The car is more than just a machine; it’s an indispensable part of the American way of life.
That’s why, when the Big Three automakers crumbled during the financial crisis, Americans felt their pride wounded. Ronald’s promise to save the domestic car companies struck a chord.
Traveling across America by car, you see seemingly endless roads that stretch on for days.
U.S. Route 66 spans 2,500 miles (approximately 4,000 kilometers) from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California.
Autonomous driving technology shone brightest not in complex city centers, but on these highways stretching across state lines. Once the destination and route were entered, the car simply drove along the road.
During this time, the driver could listen to music or rest. The car adjusted its speed according to the car in front and changed lanes on its own.
Buyers who received their cars expressed great satisfaction.
Drove from San Antonio to Las Vegas, and except for refueling and eating, I didn’t have to drive myself at all. Feels like I could just put my hands on the wheel and take a nap.
I’ve used Nikola’s autopilot, but this is a true revolution.
I dozed off in the middle of the drive, and an alarm woke me up to tell me I had arrived at my destination and autonomous driving had ended.
Don’t expect much from the driving performance. My first ride left me furious that this kind of car costs $45,000. But after using the autonomous driving once, I get it. It’s worth $60,000.
Damn it. I’m number 183,000 on the waiting list, when will it ever come out?
For your information, the AD1 is being shipped faster than the AD2.
Consumers in other countries, including Korea, also showed great interest.
Is the era of truly driverless cars finally dawning?
When will it be released in Korea? I want to try it too.
I think legal revisions need to happen before that.
It won’t happen before Eunsung Motors releases their own.
You’re wrong. Cars are a key industry, so countries will always support their own brands. That’s the case all over the world.
Automotive experts generally praised it as the car with the most perfect autonomous driving capabilities. (Though there wasn’t much positive feedback about the driving performance.)
However, Nikola’s CEO, Allen Eberhart, was particularly vocal with his criticism.
“CarOS is selling a terrible car at an absurdly high price. This is a terrible thing for the automotive industry!”
Taek-gyu said while looking at the article, “Why is this guy making such a fuss?”
“I guess we’re not to his liking.”
I personally liked him, but it seems like becoming friends is out of the question.
CarOS has many similarities to Nikola.
First of all, both started as startups, not traditional car companies. Nikola has overwhelming strengths in the electric vehicle sector and their autonomous driving technology is also quite advanced.
We’re trying to create electric vehicles starting with autonomous driving technology, and Nikola is trying to move towards autonomous driving starting with electric vehicles.
Currently, almost all automakers are releasing electric vehicles, but none have surpassed Nikola’s popularity. This is evident from the hundreds of thousands of pre-orders for the Model TH.
Nikola’s biggest problem is its low production capacity. (Although, compared to other automakers’ electric vehicle production capacity, it’s still significantly higher.)
As a result, they are experiencing production hell… and then a big one happened.
Unlike most automakers that have factories in the Rust Belt, Nikola had its factory near Silicon Valley, and due to ground tremors, part of the factory collapsed, halting operations for nearly a month.
It has been restored and is operating again, but even so, it hasn’t reached 70 percent of its previous production volume.
Production hell has intensified, and pre-order cancellations have accelerated. (Could some of them have bought CarOS cars?)
Nikola’s market capitalization, which once surpassed GM to become the top automaker in the US, has also shrunk by more than 30 percent.
Right now, it’s a competition between internal combustion engine cars and electric vehicles, but when we release our electric car, we will directly clash with Nikola.
Looking at the category of automobiles in general, there are plenty of better cars than Nikola. However, looking specifically at the category of electric vehicles, it’s hard to find a car better than Nikola’s Model A or Model B.
We are ahead in the field of autonomous driving, but Nikola is still at the forefront in the electric vehicle sector.
However, we have the OTK Research Institute.
If Professor Kim Ho-min can solve the stability issues of the new battery, we can create an innovative electric vehicle that lowers manufacturing costs and doubles the driving range.
That’s when the true era of CarOS will begin.
***
I continually received reports on sales and production volume from the company. Interview requests poured in from domestic and international media outlets regarding the launch of the new car.
Due to my busy schedule, I declined the interviews, and instead, Public Relations Director Jung Gi-hong diligently distributed press releases.
Taek-gyu asked, “When are you going to launch in Korea?”
“Currently, we’re struggling to meet the demand in the US. Since road conditions and regulations differ in each country, we need to train the autonomous driving AI for each country, which also takes time.”
Within the US, we are only working with existing dealer partners. Sales in all other countries will be exclusively online.
To meet the order volume, the factory was running non-stop, with overtime and special shifts being implemented. Cooperating companies that had been idle due to lack of work were also busy trying to meet delivery deadlines. Still, it wasn’t enough, so we signed contracts with additional partners.
When the tide comes in, you have to row hard.
Daryl announced plans to launch driverless trucks equipped with autonomous driving technology within this year, while also accelerating the development of electric vehicles for the second half of the year.
Having acquired Eunsung Motors’ heavy truck division, all we need to do is install the autonomous driving system. Of course, we need to go through test driving.
Since the railway network is not well-developed in the US, inland freight transportation relies heavily on trucks. In Korea, even the longest distances can be covered in a day, but that’s not the case in the US. American truck drivers eat, sleep, and spend several days crossing state lines to deliver cargo.
Daryl’s idea was to move trucks like a train.
Trucks would communicate with each other, sharing information about deceleration and acceleration in advance, and maintaining a reasonable following distance.
