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Ford sales in China dropped 43 percent in September

JOHANNES EISELE | AFP | Getty Images
The Ford Mustang is displayed during the 17th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition in Shanghai.

Ford's sales in China dropped 43 percent in September from the same month a year earlier, a sign that sales are slowing in the world's largest car market.

This is the third straight month of declining auto sales in China.

The second-largest U.S. automaker has been hit by the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, despite the fact that Ford sells cars in China through partnerships with local firms.

Ford shares are down nearly 30 percent since the beginning of the year. The stock hit a 52-week low of $8.57 in trading Friday.

“We are intensely focused on our sales turnaround plan in China, which includes an aggressive cadence of product introductions to meet the needs of our Chinese customers, including the launch of the highly anticipated all-new Ford Focus,” said Peter Fleet, president of Ford Asia Pacific and chairman & CEO of Ford China, in a statement. “We believe the new products, which have been custom-designed and developed with Chinese customers in mind, will help us to regain momentum in the world's largest auto market.”

Auto sales are down across the board in China, said Michael Dunne, president of ZoZo Go, an investment advisory firm that follows Chinese autonomous and electrified vehicle companies. This is the first sustained downturn Dunne has seen since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, he said.

There are three major factors driving this decline in demand. The first is a crackdown on certain types of peer-to-peer lending practices in China, a feature of the Chinese financial system that has typically allowed less wealthy Chinese to borrow money at rates better than what banks are offering.

The second is a general cautiousness among Chinese consumers that has emerged recently.

“When times are good, the Chinese are really bullish and bold,” he said. “But when times are uncertain they become exceptionally conservative.”

There is a particular mentality that can take hold among Chinese consumers that is more pronounced than the lack of consumer confidence seen in the United States, for example. “And it is contagious,” he added.

Finally, there is the trade war with the U.S., which has exacerbated the uncertainty many Chinese feel from the overall economic slowdown.

Ford has unique problems in China, Dunne said. The automaker has not brought new products to market for more than a year, and Chinese consumers have sought cars elsewhere. Ford is expected to bring new products to China in the next few months, he said.

Ford was not immediately available for comment.

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Uber Wants To Deliver Groceries, But There Is A Much Bigger Opportunity

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Careem Muscat launches new service in partnership with Marhaba Taxi

From today, Careem Muscat customers will be able to book the “GO+” car type on the Careem app to order an on-demand taxi.

Careem will handle all elements of the service, from matching the customer to their ride, to dispatching taxis, to customer service, payment and marketing. The new service offers on-demand rides that are priced in line with the regular local taxis

The launch of this new service completes Careem’s footprint across the GCC and we are now the only ride-hailing operator to offer a service across all six GCC countries. It’s now the 15th country overall in which Careem operates.

This new service will be priced in line with general Marhaba Taxi rates in Oman and no additional fees will be applied, with OMR1.25 as the starting rate for fares. Careem’s platform provides transparent pricing for customers and Captains, helping to bring about a new standardisation of taxi fares in Muscat.

Having briefly launched a service in May 2017, Careem was asked by the Government of O..

Gill Pratt of Toyota: Safety Is No Argument for Robocars 10 Oct

Photo: Toyota

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Toyota's Gill Pratt on Self-Driving Cars and the Reality of Full Autonomy

Going for Level 4 autonomy—where the car drives itself and you can go to sleep—is typically justified on the grounds that such cars will be very safe. And they had better be, or we’d never let them loose on the roads.

But the safety-first argument is flawed, says Gill Pratt, who heads up self-driving car research for Toyota. Reason: Safety can be obtained by other means.

“The reason for Level 4 being done—to save lives—is backwards thinking, even if you assume it’ll be 10 times safer,” he tells IEEE Spectrum. “That’s not the only way to save lives; there are multiple ways to do it.”

Pratt allows that there’s a purely economic argument for self-driving cars—remove the driver and you cut expenses in any commercial application, like taxi service and trucking. But that decides things only after self-driving tech can be proven far better than the best human driver. A system that’s just 10 percent better will win over statisticians and philosophers but not the general public.

This isn’t the first time Pratt has poured cold water on the idea that we’re on the verge of getting rid of the steering wheel and pedals, as GM Cruise plans to do in a pilot program next year. Read our Q&A with him from early last year. But nowadays, Pratt’s emphasizing how a system that is essentially Level 4 can be repurposed as a teammate to the driver, rather than a replacement.

Toyota is developing Level 4 systems, he said, but when they’re purposed to drive the car—and thus called Chauffeur—they need vastly more validation than has been done yet to be made into a generally useful product. Toyota doesn’t expect to hand a Level 4 Chauffeur to the public for years, though the company plans to demonstrate one during the 2020 Olympic Games, in Japan, within a relatively limited environment.

But what Pratt calls the “technological equivalent to Level 4” is coming much faster. It’s called Guardian, and he says it’s a lot better than today’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which offer lane keeping, active cruise control, and emergency braking. “We think Guardian features will trickle into production vehicles soon,” he says.

Here’s how it looks in practice:

Guardian uses a diversity of sensors and maps which, though they might be a little out of date, at least tell the system the most likely environment it’s in and the location of the car in that environment. A prediction system figures out how the environment around the car is likely to evolve, and then a planner works out the car’s trajectory and other behaviors.

“It asks if there’s an unprotected left-hand turn or a highway merge coming up,” he says. “When the system’s functioning as Guardian, it’s there to warn or nudge the driver, and if things are really bad, to take over temporarily.”

