Volvo sees a cheaper future and GM is making money in customer’s homes. Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 20^th September to 26^th September 2021. A PDF version can be found here.

• Hell Bent For Leather — Volvo says that leather is on its way out. New car launches won’t feature the material and by 2030 you won’t find it in any Volvo vehicles. Volvo is doing a great job of identifying trends that seem inevitable and then making a first public move. Why is this interesting? Because they are choosing options that will be cheaper than the components they replace, yet have greater value. Can they come up with a reason to ditch air conditioning?
• Won’t Go Home Without You — GM’s OnStar service will be available to customers in their homes. Thanks to a tie-in with Amazon’s Alexa, people will be able to call up for help in all manner of distressing situations. So far, carmakers have talked up the revenue potential of connected services, only to see tech companies make in roads as the automotive companies jealously guard their subscale territories. In the situation with OnStar, an OEM is at last providing a service that extends beyond the car and may have some benefits. Where to next?

News is arranged by company and topic. Stories that apply to more than one company or topic are duplicated.

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News about the major automakers

Daimler ^(history)

• Daimler joined as a partner in the Stellantis-led ACC battery consortium, with a 33% stake. (Daimler)
• Daimler Truck hopes that, by 2030, sales of electric trucks will outstrip non-electric versions. (Handelsblatt)
• CEO Källanius said that some Mercedes customers are waiting over one year for their cars. (Reuters)
• Priced the all-electric EQS almost 10% lower than the gasoline powered S-Class. (TechCrunch)

Ford ^(history)

• Invested $50 million in battery recycling firm Redwood Materials. (Ford)
• Unveiled a mild facelift for the Fiesta small car. (Ford) There is also an update for the Expedition SUV. (Ford)
• CEO Jim Farley is “deeply worried about the affordability” of electric cars because “average people cannot afford [them]”. (Detroit News)

Geely (includes Volvo) ^(history)

• Volvo says that sustainable materials matter and published a report into the variety of possible outcomes it sees that consumers might champion. (Volvo) So convinced of the trend is Volvo that it has vowed all new battery electric models will be leather-free and the material will be phased out entirely by 2030. (Volvo)
• Lotus says it has created a common set of components that can be used to build all-electric sportscars. Lotus seems to be betting that owners will be prepared to sacrifice range for cabin space because whilst the two seat design can accommodate a battery just under 100 KWh, the 2+2 has to make do with 66 kWh. (Lotus)
• Geely says it will have 5,000 battery swapping stations by 2025. (Reuters)

General Motors ^(history)

• Says that it has solved problems that resulted in all-electric Bolts catching fire. Production restarted. GM will also start sending battery packs to dealers to replace faulty ones in cars. (GM)
• Announced a $300 million investment in Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. (GM)
• GM’s OnStar service will now be available in the home, through Amazon Alexa-enabled devices. (GM)

Honda ^(history)

• Honda is hoping that its Prologue all-electric SUV will sell 70,000 units a year. (Reuters)
• Will integrate Google’s in car entertainment services, starting in North America and then going global. (Honda)

Stellantis (formed via the merger of PSA and FCA)

• Head of the Americas (and former FCA CEO) Mike Manley is leaving to become CEO of megadealer AutoNation. Instead of replacing him, CEO Tavares will add to his sprawling list of direct reports. (Stellantis)
• Daimler joined as a partner in the Stellantis-led ACC battery consortium, with a 33% stake. (Daimler)

Tesla ^(history)

• CEO Musk says that new semiconductor plants should be on stream next year and will put an end to supply shortages. (Reuters)

Toyota ^(history)

• Invested in Xona, a company which hopes to make a new GPS network. (Toyota) Toyota also invested in Near Space Labs, which takes photographs from high altitude. (Toyota)

VW Group ^(history)

• Porsche says the average Chinese buyer is 35 and half its customers are women. (Porsche)
• Porsche is trying to expand its use of free open source software. (Porsche)

Other

• ATLIS says it is on course to raise another $5 million through crowdfunding and is worth $385 million. (ATLIS)
• Workhorse is stopping production of its all-electric delivery van so that it can be redesigned to increase cargo capacity. (Yahoo)
• Japanese automakers including Honda, Mazda, Toyota, Subaru and Nissan announced a new joint research centre. With a modest budget of under $1 million per year, it isn’t clear how profound the initiative will be. (Honda)
• Evergrande’s EV unit said it was unsure about the future and cancelled a plan share sale. (Economic Times of India)
• Local Motors has a new CEO. (Local Motors)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

