.
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C-Class coupes sold in the US come from South Africa.
so today is day 65 of being without a vehicle because of the incompetence of government motors being able to come up with 5 bolts to finish repair of replacing battery control module of 2017 chevrolet volt with 47000 miles, most pathetic automobile and automobile company in history
You left out the part where the CCP paid every local dealer a cash payment for every car sold.–
The dealers were doing a fake sale, register the car, and park it in a field — MILLIONS of them !
You may remember the videos of massive piles of 100,000’s of bicycles piled up — same scam.
This disaster is just BEGINNING to unfold. Communism NEVER works – it ALWAYS fails.
While the actions of these companies may seem like they are on the other side of the world, and mostly in or impacting their home market, the fact that they are doing them really makes you question their products they sell the world over! I know that Morue and others have hailed the process of these products as being yeats ahead of their local competition, how can you trust their product if they, by a large margin, carry on in such unethical practices. If they’ll play with ‘numbers’ regarding the amount of products they sell, can you trust that those same products will do as advertised?! So, it does not matter how far ahead Chinese EVs are, if you can’t trust te OEM that made them! They’ve sold whatever equity in how good their products may have been, for the bragging rights of how many new vehicles they sold!
Check out ” china fakes everything ” on Youtube, its shocking how much cheating and lying is going on across the board- from cars to the recent brand new 30 story building that collapsed in the quake. Those very high sales numbers on the BYD cars are all a lie- like you said –95% of the car “sales” were fake registrations !
I’m sure a lot of lying goes on in China. Too bad they don’t have a Fox News or YouTube where they can look up the ‘facts’.
Again, 90% of todays show EV or battery related news. I guess not much else is going on in the industry, what with this total EV transition I keep hearing about accounting for maybe 8% of the US market. (Over 50% in China, oh but those are fake sales as it turns out. I too have seen the online photos of acres of EV’s parked in fields).
While not very high volume, & not mainstream vehicles, Backdraft Racing & Superperformance both build their vehicles in South Africa.
I first heard of Skoda when in Czechoslovakia in 1992. They were the Trabant of Czecho, though there were a few larger, nicer Skodas. When VW bought them, I thought it was more for some factories in the “east” than for the brand, but they have made the brand work pretty well.
@GM “General Motors is another automaker committed to moving forward with EVs. Its next-gen Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra electric pickups are scheduled to go into production in 2031.” Start of Production in 2031 means that they can wait another three years before they start developing the next generation EVs. Does not sound like much of a commitment at all.
Wim, yeah, sounds like a “wait and see” to me too.
Rick: sorry for your troubles with the incompetents at GM.
The Volt, priced almost twice as the same sized Chevy Cruze, was a loser from day one, and GM lost billions and billions over its life.
But what you bring up is much worse, and points at GM’s utter cluelessness and unprofessionalism too. I wonder if their VOlt Chief was a “DEI Hire”, or, as they said in those days, an “Affirmative Action hire”, or just an inbred white boy or girl, as so many lesser GM Bosses.
Sean, you just can’t resist a sensasionalist title for your show, even if you compare apples to oranges. Most here have no clue that Skoda is VW’s Cheapo brand.
Not trying to denigrate it, its cars are just as bad as VWs, that you should not touch with a ten foot pole anyway.
But comparing… Skoda to Tesla and being impressed that Skoda sold more cars than Tesla in some period, is like Bragging that Chevy sold more cars than Caddy or Buick. So what? Of course it did!
Sean’s point was that Skoda sold more EVs in Europe than Tesla, not that they sold more total cars. Yes, most Americans are not familiar with Skoda, but they are a significant brand in Europe, 4th in sales in 2024, ahead of several other mainstream brands.