Automotive – Page 44128 – I wish I had more to offer

Tesla Releases Third Quarter 2018 Financial Results

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 24, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tesla has released its financial results for the third quarter of 2018 by posting the current Update Letter on its Investor Relations website. Please visit http://ir.tesla.com to view the letter. As previously announced, Tesla management will host a live question & answer (Q&A) webcast at 3:30… Continue reading Tesla Releases Third Quarter 2018 Financial Results

Groupe PSA: Q3 2018 Revenue +7.8% growth

Groupe PSA Q3 revenue at €15.4 billion[1] and YTD revenue up 29.1% at €54 billion; Peugeot Citroën DS (PCD) Automotive division revenue up 0.8%: Strong market share increase in Europe: +0.7 pt[2]; Negative impact of exchange rates especially in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey; Opel Vauxhall (OV) Automotive division revenue amounted to €3.9 billion; Consolidated worldwide… Continue reading Groupe PSA: Q3 2018 Revenue +7.8% growth

Enevate Battery Start-Up Secures Funding From LG Chem

4 H BY MARK KANE LG Chem invested in Enevate in its search for next-gen tech. Enevate Corporation, a battery start-up which develops silicon-dominant composite anode materials, attracted LG Chem among other investors in the recent funding round. Details of the transaction or partnership were not announced, but it seems that the South Korean manufacturer had… Continue reading Enevate Battery Start-Up Secures Funding From LG Chem

Uber to bank London surcharge toward electric vehicles for its drivers

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Uber electric car
Uber announced Tuesday that it will levy a surcharge for its ride-hailing passengers in London. The goal: to get 20,000 drivers to go all-electric by the end of 2021, on the way to make every car using its ride-hailing app an electric vehicle in the smog- and congestion-prone city by 2025.

The surcharge, which is part of the company’s clean-air strategy announced in 2017, will go into effect in early 2019. It’s potentially as much an environmental image move as it is a response to ever-tightening rules governing the vehicle types that can pass through central London.

DON’T MISS: Uber urges Portland drivers to lease electric cars

Beginning early next year, Uber will charge riders about 19 cents (15 pence) extra per mile. That money will go directly into a piggy bank for the support of drivers looking to upgrade to an electric vehicle.

Uber app

Based on the average London trip, that will amount to an extra 58 cents per trip. And through that surcharge Uber hopes to raise $260 million (200 million pounds) over several years.

Uber is offering a significant amount of upgrade money. Every driver will be eligible for assistance in moving to an EV, but the level of assistance will be based on how many miles they’ve driven on the app. It’s anticipating that will add up to about $3,900 (3,000 pounds) for two years of driving—40 hours a week—or $5,800 (4,500 pounds) for three years.

CHECK OUT: London's $27 entry charge for pre-2016 diesel cars to start April 2019

The program complements Uber’s own diesel-scrappage scheme that aims to get 1,000 pre-Euro 4 diesel models—older, dirtier ones—off London streets and highways.

So far in the U.S., Uber’s strategies to electrify have been a bit different. Through a pilot program it calls EV Champions, it’s paying drivers up to $20 per week for driving electric—and giving riders a feel-good alert. Whether it will incentivize electric vehicles more or less effectively than the London program remains to be seen.

Schaeffler Successfully Completes Merger of Indian Entities

Merger of INA Bearings India Pvt Ltd and LuK India Pvt Ltd. with Schaeffler India Limited… Go to Source

Infineon introduces TPM for connected cars

Nissan LEAF to help stabilize German electricity grid

As the first of its kind, Nissan LEAF prequalifies as a large power station under the German Transmission System Operators’ (TSO) guidelines HAGEN, Germany – Nissan has helped reach an important milestone on the road towards emission-free energy and mobility in Germany. With an innovative charging and energy management solution, the project partners – technology… Continue reading Nissan LEAF to help stabilize German electricity grid

Alta Motors Fails: A Tale Of Electric Motorcycles, Disruption, & Startups

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Published on October 24th, 2018 |

by Michael Barnard

Alta Motors Fails: A Tale Of Electric Motorcycles, Disruption, & Startups

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October 24th, 2018 by Michael Barnard

Alta Motors has ceased operations after a decade of innovation, work, and some success. But is the apparent failure of this electric motorcycle company just the story of another startup that couldn’t cross the chasm, or is there something more going on?

Alta has been around at least as a glimmer in its designers’ eyes since 2007. Derek Dorresteyn and Jeff Sand loved the smooth torque curve of electric motors, and with their combined decades of engineering, fabrication, and design experience, decided to take on dirt bikes at their own game.

And in 2017, they reached their pinnacle, it seems, with their bike reaching victory in the Geneva Supercross. An almost stock Alta Redshift winning an international supercross race made it seem as if victory was within reach.

But as has been reported many times before, the motorcycle market has radically shifted over the past decade. It fell off a cliff in North America and Europe due to the 2008 recession, and has never recovered. Part of that is that the Baby Boomer generation embraced huge motorcycles in a quest for bragging rights about having the biggest… engine. Ludicrous displacements of up to 2,294 cc were found on two-wheelers. When motorcycles regularly had larger engines than many family cars, it was obvious that something odd was happening.

Harley-Davidson is the most obvious victim of expanding girth. As its North American sales fall, it’s chastised from the biggest bully pulpit in the world for shifting production to markets where it actually has hopes to expand and it tries to shift to electric drive trains, something it has only a faint hope of succeeding at.