• BMW and Daimler are being sued by a German environmental action group because they aren’t planning to move away from internal combustion engines quickly enough and, their accusers say, are not doing enough to combat climate change. (Handelsblatt)

Suppliers

• LG is acquiring cybersecurity firm Cybellum. (LG)
• Faurecia warned that profits will drop after industry volume forecasts were lowered. (Reuters) Kongsberg did the same. (Kongsberg)
• Lear and Hu Lane announced a joint venture for electrical connectors. (Lear)
• Schaeffler’s boss in Asia Pacific says that hybrids are a better fit for the needs of many Indian consumers than battery electric vehicles. (Economic Times of India)
• TI Fluid Systems has a new CEO. (TI)

Dealers

• Indian used car site Cars24 raised $450 million. (TechCrunch) Competitor Droom is reportedly set to file papers for an IPO in 2022. (Deal Street Asia)

Ride-Hailing, Car Sharing & Rental ^(history)

• Chinese ride hailing firm T3 looks set to raise $775 million. (Technode)

Driverless / Autonomy ^(history)

• GM announced a $300 million investment in Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. (GM)

Connectivity

• GM’s OnStar service will now be available in the home, through Amazon Alexa-enabled devices. (GM)

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Tesla’s marketing miracle; Foxconn takes the road less travelled; and Ford’s electric F-150 might soon outsell the Lincoln brand. Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 13^th September to 19^th September 2021. A PDF version can be found here.

• Know Your Enemy — Tesla is ending its referral program, which has substituted for traditional marketing by encouraging word of mouth referrals. The firm has shown that you truly can grow by word of mouth (a superstar CEO helps). Overall, by spending less on advertising, Tesla is saving 2%+ of net revenue compared to an established manufacturer (I’m not going to get into wholly-owned dealers, that is a different subject altogether). To put that in perspective, that’s not far off a 5% material cost bill, the sort of performance carmakers would shout about and analyse to death if their rivals achieved it. So… why does everyone else still have their chequebooks out?
• Boulevard of Broken Dreams — Foxconn is reportedly planning to pull out of a venture to build an electric car with Byton, thanks to the latter’s poor finances. The thing is, you can’t really chop and change parts sharing very easily with cars: either you are sharing everything and you are disturbed or were sharing nothing, so breaking apart is easy but what was the point in the first place? Does Foxconn have a secret ingredient that will make tactical collaborations a plausible strategy, or will it learn the approach’s shortcomings the hard way?
• Longview — Ford is boosting capacity for the all-electric F-150 before production has even started. But even at the new, higher, rate, Ford reckons it has almost enough orders to fill the plant for two years. At the car’s current level, sales won’t be much below the entire Lincoln line-up. Will buyers happily stand in line, or does Ford need another round of capacity increases?

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News about the major automakers

Ford ^(history)

• Announced that it will increase capacity for the all-electric F-150 to 80,000 per year. Ford says it has almost enough orders to fill two years of production. (Ford)
• Ford’s COO of North America wouldn’t commit to when the company might reduce production capacities for vehicles with internal combustion engines, saying that currently demand for all-electric vehicles appears to be incremental. The company’s current, favoured, route is to build cars that can have either fully electric drive or internal combustion engines, but with the added hassle of separate final assembly facilities. She also said that the decision to move from purchasing batteries from third parties to use joint ventures was purely driven by a greater ability to reap scale benefits (which she didn’t quantify). (Ford)
• Appointed a new chief information officer, with a background in online retail. (Ford)

Geely (includes Volvo) ^(history)

• Volvo is reportedly set to list with a valuation of $15 billion to $20 billion. (Reuters)

General Motors ^(history)

• GM said it has sent process improvement experts into plants owned by LG Chem as it bids to get enough parts to refit all-electric Bolts with batteries that could catch fire. (Reuters)
• GM invested in sensor startup Oculii. (TechCrunch)

Honda ^(history)

• Honda’s researchers are studying human brain waves to try and understand how drivers perceive risk out on the road. They aren’t yet sure that the company can realise its ambition of having zero fatal accidents by 2050. (Nikkei)

Hyundai / Kia ^(history)

• Hyundai’s upmarket Genesis brand will start offering face recognition for vehicle access. Each vehicle can register two faces. (Hyundai)
• Hyundai is using robot dogs for real time safety inspections in factories. (TechCrunch)
• Used Hyundai and Kia electric batteries will go into a stationary storage system in Texas, USA. (Autocar)

