Latest news with #TerryWoychowski
Motor Trend
25-06-2025
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
China Is Way, Way Ahead in the Car Business—Can the West Catch Up?
It's tricky for Americans to appreciate the magnitude of the technology gap that has formed and continues growing between new Chinese cars and those being produced elsewhere in the developed world. That's because our market has effectively been walled off, at least from China's homegrown brands and global nameplate electric cars. MotorTrend has attempted to lead on American press coverage of this vital market, by producing a documentary on China's inroads to Mexico (and, therefore, North America), attending Chinese auto shows, and by testing more domestic-market Chinese cars than our peer publications. The West lags behind China's rapid car development due to slower innovation cycles and differing market priorities. To catch up, Western automakers must prioritize speed, adaptability, and cost-efficiency, targeting China as the main competitor, not traditional rivals. This summary was generated by AI using content from this MotorTrend article Read Next So we listened, nodded, and took lots of notes as Terry Woychowski—CEO of vehicle benchmarking firm Caresoft Global, addressed the Society of Automotive Analysts and the Automotive Press Association, shared his thoughts on what it might take for The West to begin closing the gap with the Chinese. The question to ask yourselves is, do we have the resolve to implement his suggestions? Speed is a Key Differentiator China seems to better appreciate that the one thing there's simply no getting any more of, whether by hard work, cunning, guile, or force: time. Once a minute's gone, there's no getting it back. Terry recounted many examples of the huge differences in vehicle development time, noting that China typically spends one and a half to two years developing a new platform, versus legacy OEMs' four to five years. That's how Xpeng developed five platforms in nine years, launching one in 2018, another in 2020, and the next three in 2024. Volkswagen, by contrast, launched its MEB architecture in 2019; announced PPE in 2019 and launched it in 2025; while SSP was announced in 2021 and is scheduled for the 2028–2029 timeframe. He presented the chart below illustrating the phases of a model development program, each of which established automakers spend three to four times as long completing. Development Cycle Times (in months) Longer Hours Terry claims his contacts in China report a 9-9-6 paradigm that, frankly, seems utterly anathema to Western sensibilities. Engineers work from 9 in the morning to 9 at night six days per week. It is a pace they become inured to growing up in China, where admission slots to the coveted engineering colleges are extremely competitive. So they reportedly study way harder and party way less throughout their secondary and higher educations. Terry serves on the College of Engineering Advisory Board at Michigan Technological University, so he took time to visit ShanghaiTech University on a weekend day while in town for the auto show. He reported the library being jammed full. Speed of Innovation The days of Chinese R&D being jokingly referred to as 'receive and duplicate' instead of "research and development" are long gone. Terry reports BYD has filed as many as 45 patents per day . To date the Chinese giant holds 15 times as many patents as Tesla. Speed of Implementation Even when they don't think up a great idea on their own, the Chinese are way faster at implementing that idea once they see it. And they put up far less resistance to outside ideas. Some examples Woychowski provided: Tesla implemented its innovative integrated heat pump and EV thermal management 'Octovalve' on the Model Y in March 2020 and Huawei developed a similar 'super-manifold' with heat-pump capability for its AVATR models by mid-2022. Tesla switched from flexible copper onboard power cables used in Model S/Y to a lighter, cheaper, easier-to-install rigid aluminum setup on the Model 3/Y. The Chinese new-energy vehicle startups adopted this practice from their inception, while the legacy EV manufacturers still mainly use copper. Tesla proposed using the Transformer AI network (large language model) in Full Self Driving in 2021. Great Wall Motor followed suit launching its Highway Pilot in mass production the same year; Nio and Xpeng in 2022; and Li-Auto in 2023. DeepSeek was developed in China by Hangzhou DeepSeek AI Basic Technology Research Co. to make it easier to implement the Transformer AI LLM into automotive platforms. According to Terry, no traditional OEM has deployed it yet. Tesla introduced Gigacastings, and already Xpeng's are lighter and stronger than Tesla's. Tesla uses 9,000-ton presses; the Chinese are developing 16,000-ton presses that may be able to make an entire half of a car. The Chinese car buyer's top-five purchase considerations are technology (digital cockpits, smart features, ADAS, etc.), connectivity (embedded cellular connection with smartphone integration and AI assistants), relational priorities (brand status and reputation, OEM-customer ownership experience, riding comfort), non-traditional values (buying smarter, with less regard for traditional brand loyalties, focus on affordability, youthfulness), and environmental priorities (electrification, willingness to pay more for greener tech). By contrast, Terry says the main North American, European, Korean, and Japanese manufacturers ' top-five priorities are acceleration, power/torque, chassis grip and handling, NVH, and fit/finish. He contends the priority gap between Chinese and global buyers may be narrowing, suggesting a realignment of priorities might be overdue in Western automakers. Good question. And maybe not. But then again, those cars sell for vastly less money when new, and the march of technological progress may render them unsalable after six or eight years anyway. In that case, maybe they just need to be highly recyclable (or perhaps the third world will soon be able to tap into a huge cache of obsolete but still drivable cars). Structural Cost Advantages The playing field is not level and may not be level-able. There's no way to put a number on the cost savings of a government regulatory framework that is established and never gets altered by changes in the political winds. But some factors that have been quantified include the general cost to acquire land, raise capital, and borrow money, which is estimated to be 7–9 percent lower for Chinese OEMs. Chinese OEMs and suppliers are each said to be about 7 percent less profitable. One practice that might suggest potential savings for the establishment is a Chinese auto industry willingness to make common certain products and specifications, sharing some parts across manufacturers and suppliers to lower the cost for all (Caresoft attributes a 7–15 percent savings to this practice). What Must American Companies Do? Change everything. Bust paradigms. Stop prioritizing features and attributes that customers aren't willing to pay for nor care about. Establish a moon-landing mission mindset and target China as the competition, as opposed to cross-town or trans-Atlantic rivals. Lobby governments in lockstep to reduce structural costs. Most of all, take full advantage of any temporary relief tariffs may afford to lower costs and accelerate development. China faces some internal headwinds, including gross overcapacity, which is driving both the national impetus to export and an expected consolidation or culling of brands in the next few years. Some suppliers are in tenuous financial shape, which the government is looking to shore up by forcing OEMs to pay suppliers more quickly. But western automakers will only catch up by accelerating their own efforts; not by waiting and hoping for internal troubles to slow China down.