We already have a Level 2 system—the Super Cruise function, which is available in the Cadillac CT6. As Lawrence Ulrich reported in April, it’s the current self-driving champion of production cars. But to make sure that the driver doesn’t get lulled into dangerous complacency, the car uses cameras to observe the driver’s eyes and body posture and to jostle him or her back to situational awareness if necessary.

But Pratt suggests that approach reflects backward thinking, too.

“We’ve known since the 1940s that the better the autonomy, the more you tend to overtrust the system,” Pratt says. “That’s why Super Cruise has a monitor that watches you. In Guardian, we’ve flipped the whole nature of who guards whom: We have the person drive.”

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For Bosch, diesel still has a future

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Judge rejects Lime request to block e-scooter rivals in San Francisco

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Conflicted German Automakers Struggle With EV Transition

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Published on October 13th, 2018 |

by Guest Contributor

Conflicted German Automakers Struggle With EV Transition

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October 13th, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

It’s no secret that legacy automakers are making the transition to electric vehicles only reluctantly, in response to regulatory pressure from governments and to competitive pressure from Tesla. Contrary to what many seem to believe, Big Auto’s reluctance to embrace EVs is not merely the usual corporate fear of the future, nor is it the result of any oil industry-fueled conspiracy (as far as we know). It’s a simple matter of money — there are good reasons to believe that electrification will take a major bite out of industry profits, as BMW and Daimler execs recently acknowledged.

German automakers remain conflicted about how to transition factory production lines from gas-powered cars to EVs (Image: Werner Budding)

Now Volkswagen has warned that its stated plan to offer an electrified version of each of its models will cost more than it estimated. VW previously predicted that the coming shift to battery power would cost some €20 billion ($23 billion). CEO Herbert Diess, in an interview published in VW’s internal newsletter, indicated that this figure was too low, but didn’t offer a new estimate. “The burden for our company, such as the cost of bringing to market electric cars, will be higher than expected,” Diess says. “This is particularly so since some of our competitors have been making more progress.” (Hmm, who would that be?)

A recent article in the Financial Times discussed the challenges legacy carmakers are facing. Whereas industry disruptor Tesla started from a blank slate to design its vehicles and has “bet the company” on EVs, incumbent OEMs can’t go down that road — the risks are too high. Analysts have warned that a substantial number of Germany’s 800,000 auto industry jobs could disappear along with the internal combustion engine.

FT points out that VW, BMW, and Daimler have each earmarked billions of euros for electric technology, but are taking different approaches — some automakers hope to build EVs using the same architecture as legacy vehicles, whereas others intend to introduce new platforms. The choice of strategy “will re-sort the carmakers in profitability,” says Christian Senger, head of the VW’s e-mobility line. “Those who [take] the hardest road will be more successful than the others.”

Germany protects its car industry as EU goes for just 15% cut in CO2 car emissions by 2025 (Source:Transport & Environment / Image: Plugin Cars)

Volkswagen is leveraging its scale advantage — earlier this year, it awarded €20 billion worth of contracts for battery supplies as part of a plan to introduce 50 pure EVs by 2025. This represents an about-face from VW’s previous strategy — the e-Golf and e-Up, introduced in 2013, were basically existing models stuffed with batteries.

“To make it a fully fledged electric car, you need to start with a battery pack between the wheels and then you build up the car,” Herbert Diess, CEO of the VW Group, told the FT. “Then you have an effective battery system, the range, and you get a lot of freedom for the design of the car, to make more interior space with the same footprint.” (His words echo what Tesla designer Von Holzhausen said back in 2011.)

The first VW model designed this way, the ID Neo, is to come out late next year, the first of several models belonging to the ID electric sub-brand. Although recent reports suggest the program could be delayed.

VW’s ID concept car appears to be another unconventional design approach typically relegated to Big Auto’s electric car efforts (Image: Charged)

BMW seems to be taking the opposite tack, touting the advantages of “flexible architecture” that can accommodate fossil, hybrid or electric powertrains. BMW plans to offer all of its models with a choice of powertrain starting in 2021. “We can’t afford having two factories standing still,” says CEO Harald Krueger. “With a flexible approach, you can always manage the capacity of your plants. But if you have a specific EV architecture, what do you with the old one? What do you do with the people?”

Daimler is combining both approaches, designing purpose-built architecture for its EQ sub-brand while also setting up its production plants to accommodate all types of powertrains, including fuel cells. “We have hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric cars and maybe robo-taxis tomorrow,” says Daimler Production Chief Markus Schaefer. “It’s hard to predict volumes for the best way in an uncertain world, so this is the most efficient approach to supply the market.”

Some analysts think the flexible approach is too complex in both design and production. “I don’t see how they can consolidate traditional platforms, from small hatchbacks to large SUVs, and at the same time try to include EVs in the equation,” says Pelham Smithers Analyst Julie Boote. “That’s incredibly complicated.”

In another revealing move, Audi decided no e-tron inventory for its US dealerships would be made available (Source: Charged / Image: Automobile Propre)

Others see merit in the flexible approach, pointing out that it’s hard to predict how quickly the shift to electric cars will take place. “Most carmakers proceeding with EVs are following an ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach,” says Bernstein Analyst Max Warburton. “If you have a dedicated EV platform and the demand doesn’t come, you’ve lost a lot of money.”

Sources: Financial Times, Bloomberg

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