Photo: AP (AP)
Goodyear recalled a terrible tire, Lynk & Co. has a new concept called The Next Day, Elon Musk is upset and the US is asking questions about workers’ rights to a Stellantis plant in Mexico. All this and more in The Morning Shift on June 7, 2022.
1st gear: Goodyear G159
Years ago, we posted some blogs about what a lawyer claimed was “the worst tire made in history,” the Goodyear G159, which has been linked to multiple deaths and has been at the center of dozens of lawsuits. The G159 was originally intended for delivery vehicles, but ended up in many motorhomes, in which they sometimes failed and caused crashes.
Goodyear has known the tire could be bad for decades, according to court documents, and yet Goodyear never remembered. Until this month, that is, when Goodyear said he would remember 173,273 G159, almost two decades after making the last one. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had been investigating the tires since 2017.
From the relevant NHTSA document:
– NHTSA opened a Preliminary Assessment (PE17-009) on 28 December 2017 to review and analyze allegations made by a private litigant that the 275 / 70R22.5 G159 tire contained safety-related defects that had caused motorhome crashes that resulted in deaths and injuries. to the occupants of these vehicles.
– As part of PE17-009, NHTSA sent a request for information to Goodyear on April 3, 2018. Goodyear sent a response to this request for information in May 2018.
– After a series of talks and meetings between Goodyear and NHTSA, by letter dated February 22, 2022, NHTSA requested that Goodyear conduct a safety recall of 275 / 70R22.5 G159 (“Subject Tires”). ). Goodyear submitted its response to this letter on March 8, 2022, rejecting the request.
– To resolve any doubt that some of these tires are still on the market or in use, Goodyear has agreed to carry out this withdrawal.
– Anyone presenting a RV containing a subject tire will receive a 275 / 70R22.5 Goodyear G670 tire free of charge. Goodyear will cover the cost of disassembling and removing the subject tire and assembling and balancing the new G670 tire. In addition, anyone presenting a subject tire in a RV will be provided with a $ 60 voucher to cover the cost of weighing the vehicle professionally.
– Anyone with a Subject Tire not installed in a RV can change it for $ 500.
– Instructions for dealers shall specify that any tire withdrawn under this withdrawal will be unsuitable for resale for installation in motor vehicles before returning to Goodyear for credit. All removed tires returned to Goodyear will be used by our recycler for various recycling purposes.
– Since motorhome manufacturers who specified subject tires are no longer in business and Goodyear does not have or have access to any subject tire registration data, Goodyear will publish a newsletter describing this campaign. The newsletter will be published on certain Goodyear websites and will be issued to tire service centers and tire dealers. Goodyear will also contact major trade associations and stakeholders representing recreational vehicle manufacturers, suppliers and owners, and request that the newsletter be made available to its members, including through publication on websites. of these organizations and / or their monthly publications.
If you have a motorhome, I recommend that you check what kind of shoes your baby is wearing. It would also be negligent not to call Jalopnik student Ryan Felton, whose work in this story has been tireless. In the end, it’s always a cost-effective analysis for big companies like Goodyear when it comes to things like this, no matter what really happens. It just cost all that time and a lot of lives.
2nd march: Stellantis
This is a bit tricky, so suffer me, but the bottom line is that the US wants Mexico to study possible abuses of workers’ rights at a Stellantis plant there, stemming from a union dispute over who represents who.
From Reuters:
Teksid, which employs about 1,500 people and makes cast iron parts for heavy vehicles, has been embroiled in a union dispute since 2014. Workers say the company has prevented them from being represented by the group they have chosen. the Miners’ Union, and he has fired. workers who supported the group.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office (USTR) said in the request that it was concerned that workers had been denied collective bargaining rights in connection with an “invalid” contract with the Confederation of Workers. of Mexico (CTM), one of the most powerful unions in Mexico, which had been registered with the state authorities.
The office asked Mexico to investigate whether efforts, including threats and incentives, had been made to encourage support for CTM or to deter support for the Mining Union.