TimesLIVE
01-05-2025
- Automotive
- TimesLIVE
Ford abandons project to develop Tesla-like electronic brain
Need for speed The failed project marks a significant setback for Ford as it races alongside Detroit rivals General Motors and Jeep-maker Stellantis to develop more sophisticated electronics and software. Nailing these systems is among any carmaker's primary goals, industry experts say, because they provide a framework for car makers to deliver better vehicles more quickly. 'The only strategic advantage any company can have is speed,' said Terry Woychowski, president at engineering company Caresoft Global, while showing off the complicated guts of these electrical systems at the company's warehouse. Farley said as much in a September interview with Reuters. 'We're completely committed to building that software-enabled vehicles, not just for our EVs, but even more exciting, in a way, for our next generation of ICE [internal combustion engine] and hybrid vehicles,' he noted. Ford's next generation software was meant to be a 'zonal' system, in which bundles of smaller software brains control the functions in specific parts of the vehicle and communicate with a larger central brain. Such a system shortens the length of the expensive vehicle wiring harnesses and allows for speedier over-the-air updates. These advanced systems also provide opportunities to entice drivers to buy software-enabled features, such as assisted-driving systems, sometimes through subscriptions. Ford's vice-chair and former CEO John Lawler said in 2023 that FNV4 had the potential to accelerate and increase the number of services on each vehicle sold. Big investments, losses While these electrical systems are dependent on lines of virtual code that developers type and refine over years, they also require expensive hardware that can fundamentally change an carmaker's manufacturing process. FNV4 development contributed to Ford's losses on software and EVs, which totalled $4.7bn (R87.37bn) in 2023 and $5bn (R92.84bn) in 2024. 'The electrical architecture system in a vehicle is one of the most challenging areas from an assembly perspective,' said Woychowski, describing their sprawling wiring harnesses as 'copper anacondas'. When Reuters asked Farley about the programme in September, he said the company had its first prototype vehicle running completely on Ford software. Farley said at the time that Ford was on track to deliver the next-generation architecture and that a prototype had impressed him. 'For me as a car person,' he said, 'I was like, 'Are you kidding me?''
