+++ CITROEN is preparing a significant push into the electrified vehicle space, with plans to have electrified powertrains in 80 percent of its range within the next 6 years. “From 2023, at leas 80 percent of our vehicles will be electrified or PHEV”, Citroen CEO Linda Jackson told. Although she was light on details about which cars will drive the battery-powered push, Jackson cited growing demand for electric vehicles (EV) in China as the inspiration. “In China they’ve gone down the electric route, so you’ve got to be present with PHEV and electrification”, she said. Central to the rollout will be a new platform, currently being developed in conjunction with Dongfeng Motors in China. An agreement between the 2 brands was announced earlier this year, and will see the development of an all-electric chassis based on the Peugeot Citroen (PSA) Common Modular Platform (CMP). The first vehicles to make use of the e-CMP platform are expected in 2019. Whether the full range of EV and PHEVs will be offered in Australia, or indeed Europe, remains to be seen. Citroen isn’t the first (and won’t be the last) company to make a big commitment to electric power. Volvo will have an electric motor in every vehicle it sells from 2019, as part of its plan to sell 1 million electrified vehicles ahead of 2025. The company will also make its manufacturing plants carbon neutral, as part of its environmental push. General Motors (GM) is also planning an EV offensive, with 20 new battery-electric models on the way by 2023. Even Aston Martin is making a push into electric vehicles. But not everyone is buying into this battery-driven vision of the future. Fiat Chrysler’s CEO, Sergio Marchionne, has previously cast doubt on the viability of pure electric vehicles, telling reporters the company will focus on using hybrid power to bring internal combustion vehicles into line with tightening emissions regulations. +++
+++ LAMBORGHINI ’s Aventador might seem to have reached its fullest and most terrifying potential with the 740 hp S model, but there will be more variants to come from the old-school super car, according to Federico Foschini, the company’s chief commercial officer. He also suggests we should ignore reports about the Aventador’s replacement going turbo, or offering a V12 hybrid with 1.000 horsepower, because the company will be sticking with its gloriously loud naturally aspirated engines, “because it’s in our DNA, and it’s what the customers want. The Aventador is an icon, I love it, and it is still surprising me every year, because it is a platform that is still giving us so many possibilities”, Foschini says of a car first launched in 2013, and surely due for replacement. “I don’t want Aventador to die, honestly. I love it. The time will have to come (let’s say it will be soon, but not too soon) and there are still a few more surprises to come with Aventador. But I can’t tell you any more or someone will kill me”. Foschini has been told too many times to count over the past few years that his cars will have to go turbo to keep up with Ferrari and others, and you can tell just how much he, and his colleagues, enjoyed thumbing their noses at that theory when the Huracan Performante smashed the Nurburgring lap record recently, beating every turbocharged competitor out there (they prefer not to talk about the 911 GT2). “In a world where everybody was switching to turbo because it’s the easiest way to get power and noise reduction, we were working very hard on the naturally aspirated engine, which, speaking with customers, is what they want”, Foschini said. “For us, that Performante lap time proved that performance isn’t just about having the most number of horsepower, because we are still having the best acceleration, at 2.9 seconds, and we are the best around the Nurburgring. It’s a matter of aerodynamics, driving control, steering, driving dynamics and the light weight of the car. “And the engine, of course, but the engine has to serve not just the highest number of horsepower, it’s about the torque, the responsiveness, because you don’t have to have a hole in the torque at low rpm, because this is what disappoints you when you’re driving in a turbo. “And an engine has to give you an emotion in terms of sound. This is the difference between us and the others at the moment”. And that’s why, for the immediate future at least (and that includes the Aventador’s replacement, likely in 2020) the company’s super sports cars will remain naturally aspirated, and hugely loud (its SUV Urus is “a different market” and will thus go turbo, however). “In the future, you never say never about turbo, but I think in the next years we are staying with this technology, and with the V12”, Foschini adds. “This is the engine that we are not going to change in the next generation. The V12 is the reason why people are buying these cars, because it is different. There is no car in this segment that has this layout and it comes from a heritage, it comes from all the cars we have made in the past; the Murcielago, the Diablo, the Countach”. Ask Federico