Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but a North American automaker is about to temporarily reduce its manufacturing output due to the ongoing global chip shortage. A Ford spokesperson told Reuters on Friday the automaker would cut or suspend production at eight of its factories across the US, Mexico and Canada. The shutdown will start on February 7th. Among other facilities, the decision will affect the Kansas City plant where Ford produces the F-150, one of its most popular and profitable vehicles.
This isn’t the first time Ford has felt the chip crunch, nor has it been the only automaker affected by the situation. Last September, General Motors temporarily suspended production at all but four of its North American factories amid component shortages. At the start of the year, the US Commerce Department warned semiconductor-related supply constraints would last until at least the second of half of 2022. “We aren’t even close to being out of the woods,” Department Secretary Gina Raimondo said at the time.
Companies like Ford have taken action to address the problem. In November, the company announced a strategic partnership with GlobalFoundries to boost US semiconductor production, but the automaker likely won’t benefit from that arrangement for a while. In the meantime, Ford told Reuters it expects its production volume to “improve significantly” in the second half of the year.
“Financial performance is obviously critical,” President and CEO Jim Farley said in a release Thursday. “We’re also proud that customers see how Ford is taking EVs mainstream, and have already ordered or reserved more than 275,000 all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUVs, F-150 Lightning pickups and E-Transit commercial vehicles – and we’re breaking constraints to deliver every one of them as fast as we can.”
In fact, the company reports that sales of its EVs in January "grew almost 4 times faster than the overall electrified segment" (13,169 units in total), making Ford the current number 2 retailer of electric vehicles in the country behind Tesla (and the country’s top-selling automaker overall), prompting a promise from Farley to double the company's global production capacity for EVs "to at least 600,000 by 2023." He expects EVs to "represent at least 40 percent of its product mix by 2030."
In all, Ford saw revenue of $37.7 billion, a net income of $12.3 billion and $2 billion in EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) in Q4 2021. The company sold 6,513 Mavericks in January alone — with 3,549 of these sold as hybrids — along with 2,370 Mach-Es, 27 percent of which were of the GT variety. Ford also saw strong interest in its new Transit line of commercial EVs with more than 300 American businesses placing orders for 10,000 vehicles. And, while not wholly electrified, Ford did point out that its pickup lines — the F-150, Ranger, and Maverick — with combined sales of 62,293, outsold GM’s pickups in January.
Tesla is once again grappling with large-scale software quality issues. The Associated Pressreports Tesla has issued a recall for 817,143 cars over a flaw in seat belt chime functionality. All Model 3 and Model Y cars, as well as 2021 and newer Model S and Model X cars, have a "software error" that prevents the chime from sounding on startup if the chime was interrupted and the seat belt wasn't fastened. You could run into the problem just by closing the door just after leaving the vehicle, according to the recall notice.
The automaker plans to fix the seat belt chime bug by releasing an over-the-air update sometime in early February. There are no reports of injuries, and the visual seat belt alert still appears properly. South Korean testers first discovered the problem on January 6th, and Tesla decided a recall was necessary on January 25th following an investigation.
While this recall is relatively minor, its timing couldn't be much worse for Tesla. It comes just a few days after a recall for a Full Self Driving bug, and while the NHTSA is investigating a string of incidents where cars using Autopilot crashed into emergency vehicles. A driver is facing felony charges for an Autopilot-related crash, too. That's on top of recalls for physical problems like camera, trunk and suspension defects. Tesla doesn't have a stellar reputation for quality at the moment, and the seat belt chime fault only reinforces that image.
Bird is teaming up with Nashville with the aim of filling certain public transit gaps in the community with electric scooters. The company and the city's public transit agency hope to boost adoption of public transportation and eco-friendly transit options.
The two sides will harness WeGo Public Transit’s data and expertise about transit usage patterns as well as Bird's know-how to build their pilot program. Folks traveling to and from some areas of the city "will have consistent and reliable access" to e-scooters, according to Bird. The hope is that residents will opt for a scooter for the last-mile section of their journeys, which are often taken by car.
Bird noted in a press release that transit gaps can prevent people from having easy access to public transportation. Scooters can help those without cars get to and from bus stops and train stations. Bird didn't say when the program will ramp up or how much the scooter rides will cost.
