Featured Lots of turmoil in the automotive industry

How would we explain away this?




Change/turmoil in the Automotive Industry is a constant not a variable!

 

sister in law is trying to purchase a 2025 camry. they only had one on the lot and it was loaded.
they are searching for something she might accept

 

I'm guessing solar doesn't work too well over that side. I was in the process of setting our house up as totally off grid, solar and batteries, the grid power box went up while we were 50km away, burnt our motorhome and house to the ground .... I'll never trust the poles and wires being connected to any house I own now.
At the moment, we live in a 30 ft motorhome, in the process of converting it to full electric as far as the house side of it goes, and charge my MG4 EV from it. The future plan is to convert it from the Ford V10 and 4 sp auto to hybrid using the Lexus L110 hybrid gearbox ...... 2 speed, dual motor, 250kw, the V10 could develop that, but not until it was wound up, the L110 does it off the mark.

As far as I'm concerned, you can stick diesel and petrol where the sun don't shine, as well as coal fired power, I'' be happy to use the sun to power everything I need.

The longer term plan is to convert my '74 VW Kombi camper to electric and tow that wheels down behind the motorhome.

T1 Terry

 

I'm a bit confused just where the American car market can go from here. Musk gets his cars built in China using Chinese chip technology, so that has to be abandoned for the US domestic market .... so where will he source his chips .... bad pun I know, but still, if the Chinese are going to stop selling some of the raw materials, even to make them in the US will require new supply sources and upping the refining capacity .... and of course, the supply will have to be from a country that isn't about to be hit with mega tariffs.
There wouldn't be many, if any, vehicle manufacturing companies that don't include parts from China. Sure, US companies can be set up to produce these parts within the US, but it won't happen over night, and tooling up to suit changing requirements won't be as fast as the Chinese can do it.

The days of building ever bigger vehicles has to come to an end sometime, there isn't much of an export market for them new, a small market second hand, but that doesn't create a strong US vehicle manufacturing market

It's a pity the MG range never made it to the US, the MG4 XPower is a real giant killer at an amazing price

T1 Terry

 

Side topic....but isn't 'grid power' .......-electric?

you may want to think about using wind or geothermal as a backup.

 

Toyota's online inventory search can be helpful, At least in our region, dealers are generally "stuck" with whatever vehicles they are allocated. Some dealers still insist on charging list price with a few giving discounts. Personally, based on working 20 years with the same salesman located about 3 hours away, we decided to go ahead and pay list price. We chose the vehicle and put a deposit on it before it was even manufactured. New and used car inventories are low so dealers in this area do not trade among themselves. I test drove a Camry at my local dealer before committing to our new one. We ended up with the black interior as our second choice but chose to immediately tint the windows to reduce solar heating of the interior.

If they find a promising car from the Toyota inventory search, contact the dealer directly. I thought i had found a vehicle only to discover the dealer already had accepted a deposit on it.

i wish her luck in her vehicle search. We are really enjoying our 2025 Camry XLE. This is on-topic since all 2025 Camry are Gen 5 Hybrids.

 

Another option for a Camry is to build and order from the Toyota website - this option does not work if you need a car 'right now" but can be a good option is you can wait or rent a car for a while as your car is built and shipped.

When I worked at Toyota in Kentucky (TMMK) we used to make 500 Camrys a shift or 1000 Camrys a day and still could not keep up with the demand. We would often wonder how all those cars were being sold and why we could never catch up, but the orders kept pouring in.

For a short time we even had a supplemental line manufacturing Camry's at a Subaru Plant in Indiana supervised and inspected by Toyota to try and keep up.

Not sure how many a day they now make.

 

Just wondering, what the cutoff is between light vehicles & whatever the next categories are ... medium? Heavy?

 

Build and Order take your desired build and amexico they have other supplier issues impacting production too.ttempts to match it with allocated inventory. Toyota claims production is constrained by electronics component supplies. I saw that in Mexico plants they have other component supplier stock issues too.

 

Here is one chart.
Alternative Fuels Data Center: Maps and Data - Vehicle Weight Classes & Categories

 

Tesla, like many other auto manufacturers, get much of their chipsets from Samsung / South Korea. Lots of ties with taiwan, which may become part of China again. Nvidia claims they could remain successfully in business Without tsmc but it would be a tough row to hoe
.

 

The metals China is limiting export of do have other sources. Production just became concentrated in China because of costs.

I view it more of a cost issue. To counter the limitations of mounting on a car, more costly PV cells and equipment are needed. To get to the potential of 40 solar miles a day, it adds $1900 to the price of the Aptera; base has 16 potential miles. That's a 700W system. With incentives, $1900 would pay for two 400W panels installed on my system. For actual production, my roof is a better investment.

The story is different if you can't have solar on your building. Then the value of solar on a BEV comes down to local electric rates. Other EVs won't be gaining as many miles under the sun as an Aptera. I do hope they succeed, as I'd get one for a commuter.

 

President Biden has speech problems, which he had early in life. Cognition, he is fine. Propaganda works.

 

He had stuttering issues which id very different from current symptoms presented.

 

I've already put down $18,000 on my home solar project. Can you give more details:

• When and where? The "50km" suggests outside of the USA. Each grid has different characteristics and sometimes, like Texas, have a different approach from national grid standards.
• "the grid power box"? Any detail or a URL describing the unit used.

A retired network engineer, I've been 'beyond' curious. So they've provided details about:

• Whole Home Battery Backup, Home Power Backup | FranklinWH - "aPower" and "aGate".
• SPAN® Panel | Lower your energy bill - a replacement breaker box (electrical panel.)

I am going for an "undersized", 6 kW system because my primary goal is to maximize electric bill reduction, $0.12/kWh, and minimize utility buy-back of excesses solar production at wholesale rates, $0.05/kWh. Cost avoidance is not taxed but buy-back at wholesale rates is taxable income.

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

 

To be technically correct, Musk gets his cars built in USA/China/Austin and Germany.

And they use chip technology primarily from the USA (Applied Materials, KLA, Lam Research) & Netherlands (ASML) built in Taiwan or South Korea

Mike