Apple Watch Guy supervising Apple car Kevin Lynch

What do smart watches and cars have in common? Aside from the fact that Apple is trying to do both, I’m not sure. The tech giant’s portable software takes the reins of its turbulent car project. In other news, Tesla is bordering on New Mexico’s anti-direct selling laws by building a store on tribal land, and there’s actually a new Dodge for what it looks like for the first time in life. All this and more The morning shift for Friday, September 10, 2021.

1st team: Every Apple executive does the car thing over time

With previous advantage Doug Field marches to Ford, Apple’s Titan Project changes hands again. According to reports, Kevin Lynch, who had started the company leading its watchOS program and migrated to the automotive team earlier this year, will manage the entire operation. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg:

The executive began work on the project earlier this year when he took over the teams that managed the underlying software. He is now overseeing the entire group, which also includes hardware engineering and work on autonomous car sensors, people said, asking that they not be identified because the move is not public.

It remains to be seen whether Lynch is occupying this role on an interim basis or will be the permanent protagonist:

It’s unclear if the company will end up with a different leader for its in-car effort, known internally as Project Titan, if it moves far enough so that Apple can have confidence in launching a fully autonomous vehicle. Field’s departure for Ford was seen as a signal that an Apple car would not come in the near future. Work on the product is still early, and Apple employees anticipate it won’t be released for many years.

The Apple Car has been around for many years. One minute, the company steals former Tesla employees right and left; the following, is rejected by the major car manufacturers that I don’t want to subdue your brand to the cult of Apple personality. I’m sure Apple will end up getting into cars with some kind of software capability, because everyone in the tech industry is doing it right now. But the prospect of a fully built car seems increasingly bleak with each change of staff.

2nd team: Huawei Panic finally comes to automatic chips

Speaking of tech companies turning into car companies, remember Huawei? The Chinese telecommunications giant that blacklisted the US market for fear that its hardware could undermine national security? An arm of automotive components is now being established and U.S. lawmakers are also concerned about that. A group of 13 Republican members of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asking if he was also concerned. From Reuters:

Republicans, led by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a member of the Energy and Trade Committee’s ranking, said the United States “should not surrender to China and its efforts to dominate our high-profile sectors.” technology, including autonomous vehicles “.

The letter asked Buttigieg if he believes “Huawei intends to do with the automotive industry what it did with the communications equipment industry?”

Huawei told Reuters in August that it was “positioning itself as a new supplier of components for smart connected vehicles” and that it was helping carmakers “build better vehicles.”

The commercial blacklist against Huawei that the Trump administration put in place in 2019 is still in place, and the Biden administration does not seem interested in turning it back. Ultimately, if the company can no longer do business with the automakers that sell vehicles here, I’m not sure what additional actions the committee could reasonably expect. The U.S. government cannot banish Huawei from existence, as much as some of its members clearly want; it can only deny Huawei its presence in one of the largest markets in the world, which it already has.

3rd March: Tesla only exploited the strangest gap to end direct sales in New Mexico

There is now a Tesla sales and service center north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He resides in a building that was once a casino. Tesla’s commercial establishments have been banned from the state, but this is achieved because it resides on land belonging to the Nambé Pueblo tribal nation. Really. From Albuquerque Magazine:

Leaders of Nambé Pueblo on Thursday joined Americans Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján to highlight the partnership and promote electric vehicles as part of a broader strategy to tackle climate change.

Tesla’s new sales and service center is the first in New Mexico. It is also the first Tesla facility, officials said, on Native American soil in the United States.

“This really represents a historic moment,” Nambé Pueblo Governor Phillip Perez told a singer gathered for the event on Thursday.

The location of the village is crucial.

New Mexico law prohibits vehicle manufacturers from selling directly to consumers rather than through a franchise dealer, and efforts to allow Tesla storefronts and service centers have repeatedly failed in the legislature, often in the midst of you have a debate.

But the Tesla store is within the confines of a tribal nation, not subject to state law.

As for the governor, Nambé Pueblo Governor Phillip Perez spoke encouragingly about the opportunity:

Perez, the village governor, said Tesla will support tutors and scholarships for Nambé Pueblo students. He delivered some of his comments in Tewa, a mother tongue, while welcoming site visitors along U.S. Highway 285.

The company’s values, according to Pérez, coincide with the people’s commitment to protecting the environment.

4th gear: Toyota manufacturing problems continue

Toyota avoided production setbacks at the start of the pandemic, thanks to a stock of semiconductors. However, stocks do not last forever and therefore supply chain disruptions were recently detected in recent months. Now, the carmaker is reducing its annual production target by 300,000, second by second Reuters, but not mainly due to the bottlenecks of the material:

“It’s a combination of coronavirus and semiconductors, but right now it’s the coronavirus that has an overwhelming impact,” said Kazunari Kumakura, an executive at the world’s largest carmaker, after the company reviewed its goal of production.

Toyota’s expected operating profit remains the same, but its projected overall production has declined:

Toyota now plans to build 9 million vehicles a year by March 31, instead of 9.3 million. It did not revise the operating profit forecast of 2.5 trillion yen ($ 22.7 billion) for the year.

5th Gear: The New Dodge

Dodge has been going through the same handful of cars for almost a decade for almost a decade, while regularly removing the oldest license plates from the list. With the trip gone, he now has only three cars in his repertoire: the Charger, the Challenger and the Durango. A plug-in hybrid and finally there is an electric muscle car on the way, but the latter is still a few years old.

South of the border, however, there will be a new Dodge much sooner than that. He Stellantis Mexico The Twitter account recently sparked it.

The thing is, this new crossover It looks like it’s a version of GS5, an SUV manufactured by Chinese carmaker GAC Motor that is offered in some parts of Latin America. So Dodge is easy to make to make some branded adjustments for a car that is already available for sale in the region. Dodge lineup in Mexico it looks very similar, except that it offers its own version of the Mitsubishi Mirage G4 sedan called the Attitude. This new unnamed crossover could serve as a suitable substitute for traveling in a bit.

Reverse: the first of many