Category Archives: Ad Punctum

BMW’s planned joint venture for electric vehicles with Great Wall has been facing problems gaining regulatory approval. (Reuters)

Reportedly took longer to solve GLE launch problems than anticipated because specialist trouble shooters sent over from Germany had problems gaining work permits, but has now largely got on top of things. (Handelsblatt)
Working with BAIC on creating stationary storage with used batteries from electric cars. (Daimler)
Rumoured to be planning a major reveal of the all-electric EVA 2 platform at Frankfurt. (Handelsblatt)

Recalled around 14,000 to correct improperly built vehicles. (Ford)
Already sees 3D printing as a “legitimate alternative” to traditional methods on some parts. (Automotive News)

Lynk&Co still plans to launch products in Europe during 2020 and says that the decision to only produce cars in China (superseding an earlier scheme to make Europe-bound vehicles in Belgium) was taken because of the runaway success of the Volvo XC40 (made in the Belgian plant). The brand believes that the sweet spot for all-in subscription pricing is around €500 per month (but hasn’t decided on ideal contract length) and wants 500,000 global sales per year by 2021 (currently at around 110,000). (Automotive News)
Kandi received approval from Chinese authorities to become an electric car maker. (Kandi)

Reducing Equinox SUV production by removing a shift at the San Luis Potosi, Mexico, factory and having a week of shutdown at the CAMI, Canada, plant. GM said sales of the model were still “very strong”. (Detroit Free Press)
Applied for membership of the South Korean importers association (GM is already a member of the manufacturer’s association), leading to speculation that local production could stop altogether. (Korea Times)

Hyundai’s Frankfurt show stand will include a concept for a vehicle with a customisable interior. (Hyundai)

Mazda

Recalling about 22,500 Mazda 3 cars to fix rearview mirrors that might fall off. (Fox)

Reportedly slashing capacity at its Chinese joint venture with Dongfeng through a plan to close one plant, sell another and halve the workforce. PSA board sources said that the next step would be to withdraw from China entirely if things didn’t improve. (Reuters)
Dongfeng is rumoured to be exploring options for its stake in PSA. (Bloomberg)

Suzuki

Announced Q2 2019 (fiscal first quarter) revenue of 908 billion JPY (about $8.6 billion), down (8.1)% on prior year. Operating income of 72.4 billion JPY (about $700 million) fell (46)%. Suzuki blamed production stoppages to improve inspection methods and weakness in the Indian market. (Suzuki)

Reporters speculated that rumoured new small SUVs for Jaguar might be built on the BMW platform that underpins Mini and 1-Series. (Autocar)

Isn’t worried that the Prius is associated with private hire brands such as Uber in many European cities, seeing taxi drivers as “fantastic ambassadors” and confirmed intent to remain in the sub-B segment in Europe although many other brands are dropping their models. (Automotive News)
Will collaborate on development of customer-facing robots with Preferred Networks. (Toyota)
Recalling around 18,000 RAV4 SUVs to correct problems with the rearview camera. (Toyota)

Pininfarina reckon that VW’s forthcoming PPE platform for all-electric premium vehicles (being developed by Audi and Porsche) is no good for SUVs. (Automotive News)
Bentley’s boss says he is relatively unconcerned about Brexit because of the brand’s pricing power, although he called the prospect of no deal “annoying and painful”. (Telegraph)
Lamborghini says that 70% of Urus SUV buyers are new to the brand and that no firm decisions have been taken on a fourth model, although some discussion has clearly taken place since a 2+2 GT is “one possibility”. The CEO remains open-minded on whether to install turbocharged engines. (Autocar)
Audi has designed an electric scooter that users can ride with only one hand on the controls. It will be on sale at the end of 2020 and cost “about €2,000”. (Audi)
Audi is reportedly sub-contracting much of the next generation (all-electric) R8 powertrain to Rimac. (Car)

Other

EDAG says it has developed a scalable electric vehicle floor (i.e. what others call a skateboard, minus the parts that make it a rolling chassis) that it will offer to OEMs under licence. (Autocar)
Subaru reported financial results for Q2 2019 (fiscal year Q1). Revenue of 833 billion yen (about $7.9 billion) rose 16% on a year-over-year basis and operating profit of 92 billion yen (about $880 million) rose 48%. (Subaru)
A new Malaysian car brand headed by DreamEDGE and supported by Daihatsu is aiming to launch in 2021. The government is supporting the company through non-financial methods. (Bloomberg)
Kalashnikov revealed the UV-4 electric taxi. (TASS)
BAIC’s chairman says the business needs to build up non-vehicle revenue. (China Daily)
Russian officials said that in 2020 they will announce a collaboration with a major international automaker to build an all-electric car in Russia. (TASS)
Fisker showed a teaser image of the rear of a pickup truck. (Inside EVs)
Mahindra & Mahindra released financial results for Q2 2019 (fiscal year Q1). Revenue of 12,997 Cr INR (about $1.8 billion) fell (4)% on a year-over-year basis. PBT of 918 Cr INR (about $128 million) fell (26)%. Mahindra blamed market weakness saying the Indian industry “de-grew” (12.3)%. (Mahindra)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

The USA labelled China a currency manipulator, leading to threats of retaliation. (Reuters)

Suppliers

Despite tough times, Continental’s union leaders don’t expect any job cuts at German plants. (Handelsblatt)
Continental has been making components with too much lead content under EU rules. (Manager Magazin)
Continental says it is cutting back on research for combustion engine components and won’t try that hard to win new business for parts like fuel injectors and pumps in future. (Continental)
Magna reported Q2 2019 revenue of $10.1 billion and gross income of $595 million. (Magna)
Varroc Engineering acquired a majority stake in OBD dongle maker CarIQ. (Autocar)
China Automotive Systems reported Q2 2019 earnings and reduced full year outlook. (CAS)
Adient reported Q2 2019 (fiscal Q3) revenues of $4.2 billion and a net loss of $(321) million. (Adient)
Leoni is reportedly facing a liquidity crunch and has hired external advisors. (Reuters)
Hella reported fiscal year end (June 2018 – May 2019) results. Revenue was €7 billion and adjusted EBIT was €585 million. (Hella)
Bridgestone reported first half revenue of 1.7 trillion JPY (about $16.6 billion) and operating income of 158 billion JPY (about $1.5 billion). (Bridgestone)
Schaeffler reported Q2 2019 revenue of €7.2 billion and EBIT of €483 million. (Schaeffler)
Bosch and Hella invested in holographic display maker Light Field Lab’s $28 million round. (Venture Beat)

Dealers

Singaporean used car website Carro raised another $30 million and acquired Indonesian rival Jualo. (TechCrunch)
Chinese used car website Uxin has begun exporting second hand cars from China to Europe. (Uxin)
Brazilian used car website Volanty raised almost $18 million from investors including SoftBank. (Reuters)
38% of UK dealers responding to a survey intend to stock fewer diesel powered used cars. (Motor Trader)

Lyft reported Q2 revenue of $867 million, up 72% on a year-over-year basis. The net loss was $(644) million. Lyft said that “active riders” had increased from around 15.5 million in Q2 2018 to 21.8 million now. (Lyft)
Uber reported Q2 revenue of $3.2 billion, up 14% on a year earlier and an operating loss of $(5.5) billion, $3.9 billion of which was compensation. Uber says it has 99 million active users across all services. (Uber)
Uber is on the lookout for M&A opportunities but will turn them down if they aren’t the “right deal”, citing a recent decision not to buy deliver company Caviar. (Business Insider)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

Mushashi Seimitsu invested in KeraCel and the two companies will collaborate to develop 3D printed solid state batteries for motorbikes. (3D Printing Industry)
Continental says that electric technology doesn’t make the firm any money at the moment and that solid state batteries won’t be commercially viable until after 2030. (Handelsblatt)
Canada’s government says that a $5,000 per vehicle grant increased electric vehicle sales by 40% — but only from 2% of total sales to 3%. (Green Car Reports)
NSK says that by 2030, it is aiming for annual revenues of 4 billion JPY (about $38 million) from bearings for electric vehicle powertrain. (NSK)
Daimler is rumoured to be planning a major reveal of the all-electric EVA 2 platform at Frankfurt. (Handelsblatt)
Daimler is working with BAIC on creating stationary storage with used batteries from electric cars. (Daimler)
EDAG says it has developed a scalable electric vehicle floor (i.e. what others call a skateboard, minus the parts that make it a rolling chassis). That it will offer to OEMs under licence. (Autocar)

Connectivity

Journey tracking firm Teralytics raised $17.5 million from investors including Bosch. (Teralytics)
Varroc Engineering acquired a majority stake in OBD dongle maker CarIQ. (Autocar)

Other

EHang hopes to begin trials of air taxis in Guangzhou, China. (EHang)
Motor scooter rental firm Bounce is reportedly about to receive $200 million in funding. (Tech Circle)
Gogoro’s announced that other manufacturers including Yamaha and PGO will start to use its scooter battery swapping network. (TechCrunch)
Nikola says it has 14,000 orders for its trucks. (Nikola)

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 4th August 2019

August 4, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Proving yourself as a carmaker; the rise of the Porsche Taycan; and contingency plans full of holes. Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 29^th July to 4^th August 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

Share My World — Daimler’s former CEO (and aspiring future chairman) says that engines can be easily shared without customers noticing, but there are lots of other parts of the car that brands need to keep for themselves. He thinks customers will attach cachet to these engineering proof points. But what are they, and why can’t some of them be shared too?
We Want) The Same Thing — Porsche has taken 30,000 deposits for the Taycan all-electric sports car. Could this be the car that takes damaging lumps out of Tesla Model S sales (already weakened in recent quarters)? Would Tesla be able to do anything substantial to react?
What About Us? — Kia detailed the mix forcing measures being kept in reserve to sell enough electruc cars to meet European CO₂ targets in 2020 and 2021. The list will look familiar to most OEM planners — force electric cars into any sales channel the carmaker controls (company service vehicles, management cars and dealer demonstrators). The thing is, they all wind up as nearly new cars a few months later. Unless the used demand is there, manufacturers face hefty residual value losses (especially since everyone is planning the same thing and assuming they will be the only ones doing it)…

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

Reported financial results for Q2 2019. Automotive revenue of €22.6 billion rose 1.9% on a year-over-year basis whilst EBIT of €1.47 billion fell (23.4)%. (BMW)
Lost the final appeal in a case that limited the amount of subsidy BMW was allowed to receive from the German government for a factory upgrade. (Reuters)
Outgoing CEO Krüger offered to meet new British prime minister Boris Johnson to tell him to his face that a no deal Brexit would be a bad idea. (The Guardian)
Invested in autonomous vehicle vision technology company Recogni. (FINSMES)
Although executives refused to be drawn on the exact profitability at Rolls-Royce, they described it as “very, very pleasant”. (Seeking Alpha)

Recently departed former CEO Zetsche said that engines are now less of a differentiator, but that there remain “lots of engineering proof points” where commoditisation would harm brands. (Top Gear)
Invested in car price comparison site Carwow. (The Times)

Reported Q2 2019 revenue of €26.7 billion, down (3)% on a year-over-year basis and net profit of €793 million, up 14%. North America performed strongly, despite lower sales resulting from a reduction in dealer inventory. Maserati performed poorly, losing €(119) million due to residual value misses and lower dealer stocks. (FCA)
Expects that 5% of European sales mix in 2020 will be BEV or PHEV and that customers will absorb about 60% of the cost. Overall, FCA says the cost of compliance will absorb about half a percentage point of operating margin. CEO Mike Manley also told analysts that 2019 year end emissions will fall significantly as the company introduces new engines. (Seeking Alpha)
FCA remains hopeful that Renault will reignite merger talks, but doesn’t want to make the first move, and has struck up a broader range of partnership talks with European competitors. (Seeking Alpha)

Ferrari

Sold 2,671 units in Q2 2019, an increase of 8.4% on a year-over-year basis. Revenue of €984 million rose 9% and EBIT of €239 million also increased 9%. (Ferrari)
Will unveil three new models by the end of 2019 — two at an event in September and one at an undisclosed point after that. (Seeking Alpha)
Said that initial customer feedback on the SF90 hybrid in electric drive mode was very positive because the lack of noise would be less antisocial in crowded neighbourhoods. The CEO says however than pure electric vehicles are “beyond 2022”. (Seeking Alpha)
CEO Camilleri pushed back strongly against suggestions that Ferrari might be interested in any form of M&A, after being asked specifically about other car companies and non-automotive luxury brands. (Seeking Alpha)

Acquired two companies to boost Ford’s mobility division — transport app developer Journey Holding and robotics company Quantum Signal. (Detroit News)

Reported Q2 2019 revenue of $36 billion, down (1.9)% on a year-over-year basis, and income of $2.4 billion, up 1.6%. GM said that a strong performance from North American trucks was to responsible for the higher profits, even as sales fell (particularly in China). (GM)
CEO Mary Barra said customer feedback about the Super Cruise driver assistance system was amongst the best she had ever experienced (85% of owners said it would affected their next purchasing decision), but GM wants to put it into all Cadillac products before it will start introducing the feature into other brands (but also that this would be done “as quickly as we can”). (Seeking Alpha)
GM wouldn’t be drawn on a new timeline for the launch of robotaxi services operating by Cruise, but did confirm that from GM’s perspective a market launch meant no safety drivers in the vehicles. (Seeking Alpha)
Closed the Warren Transmission factory. (World Socialist Web Site)

Honda reported Q2 2019 (fiscal Q1) revenues of 3.996 trillion yen (about $37.6 billion) and operating profit of 252 billion yen (about $2.4 billion), both down on the prior year. Despite the year over year drops, Honda said it was still confident in full year targets because of improvements being made to the business. (Honda)
Produced 2,692,175 units in the first six months of 2019, a 0.4% increase versus prior year. (Honda)
A security researcher found an unprotected file listing all of Honda’s computers and what was installed on them, something he says could have been used with malicious intent. (TechCrunch)

Kia says it will definitely meet 2020 and 2021 CO₂ targets, but since the brand reckons that will mean it has to sell 40,000 battery electric vehicles each year (up from about 15,000 now), there are several contingency plans in place that could force a higher mix if the retail demand doesn’t emerge. These include: making its car-sharing business all-electric, forcing the company service fleet and dealer demonstration cars to be electric-only and fitting low resistance tyres to all vehicles. (Automotive News)
- Significance: Kia’s approach is reflective of the challenge facing many carmakers in the European market in the early 2020s. CO₂ emissions compliance is not a matter of technology, it is one of cost and consumer demand, and many companies have openly said that they don’t want to sell any more electric cars than necessary. Expect all the other major manufacturers to have similar ideas for emergency mix forcing but, although this solves the new car sales challenge, how can they be confident that nearly new second hand values will hold up for a flood of electric vehicles?
A sales campaign run by Hyundai in the US where customers receive $50 if they take a test drive apparently ends up with half of participants buying a car. (Automotive News)
Hyundai now offers a solar roof on Sonata hybrid cars. According to Hyundai, between 30% – 60% of the hybrid’s 1.76 kWh battery capacity can be charged over a six hour period. (Hyundai)

Mazda

Announced financial results for Q2 2019 (fiscal Q1). 353,000 units were sold, a drop of (12)%. Revenue of 849 billion yen (about $8 billion) fell (3)% and operating profit of 7 billion yen (about $66 million) was down (79)%. (Mazda)

