Cruise Robotaxis Are Back After Maiming A Pedestrian Last Year
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Good morning! It’s Friday, September 20, 2024, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
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1st Gear: Cruise Is Back In Bay Area, Aiming Not To Hurt Anyone
General Motor’s Cruise robotaxi unit is back on the roads in the Bay Area with mapping vehicles. It comes just about a year after a pedestrian accident in northern California stopped operation nationwide. Now, Cruise is deploying manual mapping vehicles in Sunnyvale and Mountain View, California, as a first step. Soon enough it’ll move back to having supervising testing with up to five autonomous cars in the area.
This is the latest step for GM and Cruise as the automaker has focused intensely on relaunching the service. It changed its leadership and overhauled its safety strategy after one of its Chevy Bolt autonomous vehicles dragged a San Francisco pedestrian down the street who was hit by another car and thrown into the Bolt’s path.
The incident led to regulatory scrutiny of Cruise’s safety standards, which eventually forced the company to suspend its services. Kyle Vogt, the unit’s former CEO and founder, left it in 2023. From the Detroit News:
“Resuming testing in the Bay Area is an important step forward as we continue to work closely with California regulators and local stakeholders,” the company said in a social media post. “This will allow our local employees to engage directly with our product as they refine and improve our tech through R&D.”
A Cruise spokesperson said in a statement: “While the purpose of this small-scale presence is specifically to allow employees to engage with our product for research and development purposes, we look forward to taking this step as we continue our conversations with California regulators and stakeholders.”
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Cruise has relaunched service with safety drivers in Houston, Phoenix and Dallas. In August, Cruise and Uber Technologies LLC announced they entered a multiyear deal for customers to book autonomous Cruise robotaxis through the Uber platform starting in 2025.
In the second quarter, GM executives announced the company would pause production of the Cruise Origin robotaxi at the Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center, which led to a $600 million charge. Cruise is instead focused on using all-electric, autonomous Chevrolet Bolts.
Listen, call me old-fashioned or whatever, but I really do not get autonomous vehicles. I just don’t. Driving is not that hard of a thing to do, and even if you don’t want to drive, taxis and public transportation already exist. Want a self-driving car? Get on a goddamn train.
2nd Gear: U.S. Spending Big On Battery Manufacturing Projects
The U.S. Department of Energy is awarding $3 billion to 25 battery manufacturing sector projects in 14 states. That big chunk of change comes courtesy of the Biden administration’s efforts to shift the electric vehicle battery supply chain away from China. It’s meant to increase domestic production of advanced batteries and battery materials and follows the adoption of U.S. EV tax credit rules.
The awards fund battery-grade processed critical materials, components, battery manufacturing and recycling. In theory, it’ll generate $16 billion in total investment for the project that’ll support 12,000 production and construction jobs. From Reuters:
“Mineral security is essential for climate security,” said White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi. “This sets us up to lead on the next generation of battery technologies – from solid state to other new chemistries.”
Here’s where some of the bigger slices of the $3 billion pie are going:
Albemarle is set to receive $67 million for a project in North Carolina to produce commercial quantities of anode material for next-generation lithium-ion batteries, while Honeywell is set to receive $126.6 million to build a commercial-scale facility in Louisiana to produce a key electrolyte salt needed for lithium batteries.
DOE plans to award Dow $100 million to produce battery-grade carbonate solvents for lithium-ion battery electrolytes, while Clarios Circular Solutions, which is partnering with SK ON and Cosmo Chemical, is set to receive $150 million for a project in South Carolina to recycle lithium-ion battery production scrap materials from SK ON, the battery unit of SK Innovation.
Currently, most U.S. production scrap is exported by material traders to be processed, mostly in China, DOE said.
DOE plans a $225 million award for production of lithium carbonate by SWA Lithium, jointly owned by Standard Lithium and Equinor, using Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology. DOE also plans to award $225 million to TerraVolta Resources to produce lithium from brine using DLE.
Revex Technologies, a partnership co-founded by Lundin Mining, opens new tab, is set to receive $145 million for three Michigan facilities to turn waste from the only operating U.S. primary nickel mine to yield domestic nickel production for at least 462,000 EV batteries yearly.
DOE plans to award $166 million to South32 Hermosa in Patagonia, Arizona for the mining of high purity manganese sulfate monohydrate (HPMSM) for electric vehicle battery chemistries. Currently over 96% of HPMSM is made in China.