Nissan and Mitsubishi ^(history)

• Mitsubishi will stop designing its own products for the Japanese market and will instead rely on engineering provided by part-owner Nissan. (Nikkei)

Stellantis (formed via the merger of PSA and FCA)

• CEO Tavares is giving up his board seat at Airbus to concentrate fully on Stellantis. (Stellantis)

Tesla ^(history)

• CEO Musk says Chinese automakers have his respect, thanks to their software expertise. Some journalists thought the remarks might have been made to please the Chinese government. (TechCrunch)
• Tesla will monitor how well owners drive for seven days before allowing them to try out the most advanced release of its driver assistance system. (CNBC)
• Ended its referral program (for the second time). (Engadget)

VW Group ^(history)

• Bugatti has launched a new razor. As if Bugatti buyers shave their own faces. (Bugatti)
• VW’s captive finance company sold off its Indian loan portfolio, which the company said was because of a “refined digital strategy”. (Autocar)

Other

• Solar powered vehicle developer Lightyear raised $110 million. (Lightyear)
• Rivian is reportedly hoping that its IPO will raise $8 billion in cash. (Reuters)
• Workhorse accepted that it wouldn’t win its legal case against the US Postal Service choosing a competitor’s product for a big fleet deal. (FreightWaves)
• AM General showed off the next generation Humvee. (AM General)
• Foxconn’s project to build an all-electric car with Byton is reportedly on the ropes due to the OEM’s worsening financial situation. (Economic Times of India) Despite the troubles, Foxconn signed a joint venture with Thai fossil fuel producer PTT to build electric vehicles. The partners hope for 150,000 vehicles per year. (Nikkei)
• Evergrande is in grave financial problems. (Deal Street Asia)
• Xpeng wants to expand and is open-minded about acquiring weaker rivals to do so. (Deal Street Asia)
• Lucid celebrated achieving a 520 mile range in US certification. (Lucid)
• Rivian is launching a scheme that will bundle charging, data and membership of an owners’ club along with software updates. It will be free for an unspecified period. (Rivian)
• There are reportedly three final bidders for Ssangyong. (Economic Times of India)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

• US regulators are reportedly looking at another round of failures related to Takata airbag inflators. (Reuters)
• Chinese ministers hope to consolidate the country’s electric vehicle brands. (Reuters)
• CATL and BASF will work together on battery materials. (CATL)

Suppliers

• Allison Transmission is acquiring AVTEC’s Indian off-highway components division. (Allison)
• Continental completed the spin-off of Vitesco. (Handelsblatt)
• Redwood Materials hopes to have enough capacity to produce cathode and anode materials for 500 GWh of batteries by 2030. (TechCrunch)
• Chipmaker GlobalFoundries says it will double production for automotive parts. (Nikkei)

Dealers

• UK used car dealer Cazoo acquired vehicle reconditioning business SMH. (Motor Trader)

Driverless / Autonomy ^(history)

• Self-driving firm DeepRoute.ai raised $300 million. (Deal Street Asia)

Other

• Electric scooter maker Gogoro is merging with a special purpose vehicle in a $2.4 billion deal. (Deal Street Asia)
• Volta Trucks raised €37 million. (TechCrunch)
• Xpeng Heitech, part-owned by carmaker Xpeng says it will have flying cars on sale by 2024. (Deal Street Asia)

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Ford’s expansion comes to an end; Hyundai’s continued quest for a hydrogen future; and premium CFOs promise to behave themselves. Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 6^th September to 12^th September 2021. A PDF version can be found here.

• Moving On Up — Ford is shutting down manufacturing operations in India, effectively ending the firm’s challenge in the country. Although cars like the Mustang will remain on sale, they are niche products. Along with retreats from Russia and South America, Ford is undoing 20 years of expansion built on the assumption that it could serve the needs of an emerging middle class, even though it struggled to make money on similar cars in mature markets where they sold for higher prices. Automotive executives crave growth stories, so what comes next?
• Search For The Hero – Hyundai is still pursuing its plans for hydrogen fuel cells and says that by 2030 the technology will reach price parity with battery electric cars. Since both types of vehicle use electric motors and power electronics, that boils down to a bet that a fuel cell stack and hydrogen fuel system can become cheaper than a battery. With Toyota reckoning that battery costs will fall 50% in the next few years thanks to a combination of scale, energy density and new technology, what do Hyundai know that others don’t?
• Dreaming — The CFOs of BMW and Daimler both claim that when the semiconductor shortage is over they will keep their newfound pricing power. Their firms have learned the lessons of disciplined supply, they say, and incentives are banished forever. Through many cycles we have seen automakers gain pricing, and profits, as rising demand outstrips capacities that have just been slashed. How come this time it will be different?