According to leaked emails, Nissan and Renault are in the middle of intense negotiations to see whether Nissan would approve the proposed FCA / Renault merger if the French company reduced its current 43.4% stake in Nissan. (WSJ)

PSA’s CEO says the company’s worst case scenario for European fleet CO₂ is a sales mix of 10% diesel and 7% electric or hybrid vehicles. He also told reporters that he plans to leave sometime in the next few years, and certainly before 2030. (FT)
Citroen executives hinted that the next generation C4 would have an all-electric version and promised that the design would “shake the market”. (Auto Express)

According to leaked emails, Nissan and Renault are in the middle of intense negotiations to see whether Nissan would approve the proposed FCA / Renault merger if the French company reduced its current 43.4% stake in Nissan. (WSJ)

Suzuki

Produced 1,610,174 units in the first half of 2019, an (8.8)% drop on a year-over-year basis. (Suzuki)

Tata Motors’s chairman said partnerships are “the only way” to cope with the additional capital spending demands of mobility services and electrification, and that Tata was looking at both tactical and strategic options. (Autocar)
Tata is setting up a 300 station charging network in India with Tata Power. Planned charging speeds are modest, with power levels between 15 kW – 50 kW planned. (Economic Times of India)
Feedback from US customers suggest that Jaguar dealers are offering firesale prices on electric I-Pace models, despite the car having only recently launched. (Inside EVs)

Tesla’s Chinese factory lease depends on selling enough vehicles to raise 2.2 billion yuan (about $320 million) in annual tax revenues by 2023. (Bloomberg)
Reinstated free supercharging for Model S and Model X buyers. (TechCrunch)
Announced a new battery product for power grids called the Megapack, essentially a much larger version (up to 3 MWh) of the existing powerpack. (Tesla)

Reported financial results for Q2 2019 (fiscal Q1). Revenue of 7.65 trillion yen (about $72 billion) rose 3.8% on a year-over-year basis whilst operating income of 741.9 billion yen (about $7 billion) was up 8%. Nevertheless, Toyota cut full year forecasts, citing adverse exchange movements. (Toyota)
Says that shared platforms reduce development headcount and investment by 25%, whilst saving 10% of the vehicle material cost too. (Toyota)
Invested in autonomous vehicle vision technology company Recogni. (FINSMES)

Porsche says that 30,000 customers have paid a €2,500 deposit for a Taycan electric car. (Handelsblatt)
Acquired “nearly a quarter” of charging station management company has.to.be and will help fund an expansion of the European network. (VW)
Porsche’s digital team is around 120-strong and will grow further with the addition of a second US office. (Porsche)
Audi’s former CEO has been charged with fraud relating to the dieselgate scandal. (BBC)
Audi will sell a cheaper version of the e-tron with a 71 kWh battery, but not in the USA. (Electrek)

Other

Aston Martin sold 2,442 cars in the first half of 2019, up 6% on a year-over-year basis. Despite this, revenue fell (4)% to £407 million and there was a £(38) million operating loss — about half of which related to an IP sale gone wrong. (Aston Martin)
Human Horizons revealed the HiPhi1, an all-electric large SUV with claimed L3 self-driving capability and rear doors reminiscent of the Rolls-Royce 103EX concept. Although the car was said to be production ready, the launch date is unclear. (Human Horizons)
Russian’s first locally developed electric car, from Zetta, is on target for a 2019 production launch. (TASS)
VinFast will use battery packs developed by Austrian firm Kriesel (it seems likely that the batteries themselves will come from LG Chem). (Kriesel)
Atlis Motors claims to have 11,000 reservations for its forthcoming electric pick-up truck. (Core77)
Fresco Motors plans to start building its Reverie electric sedan in 2021 and says 70 people have already made reservations. (Inside EVs)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

Donald Trump joked about 25% tariffs on German car imports. (Detroit News)
Trump gave a deadline of 1^st September for increased tariffs on imports from China, urging Chinese government officials to pick up the pace on agreeing a trade deal. (Reuters)
The UK automotive trade body said member companies spent £330 million on Brexit contingency plans, but since this figure includes increases in inventory (a method adopted almost universally), it is likely that the bill for remaining items (training, warehousing and the like) is far smaller. (SMMT)
UK passenger car sales in July of 157,198 units fell (4.1)% compared with a year earlier. (SMMT)

Suppliers

ZF reported first half financial revenues of €18.4 billion and adjusted EBIT of €650 million and lowered the full year outlook, citing the “difficult” environment. ZF said the CFO “appears” confident that there won’t be any problems getting financing to complete the acquisition of Wabco. (ZF)
Eaton is buying Souriau-Sunbank for $920 million. (Autocar)
Toyo Tire is building a new 5 million capacity tyre factory in Serbia. (Toyo)
Delphi reported Q2 2019 revenue of $1.1 billion and operating income of $56 million. Citing the tough external environment, the company lowered full year guidance. (Delphi)
AAM reported Q2 revenue of $1.7 billion and net income of $52.5 million and lowered full year outlook. (AAM)
Manufacturing engineering supplier Eisenmann filed for insolvency. (Reuters)
Stonebridge reported Q2 revenue of $222 million and maintained full year guidance, but only by focusing on earnings per share and including favourable tax rate and buyback effects (revenue and margin are both expected to be worse than prior forecasts). (Stonebridge)
Meritor reported Q2 2019 (fiscal Q3) revenue of $1.166 billion and net income of $86 million. (Meritor)
Dana reported Q2 revenue of $2.3 billion and a net loss of $68 million. (Dana)
Denso reported Q2 2019 (fiscal Q1) revenue of $12.3 billion and profit of $641 million. (Denso)

Dealers

Although many UK car sales professionals have long said that retail-like experiences are the future, one Hyundai dealer is handing back the keys at one site in a well-trodden shopping centre. (Motor Trader)
UK car price comparison site Carwow raised £25 million from Daimler and other investors. (The Times)

Uber fired 400 members of the marketing team, saying that the teams had become too big. (Business Insider)
Lyft’s COO is leaving. (TechCrunch)

Self-driving developer Wayve is reportedly set to raise $20 million. (Telegraph)
GM CEO Mary Barra said customer feedback about the Super Cruise driver assistance system was amongst the best she had ever experienced (85% of owners said it would affected their next purchasing decision), but GM wants to put it into all Cadillac products before it will start introducing the feature into other brands (but also that this would be done “as quickly as we can”). (Seeking Alpha)
GM wouldn’t be drawn on a new timeline for the launch of robotaxi services operating by Cruise, but did confirm that from GM’s perspective a market launch meant no safety drivers in the vehicles. (Seeking Alpha)
Autonomous vehicle vision technology company Recogni raised $25 million from investors including BMW, Faurecia, Osram and Toyota. (FINSMES)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

VW’s Electrify America charging network is trialling automated chargers from Stable in preparation for self-driving cars. (VW)
India slashed tax rates on electric cars to 5% (from 12%), conventionally powered vehicles remain at 28%. (Reuters)
BP and Didi Chuxing have teamed up to create a Chinese network of charging stations. (BP)
Transition-One says it can convert cars with internal combustion engines into fully electric operation for €8,500, and it will only take a day. The economics aren’t completely clear since that isn’t much more than carmakers are saying a battery pack and motor costs. (Bloomberg)
Sumitomo believes that it can develop tyres that harvest electricity. (Inside EVs)
Nidec and GAC are working on a Chinese joint venture that will produce electric motors. (Nidec)
VW acquired “nearly a quarter” of charging station management company has.to.be and will help fund an expansion of the European network. (VW)
Ferrari said that initial customer feedback on the SF90 hybrid in electric drive mode was very positive because the lack of noise would be less antisocial in crowded neighbourhoods. The CEO says however than pure electric vehicles are “beyond 2022”. (Seeking Alpha)

Connectivity

Avis will sell data from over 100,000 connected vehicles on Otonomo’s platform. JD Power has signed on as an early customer to supplement its quality surveys. (Reuters)

Other

ParkMobile now has 15 million registered users. (ParkMobile)
Electric scooter rental firm Charge says the answer to the woes of dockless scooters (e.g. trouble charging them and unused scooters cluttering pavements) is to have docking stations — just like bicycle rental schemes of yore. (Charge)

European passenger car registrations in June of 1,491,285 units fell (7.9)% versus prior year, mainly explained by a reduction in selling days. (ACEA)
As negotiations over a new contract for US hourly paid employees between the major US automakers and the UAW union began, Ford said it was the biggest employer of UAW labour (i.e. don’t be mean to your best friend), GM said it wanted to lead the industry transformation (i.e. things aren’t going to stay as they are) and FCA asked everyone involved to think about disruption (i.e. put yourself in my shoes, I can’t pay you any more).

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 21st July 2019

July 23, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Nothing to see at Tesla; affordable car subscriptions; and inventive Japanese car sharing users. Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 15^th July to 21^st July 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

Work It Out — Media were scandalised by Tesla employees with tales of installing parts with sticky tape. Yawn. These stories will be familiar to anyone who has worked in production. Sometimes things need to be done to make the numbers in a way that isn’t perfect but doesn’t harm the customer. Tesla bears need to look somewhere else for evidence of the firm’s shortcomings.
Bit By Bit — Australian company CarBar has just raised almost $17 million. The term “subscription” has become mainstream parlance when the reality of most offerings is a thinly-disguised very short term lease, with eye-watering depreciation charges to match. CarBar lowers prices by putting customers in cars that are several years old, but still in decent condition. Will others sit up and take notice?
Still — Japanese car sharing companies have been confused by cars being returned with zero extra miles on the clock. It turns out that some more inventive customers have started using them for purposes other than driving… consuming takeaway food and taking out-of-office powernaps being two great examples. How useful could shared cars become if we designed them with some of these activities in mind?

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

Announced production chief Oliver Zipse as CEO effective 16^th August 2019. German press had forecast the appointment with unnerving accuracy. (BMW)
Said it had developed a versatile error checking machine learning algorithm that can be taught to spot errors (whether faulty parts or incorrectly applied name badges). All the examples mentioned were from a single factory so it remains to be seen whether the advance is as great as BMW claim. (BMW)
Partnering with Tencent to create software that can train self-driving cars. BMW implied that the announcement was nothing to do with Chinese intellectual property concerns and instead was down to unspecified unique driving conditions in China. (BMW)
Rumoured to be finalising a deal to supply four and six cylinder engines to JLR. (Autocar)

Sources say that Daimler plans to drop the Nissan-based X-Class pickup truck. (Automotive News)
Held a press briefing about Mercedes’s forward-looking retail strategy which bundled together several separate prior announcements into an over-arching explanation of the approach. (Daimler)

Extended the term of the joint venture finance company FCA operates in Europe with Crédit Agricole to the end of 2024. (FCA)

Ford’s European sales of 346,800 units in Q2 2019 fell (3.4)% versus a year earlier, almost all explained by Fiesta. Ford said that commercial vehicles were doing well (although the brand still lost share because industry also rose) and 73.8% of passenger vehicles were high series. (Ford)
Increasing production of the Ranger pickup truck due to the product’s success in the European market. (Ford)
Union officials said that Ford was cutting a shift at the Oakville, Canada plant that makes large SUVs. (Reuters)

Volvo’s CEO thinks the brand portfolio might need an even bigger car than the XC90 and smaller one than the XC40 to achieve sales targets, promising a surprise in the future. (Auto Express)
Lotus took the wraps off the Evija supercar, an all-electric offering with a claimed 2,000 PS output. The production run will be limited to 130 examples priced at £1.7 million plus taxes. (Lotus)
Volvo’s Q2 2019 revenue of 67.2 billion SEK (about $7.1 billion), rose 2% on a year-over-year basis but to keep pace with the increase in unit sales, up 5% YoY. EBIT of 2.6 billion SEK (about $280 million) dropped (38)%. (Volvo)
Volvo is recalling over 500,000 cars to fix problems with the engine intake manifolds. (Sky News)
Volvo said it was in the midst of a job cutting exercise to reduce fixed costs by 2 billion SEK (about $210 million). 750 staff have already gone since the start of 2019 and more could follow by the middle of 2020. (Volvo)
Volvo announced investments in MDGo, a firm creating software that automatically contacts medical personnel with data about occupant health after a crash and UVeye who are developing technology that can automatically check a vehicle for quality problems. (Volvo)

Revealed the next generation Corvette, with a mid-engined layout and “generous use of real metal”. (GM)
Rumoured to be developing an all-electric version of the Escalade large SUV with a 400 mile range. (Cadillac Society)

Hyundai reported Q2 2019 revenue of 26.97 trillion won (about $23 billion), up 9.1% on a year-over-year basis and operating profit of 1.24 trillion won (about $1 billion), 30.2% better YoY. (Hyundai)
Hyundai’s VC unit invested in parking location and payment app AppyParking. (Hyundai)

Showed off a new version of the Skyline. (Nissan)
Renault’s chairman said the alliance with Nissan was back on track, there were no plans to restart merger talks with FCA and that no one talks about Carlos Ghosn anymore. (AP)

Sold 1,013,968 units in Q2 2019, a drop of (10)% on a year-over-year basis. (PSA)
Citroen’s CEO suggested that the 30 inch wheels used in the 19_19 concept were being considered for production, partly because they provide a large ground clearance for the battery pack of a skateboard layout (implying the use of some trick suspension to lower the car enough for people, other than Olympic high jumpers to get in). (Autocar)
Opel will enter the Israeli market using a distributor. (PSA)

Renault sold 1,030,231 vehicles in Q2 2019, a drop of (8)% on the prior year. (Renault)
Linked up with Nigerian firm Coscharis to begin local production of two Renault (re-badged Dacia) models and sell those, and two imported products. (Renault)
Confirmed a stake of 50% in the electric vehicle joint venture it is creating in China with Jiangling Motors. The prior press releases had only spoken of a “significant part” of the JV. (Renault)
Renault’s chairman said the alliance with Nissan was back on track, there were no plans to restart merger talks with FCA and that no one talks about Carlos Ghosn anymore. (AP)

JLR received a £500m loan guarantee from the UK government to assist electric vehicle development. The guarantee will enable JLR to receive a low interest rate on £625 million of commercial loans it intends to raise. (JLR)
JLR said it would like to produce more cars and SUVs in India but effective tax rates of around 50%, including VAT and surcharges, are restricting the market size. (Economic Times of India)
Rumoured to be finalising a deal to buy four and six cylinder engines from BMW in preference to in-house units so that JLR can re-direct development spending to electric vehicles. (Autocar) An earlier rumour was that BMW might supply JLR with V8 engines.
Executives reportedly told staff that the Halewood plant will soon lose its third shift. (Liverpool Echo)

Further tinkered with the line-up and pricing, offering only two derivatives of the Model S and Model X. (Reuters)
- Significance: Tesla is changing options and pricing so frequently at the moment that it isn’t possible to gauge whether (1) the sales department is completely chaotic; (2) the changes are a reaction to short term manufacturing bottlenecks, that are then reversed; (3) Tesla is rationing certain derivatives for re-release at a later date (a la Disney’s video strategy of the 90s and 2000s) or; (4) the changes are a manufacturing simplification ahead of an updated model (normal practice and denied by Tesla)
Disgruntled employees said that Tesla had cut corners with Model 3 production, citing several quick fixes applied lineside to keep production moving, such as using sticky tape to keep parts in place. (CNBC)
- Significance: Whilst the examples cited by the employees horrified journalists, most mass production veterans will have seen a similar litany of patches and many of us unwittingly drive vehicles with such measures in place.

