Intel Report | Sep 9 | The Weekly Automotive & Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | SEP 9?2024?| VIEW ONLINE ??

What We're Reading:

??? Automotive

According to the J.D. Power 2024 Canada Customer Service Index, the average cost of a visit to a dealership for vehicle service rose to $465 in 2024, up 7.6% from a year ago. A similar trip to an independent repair shop has increased to $273, up 4.2% from 2023.?| Automotive News ($)

Over the last ten years, Finland reduced road deaths by a sizable 29%. The average decline in the European Union was 16%. Finland’s progress was due to a range of measures, from lowering speed limits in most urban areas and installing automatic speed cameras on nearly 3,000 km (1864 miles) of main roads, to constructing pedestrian and bicycle paths and 400 km (nearly 250 miles) of motorways. | Forbes

It is widely known that America’s roads are more deadly than those in other rich countries. But there is debate about why. One of The Economist 's data journalists found research by academics at the 美国加州大学伯克利分校 that concluded that America’s heavy, bloated cars and trucks are a big factor.?| The Economist?($)

Tesla Sentry Mode has the ability to capture any event that takes place near a vehicle on one of the vehicle’s external cameras. Routinely used by owners to help solve everything from vandalism cases to finding fugitives on the run for months, Sentry Mode is now being used and employed by the Oakland, California, Police Department. Police officers in the city are now hoping that Teslas are nearby the scene of a crime in hopes of locking more suspects up. | Teslarati

Elon Musk has endorsed Donald Trump and conducted a softball interview with him on X , the social media platform that he owns.?His unpredictable interventions — combined with immense technological and financial power — make him an unguided geopolitical missile, whose whims can reshape world affairs.?| Financial Times ($)

With both X and STARLINK under his control, the world’s richest man wields unprecedented power.?| The Atlantic?($)

Donald Trump formally endorsed a government spending commission that could give Elon Musk broad responsibilities for auditing federal spending and regulations — a move that reflects a tightening political alliance between the two men with less than nine weeks left until Election Day. “This commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” Trump said. Trump said the new commission would save “trillions of dollars — trillions. It’s massive. For the same service we have right now.” | The Washington Post ($) ?

???Electric Vehicles (EVs)

The race to electrify America’s cars is looking more like a slog these days. In the past few months, several automakers announced plans to pull back on introducing new electric models or have scaled back some of their decarbonization goals. So does the latest news threaten U.S. ambitions of cleaning up its transportation sector, which is the single largest driver of the country’s carbon emissions? Not in the long-term, according to experts. “There’s still a consensus among carmakers that everything will go electric,” The New York Times Company ’s Jack Ewing, who has covered the auto industry for 40 years, says, “It’s just a question of how long it’s going to take.” | The New York Times ($)

Electric and hybrid vehicle sales made up 18.7% of all new light-duty vehicles sold in the second quarter of this year, according to new data from Wards Intelligence analyzed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration . ?This increase was “driven primarily” by hybrid sales, which grew almost 31% from 2023 and made up almost 10% of light-duty sales in the second quarter. Sales of plug-in hybrids grew, as well, while the battery electric vehicle share of the market was about flat compared to the second quarter of last year. The trend appears to be continuing into the back half of the year. In July, hybrid sales were up about 23% in the U.S. compared to July of last year, and the gap between hybrid and electric sales grew, according to data from 摩根士丹利 . | Heatmap ($)

J.D. Power is projecting that 1.2 million EVs will be sold in the US by the end of 2024, an increase over 1 million sold last year. That’s 9% of total vehicles sold, which has been revised down from a previous prediction of 12%. | The Verge

You might want to start saving up if you're looking for a plug-in hybrid. These cars, equipped with an internal combustion engine to take over when the battery powering the vehicle runs out of juice, have become an alluring compromise for a new group of more practical green-car shoppers. That's giving new life to the once-withering hybrid segment. Car companies are leaning into this segment more than ever, changing production and sales strategies to meet the growing demand for hybrid cars.?| Business Insider?($)

Swedish automaker 沃尔沃汽车 scrapped its target of going all electric by 2030, saying it now expected to still be offering some hybrid models in its lineup at that time.?| Reuters ($)

In August, electric vehicles accounted for a genuinely staggering 94.3% share of new car sales in Norway, as the nation’s road users continue to accelerate ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to EV adoption. While electric vehicles have made up the majority of new car sales each year since 2020, the 94% monthly figure marks a new high even by their standards, with the Norwegian government aiming to reach a point in 2025 when every new car sold is electric or hydrogen.?| Sherwood

The Biden-Harris administration announced that the number of publicly available EV chargers has doubled since Biden took office. Over 192,000 publicly available charging ports are now online, and approximately 1,000 new chargers are being added each week. To build on this momentum, the federal government has awarded $521 million in grants to further expand the national network.?| Electrek

Joe Biden wants 50% of new cars in the US running on batteries by 2025. In 2021, Biden approved a $5 billion plan to build fast-charging stations every 50 miles (80 kilometers) along 75,000 miles of interstates and highways. There are now about 4,800 public fast-charging stations in the US, with 12,500 cords between them. More than a quarter of those locations — some 1,300 stations — were switched on in the 12 months ending on July 31. | Bloomberg ($)

