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Ford is considering shipping partially built vehicles to dealerships. They started talks with some dealerships this week to get a feel for how the plan would work. As of now they are saying only dealerships that elect to receive vehicles will get shipments. This seems like a nightmare for dealerships who would most likely be on the hook for the storage and insuring of a huge dollar amount of inventory that would be unsellable. Other issues would be the logistics of shipping parts that are in ultra high demand like microchips to the dealerships in the US that sign up. Considering they are having trouble keeping their 8 domestic assembly plants supplied with these parts, I see this move as Ford limiting their liability and pushing it off to the dealerships. I have major concerns for the quality of the vehicles finished at some dealerships. My guess is that Ford will incentivize taking partially built vehicles by offering more vehicle allocation to the dealers that take on the liability and of course they will compensate for time taken to install the chips.
GM is also cutting some corners amidst the microchip shortage. They are eliminating wireless charging capabilities on certain 2021 Tahoe, Suburban, and Yukon vehicles. GM will be giving a $75 MSRP credit to the consumers that buy the vehicles without the features. In June, GM also built some of these vehicles without the automatic start stop feature.
Despite GM not being able to produce vehicles to keep up with demand, they announced their plans to build a $71 million dollar Advanced Design and Technology Campus in Pasadena California. They are hoping this will speed up the development of their zero emission, zero crashes, and zero congestion goals. This campus will be over 8 acres and house some of the engineering teams working on automated driving, EV development and safety technology. It is expected to open toward the end of 2022.
Reuters claims that GM is turning to a German parts supplier, Kuka, to make the initial production run of about 500 hand made Brightdrop EV vehicles in a suburb of Detroit. This is suspected to be because GM wants to get these vehicles in the hands of FedEx as soon as possible. The Brightdrop EV600’s official production will be in Canada’s Ingersoll plant and it is scheduled to start production next year.
Ford will no longer be accepting orders for the F-150 with the diesel engine option as of today. This option has only been offered for 3 years and is being pulled because of a lack of demand. I have lost count of the number of times that the F-150 has had a diesel option and within a few years it is revoked.
The EU is rolling out plans to have a cut off date for the production of new internal combustion engine vehicles. Although no specific date has been given. The EU executive arm is looking at 2035 as a target.
Moving forward, the auto industry seems to still be going through major changes. As of now, I would take any announcements from the auto manufacturers with a grain of salt. Anyone who says they “know” what is going to happen, I think is not being truthful at this point. There are way too many factors to take into account. I would expect to look up in a few years and have the auto industry look completely different.
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