Teaming up with BYD to develop battery electric vehicles for the Chinese market. (Toyota)
Toyota Tsusho invested in inspection startup UVeye alongside Volvo. (Forbes)

CEO Diess sees the MEB platform becoming the “industry standard for electric vehicles”. (Automobil Sport)
- Significance: Although he claims MEB will deliver significant economies of scale, this certainly isn’t being reflected in lower list prices (although perhaps it will be in profits) and financial figures released at the joint Ford / VW press conference suggest a rolling chassis only price of ~$16k, not cheap for a mass market car.
Dropping estate car (station wagon) bodystyles from the US line-up because SUVs have “assumed the mantle of family haulers”. (CBNC)
Said that vehicles produced in India will have around 90% local sourcing, a slight climbdown from targets of 95% that VW earlier announced for vehicles on the MQB platform. (Economic Times of India)
Reckons that the latest generation of manual gearbox can reduce CO₂ emissions by five grams per kilometre in some cars, equivalent to about 3% – 4%. VW said that until now “nobody took much notice of manual gearboxes” as a way of improving fuel economy. (VW)
Reportedly considering an offer for the MAN Energy Solutions (large engines) unit, from Cummins. (Reuters)

Other

VinFast executives say the brand is losing money on the first vehicles on sale but the plan is that operational efficiencies from ramping up to larger scale, and some headroom to increase pricing, will see the carmaker reach profitability. VinFast claimed 10,000 firm orders ahead of product launch. (Bloomberg)
SAIC’s MG brand says the Hector SUV has been such a runaway sales success in India, with 21,000 orders so far, that is has stopped letting customers order the car whilst it clears the backlog. (India Today)
Early Xpeng customers protested at the firm’s headquarters after a new model was released, claiming to have been mis-sold the original car by sales people who said it would be a sound financial investment. (Caixin)
Seres (aka SF Motors) said it made fewer employees redundant than media reports claimed. (China Economic Net)
Former JLR design boss Ian Callum opened a new firm and intends to create some sort of car, but won’t say what it is… yet. (Top Gear)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

European passenger car registrations in June of 1,491,285 units fell (7.9)% versus prior year, mainly explained by a reduction in selling days. (ACEA)
As negotiations over a new contract for US hourly paid employees between the major US automakers and the UAW union began, Ford said it was the biggest employer of UAW labour (i.e. don’t be mean to your best friend), GM said it wanted to lead the industry transformation (i.e. things aren’t going to stay as they are) and FCA asked everyone involved to think about disruption (i.e. put yourself in my shoes, I can’t pay you any more).

Suppliers

Autoliv announced Q2 2019 sales of $2.155 billion, down (2.6)% and a (26)% drop in operating income. The firm says it has already begun cost saving actions and shed over 1,200 jobs this quarter. (Autoliv)
Lear gave a preliminary earnings release for Q2 2019 and lowered full year revenue and profit guidance. Revenue of $5 billion dropped (10)% from prior year. (Lear)
Bearing maker SKF thinks there might be “some light in the tunnel” for the Chinese automotive industry. (Reuters)
Eaton is buying Innovative Switchgear Solutions. (Eaton)
Samsung SDI will supply batteries for Volvo trucks. (Volvo)

Dealers

Australian subscription service CarBar raised $16.8 million. The company reduces prices by offering cars that are several years old, and have quote high mileage. (Deal Street Asia)

A subset of short-term car rental users in Japan aren’t driving the cars at all, preferring to use the vehicles for activities such as eating takeaway food or short naps during the workday. (The Guardian)
Short term car rental operator Turo raised $250 million in a round valuing the firm at over $1 billion. (Turo)
Rickshaw ride hailing service SmartE raised $14 million. (Live Mint)
Yandex and Uber’s Russian joint venture announced a takeover of local rival Vezet, although there were murmurs from some stakeholders that they might not be happy with the deal. (Reuters)
Uber suffered a payment mishap that saw some customers overcharged by 100 times the correct fare. (BBC)
Didi Chuxing plans to raise another $2 billion. (WSJ) and wants to get back into the carpooling game, but says it will hold a public consultation on improved safety measures first. (Reuters)

Open source driver assistance technology developer comma.ai announced a changed strategy, the company now hopes to become an insurance provider. (Comma.ai)
Uber proposed a structure for defining how to implement sufficient safety measures in self-driving vehicles. (Uber)
Compact lidar developer Voyant Photonics raised $4.3 million. (TechCrunch)
Self-driving vehicle developer AutoX has partnered with NEVS for a European robotaxi service that the pair hope can be launched by 2020. (TechCrunch)
A Navya self-driving bus had a low speed collision with a pedestrian in Vienna and trials were halted. (The Verge)
- Significance: Collisions between vehicles and pedestrians are (unfortunately) an everyday occurrence. As self-driving fleets increase in size, the attitude of local authorities to accidents will begin to have a measurable effect on development if trials have to be totally suspended whilst an investigation takes place — as is the practice currently.
BMW is partnering with Tencent to create software that can train self-driving cars. BMW implied that the announcement was nothing to do with Chinese intellectual property concerns and instead was down to unspecified unique driving conditions in China. (BMW)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

Evergrande is partnering with the state-owned Chinese power grid in a 50/50 joint venture to create a charging network called Guoheng Smart Energy. (Caixin)
A new estimate of electrification infrastructure in China reckons there are over 1 million charging points across the country, about 40% of which are open to the public. (Economic Times of India)
ZF says a two-speed gearbox on an all-electric car will improve range by 5% compared with a single speed. (ZF)
Toyota is teaming up with BYD to develop battery electric vehicles for the Chinese market. (Toyota)

Connectivity

Blockchain collaboration MOBI, with support from several carmakers, said it had created a way to log vehicle VINs and was now working on ways to capture information about how it was used through its life. (MOBI)

Other

Emoji lovers were gratified by news that blue-chip companies were finally waking up to society’s wish for them to muscle in on the act. Ford said it was sponsoring a pickup truck, whilst VW-owned charging network Electrify America offered a car plugged in to a charger.
Indian logistics firm Rivigo may have recently raised $65 million, but it is having to cut staff and rescind job offers. (Economic Times of India)
Bicycle rental service Hellobike raised $400 million. (Deal Street Asia)
Bus and train operator and ticketing website FlixMobility raised €500 million and said that it will put some of the money towards starting a short-term car rental service. (Reuters)
Air taxi developer Karem raised $25 million. (TechCrunch)

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 14th July 2019

July 16, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Musk says price will skyrocket; managing the decline of combustion engines; and why are factories for electric cars so expensive? Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 8^th July to 14^th July 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

Up Where We Belong — Elon Musk says that once Tesla has cracked self-driving, prices will go up significantly. But since he also says the cost of the hardware is included in cars being built right now, that would simply be price gouging. The reason Tesla loses money currently is that it must sell cars at a similar price to competitors, rather than however much it would like to charge. Why would self-driving cars change that?
The A Team — VW’s head of procurement says that the switch to electrification could cause a raft of insolvencies in suppliers and makers of combustion engines, leading to absolute chaos. His preferred approach is a planned consolidation. Sounds like the idea advanced by Ad Punctum and Evercore ISI at the end of last year. Why are so many people ignoring this?
My Favourite Mistake — Fiat will spend €700 million to introduce the next generation all-electric 500e. What will they get for the money? An electric version of a car they will be making with a combustion engine and a factory good for 80,000 units per year. Doesn’t sound like much when a conventionally powered car would buy you well over 250,000 units of capacity annually for the same money. Where are the much-vaunted investment savings from electric vehicles being simpler to make?

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

Sold 647,504 cars globally in Q2 2019, an increase of 1% on a year-over-year basis. (BMW)
Said that it had moved production of engines destined for South Africa out of the Hams Hall, UK, plant to ensure that EU-South Africa rules of origin requirements continue to be met. (The Guardian)
Invested in Maniv Mobility’s new $100 million fund. (Economic Times of India)
Unveiled the all-electric version of the Mini, saying there had been 40,000 expressions of interest. (BMW)

Daimler ^(history)

Sold 607,126 globally cars in Q2 2019, a drop of (3)% on prior year. (Daimler)
Issued a profit warning for Q2 2019, having only just issued a profit warning a few weeks ago, saying it had lost €(1.6) billion, down from a profit of €2.6 billion last year. Daimler blamed higher recall costs, likely fines relating to diesel vehicles and a mysterious product planning decision concerning vans. (Daimler)

Investing €700 million to produce the all-electric Fiat 500e in Mirafiori, Italy. (FCA)
FCA said that it withheld some of its US sales chief’s pay packet because he was implicated in a scheme to exaggerate sales figures, not because he cooperated with the investigating authorities, as he alleges. The lawsuit implies that up to 90% of senior executive compensation at FCA comes in bonuses and stock grants. (Detroit News)

Ferrari

There is a five year waiting list of customers who want to commission a one-off from Ferrari, and unless you are in the top 250 customers globally — however that is defined — you don’t have a chance. (Autocar)

Recalling around 58,000 Focus cars to correct problems that can deform the fuel tank. (Ford)
Ford and VW announced the terms of a tie-up for autonomous vehicles. VW will merge its autonomous driving efforts (with a claimed value of $1.6 billion) with Argo AI and stump up a further $1 billion in cash, plus hand over $500 million to Ford to buy into the project. After the transaction is complete, Ford and VW will hold an equal share in a business, they say, worth $7 billion. (VW)
Has agreed to build up to 600,000 MEB-based electric cars and could “almost double” that figure if a second product, currently under discussion between the two parties, gets the go ahead. (VW) Ford will pay licensing fees on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis. (Reuters) with implied ~€15,000 per vehicle of revenue for VW. (Ford) Ford’s electric vehicles will be made in European Ford factories, but which one stays a secret for now (hint: there are impending capacity crunches in Saarlouis and Valencia). (Seeking Alpha)
Ford and VW’s collaboration on commercial vehicles saves “several hundred million euros”. (VW)
Ford and VW might share some of the behind the scenes infrastructure related to autonomous cars but haven’t decided yet. (Seeking Alpha)
Argo AI will “continue to seek new partners” after VW buy-in. (Argo)
Recalling around 58,000 Focus cars to correct problems that can deform the fuel tank. (Ford) Ford will also recall about 7,500 Rangers because of seat belts that weren’t fitted properly. (Ford)

Issued a profit warning saying the net profits in the first half would be about (40)% down on 2018. (Geely)

The head of artificial intelligence at Cruise thinks it might take a lifetime to get self-driving cars to work properly in all locations and driving conditions. (IEEE Spectrum)

Invested in Maniv Mobility’s new $100 million fund. (Economic Times of India)

Mazda

Recalling 262,000 US vehicles to fix problems with engines stalling. (Fox)
Toyota will now make an SUV at the new US joint venture plant with Mazda (still under construction), rather than the previously planned car. The impact on Mazda’s production plans is unclear. (Toyota)

Mitsubishi will invest in ride hailing firm GoJek (the Mitsubishi trading company had already been announced as an investor but this is the first time the motor company has come on board). (Mitsubishi)
Nissan and Mitsubishi merged their Japanese finished vehicle logistics operations. (Mitsubishi)
Alliance Ventures invested in Maniv Mobility’s new $100 million fund. (Economic Times of India)

Alliance Ventures invested in Maniv Mobility’s new $100 million fund. (Economic Times of India)

JLR sold 128,615 cars in April to June 2019 (fiscal Q1), a drop of (11.6)% on prior year. (JLR)

A leaked internal email suggested further production increases at the Fremont, USA, factory and a full year 2019 production target of far more than 400,000 cars. (Bloomberg)
CEO Musk said that customers shouldn’t expect a refreshed Model S or Model X and that only a series of “minor ongoing changes” were planned. (Business Insider)
- Significance: With Model S and X sales falling fast, Tesla may find that it is less immune to product ageing than the company thinks, despite Musk’s belief that the Model S remains an unparalleled product.
Seeking a restraining order from a researcher aligned to a group of Tesla short sellers. Tesla say the man, who tries to count car deliveries and shadows autonomous test vehicles, puts their employees at risk. (Detroit News)
A Tesla supplier is reportedly preparing to double shipments to Tesla, setting tongues wagging about an explosion of Model 3 volume. The other possibility is that it has won some work from other suppliers (or the whole thing is an inaccurate rumour). (Digitimes)
Elon Musk said prices for Tesla cars would rise “significantly” when the company has cracked the self-driving problem because they would be capable of functioning as robotaxis and would thus be far more valuable. (Electrek)
- Significance: Musk’s comments imply that although he believes the cost of self-driving is already included in current production (as yet unproven because Tesla doesn’t actually have a self-driving suite that works), the market would allow the company to reap outsize profits — this is known colloquially as price gouging and normally fails because of competitive pressure (a phenomenon already encountered by Tesla and responsible for setting transaction prices at a level too low to make profits).

