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Battery Swap Stations Are Gaining Momentum In China

The simplest and most genius-brain solution to charging times and range with EVs isn’t one you’ll find in America. In China, though, it’s gaining ground. All that and more in The Morning Shift for June 2, 2021.

1st Gear: China Is An Alternate Universe For EVs

China is like the American car market in so many ways. It’s huge, for one, (the biggest in the world while we’re number two) and filled with people inexplicably buying sedans and not hatchbacks or wagons. It’s also the biggest market for electric cars in the world, and you see as many Teslas bopping around Shanghai as you do here in New York or Los Angeles.

But China also offers us a market where GM builds small, adorable, unbelievably popular EVs as opposed to 9,000-pound hulking Hummers for the rich. It feels like an alternate reality where everyone takes EVs as a given, not as a radical tech.

This is a long intro to the point that battery-swapping stations are taking off there, as noted in this overview story by Automotive News China:

Until 2019, state-owned BAIC Motor Co. and EV startup Nio were the only two automakers offering battery swap services for customers.

[…]

Competition from Tesla and Nio’s success in gaining customers with battery swap services have prompted other Chinese EV makers to take bold steps.

[…]

While Geely is constructing battery swap stations on its own, other Chinese automakers have opted to build facilities along with domestic companies to share costs.

In September, state-owned Changan Automobile Co. launched its first battery swap station in Chongqing along with a consortium of other major domestic companies.

The partner companies include CATL, China’s largest EV battery maker; Aulton New Energy Vehicle Technology Co., a Shanghai-based battery swap station operator; and State Grid, a state-owned power grid operator.

In March, SAIC Motor Corp., another major state-owned automaker, also teamed up with Aulton to kick off operation of the first battery swap station for its EVs.

Aiways, an EV startup, tapped Blue Part Smart Energy, an EV charging facility operator under BAIC, in April to offer battery swap services.

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This is all interesting to see from an American perspective, especially one based out of New York City. Around the turn of the century, NYC was home to the largest electric car company in the world, the Electric Vehicle Company, and it operated using battery-swapping stations right in the middle of Manhattan. The tech is basic. We could go down this route if we wanted to.

2nd Gear: Another Tesla Recall

Some 6,000 Tesla Model 3 and Model Ys are getting recalled for loose brake caliper bolts, as Reuters reports:

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) is recalling nearly 6,000 U.S. vehicles because brake caliper bolts could be loose, with the potential to cause a loss of tire pressure, documents made public on Wednesday show.

The recall covers certain 2019-2021 Model 3 vehicles and 2020-2021 Model Y vehicles. Tesla’s filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it had no reports of crashes or injuries related to the issue and that the company will inspect and tighten, or replace, the caliper bolts as necessary.

Tesla said that loose caliper bolts could allow the brake caliper to separate and contact the wheel rim, which could cause a loss of tire pressure in “very rare circumstances.” The company said that, in the “unlikely event” there is vehicle damage from a loose or missing fastener, it will arrange for a tow to the nearest service center for repair.

Hey, at least they got the bolts on there this time!

3rd Gear: Everyone Is Copying How Elon Talks

Another interesting Tesla story comes from Bloomberg, which has taken notice that everyone is not just copying Tesla’s plans to make attractive and desirable electric cars, but also how Tesla talks them up with ever-grander terminology. Per Bloomberg:

Many of the words speak to the sheer scale of Musk’s ambitions, which are always far grander than people realize initially. A battery factory isn’t just a battery factory, it’s a Gigafactory. (Giga comes from the Greek word “gigas,” or giant.)

A fast charging station for Tesla’s electric cars isn’t just a charging station, it’s a Supercharger. (Tesla has more than 25,000, giving them the largest network in the world.)

The battery packs that Tesla sells to utilities that promise “massive energy storage?” Megapacks.

There are no signs of him stopping. At Tesla’s “Battery Day” in September 2020, Musk talked about reaching “Terawatt-hour” scale battery production. “Tera is the new Giga,” Musk said on stage.

We’ve now reached the point where every battery factory — even those being made by competitors — is called a gigafactory, regardless of its physical size or planned output. “Nissan in advanced talks to build battery gigafactory in UK,” reported the Financial Times. “Stellantis discussing conditions with Rome to build gigafactory in Italy,” said Reuters.