And Harley-Davidson’s electrification plans play into the story of Alta Motors. In hindsight, it’s obvious that when Alta Motors’ funding hope was Harley-Davidson, there was a problem at Alta. The two brands are far, far apart. Alta is a San Francisco startup, a maker of silent race machines and looking forward to an electric future. Harley-Davidson is a lethargic, backward-looking dinosaur of a company, trying to survive while nimble mammals eat its eggs. They were always a poor fit, and HD funding Alta was at best odd. And it didn’t last.

So is that it? Was Alta just too early in its quest to succeed? Is it just another failed startup that couldn’t get funding for the next round of growth?

Probably not.

Chart by author

Let’s start by looking at use cases for motorized two-wheelers across multiple types of bikes. Alta Motors was making a pure dirt bike. While it could be converted in many places to a street legal bike by the addition of various bits, they didn’t sell it that way. The included chart reflects their purity or narrowness of purpose, depending on how you look at it. Like straight dirt bikes, they are optimized for offroad fun. Dual-sport bikes score highest in this ranking simply because they support the most use cases, even though they don’t support many of them as well as more specialized offerings.

So far, so reductive. You don’t buy a dirt bike to do extended road touring, and you don’t buy a Honda Goldwing if you want to spend time in the dirt. But what about the electric mountain bike category? It has a lot more utility in different areas, is almost as fun in the dirt as a straight dirt bike, and is a lot cheaper. And it’s street legal out of the box without add-ons.

Why is this important? Alta Motors wasn’t competing with mountain biking, after all. It was building pure offroad racing machines.

It’s simple. In order for Alta Motors to scale, it had to sell a lot of bikes. It had to sell motorcycles to weekend riders. It had to sell motorcycles to casual riders. There just aren’t that many motorcycle racers in the world.

Diagram by author

But as soon as it steps outside of racing, it’s competing with broader competition. More casual offroad riders are going to value bang for the buck, and both gas dirtbikes and electric mountain bikes offer that. Alta Motors made headlines when its prices made it down to $12,000 USD for its cheapest bike. The other two can be had for under $5K for the most part, although there are more expensive options as well.

If your differentiator is electrons or silence, electric mountain bikes offer those as well. And the 800-lb gorilla in the electric motorcycle market, Zero, sells its fun FX and FXS dirt bikes in street legal form out of the box at around the same price point as the Alta Motors bikes.

In the USA alone, there were about 40 million people who mountain biked in the mid-2000s. Mountain bikes sell by the millions annually in America, while dirt bikes might hit 100,000 units. Which is the more attractive market for an innovative product? Extending the utility and fun of something which is sold by the millions for a bit of extra money, or trying to displace the best product of tiny market?

When framed like that, it’s clear that Alta Motors faced an uphill battle. Its reported 300 back-ordered units is pretty good for the market they were going after, but terrible from the perspective of investors.

Market disruption per Christensen and Raynor’s The Innovator’s Dilemma

Electric bicycles are disrupting the bottom end of the motorcycle marketplace. They have much lower barriers to entry for most people, have higher utility for our increasingly urban lifestyles and increasingly offer equivalent amounts of fun at a fraction of the price. We can see what will happen to much of the rest of the market when we look at other innovation spaces that have been addressed in other areas. Christensen and Raynor’s Innovator’s Dilemma demonstrates with case study after case study the impact on market leaders when entrants come into established markets with simpler products which offer different utility at a lower price point.

Alta Motors is a victim of focusing too narrowly for effective entrepreneurialism. Its vision is to be admired. Its aspiration to compete directly with specialized gas offroad bikes was fulfilled. But unlike Tesla, it wasn’t going after a big enough market for investors to care. And the market is radically altering under its feet.

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About the Author

Michael Barnard is a C-level technology and strategy consultant who works with startups, existing businesses and investors to identify opportunities for significant bottom line growth in the transforming low-carbon economy. He is editor of The Future is Electric, a Medium publication. He regularly publishes analyses of low-carbon technology and policy in sites including Newsweek, Slate, Forbes, Huffington Post, Quartz, CleanTechnica and RenewEconomy, with some of his work included in textbooks. Third-party articles on his analyses and interviews have been published in dozens of news sites globally and have reached #1 on Reddit Science. Much of his work originates on Quora.com, where Mike has been a Top Writer annually since 2012. He's available for consulting engagements, speaking engagements and Board positions.

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Toyota Motor Credit Corporation (TMCC) Issues First Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) Commercial Paper Transaction

October 24, 2018 PLANO, Texas (October 24, 2018)—Toyota Motor Credit Corporation (TMCC) issued its first Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) commercial paper transaction, demonstrating the company’s commitment to innovation, and advancing its reputation as an industry leader. The three-month USD-denominated issuance raised USD 500 million from institutional investors, and represents the first non-bank SOFR-linked commercial… Continue reading Toyota Motor Credit Corporation (TMCC) Issues First Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) Commercial Paper Transaction

New works council at A-Kaiser agreed to reduce temporary work

24.10.2018 Ι Every year, five percent less temporary workers. This has been enforced by the works council at the automotive supplier A-Kaiser in Lower Bavaria Aicha by company agreement. Eleven temporary workers have just been taken over. Eleven temporary workers have just been taken over by the automotive supplier A-Kaiser in the Lower Bavarian town… Continue reading New works council at A-Kaiser agreed to reduce temporary work