Created a sub-brand called “Toyota Professional” to sell commercial vehicles in Europe. (Toyota)
Will now make an SUV at the new US joint venture plant with Mazda (still under construction), rather than the previously planned car. (Toyota)
Selling all of Toyota’s interest in driveline supplier Yutaka Seimitsu to JTEKT. (Toyota)
Toyota and Denso will establish a 49% / 51% joint venture to develop advanced semi-conductors. (Toyota)

Delivered 2,759,700 vehicles in Q2 2019, a drop of (2.8)% versus prior year. (VW)
Bentley unveiled the EXP 100 GT concept, an all-electric GT with (intended) self-driving capability that represents the product Bentley hopes to sell in 2035. The sleek design implies that Bentley believe all sensors required for autonomous driving will be integrated into the bodywork by then. (Bentley)
VW has set a target to become “balance sheet CO₂ neutral” by 2025, implying extensive use of renewable energy and carbon offsets. The move may be partly aimed at EU CO₂ regulations which imply that the emissions from the entire vehicle lifecycle will be considered. (VW)
VW highlighted how much of the forthcoming ID3 electric vehicle components are made in-house. (VW)
CEO Diess said VW preferred Ford / Argo to other options because he wanted an American technology partner and to work with a strong OEM. It wasn’t clear how this was different to (US-based) Aurora and their OEM partners Hyundai / KIA and FCA. (Seeking Alpha)
VW’s parking subsidiary PayByPhone acquired Mirada Connect. (FINSMES)
VW’s head of procurement says that the automotive industry is “obliged” to find a way to consolidate internal combustion assets without uncontrolled insolvencies. (Reuters)
- Significance: These comments further show that the industry is waking up to the need for radical solutions to the decline of internal combustion engines. Pre-planned consolidation was the route Ad Punctum and Evercore ISI championed in a 2018 research piece titled E-FIRST.
Ford and VW announced the terms of a tie-up for autonomous vehicles. VW will merge its autonomous driving efforts (with a claimed value of $1.6 billion) with Argo AI and stump up a further $1 billion in cash, plus hand over $500 million to Ford to buy into the project. After the transaction is complete, Ford and VW will hold an equal share in a business, they say, worth $7 billion. (VW)
Ford agreed to build up to 600,000 MEB-based electric cars and could “almost double” that figure if a second product, currently under discussion between the two parties, gets the go ahead. (VW) Ford will pay licensing fees on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis. (Reuters) with implied ~€15,000 per vehicle of revenue for VW. (Ford)
Ford and VW’s collaboration on commercial vehicles saves “several hundred million euros”. (VW)
Ford and VW might share some of the behind the scenes infrastructure related to autonomous cars but haven’t decided yet. (Seeking Alpha)

Other

Aston Martin’s CEO worries about requirements for tens of kilometres of electric-only range, saying plug-in hybrids are a “bad solution” for sports cars because of the additional weight of the larger electric engine. V12 engines will last “at least until the next generation”, but can easily imagine it going longer. (The Drive)
Seres, aka SF Motors, has reportedly made around one third of US staff redundant and is postponing the US market launch (and potentially abandoning plans to manufacture locally), citing difficult conditions in China. (The Verge)
Chinese automaker JAC was fined 170 million RMB (about $25 million) for excessive real world emissions compared to test results. (Caixin)
NIO delivered 3,553 cars in Q2 2019. (NIO)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

The US government is removing the escalation of financial penalties for exceeding fuel economy standards. (Reuters)

Suppliers

Dana’s CEO thinks people are underestimating the staying power of the internal combustion engine — although he admits that this view is contingent on hybrids, rather than fully electric vehicles — ruling the roost. (Reuters)
ZF says it is providing the entire electric powertrain for the Mercedes EQC, including controls. (Xinhua)
Weber Automotive declared insolvency amid a fight over funding between its owners. (Reuters)
Bosch invested in on-demand manufacturing start-up Xometry. (Bosch)
Denso and Metair subsidiary Smiths set up an aftermarket parts joint venture in South Africa. (Autocar)
Toyota and Denso will establish a 49% / 51% joint venture to develop advanced semi-conductors. (Toyota)

Lidar developer Luminar said it has now raised $250 million and that its sub $1,000 sensor will be on production vehicles from 2022 onwards. Luminar claims to be “working with… 12 of the world’s top 15 automotive companies”, but this does not imply firm production contracts. (Luminar)
Hyundai Mobis and Yandex said they had produced a prototype self-driving car in six weeks. (Korea Times)
- Significance: The speed with which the prototype was built underlines that the challenge isn’t fitting a car with sensors and linking the steering, power and brakes to a central control unit, it is developing software that uses the sensor set to drive the vehicle safely.
Volvo Trucks says that in commercial trials of self-driving vehicles, it is already trialling a cost per tonne moved revenue model and exploring the possibility that it might not sell the trucks outright. (Reuters)
Waymo says it has now simulated 10 billion miles of driving. (TechCrunch)
Pony.ai’s CEO thinks there will be “thousands or tens of thousands” of autonomous vehicles on the road within the next three to five years. (Time)
The head of artificial intelligence at GM’s Cruise division thinks it might take a lifetime to get self-driving cars to work properly in all locations and driving conditions. (IEEE Spectrum)
Elon Musk said prices for Tesla cars would rise “significantly” when the company has cracked the self-driving problem because they would be capable of functioning as robotaxis and would thus be far more valuable. (Electrek)
Argo AI will “continue to seek new partners” after VW buy-in. (Argo)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

Chinese battery maker SVOLT is reportedly planning a European factory. (Reuters)
REE emerged from stealth mode saying it had developed a highly flexible vehicle platform using in-wheel motors and steer by wire that was already interesting Mitsubishi and FCA amongst others. (REE)
LG Chem is reportedly looking to build a second US battery factory. (Reuters)

Connectivity

Niu has collected 85 terabytes of journey data from the 710,000 scooters the company has sold — which have collectively covered 3 billion kilometres. (CNBC)

Other

Refraction is building an autonomous delivery robot with a target price below $5,000, partly enabled by a 15 mph top speed which reduces the need for expensive sensors. (TechCrunch)
Electric bike maker Pure EV raised $25 million. (Economic Times of India)
Bicycle sharing network Yulu is reportedly in talks to raise $15 million. (LiveMint)
Scooter rental firm Bird is establishing a European headquarters in Paris. (The Verge) The CEO says that, with the latest scooters, Bird can make $1.27 on every ride. (TechCrunch)

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 7th July 2019

July 9, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Hypercars for all; jobs for the masses; and are Norwegians making everyone else look silly? Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 1^st July to 7^th July 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

You Wanted More — Aston Martin’s CEO says he could have sold 900 Valkyrie hypercars, and regrets limiting production to 150 units. If correct, that would be nearly 50% more than LaFerrari, despite a far higher price tag. Do enough buyers really exist? If so, can we expect to see the next Aston Martin hypercar (Valhalla) nearing four figures?
Paper Thin — A coalition of car companies and suppliers released what they termed a framework for autonomous driving. It’s a whopping 157 pages long, but don’t hold out hope that all your questions will be answered, most of them are simply acknowledged by the report, with no firm answers provided beyond. To carry out tests, the authors recommend simulations with human drivers controlling other simulated vehicles. Thing is, if we test self-driving cars that way, lots of human will have to drive lots of computer-generated miles. Will simulated driving become the new content moderation, employing tens of thousands across the globe?
The World’s Greatest — Almost half the cars sold in Norway over the past six months are capable of zero emission travel. Not only that, but the fleet average CO₂ emissions registered 59 g / km, meaning that Norway is already compliant with 2030 European targets many are labelling as near impossible! Okay, there are incentives involved and, yes, Norway’s citizens are richer than most, but why not look on the bright side… if the Norwegians are there now — with today’s technology at today’s prices — surely other countries can get there with the technology of the future (as yet unrealised scare stories about battery raw material costs notwithstanding)?

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

CEO Harald Krüger will not seek a second term as CEO (the current term was due to end in 2020). (BMW)
German media reports on the main candidates for the CEO position speculated that senior executive departures are likely after the decision has been made. Sharp elbows have reportedly been out for months. (Handelsblatt)
BMW and Daimler finalised an (already announced) agreement to jointly develop L4 self-driving systems (i.e. the owner doesn’t need to concentrate, but the car may only be capable in a limited number of environments). The two companies will pool a team of 1,200 development engineers and hope to launch the first products in 2024. (Daimler)

BMW and Daimler finalised an (already announced) agreement to jointly develop L4 self-driving systems (i.e. the owner doesn’t need to concentrate, but the car may only be capable in a limited number of environments). The two companies will pool a team of 1,200 development engineers and hope to launch the first products in 2024. (Daimler)
Spent €50 million on a new electromagnetic compatibility testing centre. (Daimler)

Announced some changes to the team heading up Maserati. (FCA)
Will buy 8 speed automatic transmissions from ZF. (ZF)

Releasing a track-only version of the GT. Just 45 examples will be built, at a cost of $1.2 million each. (Ford)
Although Ford celebrates the success of the F-150’s all-aluminium body, the experience of the next-generation Explorer, which uses the material only sparingly, suggests it is still too expensive for vehicles where manufacturers cannot claim a hefty premium for fuel economy. (Detroit Free Press)
Highlighting the difficulty of pricing in the UK market, despite the need to recover from sterling devaluation, Ford launched a “scrappage scheme” offering customers £2,000. (Autocar)
Sold 650,336 vehicles in the US during Q2 2019, down (4.1)% on a year-over-year basis. (Ford)
Ford and VW are reportedly close to an overarching deal that will see Ford sell a share of self-driving unit Argo AI to VW in exchange for access to the MEB electric vehicle platform. The value of the self-driving technology is apparently lower than Ford hoped because VW reckons it won’t be commercially available in large numbers for such a long time. (Handelsblatt)
French unions won a court judgement against the company saying it had failed in a duty to employ 1,000 workers at the site under the terms of a grant. However, the judges stopped short of condemning Ford’s decision to close the plant, saying they weren’t qualified to rule on the economic merits. (Usine Nouvelle)

The Geely and Lynk&Co brands sold 285,092 units in Q2 2019, a fall of (25)% on a year-over-year basis. (Geely)
Volvo sold 179,506 cars in Q2 2019, a 5% increase on the same period a year earlier. (Volvo)
Volvo has a new CFO. (Volvo)
Lotus’s new hypercar (previously known as Type 130) will be called Evija. (Lotus)

Reported US sales of 746,659 units in Q2 2019, a drop of (1.5)% on a year earlier. (GM)

Developing one and two seat electric cars, believing them to be the best way to transport the elderly. (Japan Times)
Creating a retrofit kit that will allow some features of Honda’s driver assistance suite even on older vehicles. (Honda)

Hyundai says that continuously variable valve duration (CCVD) technology provides a 5% improvement in fuel economy. (Hyundai)
Might enter NASCAR when new rules come into force for 2021. (Autoweek)

Mazda

Recalling tens of thousands of Mazda 3 cars to stop their wheels falling off. (The Guardian)

Renault and Nissan might stop publishing their customary annual cost saving declaration. (Reuters)

Continuing the recent trend of removing national sales companies in lower volume locations, Opel announced a distributor had been selected for Ireland. (Opel)
The EU said it would take a closer look at €20.7 million in aid from the Spanish government to support further investment in the Vigo factory. (Europa Press)

French Police raided Renault’s headquarters apparently looking for dirt on Carlos Ghosn. (Reuters)
Renault and Nissan might stop publishing their customary annual cost saving declaration. (Reuters)

Suzuki

Maruti Suzuki’s woes continue with a fifth consecutive month of production cuts. (The Hindu)

Confirmed plans for an all-electric replacement for the XJ large saloon at the Castle Bromwich, UK, factory and a “range” of other electric products. Whilst making the announcement, JLR’s CEO said that unless battery factories are built in the UK, car plants will have to be relocated to wherever they are made (JLR)

Reported Q2 2019 deliveries of 95,200 cars, up 34% on a year-over-year basis. Tesla said orders were being placed more quickly than they could build cars but declined to provide specifics (although the balance sheet contains clues). Tesla will stop reporting the number of cars in transit inventory. Model S and X remained weak. (Tesla)

Says that a new generation of solar panels has increased charging rate by a factor of four. Toyota has a Prius test vehicle that generates around 860 W (in Japanese sunshine), good for a claimed 44.5 km of highway driving (the old system provided just over 6km). (Toyota)

Aims for 50% of Chinese sales to be electric vehicles by 2035. (VW)
VW expects solid state batteries to become cost competitive in the late 2020s and says that most of the production equipment and 60% of the tooling is the same as lithium ion cells, so newly built factories won’t become obsolete even if the technology changes. (Reuters)
Bentley’s boss wants to build an all-electric car but says that current technology (specifically the battery energy density) won’t allow him to create a vehicle with long range that isn’t too heavy, and that he might have to wait until 2025 for the right batteries to come along. (Autocar)
Ford and VW are reportedly close to an overarching deal that will see Ford sell a share of self-driving unit Argo AI to VW in exchange for access to the MEB electric vehicle platform. The value of the self-driving technology is apparently lower than Ford hoped because VW reckons it won’t be commercially available in large numbers for such a long time. (Handelsblatt)

Other

Borgward has lost the site of its planned factory in Bremen, Germany due to inactivity. (WirtschaftsWoche)
Aston Martin’s CEO says he wishes he hadn’t limited the Valkyrie hypercar to a production run of 150 cars because demand is so great that he could have sold 900 of them. (carsales)
- Significance: Given the £2.5 million price tag, a 900 unit run would be unprecedented (La Ferrari sold 649 cars and the relatively cheap F40 reached just over 1,300 — albeit when the addressable market was smaller). Since Ferrari’s newest special editions will only have 499 examples at €1.6 million, the remarks look like hyperbole. Aston Martin will have another chance when they release the Valkyrie’s successor.

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

US light vehicle SAAR in June of 17.29 million units was down (0.5)% on prior year. (Wards)
German passenger car registrations for June of 325,231 units fell (4.7)% versus a year earlier. (KBA)
French June sales of 230,965 passenger cars, dropped (8.4)% from prior year. (CCFA)
Passenger car sales in the UK during June of 223,421 cars fell (4.9)% on a year-over-year basis. (SMMT)
Italian passenger car registrations for June of 171,626 units, fell (2.1)% versus the prior year. (UNRAE)
Spanish sales of passenger cars in June of 130,519 units fell (8.3)% on a year-over-year basis. (ANFAC)
Norwegian sales of new passenger cars in the first half of 2019 reached 78,209 units. 35,200 (45)% of these were zero emission vehicles. The average CO₂ emissions of passenger cars sold was 59 g/ km. (BIL)
Bulgaria’s government reportedly plans to ban imports of diesel cars which do not meet the Euro 4 emissions standards (i.e. pre-2005 vehicles). (Novinite)

Suppliers

Teijin is acquiring composites supplier Benet Automotive. (Teijin)
Inzi Controls is building a $50 million battery plant in Hungary. (Budapest Business Journal)

Didi Chuxing said that it had dropped over 300,000 drivers after a safety review. (TechCrunch)

Self-driving car developer Tier IV raised over $100 million from investors including Yamaha. (VentureBeat)
Valeo said it had orders for €500 million worth of lidar sensors. (Reuters)
Testing equipment firm AB Dynamics acquired simulation company rFpro. (Autocar)
A coalition of carmakers and suppliers published a shared white paper on safety in autonomous vehicles. The paper places a heavy emphasis on the role of sensor fusion algorithms (loosely, taking data from several sensors and combining it into a single worldview), a catch-all term that will mean different things to different people. It does lay down a marker by talking about a “degraded mode” (a back-up system) and calling for a mixed sensor suite that includes lidar. (BMW)
- Significance: The study does a better job of highlighting the problems verifying the roadworthiness of self-driving systems than it does in providing clear answers about how it can be performed. For instance, whilst discussing the difficulties of simulation, about the same about of space is given to considering gravitational forces as modelling the reaction of other drivers to the car’s decisions. A driver in the loop model (e.g. use human drivers to drive the other cars, as if it is a great big computer game) is the get out of jail free card — could being a simulator driver become the next big gig — tens of thousands could be required if this is really how we are going to test self-driving cars.
Visiblezone says it can detect pedestrians that self-driving cars aren’t able to directly see by monitoring signals from mobile phones and other electronic devices the people are carrying. (TechCrunch)
Driver assistance developer ZongMu raised $14.5 million. (VentureBeat)
BMW and Daimler finalised an (already announced) agreement to jointly develop L4 self-driving systems (i.e. the owner doesn’t need to concentrate, but the car may only be capable in a limited number of environments). The two companies will pool a team of 1,200 development engineers and hope to launch the first products in 2024. (Daimler)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

Continental showed off a hybrid vehicle with a 30 kW (40 PS) motor powered by a 48V system. These type of hybrid set-ups promise lower costs than (traditional) high voltage equipment. (Continental)
Ola Electric raised $250 million from SoftBank. (Business Standard)
Toyota says a new generation of solar panels has increased charging rate by a factor of four. Toyota has a Prius test vehicle that generates around 860 W (in Japanese sunshine), good for a claimed 44.5 km of highway driving (the old system provided just over 6km). (Toyota)
VW expects solid state batteries to become cost competitive in the late 2020s and says that most of the production equipment and 60% of the tooling is the same as lithium ion cells, so newly built factories won’t become obsolete even if the technology changes. (Reuters)

Connectivity

Amazon keeps customer voice recordings, transcripts and details of their discussions with Alexa devices forever, unless the user manually deletes them. (ZDNet)
Samsung says people won’t be using smartphones in five years, preferring multiple displays connected wirelessly to each other instead. (ZDNet)
- Significance: If Samsung are right (and they know a thing or two about electronics), car makers need to be thinking more seriously about how the car can interact with external devices — beyond CarPlay and Android Auto — and how customers can mount and power different screens in the car without a proliferation of ugly plastic add-ons.