Would Tesla be where it is if everyone just called gigafactories what they are? (They’re just regular factories.)

4th Gear: Toyota Scaling Back Olympic Plans

The Olympics in Japan seem to be still on somebody’s schedule, even if the people of Japan seem less than stoked on a global travel-fest in the midst of a still-ongoing global pandemic. Of course, this has huge implications for … high-profile industrial manufacturing that hopes to use the Olympics as a sales and marketing opportunity! Reuters has a broad report on it, and I’ll just take out this little section on Toyota:

For global sponsor Toyota Motor Corp., the Games were a chance to showcase its latest technology. It had planned to roll out about 3,700 vehicles, including 500 Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell sedans, to shuttle athletes and VIPs among venues.

It also planned to use self-driving pods to carry athletes around the Olympic village.

Such vehicles will still be used, but on a much smaller scale — a “far cry from what we had hoped and envisioned,” a Toyota source said. A full-scale Olympics, the source said, would have been a “grand moment for electric cars.”

A Toyota spokeswoman declined to comment on whether there were any changes to its marketing.

5th Gear: Biden Blocks Trump Plan For Arctic Drilling In Alaska

This is not a total win for climate, but it’s something, as the Financial Times reports:

The Biden administration has announced it will suspend the Arctic oil drilling rights sold in the last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, reversing a signature policy of the previous White House and handing a victory to environmentalists.

[…]

Tuesday’s decision marked a victory for environmentalists and activists, a pillar of Biden’s support in last year’s election, who have begun to grow impatient with some of the White House’s climate actions. The administration recently opted not to intervene to force the closure of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and has supported a major Alaska oil project approved during Trump’s term in office.

“In general the Biden administration is acting vigorously on climate change,” said Michael Gerrard, founder of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “This action on ANWR is quite consistent with that. The actions on the other two projects do not seem so consistent.”

I’ll take anything I can get at this point!

Neutral: How Is Your Car?

My Bug refused to start the other day just as I had loaded the car up for a multi-day road trip. With rain coming down, it refused to start even when I flagged down a ‘90s Infiniti for a jump. I ran out and got a new battery and it did start, but was running like shit until I found a half-bare wire leading to the coil. Some electrical tape later and we were on the road, though I’m still finding the car getting hot and leaking oil around some seals I know I just replaced. Stopping after one mountain pass I saw vapor rising out of one of the two carburetors. Time for a tune-up!

I Figured Out How Chevy Can Sell A Ton Of Bolts And It Involves Tesla

By now you’ve possibly heard that there’s a new Chevy Bolt coming, and it’s going to have a very competitive range of 259 miles and a very competitive price of just under $32,000. You likely haven’t heard all that much about it because even though it’s a modern, capable EV built by a company that’s been building cars in quantity for over a century, it’s not a Tesla. And, as a not-Tesla EV, nobody gives a shit about it. But I have a plan to fix that, a way for Chevy to really sell a crapton of Bolts. And it involves a whole new kind of engineering.

You’ve heard of reverse engineering, right? Where a company takes a competitor’s product and figures out how it works? And you of course know about badge engineering, where a carmaker slaps its name on some other carmaker’s car to somehow make money, yeah? Well, consider this concept: reverse brand engineering.

What I’m suggesting is that Chevrolet needs to work out a licensing deal with Tesla that lets them offer an option to sell people Bolts re-branded as a Tesla. Let’s call it the Tesla Model 2.

It could be one of the Bolt’s trim packages, like this:

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The TLS trim package is the one we’re talking about here. This package would offer a full Chevy badge/bowtie delete, ideally even in the little white print in the corners of the windows, too. No Chevy badging anywhere, as that will all be replaced with Tesla badges, which includes a new faux-grille panel without Chevy’s distinctive diamond pattern.

So, we’d go from this:

…to this:

Just the nose badge, the “grille” panel, and a Tesla badge on the tailgate, along with a MODEL 2 badge. Oh, and wheels without the Chevy logo.

There would be an adapter included so you could charge your disguised Bolt at any Tesla Supercharger station, and then be able to rub well-lotion’d, world-saving elbows with fellow Tesla owners, where you can talk about Bitcoin and make jokes with the numbers 69 and 420 in them.