about the idea of Lambo EVs and he looks mildly ill, but mention the word “Tesla” and he coughs and splutters like you’ve offered him a pizza covered in pineapple. “For sure, there will be discussions about electrification, but not because of Tesla, no, no! Absolutely not, Tesla is another thing, another business model, it is not in our competitors”, he says, waving his hands and swaying his head in full Italianate horror. “Our talks about EV are ongoing, but it is mainly for hybridisation, always related to boost, to increase performance and to stay in tune with the technology. A full electric car is not giving of all the characteristics that you need in a super sports car. It’s too heavy, it’s not noisy enough, it’s not emotional, it has no handling. It’s also a matter of reliability of the battery. You do one lap of the Nurburgring to set a lap record and you’ll need to stop and recharge it”. The other bit of madness that Lamborghini refuses to give up on, no matter how powerful its cars become, is rear-wheel drive special editions, according to Andrea Baldi, general manager of Lamborghini for the Asia Pacific region. While BMW made its latest M5 all-wheel drive, in a shift away from its traditional RWD layout caused by it being simply too powerful, Baldi laughs at such an idea. “What we have shown with the Huracan is that we can deliver anything, from four-wheel drive to two-wheel drive, and those two-wheel drive versions are for people who like less control, they want a car where it is your skills making the difference”, he explains. “Our philosophy is mainly connected with four-wheel drive, for performance and safety, but with the right concept, we are not against rear-wheel drive cars, and there are still people out there who want those cars”. Those people are, of course, largely Italians. +++
+++ NISSAN has flagged 2025 as the year where electric vehicles and conventional combustion-engined vehicles will hit price parity, rapidly escalating their popularity in key markets, particularly those with the requisite charging infrastructure. The 2025 projection comes from two of the most senior executives within Nissan: chief planning officer, Philippe Klein, and executive vice-president for global marketing and sales, zero-emission vehicles and the battery business, Daniele Schillaci. This broadly complements the projections of fellow electric car investment leader Volkswagen, which wants to launch the I.D electric hatch in 2020 priced on par with an equivalent Golf diesel. “We see this happening somewhere in the middle of the next decade”, Klein said, saying the increased cost of emissions regulations on IC cars, and the reducing cost of batteries through scale and maturity, would see the two types of propulsion converge. “We are not saying that we will see it everywhere, but for a lot of vehicles it’s going to become an obvious technology. For a lot of vehicles commuting every day, it is going to become an obvious technology, so that is going to trigger the pace of the deployment”, he said, adding that it wasn’t “gameplay” between mature and emerging markets, since some of the most polluted cities are in the latter. Schillaci was even more precise with the timing he mooted, citing a number of external studies. “We see this tipping point happening around 2025. Then for a customer to buy a petrol over an EV will be probably the same cost and then it will be really exponential”, he said. “If you have the same price a petrol and an EV, why would you have traditional technology?” he asked. Schillaci also said enabling the full-scale rollout of EVs was less dependent on government incentives than the technology itself. “The most important thing is the technology itself, if the customer connects with the tech. And the EV tech clearly shows that the customer, when they experience an EV, most of them probably won’t buy a traditional engine because once you use this EV experience, I am afraid if you move to a diesel, it won’t be your first choice”, he said. As we know, the second-generation Nissan Leaf is rolling out in global markets at the moment. This version has a range of about 400 km and a price point putting it into contention with high-spec IC hatches, particularly if tax incentives are in play. The company also previewed a future crossover electric car with the IMx concept this week, with a theoretical driving range of 600 km. The Renault-Nissan Alliance has also committed to 12 EVs already. Nissan also has a ‘milder’ plan for regions where EVs are less feasible, or on vehicles where the tech is less suitable. This is called e-Power, and it uses a combustion engine to power an electric motor, which is the sole driver of the wheels. Sort of like a range-extender without an external plug-in point. The company’s Note e-Power hatch has been a massive hit in Japan, even out-selling the conventional-hybrid Toyota Prius. As such, the tech is now flagged for global markets at much greater scale, potentially even in commercial vehicles. “We have huge request of the new Leaf and huge request for the new e-Power technology and they are products we are seeking for the Australian market”, Schillaci said. +++