Other

Electric scooter rental service Dott raised $30 million. (TechCrunch)
Electric bus maker Proterra is reportedly exploring an IPO. (Reuters)
A profile of bicycle sharing firm Ofo’s failure suggested that the root cause was getting on the wrong side of too many big investors. (Technode)
Electric scooter rental start-up Wind Mobility raised $50 million. (TechCrunch)

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 23rd June 2019

June 25, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

New cars for old people; self-driving brains that use modular decision making; and VW’s blockbuster plant closure plan. Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 17^th June to 23^rd June 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

Old Souls — Japan’s government is looking at ways to stop old people having so many crashes, after several high-profile accidents. One of the big problems carmakers have always had is that the people with money (generally old people) don’t like being reminded of their age (old). So much so that they sometimes buy products that attempt to disguise the ageing process (Ferraris). Might moves like this help usher in cars designed to help older customers live better without alienating them?
Busy Guy — Humanising Autonomy is a start-up that specialises in predicting how nearby pedestrians will act in the next few seconds. Although at first sight this could seem a bit niche, being able to buy parts of the decision making system off the shelf could help self-driving vehicle developers create secondary controls, once they’ve actually got their primary system working.
Idyll’s End — Volkswagen’s CEO casually mentioned in an interview that the company needs to close half its powertrain plants in the next ten years. He believes that displaced workers will be able to find jobs in factories for batteries and electric motors, so doesn’t seem so worried. But can the change really be planned so smoothly? And does it make sense for the new factories to be in the same place as the old ones?

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

Rumoured to be planning a more aggressive electric vehicle strategy that would see 25 models on sale by 2023 (the current target is 25 by 2025) and an annual growth target of 30%. (FAZ)
Recalling about 560,000 5 and 6 series models to fix corrosion problems. (Der Spiegel)
The Quandt family representatives on BMW’s board gave an interview where they explained the great burden of their family wealth. (Manager Magazin)
Doesn’t plan to replace the 2 Series and is developing a plan to get customers to choose SUVs in future. (Autocar)
Enlisted the help of synthesiser guru Hans Zimmer (Beverley Hills Cop / Miami Vice theme tunes) to help develop sounds for BMW’s all-electric vehicles. (BMW)
- Significance: Competitors need to get on the phone to Ramin Djawadi’s (Iron Man / Pacific Rim / Game of Thrones) agent if they want to have any hope of besting the aural sensation Zimmer must have lined up for us.

Issued a profit warning saying that Group EBIT in 2019 would not be higher than the previous year, blaming a “high three digit million” euro cost for actions related to diesel vehicles. (Daimler)
Ordered to recall 60,000 diesel powered vehicles by German regulators because of claimed defeat devices. Daimler maintains that it hasn’t done anything wrong. (Reuters)
Signed an MoU for an Egyptian assembly plant with the national government. There will also be an, as yet unnamed, local partner involved. (Daimler)

A close confidante of FCA’s Chairman has reportedly been spotted in Tokyo making overtures to Nissan about a potential merger with Renault. (Les Echos)

A long puff piece suggested Jim Farley is still very much in contention for the CEO position when Jim Hackett leaves and sought to make a virtue of his outsider’s perspective. Seasoned Farley-watchers will be interested to discover that he has switched from suede loafers to brogues (for reasons that the article did not explore). (Detroit Free Press)

Comments by GM’s president sparked rumours of an electric Hummer. (Fox News)
GM’s electric bikes have gone on sale. (Cycling Weekly)
Reportedly wants the UAW to agree to a greater amount of temporary workers in order to control costs and preserve benefits for the permanent staff members. Experts believe that the unions may be reluctant to cede to GM’s demands in the light of the plant closures / unallocation. (Bloomberg)

Wants to cut about 35% of the UK dealer network over the next two years, seeking a minimum of 200 retail sales annually per site. The company is also changing how sales targets and bonuses are set, relying more on historical data and the dealer’s view than Honda’s sales team. (Automotive Manager)

Unveiled the new Kia Seltos compact SUV. (Kia)

Announced plans to add Renault’s chairman and CEO to two of the new oversight committees. (Nissan)
Renault and Nissan signed an “exclusive” deal with Waymo for mobility services in France and Japan. (Renault)
Nissan is being sued by its partner in a Middle East distribution joint venture, who claims that Nissan didn’t maintain the level of exclusivity it had initially promised. (WSJ)

Started production at the new factory in Kenitra, Morocco. (PSA)
Opel expressed satisfaction with new order levels for the forthcoming electric Corsa but said that exact figures wouldn’t be released until a later date. (FAZ)
Workers at the Kaiserslautern, Germany, plant agreed a series of efficiency actions that will see more early retirements and some new press shop facilities. (PSA)
PSA’s Free2Move brand has started trials of a monthly rental service. Customers can switch cars each month and all running costs are included. Prices seem more reasonable than schemes run by premium brands — around €300 per month for a B segment car. (PSA)
Iran Khodro believes it has the right to use Peugeot logos on locally produced cars because the French manufacturer abruptly pulled out of the country, even though PSA disagrees. (IFP)

Renault and Nissan signed an “exclusive” deal with Waymo for mobility services in France and Japan. (Renault)
CEO Bollore dismissed recent rumours that Renault could reduce its stake in Nissan. (Reuters)
Nissan plans to add Renault’s chairman and CEO to two of the new oversight committees. (Nissan)

Moody’s downgraded Tata Motor’s debt rating, with a negative outlook. (Economic Times of India)
JLR’s CEO said the brands are not for sale, scotching recent rumours of interest from PSA. (Auto Express)

Leaked documents apparently show that Tesla won’t meet the quarterly production targets CEO Musk set for employees in May, Musk’s recent comments imply he still has faith. (Business Insider)
Reportedly restructuring its Asia Pacific sales operations so that China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will be a distinct division and the other markets will report into head office. (Bloomberg)
Tesla’s Grohmann (manufacturing engineering) division is developing a “giant, giant, giant” machine that will revolutionise manufacturing as we know it, according to the head of automotive. (Clean Technica)

Reportedly concluded that a factory in Saudi Arabia would need a government subsidy covering half the manufacturing costs to be viable. (Reuters)
Brought forward the date that the Japanese dealer network will be integrated to May 2020. (Toyota)

Plans to write 60% of the software in the car, up from 10% today by forming a team of 5,000 software engineers who will write a “vw.os” that all VW Group cars will use. (VW)
CEO Herbert Diess says that about half of VW’s engine and gearbox plants will need to close in the next 10 years, but expects battery production to compensate. (Autocar)
- Significance: It is a startling admission by VW, one very much in line with the findings of the E-FIRST report co-authored with Evercore ISI in late 2018. Diess’s expectation that redundancies will be offset by increases in electric powertrain production seems to be based on Tesla and Panasonic’s labour usage at the Gigafactory, but for this to soak up VW’s surplus labour, the company would need to build a far greater proportion of battery cells in-house than it is currently planning.
VW’s German car sharing brand WeShare will charge its electric vehicles through exclusive overnight use of the facilities in supermarket car parks. (VW)
VW’s newest car factory will reportedly be in Turkey, beating rival bids from Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria. The Turkish government has apparently agreed a three digit million euro support package. A firm decision is expected soon, with Bulgarian officials on standby to scupper the deal if they get a chance. VW’s underperformance in the local market seems a partial justification for the move. (Handelsblatt)
CEO Diess has reportedly told the team delivering the new Golf that he will be very unhappy with them if they don’t start delivering vehicles before the end of 2019. (Automotive News)
Porsche will offer a three-pronged portfolio of all-electric, hybrid and combustion engine only powertrains for at least the next 10 years. (USA Today)
Opened a new data centre in Norway that uses hydropower, letting VW claim it is carbon neutral. (VW)

Other

SAIC intends to start manufacturing cars in Egypt through a joint venture. (China Daily)
Thai firm Energy Absolute says there have already been 4,500 orders for the Mine Mobility all-electric hatchback, 3,500 of them came from a group of taxi drivers in Bangkok. (Electric Drive)
Aston Martin’s forthcoming hypercar, thus far dubbed the 003, will be called the Valhalla. CEO Andy Palmer says his company is learning about mid-engined cars from a variety of methods, one of which is osmosis-by-lunchtime-conversation. (Auto Express)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

European passenger car registrations in May of 1,443,708 units were up 0.04% on a year earlier. (ACEA)
The Spanish government intends to review a law passed by the Balearic Islands (a group of islands in the Mediterranean Sea) which bans diesel vehicles by 2025 and all internal combustion engines by 2035. Carmakers hope that the law is found unconstitutional. (ANFAC)
Japan intends to introduce measures that will reduce the number of accidents caused by older drivers after a series of high profile crashes, and might force them to only drive cars with emergency braking. (Economic Times of India)
- Significance: Carmakers have always struggled to market cars to older owners because although the group have specific needs that feature-rich (higher revenue) cars could solve, they simply don’t like being reminded that they are old. Could government action make a virtue of expensive added equipment and boost margins, or will they encourage people to drive less (and buy fewer cars)?

Suppliers

Johnson Matthey’s boss says that diesel will be around for ages. (The Telegraph)
Zenuity will be the preferred supplier of autonomous driving technology to Geely — not a massive surprise since Zenuityis part owned by Volvo. (Zenuity)
Axalta announced a “strategic review” of its business. (Axalta)

Dealers

Wholesale auctioneer BCA is reportedly the target of a £1.9 billion takeover offer. (FT)
Used car website Droom raised $10 million. (Deal Street Asia)

Via says it has much better utilisation rates than all other competitors in New York because the company’s cars have passengers in them 87% of the time, whilst the nearest rivals are 58% utilised. (Via)
Careem’s CFO suggested that even after the firm is acquired by Uber in early 2020, both brands might coexist because it is better for competition — although it isn’t clear what evidence the logic is based on. (Reuters)
Ride hailing start-up OnTime is launching in Southern China with backing from Tencent. (Tech In Asia)
Ride hailing network Micab has a new CEO. (Tech In Asia)
Didi Chuxing started offering rides by third party rivals within its app. (Tech In Asia)
VW’s German car sharing brand WeShare will charge its electric vehicles through exclusive overnight use of the facilities in supermarket car parks. (VW)

Lidar developer Velodyne has reportedly recruited investment bankers to prepare for an IPO, with a target valuation in excess of $1.8 billion. (Business Insider)
Insurance underwriters Lloyds of London expect driverless car technologies to change motor insurance within the next five years. (Bloomberg)
Innovusion’s new lidar unit has a claimed detection range of 200 metres and a $35,000 price tag. (Innovusion)
SafeAI came out of stealth mode, after raising $5 million, as a developer of self-driving software for off-highway vehicles. (TechCrunch)
ArgoAI is releasing a public dataset containing map data, object classification and movement patterns of various road users. Since the data covers only 1,000 hours of driving it is unlikely to have a great commercial value. (ArgoAI)
Humanising Autonomy raised $5 million to develop software that predicts the movements of pedestrians, with the results being fed into a self-driving vehicle’s decision making process. (TechCrunch)
- Significance: Given the complexity of the task of developing self-driving vehicle brains, it seems possible that companies which become specialist in identifying particular elements of the driving environment could have a role, both because they can sell their technology to multiple platforms and also because, as companies start to think about redundancy, alternative ways of processing the data could be advantageous.
Renault and Nissan signed an “exclusive” deal with Waymo for mobility services in France and Japan. (Renault)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

The German government plans to support three battery making alliance. (Reuters)
Charging operator ChargePoint has been acquired by Engie. (Fleet Europe)

Connectivity

Clavister and Tieto will collaborate to offer cyber security products for connected vehicles. (Telematics News)

Other

Scooter rental firm Vogo apparently wants to raise $50 million. (Live Mint)
Motorbike rental firm Bounce raised $72 million. (Deal Street Asia)
SoftBank’s CEO says most of the investors in the firm’s $100 billion Vision fund are ready for more and want to join the second mega fund. (Reuters)
Bicycle rental firm Yulu wants to raise about $20 million and Bajaj Auto might become an investor. (Times of India)
Bajaj Auto took a 27% stake in Maharashtra Scooters. (Autocar)

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 16th June 2019

June 18, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Phantom “production-ready” self-driving cars; electric car start-ups struggling to raise money; and why have VW dropped Aurora? Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 10^th June to 16^th June 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

My Generation — Uber / Volvo and Ford / Argo AI unveiled “third generation”, “production ready” self-driving vehicles. This continues an unfortunate theme led by GM’s Cruise. No one has a driverless car that works reliably, no one knows what sensor set is therefore required, or whether regulators will want anything on top to provide a safety factor. So how can anyone declare these cars production ready?
Oh Dear What Can The Matter Be — The CEO of Chinese electric car market Xpeng says it is getting harder to raise money from investors as Tesla and Nio have struggled on public markets. How is this a surprise? Hasn’t starting a car company always been a high-risk endeavour? That doesn’t mean don’t do it, but why not have your eyes open to the challenge?
Too Good At Goodbyes — VW has broken off its self-driving partnership with Aurora, implying it is close to a deal with Ford and Argo AI. The question is why? Having multiple partners seems like a no-lose proposition (apart from spending more money, but then you don’t know what you’re spending it on anyway). Join up with Ford, but why not continue to work with Aurora? The most reasonable explanation is that their technology is rubbish, but then wouldn’t FCA (who work with Waymo) know a thing or two about that?

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

Said that competition was a more powerful motivator than money in persuading drivers of plug in hybrid vehicles to use electric only mode in city centres. (Automotive News)
Ansys and BMW are developing software that will assess the capabilities of self-driving systems and allow various sensors to be compared against one another using example real world data collected by BMW. Ansys will then offer the system to third parties, where they have “exclusive rights” — presumably BMW will still bank some form of royalty fees. (Ansys)

Signed a deal with charging networks Enel and Engie to provide coverage for FCA customers with electric vehicles in Europe. (FCA)

Opening a new research centre in Tel Aviv, Israel, mainly to house existing subsidiary SAIPS. (Ford)
Lyft rebranded the Ford GoBike scheme in San Francisco as Bay Wheels. (Lyft)
Issued a series of recalls, including 1.2 million Explorer SUVs (and a smaller number of other vehicles) to correct suspension fatigue; plus 123,000 pick-up trucks to correct an earlier recall for powertrain calibration. (Ford)
VW’s CEO reportedly told managers an autonomous vehicle partnership with Ford was almost complete. (Reuters)
Workers at the Bridgend engine plant voted in favour of being prepared to strike but didn’t pull the trigger. (BBC)

Geely and LG Chem created a joint venture to produce batteries for electric vehicles. The initial investment is $188 million, implying that either operations will start out small or more money will quickly be needed. (Geely)
Volvo said it had developed a production vehicle “ready” for self-driving in collaboration with Uber. (Volvo)
LEVC revealed the long-awaited van based on the London Taxi. The firm claims best in class ownership costs, implying a price point substantially below that of the taxi, given the size of the load bay. (LEVC)

Investing $150 million at the Flint, USA, plant to increase annual capacity for heavy duty pick-up trucks by 40,000 units. (GM)
GM’s VC unit invested in Spring Labs, who are developing a blockchain-based method for sharing and tracking financial transactions. (Spring Labs)

Deepened an existing partnership with Aurora to develop driverless cars by making an investment of an undisclosed amount (rumoured to be sub-$30 million) in the firm. (Kia)
As rumoured, Kia will stop producing cars at one of the three Chinese joint venture plants at the end of June, the factory will instead be used to make electric cars for a domestic brand (said to be Human Horizons). (Yonhap)
Hyundai’s chairman called on G20 energy ministers to support the creation of a hydrogen economy that could support zero emission vehicles. (Hyundai)
- Significance: Japanese and Korean car makers seem particularly convinced of the potential for hydrogen powered vehicles but it seems as though they have not yet done enough to make others feel the same.