The agreement marks Nashville's first private-public partnership based on expanding access to e-scooters. Bird has operated in the city since 2018. Other micromobility companies have a presence there, including Lime and Unagi.
Public-private partnerships aren't exactly novel for Bird, though. Spain, for instance, forged its first public-private micromobility partnership with the company back in 2020.
Strong sales of its existing pickup and SUV lines in Q4, despite decreased sales numbers due to the semiconductor shortage and supply chain constrictions, have GM positioned for a strong start to 2022 as the company works to electrify and automate its vehicle offerings.
"With an improving outlook for semiconductors in the U.S. and China, we expect our 2022 results will remain strong," GM CEO Mary Barra wrote in a letter to shareholders Tuesday. "In fact, we expect our EBIT-adjusted earnings to remain at or near record levels in the range of $13 billion — $15 billion, all while investing more year over year in our growth businesses like Cruise, BrightDrop and our rapidly accelerating portfolio of electric vehicles."
Barra points to strong demand for GM's burgeoning line of EVs running on the Ultium battery platform — such as the currently available Hummer EV as well as upcoming Silverado, Equinox, Sierra and Lyriq EVs — with a portion of the company's financial performance. GM's Brightdrop EV6000 commercial vehicle is also seeing healthy interest from FedEx, Merchant's Fleet and Walmart as green additions to their respective delivery and cargo fleets, the company reported Tuesday.
The Hummer EV itself has reportedly seen more than 59,000 paid reservations to date. "Not surprisingly, some of the first owners are very prominent figures in the sports and entertainment industries," Barra said during Tuesday's call "Their initial feedback has been just incredible.” The company has also seen 110,000 Silverado EVs reservations so far, Barra explained, "including reservations for more than 240 fleet operators, and the numbers keep growing every day."
GM's $35 billion EV and autonomy investment announced last June, is already beginning to pay dividends. "Battery cells will not be a constraint to our long term EV growth," Barra noted. The company expects its first battery cell manufacturing plant in Lordstown Ohio by the middle of the year, with two more expected to commence operations by the end of next year and the location of a fourth site set to be announced later this spring. These will work in tandem with the automaker's Michigan-based Factory ZERO and Orion EV assembly plants.
"This major milestone brings Cruise even closer to offering its first paid rides and generating $50 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade," Barra noted. "It also means that the SoftBank Vision Fund will invest — as planned — an additional $1.35 billion in Cruise. This is another strong vote of confidence in the Cruise team, its technology and services."
The company also reiterated three of its ambitious climate goals during Tuesday's earnings call: going "carbon neutral in our global products and operations by 2040," eliminating "tailpipe emissions for new light-duty vehicles and offer all-electric heavy-duty vehicles by 2035" in line with California's upcoming emission vehicle sales ban, and sourcing 100 percent of its production power requirements "from renewable sources by 2035, and by 2025 in the US."
While interest in GM's line of electrifieds helped propel sales, the lack of available processors to put in them hurt the company's overall numbers. GM delivered 441,000 vehicles to American consumers in Q4 2021, does from 447,000 in Q3 and 771,000 in Q4 of 2020. Still, that dip only translated into a minor drop in overall revenue of $3.2 billion from $3.4 billion the previous quarter.
Looking ahead, GM expects the first of its Cadillac Lyriq to begin in less than 60 days while the first batch of its Hummer EV Pickups are already en route to their buyers. The company expects production on the EV600 to begin later this year with an initial capacity of around 30,000 units annually.
Tesla is issuing an over-the-air update to recall a "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) beta feature that allowed cars to roll through stop signs, ABC News has reported. The function first appeared in FSD 10.3 with the addition of the so-called Assertive profile. It allows vehicles to illegally roll through stop signs at 4-way intersection at speeds of up to 5.6 MPH, according to ABC.
Tesla reportedly agreed to the recall after two meetings with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officials. It affects nearly 54,000 vehicles including 2016-2022 Model S and X EVs, 2017-2022 Model 3s and 2020-2022 Model Ys. "Failing to stop at a stop sign can increase the risk of a crash," the NHTSA wrote in the recall report. Tesla said it doesn't know of any injuries or crashes caused by the feature, however.
Tesla previously reverted its FSD 10.3 software due to "some issues" including a regression with left turns, phantom forward-collision warnings and auto-steering bugs. The company was also forced to recall 300,000 cars in China due to Autopilot issues, while issuing recalls elsewhere for camera and trunk defects, separating suspensions and other issues.
