AD #4336 – Ford Reimagines 1964 Concept Using AI; Rising Costs Drag Down Chinese Automakers; Range Rover Sport Electric Coming Soon

This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.

RISING MATERIAL COSTS DRAG DOWN CHINESE AUTOMAKERS
Even though China controls the market for many raw materials, its automakers are still vulnerable to rising commodity prices. Six major Chinese automakers have issued earnings forecasts for the first half of the year and four of them expect losses, mainly due to rising prices of raw materials and components. While the other two expect to remain profitable, they’ve seen their net profits tumble by 60% or more. And like other global automakers, Chinese companies are also dealing with a chip shortage caused by growing demand from data centers, which is leading to higher chip prices. In addition to the rising costs, car sales in China slumped 20% in the first half of the year, and that’s putting even more pressure on automakers’ cash flow and margins.

HONDA ADDS GOOGLE GEMINI TO U.S. LINEUP
Did you know that yesterday was National AI day? Well, we didn’t either, but Generative AI sure is showing up in all parts of the auto industry. Yesterday, Honda announced it’s adding Google Gemini to most of its lineup in the U.S. for more conversational voice assistance in their cars.   

BMW LAUNCHES CHATGPT VEHICLE CONFIGURATOR
Today, BMW announced it’s using ChatGPT for customers to configure cars using their smartphones, tablets or laptops.

FORD REIMAGINES 1964 AURORA CONCEPT USING AI
And Ford used gen AI to bring a 1964 concept car back to life. The Aurora was a futuristic station wagon that Ford showed at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Yep, the same World’s Fair where the Mustang made its debut. So Ford used gen AI to bring the car back to life and show off how forward-thinking its designers were 62 years ago. The Aurora had 12 headlamps for great nighttime visibility. It had electroluminescent inserts on the body sides to highlight the trim. Instead of a steering wheel it had a yoke, half a century before Tesla thought of using one. The glass canopy used electrochromic technology to block out hot sunshine. It demonstrated the possibilities of on-board navigation well before GPS was invented. There was an on-board TV to keep the kids entertained on a long trip. And there was an intercom so the people in the back could easily talk to the driver. It’s really valuable to go back and look at the ideas designers and engineers had long ago. They pretty much thought of everything, even if they didn’t have the modern electronics and materials to put it in production. There’s probably some forgotten gems out there that we could use for inspiration today.  

VOLKSWAGEN LAUNCHES AFFORDABLE ID. POLO ELECTRIC
Volkswagen is now taking pre-orders in Europe for the entry-level ID. Polo. The more affordable version starts just under €25,000 and features a 37-kWh LFP battery pack, which provides 334 kilometers or 207 miles of range. VW also offers a larger 52-kWh NMC pack, which starts just under €34,000. That version launched a few weeks ago and VW says it already has 20,000 orders.

STELLANTIS REVIVES 50-50 SUPPLIER COST SAVING REWARD
Back in the 1990s Chrysler had a supplier purchasing program it called SCORE, which stood for Supplier Cost Reduction Effort. It encouraged suppliers to come up with cost saving ideas, and Chrysler split the savings 50-50 with them. The program was wildly popular with suppliers and back then, Chrysler had some of the highest profit margins in the industry. But then came the DaimlerChrysler days, and the company went back to beating up suppliers to get the lowest possible price. As a result, supplier relations went down the drain and they got even worse at Stellantis, under CEO Carlos Tavares, who put even more pressure on suppliers to cut prices. But now the company has come full circle. Automotive News reports that Stellantis has a new program called the Supplier Product Enhancement Reward, or SUPER, for short. And it’s revived the idea of splitting cost-saving ideas 50-50. You watch. If this is properly implemented, Stellantis is going to dramatically improve its supplier relations. 

 

FORD WEC HYPERCAR ENGINE FIRES UP SUCCESSFULLY
Ford is going to compete for the overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time since the early 1980’s and it just hit a major development milestone. Since first announcing it would enter the 2027 WEC Hypercar program at the beginning of 2025, the racing team fired up the engine inside of its chassis. That powerplant is based on the Coyote V8 that you can get in a Mustang, but it’s bored out to 5.4L and heavily modified in-house by Ford in Michigan. It’s also paired with a hybrid system, which was all installed into the chassis that’s being co-developed with ORECA. And the good news for you and I is that this is meant to be a direct link to the company’s production performance vehicles. Ford’s new hypercar will start track testing in just a couple of weeks.

HONDA BACKS OUT OF EV SEGMENT TEMPORARILY
You may have noticed a lot of media coverage today that Honda is getting rid of the Prologue EV. And as you know, we get some of the top executives in the industry on our shows. Yesterday, on Autoline After Hours, Lance Woelfer, the vice president of sales for American Honda said it’s backing out of the EV segment for now, but are not giving up on it. Here’s what he had to say.

“We don’t anticipate the market getting beyond 10% in any kind of hurry. I think that it will grow. And we plan, in the future, to be competitive in that part of the market. But two years ago, I would have told you that it would get there in a much bigger hurry than it is today.”

LEXUS USES 3D PRINTED FAUX BAMBOO TRIM
Speaking of EVs, yesterday we reported on the Lexus ES EV. One tidbit to add about that car is that Lexus is making a big deal about the inserts it’s using on the interior door trim. They look like bamboo and feel like bamboo and Lexus says the inserts recreate the depth and flow of bamboo. But the key word there is ‘recreate.’ That’s because it’s not real bamboo, it’s 3D printed plastic. Lexus designers wanted to backlight the inserts at night, but they couldn’t do that with natural bamboo. So they turned to a 3D layering process that allows for backlighting, yet makes it look like bamboo. We’d love to see how they print it. These are fairly big parts and we think these might be the largest 3D printed pieces used by a mass manufacturer.  

RANGE ROVER SPORT ELECTRIC COMING SOON
Before the end of the year the Range Rover Sport lineup will expand to include an all-electric version, joining powertrain options that already include both gas and diesel 6-cylinders, a gas V8 and a plug-in hybrid setup. Styling-wise they all look pretty much the same, but the Range Rover Sport EV is reported to be based on the same 800-volt platform as the larger Range Rover EV, which is scheduled to go on sale soon. The Sport EV will come in outputs of roughly 440- and 540-horsepower and will feature a 118-kWh battery pack that will return an estimated 330 miles of range on the EPA test. Pricing is expected to start around 100,000 pounds or roughly $135,000.

And that brings us to the end of today’s show. Thanks for tuning in and I hope that you have a great weekend.