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Business model at Brexit without contract in danger: car industry is making dramatic appeal to EU summit

Bloomberg via Getty Images Mini-production in the UK: Not only on the island, the car manufacturers fear in a Brexit contract without chaotic conditions A Brexit without a contract would threaten the entire business model of the industry from the point of view of the European auto industry. Before the EU summit this Wednesday evening,… Continue reading Business model at Brexit without contract in danger: car industry is making dramatic appeal to EU summit

Tesla buys new plot for its first China factory

Source: Shanghai Municipal People's Government
Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong and Tesla Chairman and CEO Elon Musk pose in from of a plaque for the Tesla (Shanghai) Ltd. Electric Vehicle Development and Innovation Center.

Tesla successfully acquired an 864,885-square meter plot in Shanghai's Lingang area for the electric car maker's new factory, according to an announcement from Lingang Wednesday afternoon. No price was immediately disclosed.

Plans for the wholly-owned factory were first announced in July. Lingang is located on the coast, about 47 miles southeast of the center of Shanghai or a roughly two-hour subway ride. Several auto manufacturers with foreign ties have facilities there, and unmarked test vehicles can be seen roaming the streets.

Tesla expects the factory to produce its first cars in three years, according to an earnings release in August. The facility will initially have capacity for about 250,000 vehicles and battery packs a year, and plans to eventually double that, the release said.

Funding will mostly come from local debt, and Tesla's own investment “will not start in any significant way until 2019,” the company said in the August release.

Producing cars in China, the world's largest market for electric vehicles, would significantly lower costs for Tesla.

The company noted in an Oct. 2 report it cannot access the same cash incentives as local Chinese manufacturers, and overall ocean transport costs and tariffs mean the automaker is operating at a 55 percent to 60 percent cost disadvantage compared with a domestic equivalent.

Shanghai-based Nio, nicknamed the “Tesla of China,” went public in the U.S. in September and said earlier this week it beat its own fiscal third quarter production target by several hundred vehicles. Baillie Gifford, Tesla's largest outside investor, disclosed earlier this month an 11.4 percent stake in Nio.

—CNBC's Robert Ferris contributed to this report.

Cognata raises $18.5M as race to deploy autonomous vehicles quickens

Cognata has raised $18.5 million in a funding round led by Scale Venture Partners, fresh capital that the Israeli autonomous simulation startup will use to meet demand for technology that will help companies speed up the deployment of self-driving vehicles. Cognata founder and CEO Danny Atsmon told TechCrunch the company, which has 28 employees, will… Continue reading Cognata raises $18.5M as race to deploy autonomous vehicles quickens

European Dealer Council: Audi and European sales partners shape the retailing of the future

AUDI AG and the European Dealer Council exchange views on the future business model and discussed growth areas at the conference of the European Dealer Council today (Wednesday). When the new contracts take effect on April 1, 2020, the new AUDI sales strategy will begin, fundamentally changing the sales model and making it fitter for… Continue reading European Dealer Council: Audi and European sales partners shape the retailing of the future

UPDATE 1-Tesla secures Shanghai site for China Gigafactory

BEIJING (Reuters) – Tesla Inc has signed an agreement with the Shanghai government for an 860,000 square meter plot of land to build its first overseas Gigafactory, the electric carmaker said in a Chinese social media post on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO: A Tesla logo is seen in Los Angeles, California U.S. January 12, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy… Continue reading UPDATE 1-Tesla secures Shanghai site for China Gigafactory

China’s auto sales drop sharply in Sept

Copyright 1995 – . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested… Continue reading China’s auto sales drop sharply in Sept

Press Releases – Passenger car registrations: +2.5% nine months into 2018; -23.5% in September

Brussels, 17 October 2018 – In September 2018, registrations of new passenger cars in the European Union fell by 23.5%. In September 2018, registrations of new passenger cars in the European Union fell by 23.5%. However, this should not come as a surprise, as the introduction of the new WLTP test at the beginning of… Continue reading Press Releases – Passenger car registrations: +2.5% nine months into 2018; -23.5% in September

Fixing Salvaged Teslas, The Ingineer Way

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Published on October 16th, 2018 |

by Guest Contributor

Fixing Salvaged Teslas, The Ingineer Way

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October 16th, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

All automobiles are supported by an ecosystem of services, which traditionally includes dealerships, repair shops, and fueling stations. One of the ways Tesla has redefined the auto industry is by vertically integrating these services. You can buy a vehicle directly from Tesla, have it serviced at a Tesla service center, and charge it at a Tesla Supercharger. On the whole, most customers seem to be happy with this arrangement, but some believe that there is an unmet need for independent repair shops, and a community of DIY Tesla repair techs has developed. Because Tesla doesn’t support their activities, there’s an underground, hacker vibe to the scene.

A totaled Tesla Model 3 that Phil Sadow plans to repair (Image: InsideEVs via Ingineerix)

A recent Motherboard documentary told the story of Rich Benoit, aka the Dr. Frankenstein of Teslas, who salvages Tesla parts and uses them to repair cars damaged in crashes, fires, and floods.