As we've previously mentioned, the name "Full Self-Driving" is misleading because that term generally refers to true Level 4 self-driving, while Tesla's system simply offers Level 2 advanced driver assistance. An OTA release to disable rolling stops is expected to be sent out by early February.
Starting today, owners of non-Tesla electric vehicles can juice up their batteries at select Superchargers in France and Norway. Drivers can find eligible locations in the Tesla app. Based on screenshots Tesla shared, there are 20 such sites in France and 15 in Norway.
Tesla started opening up broader access to its Supercharger network in November. It initially allowed drivers of non-Tesla EVs to charge their car at 10 stations in the Netherlands. The pilot is open to EV drivers who live in the Netherlands, France, Norway, Germany and Belgium.
Only CCS-enabled vehicles are supported for now. Tesla owners will still be able to charge at Supercharger stations as normal, though drivers of other EVs will need to pay some additional fees to "support charging a broad range of vehicles and adjustments to our sites to accommodate these vehicles."
The company said it will keep an eye on possible congestion at each site. Future expansion of the pilot will depend on capacity, though Tesla said that "more customers using the Supercharger network enables faster expansion." It aims to eventually open all of its sites to all EV owners. Tesla said it has long been its ambition to open Supercharger locations to non-Tesla EVs to boost the overall availability of charging locations and encourage more drivers to opt for an electric vehicle (while earning some more scratch, of course).
We got our first good look at the EV6 last March and, nearly a year later, finally got to sit in it, drive it, and push every button in the cabin last week during a day-long press event in Northern California. It’s the first Kia vehicle to be produced under the company’s new Plan S electrification strategy and is expected to be joined by nearly a dozen other new EV models by 2026 - with Kia noting that “All dedicated Kia EVs will begin with the ‘EV’ prefix, followed by a number that indicates the car’s size and position in the lineup, not its chronological place in the launch cadence.”
The EV6 will be made available in three trim levels: Light, Wind, and GT-Line. Technically there’s a fourth version, the First Edition, but the 1,500 units in that introductory lot sold out in something like 11 hours so your chances of catching one for sale at the local dealership are quite low.
Hyundai Motor Group
The EV6 Light is Kia’s introductory trim level, retailing for $40,900 and offering performance to match. Its 58 kWh nickel-cobalt-manganese battery powers a 168k W rear motor to produce 167 horsepower. That translates into an 8-second 0-60 with an electronically limited 115 MPH top speed and an EPA-rated range of 232-miles. In terms of efficiency, the Light will net you around 136 eMPG in the city (thanks, regenerative braking!) and 100 eMPG at freeway speeds. Like its better-appointed brethren, the Light employs MacPherson struts up front and a multi-link suspension in the rear.
Its drivetrain, unfortunately, can only handle a 400V charging architecture which lengthens the amount it takes to fully recharge it. It’s not terrible, mind you, with a full charge off a 50W DC fast charger taking just over an hour — and a cool 18 minutes if you’re lucky enough to snag a 350W station. At home, using a 240V / 48A connection (ie a home-charging box), you’re looking at just under 6 hours for a full charge but with a standard 110V / 12A socket (like what you plug your coffee maker into), that’s going to take days. Literally it’d have to sit on charge for more than a weekend — 51 hours and 5 minutes specifically, according to Kia’s numbers — to max out its battery capacity. You’re not going to see the same delays with either the Wind or GT’s on account of them using the same 800V-style drivetrains that we’re starting to see on higher-end EVs like GM’s Hummer EV, the Porsche Taycan, Audi’s E-Tron and even the Mach-E.
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What’s more, the Wind (starting at $47,000) and GT (starting at $51,200 and topping out at $55,900) both offer larger 77.4 kWh packs as well as the option of having both front and rear motors, enabling AWD. You’re looking at 310 miles of range with a 7.2 second 0-60 and 117 MPH top speed with the RWD iterations; 274 miles of range and 5.1 second 0-60 for the AWDs. The AWD notches 134 eMPG in cities and 101 eMPG on freeways, though the AWD’s efficiency takes a noticeable hit, 116 eMPG and 94 eMPG, respectively.
