Good morning! It’s Friday, October 11, 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.
1st Gear: Tesla Cybercab Is Coming…One Day
Thursday was a big one for Tesla, with the automaker hosting its hotly-anticipated We, Robot event to unveil its autonomous future. The event was full of glitz, glam and lofty promises from big boss Elon Musk, but that hasn’t done much to quell the concerns among Tesla’s investors.
During the event, Musk unveiled a two-seat Cybercab and a massive Robovan that he said would one day autonomously ferry passengers around America. However, the Tesla boss was big on vision but lacking on the finer details, and that left some investors concerned, as Reuters explains:
Thursday night’s electronic dance music-infused event had the signature trappings of Musk’s salesmanship, but some Tesla investors and experts said they were hoping for more concrete details on how the company plans to transform from an automaker into an autonomous driving and artificial intelligence titan with a solid business plan.
“His vision is lovely, but somebody has to actualize it,” said Ross Gerber, a Tesla shareholder and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. “For now, for the next 24 months, Tesla has to sell EVs. Why aren’t we focused on that?”
Musk claimed that the self-driving models will run on an unsupervised version of Full Self-Driving, which relies on cameras and artificial intelligence to map the road ahead and plot a route through. As it stands, this tech is currently able to operate without assistance for around 13 miles, while rival self-driving taxi firm Waymo can manage for more than 13,000 miles.
This gaping chasm between the two companies will be the “hard part” for Tesla to overcome, one expert told Reuters. Tesla is targeting a 2026 launch for the Cybercab, and it says that unsupervised FSD will come to current Tesla owners in California next year, giving the company little time to iron out the creases with its tech. As Reuters adds:
Tesla is aiming to leapfrog incumbent self-driving players, including Alphabet’s Waymo, by pursuing a lower-cost technological path that Musk believes will allow the company to scale up its autonomous vehicles far quicker than rivals.
Tesla’s strategy is simpler and much cheaper than that of its rivals, but has critical weaknesses. Chief among those is that the AI technology underpinning its self-driving system makes it nearly impossible to pinpoint why a crash or other failure occurred – something that could concern regulators.
“Tesla software is at least years behind where Waymo is. That’s the hard part. No flashy vehicle design is going to change that,” said Matthew Wansley, professor at New York’s Cardozo School of Law.
As Musk has been promising a self-driving Tesla for more than 10 years now, and he has a track record of missing countless product launch dates, I wouldn’t hold my breath for those targets to be met but the automaker. Those concerns appear to be shared among investors in the EV maker, as shares in Tesla were down five percent in pre-market trading on Friday.
2nd Gear: Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares To Retire
It feels like Stellantis is making headlines almost every week these days, but for all the wrong reasons; struggling sales, revolt among dealers and concerns over its future all making the news in recent months. Now, after revealing that it had started looking for a new CEO, Stellantis has announced that current CEO Carlos Tavares will retire in 2026, reports Automotive News.
Tavares took on the role when Stellantis was formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Groupe PSA in 2021. The Portuguese CEO has faced a tough few months, however, and now the 66-year-old appears ready to call it quits. As Automotive News reports:
Stellantis confirmed that CEO Carlos Tavares would retire at the end of his contract in early 2026 and announced major senior management changes as it struggles to turn around its lagging North American operations.
The confirmation comes weeks after Stellantis said it was searching for his successor, though at the time it said it was possible he could remain after his contract expires.
Stellantis said it now planned to name his successor by the fourth quarter of 2025.
While announcing Tavares’ impending departure from the Jeep owner, Stellantis said that Jean-Philippe Imparato had been named chief operating officer for Europe in addition to his role as CEO of Pro One LCV division. Santo Ficili was also named lead of Alfa Romeo and Maserati, and Doug Ostermann was appointed the company’s finance chief.
The change at the top for Stellantis follows a few months of turmoil for the automaker, which has struggled with mounting inventory, falling sales and tumbling profits through 2024.
3rd Gear: Making Money On Autonomous Taxis Will Take Years
Tesla isn’t the only company hoping that its future lies in autonomy, ride-hailing company Uber is also experimenting with the tech. Uber isn’t going in all guns blazing to the space though and has now warned of the challenges of making money on self-driving taxis.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg that reluctance for self-driving rides among consumers, higher costs associated with developing the tech and regulation around rollout mean that turning a profit with self-driving cars is tough:
Uber Technologies Inc. is prioritizing safety over profits as it develops its autonomous driving fleet.
“The most important factor is, ‘Can we make this technology safe? Can we build trust for riders, for example, in markets where we offer autonomous, half of our riders say, no thank you?’” said Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi in an interview for an upcoming episode of Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast.
“Safety is job number one,” he added. “We will then, I would say in the next three to seven years, start to focus on economics.”
Khosrowshahi added that they believed “margins on autonomous will be lower than non-autonomous in the early years,” reports Bloomberg. Then, as if hearing his shareholders panicking, he added that the tech could one day “be great for business,” but didn’t add a timeframe for when that day could come.
Uber and Tesla are not the only companies working on autonomous taxis here in the U.S. Over the past decade, countless startups have come and gone in the autonomous vehicle world, including companies promising self-driving trucks, self-driving cars and even self-driving boats.
4th Gear: UAW Slams Trump’s Attitude Towards EVs
Election fever is heating up here in the U.S. with just 24 days to go until the country goes to the polls and chooses between vice president Kamala Harris or convicted felon Donald Trump. After pledging its support for the Harris campaign already, the United Auto Workers union has now slammed Trump’s stance on EVs ahead of the big vote.
UAW president Shawn Fain this week warned that “hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs” would be at risk if Trump wins the election on November 5, reports the Detroit Free Press. The warning came as Trump has repeatedly pledged to backtrack on government support for electric vehicle production here in the U.S., without which the UAW warned there would be dire consequences. As the Free Press reports:
Fain, who has endorsed the Democratic nominee in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris, said removing the funds would put at risk some 650 jobs in Lansing and have a greater impact across the United States.
“It’s a lot bigger than just the Lansing Grand River investment. It’s factories all over the United States, and it’s supply chain factories all over the United States that are being put in place now. So you’re talking hundreds of thousands of jobs that Donald Trump is just writing off,” Fain told reporters ahead of Trump’s visit to Detroit later on Thursday.
Vance had drawn fire from the UAW last week for giving noncommittal answers on questions about the money allocated to GM for the electric vehicle plant.
This isn’t the first time Fain has had stern words for Trump, having already called him a “Scab” who “doesn’t know shit about the auto industry” this year. His comments also come just days after it emerged that attendees at a rally supporting Trump who were wearing “Auto Workers For Trump” t-shirts weren’t actually auto workers.