DOE also plans to award $166.1 million for another HPMSM project in Louisiana for Element 25 from manganese ore sourced from an Element 25 mine in Western Australia.
Group14 Technologies is to receive $200 million to develop a U.S.-based silane manufacturing plant in Moses Lake, Washington. The largest source of silane today is China, a material needed for silicon batteries.
Birla Carbon is set to receive $150 million for next-generation synthetic graphite that will not use material from China.
That is a hell of a lot of money going around, and while it’s certainly in the interest of the government to support U.S. manufacturing, it sure would be nice if they slipped me some cash for my student loans.
3rd Gear: Holy Shit Bollinger Is Actually Building A Truck
Upstart electric vehicle makers are having a tough time right now, but against all odds, one has actually started production. That’s right, folks. At long last, Bollinger Motors has started production as the first of its Class 4 electric chassis cab commercial trucks began production on September 16. It’s a huge moment for the nascent automaker.
The first Bollinger B4s are expected to hit dealerships in late October and begin filling an order book that extends into a good chunk of 2025. We don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, though. This isn’t quite mass production yet. From Automotive News:
The plan is to start slowly, perhaps assembling one vehicle a day at first, and gradually increase the tempo. The factory has an annual capacity of 5,000 trucks per year. Bollinger’s slow ramp-up, [COO Bryan] Chambers said, is to ensure defect-free trucks leave the assembly line. The B4 will also be subjected to extensive road testing before being shipped.
Bollinger has announced orders from large fleet customers for at least 240 B4s worth an estimated $35 million. In the Detroit area, LaFontaine Automotive Group will sell and service Bollinger vehicles.
It was a long road just to get to the start of B4 production.
Of the many of electric vehicle startups that have mushroomed in the last decade, Bollinger Motors — a transplant from Hobart, N.Y., with plans to build rugged, off-road SUVs — seems one of the least likely to have made it to production.
Company founder Robert Bollinger is an entrepreneur who made his fortune in personal care products. When he moved his EV company to Detroit in late 2018, Bollinger didn’t know a thing about automotive supply chains; product development’s long, slow slog; or how to deal with suppliers on small runs of bespoke parts. OTA, the three-letter abbreviation for over-the-air updates? Those were just letters to him.
Two years later, the company abandoned plans to build the boxy, brawny $125,000 B1 and B2 electric off-road utility vehicles and refunded millions in deposits. Instead, taking advantage of generous federal tax incentives that can whack tens of thousands of dollars off the price of large electric commercial trucks, Bollinger saw an opening. He pivoted to developing electric commercial Class 4 and Class 5 fleet chassis cab trucks, vehicles that are the backbone of local delivery services, freight haulers and agricultural companies.
Then came a majority sale to Mullen Automotive, a struggling California EV startup. Mullen wrote checks but let Bollinger’s team continue work without interference on the B4 and a larger, more powerful B5, coming in 2025.
This year, with production imminent, Robert Bollinger stepped aside, selling a controlling stake to Mullen and turning over the CEO job to James Taylor, a former General Motors executive.
The B4 starts at $158,758, not including shipping, but it is eligible for up to $40,000 in federal incentives. Not too shabby. It also has about 160 miles of range, according to AutoNews, and it can tow about three tons of cargo. Additionally, the truck comes with an impressively-small 44-foot turning radius and a 400 horsepower rear electric motor.
On paper, the Bollinger B4 is a pretty impressive little product. Time will tell if production can be sustained or if the demand is actually there.
4th Gear: Nearly Half A Million GM Pickups, SUVs Recalled
General Motors is recalling 449,671 pickup trucks and SUVs because of a broken low brake fluid warning, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. From Reuters:
The recall includes some 2023 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, GMC Sierra 1500, 2023-2024 Chevrolet Tahoe, Suburban, GMC Yukon, Yukon XL, Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV models.
The electronic brake control module software on impacted vehicles may fail to display a warning light when a loss of brake fluid occurs, the NHTSA said.
Dealers will remedy the issue with an over-the-air update to fix the electronic brake control module software, the NHTSA added.
I feel like you’d really want to know if your brake fluid was low on trucks as beefy as these guys. There’s nothing like the thrill of trying to stop a three-ton SUV with no brakes.
Reverse: The First Standing Ovation Is Still Happening
Neutral: Someone Give Me Lots Of Money For This Car
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On The Radio: Bob Segar & The Silver Bullet Band – “Night Moves”
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – Night Moves (Official Video)