In terms of charging, the Wind and GT will require 73 minutes for a full charge on a 50W DC connection (and again, 18 minutes with a 350W port which provides roughly 217 miles of added range), about 7 hours on a 240V plug and a whopping 68 hours using 110V. They’ll also offer another first for Kia, V2L (vehicle to load) capabilities similar to the Ford F-150 Lightning meaning that you’ll be able to use the EV6 as a giant, rolling battery to power various accessories, 110V power tools and sundry household items in the event of a blackout.
Hyundai Motor Group
Aside from the trim levels and powertrain differences, the various EV6s are practically identical from the outside given the common E-GMP underpinnings. Each measures 114 inches at the wheelbase (same as the Telluride SUV) with an overall length of ~184 inches. The crossover is 74 inches wide and 60.8 inches tall. The EV6 may look like a svelte sports coupe from its promotional photos but in real life, this is one chonky boi — not quite as tall as the Mach-E but just as broad and sporting beefy 19-inch rims (dubs are optional on the GT). It really fills out a standard parking space, though Kia is offering a cool valet feature (optional on Wind, standard on the GT) with the EV6 that allows you to line up the vehicle with a parking space, get out of the car and then use the key fob to remotely back it into the spot.
The EV6 has a damn comfortable interior. Its cabin is disconcertingly quiet with the doors closed and windows up. There’s a total of 102 cubic feet of space inside the EV6, 24.4 of which is dedicated to storage in the rear cargo area (50.2 cubic feet if you fold the seats down). You’ve got plenty of head and leg space regardless of whether you’re sitting in the front or back, though you might need to slouch a bit to fit three sets of shoulders across the rear bench seat. On the plus side, there is no central drive shaft running under the cabin (thanks, e-motors!) so there’s no hump to endure if you’re sitting in the middle.
Hyundai Motor Group
Kia also sprinkled USB and USB-C ports throughout the front and rear seating areas so you won’t have to stretch very far to plug in. Heck there’s even a wireless charging pad on the front armrest (next to the engine start button and drive selector). My only bugaboo with the seating layout was a minor one: the front seats employ a rather elaborate headrest that tends to obscure the forward facing view for people in the rear of the vehicle and, conversely, block out a noticeable portion of the rearview mirror.
Blind spots are not really a worry, however, seeing how many cameras Kia managed to pack into the vehicle. For example, when you engage your turn signal, a live rear-facing video feed from the side mirror pops up on the driver’s instrument cluster so you don’t cut off bicyclists or merge into the path of a tractor-trailer. You’ve also got a slew of 21 different ADAS (driver assist) features including rearview cameras for parking, lane keeping assist, lane departure warnings, automatic high beams, and forward collision avoidance.
Hyundai Motor Group
I was especially impressed with the EV6’s level 2 highway autonomy driving feature, Highway Driving Assist 2. Just click the appropriate button on the steering wheel and the adaptive cruise control will automatically center the vehicle in the lane, maintaining its course and speed even through turns. There were a handful of times when the system and I (and the car in the next lane over) mildly disagreed when a turn in the road either began or finished but as long as I kept my hands on the wheel, minor course corrections were no big deal.
If anything, the reduced need to keep my eyes on the road allowed me sufficient time to figure out how to work the rather confusing central infotainment system. The EV6 comes equipped with a 12.3-inch color TFT touchscreen navigation display unit mounted into the center console. It offers AM/FM/Sirius radio running through a Meridian sound system, Bluetooth connectivity, a WiFi hotspot, and Android Auto/Apple Carplay — ugh, the phone has to to be physically tethered to enable Carplay/Auto? Really? This is what we’re doing in 2022?
Hyundai Motor Group
I’m a fan of the physical volume and temperature control knobs that Kia incorporated into the design, not so much a fan of the lower, secondary touchscreen which alternates between a quick selection bar for the media, navigation, and climate menus. The problem is that the button space that flips functionality between the menu select screen and the dedicated climate control menu is not well defined or really delineated in any meaningful way (I honestly thought it was the button for the hazard lights until a Kia PR rep showed me otherwise) so unless you either know what you’re specifically looking for or tap it at random, there’s no direct way to change the cabin temperature, adjust the fan speeds or activate the defogger — or, conversely, quickly access the navigation map or radio. And asking the onboard virtual assistant for help in doing so was like talking to an (even more) incompetent Siri; there was no amount of enunciation that could get this thing to understand the words that were coming out of my mouth.
