EX90, Volvo’s great hope to take over America, has hit a snag

Good morning! Today is Friday, July 21, 2023 and here it is Morning shift, your daily compilation of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.

Gear 1: Volvo’s Mass Champion Delayed

We first set our eyes on Volvo’s seven-seat electric SUV, the EX90, back in november. At the time, the Swedish automaker was aiming for a launch in early 2024, but it looks like the timetable has moved to the middle of next year. auto news. Reason? Problems developing semi-autonomous driving and safety features that support the car’s hood:

Volvo has delayed production of the new EX90 electric crossover to mid-2024 as engineers work to incorporate key safety technology into the flagship model’s new platform. During the company’s earnings call on Thursday, Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan identified the “five or six-month” delay as due to the “complexity of the software code” surrounding the EX90’s lidar system.

Remote sensing lidar technology uses pulses of laser light to display an accurate image of the vehicle’s surroundings. Volvo says the lid and other sensors on the EX90 create an “invisible safety shield” that could help reduce crashes that result in serious injury or death by up to a fifth.

The EX90 is the first Volvo to incorporate a lid and will offer the technology as standard equipment.

Yes, type. Because while every $80,000 EX90 will ship with that hardware, only people ordered will be able to use all the features it allows. For example, Lidar-assisted pedestrian detection could be a standard feature. On the other hand, self-driving with Lidar support, maybe not.

In any case, Volvo wants to make sure it gets this right from day one, especially because the EX90 will be key to its destiny in North America. The SUV will be built in South Carolina, and Volvo predicts that it’s – not the C40, XC40 or even bargain by comparison. EX30 — will be its bulk EV in the United States. An $80,000 SUV that (at least) seats seven, which, again, would be too expensive to qualify for tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. What a strange car buying market we have.

2nd device: UAW wants Washington’s support

The United Auto Workers union is bracing for a major fight with Detroit’s three major automakers in the second half of this summer, and UAW President Shawn Fain hopes that support from Washington can help his side keep the pressure on General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. Part of that strategy involves organizing a endorse Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, which Donald Trump’s side seems to enjoy. polite Reuters:

Biden also faces pressure from former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. On Thursday, Trump said Biden was “making war on the US auto industry” by “crippling” EV mandates and urged the UAW to endorse him.

Biden’s campaign responded by saying that Trump is “the most anti-union president in modern history, filling his cabinet with anti-union officials”. It added that under Biden, “more than 120,000 auto manufacturing jobs have returned to the United States and new auto factories are springing up around the country.”

One of the UAW’s sticking points in these negotiations is that battery joint ventures between automakers and suppliers, like GM and LG’s efforts together or those of Ford and SK, do not create union jobs. As a result, employees at these facilities earn less than their counterparts at factories wholly owned by automakers, even though their duties are still highly specialized and dangerous too.

Fain not only violated most of the major US labor unions by not endorsing Biden’s re-election, but also criticized some of the administration’s policies on electric vehicles.

Last month, Fain harshly criticized the U.S. Department of Energy’s plan to lend $9.2 billion to a joint venture by Ford and South Korea’s SK Innovation to build three U.S. battery plants, citing lower wages for workers who are not normally represented by the union.

After meeting with Fain in April, Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is in caucus with the Democratic Party, criticized the joint-venture battery factory GM-LG Energy Solution for paying workers much less than employees of the GM assembly plant despite GM benefiting from huge US government tax credits. The same program funded Ford.

The hot summer of labor begins.

3rd device: Mahindra’s baby Jeep can live

Back in 2020, the automaker formerly known as Fiat Chrysler and now known as Stellantis took Mahindra to court over the Roxor, a small off-road vehicle that suspiciously resembles a Jeep Wrangler. The problem is that around this time, Mahindra happened to change the Roxor’s design to look less like a Jeep. As a result, the current-generation Roxor was deemed fair to sell by the Eastern District Court of Michigan. From Bloomberg:

The legal dispute began after Fiat complained that the Roxor was an “almost identical copy” of the Jeep, with some design elements such as “a boxy body shape with flat-looking vertical edges and the rear body ending at the same height as the hood.”

In June 2020, the International Trade Commission said that while Roxor did not infringe Fiat’s trademarks, it did violate commercial dress — the appearance of a product that helps consumers distinguish the source — and recommended a ban on the importation and sale of Roxor parts, according to the filing.

Mahindra reckons that Roxor’s 2018 and 2019 models – subject to legal action – are no longer in production and the 2020 version has a new look and feel with further design changes planned. In December of that year, the ITC said the post-2020 Roxor did not violate Jeep’s commercial apparel, amending the previous order to waive the import ban for the redesigned Roxor.

The old Roxor definitely looks like the CJ-5 and the new one certainly isn’t, so we can put this whole thing behind us. Right, jeep?

4th gear: Daimler wants to burn hydrogen

Hydrogen fuel cell powertrains have been explored as a potential path forward for commercial trucking, but Daimler is interested in another use for the element. It wants to replace gasoline with hydrogen in internal combustion engines because this is an easier transition to make, because Bloomberg Fifth explanation:

Michael Brecht, vice chairman of Daimler Truck’s supervisory board and top employee representative of the company, said that because hydrogen combustion is similar to a traditional gasoline engine, the change could happen “much faster than anything else we have to do with electrification”. He added that any cost cuts the company is planning to boost profits will not affect investments in new technologies that could protect the truck maker’s future.

This technology has a lot of disadvantages. Hydrogen-burning engines are still using oil-based lubricants, meaning they are not completely carbon-free when burning liquid or gaseous hydrogen. Since this process occurs at very high temperatures, it can also lead to higher nitric oxide emissions and lower efficiency. Hydrogen fuel is also limited, at least in the short term. BMW tried the technology for three years in the 2000s but abandoned the effort when it failed to prove viable.

However, skeptics see this as an attempt to prolong the life of Germany’s ICE manufacturing industry, which is being disrupted very quickly as the number of electric vehicles increases. It’s not like there isn’t recent precedent for exactly that tactic:

Critics say Germany’s focus on hydrogen-burning engines is just another attempt by companies in Europe’s largest economy to keep traditional engines but label them green. In March, Germany’s attempt to secure guarantees from Brussels on e-fuel – an extremely expensive technology that is barely available – nearly derailed the EU’s effort to ban new internal combustion-engine cars from 2035.

In addition, “rapid battery improvement,” as one analyst puts it, seems to make fuel cells a better technology investment than fuel cells. direct hydrogen combustion. That investment could also inform the development of all-battery trucks, which could one day become efficient enough to operate in the real world. The commercial trucking industry is roughly where passenger cars were 15 or 20 years ago: a bunch of belong to companies floating many possible solutions, no clear winner yet. Poetry point of interest.

Reversed: Volkswagen has its own laws

On this day in 1960, 63 years ago…