I saw a story today that kind of felt like a metaphor for the entire auto industry for the last few years. There is a cargo ship, on fire and adrift in the middle of the ocean, full of almost 4,000 vehicles coming to the US from Europe. The crew of 22 have abandoned ship and are looking to international governments to fix their floating dumpster fire or maybe for it to sink to the bottom of the ocean so they can collect the insurance money. So far no reports have said how the fire started. This will definitely have an effect on the already depleted inventories at American dealerships.
Stellantis in France is needing to cut jobs and payroll in their transition to electric vehicles. As labor laws in France make it hard for employers to fire their employees, Stellantis is resorting to flooding the employees in positions that need to be cut with emails on how to get exciting jobs elsewhere, alerts for local job fairs and even pushing services to help you rewrite your resume. The employees are being inundated so much so that union reps are accusing management of harassment. EVs are much simpler to produce than combustion engines and Stellantis is pushing hard to lower its workforce in preparations to go 100% electric. Stellantis is hiring software developers so the old meme “learn to code” is going to be hitting the auto industry’s workforce hard soon. Software engineering is much different than mechanical engineering and rarely does someone have both skill sets. This will most likely displace many of the people that have specialized in auto manufacturing.
Toyota North America auctioned 2 of the first i-Force Max Tundras and raised over a million dollars to help cover the living and training costs for Paralympic athletes. Toyota US Paralympic Fund has supported over 400 athletes in helping find their dreams of reaching the Paralympics. The two trucks one with VIN number 001 and one with VIN number 002 were auctioned at Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale Arizona. With as much ragging as I do on the auto industry, I feel like I need to give credit where credit is due. I always admire anyone giving to the less fortunate so good job Toyota!
The Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Canada was cleared last week by a large police force after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a state of emergency. Although protests are still happening all over Canada, the Ambassador Bridge seems to be under police control and crossing time has been reported to be about twice as long as it is normally. Trudeau addressed Parliament earlier this week to basically say he is ignoring the requests of the protestors and basically declaring them domestic terrorist, handing out fines and arrests of people for non violent civill disobediance. I guess we will see how things unfold from here but it does seem like the Canadian government has no problem escalating the situation with their recent show of force.
In EV news it looks like Ford has chosen a Detriot contractor to build the new battery plant in Kentucky. This plant looks like it is going to be built on 1500 acres in Greendale Kentucky, just south of Louisville. This is one of 3 new plants Ford has announced that are outside of the state of Michigan. The total 3 plant project is reported to have an $11B price tag which will be split between Ford and Korean based company SK Innovation.