Another guerrilla repairman is Phil Sadow, aka Ingineer, an electrical engineer who has been rebuilding and selling salvaged Teslas for three years. A recent article in Fast Company tells us how Sadow also teaches fellow enthusiasts to develop their repair skills. The intrepid Ingineer says he’s participated in almost 400 Tesla refurbishment projects.

According to Sadow, Tesla really doesn’t want cars that have been in serious accidents back on the road, and the company has taken steps to make it almost impossible to repair them. “When a car is totaled,” he says, “they deny parts, [and] they don’t in any way give service information, the service tools like all the electronics and computer stuff needed to work on the cars … except where they’re required to by law. And even then they don’t do that.”

Sadow understands the reason for this policy: given the media hunger for anti-Tesla articles, any incident involving a repaired Tesla would surely be blown out of proportion by the press. “Tesla’s trying to protect their stock price and their mission by eliminating some of this,” he says. “If I buy a salvage car and fix it improperly and it kills someone or burns a house down … it’s not going to be ‘Man fixes Tesla improperly and hurts someone.’ It’s going to be ‘Tesla kills someone.’”

A look at the Tesla Model 3 drive unit (YouTube: Ingineerix)

Sadow is obviously a big fan of Tesla’s mission, but he fears that making it difficult to repair damaged vehicles is a short-sighted policy, because the lack of a market for salvaged Teslas will eventually lead to expensive insurance premiums.

Normally, when a vehicle is totaled, it’s sold at an insurance auction to a shop that either repairs it and puts it back on the road, or sells it for parts. This healthy secondary market allows insurance companies to recoup a substantial part of what they have to pay to replace a “totaled” vehicle. However, because of Tesla’s policies, Sadow says, the market for salvaged vehicles is thin, so auto insurers tend to lose a lot of money on totaled Teslas. “The insurance underwriters figured it out,” he says. “‘Oh, it’s a Tesla, we’re going to eat our lunch on these.’ So they start raising premiums. A lot of insurers consider the Model S and the Model X exotics, like a Ferrari. For that reason, they’re losing their shirt on even relatively minor accidents.”

In the US, only Massachusetts has a “right to repair” law, which requires auto dealerships to make parts and service manuals available to independent repair shops. According to Sadow, even in Massachusetts, Tesla has so far refused to release service information for Model 3. (Tesla told Fast Company the same thing they told Motherboard: owners are free to do whatever they want to their cars, and the company will inspect salvaged vehicles for a fee to assess what repairs are needed.)

A look at the Tesla Model 3 battery pack (YouTube: Ingineerix)

Sadow’s EV-recycling career began in 2015 when he bought a Model S that had been through the Houston flood. He and his girlfriend took the car apart, repaired the damaged electronics, gave it a thorough cleaning and got it back on the road. Soon he partnered with a body shop owner in Minneapolis and the two began regularly buying, repairing, and reselling salvaged Teslas.

Nowadays, Sadow spends more time teaching others to resurrect Teslas than fixing them himself. As more Model 3s hit the roads, more damaged vehicles will be showing up at insurance auctions. “There will be people that want to know how to work on them,” he says, “and that’s basically my full-time job now — helping other people work on these cars.”

Sadow has created his own answer to Tesla’s mobile app, which offers his car-fixing customers access to information such as battery voltages and diagnostic codes. Getting into Tesla’s software required gaining root access — something like jailbreaking a phone. It took Sadow about four months to figure out how to reverse-engineer Model S’s systems, but it took him only three weeks to get the same access to Model 3, as many of the new car’s systems were based on the older model. Tesla hasn’t tried to stop him, but it does employ some software counter-measures to limit what owners of damaged cars can do. When Tesla becomes aware that a particular vehicle has been in a catastrophic accident, it “blacklists” it, meaning that it will refuse to sell the owner any parts.

A look at the Tesla Model 3 cooling system (YouTube: Ingineerix)

That’s not a problem for Sadow and his fellow renegade rebuilders, because salvaged parts are plentiful and cheap. Sadow is proud of the fact that his revenant Teslas have been problem-free, and hopes that, as long as that remains the case, the company will leave him alone and let him get on with his business. “As long as it keeps them out of the news,” he says, “and as long as they don’t see one of the cars I helped repair burn down or burn down someone’s house or neighborhood, then they’re completely don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Sources: Fast Company, Ingineerix

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Tata Motors mulls alliance with Ola, Uber with new shared mobility platform

October 17, 2018 Tata Motors Ltd has created a separate division to explore ways to tap its entire range of passenger and commercial vehicles for offering shared mobility solutions, said two people aware of the development. Named Mobility Innovations Hub, the new department is headed by Pankaj Jhunja, formerly with Tata Technologies, said the people… Continue reading Tata Motors mulls alliance with Ola, Uber with new shared mobility platform

Hyundai Motor inks MOU with Air Liquide, Engie

SEOUL, Oct. 17 (Yonhap) — Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea’s biggest carmaker by sales, said Wednesday that it has signed an initial agreement with French companies Air Liquide SA and energy firm Engie in the latest move to boost sales of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Under the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed in Paris on Tuesday,… Continue reading Hyundai Motor inks MOU with Air Liquide, Engie