Automakers Are Helping Chinese Government Monitor Every EV On The Road

Big Brother is watching Chinese EV drivers.

Ever get the feeling that someone's watching you? Well they very well may be. Especially if you're driving an electric vehicle in China.

According to the Associated Press, quasi-governmental agencies in the so-called People's Republic are tracking alternative-energy vehicles through a variety of parameters, including their location, make, model, mileage, and battery-charge levels... all in real time. But the information isn't being obtained covertly. It's being provided by their manufacturers – both domestic automakers and by foreign automakers (like Tesla, General Motors, and BMW) that are eager to do business in the country.

Data collected by the automakers is transmitted to local monitoring agencies like the Shanghai Electric Vehicle Public Data Collecting, Monitoring and Research Center, which tracks over 222,000 vehicles (most of them electric passenger cars) in Shanghai. The stated purpose is to help plan infrastructure requirements and to enhance public security. But the data is shared with a national monitoring center in Beijing, and can be shared with law enforcement on request.

“The government wants to know what people are up to at all times,” said Maya Wang, senior China specialist at Human Rights Watch. “Tracking vehicles is one of the main focuses of their mass surveillance.”

Though some foreign manufacturers initially resisted sharing the information, AP reports that many have acquiesced to the requirement as the “cost of doing business” in China, one of the largest and fastest-growing market for new cars in the world.

“The automakers consider the data a precious resource,” a government consultant told AP on condition of anonymity. “They gave you dozens of reasons why they can’t give you the data. They give you dozens of excuses. Then we offer the incentives. Then they want to give us the data because it’s part of their profit.” The market for such data is estimated to be worth $750 billion by 2030.

German Automakers Gang Up On Tesla Over EV Plug Monopoly

This is about to get interesting.

To its full credit, Tesla was the first automaker to develop and put on the market the necessary technologies for electric vehicles. It’s not just the cars, but also the charging network. And right now, it has sort of a monopoly on the network part. Even more specifically, the industry standard for plugs. According to Automotive News Europe, BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen are teaming up to take on Tesla’s EV plug monopoly in Europe.

You see, both Japanese and German automakers use “different plugs and communication protocols to link batteries to chargers, but companies building the charging networks needed for EVs to become mainstream say the number of plug formats will need to be limited to keep costs down.” Last November, these German automakers, along with Ford, announced a plan to develop 400 charging stations on some of Europe’s main roads by 2020. It’s called the Combined Charging System (CCS) and the clear goal is to outgun Tesla, but first these automakers will need to catch up to what the former has already accomplished.

In the end, it is about safe-guarding investments for those that are investing in electric mobility," said Claas Bracklo, head of electro-mobility at BMW and the chairman of the Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN), which is backing CCS. "We have founded CharIN to build a position of power.” Basically what’s going on here is a plug format war. At the moment, Tesla has 8,496 superchargers throughout the world, mostly in the US, while CCS has 7,000 globally. The European Union, not surprisingly, is backing CCS. Where Tesla may run into problems in the near future is the fact that its charging network is exclusive to its customers, while the CCS encompasses several automakers in one.

More will probably join instead of devising their own network, which would be crazy expensive and kind of pointless. "If I were Nissan, I'd be wanting to take that standard and make it the dominant one," said Gerard Reid, founder of Alexa Capital that advises companies in the energy, technology and power infrastructure sectors. "It creates a competitive advantage for them," he said. As to how Tesla will handle the upcoming onslaught against it is anybody’s guess, but Elon Musk has always favored competition. Let’s see how responds this time.

These Are The Worst 2018 April Fool's Pranks From Automakers

They need a tough love approach to do better next year.

Yesterday was, of course, both Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day. While automakers ignored Easter, we received several April Fool’s “pranks” in our email inbox. We opted not to publish everything we were sent because most of these so-called pranks were, in a word, lame. Not even remotely close to believable. Laughably bad is more like it. But you want to see them, don’t you? Of course you do, so here they are. For the record, we want these automakers to do better next year, hence our tough love approach today.

