In today’s news dump we’ve got flying cars, crashing sales, falling costs for Chinese automakers, and a Mercedes recall almost as old as Thomas.
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Pick Your Poison: Randomly Stalling Engine Or Detaching Sunroof?
Recalls happen almost every day and we don’t cover all of them because the volume is fairly high and the issues are often quite minor (we could have a whole blog just for Ford). It’s rare, though, to see an automaker issue recalls for vehicles over 20 years old and it’s not often there’s a recall for a problem that can cause new engines to just randomly stall. That Mercedes managed to pull off one of each in the same week is the bad kind of impressive.
Let’s start with the older one, first. You can read about it here. This is the one where the sunroof might just fly off the car without warning:
Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (MBUSA) is recalling certain 2001-2011 C-Class, CLK, E-Class, and CLS vehicles. Please refer to MBUSA’s recall report for specific vehicle model details. The glass sunroof panel may not be properly secured and may detach
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Mercedes already tried one recall with this supplier and then decided it wasn’t enough. There’s a whole chronology of what happened that you can read here, but the short version is Mercedes claims the supplier initially didn’t let the sunroofs bond long enough at first and then changed their process at some point in production. Mercedes recalled those vehicles but noticed the problem was still occurring and decided other factors (humidity/temperature in the production facility, for instance) were to blame and thus decided to institute a second recall.
Given that these cars are on most likely on their second or third owners, it’ll be fun tracking them down. The good news is it sounds like an extremely rare occurrence.
And behind door number two there’s this recall of crossovers/suvs for engines that can stall while driving.
Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC. (MBUSA) is recalling certain 2012-2014 ML550, 2012-2015 ML350, AMG ML63, 2015 ML250, ML400, 2016 GLE450, GLE300, 2016-2018 GLE350, GLE550, 2016-2019 GLE400, 2017-2019 AMG GLE43, and 2016-2020 AMG GLE63 vehicles. Water might accumulate in the spare tire wheel well and damage the fuel pump control unit, which could cause an engine stall while driving.
Auto Supplier: Chinese Automakers Can Undercut Europeans By $10,600 Per Small EV
There are numerous reasons why Chinese automakers have focused on reaching European customers first, but the biggest is probably the relative lack of duties compared to the United States. Without the high import barrier, the Chinese can use their price advantage to gain market share. How big is their advantage?
Franco-German auto supplier Forvia’s CEO Patrick Koller told Reuters at CES that it’s about 10,000 EUR or $10,600 USD.
While the average price of electric cars has risen in Europe since 2015 from 48,942 euros to 55,821 euros and 53,038-to-63,864 in the United States, it has dropped in China to 31,829 from 66,819 euros, taking it below the price of gasoline cars, according to a study by JATO Dynamics, which provides analysis on industry trends.
Koller said Chinese EV makers can produce vehicles for less because they have lower research and development costs, lower levels of capital spending and lower labour costs than rivals in Europe.
The halving of costs for Chinese EVs is a huge deal. The Chinese might not be here tomorrow, but that’s an enormous amount of price pressure to put on the competition. Can it last forever? That’s less clear. Cheap labor usually doesn’t last forever as a middle class often forms, though it’s always a conflict (as seen in South Korea, most recently).
Stellantis USA Did Worse Than The Market In 2022, GM Did Way Better
FCA US LLC, aka Stellantis, aka Chrysler, aka aka Winnie the Bish, lagged the rest of the market in 2022. While the overall car market in the US looks to be down about 8-10% from 2022, Stellantis dropped nearly 12.9%. It could be worse! Honda/Acura combined for a 32.9% loss year-over-year. Other big losers include Toyota at -9.6% and Nissan/Mitsubishi at -24.5%.
I mentioned yesterday that Hyundai did quite well (almost matching 2021), but the biggest winner seems to be Polestar, which had an increase of 189.7% compared to 2021. That’s got a lot to do with the small numbers (it sold 2,100 cars in 2022) and the rollout of products, but it’s still a fun number. General Motors also performed admirably, with a 41.8% increase in sales in the fourth quarter, which put the company ahead for the year by 2.5%.
Looking at the Stellantis sales results, it is interesting to see that Jeep’s plug-in hybrid game is so strong. The Jeep Wrangler 4xe is America’s best-selling plug-in hybrid and 11% of all Grand Cherokee sales in the fourth quarter were also the 4xe. It’s not just Jeep, as Pacifica Hybrids were up 123% in the fourth quarter of 2022 as well.
Oh, Hey, Look! Stellantis Is Doing The Flying Car Thing
The eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) market is exploding. Specifically, the investment side is exploding. None of these things are actually flying in anything other than in extremely limited tests. The renders, though, are great. Look how cool that person appears to be. They’re not even looking at the flying car! They just keep walking like it’s an explosion in an action movie.
Hyundai’s got Supernal, and now Stellantis has announced an increased investment in California-based Archer. From their press release:
Stellantis will work with Archer to stand up Archer’s recently announced manufacturing facility in Covington, Georgia at which the companies plan to begin manufacturing the Midnight aircraft in 2024. Midnight is designed to be safe, sustainable, quiet and, with its expected payload of over 1,000 pounds, can carry four passengers plus a pilot. With a range of 100 miles, Midnight is optimized for back-to-back short distance trips of around 20 miles, with a charging time of approximately 10 minutes in-between.
Additionally, Stellantis set aside $150 million in equity capital that Archer can use to enlarge itself. Phrasing!
The Flush
Flying cars, huh? Not to go all Popular Mechanics here, but how long do you think before these are regularly in service?
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Even CarMax’s CEO Thinks Used Car Prices Are Too High
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The Auto Industry Thinks The Future Of Cars Is Everything But Driving
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Chinese Car Companies Had A Huge Year In Europe And They’re Just Getting Started
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McLaren’s V6 Artura Already Recalled For Fire-Causing Loose Nuts
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Here’s What You Need To Know About Tom Zhu, Tesla’s New ‘Number 2’
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Photos: Stellantis, BYD, Mercedes BYD
“…Chinese EV makers can produce vehicles for less because they have lower research and development costs…” They let others spend the money and do the work, then they steal the results.
Don’t worry, those C-Classes are also still on recall for the Takata airbags – took one on trade recently and was not enthused to drive it to our service center down the street.
“FCA US LLC, aka Stellantis, aka Chrysler, aka aka Winnie the Bish.”
New tagine- “Dodge Hellcats – I’m gonna hit you with a ski!”