+++ There will be no new TESLA Model 3 in 2017. The electric carmaker updated its website for customer reservations, including a table that shows the base $35,000 Model 3 won’t be available until some time next year. That follows a painful earnings call for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who described the company as being in the “8th level of hell” (there are 9, in case you’re counting). The stock price fell 8.9 per cent, the most in more than 16 months. The electric-car maker won’t build 5,000 units per week of its Model 3 sedan until sometime in March, 3 months later than planned. “I have to tell you I was really depressed about 3 or 4 weeks ago”, Musk said on the call after Tesla reported a record quarterly loss and cash burn. He downplayed the long-term implications of the delays. “In the grand scheme of things”, Musk said, “this is a relatively small shift”. But the setbacks lengthen the wait for hundreds of thousands of customers waiting for their Model 3 and extend the payoff period for the billions of dollars the company has spent to expand. The manufacturing snags will embolden skeptics who’ve doubted the company’s ability to quickly reach mass production, a feat the youngest US carmaker is trying to pull off for the first time with a car that starts at $35,000. “We left the call frustrated with the lack of transparency from Tesla management”, Jeffrey Osborne, a Cowen & Co. analyst who recommends selling the shares, wrote in a note to clients. “Elon Musk needs to stop over promising and under delivering and the board should rein in a CEO who publicly shares his aspirational goals that have rarely been hit”. Tesla burned $1.42 billion in cash in the third quarter. The carmaker is spending heavily on both its auto assembly plant and at its battery gigafactory, contributing to an adjusted lost per share of $2.92 per share, worse than analysts estimated. People from key teams at Tesla are now focussed on fixing bottlenecks that have hobbled production, said Musk, who held his earnings call at the Nevada battery factory where he and co-founder J.B. Straubel are spending their days and nights, even camping on the roof . Despite earlier reports that it was the company’s California assembly plant that was gumming up the works, it turns out the famed Gigafactory is the heart of the problem, which is bad news for other Tesla products. The main constraint holding back Model 3 output has been on the assembly line that packages battery cells at the gigafactory, which Musk blamed in part on a subcontractor that “really dropped the ball”. Software had to be rewritten from scratch and mechanical and electrical elements of one area of the plant had to be redone. Speaking from the plant, he also faulted himself for picking the wrong subcontractor. He recalled being on the assembly line at 2 am on a Sunday to help diagnose robot calibration issues and said work was being done 7 days a week to solve the problems vexing the gigafactory. “One should lead from the front lines and that’s why I’m here”, he said. The reallocation of resources to fix the facility’s difficulties appears to be slowing down Autopilot, the Solar Roof, the Tesla Semi, and the Tesla Network. “Tesla’s cash burn is astounding, and time is ticking”, said Salim Morsy, an electric-car analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “They have some pretty urgent things to deal with, and we just don’t have any visibility right now”. Here are 5 key products still waiting to catch an elevator out of the inferno: 1) The Model 3: The “$35,000 electric car” has been Tesla’s top goal and marketing calling card for years. It’s an important price point, competing with entry level luxury petrol-powered cars like the BMW 3 Series and the Mercedes C Class. When you include a $7,500 US tax credit, the price is cheaper than the average new US car and more in line with a well-optioned Toyota Camry. But Tesla pushed back its timelines for the Model 3 by 3 months. And perhaps the biggest warning flag: Musk would no longer give a timeline on when Tesla would reach a production rate of 10,000 a week. Last quarter he was unequivocal on that point: “What people should absolutely have zero concern about (and I mean zero) is that Tesla will achieve a 10,000 unit production week by the end of next year”. 2) The Solar Roof: A year ago this week, Tesla unveiled its remarkable solar shingles with much fanfare in Hollywood on an old set of “Desperate Housewives”. It began taking deposits in May. There’s still little indication of when the product might roll out. Tesla said things will move slowly in the coming quarter while it gets its new factory in Buffalo, New York, up and running. Then, the company said, the product will ramp up “in 2018”. That’s a wide window for customers trying to plan a roofing project. Perhaps a better indication of where things stand is this: Tesla’s website currently shows job postings for 24 “lead roofer” positions, all in California. Each position, according to the descriptions, would be second-in-command of a small roofing team. Meanwhile, the amount of standard solar installations being done have dropped 42 percent compared with the same quarter last year, just before Tesla bought SolarCity. 