Appeared to back down from an earlier stance that Renault executives shouldn’t be on the new oversight committees Nissan intends to establish. (Les Echos)
Off-the-record sources said new Renault chairman Senard has decided that the CEOs of both Renault and Nissan are “irritants” impeding good relationships between the alliance partners. (Reuters)

Opel has supposedly been told by German regulators to recall Adam and Corsa models fitted with oxygen sensors that can give faulty readings under some conditions and lead to excessive emissions. (Bloomberg)
PSA say that electric motors require only about 30% to 40% of the workforce that a comparable small internal combustion engine needs. (Les Echos)

Off-the-record sources said new Renault chairman Senard has decided that the CEOs of both Renault and Nissan are “irritants” impeding good relationships between the alliance partners. (Reuters)
Renault Chairman Senard told shareholders that he was confused about the French government’s attitude towards the proposed merger with FCA because it had been the finance minister’s idea in the first place. (WSJ)
Agreed terms of a wage deal with Renault-Samsung workers in South Korea. They will get a $10,000 bonus but no pay rises. Union bosses wouldn’t agree to Renault’s request to stop striking until at least 2021. (Yonhap)

Recalling I-Pace electric vehicles to fix problems with the regenerative braking. (Inside EVs)

CEO Musk told shareholders that Tesla had a “decent short at a record quarter on every level” and stressed that there was absolutely no demand problem for the firm’s cars. None whatsoever. The steep drop in Model S and X volumes is not relevant. (CNBC)
In off the cuff remarks, CEO Musk suggested that at very high production levels it could make sense for Tesla to own mines and guarantee supplies of raw materials. (TechCrunch)
- Significance: Whilst Musk’s comments should be taken with a pinch of salt, they imply that somehow the supply chain logic of every other part of the vehicle is wrong and vertical integration is best — why don’t car companies own iron mines and steel companies?
Will enter the insurance market soon, pending an unspecified acquisition that Tesla needs to make. (CNBC)

Announced a reorganisation, mainly affecting the engineering team structure. (Toyota)
Planning to announce more partners for the Monet self-driving vehicle venture this month (currently Toyota, SoftBank, Honda and Hino Motors have stakes). (Reuters)
Reportedly intends to reduce the bonuses of top managers by around 5% because of rising spending. (Japan Times)

Ended the self-driving vehicle development partnership with Aurora. (FT)
- Significance: Since FCA’s deal with Aurora (alongside BMW and Waymo) implies non-exclusivity, it is odd to see VW abandon the relationship — even with Ford waiting in the wings — unless it believed that Aurora’s technology was greatly inferior.
CEO Diess reportedly told managers an autonomous vehicle partnership with Ford was almost complete. (Reuters) He also said that an alliance with Ford was a wise move because the company was becoming too China-oriented in its thinking and a US perspective was a useful counterbalance. (Manager Magazin)
Audi recalled about 540 e-tron all-electric SUVs in the USA saying it needed to repair seals that could allow water into the battery compartment. (Inside EVs)
VW’s partner in Algeria is reportedly under investigation for corruption. (Economic Times of India)
Hopes that an IPO of truck unit Traton will raise about €1.9 billion. (VW)
VW’s plant in Tennessee, USA, voted against unionisation, but given the closeness of the vote (712 to 626), it seemed likely that this won’t be the last try. (Reuters)
Invested €900 million in battery producer Northvolt for about 20% of the firm and confirmed plans to create a joint venture that will have a 16 GWh factory. (VW)

Other

Xpeng’s CEO said the poor share price performance of publicly traded electric car companies (i.e. Tesla and NIO) was making it more difficult for him to raise money, and even harder for anyone not planning to launch a product in the next few months. (CNBC)
Ultima says its new RS model can go faster than 250mph. If you want one, there is a two year waiting list, unless you are prepared to build it yourself in which case that can be cut to a mere six months. (Ultima)
Evergrande is reportedly finding it difficult to bring electric cars into production. (Caixin) but apparently intends to spend $23 billion building three factories that collectively can build vehicle components, 500 GWh of batteries and 1 million cars annually. (Global Times)
- Significance: Unless I’ve got my maths wrong, the 500 GWh of battery capacity number either doesn’t make sense or implies that 80% – 90% of the capacity would be for third parties.
Electric vehicle start-up Aiways invested $253 million in a Changan subsidiary, reportedly in order to get production permits for its new range of cars. (China Daily)
Ares Design showed the production version of the Panther ProgettoUno with 650hp on tap and a €615,000 price tag. The car’s technical specifications are very similar to the Lamborghini Huracán. (Ares Design)
Workhorse raised $25 million, saying it has enough to bring the N-Gen truck to production. (Workhorse)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

Outgoing UK prime minister Theresa May said the UK would commit to a plant that would see almost nil greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. (BBC)
French ministers said the government would go ahead with plans to end sales of (purely) gasoline and diesel powered vehicles by 2040 via a new mobility law. (Reuters)
The penny is starting to drop in Germany that more expensive emissions legislation and (non-mandatory) safety tests are forcing manufacturers out of smaller, cheaper, car segments. (FAZ)

Suppliers

The head of the Spanish dealer association says a drop in sales of 100,000 units annually equates to around 3,000 staff losing their jobs. (Coche Global)
Continental showed a prototype dashboard that uses clever displays to create a 3D image that doesn’t require special glasses. The new technology will be in production from 2022. (Autocar)
Toyoda Gosei invested $1 million in QBIT Robotics, gaining a 7.6% stake. (Toyoda Gosei)
Yanfeng might soon start making interiors that use materials produced as a by-product from paper making instead of oil-based plastics. (Yanfeng)
Veoneer will buy Nissin Kogyo out of their US joint venture and the two agreed a clearer formula for funding the remaining non-US plants. (Veoneer)
Denso and Honeywell agreed to collaborate on engines for electric air taxis. (Honeywell)

Short term rental firms Zoomcar and Drivezy are said to be in merger talks. (Deal Street Asia)
The CEO of Bolt (formerly Taxify) said the ride hailing service had demonstrated “a few profitable quarters”, but didn’t explain how he was measuring it. (Business Insider)
Citymapper is shutting down its bus routes in London, blaming regulation and the poor economics of offering ridesharing with only a few vehicles. (Citymapper)
French firm Ucar is offering users cars for €105 per month if they agree to rent them out (with some leg work involved for the owner to ferry the car around) and says that if they maximise the service, the net monthly rental could fall to €49. (Ucar)
Go-Jek acquired recruitment start-up AirCTO to help it bring in new staff faster. (Deal Street Asia)

Uber says that self-driving cars will probably still have accidents but that they will never have another crash like the other than killed a pedestrian last year and let journalists tour its test site. (CBS)
Innoviz said it raised $170 million in its latest round ($132 of it was already announced). (Innoviz)
Other road users “bully” autonomous cars, according to Uber which has recorded numerous incidents of drivers cutting across and abusing right of way. Given that these are situations regular drivers are likely to frequently encounter, Uber didn’t offer any statistics about how much worse it is for a driverless vehicle. (V3)
Sense Photonics raised $26 million to develop lidar sensors. (Sense Photonics)
Uber (Volvo XC90) and Argo AI (Ford Fusion / Mondeo) unveiled updated versions of their self-driving cars, claiming to be one step closer to production. Uber drew attention to the integration of Volvo’s underlying safety features so that the car comes to a safe stop if the software (or human driver) disengages. (Uber) / (Argo AI)
- Significance: This idea of a third generation car seems to have been popularised by GM’s Cruise division but notion of cleanly packaging all the sensors to make something look production ready seems slightly odd when set against the absence of a self-driving AI that works. Companies are in effect implying that they have perfected the sensor suite without knowing if it is actually true.
Yandex outlined the differences local weather and traffic signs made to training a self-driving car. (Yandex)
Luminar plans to sell a lidar sensor that enables driver assistance functions such as emergency braking and steering for $500, less clear is whether manufacturers will plump for it over camera based systems. (Reuters)
Ansys and BMW are developing software that will assess the capabilities of self-driving systems and allow various sensors to be compared against one another using example real world data collected by BMW. Ansys will then offer the system to third parties, where they have “exclusive rights” — presumably BMW will still bank some form of royalty fees. (Ansys)
Hyundai and Kia deepened an existing partnership with Aurora to develop driverless cars by making an investment of an undisclosed amount in the firm. Aurora said it raised $600 million in total Series B funding. (Aurora) and made no mention of losing VW as a partner. (FT)
- Significance: Since it was earlier rumoured that Aurora had rebuffed VW’s offers of investment, this seems like a change in strategy.

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

Ford’s ex-CEO Mark Fields said electric vehicle demand would only grow slowly and lots of carmakers were going to look silly in the next 2 – 3 years for making investments in cars no one wants. (Automotive News)
Charging network Fastned filed for an IPO hoping to raise €27 million. (Fastned)
VW invested €900 million in battery producer Northvolt for about 20% of the firm and confirmed plans to create a joint venture that will have a 16 GWh factory. (VW)

Other

Air taxi start-up Lilium says a flight from Manhattan to JFK airport (about 20 miles) will take six minutes and cost about $70. Commercial flights are slated for 2025. That works out at about 8 times faster than a taxi for around 1.5 times the price. (CNBC)
Scooter rental firm Bird confirmed that it acquired smaller rival Scoot. The Scoot brand will remain (presumably to prevent regulators re-appraising Scoot’s operating permits in San Francisco). (Bird)
Uber displayed a mock-up of the interior for its forthcoming air taxi. (Futurism) and says that although at launch per mile costs will be above $5 they will fall to around $2 in the “near term” and match car ownership (e.g. sub $1 per mile) in the “long term”. (TechCrunch)
Uber and AT&T are experimenting with the use of 5G networks for air taxis and drones — in particular they are studying at what altitude the signal becomes unreliable. (ZDNet)
CATL, Hellobike and Alibaba’s Ant Financial are creating a joint venture to build batteries for electric bikes and operate a network of battery swapping stations. (Reuters)
Boeing is buying aerospace interiors company EnCore. (Reuters)
- Significance: The supply chain of aerospace, where companies buy an empty tube (save for some wiring) and use third parties to fit it out to fulfil brand-specific needs likely has some parallels for a world of ubiquitous on-demand transport. This move by Boeing to integrate aircraft supply and fitting could be a hedge against recession (fewer new planes, more refits) or be based on a belief that a firm with combined expertise can offer more; or both.

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 9th June 2019

June 11, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Share the past as well as the future; FCA dancing with multiple self-driving suitors; and are Ford staff right to be unhappy? Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 3^rd June to 9^th June 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

Future Proof — Toyota and Subaru will develop an electric vehicle together and BMW will share electric motor designs with JLR. The brands believe that there are plenty of areas where components can be shared without the customer noticing. So far, so sensible. But if it is such a great idea to share new-fangled electric vehicle parts, what do manufacturers stubbornly cling to their own internal combustion engine designs?
All The Lovers — FCA will partner with Aurora to develop self-driving vehicles. This is on top of existing agreements with BMW / Mobileye and Waymo. Although the exact investment, package and variable cost implications of using someone else’s system aren’t clear (because no one has a design that works), FCA at least show that fear of missing out is a fiction… providing you have enough volume to bring to the party.
I Have Questions — In 2016, 81% of Ford employees were satisfied with the company, in 2018 it was down to 60%. How are we supposed to reconcile the rapidly dropping morale of the troops with the sunny disposition of executives?

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

Find our archive here.

Apology

Last week I made a stupid joke about Volvo’s efforts to improve safety. It was unfunny, unwarranted and not something I am proud of. This weekly review aims to keep you well informed, with enjoyable moments amongst the detail, and improve Ad Punctum’s reputation along the way. I didn’t do that last week, and I am sorry.

News about the major automakers

Announced a collaboration with JLR on next generation electric drives, based on the unit that will debut in the BMW iX3 SUV. Both companies will independently produce drives from common designs. (BMW)
Invested in data processing firm Yellowbrick Data. (FINSMES)
Opened a new plant for 3 Series in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (BMW)
Will make “safety-relevant” European traffic data available without licence feeds from 1^st July. (BMW)

Will start marketing the China-only Denza brand, created in collaboration with BYD, through Mercedes-Benz dealers in China in a bid to increase demand. (China Daily)
Adding a new city to its US subscription scheme pilot, and a new tier for AMG models. (TechCrunch)
The CEO of Torc Robotics — in which Daimler recently took a majority stake — believes autonomous trucks will develop more quickly than robotaxis over the next decade, with the first applications on daily long haul routes of 300 miles or so. (Trucking Info)

Called off the merger proposal with Renault, saying the French government had been unreasonable. (FCA)
Being sued by the executive in charge of US sales, claiming he is victimised for cooperating with a regulatory probe into sales reporting. Although he oversaw the discredited reporting practices for many years, he says that they had been in place long before that. (Reuters)
Recalling almost 300,000 US pick-up trucks to fix problems with seat belts and air bags. (FCA)
Partnered with Aurora to develop self-driving technology. (Aurora)
- Significance: FCA now has relationships with three different self-driving groups: BMW / Mobileye; Waymo and Aurora. Although the impact on variable costs and package of having a third party system remain unclear (because no one has a working system), FCA’s strategy shows that with sufficient volume, doors remain open to collaboration.

