smk4565

We aren't all that far away from the day when an electric car costs less than the gasoline car, and then gas cars are finished.

If they go to all electric then they don't really need the hybrid. I imagine they will have to offer electric and the V12 side by side for a while to see how each sells.

FCA has terrible reliability too. I get that some like a big rear drive car and they are the only game in town. But when you look at Impala, Cadenza, Avalon, Taurus sales they are tanking. FCA has no small or mid size car, ignoring the 2 largest car segments. It is a miracle called Jeep that they are even still in business.

The EU car companies are running away from ICE like it is the plague and toward EV's like it is the second coming. But i am all for it. Bring on the future.

But the 5-series outsold the CT6 4 to 1 and they cost the same. In fact the 5-series can go over $100k and has 2 V8s. Cadillac doesn't have a sedan that covers the 7-series price range, other than a loaded to the max CT6 vs a 740i. But you can load up a Camry to Cadillac ATS price, I wouldn't call them competitors either.

I am not saying Chevy should drop the Corvette or anything. But do they need a Sonic and Cruze? Or could those merge into one product? Impala is going to die just because the segment is. Personally, I would down size the Cruze and kill the Sonic, offer, a 3 door, 5 door and a sedan of it. Downsize the Malibu to about 185 inches long, cut the price to $19k base, and I would downsize the Impala to the size of the current Malibu and cut the price to $23k base.

A brand like Chevy that is full line could support 6 crossovers. Crossovers outsell sedans and coupes combined and look at how many sedans and coupes Chevy has. Once they start dropping car lines, they will put more crossovers in.

I am shocked that they can still sell 6000+ Challengers a month. Even if a lot are fleet sales, who is buying a a big coupe like that. I am surprised they sell that many 300s too and that the Dart and 200 are still on sale, they stopped building them like a year ago. Really I am surprised that FCA sells over 100,000 a month, half these products shouldn't even be on the market they are so old.

Subaru has done something like double is American market sales since 2007 or 2008. They do a good job pushing the safety with all wheel drive and eye sight, and I think there is a lot of appeal with that brand to older buyers you like that sort of security.

The Atlas and Tiguan will drive growth. They could get another crossover under Tiguan. Hard to get any sales momentum with hatchbacks and small sedans, that is why VW h as struggled for so long. And Audi keeps growing because they have 5 or 6 crossovers .

I am shocked the 5-series had such a huge month. Up 40%, is a lot. Maybe since the 7-series doesn't offer much that a 5 offers, the buyers went there. Because the S-class was down, so it wasn't like most months when the S-class just whips on the 7.

Well the S-class is about to get a refresh, so there is a burn out of the 2017s, as the first 2018s started production today. In fact, the S-class today became the first car ever to drive itself off the production line and to the loading area 1 mile away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZEpeyl7VGM

Ha, the Continental costs half as much. How did the Continental do compared to the Camry?

MERCEDES-BENZ USA Sales -- June 2017 Mercedes-Benz Passenger Vehicles Jun-17 Jun-16 Monthly % YTD 2017 YTD 2016 Yearly % B-CLASS 46 44 4.5% 317 310 2.3% CLA 2,118 2,296 -7.8% 8,505 13,611 -37.5% C-CLASS 7,116 6,867 3.6% 42,552 37,305 14.1% E-CLASS/CLS 4,316 4,292 0.6% 24,759 22,458 10.2% S-CLASS 1,169 1,487 -21.4% 7,583 8,493 -10.7% SLC 201 168 19.6% 1,616 1,737 -7.0% SL 221 191 15.7% 1,450 1,798 -19.4% AMG GT 118 79 49.4% 541 679 -20.3% GLA 2,081 1,750 18.9% 10,360 12,815 -19.2% GLC 3,729 3,771 -1.1% 19,727 23,391 -15.7% GLE 4,824 4,515 6.8% 26,825 25,186 6.5% GLS 2,656 2,651 0.2% 15,530 12,880 20.6% G-CLASS 399 362 10.2% 2,195 2,114 3.8% TOTAL 28,994 28,473 1.8% 161,960 162,777 -0.5% Vans1 3,108 3,085 0.7% 15,800 15,762 0.2% smart 226 407 -44.5% 1,983 2,593 -23.5% MBUSA Combined Total Jun-17 Jun-16 Monthly % YTD 2017 YTD 2016 Yearly % GRAND TOTAL 32,328 31,965 1.1% 179,743 181,132 -0.8% They sold 2,711 AMG's in June. I still think the GLC should be able to do 5,000 a month without stealing from any other Mercedes, when you look at how much volume is in the Acura-Lincoln-XT5-RX segment there. The G-wagen is on pace for its 5th consecutive record breaking sales year.