News is arranged by company and topic. Stories that apply to more than one company or topic are duplicated.

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News about the major automakers

BMW ^(history)

• BMW’s new development centre will have 14 driving simulators, although it seems as though only one will be a near-realistic dynamic simulator. (BMW)
• Plans to increase the amount of recycled and reusable materials in each vehicle (a measure which includes some brand new material) from 30% in the current generation to 50% in future. BMW unveiled a concept called the I Vision Circular, which the brand claims shows how to get the figure to 100%. In design terms, the car appears to be the spiritual successor to the i3. (BMW)
• BMW’s CFO says that even when the chip shortage is finished, his company will produce at nearly the same levels, hoping to keep prices high. (FT)
• Invested in networking company GenXComm. (FINSMES)
• BMW’s CEO said the company’s future is as an independent. (Handelsblatt)

Daimler ^(history)

• Daimler’s CEO says chip shortages may extend into 2023. (Reuters)
• Daimler’s CFO says that even when the chip shortage is finished, his company will produce at nearly the same levels, hoping to keep prices high. (FT)
• Unveiled the all-electric EQE. (Mercedes) and a concept version of an electric G-Class. (Mercedes)
• Showed off an all-electric concept called the Maybach EQS. Despite sharing a name with the recently revealed Mercedes EQS, this Maybach is an SUV, rather than a sedan. (Mercedes)

Ford ^(history)

• Announced a restructuring in India that will see manufacturing in the country end and Ford scaling back its marketing and sales activities to concentrate on only very high end customers. Engines will still be built in India for export and Ford will retain its 11,000-strong office workforce. Ford’s pull-out comes only a little while after the collapse of a planned joint venture with Mahindra. Ford says it will cost about $(2) billion to close its operations in India. (Ford)
• Has started serious efforts to incentivise customers to join the FordPass program by offering US participants the option to book pickup and delivery for servicing – and if they are sufficiently “loyal”, they can even do it for free (once per year). (Ford)
• Headhunted Doug Field, the chief of Apple’s constantly-under-development car project to head up the team looking after advanced technologies and embedded hardware and software. (Ford)

Geely (includes Volvo) ^(history)

• Investing $50 million into ECARX, founded by Geely’s founder. (Geely)
• Has a new design director as the previous incumbent stepped down to concentrate on Lotus. (Geely)
• Lotus plans to open 70 dealerships in China next year, up from four today. Nio has invested in Lotus’s Chinese unit, which is apparently worth over $2 billion. (Reuters)
• Geely’s ride hailing subsidiary Caocao Chuxing raised $600 million. (Nikkei)

General Motors ^(history)

• GM reckons that the facelift for the Silverado will put the pickup truck at the top of the sales charts. (Reuters)

Honda ^(history)

• Honda intends to launch a new sub-brand of rugged pick-up trucks called Trailsport. (Honda)

Hyundai / Kia ^(history)

• Hyundai sell only electric or hydrogen powered vehicles in Europe from 2035 onwards and says that by 2040 all major markets will have phased out fossil fuels. (Hyundai)
• Hyundai says every commercial vehicle will have a fuel cell offering by 2028 and hopes that fuel cells will reach price parity with battery electric models by 2030. Hyundai says that durability is improving and in the next generation the fuel cells will last for 500,000 km. (Hyundai)
• Hyundai says it will be carbon neutral by 2045 and will reduce emissions 75% between 2019 and 2040. (Hyundai)
• Kia will be in charge of making military hydrogen powered vehicles. (ET News)

Renault ^(history)

• Dacia unveiled the seven seat Jogger minivan. (Dacia)
• Unveiled the all-electric version of the Megane. (Renault)
• Reportedly close to ending its Chinese joint venture for vans with Brilliance. (Reuters)
• Renault executives hope to be able to push back plans to ban internal combustion engines in Europe by 2035, preferring a target of 2040. The logic is that it will still be too expensive for some customers to have fully electric cars in 2035. (Auto Express)
• Renault’s design chief reckons that door handles and touchscreens are on their way out because they are unhygienic. Whilst automatic door handles have been demonstrated, touchscreen replacement may require greater use of voice control, or better gesture recognition. (Autocar)

Stellantis (formed via the merger of PSA and FCA)