Ferrari

Formula 1 teams are reportedly set for a $175 million cost cap in 2021 — excluding engines, drivers and marketing costs. Although this would probably force the Ferrari team to reduce its footprint (and potentially cede some competitiveness), it could be positive for profits if prize and sponsorship income were unchanged. (Motorsport)

Released its latest sustainability report. Revealingly, Ford’s employees appear less than impressed with the current state of the firm. In the 2016 report Ford’s internal surveys found 81% were satisfied with the company. That fell to 71% in 2017 and 60% last year. (Ford)
Will start production of battery packs at the Valencia, Spain, factory. Unions fretted that this was partial compensation in advance for as-yet unannounced workload reductions in other areas of the plant. (Europa Press)
Ford’s Chinese JV with Changan was fined $23.6 million because of the way it set resale guarantees. (Arab News)
Executives said that there had been interest from several companies in Ford’s shuttered Russian sites and the company was keen to sell them. (Economic Times of India)
Confirmed plans to close the Bridgend engine factory in late 2020 once deliveries of engines to Jaguar Land Rover cease. Production of Ford’s 1.5 litre engine will stop in early 2020. (Ford)
- Significance: Ford blamed falling demand and under-utilisation but the decision taken several years ago to only install only a fraction of the plant’s then nearly 1 million units of annual capacity appears to have precipitated an inevitable decline. As with the closure of Honda’s Swindon plant, mainstream national politicians refused to get involved, presumably in case Ford decided to say it was because of Brexit (which it doesn’t appear to be).
The head of Ford’s automotive division believes that if fuel prices rise, US customers will switch to hybrid SUVs rather than passenger cars and so the company’s decision to exit car segments won’t be impacted by economic factors. He also denies that the firm is behind competitors in developing battery electric vehicles. (Ford)
Ford has three major suppliers for steel in North America and negotiates yearlong contracts, with renewals staggered so that they take place once per quarter (with one quarter off so the purchasing team can rest). (Ford)

Expanded the amount of US and Canadian highway mapped for the Super Cruise hands-off driving system from 130,000 to 200,000 miles, and added some ability to drive through intersections. (Detroit News)
GM’s president says forthcoming all-electric vehicles will be profitable despite intending to charge “very average” transaction prices and that cost parity between electric and conventionally powered cars will arrive “sooner than people think”. (Bloomberg)

Kia’s new compact SUV will be called the Seltos. (Kia)
Will use sensors and algorithms developed by Israeli firm MDGo in a pilot project to assess occupant condition after an accident. (Hyundai)
Released the first images of the new XCeed Crossover model. (Kia)
Although Kia is exploring new business models relating to mobility and transportation and a service, the company is struggling to see a route to profitability and is especially troubled by how to cope with residual value risk when providing new cars in alternative schemes. (Forbes)

Mazda

Mazda executives admitted that the firm may have to pay some fines in 2020 for missing European fleet CO₂ targets but says everything will be sorted out by 2021 when the company launches a new BEV. (Automotive News)
The new Mazda 3 sports an internal combustion engine augmented by a 24V electric motor — 48V is becoming de rigeur, 12V is old money. (Mazda)
- Significance: Cheaper than 48V, Mazda appears to be taking a partial regulatory cost hit to electrically augment engines now, with the potential to go to a more capable 48V system should regulatory demands force the firm’s hand. The 24V also suffers from relatively poor NEDC to WLTP performance compared to many 48V systems.

Renault complained that it was under-represented in Nissan’s new corporate governance plan, but didn’t object to the new framework, threatening to abstain from any shareholder vote (and effectively block the move). Nissan called the stance “regrettable”. (Nissan)
Nissan could refuse to support any revamped merger proposal between FCA and Renault unless the latter sells some of its Nissan stake. (Reuters)

Launched Free2Move Rent, a service offering online booking for short term rental. PSA says that by the end of the year, 20,000 cars and commercial vehicles will be on offer. (PSA)
The all-electric Corsa clearly isn’t aiming to make too much of a sales impact. Opel has set the car’s price at almost €30,000. (Opel) The car Opel really hopes people will buy is the Grandland X plug-in hybrid. (Opel)
Peugeot’s UK boss said the brand had walked away from 5,000 fleet deals since 2017 to protect margins and that he wants to weed out loss-making dealers, threatening any site that makes a loss in 2019 with the cancellation of its franchise agreement. In the event of a no-deal Brexit, PSA intends to immediately pass through tariff costs via increased wholesale prices. (Automotive Manager)

FCA called off the merger proposal with Renault, saying the French government had been unreasonable. After agreeing to job guarantees, improved financial terms and governance structures, it seems as though demands to get Nissan’s buy-in were the final straw. (FCA)
- Significance: Given that FCA called off talks less then two weeks after going public, in the face of entirely predictable French government demands, the question seems to be, were they poorly advised or unrealistically optimistic? Renault’s management, FCA’s advisers and FCA’s own globetrotting executives should surely have expected some degree of government arm-twisting given the state’s large shareholding and similar manoeuvres in other industrial M&A.
Said an audit concluded that some of the expenses by Renault-Nissan’s jointly-owned Dutch subsidiary raised “concerns” and that it would work with Nissan to take action against Carlos Ghosn. (Renault)
Threw a spanner in the works of Nissan plans to change the corporate governance structure, complaining that Renault was under-represented in the new plan, but not objecting to the new framework. (Reuters)
As wage negotiations with Renault Samsung bosses faltered, many line workers appeared to break ranks with union calls for an all-out strike. Union leaders said it was gossip spread by malicious managers. (Korea Times)
The French government is prepared to reduce its stake in Renault if it helped to safeguard the future of the alliance with Nissan. (AFP)
Nissan could refuse to support any revamped merger proposal between FCA and Renault unless the latter sells some of its Nissan stake. (Reuters)

Announced a collaboration with BMW on next generation electric drives, based on the unit that will debut in the BMW iX3 SUV. Both companies will independently produce drives from common designs. (JLR)
JLR’s design chief is moving on professionally, but will remain as a consultant. (JLR)

Developing a dedicated electric vehicle platform for mid-sized and large passenger vehicles,. The first project will be a C-sized SUV that both companies will badge and market separately. (Subaru)
Said that electric vehicles were more popular than it had anticipated in 2017 and product plans had therefore been revisited. Amongst the vehicles now planned is a mini car with heavily restricted performance (e.g. maximum speed of 60 km/h) and various standing and sitting electric scooters. Toyota will have six global BEVs (including the Suzuki, Daihatsu and Subaru collaborations) and will expand the range of battery suppliers it works with. (Toyota)

Agreed with unions that 4,000 German jobs can be eliminated by 2023 in VW’s digitalisation initiative, but only in exchange for guarantees that there will be no involuntary redundancies until 2029. VW executives had previously talked about up to 7,000 posts going. (VW)
After months of rumours, the sale of transmissions maker Renk is reportedly imminent. (Reuters)

Other

NEVS acquired electric hub motor developer Protean. (Protean)
Gordon Murray plan to build 100 V12-powered T.50 supercars, with deliveries starting in 2022 and prices in excess of £2 million. (Gordon Murray)
Great Wall started production at a new factory in Russia. (Great Wall)
Chinese electric vehicle maker Bordrin Motor raised $361 million. (Deal Street Asia)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

President Trump abruptly called off his threat to implement US tariffs on Mexican imports, citing improved anti-immigration practices. (Reuters)
US light vehicle industry SAAR in May reached 17.31 million units, up 3% on prior year. (Wards)
May passenger car registrations in the UK of 183,724 units fell (4.6)% compared to a year earlier. (SMMT)
German passenger car registrations in May of 332,962 vehicles rose 9.1% from a year earlier. (KBA)
In May, France had 193,948 passenger car registrations, an increase of 1.2% from prior year. (CCFA)
Spain saw 125,625 passenger cars registered during May, a drop of (7.3)% from prior year. (ANFAC)
Passenger car registrations in Italy during May totalled 197,307 units, a (1.1)% decrease versus prior year. (UNRAE)
China’s government will encourage new car sales in rural areas and has told cities to stop restricting the number of permits available to electrified vehicles. (Economic Times of India)

Suppliers

Bharat Forge increased its holding in electric motorcycle company Tork Motors to almost 49%. (Autocar)
Michelin enlisted GM to help testing airless tyres. The main claimed benefit is that tyres will not need to be replaced because of punctures or damage, and that fuel economy deterioration due to inconsistent tyre pressure will be a thing of the past. (Michelin)
Joyson simplified operations in India by combing two separate joint ventures. (Autocar)
ZF has developed an airbag that uses input from crash sensors to determine that a side impact is imminent and then opens on the outside of the vehicle to provide additional cushioning. ZF claims a 40% reduction in accident severity, although it isn’t clear how this is determined. (ZF)

Hertz announced a “subscription” scheme that offers a wide range of vehicles, with up to two changes per month for $999, or a posher selection for $1,399. (Hertz)
Uber’s COO and marketing chiefs lost their jobs because the CEO wants greater day-to-day control. (ZDNet)
Uber said its accounts were under review by US tax authorities and a write down in unrecognised tax benefits of $141 million is expected. (Reuters)
India’s government will reportedly demand that ride hailing companies convert at least 40% of their fleets to electric vehicles by 2026. (Reuters)

Interest in autonomous technology by the United States Parcel Service (USPS) led industry observers to wonder whether the firm might specify some degree of future-proofing in a much anticipated order to replace its mainly 90’s era fleet of short distance delivery vans. (Trucks)
Quanergy said it would not accept the patent ruling in Velodyne’s favour, and that the Velodyne puck wouldn’t work if it were not for Quanergy’s intellectual property. (Quanergy)
Apple is reportedly in talks to buy self-driving start-up Drive.ai. (The Information)
Self-driving vehicle developer Gatik.ai emerged from stealth mode, saying Walmart are an early customer for a pilot program. (TechCrunch)
FCA partnered with Aurora to develop self-driving technology. (Aurora)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

Industry insiders appear concerned at the lack of a transparent pricing mechanism for lithium, a key raw material in most electric vehicle battery designs. (Reuters)
NEVS acquired electric hub motor developer Protean. (Protean)
India’s government will reportedly demand that ride hailing companies convert at least 40% of their fleets to electric vehicles by 2026. (Reuters)

Connectivity

A group comprised of HERE, TomTom, Daimler, BMW, Ford and Volvo are undertaking a vehicle to everything (V2X) test program across Germany, Spain, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden. (Daimler)
Cohda Wireless and Sasken technologies will jointly develop V2X hardware and software. (Telematics News)

Other

Bus maker TEMSA has a new owner. (TEMSA)
Flying car builder NFT showed off the Aska and claims people could subscribe to partial ownership for between $200 to $300 per month. (CNET)
Scooter rental firm Bird plans to launch electric mopeds, a higher speed offering with room for two. (The Verge) The company has reportedly agreed to acquire smaller rival Scoot. (TechCrunch)
10,000 surplus bicycles, discarded by Ofo and oBike as they abandoned operations in Singapore have found a new lease of life as transport for students in Myanmar. (Tech In Asia)
Bicycle and scooter rental service Grow Mobility merged with payments start-up Flinto. (TechCrunch)
Amazon’s CEO believes that within ten years, robots will be able to reliably grip objects with a similar dexterity to a human hand. (Reuters)
- Significance: Contrary to popular belief, the assembly stage of a car is still almost entirely manual, with little philosophical difference between a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a Ford Fiesta (from a manufacturing engineer’s viewpoint — conveyor method and production tempo notwithstanding). Robots that could grasp and assemble nuts, bolts and cables, would be a significant productivity step (and be bad news for low-skilled jobs).

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 2nd June 2019

June 4, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Smaller pay packets for fat cats; saving money by thinking differently; and how loyal will young customers be? Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 27^th May to 2^nd June 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

Apparently Nothin’ — Nissan’s CEO had his pay slashed for failing to control Carlos Ghosn and Suzuki’s chairman will have to work for free after the inspection scandal. Would US and European executives contemplate doing the same?
The Weight — Hyundai has developed a commercial vehicle that weighs itself and chooses the most efficient powertrain settings. The idea isn’t new, but Hyundai’s system saves money by using differences in acceleration as a proxy for weight, rather than measuring it properly, which needs an expensive suspension set up. How many other parts of the vehicle are we over-complicating?
Forever Young — Honda says that automakers cancelling passenger cars and pouring money into SUVs are making a big mistake because hatchbacks and saloons are the vehicle of choice for 70% of younger American customers. Granted, many of them might make a different choice if they had more money, but they don’t. Will customers switch to US OEMs as they get a bit richer, or stay with Honda et al?

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

Unveiled the 3^rd generation 1 Series, now front wheel drive. Sales will start in September. (BMW)
Released an updated X1 small SUV. (BMW)
The all-electric Mini derivative will start production in November 2019. (BMW)
Perhaps inspired by their former colleagues at Byton, BMW will put a massive screen in the iNEXT. (BMW)

Says that it will cost more than €500 million, and take up to ten years, to develop self-driving trucks that can operate within geo-fenced areas. Daimler sees the US as the most lucrative initial market. (Daimler)

FCA’s code names when developing the merger offer for Renault were apparently: Fermi (FCA); Rutherford (Renault) and Newton (the combined entity / deal). (Detroit Free Press)
Reportedly may sweeten the merger deal in Renault’s favour by offering a special dividend and basing the new company’s headquarters in France. (Reuters)
France’s finance minister said the government would have several conditions, including job guarantees, to agree to a Renault-FCA merger, but was cautiously supportive. (Reuters)

Ferrari

Announced the SF90 Stradale, a forthcoming PHEV model that will boast a combined 1,000 hp output from a V8 engine and three electric motors. (Ferrari)
Ferrari F1 sponsor Philip Morris’s COO said that anyone who thinks the Mission Winnow branding on Ferrari’s cars reminds them of the Marlboro cigarettes logo should “see a doctor”. (Telegraph)

Stopped selling the Edge in several European markets, including the UK. (Fleet News)

Lotus will unveil the Type 130 all-electric hypercar on 16^th July and says the model will be limited to 130 examples and built at the Hethel, UK, factory. (Lotus)
Volvo invested in virtual reality company Arjo. (Volvo)
Volvo developed a new way of simulating crashes between cyclists and cars, to reduce accident severity. (Volvo)

Increasing pick-up truck production at the Ford Wayne, USA plant. (GM)
Will produce Chevrolet Trailblazer SUVs in South Korea, and export them to the USA. (Yonhap)
US regulators said they were checking whether GM had properly implemented a 2014 seat belt recall. (Reuters)

Honda’s research says that younger buyers in the USA prefer passenger cars over minivans, and the brand believes that staying in the segment whilst rivals leave will protect the future. (Forbes)
The Honda e electric city car will have camera wing mirrors as standard. (Honda)

Hyundai and Kia are developing an electric commercial vehicle that weighs itself so that it can select the most efficient motor settings. Because the system uses accelerometers, it can avoid costly air suspension. (KIA)
Hyundai is opening a mobility research centre in Russia. (Hyundai)
Hyundai wants to sell hydrogen fuel cell systems to rivals, rather than have them develop their own. (FT)

Nissan will dock the CEO’s pay by 50% because of his role in the Ghosn scandal. (Nissan)
Nissan’s CEO said the firm wasn’t opposed to FCA’s proposed merger with Renault. (Nissan)
The Infiniti brand’s will move from Hong Kong to Japan as part of cost-cutting measures. (Nissan)

CEO Tavares reportedly told senior PSA executives that the FCA-Renault proposal would be a virtual takeover of the French manufacturer with the benefit mainly accruing to FCA. (Bloomberg)
Faurecia took a stake in cyber security firm GuardKnox. (Autocar)
Lucky Motors expects to finalise a deal to produce PSA vehicles in Pakistan from knock down kits within the next two months and says the project will cost $15 million. (Dawn)

FCA may reportedly sweeten the merger deal in Renault’s favour by offering a special dividend and basing the new company’s headquarters in France. (Reuters)
France’s finance minister said the government would have several conditions, including job guarantees, to agree to a Renault-FCA merger, but was cautiously supportive. (Reuters)