Let’s start with Porsche. It’s done better in past years. Much better. This year it was the announcement of the Mission E Tractor. Featuring Porsche’s new FastFarm App, designed to provide 24-hour satellite-based weather updates, it has a claimed 700 hp and is the fastest accelerating agricultural vehicle in the world. It’s built on the same 800v fast-charging architecture as the Mission E. Is any of this believable? Uh, no. And yet Porsche added this disclaimer: “Dear reader, the editorial team has taken the liberty of having a little fun here on April 1. Of course, the Mission E tractor will not be built.” Really?!

BMW has done better than this for April Fool’s. Much better. Remember the 2011 M3 Ute concept, which was actually built and not some Photoshop hack job? Yesterday, however, we received this: the X2 in a new “Digital Camo” wrap. BMW says this is a full multicolored matte wrapping to highlight the X2’s athletic proportions. It also protects the original paint from damage caused by stone chips. The asymmetrical pattern is made up of dark, grey and light colors. Above all, it’s looks ridiculous. BMW added that the Digital Camo wrap can be applied within four days and prices and availability are only available upon request. Yeah, try doing that at your local BMW dealer. They won’t stop laughing at you. Never.

Did you know there was such a thing as Level 7 autonomy? We didn’t either, but thankfully Fisker made us aware yesterday. Meet the first L7 Autonomous drone EMotion. It’s capable of both vertical and takeoff and landing. Auto park is also included. Fisker added this is also the first “in air” test of its drone powered Fisker EMotion and it can travel up to 10 meters (about 33 feet) off the ground and has a top speed of 75 mph. So it’s like the DeLorean Time Machine without the time circuits, right? Of course it is. Oh, and it can also operate as an autonomous urban air taxi that’ll earn you extra income when you’re not using it.

McLaren announced yesterday it has introduced new measures to increase efficiency. How so? By daily monitoring of the water level in the lake in front of the McLaren Technology Center. Specially-trained staff are tasked with doing so, along with measuring each component of the building itself, including its floor tiles.

Yesterday, Hyundai revealed more of the i30N's “development secrets.” How did engineers manage to tune such a capable hot hatch? The secret is the Cacao Corner, a bespoke surface designed to capture tire prints for dynamic analysis. The corner’s surface is created with a mix of cocoa, butter and milk. We couldn’t make that up.

VW CEO Warns: German Automakers Have A 50-50 Chance To Remain Elite

Will Germany's automakers suffer the same fate as their Detroit competitors?

Whenever one thinks of automakers like Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, adjectives like ‘premium’ and ‘luxury’ typically come to mind. That may be true today, as it has been for the past several decades, but Volkswagen’s newly appointed CEO, Herbert Diess, isn’t so sure about the future.

As Reuters reports, Diess earlier this week said that Germany’s automakers have a 50-50 chance of remaining the so-called elite brands in the years ahead unless they make drastic changes. Examples include building vehicles that meet strict new emissions regulations and adapting their supply chains. In fact, Diess believes it’s possible some brands may go out of business unless they reform and shift production to electric cars.

“From today’s point of view the chances are perhaps 50-50 that the German auto industry will still belong among the global elite in 10 years’ time,” Diess said at a conference in Wolfsburg, Germany. "We are all used to the fact that we have flourishing industrial metropolises around the central manufacturing plants of German carmakers and their suppliers, places where people like to live and work, but that's not guaranteed for eternity.”

Think Diess is completely out of his mind and these German automakers are simply too big to fail? Diess added that “If you look at the former bastions of the auto industry like Detroit, Oxford-Cowley or Turin, you understand what happens to cities when once-powerful corporations and leading industries falter.”

Remember, GM filed for bankruptcy back in 2009 because it failed to identify numerous industry changes and implement the necessary solutions. Anything is possible. But the fact that Diess is already ringing the warning bell is a good thing. He already knows a few issues that require immediate attention, among them cutting carbon dioxide emissions in Europe by 30 percent by 2030. Diess said VW must increase its fleet of electric vehicles to 30 percent of new car sales in order to meet that goal.

This will be possible but it’ll come at a price: the change over from combustion engines to EVs will cause the loss of 14,000 jobs at VW by 2020 because of in-house structural changes. While many of the decisions Diess will soon have to make are painful, especially for thousands of plant workers, the ultimate goal is VW’s survival, both as an automaker and a global industry leader.