• Will consolidate its two joint venture factories in China with GAC to a single site. (Economic Times of India)

Subaru

• Unveiled the next generation Subaru WRX. (Subaru)

Toyota ^(history)

• Gave a presentation on battery strategy re-confirming a plan to sell 6 million electrified, but not all-electric vehicles in 2030, plus 2 million all-electric models. Toyota is still pushing hybrids, declaring that the 18 million vehicles it has sold are equivalent to 5.5 million battery electric models on the streets, for the equivalent battery capacity of 260,000 models. Toyota also says that experience with hybrids has helped the company to develop battery technologies that will be highly relevant for all models. Toyota says that battery costs will fall by 50% towards the end of the decade through a combination of new low cost technologies and improved power density (which means a smaller battery can go the same distance). (Toyota)
• Toyota says that currently solid state batteries suffer from deterioration in their structure that mean their useful life is too short. If the challenges can be solved, Toyota intends to apply them to hybrids in addition to all-electric vehicles. By 2030, Toyota says it will consume more than 200 GWh of batteries. (Toyota)
• Expects to produce 300,000 fewer vehicles in this financial year. Toyota said that although chip shortages were part of the problem, coronavirus was mostly to blame. (Reuters)
• Acquiring Chinese vehicle leasing firm SK Auto Service for about $45 million. (Nikkei)

VW Group ^(history)

• Unveiled the ID.LIFE a concept version of a Polo-sized all-electric car, likely to be badged the ID.2 when it launches in 2025. VW says the car will cost €20,000. (VW)
• Porsche unveiled the Mission R, an all-electric track concept car. Porsche says the vehicle’s battery is sufficient for “sprint racing”, Porsche’s shorthand for not very many laps. The company hinted that the vehicle could participate in a future one-make championship, saying that it is as fast as a 911 GT3. (Porsche)
• Building work has begun on the synthetic fuels factory Porsche and Siemens hope will eventually produce 550 million litres of petrol equivalent annually. (Porsche)
• VW is setting up an in-house VC fund to invest €300 million in decarbonization. (Reuters)
• CEO Diess says there is enough money available to invest in all the new battery plants the automotive industry needs, saying that Northvolt has proven investor appetite. (Reuters) He also told journalists that electric cars were “kind of easy” compared to autonomous cars, which will be the industry’s real “gamechanger”. He thinks that by 2030, mobility services could buy around 15% of vehicles, which although seemingly relatively small, is a big increase on the share of sales today. (Reuters)
• Sold a 75% share in its in-car payments business to JP Morgan. (Reuters)
• CEO Diess had his house vandalised by climate change protesters. He said that oil executives should be targeted instead. (Handelsblatt)
• Porsche’s CEO said that he supported a European ban on internal combustion engines by 2035, saying that competitors should play their part in emissions reduction. (Bloomberg)

Other

• Nio is seeking to raise an additional $2 billion. (Nio) Nio’s venture capital arm invested in Lotus’s Chinese technology unit. (Reuters)
• Koenigsegg announced that it has bought back the 65% share NEVS took in a joint venture company to make the Gemera hypercar. (Koenigsegg)
• Great Wall unveiled two new cars in Munich, the Wey Coffee 01 PHEV and the all-electric ORA 01CAT. (GWM)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

• UK passenger car registrations in August of 68,033 units fell (22)% versus prior year. (SMMT)
• The Italian government is seeking an exemption from stringent EU emissions legislation for small volume manufacturers, such as Ferrari and Lamborghini. (Electrive)
• US politicians are proposing to extend incentives for all-electric vehicles with a series of escalating rebates for vehicles built by unionised workers, and with US-sourced batteries. (Reuters)

Suppliers

• Intel plans to turn production capacity at a plant in Ireland over to automotive use. (Reuters)
• Magna will contract manufacture trucks for Volta. (Autocar)

Dealers

• Singaporean multipurpose car ownership app Motorist raised $800,000. (Tech In Asia)

Driverless / Autonomy ^(history)

• WeRide showed off the Robovan, basically an off-the-shelf van with autonomous driving kit. (TechCrunch)
• The head of Apple’s car project defected to Ford. The move suggests that Apple is still not close to signing off on a full program. (Ford)

Electrification ^(history)

• Four motorbike manufacturers, including Honda, Yamaha, Piaggio and KTM officially formed a consortium for battery swapping, after originally announcing the move in March 2021. (KTM)

Other

• BP invested €10 million in in-car payments firm Ryd. (TechCrunch)

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