Hyundai Motor Group
There was one feature that really stood out to me, easily redeeming the secondary touchscreen’s learning curve, and that was the AR display. It is absolutely brilliant. I gushed about Kia’s use of AR back in 2019 when I drove the Niro EV. That one seemed more a proof-of-concept with its little pop up screen mounted on the steering shaft. The EV6’s, instead, is a far more finished and polished product beamed directly onto the front windshield with startling clarity. The vehicle’s speed, the road’s speed limit, the status of various cruise control features, and upcoming turns all appear to be floating about a car length ahead of you. It’s a fantastic, streamlined alternative to the, in my opinion, overly busy layout of the driver’s cluster. The information can be a bit tricky to read when wearing sunglasses (especially the polarized variety) but other than that, the display is easily understandable regardless of how bright or dark it is outside and can be adjusted to account for the driver’s height and viewing preferences.
Of course all these technological bells and whistles would be rendered moot if it handled like the decrepit Elantra I usually drive. Thankfully, the EV6 does not. It isn’t as overtly aggressive as the Mach-E, nor is it quite as nimble through turns as the Polestar 2 — it certainly isn’t near as pretentious as the Model Y — and the EV6 doesn’t have to be. Kia, from what I gathered from the company’s pre-drive presentation, is positioning the EV6 to be a Gen Z family sedan, a Taurus SHO for millennials, and for that I applaud them. Cranking through hairpins on the 175 and opening up the throttle along quiet stretches of the 101 were fun and all but this car is not built for racing — it’s not going to suck the fillings out of your teeth when you floor the accelerator, you’re not going to be taking street bikes on the inside through turns in it. What the EV6 will do is help ferry your anklebiters to soccer practice before you run errands around town for the afternoon — maybe even take the family out glamping on the weekend — and do it in comfort, style and safety.
Tesla is selling a new accessory: a microphone for in-car karaoke. The TeslaMic is only available in China for the time being. The company introduced it amid the rollout of a Chinese New Year software update, which adds a karaoke platform called Leishi KTV to infotainment systems.
The microphone automatically pairs with the infotainment system, according to Tesla. The TeslaMic comes in a pack of two, so it could come in handy if you ever feel like parking somewhere with a date and belting out some duets. The pack costs around $188 but the Tesla store page is failing to load for many would-be crooners.
A Weibo post (which has been mirrored onto YouTube) shows the TeslaMic and karaoke system in action. As Elektrek notes, by adopting the Leishi KTV interface and catalog, Tesla is building on a "Caraoke" feature it introduced in 2019, which had a more limited selection of tracks.
It remains to be seen whether Tesla will sell the TeslaMic outside of China, though maybe you'll be able to buy it with Dogecoin if it ever comes to the US. In the meantime, there's an official Carpool Karaoke microphone that you can connect to your car's audio system (though you'll need to provide your own backing tracks and a display with lyrics).
A standard 2021 Porsche Taycan has broken the Guinness World Record for the shortest charging time to cross the United States in an electric vehicle. It only needed a cumulative charge time of 2 hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds to cover a 2,834.5-mile drive from Los Angeles to New York. While the record it broke is highly specific, there was a previous holder: A Kia EV6, which had to be charged for 7 hours, 10 minutes and 1 second to make a similar, but just slightly longer, trip from New York to LA.
Wayne Gerdes, known for his efficiency driving and for coining the term "hypermiling," was behind the wheel for the record-breaking journey. Hypermiling, as you may know, involves the use of adjustments and driving techniques to maximize the vehicle's fuel use. Porsche told Engadget that Gerdes drove normal speeds and sometimes even went faster, depending on the charge level, for the duration of the trip.
As for the vehicle itself, it was equipped with the company's Performance Battery Plus, which has a higher gross capacity than the base battery option, and Adaptive Cruise Control. For the attempt to be recognized by the Guinness World Records, every mile of the journey had to be filmed and the vehicle's GPS had to be tracked.
Gerdes said that the first time he charged a Taycan on a 350KW charger, its battery levels went from 6 to 82 percent in just 22 minutes. He relied on Electrify America's CCS DC fast charging network for the trip, since the company is a partner for this attempt. Porsche first revealed the Taycan electric sedan in 2019 and started making deliveries in 2020. The automaker has released several variants since then, including the category-blurring Cross Turismo EV.