New Traverse is on sale and on fire. I didn't realize the new one was on sale already. Chevy sedans got killed. The large sedan market is just disappearing.

Cadillac has a lack of crossovers, that kills them. Chevy needs a new Traverse and a crossover under Traverse, above Equinox. Ford, GMC, and Chevy all get big numbers from full size pick-ups and SUVs, the cost on those is pretty high, and at some point the price goes up so high that even 6-7 year car loans can't make them affordable for people who for the most part aren't seeing any pay raises but are seeing the cost of everything else go up.

FCA is hurting and there is no end in sight for that because Chrysler-Dodge-Fiat have no new product coming. Keep being down double digits several months in a row now is surprising because they have a new Compass to sell. Alfa is so small they don't matter. Good month for VW stable. Surprised that Acura is up so much when there is nothing new over there. And they don't have a great line anyway.

Capital Investment is building a new factory, it has nothing to do with research and development. If GM says we are going to spend $100k per Cadillac dealership to make them nicer, that doesn't come off the R&D budget, it comes from capital investment. Because real estate is capital. I would argue Daimler has a broader range of product than GM. That could be bad thing for Daimler as they are all over the place, so that drives up R&D cost since they have so many model lines, but not he flip side, if all those lines are profitable, it should off set that. Daimler makes all these products (including 37% of class 8 trucks sold in USA): These busses too: These vans: And all these cars/suvs

And Daimler sold 2 million cars and a few hundred thousand tucks and busses, compared to 9 million cars at GM?

I never said they were first, the 2017 Audi SQ7 has it now, they are actually first, it just isn't sold in the USA. It has 2 turbos and an electric supercharger, on a 4 liter V8, but it is a diesel, we'll never get it here. Audi says it gets 30-32 mpg US, and it has 435 hp and 664 lb-ft of torque. But if they can do it, Mercedes can do it, they should be able to get 30 mpg on a GLE or GLS with a 3 liter straight six.

Capital Expenditure is different than R&D though. Even look at Mercedes car division spending 5.67 billion Euros last year, that is over $6 billion on just the Mercedes line. No car brand has that sort of budget to work with. If Cadillac got 1/5th of GM's budget (5 brands with Opel last year, I'll ignore Holden) that is like $1.8 billion. Take VW's $13 billion R&D budget and divide up between all the brands they have, and how much do each one get?

I never said anything about Daimler's profit. If they made $9 billion profit last year that is AFTER they paid R&D, just like it is after they paid labor cost materials, etc. In fact their thinking is that since they have made record profits the past 4 years they can sacrifice some and spend more on R&D and spend 500 million euro on a battery factory and more on factory upgrades etc. They are cash rich right now due to their huge sales volume.

I don't see GM's BAS system adding 70 hp. If so they could have the 2.5 inline 4 up to about 250 horsepower and the 2.0t up to 330-340 and then they could take the 3.6 V6 out of production. And expand use of the 3.0 turbo and hybrid that.

$8.8 billion per year budget. It was around $7 billion spent in 2016 and they are increasing R&D 22% from 2015 levels which was already higher than their competitors. Dr. Zetche has said on tv not to expect profit increases the next few years because they are pouring money into R&D. And the S-class has been a full decade ahead of the pack for a long time. Run that scenario with $17.6 billion over 770 days and see what you come up with. Daimler has the 3rd largest R&D budget in the auto industry, trailing only VW and Toyota who are about 4 times larger and they spend nearly as much as Toyota who spends about $9 billion a year.

The 48 Volt system lets you make it a mild hybrid though. And a much better version than what is out there now, and for way cheaper than something like a Prius set up. And you have an integrated starter/generator, you get rid of the alternator, get rid of drive belts, run everything off electricity. That cuts parasitic losses, also improves packaging. The E-turbo comes into play too, less plumbing, less turbo lag, etc. Every car is going to do this, Mercedes and Audi are just the first ones. Continental and Delphi have these systems in the works too and they think it will add 13% fuel economy at like $800 cost to the car.