+++ Italian electric vehicle startup AEHRA has unveiled its new, European-made sedan which will serve the high-premium market segment and which joins the firm’s SUV which was first displayed late last year. Both models will start production in 2026, Aehra said. They will be priced in the 180.000 to 200.000 euros range in the Netherlands, placing them in what Aehra’s co-founder and CEO, Hazim Nada, termed the “high premium and luxury” segment. “When it comes to that segment, people are not yet ready for Chinese or American brands. Europe is still the reference”, Nada, a 40-year-old Italian-American, told. The new sedan follows Aehra’s electric SUV which was unveiled in November 2022. Both will have a top speed of 265 kph and a range of more than 800 km, Aehra said. First deliveries are expected in 2026, beginning in key markets including the U.S., Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. Aehra plans to open preorders next year. Nada said full-scale production should occur in late 2027, with an annual production target of 25.000 vehicles for each model. Both vehicles are so-called native EVs, which means most of the design is a new development and not based on a previous internal-combustion platform. Aehra, whose chief design officer and chief engineer were formerly at Lamborghini and Ferrari, respectively, has said it plans a total investment of 750 million euros. Aehra is still assessing options for assembly. The preferred one, at least in the short term, is to rely on a large contract manufacturer (like VDL Nedcar), either in central or northern Europe, Nada said. Another option is to start a new facility in Italy or buy and refurbish an existing one, but that would be possible only if backed by state funds, Nada said. “We see a decision on this around the end of this year”. Aehra is working on its supply chain, and recently clinched a deal with Austria’s Miba Battery Systems for 120 KWh custom NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) batteries, Nada said. +++
+++ ALPINE will build its own platform for its planned electric sports car with the aim of producing more than one model, said Luca de Meo, CEO of Alpine parent Renault Group. Alpine announced in May it had cancelled the joint collaboration with Lotus to produce a sports car, leaving questions about Alpine’s commitment to include a sports car in its shift to electric. De Meo, however, has answered those questions. “We had a long discussion and finally decided to build our own platform”, he told at the reveal of the Renault Rafale at the Paris air show. De Meo said Alpine would build more than one model off the platform, without revealing whether the planned new architecture would stretch to more than just sports cars. Alpine will reveal more about its future line-up at an investor day to be held on Monday 26th of July, said de Meo. Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi has said that the premium brand will launch 5 cars in 5 years, starting with next year’s Renault 5-based A290 hot hatch and followed by the GT X-Over compact crossover due in 2025. The electric sports car was due in 2026 with 2 larger SUVs aimed predominantly at the US market arriving after that. Renault is positioning Alpine as a premium brand that will leverage both Renault technology and platforms from outside the group. The sports car collaboration with Lotus was announced in 2021 and spoken of as a win for both brands in keeping the costs of building a bespoke electric platform down. “Lotus and us share the same preoccupation, which is trying to make light, agile sports cars while obviously adding weight and electrifying”, Rossi previously told. Under the memorandum of understanding, the A110 was planned to share a chassis and technologies with the Lotus Type 135 including having its battery cells stacked vertically behind the driver. Lotus has said it will continue with the project despite Alpine’s exit. Renault’s decision to go it alone on the platform will increase costs for what will be a niche halo product, designed to take over from the A110 coupé. De Meo’s decision to build more than one product on the platform will help defray the extra expense. De Meo hinted at a halo hypercar. “You never know we me”, he joked. The decision to exit the Lotus collaboration was amicable, said de Meo. “There was no friction with the thing because everybody was feeling like this was the best thing”, he said. “It doesn’t mean we don’t have opportunities to work together again”. Alpine has said it needs to look outside the group platform to build the larger SUVs, with Lotus still in the frame to possibly collaborate on that project. +++
+++ The BMW M3 and M4 gave up their dual-clutch transmissions when the new generations debuted in 2020, the last M cars to utilize the instant-shift gearbox. Now, every M but the M2, M3, and M4 are fitted solely with ZF’s 8-speed torque converter automatic. Even the rare and expensive M4 CSL got the slushbox. The 1 Series and 2 Series Active Tourer are the only cars out of Munich to carry the dual-clutch torch. BMW M’s head of development made it clear that automatics will be the last shifter standing. Dirk Hacker told: “The double clutch, from BMW M’s point of view these days, it’s gone. It’s now manual or automatic, and automatic electrified for the future”. A myriad of reasons explain Hacker’s guidance. First, customers like the easy and familiar low-speed traits of an automatic, like the off-throttle creep and predictable throttle tip-in. Automatics are also less expensive than DCTs. Considering the sales trend with manual gearboxes and the rise of electric vehicles, suppliers are focusing on automatics, which makes manuals harder and more expensive to source. On top of all of that, torque converter automatics have gotten so good that they are “better performing than the double clutch”, Hacker saying the automatic in the M4 CSL shifts faster than the dual clutch. Envisioning a sunset for the manual, the exec said: “I’m not sure we will have the possibility in the future to get standard gearboxes that serve BMW’s purposes”, and “in the future means 6 or 7 years in forecast”. That’s about 2 years after the current M3 and M4 will give way to new generations, and about the time the current M2 is expected to say goodbye. Manual fitment likely only applies to the entry-level version of the M2 as well. The hotter versions of the M2 like the CS rumored for 2025 can be expected to use the automatic. As for finding a way to put a manual transmission in an electric M, forget about it. “I think it could be done”, Hacker said, “but we will not do that”. +++