At US public stations promising charging speeds of 100 kW or higher, the average delivered charge was only 52 kW in 2022. That disconnect — largely a reflection of battery power’s idiosyncrasies — is leaving many US drivers guessing as to when, why and by how much their charge is being throttled. | Bloomberg?($)

U.S. miners and battery recyclers are rushing to close government loans worth billions of dollars before January out of concern that former President Donald Trump would, if reelected, block funding needed to boost American output of critical minerals for the energy transition.?| Reuters ($)

Toyota Motor Corporation and 日产 are among several Japanese companies that will invest $7 billion (1 trillion yen) to boost the nation’s EV battery output. The Japanese government will help as it aims to establish a domestic supply chain while moving away from China and South Korea, which currently dominate the market. Japan has been seen as one of the biggest laggards as the industry shifts to all-electric. Sales of domestic EVs fell 39% in the first half of the year. | Electrek

How does electric car adoption vary across US states? | Hannah Ritchie

Many people seem to be puzzled by the EV battery recycling market. Why are not batteries piling up outside the recycling facilities? They were supposed to last only 8 years, right? Or 4 years as Chinese industry associations suggested. But fair enough. If it didn’t happen last year it will happen this year, right? The main reason EV batteries are not recycled at a larger scale than what they are today is that they remain in the vehicles. They remain there because they serve the purpose they were produced for. The question is for how long??| Hans Eric Melin ?

????? China

China’s top electric vehicle maker 比亚迪 won’t announce a major plant investment in Mexico until at least after the US election, as shifting American policy forces global businesses into wait-and-see mode. BYD was scouting three locations for a car production facility in Mexico but has stopped actively looking for now. The postponement is largely because BYD would prefer to wait and see the outcome of the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in early November.?| Bloomberg?($)

Tesla plans to produce a six-seat variant of its Model Y car in China from late 2025.?| Reuters ($) ?

???Robotics & Autonomy

In places like San Francisco, Phoenix and Las Vegas, robot taxis are navigating city streets, each without a driver behind the steering wheel. Some don’t even have steering wheels.?| The New York Times ($)

The abundance of cheap labor was once a reason why seemingly everything is made in China. But with rising wages and an aging population, industrial robots are increasingly common on the country’s factory floors. Now, China wants to produce those robots, too. Being the world’s factory, it is natural that China is by far the largest market for industrial robots. The country installed more than half of all industrial robots globally in 2022, according to the International Federation of Robotics | The Wall Street Journal?($)

Waymo has driven over 22.2 million miles across four cities — which reflects a 212% increase over eight months. The company says it has around 300 vehicles operating each in San Francisco and Phoenix, its two main markets. Waymo’s robotaxis have 73% fewer injury-causing crashes as compared to human benchmarks and 48% fewer police-reported collisions. It also added a new category: airbag deployment crashes. Waymo says it has 26 fewer airbag deployments than the human benchmark, or a decrease of 84%. | The Verge

David Zipper references Jevons paradox to explain that even if autonomous vehicles eventually work perfectly — an enormous “if” — they are likely to increase total emissions and crash deaths, simply because people will use them so much. | The Verge ?

????Connectivity

The federal government and numerous industry stakeholders want vehicle-to-everything technology to increasingly become part of the country’s national highways, intersections and vehicles to improve safety. Known as V2X, the digital communication could help prevent crashes, optimize system performance, improve transportation efficiency and improve roadway condition awareness of issues such as weather and work zones. | Trucking Dive ?

??? Aviation & Space

Aerospace engineers have spent the better part of a century trying to cut weight from aircraft to save on fuel. 汉莎航空 is now going the other way on some jets in order to give first-class customers a good night’s rest. The German group’s Swiss International Air Lines subsidiary will add a lead weight to the tail of some of its aircraft to smooth out a fore-to-aft imbalance caused by its new first class cabin. Engineers will add the so-called “balancing plate” to compensate for the additional weight generated by a new arrangement that will feature lie-down beds. | Bloomberg ($)

SpaceX revealed pictures and specifications of Raptor 3 engine:

Raptor 1:?

185 metric tons of thrust.?

2,080 kg.

(3,630 kg when all vehicle-side commodities and hardware added on)

Raptor 2:?

230 metric tons of thrust.?

1,630 kg.

(2,875 kg when all vehicle-side commodities and hardware added on)

Raptor 3:?

280 metric tons of thrust.?

1,525 kg.

(1,720 kg when all vehicle-side commodities and hardware added on).

| NSF ?

????Climate

More than 50 countries have dabbled in cloud seeding since the 1940s—to slake droughts, refill hydroelectric reservoirs, keep ski slopes snowy, or even use as a weapon of war. In recent years there’s been a new surge of interest, partly due to scientific breakthroughs, but also because arid countries are facing down the early impacts of climate change.?Like other technologies designed to treat the symptoms of a warming planet (say, pumping sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight into space), seeding was once controversial but now looks attractive, perhaps even imperative. | Wired

????Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Cars of the Week":?a 1991 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Targa Reimagined by Singer Vehicle Design . | Broad Arrow

Have a great week,

Steve Greenfield ?