[…]
Stellantis (STLA.MI), the world’s fourth-largest carmaker to be formed from the merger of Peugeot PSA and Fiat Chrysler, said it “respects and supports the collective bargaining rights of its employees around the world and will comply with all local laws.
The United Auto Workers union, which represents U.S. workers at Stellantis, along with the AFL-CIO labor federation and the Miners Union, marked the possible violations, the USSR office said.
I will not pretend to know the dynamics at stake here, but as a veteran of many union struggles, both internal and external, I can say that things get complicated, although the bias should always be activated: what do workers say they want? In this case, it seems, they are saying that they want one thing and get another.
3rd march: dismissals to Cazoo
Cazoo is something like the Caravan of Europe, known to me primarily as the sponsor of British football teams. Like Carvana, Cazoo recently said he would fire a lot of people. Cazoo said Tuesday he would fire 15 percent of his people, specifically as the turbulent car market remains turbulent.
From Reuters:
The job cuts will affect about 750 jobs for the company, which employs more than 3,500 people in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Portugal. Cazoo shares rose about 2.3% to $ 1.3 in a low-volume trade.
The plan is expected to expand its cash flow beyond 2023 and reduce risks to its profitability, the company said, as decades of high inflation and rising interest rates trigger fears. of global economic slowdown.
[…]
While aiming to save cash, Cazoo said he expects sales to double to 70,000-80,000 units in 2022 from the previous year and expects annual revenue of between £ 1.4 billion (€ 1.75 billion). dollars) and 1.5 billion pounds, twice as much as a year ago.
As part of its readjustment plan, Cazoo said it will stop offering its subscription service to new subscribers by the end of June, given the highly cash-consuming nature of the business model.
4th Gear: Lynk & Co. has a new concept
And it’s a lookout, at least in my eyes. This is:
Photo: Lynk & Co.
Lynk & Co is owned by Geely, which also owns Volvo and Polestar. He’s calling this car the next day, which is fine. Lynk & Co., in particular, is a hybrid brand, not an all-electric one, and this is also a hybrid.
Motor Authority has more:
The Next Day concept is designed to operate a conventional hybrid propulsion system or a plug-in hybrid configuration. In both cases there is a small internal combustion engine with a thermal efficiency of over 43%. The thermal efficiency of an engine is a measure of how much of the heat energy generated by combustion actually becomes useful work. A good rating for a road car is about 40%, while 50% is a rating normally associated with the best Formula 1 engines.
In The Next Day concept, the internal combustion engine drives the front axle while a pair of electric motors power the rear. In the proposed plug-in hybrid configuration, there would be the opportunity to choose from a handful of battery sizes, with the largest capable of offering pure electric range approaching 100 miles on a single charge.
Other technologies envisioned in the concept include active aerodynamics, an advanced augmented reality front display, and a self-driving system rated at level 4 on the SAE scale of autonomous driving capability and which includes six lidar sensors. Although Lynk & Co. has not yet announced plans for a self-driving car, its sister brand Zeekr in January announced plans to launch a level 4 autonomous car by 2024.
5th gear: Elon Musk
Elon has a binding deal to buy Twitter, from which he seems to be doing everything he can to get out of it.
According to Bloomberg:
In a securities filing Monday, Musk said he believes Twitter is in breach of its agreement by failing to meet its demands for more information about spam and fake accounts. Last month, Musk said he would not continue with his offer unless the social media giant could prove that robots make up less than 5 percent of its users, the company said in public documents. Musk has estimated that fake accounts account for at least 20 percent.
In a statement, Twitter said it “has and will continue to share information cooperatively” with Musk. The company said it believes the deal is in the best interests of all shareholders and intends to “close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and conditions.”
If I didn’t want to buy something, I just wouldn’t sign a binding agreement to buy it, but it’s just me, a fool. Elon is also the CEO of Tesla, you may recall, which is a car manufacturing company whose stock price has now dropped 33 percent over the past six months. It’s almost as if Elon has a short attention span, which would make him your average Twitter user.
Reverse: Drive-Through Banking
I’m not entirely sure this deserves a full article on History.com, but I don’t judge it.
The SKA branch, which opened in Zurich in June 1962, had eight glass pavilions, seven equipped for …