+++ Despite all the strides made by electric vehicles in the last decade, there’s still one category where they’re sorely lacking: the affordable SPORTSCAR . We’ve seen sedans, SUVs, supercars and even pick-ups, but there’s yet to be an EV that drives like a MX-5. That could be changing, as Toyota is working on an electric performance prototype worthy of the GR badge. At the recent 24 Hours of Le Mans, Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s recently retired president and grandson of the company’s founder, said he is still taking an active role in developing the EV sports car. Toyoda, a known enthusiast that has driven some of Toyota’s race cars at endurance and rally competitions around the world, says that he wants his performance EVs to be almost indistinguishable from their gasoline counterparts. “The starting point is not what powertrain the car has, but how fun it is to drive regardless of that powertrain”, Toyoda revealed. “I actually had the opportunity to test drive a BEV GR we are working on recently. I don’t know if that car will make it onto the market yet, but the first priority of making these kinds of cars is that they need to be fun to drive, no matter what powertrain they use”. The driving experience will be bolstered with engine sounds piped into the cabin, as well as the EV manual transmission and three-pedal setup that Toyota has been working on. The stick shift is said to be so realistic that it can even roll backwards or stall. “If you put someone in the car and asked them to drive it and guess the powertrain, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you”, Toyoda said of the prototype. Toyoda did say that the car would look like a modern EV. That could mean design cues like the lack of a grille. Toyoda has been adamant about preserving the “fun to drive” aspect of cars as the industry moves into a new era of green energy, almost to a fault. It’s why the company has been experimenting with hydrogen-combustion race cars and other carbon neutral alternatives to the point where Toyoda himself was nearly voted out of his chairmanship. He has since managed to retain the position. Toyoda perhaps also has a vested interest in seeing the GR EV succeed. Toyoda himself founded Gazoo when he was a junior executive at the company and has taken it to an entire performance sub-brand and motorsports program. Rumors have pointed to a potential EV using a mid-engined layout being co-developed with Toyota partners Daihatsu and Suzuki, but Toyoda didn’t disclose details and still hedges. “Whether it makes it to the market or not”, he said in the interview, “What the company is trying to do is explore the idea of what it is that we shouldn’t lose in a car even if it becomes BEV”. +++
+++ With electric car battery costs on the rise, auto companies are doing everything they can to make their EV offerings more affordable for the masses in the coming years. Making that happen may require forgetting much of what they’ve learned about supply chains over a century, and replacing it with a few pages from TESLA’S PLAYBOOK . Automakers have been trying to evade today’s EV woes by exploring different kinds of batteries to slash their dependence on the in-demand materials found in traditional lithium-ion setups. They’ve also been ramping up battery recycling efforts and working to return lithium, nickel, cobalt and more into the supply chain. These solutions come with challenges in terms of timing and expense, at least in the near term. That means car companies are seeking an alternative and racing to secure their battery supply in the US. That means making investments in battery material sourcing, battery production, and more, to reduce the global supply disruptions the industry saw from the pandemic. “Almost all the major companies are investing in that for that very reason: to vertically integrate more and get more control of their supply chain”, said Peter Maithel, auto industry principal analyst at Infor. What’s the rush? In the past, car companies have expanded their supply chains across the globe, relying on slews of suppliers for each component of a car. Some of their key parts might come from the US, while others might come from Europe or Asia. Historically, the breadth of those supply chains has reduced potential bottlenecks. But the pandemic (and other disruptions, like natural disasters) shed a light on just how vulnerable that can also make auto companies. If an auto parts plant across the world sees even a minor disruption, that could bring down a manufacturing line for days or weeks at a time. The dawn of EVs, and the nuances in sourcing for these cars, brings those concerns and more to the forefront of automaker to-do lists. The US in particular has relied on foreign sources for battery supplies, components, and processing. China, meanwhile, has had a headstart in terms of sitting on the raw materials necessary to power EVs and controlling