3) Autopilot: A year after Tesla started charging $8,000 for a feature called Full Self Driving, there’s still no sign of a rollout of such features, and Musk hinted that a more powerful supercomputer may be needed to achieve its goal. Recently, he said the current hardware can reach “approximately human-level autonomy”. Musk concedes that the system will probably need to be significantly safer than the average human driver in order to achieve regulatory approval, so a hardware upgrade may be necessary. “We’ll have more to say on the hardware front soon, we’re just not ready to say anything now”, said Musk. As a consolation, anyone who has already paid for the option will get a free computer swap. Tesla said new features will be coming for its less-ambitious $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot package in the next few months. Musk said the other hardware for autonomous driving-8 cameras, a radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors-will be sufficient. Other companies pursuing autonomous driving are also including expensive lidar kits. Musk was undeterred: “We are certain that our hardware strategy is better than any other option, by a lot”. 4. Tesla semi truck: Tesla was set to unveil its first all-electric long-range semi truck back in September. Then it was moved to October. Then it was pushed until November 16, explicitly so that resources could be diverted to deal with Model 3 problems. Tesla reiterated the same unveiling date. However, it’s notable that such an integral and supposedly imminent product for Tesla didn’t even come up on the analyst . 5) The Tesla network: Tesla is working on a system that will allow owners to rent out their cars using what they’ve dubbed the Tesla Network. Once fully autonomous driving is achieved, the idea is that fleets of privately owned Teslas will function like a driverless Uber or Lyft, picking up and delivering passengers for a fee that will be split between Tesla and the individual car owners. In the shorter-term, the Tesla Network could function more like Zipcar. An owner could switch a setting online and open their car for someone to rent. The Model 3 uses key cards and Tesla’s smartphone app instead of a key, so in theory anyone could be granted access through an automated system. The Tesla Network, which accounts for billions of dollars in long-term revenue in many analyst models, is supposed to be unveiled this year. With all of the bigger delays drawing the attention, it didn’t even get a mention. +++
+++ TOSHIBA has established itself as a leader in the field of electric vehicle (EV) battery technology, supplying the lithium-ion packs for the Mitsubishi i-Miev and Honda Jazz EV. With a claimed life of 10 years and all the requisite safety precautions for use on the public road, the current Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB) does its job with a minimum of fuss. But the next-generation SCiB, inventively named SCiBTM, promises to build on that base with a new titanium-niobium oxide anode, which opens the door for super-fast recharging: 320 km of range in just 6 minutes. That’s around 3 times faster than current technology allows. It’s also less likely to suffer lithium metal deposition during quick charging or charging in extreme cold, which Toshiba says is one of the major causes of battery wear in current batteries. Toshiba says a 50 Ah prototype battery has demonstrated the technology has a long life cycle, operates without causing excess heat, and allows for lightning-quick recharging. The test battery has retained 90 percent of its initial capacity, despite being put through 5.000 charge/discharge cycles (14 years of once-daily charging) and ultra-fast charge has been successfully tested at -10 degrees. “We are very excited by the potential of the new titanium-niobium oxide anode and the next-generation SCiBTM”, said Osamu Hori, director of Corporate Research and Development Centre at Toshiba Corporation. “Rather than an incremental improvement, this is a game-changing advance that will make a significant different to the range and performance of EV. We will continue to improve the battery’s performance and aim to put the next generation SCiBTM into practical application in fiscal year 2019”. Although fast-charging is one step toward widespread adoption of electric vehicles, the tech in Toshiba’s battery doesn’t necessarily offer a better range than you’d find in current lithium-ion batteries. “Niobium is certainly not one of the lighter elements”, Professor Douglas MacFarlane, energy theme leader of the Centre for Electromaterials Science, told. “At a guess, I doubt these, in terms of energy density, are much better than conventional lithium-ion batteries. If it’s a 6-minute charge, you or I could probably go on our daily commute or our weekly