NBC News
27-01-2025
- Automotive
- NBC News
Why this China-made BYD Shark pickup is drawing attention in the global truck market
DETROIT — There's a Shark circling one of the greatest profit pools for American automakers globally, as Chinese automaker BYD Auto expands its reach and product portfolio with a pickup truck. Without the vehicle's branding badge, the BYD Shark could pass as an American-made product. In many ways, it looks like a smaller pickup from Ford Motor. The China-made truck features uncanny exterior resemblances to a Ford Explorer mixed with the popular F-150 — part of the Ford brand's best-selling truck lineup in the U.S. for 48 years. Much like BYD's Seagull — a small all-electric hatchback that starts at just 69,800 yuan (or less than $10,000) — there's fear among global automakers that Chinese rivals like the Warren Buffett -backed BYD could flood their markets, undercutting domestic production and vehicle prices to the detriment of their own auto industries. BYD has not announced plans to sell the Shark in the U.S., but it has entered countries where General Motors, Ford and Toyota Motor sell pickup trucks, including Australia, Brazil and Mexico. In the U.S., pickup trucks are the bread-and-butter vehicles for the Detroit automakers, combining for millions of units of sales annually. They've also become increasingly important for Toyota in the U.S. and globally. 'When you consider the importance, from a revenue perspective, that these products bring to manufacturers, it's the franchise,' said Terry Woychowski, president of automotive at Caresoft Global who formerly was a chief engineer of GM's full-size trucks. 'There's been a lot of interest in this vehicle because of the market.' Caresoft, an engineering benchmarking and consulting firm, has torn down and examined roughly 40 China-built EVs from the likes of BYD, Nio and others. The Michigan-based company digitally and physically analyzes every part of a vehicle, from bolts and latches to seats, motors and battery casings. It then determines how its clients — mainly automakers and suppliers — can improve efficiencies and cut costs in their products. Drawing attention Automakers such as Ford and Toyota that rely heavily on sales of smaller pickup trucks globally have taken notice of the BYD Shark. 'It's a great product. It's sold well. They're trying to sell in high volume in Mexico, but it's also being localized in Thailand,' Ford CEO Jim Farley said when asked by CNBC earlier this month about the BYD Shark. 'If we want to be a global player in pickups, like we are now, we have to compete.' While Ford's F-150 reigns supreme in the U.S., Toyota's Hilux has been the top-selling truck outside of North America for many years. Toyota has sold 19.8 million Hilux trucks since its introduction in 1968, including a record of 851,000 units in 2022. When asked about Chinese competitors earlier this month, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said the company 'needs to be prepared to respond to the global needs of the global markets,' regardless of the competition. 'We try to focus on the needs of each individual market and try to be best in town. So that will be the strategy that we have,' Toyoda said during a media roundtable at the CES tech conference. BYD reportedly exported more than more than 10,000 BYD Sharks in 2024. Such sales are expected to increase going forward, especially as the company prepares to expand production. BYD has grown its share of vehicle exports from China from 2%, or less than 56,000 units, in 2022 to 8% in 2024, or 350,500 units, according to BofA Securities. Exporting has continued to assist BYD in increasing its sales globally to approximately 4.3 million vehicles in 2024, up from roughly 3 million a year earlier. Wall Street analysts expect that to continue to grow this year to roughly 5.5 million this year, according to Goldman Sachs. 'BYD is starting to tap into the overseas market with compelling (highly competitive, innovative) products, which we expect could become a second growth driver for the company, contributing 31% of incremental vehicle sales volume over 2022-2030E, Goldman Sachs analyst Tina Hou said in a Jan. 14 investor note. The BYD Shark is expected to help the automaker grow its sales and profits. It's a midsize pickup truck — which has a smaller market in the U.S. compared to globally — with a plug-in hybrid powertrain that combines electric vehicle components such as a battery and electric motors with a small 1.5-liter internal combustion engine. The vehicle can operate as an all-electric vehicle or have the engine power its batteries and electric motors, with a range of more than 500 combined miles between the battery and engine, according to BYD. The Shark starts at about 899,980 pesos ($44,000) in Mexico. That's far more than BYD's other models but still much cheaper than many hybrid or all-electric trucks in the U.S. It's in line with pricing of midrange models of the Ford Ranger and Toyota Tacoma midsize pickup trucks in Mexico. Benchmarking Ford, GM Taking the BYD Shark for a spin on private property with a mix of smooth and broken pavement in Michigan, the pickup truck drives well. Its acceleration is quick, but not as fast as the Tesla Cybertruck or GM's all-electric pickups. It's quiet, but there's definitely room for improvements to the ride and handling, which feel a bit less refined than current trucks in the U.S. The overall build quality of the Shark is impressive, but there are quirky elements of the vehicle as well as some 'shared' best practices with current pickups by Ford and GM, according to Woychowski. Some familiar practices and elements include the overall exterior design being similar to the F-150, including its lighting and a pullout tailgate step; the front seat interior design resembling Toyota; and certain production aspects of the vehicle being used from other trucks. Most notably, its frame — the backbone of the vehicle — is dipped in wax. That's a process to reduce corrosion that GM has been doing for decades, according to Woychowski. 'You can tell where they benchmarked and whom,' Woychowski said while inspecting the vehicle's underbody. 'Ford back here, GM under there and Toyota over there.' That's not to say the vehicle isn't unique. While Caresoft still needs to tear down the Shark to understand its build processes and parts better, the vehicle's interior design and, most notably, its hybrid powertrain is unlike anything currently offered in the U.S. For example, some of the battery technologies are placed under the back seats, eliminating storage space, and there are bungee cords to hold up the vehicle's back bench seat when it's folded. 'This is actually quite poorly done,' Woychowski said regarding the back seat. 'I would watch this space. I bet they fix this up quite nicely.' Other not-so-easy to spot unusual elements include an over-engineered rear suspension with dual control arms (instead of one each); a considerably straight frame; an unnecessary amount of jack lifts under the vehicle for lifting it; and using hydraulic arms for the heavy tailgate, he said. Woychowski said clients have taken particular interest in Chinese automakers, including BYD, because of their growth and quickness in developing new products and making improvements to existing models. 'It's a credible truck,' Woychowski said about the Shark. 'There's some things they did very well. There's some things that they can do to clean it up, but that's not a hard job to do.' — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