Also, all of the Bolt’s instruments will get a UI re-skin to match Tesla’s look-and-feel (this is easy! It’s just software on a screen!) and the Bolt’s center-stack infotainment display screen will get a similar makeover, along with some ability to run Tesla infotainment applications, like the one that makes fart sounds or shows a fireplace or plays Atari games.

Hardware permitting, it should just run some licensed variant of Tesla’s infotainment software, but even if it’s just emulated or copied, that’ll probably be just fine.

Also, it should have GM’s SuperCruise Level 2 semi-autonomy system installed, just re-named Autopilot SC. This could be considered an upgrade, depending on who you ask, even.

Another very important part here is the very obviously Tesla-branded key fob. This should be big and showy and unmistakably Tesla. The key is key.

All that, plus a glossy 8×10 headshot of Elon Musk, ideally signed and with some sort of Tesla Certificate of Authenticity printed on the back, to be produced in case of arguments from gate-keeping Tesla owners, should complete the package.

I’m telling you, with this package, Chevy will move Bolts like they were electric hotcakes. It’s got everything people want in a modern electric car: a Tesla badge!

Plus, unlike a Tesla-built Tesla, the Model 2 will have bumpers that stay on in the rain and novel Sta-Put™ roofs and the parts and service side of things won’t be a total mess.

As far as what Tesla gets out of it, I guess it’s mostly money from their sweet licensing deal with GM, and an entry-level model below the Model 3 on the road with zero effort from them. Plus, plenty of brand visibility, too!

Also, it may help Tesla’s perceived reliability, kind of like how Pontiac benefited that way when it sold Toyota Matrixes as Pontiac Vibes. Kinda.

This is really Chevy’s best bet to finally get people buying Bolts, because, as we’ve already seen with the perfectly fine first-gen Bolt, nobody really gives a rat’s rectum about them. But mainstream culture is absolutely smitten with Tesla, for reasons that transcend logic.

Why fight it, Chevy? Just pay Elon some cash and start slapping Tesla Ts on your Bolts, and watch those things fly off the lots. You think I’m kidding, but deep down, you know there’s some painful truth here.

As always, you can just Venmo me my cut.

NHTSA Has A Lot Of Catch-Up Ahead

It’s happening too often. Someone spots a Tesla owner sleeping while motoring down the freeway, their car under the control of Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system. Next thing you know, it’s all over social media.

You may wonder how Tesla was able to release this product onto public roads. Are there no regulations covering such features? Isn’t this a safety issue? According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, it really breaks down to oversight from the government.

The Trump administration focused its efforts on rolling back fuel economy requirements. Its arguments for doing so was that cars would become both cheaper and safer. That didn’t happen, and it’s a mystery why Trump thought it would. One explanation is he didn’t know shit about cars.

Unfortunately, fuel economy and emissions control rollbacks were just about the only things Trump’s NHTSA did get around to doing. NHTSA’s important regulatory oversight work stalled for four years with no director at the helm. Now, the Biden administration has a backlog of neglected tasks to dig through. As the Times report shows, NHTSA has been pretty much hands-off when it comes to driver-assistance systems, specifically when it comes to Tesla’s misleadingly named Autopilot:

Officially, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration discourages such behavior, running a public awareness campaign last fall with the hashtag #YourCarNeedsYou. But its messaging competes with marketing of Tesla itself, which recently said it will begin selling a software package for “Full Self Driving” — a term it has used since 2016 despite objections from critics and the caveats in the company’s own fine print — on a subscription basis starting this quarter.

That NHTSA has so far declined to confront Tesla directly on the issue is firmly in character for an agency that took a hands-off approach to a wide range of matters under the Trump administration.

”Inactive,” is how Carla Bailo, chief executive of the Center for Automotive Research, summed up NHTSA’s four previous years. “Dormant,” said Jason Levine, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety. “No direction,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a professor and expert in autonomous vehicle law at the University of South Carolina.

The agency went the full Trump term without a Senate-confirmed administrator, leaving deputies in charge. It launched several safety investigations into Tesla and other companies, but left most unfinished. “A massive pile of backlog” awaits the Biden administration,” said Paul Eisenstein, publisher of The Detroit Bureau industry news site.