production of much of the world’s battery cells, packs, and more. But whether it’s an unforeseen disruption like Covid-19 or a geopolitical issue, that leaves companies pretty vulnerable, and has encouraged them to bring manufacturing closer to home. There’s been a general push to get away from that world-wide supply chain model anyway, driven by this summer’s climate law. “We’ve just seen an unprecedented amount of announcements, joint development agreements, early supply contracts from the automakers with battery materials providers, with battery manufacturers”, said Matt Sculnick, executive director of Nomura GreenTech’s advanced transportation team, “in a collaborative way that I don’t think we’ve really seen”. “Tesla is always the groundbreaker here, going directly to the source, going directly to the mines and negotiating supply contracts with the mines”, said Alvarez & Marsal managing director Tony Lynch. It’s given Tesla an advantage in terms of having visibility into production, while GM and Ford and others scramble to get in on US mining deals and manufacturing. It’s complicated and time-consuming, but may ultimately be the best way car companies can get closer to lowering the cost of new EVs. Those sat at about $55.001 in April, about $10,000 less than a few months ago, with new gas-powered cars averaging $48.281 that same period, or roughly the same as last year. More supply in general, but especially in the US, combined with more EV volumes, will drive that down. +++
+++ About 85% of Toyota Motor’s shareholders voted to re-elect chairman Akio TOYODA to the automaker’s board of directors at an annual general meeting, the company said on Thursday, for his lowest approval rating in at least 5 years. Support for Toyoda, the grandson of the founder of the world’s top-selling automaker, fell from 96% the previous year, when he was president and chief executive. The lower support probably pointed to some investors’ worry over governance at the automaker rather than strategy, as its profitability and share price have risen, said Koji Endo, head of the equity research department at SBI Securities. “From the viewpoint of Japanese, there isn’t any particular problem with governance”, he said. “From the perspective of some U.S. and European institutional investors, there’s a lack of clarity and transparency”. Some influential U.S. funds, including top public pension CalPERS, had come out against the re-election of Toyoda ahead of Wednesday’s meeting. Toyota has said Toyoda was re-nominated as he would push its transformation into a company that provides a range of mobility services. A day before the shareholder meeting, it unveiled a sweeping plan to introduce solid-state batteries and other technologies to improve the driving range and cut costs of future electric vehicles. About 15% of shareholders backed a resolution that would have compelled the automaker to make greater disclosure of its climate change lobbying activities, but it fell short of the two-thirds majority required to pass. Toyota’s board had recommended shareholders vote against it. Danish pension fund AkademikerPension and 2 other European asset managers, which had submitted the resolution, were glad for the support it received, they said in a joint statement.”We will continue to engage actively and support Toyota”, they added. +++
+++ TOYOTA has said it will adopt a technology Tesla pioneered known as “Gigacasting” as part of a strategy by the Japanese automaker to improve the performance (and lower the cost) of future electric vehicles (EVs). Toyota is not alone in following Tesla’s breakthrough. What is gigacasting? The Giga Press is an aluminum die-casting machine adopted by Tesla at its factories in the U.S., China and Germany. The house-sized machines are able to produce aluminum parts far bigger than anything used before in auto manufacturing. The “giga” in the name is a nod to Tesla’s convention of calling its plants “Gigafactories”. Other automakers have taken to calling them “megapresses”, which also can refer to smaller but still massive machines. In operation, the press takes in a shot of molten aluminum of 80 kilograms or more into a mould where it is formed into a part, released and then quickly cooled. Tesla has developed an aluminum alloy that also allows it to skip the heat treating traditionally used to increase the strength of the cast part. What’s the payoff? Typically more than a hundred individually stamped metal parts have been welded together to make a car body. Fewer parts, lower costs and a simplified production line have contributed to Tesla’s industry-leading per-car profitability, analysts have said. For Tesla, the use of a single component in the rear of the Model Y (its best-selling model) allowed it to cut related costs by 40%, the company has said. In the Model 3, by using a single piece from the front and rear of the vehicle, Tesla was able to remove 600 robots from assembly, Elon Musk has said. It can also cut a vehicle’s weight; an important consideration for EVs where the battery pack alone can weigh more than 700 kilos. And it has the potential to reduce waste and greenhouse emissions from a plant. Toyota said it expected that using aluminum die-casting would eliminate dozens of sheetmetal parts from assembly and reduce waste. Who makes these machines? Tesla sources its presses from Italy-based IDRA, which has been a unit of China’s LK Industries since 2008. Competitors of IDRA and LK include Buhler Group in Europe, Ube and Shibaura Machine in Japan, and Yizumi and Haitian in China. The global aluminum die-casting market was worth almost $73 billion last year and is projected to top $126 billion by 2032. Who’s chasing it? In addition to Toyota, General Motors, Hyundai and affiliates of China’s Geely (Volvo, Polestar and Zeekr) are using the technology or planning for it. Zeekr has started using massive aluminum die casts for a multi-purpose van it makes for sale in China and has said it will introduce the technology for other models. Volvo said last year it would invest more than $900 million to upgrade its plant near Gothenburg, Sweden, to include megapress technology. What’s the catch? Cost is one. Tesla records most of its sales with just 2 models: the Model 3 and Model Y. High sales volume on just 2 platforms make it easier to justify the investment in new production technology. Other EV startups also have that advantage. For legacy automakers with more complicated product lineups and factory machinery that is already amortized, the decision to invest tens of millions of dollars in new casting technology can be a harder call, analysts have said. Cars with body sections cast into single pieces could also be harder or more expensive to repair after an accident. That could add to the cost of operation for EVs. Already insurance companies are totaling Teslas and other EVs with low mileage if they have damaged batteries because there is often no way to repair even slightly damaged battery packs. +++
+++ New vehicle demand from UNITED STATES retail and commercial customers is outpacing expectations, 2 top Detroit auto executives said. Their positive comments underscored an upbeat report by the U.S. Commerce Department that showed U.S. retail sales unexpectedly rose in May as consumers bought more motor vehicles and a range of other goods. “If the consumer remains at this strength, we could significantly outperform what we said about full-year performance”, General Motors chief financial office Paul Jacobson told. Ford chief financial officer John Lawler, in a separate interview at the conference, said: “the consumer is hanging in there” while noting continued strength and “pricing power” in the company’s Ford Pro commercial business. The comments from the two CFOs marked a shift from earlier in the year when many economists and some auto sector executives were bracing for a U.S. recession. Tesla CEO Elon Musk in January forecast a “serious recession” and subsequently began slashing prices on the electric car company’s vehicles. Since then, U.S. vehicle sales have stabilized and vehicle production has recovered to close to pre-pandemic levels as supply chain bottlenecks have eased. Jacobson and Lawler said their companies will keep pushing cost-reduction programs that have already cut thousands of jobs from Ford and GM payrolls. The 2 companies are under pressure to fund the launch of new electric vehicles that in the near-term will return far less profit than traditional combustion-engine pick-ups and SUVs. Lawler said Ford sees continued strength and growth in its combustion-engine vehicles “for the next few years” as it ramps up investment in and production of EVs. At the same time, the company is focused on slashing engineering and manufacturing costs by 50% on its second-generation EVs, including a successor to the F-150 Lightning that is due in the middle of this decade. Lawler hinted that Ford may follow Tesla’s lead in employing large underbody castings on its next-generation electric vehicles in its broader efforts to trim costs. Jacobson said GM will not let up on its effort to cut $2 billion out of annual operating costs. As GM faces rising costs for electric vehicles, Jacobson said cost reduction should not be “a program … and we go back to the way it was. We have to cultivate continuing improvement on the cost side”. Both executives said their companies’ decisions to join Tesla’s EV charging network and embrace its NACS (North American Charging Standard) charging protocol will save money and benefit their EV customers. Jacobson said GM has an opportunity to partner with Tesla in developing future locations for EV chargers. Lawler said the adoption of Tesla’s charging standard will not require additional capital investment on Ford’s part. Owners of GM and Ford EVs will gain access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in North America, starting in early 2024. +++
+++ VOLKSWAGEN and a technology partner have mastered a battery manufacturing process called dry coating which if scaled up could cut the cost of cell production by hundreds of millions of euros a year, its battery chief said on Friday. The carmaker, which is working with printing press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer on the technology, said the 2 companies are the first to perfect the procedure for both the positive and negative electrode. “No one else can do this today”, battery chief Thomas Schmall said at a media roundtable. In traditional battery manufacturing, materials for the cathode (or positive electrode) and anode (negative electrode) are applied to a carrier foil via a chemical paste mixture that needs to dry, requiring high amounts of energy. Dry-coating eliminates that step with an adhesive that does not require drying, Schmall explained. Tesla, which obtained a similar process through acquiring startup Maxwell Technologies in 2019, has so far been able to dry-coat the anode, but is still having issues with the cathode, sources told in March. Volkswagen said it has produced several hundred cells with its method on a pilot line and should be ready for industrial production by 2027. Together with scaled-up production and cheaper raw materials, the carmaker hopes the procedure will help bring down cell costs by around 50%, Schmall said. Its cell plants under construction in Germany, Spain and Canada will still have drying lines but can be retrofitted to remove them at a later date, PowerCo Chief Operating Officer Sebastian Wolf added, freeing up around 15% of factory floor space. +++