Business Radio’s In The Driver’s Seat’s three-part miniseries, “From Lockdown To Mobility: Back To Cars & The Car Industry” debuted Tuesday at 6 PM EST on Business Radio (Ch 132).
Host and auto journalist Doron Levin, spoke with executives from auto manufacturers & retailers, as well as, independent industry experts, about the future of the auto industry in this post-COVID world. Guests included Johan de Nysschen, COO of Volkswagen of America, Mike Dunne, Bob Carter, EVP of Toyota’s U.S. Operations, and Chinese Transportation Expert/”ZoZo Go” CEO.
During the special, Johan de Nysschen, COO of Volkswagen of America discussed the current situation in Volkswagen's factories, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, “We've taken steps to really mitigate risk. As we were preparing to start production again we needed to consider things like increased social distancing on the work assembly lines…The challenge for all companies is to, of course, secure adequate supplies of personal protective equipment, not just for our own employees, but in fact, also for our dealers. And so we have in fact, taken on manufacturing of this equipment in house. We've procured the production gear and we're able to produce 250,000 masks per week. And that gives you about an idea that's our own internal requirement, across the country. So all of these things are outside the norm, but, these are the things that we need to get our heads around as we prepare to get back to business.”
He also shared his thoughts on the future and the role cars will play in it: “In the near term, I think people are going to find ways of having their private space inside the automobile.. it kind of is a safety zone…Artificial intelligence and autonomous driving systems are precisely what will help individual movement a subset of a mass transit system as the cars can drive themselves, as we can pack roads very densely, the physical separation as mere inches and traffic jams begin to be simply a function of one mass computer controlled transportation system, protecting still the benefits of individual mobility. Now, I don't suggest that this is a year or two away. This is obviously, probably a time horizon, 10, 15, 20 years into the future, but it is going to be part of what the future of mobility looks like.”
Mike Dunne, Chinese Transportation Expert/”ZoZo Go” CEO also joined the discussion and told Doron Levin about China's current efforts to reopen itself, while preparing for a possible second wave, and spoke about China’s electric car market in the post coronavirus world: “There's deep concern about a second spike. In fact, China now blocks travel to China..and it won't open up again until October. With regards to their protocol for going back to work, yes, disciplined measurement, spacing.. My friends tell me on a given day, depending on the city, they might have 10 or 12 different temperature checks. So the difference I think is the protocols are quite similar now, but in China they're enforced strictly.”
“China is still the number one market for electric vehicles…The difference between other markets and China is it's heavily topped out. So the government sets mandates for cities and for commercial enterprises. Their only government agencies buy electric. In the meantime, they've also invested heavily in charging stations. So Tesla, for example, has charging networks nationwide in China, and they're not alone. The government has also invested in thousands of charging points. So come hell or high water, China's determined to lead in electrics and be the production hub globally for electric vehicles. Whatever that takes.”
Bob Carter, EVP of Toyota’s U.S. Operations spoke about the shutdown's impact on the Toyota Corporation and discussed the ways that Toyota responded to the pandemic: “It’s been hard on everybody in the industry, including ourselves. One of the things that I'm proud of going back to our greatest assets are our people. We were able to accomplish seven weeks of shutdown without any layoffs..but, yes, we had to scrutinize everything, some of our marketing, some of our investments that we were doing. We took a process of basically stop what was nonessential, defer what we could defer, and accelerate, what we thought was most important in this new reality that we're all facing. And with that balance, we're seeing retail consumers coming back to the market actually much faster than we originally had predicted.”
“We brought our 42,000 manufacturing associates at our 14 plants here in North America back to work on May 11th…we have everything from pen cleaning, deep cleaning of the factory, building cars with six foot social distancing, face shields masks to protect the workers because our team members are our greatest asset and that's always been a philosophy of the company…The week of the 18th, then we started building vehicles. And we're not at a total run rate yet, but our processes are going very well... The quality is exceptional. I'm really proud of those with the quality of our vehicles, as you know, that has been our hallmark and our intentions from here on out is to slowly bring back production, to get one shift in our 14 plants, fully operational, but then as quickly as possible is to go to a two shift environment. So, not only are we helping ourselves and helping our team members, but we have a very complex supplier network out there of over 600 suppliers feed into our plants. And so not only are we working with our team members, but we're helping our suppliers build in a safe environment.
Business Radio’s In The Driver’s Seat’s three-part miniseries, “From Lockdown To Mobility: Back To Cars & The Car Industry” will air Tuesday, June 23 and Tuesday, June 30 at 6pm ET on SiriusXM’s Business Radio (Ch 132).