While NHTSA has been absent on a number of issues, its lack of oversight on autonomous driving is perhaps the biggest. The Times says Level 2 autonomy is the biggest safety challenge since Ralph Nader’s Unsafe At Any Speed. Silly Nader references aside, the Times does have a point.

How to deal with emerging autonomous driving technologies is a long term issue. But one thing is for sure, the way Tesla uses its customers as beta testers raises alarm bells with experts.

Whoever takes charge must balance the long-term potential for next-generation cars to reduce pollution, traffic and greenhouse gases against the near-term risks of deploying buggy new technologies at scale before they’re fully vetted. In the “move fast and break things” style of Silicon Valley, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has embraced those risks.

While other driverless car developers — from General Motors’ Cruise, to Ford’s Argo AI, to Amazon’s Zoox, to Alphabet’s Waymo, to independent Aurora and more — all take an incremental, slow rollout approach with professional test drivers at the wheel, Tesla is “beta testing” its driverless technology on public roads using its customers as test drivers.

Musk said last month that Tesla cars will be able to fully drive themselves without human intervention on public roads by late this year. He’s been making similar promises since 2016. No driverless car expert or auto industry leader outside Tesla has said they think that’s possible.

While law professor Smith is impressed by Tesla’s “brilliant” ability to use Tesla drivers to collect millions of miles of sensor data to help refine its software, “that doesn’t excuse the marketing, because this is in no way full self-driving. There are so many things wrong with that term. It’s ludicrous. If we can’t trust a company when they tell us a product is full self-driving, how can we trust them when they tell us a product is safe?”

The Detroit Bureau’s Eisenstein is even harsher. “Can I say this off the record?” he said. “No, let me say it on the record. I’m appalled by Tesla. They’re taking the smartphone approach: Put the tech out there, and find out whether or not it works. It’s one thing to put out a new IOS that caused problems with voice dictation. It’s another thing to have a problem moving 60 miles per hour.”

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A late 2016 NHTSA directive under the Obama administration considered “predictable abuse” as a potential defect in autonomous driving tech deployment. Unfortunately, under Trump NHTSA did nothing. For context, the directive came about a year after the software that enabled Autopilot driver assistance in the Tesla Model S was released.

The inaction of NHTSA drew ire from another federal safety agency, the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB — which is most known for its investigations of plane and train incidents — blamed predictable abuse for a 2018 crash where a Tesla Model X crashed into a concrete divider.

Part of the issue is the lack of transparency from Musk and Tesla regarding how safe the Autopilot driver-assist system is as well as a lack of data in general. From the Times:

Musk regularly issues statistics purporting to show that Autopilot and Full Self Driving are on balance safer than cars driven by humans alone. That could be, but even if Musk’s analysis is sound — several statisticians have said it is not — the data is proprietary to Tesla, and Tesla has declined to make even anonymized data available to university researchers for independent confirmation. Tesla could not be reached — it disbanded its media relations department last year.

***

In 2019, after a series of Tesla battery fires, NHTSA launched a probe of the company’s software and battery management systems. Later, the agency said allegedly defective cooling tubes that could cause leaks were being investigated as well. At the time, the agency did not make public information it held about battery cooling tubes prone to leakage that were installed in early versions of the Model S and Model X.

Since late 2016, many Tesla drivers had been complaining about “whompy wheels” on their cars — a tendency for the suspension system to break apart, which sometimes caused a wheel to collapse or fall off the car. Chinese drivers lodged similar complaints, and last October, China authorities ordered a recall of 30,000 Model S and Model X cars. A Tesla lawyer wrote NHTSA a letter arguing no U.S. recall was necessary and blamed driver “abuse” for the problems in China. NHTSA said in October it is “monitoring the situation closely.”

Four days before Biden’s inauguration, NHTSA announced that defects in Tesla touchscreen hardware can make the car’s rear-view camera go blank, among other problems. Rather than order a recall, NHTSA said it asked Tesla to voluntarily recall approximately 158,000 Model S and Model X cars for repair. On Feb. 2, Tesla agreed to recall 135,000 of those cars.

Check out the full Los Angeles Times report, it’s well worth the read!