📈👩🏭🎓 Honda and Kia have upped their EV production goals following 2023's 60% growth in the EV segment. According to recent data, 14% of global sales are EVs.
Business Lesson 1: Sell something for more than it costs you.
Business Lesson 2: If people tell you what they want to buy - sell more of that.
🧑💻👯🚙 General Motors worked with the Eclipse Foundation to create an open-source protocol, uProtocol, to speed up the development and improve the customer experience of in-car software across the industry - that is, if its competitors opt to use the protocol. Currently, the automaker is working on a product for OTA updates, subscription services, and theorized in-car features like facial recognition to activate child locks if a kid enters the car.
If cars are heading toward a software-defined future, getting dibs on writing the dictionary makes sense.
🔌🔋🚛 Daimler Truck North America is launching national charging and hydrogen fueling networks for medium and heavy-duty vehicles. The $650M project will start in Southern California and expand along freight routes.
You can take the diesel out of the truck, but you can't take it out of the trucker!
🤥💥❤️🩹 Daihatsu, a Toyota affiliate, rigged side-collision safety tests on 88K small cars. Most of the rigged cars were under the Toyota brand. A notch was added to the door trim to minimize risk during testing, but the modification was not part of production vehicles. A whistleblower reported the issue, Daihatsu stopped shipment, and Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda apologized for the "unacceptable" violation of consumer trust. A thorough investigation is underway.
Social math: Owning your mistakes earns back some favor, but not more than is lost when a whistleblower has to report the errors first.