commute. We’d probably put up with a 320 kilometer range”, he continued. “Whereas if it’s an overnight charge, your 320 kilometers start to become a bit of a problem. You’d have to think about when you were going to have your overnight charge done”. The other area where the the new Toshiba battery doesn’t advance the game is in the field of safety. “Lithium-ion batteries contain a flammable liquid electrolyte which doesn’t go well once it is heated beyond about 150 degrees or so”, Professor MacFarlane told. “The battery has got a tendency to overheat itself under certain kinds of mal-treament or damage, like a collision in a car would be an issue. And once the battery gets too hot, the whole thing just begins to go into a ‘thermal runaway’ we call it, which ultimately produces a fire or even a small explosion of the battery, which is pretty serious in a big battery pack”. Solid-state batteries, the likes of which Toyota has promised in a production car for 2022, don’t suffer the same fiery tendencies. Rather than using a liquid electrolyte, they use a solid polymer material, which means there’s nothing volatile or flammable inside the pack. An MIT report on the technology says you could drive a nail through a solid-state battery, or smash one against a wall, and it would be unlikely to catch fire. The technology is, in the words of Professor MacFarlane, “intrinsically much more stable under a variety of both normal and abnormal operating conditions”. Given the frequency with which cars crash into each other, that can only be a good thing. +++
+++ A worldwide production shortfall has forced Volkswagen Australia to take the chic little T-ROC crossover (its premium-positioned Mazda CX-3 and Toyota C-HR rival) off the agenda for the time being, though it will revisit the business case in 12 months time. It had been pencilled in for a local launch either late in 2018 or early 2019, though supply issues always made its situation for the Australian market tenuous. This update comes from Volkswagen Australia’s managing director Michael Bartsch. It’s something of a setback for VW as it seeks to increase its share-of-voice in the dominant SUV sector here. “I think we have to take T-Roc off the agenda at this stage”, he said, remaining diplomatic despite VW’s evident need for a crossover to slot in below the Tiguan, which is itself being dramatically supply-restricted due to European demand. “It’ll be reviewed again probably in the next 12 months, but again they’re Volkswagen Global looking at a global rollout and the priorities will be from the Northern Hemisphere first”, he added. The oddly-named high-riding hatch, based on a similar version of the stretchable MQB architecture as the Audi Q2, slots into the Volkswagen Europe range below the 250 mm longer Tiguan. Bartsch’s update follows what we gleaned out of Frankfurt earlier this year, where we went to attend the world’s largest motor show. There, Volkswagen’s member of the board of management for sales and marketing Jürgen Stackmann admitted to us the company had even then already decided to triple T-Roc production to 200,000 units annually. “Eventually we’ll get it but at this stage it’s best we take it off the agenda for 12 months”, Bartsch added. “The production situation won’t allow us to get the car in quantities that will make it viable for now”. Irrespective of what VW management says, it’s obvious the company’s global planners drastically underestimated the worldwide demand for T-Roc, to be built in Portugal alongside the Volkswagen Sharan and Seat Alhambra people-movers. +++
+++ VOLKSWAGEN Group CEO, Matthias Müller, has used a panel discussion to take aim at Tesla. Speaking at a forum about the future of the automotive industry, Müller didn’t mince words when talking about the low volumes, regular losses and reported layoffs plaguing Tesla. “Now I really need to say a few words about Tesla: with all respect, there are some world champions of big announcements in this world, I don’t want to name names”, Müller said, in response to a question from the panel moderator. “There are companies that sell barely 80,000 cars a year. Then there are companies like Volkswagen that sell 11 million cars this year, and produce a profit of 13 or 14 billion euro. If I am correctly informed, Tesla each quarter destroys millions of dollars in the 3-digits, and it willy-nilly fires its workers. Social responsibility? Please. We should not get carried away and compare apples with oranges”. This isn’t the first time a prominent executive has questioned Tesla recently. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) CEO, Sergio Marchionne, called the Silicon Valley startup’s viability into question just 2 weeks ago, and said FCA would focus on combining electric motors and internal combustion to meet tightening emissions regulations. “We are investing without making a lot of noise on electrification”, he said. “We will combine it with combustion to yield the right level of CO2. But we’re not betting the bank on going fully electric in the next decade. It won’t happen”. +++