Happy Friday! It’s June 28, 2024 and that’s it Morning shift, your daily roundup of top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
First gear: Ram Good, Dodge Bad: JD Power
JD Power’s latest Initial Quality Study is out, and this year’s results are… strange. Ram takes the top spot, but Dodge is the absolute worst of the bunch — except for the Polestar, which the study claims isn’t up to snuff anyway. from Automotive News:
Ram grabbed the top spot in the JD Power US Initial Quality Study for the second time in four years, while Stellantis’s friend Dodge slipped to last place after leading the industry in 2023.
Porsche climbed to the no. 1 among premium brands after last year’s runner-up to Stellantis-owned Alfa Romeo, which dropped to bottom in 2024. Porsche was seventh overall.
Chevrolet placed second, moving up three spots from last year. Hyundai jumped to third place, up from No. 17 in 2023. Kia was fourth and Buick rounded out the top five.
GMC and Cadillac dropped out of the top 10. Ford climbed from below average in 2023 to ninth place this year.
It’s not immediately clear why the gap between the two automakers would be so massive Automotive News says Alfa Romeo was hurt by Tonale. Maybe Hornet is seeing some problems.
2nd gear: Elon Musk’s $56 billion salary goes to court
Remember when shareholders voted to give Elon Musk $56 billion? Well, as you may recall, that vote wasn’t binding — it was just evidence to send to the Delaware court that had frozen Musk’s pay. Now, that’s where it’s gone. from Reuters:
Tesla is claiming that Elon Musk won his legal battle over his $56 billion pay package because shareholders voted for the compensation, despite a judge striking it down earlier this year, according to a court filing made public by on thursday.
The company’s announcement comes two weeks after Tesla shareholders voted to ratify a 2018 stock option package. Tesla withheld the vote following a January ruling by a Delaware judge to void the compensation because Musk improperly controlled the negotiation process. and the company misled shareholders about key details.
Uncertainty in this case hinges on Musk’s relationship with Tesla, which is struggling with slower sales and tougher competition. He has said he may develop some products outside the company if he doesn’t take a larger share of ownership.
Given that Tesla and Musk’s current state is much different than it was when the pay package was first approved — Tesla is a robotics company now, if you hadn’t heard, not a car manufacturer — it’s unclear how much this new evidence will affect the judge.
3rd gear: Toyota wants to get to driver assistance
Buyers in China want electric vehicles with advanced driver assistance technology. Toyota, in particular, lags on these two points – and accordingly lags in Chinese sales. Now, through a joint venture, the company is looking to change that. from Reuters:
Toyota is planning to launch the first electric car model equipped with an advanced autonomous driving system similar to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving for the Chinese market next year, one of its Chinese joint ventures said.
The JV with state-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) aims to restore the Japanese automaker’s market share in China, catching up with Chinese rivals on technologies in hybrids, batteries and smart vehicles.
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Toyota ranked fifth among all brands for car sales in China in the first four months of this year, when the Japanese brand saw a 22% drop from the same period in 2023, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
Toyota is also working on developing new battery technology to lower the bZ4X’s cost, which – if successful – could give buyers a single reason to buy it over literally any other option.
4th gear: Electrify America is racing to fix chargers
The biggest obstacle to EV adoption in the United States is our collection of unreliable chargers and the 35 or so apps needed to run them all. Electrify America is aiming to change that, with a radical new approach: What if EV chargers worked? from Automotive News:
Electrify America, one of the largest electric vehicle charging networks in the US, is pulling multiple levers to improve an EV industry black eye: poor charger performance.
Just 9 percent of electric vehicle charging attempts failed on the Electrify America network in the first quarter of this year, compared to 11 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 2023, according to a JD Power analysis.
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Electric vehicle charging companies have focused on improving charger performance over the past year. Charging hurdles have hurt electric vehicle sales. According to JD Power, one-fifth of charge attempts failed on non-Tesla chargers in the first quarter of this year. Tesla Superchargers, known to be the most reliable, had a failure rate of 5 percent, JD Power said.
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Electrify America has replaced outdated charging equipment, some of which it installed in 2018, with more sophisticated chargers that can quickly power EVs that have the most advanced systems.
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Electrify America also brought in-house software to gain control over the charging experience.
With any luck, this will help change the face of charging in the United States. There are so many great electric vehicles out there, and driving them can be such a hassle because of our junk infrastructure. Let’s fix that.
Opposite: Remember where Pride Month comes from
As a reminder, children: These rights did not come from asking politely. Queer people who came before us fought, bled and died for them.