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The auto industry continues to have trouble amidst the world’s semiconductor shortage. Everyone from General Motors to Tesla is seeing production affected as yesterday Tesla announced it will be idling its Model 3 line in California for 2 weeks.
On a brighter note, even the Whitehouse is getting involved. Joe Biden is pressing for $37 billion in funding to ramp up domestic semiconductor production. He said “I’m directing senior officials in my administration to work with industrial leaders to identify solutions to the semiconductor shortfall,” also stating “Congress has authorized a bill but they need … $37 billion to make sure that we have this capacity. I’ll push for that as well.”
The German company Infineon, claims it can help meet chip demand with help of their new plant in Austria. CEO Reinhard Ploss siad the new plant, due to open in late summer, will produce enough semiconductors for 25 million vehicles annually.
Defense contractor Oshkosh was awarded the USPS contract for their Next Generation Delivery Vehicle or NGDV. These vehicles are going to replace the more than 2 decade old design that has been built by defense contractor Grumman. Although these vehicles are expected to be much more environmentally friendly, a lot of people were surprised to see that only 10% are projected to be electric vehicles. The estimate to get the proposal to 90% electric was an additional $3-$4 billion dollars on top of the original $6 billion. Taking the average cost from $36,000 to $60,000 per vehicle. That is a 50 to 65 percent increase and it is unclear if that cost includes the charging infrastructure that would be needed for a fleet of this scale.
Auto manufacturer Hyundai had an interesting week, finding themselves in the spotlight unexpectedly when Tiger Woods crashed his Genesis and then again when they announced a recall of the batteries on 75,680 Kona Electric models, 5,715 Ioniq Electric models and 305 city buses. An expected average cost of $11,000 per vehicle or a total of over $900 million dollars, makes this the most expensive electric vehicle recall ever.
Fleet vehicle ordering has been heavily affected so far in the first quarter of 2021, with GM currently only having a few models available to order. This includes some Low Cab Forward Trucks, Suburban and Traverse. Most other models will hopefully be available to order within the next 3-4 months with most production scheduled to start Q3 of 2021.
Ford is still accepting fleet orders for most models except super duty trucks and the Transit Connect. They have not announced when fleet order availability will be cut off.
A new survey from company onePoll done for Hyundai showed that the pandemic has not been good on vehicle maintenance. Out of 2000 people polled about 1 in 4 have not had their vehicles maintained in over 12 months. They also found the average interval for oil changes was 7,460 miles, with the typical recommended interval being 5000.
1 in 3 admit they have driven with the check engine light on and onePoll found that on average people will drive 9 days before taking a vehicle in for service. Almost half of the people polled said they find vehicle maintenance intimidating, listing lack of knowledge and the attitude of the technician as some of the reasons.
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