This platooning technology reduces air resistance and significantly improves fuel efficiency.
The advent of driverless trucks will dramatically change the transportation system that has existed for decades. Labor costs will disappear entirely, and fuel efficiency will also improve, greatly reducing transportation costs.
The U.S. Congress has begun revising legislation to allow autonomous vehicles to operate, provided they have received approval. The National Trucking Union immediately issued a statement of opposition and started protests.
Just as the advent of automobiles took away the jobs of coachmen, the development of new industries is a threat to those working in old industries.
CarOS announced that it would prioritize hiring drivers who would lose their jobs for new factory positions, but discontent did not subside easily.
People like their jobs and take pride in them. Telling them to quit and do something else is, in some ways, a very cruel thing to do.
However, we cannot stop technological development or turn back the tide of time. CarOS may have accelerated the timeline, but the emergence of autonomous trucks is something that was expected.
In fact, this is happening not only in transportation but across all industries. Minimizing side effects like unemployment will be the role of government and businesses.
Seosung Electronics’ stock price continued to rise.
Two days ago, JP Morgan and Nomura Securities issued sell recommendations for Seosung Electronics, citing concerns about a slowdown in the semiconductor industry as the supercycle ended.
Previously, this would have been a major negative factor that would have caused the stock price to plummet, but this time, everyone just scoffed.
What are these idiots saying?
Keep putting out sell reports. Who’s going to sell Seosung Electronics stock now?
LOL, they probably shorted the stock and are getting nervous.
These guys issue sell reports and then put in massive buy orders. Haven’t we been through this before?
Surely no Black Cows sold based on that, right?
Even if the semiconductor industry slows down, the electronics components business is doing so well!
Saying the semiconductor supercycle is over is also nonsense. If autonomous vehicles sell well, the demand for semiconductors will continue to increase.
Don’t forget that Seosung Electronics is the second-largest shareholder in CarOS.
I guarantee you, within the next three years, Seosung Electronics’ stock price will surpass NPL!
Seosung Electronics’ stock price closed up 2 percent even after the sell reports were released.
This is partly due to the anticipation surrounding the electronics components business, but there’s another important reason.
Since CarOS is a private company, its shares are difficult to obtain. OTK Company holds the majority of the shares, and the 4 percent stake held by Daryl and the development team is restricted from being sold until they leave the company.
However, Seosung Electronics currently owns 10.5 percent of CarOS’s shares and has a call option to acquire an additional 14 percent in the future.
There’s no way they wouldn’t exercise the call option, so Seosung Electronics will own 24.5 percent of CarOS.
Currently, buying Seosung Electronics stock is the only way to invest in CarOS, so institutional and foreign investors have been buying heavily.
This includes JP Morgan and Nomura Securities, who issued the sell reports.
***
Seosung Electronics immediately reorganized its structure, combining the tasks previously handled by different business units into a new electronics components division, and appointed Lee Myung-ho as president.
Lee Myung-ho is a person known as one of the “three loyal retainers” along with Lee Su-hak, president of Seosung SB, and Kim Myung-soo, head of the Future Strategy Office.
This demonstrated the group’s commitment to intensively developing the automotive electronics components sector at the group level.
Around lunchtime, I went over to Seosung Town to meet Chairman Im Jin-yong. He looked a little tired, perhaps because he had just returned to Korea this morning after a business trip to Germany.
“Didn’t CEO Oh Taek-gyu come with you?”
“No, he has some things he’s working on.”
To be precise, the game he was playing wasn’t over yet. He wasn’t going to move until he saw the ending, so I came alone.
“What took you to Germany?”
“I had an appointment with Tobias Hilbert, Chairman of BMW.”
BMW is one of Seosung SB’s major customers. Currently, BMW’s electric vehicles are equipped with Seosung SB batteries.
“What’s the atmosphere like over there?”
“They were very welcoming to me. Since they’re the ones making the finished products, there was a feeling of being treated like a supplier in the past, but it was different this time. They seemed very curious about CarOS and you, and asked various questions. Oh! And from what I heard, the Big Three seem to be cooperating in the field of autonomous driving.”
They’re moving quickly as expected.
Usually, the German Big Three refers to Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi. Volkswagen and Porsche are in the same group as Audi anyway.
Several years ago, the German Big Three jointly acquired a map specialist company from Nokia. The acquisition price was 2.8 billion euros. The shares were divided equally.
However, each had been developing autonomous driving technology independently, but now it seems they’ve shifted towards joint development.
This is the case with other companies as well.
When a strong enemy emerges, even those who don’t get along tend to band together. Once you fall behind in the competition, it’s difficult to close the technological gap. As such, NPL, Gooble, Nvidia, Iver, GM, Ford, and others were exploring cooperation in areas where they had strengths.
The 20 or so leading companies will soon merge into four or five groups.
“You know that the AD1 and AD2 have already made their way to Europe and China, right? Chairman Hilbert seems to have even driven one himself.”
I nodded.
“Daryl reported it to me. He thinks competitors bought them.”
Acquiring and analyzing competitors’ products is a natural thing to do.
Hundreds of units have flowed into China alone.
Currently, the US leads the field of autonomous driving, but China’s pursuit is not to be underestimated. The Chinese government is promoting future vehicles such as electric and autonomous vehicles at the national level.
Chairman Im Jin-yong said with a wry smile, “By now, Chinese automakers and IT companies are probably taking apart all the electronic equipment installed in the AD1 and AD2.”