Suzuki

Took away the chairman’s salary for a year and slashed the president’s as punishment for their failure to identify and rectify improper conduct in end of line inspections. (Japan Times)
Maruti Suzuki scheduled plant shutdowns to reduce inventory. (Bloomberg)

CEO Musk exhorted employees to catch up on vehicle deliveries and help Tesla to achieve a record quarter. (Reuters)
Rumoured to be combining Model S and X production onto a single line to make room for facilities to make the Model Y. A refreshed Model S is rumoured to be on the way for September. (CNBC)
Elon Musk implied that the forthcoming Tesla pick-up truck will have a retail price of under $50,000. (Inside EVs)
Started to take orders for Chinese-built Model 3 vehicles, which will be cheaper than the imported version. (Reuters)

Launching a new plant in Myanmar to build pick-up trucks. (Toyota)
Unveiled an updated Lexus RX SUV. (Lexus)

Rumoured to have concerns that a 20 GWh battery supply deal with Samsung will ultimately only deliver 5 GWh because of differences over production volumes and point in time demands. VW said that it still regarded Samsung as a major supplier. (Bloomberg)
Showed a concept interior with infotainment controlled via a holographic interface. (VW)
Audi advertising executives were presumably so exhausted by the process of securing the rights to Tomoyasu Hotei’s “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” that afterwards they paired it with an underwhelming e-tron advert. (YouTube)
Workers at the Chattanooga, USA, plant will vote on whether to unionise. (Reuters)
The Traton truck division will have a dual-listing on the Frankfurt and Nasdaq exchanges. (VW)
SEAT and JAC signed the detailed cooperation agreement that will see the two develop electric cars together and experiment with new mobility services in Hefei, China. (VW)
Porsche used 7,654 different suppliers in 2019. (VW)
Porsche believes that by the time the all-electric Macan becomes available, public perception will have moved enough that it can be a sales success. The US-market subscription program is apparently going so well that it will be expanded to more cities, and that the average customer age is lower than car buyers. (Automotive News)

Other

NIO announced Q1 2019 sales of 3,989 units and revenue of $228 million, with an operating loss of $(390) million, substantially worse than Q4 2018. NIO is in the final stages of agreeing detailed terms to receive 10 billion RMB (about $1.45 billion) from investment firm Beijing E-Town, hoping it will help find a factory. If the deal closes, NIO will have three different joint ventures. (NIO)
Isuzu and Cummins announced a collaboration to develop diesel engines. (Cummins)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

UK car production in April fell (44.7)% versus a year earlier as plants took shut downs planned for the original Brexit timing cut production. (SMMT)
US president Trump announced a series of automatically escalating tariffs on Mexican imports, unless the country reduces the flow of migrants, to his satisfaction. (CNBC)
Carmakers complained that a regional court in Russia had been making corrupt decisions by awarding excessively high damages in consumer protection cases. (Moscow Times)
China may respond to US tariffs with restrictions on exports of rare earth metals, according to well-informed local newspapers. (Reuters)

Suppliers

Saint-Gobain acquired acoustic and thermal insulation supplier Pritex. (Autocar)
Chipmaker NXP will buy Marvell’s wireless connectivity business. (Reuters)
Consultancy Ricardo says that using fewer, more powerful, electronics controllers in cars, rather than the multiple units in today’s models, will save $500 per unit. (Autocar)
Infineon agreed terms to acquire Cypress Semiconductors in a $10 billion deal. (Reuters)

Dealers

Chinese used car dealer Uxin is raising $230 million in debt. (TechCrunch)
Scout24 is interested in buying EBay’s car listings business. (Reuters)

Uber announced financial results for Q1 2019. Net revenue of $3.1 billion rose 20% on a year-over-year basis whilst the operational loss of $(1.03) billion was more than double the loss in the same period a year earlier. Uber says it now has 93 million monthly users and that one day it will make money. (Uber)
Ideanomics and iUnicorn (Shenma Zhuanche) formed a joint venture to provide financing to ride hailing drivers, underpinned by almost 110,000 of existing iUnicorn orders. (Ideanomics)
Bus operator FirstGroup said it will sell the Greyhound coach service, citing “limited synergies” with the rest of the business. (Reuters)

Waymo will start testing self-driving trucks alongside the existing minivan fleet in Phoenix, USA. (Detroit News)
Lyft and Aptiv’s pilot robotaxi program in Las Vegas has passed 50,000 journeys. (Lyft)
An MIT study concluded that robotaxis would have higher per mile costs than Uber today. (Business Insider)
Chinese firm Neolix says it is ready to start mass production of small driverless delivery vans and aims to produce 1,000 vehicles in the first year, quickly rising to 30,000, selling for around $30,000 each. (SCMP)
Velodyne trumpeted winning a patent case against Quanergy. (Velodyne)
Sensor company TriEye raised $17 million. (Reuters)
Daimler says that it will cost more than €500 million, and take up to ten years, to develop self-driving trucks that can operate within geo-fenced areas. Daimler sees the US as the most lucrative initial market. (Daimler)

Before you read the detail, what were my favourite stories of the past week…?

Three Indian state-owned companies created a joint venture to secure raw materials for electric vehicle batteries through buying mines that can supply lithium and cobalt. (Economic Times of India)
Chakratec launched a high-power charger which uses kinetic recovery (rather than a battery) to boost output from local grid levels. (Chakratec)
Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard has established a new battery start-up called Tiveni. (Electrek)
Charging provider Ionity (a VW Group / Ford / BMW / Daimler JV) said it had contracts in place to build 95% of the intended 400-station network. (Porsche)
Market researchers in the US said that due a glut of new electric vehicles about to appear on sale, the average model can only expect to sell 11,900 units per year. (Reuters)
Germany’s government proposed a new raft of measures to improve CO₂, including increased incentives for buying electric cars. The plan is to offer €4,000 on cars priced under €30,000 (e.g. the VW ID3), an existing €2,000 manufacturer contribution would presumably remain. (BMVI)
VW is rumoured to have concerns that a 20 GWh battery supply deal with Samsung will ultimately only deliver only 25% of the plan because of differences over production volumes and point in time demands. VW said that it still regarded Samsung as a major supplier. (Bloomberg)

Connectivity

Amazon is reportedly interested in buying US prepaid cellular carrier Boost Mobile. (Deal Street Asia)
Chipmaker NXP will buy Marvell’s wireless connectivity business. (Reuters)

Other

Flying car start-up Alaka’i said it was developing a fuel cell powered vehicle with a range of 400 miles. (Futurism)
Electric motorbike manufacturer Ather Energy raised $51 million. (Autocar)

Find our archive here.

Auto Industry Briefing — week ending 26th May 2019

May 28, 2019 Ad Punctum TeamAd Punctum, Automotive0

Stingy electric car charging stations; buy-what-you-see car showrooms; and can FCA and Renault do a deal without Nissan? Please enjoy our auto industry and mobility briefing for 20^th May to 26^th May 2019. A PDF version can be found here.

Juice — Tesla’s great idea to reduce queues at charging stations is… let them charge less. Is the company losing its edge in terms of customer focus with such old-world solutions?
Price Tag — Lynk&Co’s showrooms will be different because everything in there will be for sale: cars; sofas and coffee cups. But, aside from a PR talking point, how much of a difference does this make? Can anyone remember leaving a car showroom wishing they had bought the waiting room chairs too?
You Belong With Me — FCA and Renault have gone public on their merger talks. As the first big automotive deal is the offing for many years, it is certain to get lots of attention. But does it really make sense? In Europe, FCA looks weak (especially with CO₂ headwinds) whilst Renault is no more than so-so. In North America, Jeep and Ram are going great guns but the synergy with Renault’s business appears limited. The question really is… does this deal need Nissan to join the party if it is going to make sense?

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

Find our archive here.

News about the major automakers

Says that it will only participate in motorsport which relates to core brand values such as electrification (Formula E) and handling (DTM touring cars). (BMW)
Launching an electric scooter with a 12km range that will retail for €800. (BMW)
Recalling a small number of i3 models for electronic components that could cause a shutdown. (Green Car Reports)
The BMW / Daimler mobility joint venture acquired Validated, a service for companies to subsidise travel costs for employees and customers. (Validated)
There was media speculation that CEO Harald Krüger might not have his contract renewed. (Business Times)

Opening a new factory making truck cabins in Russia. (Daimler)
The BMW / Daimler mobility joint venture acquired Validated, a service for companies to subsidise travel costs for employees and customers. (Validated)

Made a public proposal (FCA stressed it was not an offer) for a 50:50 merger with Renault, following weeks of secret meetings between executives of the two firms. FCA estimates that a combined business could save €5 billion annually by 2025, mainly in the fields of purchasing, R&D efficiency and manufacturing economies of scale. The firm foresees €3 billion – €4 billion of implementation costs. FCA says that since it is worth more, its shareholders will have to be paid a €2.5 billion special dividend. (FCA)
- Significance: Although many welcomed the move, FCA appear to have an optimistic view of their worth, especially given the tough European CO₂ outlook which the company is poorly positioned to weather.
CEO Mike Manley told employees that even if a merger with Renault went ahead, it could take a year. (Reuters)

US insurance data shows that, as promised, the aluminium-bodied F-150 pick-up is no more expensive to repair than steel-bodied rivals. In fact, repair costs are about 7% lower. (Automotive News)
Despite reducing the production footprint and portfolio in Russia, Ford’s joint venture hopes that 99% of dealers will continue with the brand. (World News Monitor)
Ford wants to use fold-up robots to deliver packages. They will sit in the boot/trunk when not in use. (Ford)

Everything in Lynk&Co showrooms will be for sale, including sofas and coffee cups. (Automotive News)
Volvo wants to sell 10,000 cars in South Korea this year. (Korea Times)
Will use voice recognition from Nuance for in-car assistants. (Nuance)

Will reduce the number of cities in which the Maven car sharing scheme operates from 17 to nine, saying that it wants to focus on demand and growth. (Wall Street Journal)

Recalling 137,000 SUVs to fix problems (unrelated to Takata) with the airbags. (Reuters)
Claims 25,000 expressions of interest for the Honda e electric city car. (Express)

Received over 17,000 pre-orders from Indian customers for the Venue SUV. (Autocar)
Hyundai’s executive vice chairman says the company needs to focus on customers more and look at what competitors are doing less, citing a need to boost R&D efficiency as the greatest challenge. (Hyundai)
Kia showed some sketches of what the interior of the next generation small SUV will look like. The designers should probably expect a call from BMW. (Kia)

FCA says that if the proposed merger with Renault went ahead, Nissan and Mitsubishi would save €1 billion per year on top of current alliance plans. (FCA)
Mitsubishi will reportedly change the sizes of SUVs in the next generation to create a gap of around 200mm between the overall lengths of different models. (Autocar)

Released pictures of the next generation Corsa. (Opel)
1,340 German engineering staff have apparently agreed to take voluntary redundancy from Opel. (Handelsblatt)

FCA Made a public proposal (FCA stressed it was not an offer) for a 50:50 merger with Renault, following weeks of secret meetings between executives of the two firms. FCA estimates that a combined business could save €5 billion annually by 2025, mainly in the fields of purchasing, R&D efficiency and manufacturing economies of scale. The firm foresees €3 billion – €4 billion of implementation costs. FCA says that since it is worth more, its shareholders will have to be paid a €2.5 billion special dividend. (FCA)
Renault’s board said they will study the FCA proposal with interest. (Renault)
France’s finance minister said the status quo of the Renault-Nissan alliance was harming Renault. (Reuters)

Reported full year financial results for the year ending March 2019. Revenue of 301 KCr (about $43 billion) rose 3.7% on a year-over-year basis, JLR’s revenue fell (6.1)% with Tata Motors up 20.3%. There was a full year loss of (1.720) KCr but JLR had some good news: 4^th quarter free cash flow of £1.4 billion. (Tata)
JLR’s CFO is leaving, to be replaced by the chief transformation officer. (JLR)
Started talks with factory workers in Coventry about job losses when production of the XJ ends in the summer. JLR confirmed that the nameplate will continue. (Birmingham Mail)

CEO Elon Musk told employees that there had been more than 50,000 orders in the second quarter so far and that the current production rate of Model 3 was about 900 cars per day. (Business Insider)
An investment analyst says he has it on good authority that Apple wanted to buy Tesla for $240 a share in 2013, and that the interest may be re-ignited given recent falls in Tesla’s share price. (CNBC)
Will only let owners charge until their batteries are 80% full at some charging stations, to reduce queues. Tesla says that charging less, together with higher peak charging rates, will increase capacity by 34%. (Economic Times of India)

Scania will spend $344 million to upgrade a truck factory in Brazil. (Reuters)
Created a service called We Experience to sell physical services located nearby to drivers. (VW)
A VW board member said the company was in the process of detailed planning for a battery factory with Northvolt and might add further European locations. (Reuters)
Audi’s on-demand short term rental service will have about 10,000 cars in the fleet by late 2019. (VW)
Audi’s CEO says the brand will be the benchmark for electric cars in two to three years. (Manager Magazin)
Audi will spend €40 billion on R&D and manufacturing assets between now and 2023, with €14 billion of that going towards electric vehicles, autonomous driving and digitalisation. (Audi)

Other

Streetscooter will develop a hydrogen fuel cell delivery van alongside electric offerings. It will be based on the same Ford Transit chassis used for the Work XL. (DHL)

News about other companies and trends

Economic / Political News

In elections for the European parliament, about 35% of UK voters supported no deal Brexit parties in what was seen by many as a proxy referendum. Politicians were left to ponder the significance. (BBC)

Suppliers

Veoneer said it would raise $600 million – $700 million through a mix of new shares and debt. (Veoneer)
First Sensor says it has been approached with a takeover offer by TE Connectivity. (Reuters)
Denso expects $10 billion in annual revenue by 2025 from autonomous and mobility service offerings. (Denso)
German regulators have given Bosch a €90 million fine for the firm’s role in the diesel scandal. (Manager Magazin)
British Steel entered insolvency. (BBC)
Denso invested in Quadric.io, a company developing a chip to control autonomous robots. (TechCrunch)
Schaeffler’s CEO told staff that times are tough and will probably get even harder. (Handelsblatt)
Continental opened a new centre dedicated to 3D printing in Germany (3^rd parties can use it too). (Continental)

Dealers

Indian online used car marketplace Spinny raised $13.2 million. (Deal Street Asia)

Nigerian ride hailing firm Gokada raised $5.3 million. (TechCrunch)
Consumer Reports found that one in six Uber and Lyft vehicles have outstanding safety recalls against them. It wasn’t clear what the rate is for the average private vehicle. (Auto Rental News)
GM will reduce the number of cities in which the Maven car sharing scheme operates from 17 to nine, saying that it wants to focus on demand and growth. (Wall Street Journal)
The BMW / Daimler mobility joint venture acquired Validated, a service for companies to subsidise travel costs for employees and customers. (Validated)

Researchers say that autonomous cars operating as a swarm can reduce traffic by 35% compared to the same volume of manually-piloted vehicles. (BBC)
TuSimple is undergoing trials with self-driving trucks for long distance routes in partnership with the US Postal Service, saying that it is targeting jobs that require multiple drivers. (Reuters)
Aurora is buying lidar developer Blackmore. (Aurora)
Immense Simulations, a maker of digital replicas of cities, raised $4.6 million. (Reuters)