UAW Strike Won't Expand, Electric Skates Recalled, France Destabilizes the UK, Renault JV with Volvo & CMA-CGM - MOBILITY BRIEF_ ??????? - October 7th

Good Saturday everybody, it's time for your weekly Mobility Brief! ???

On the menu this week

?? This Week In The Mobility World

???? UAW Strike Update

• UAW President Shawn Fain announced Friday that the union won’t expand its strike against Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis: and indeed, the Union leader announced a huge win for them, with GM accepting to include battery plants in the Union agreement, avoiding the UAW to launch new Union votes in those plants. It’s also an opportunity for GM to avoid a strike in its very profitable Texas plant in which it builds its full-size SUVs. The battle is not over yet, but it’s a great step in that direction.
• Meanwhile, GM and Ford are proceeding to layoffs that they attribute as a consequence from the strike. 330 at Ford and 164 at GM, as GM announced that the strike cost them $200M so far. The good ol’ American bargaining.

Tribute

• Karim Slaoui , Cowboy 's Co-Founder, has left us at the age of 36. Our thoughts are with its family and Cowboy’s team. Tech.eu’s wrote him a tribute we had to share with you.

???Micromobility News

• All electric skateboards from the Californian brand OneWheel have been recalled by its manufacturer Future Motion. It’s up to 300k devices that are being recalled after the US Consumer Product Safety Commission warned of possible injuries or even deaths become of the skateboard sudden stop while reaching limit conditions. 4 deaths have already been reported. The manufacturer already announced a firmware upgrade will soon solve the problem in the next few weeks.

???Manufacturing Updates

• France is getting tired of all the Brexit deal exemption/delays being negotiated by the UK with the EU, and claims it is not in favor of a delay of the tariffs rules negotiated after Britain’s exit from the EU. Reminder: those rules state that to be exempt from any tariffs, EVs should contain 45%+ of EU/UK components and even 50%+ for batteries. Of course, nobody is ready for that in the UK. Is France trying to eliminate the British option for any new EV manufacturing deal in Europe, or is it fearing that Chinese manufacturers would be doing car-laundering through the UK?
• PowerCo (Volkwagen) and Umicore JV planned to manufacture battery materials has just been named: call it Ionway. The target remain clear: produce enough to equip 2.2M EV vehicles by 2030. Their first plant location has just been announced: it’s gonna be in Nysa, Poland, right beside an already existing Umicore cathode plant. Production will start in 2025, and of course, Poland government will bring €350M of the €1.7Bn investment plan from the JV.
• After Takata, it’s now ARC who faces a gigantic recall for defective airbags: 52M of them could potentially be recalled, impacting up to 11 manufacturers. If the NHTSA is discussing this potential recall, ARC considers it’s not needed. Two cases involving these airbags resulted in deaths, while many other involved injuries.
• The NHTSA is also closely watching Ford’s EcoBoost 2.7L & 3L that equips the Bronco, F-150 and Explorer amongst many others from the American manufacturers, and is now evaluating ??catastrophic engine failures??.
• Is it the Autumn of recalls? NHTSA is on a roll: they just opened an inquiry regarding potential Volkswagen Atlas models triggering ??ghost brakings??.

???New Car Reveals

• Not really a new car, but a new market entry this week: GM is back in Europe! 5 years after exiting through Opel’s sale to PSA (now Stellantis), the Detroit manufacturer is launching its Cadillac Lyriq in Switzerland, opening a flagship in Zurich, and will soon continue its comeback in France and Sweden. Imported from the US, the , who will be mostly sold online, has also inherited of a premium regarding its price: as it is starting at €84k, European customers will pay €30k more than Americans for the entry level. Hopefully it means its European version is more equipped from the entry level.

???Tech Updates

• And the Cadillac Lyriq launch is also an important milestone for GM, as it will bring the Super Cruise ADAS system to the Old Continent at the same time. Regulatory approval is still pending, but definitely something to keep an eye on.
• Renault Group validated the UNECE UN-R156 requirement this week, aka the SUMS certification. If it seems like a foreign language for you: it’s basically a certification proving the UNECE that the group respects the best standards for in-car software updates, which is now mandatory to obtain any vehicle homologation.
• Tesla got away with murder: threatened by a class action about its FSD feature, Tesla managed a legal masterclass that only the US legal system can offer us. The judge accepted Tesla’s argument that all the customers involved have been signing an ??agreement to arbitrate?? in their purchasing agreement, that implies that any conflict between the customer and the brand should not be solved in front of a judge, but through an arbitration ??administered by the American Arbitration Association ?, (AAA, how ironic). And of course, nobody lifted this clause as it required to send a letter to Tesla within 30 days after purchase. Sigh.
• Nio has updated its SkyOS system for Europe, localizing some of its connected services for European customers as illustrated by the use of Google for any POI search.
• British AV start-up Wayve unveiled its GAIA-1 generative AI world model that impressively generates new video captures of driving situations based on a simple prompt. An interesting breakthrough for vision-based AV.

?? EV Updates

• Renault Group is joining forces with with Volvo Group (the truck company, not the car one, and the owner of the Renault Trucks brand) and CMA CGM (French supply chain leader) to design a new generation of BEV vans and associated connected services. A JV will be created in 2024 (project name is Flexis), shared evenly between the two mobility giants, with CMA CGM expected to join the capital later. Renault continue to tie its web of partnerships, and enters the world of purpose-built vehicles with this JV that will carry its future FlexEvan model.

• Is Foxconn’s Ohio plant a graveyard? After Lordstown a few months ago, it’s now another Foxconn customer in the US who is filing for bankruptcy: IndiEV. Already low in cash when it signed a manufacturing contract with Foxconn last year, the start-up rushed into bankruptcy after failing to be listed due when its “merger partner liquidated”.
• China complains about the speed of EU’s inquiry, especially regarding the short notice given by the European Commission for the underlying consultation. EC released earlier that it already gathered documents showing that China-based producers were given an unfair advantage compared to EU producers through subsidies in the form of grants, advantageous loans, and unusually low raw material prices.
• Europe is not the sole expansion area for Geely’s Zeekr: the US-listing-awaiting brand is expected to launch in Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain next year, aiming for 10k total sales in Middle East by 2025.
• Meanwhile, Bahrain-funded McLaren is looking for new partners in order to expand its model range further than the sole supercar niche: BMW, Hyundai, Geely and Lucid have been surveyed in that regard. Also in the pipeline for McLaren: raising $600M from its current shareholders for developing a brand new EV supercar before 2030. A crucial moment for the loss-making British manufacturer.

???Investment/Financial Updates

• BYD acquires the Mobility division of the American electronic manufacturing services company Jabil, tightening its position on the market for $2.2Bn. The whole scope remains unclear, as Jabil operations are quite wide, but it will certainly about the Automotive Electronics Manufacturing division (Electronics for ADAS, EVs and connectivity).

?? Bookmark Of The Week

Skoda Voltavia Project - Automobile Propre

In French: Link

??The Czech brand has asked [Automobile Propre and Turbo] to carry out a retrofit based on a first-generation Octavia produced between 1959 and 1971. Once completed, the two projects will compete in front of a panel of judges who will have the difficult task of deciding which is the better of the two.

The only constraint imposed by Skoda was a range of 180 km on a single charge. For the rest: total freedom, without even having to worry about the potential final blow of homologation ".

This is quite a challenge posed by Skoda France to the teams at Turbo and Automobile Propre, with the latter attempting to meet it with the help of the teams at Retrofutur, the French retrofit specialist led by Arnaud Pigounides whom we were lucky enough to interview on our Bitume podcast (the replay is here, in French).

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