Apple Watch Guy Supervising Apple Car Kevin Lynch

What do smartwatches and cars have in common? Other than the fact that Apple is trying to do both, I’m not sure. The tech giant’s wearable software leader is taking the reins of its turbulent car project. In other news, Tesla is circumventing New Mexico’s anti-direct selling laws by building a store on tribal land, and there’s actually a new Dodge for what appears to be the first time in its life. All this and more in The morning shift for Friday September 10, 2021.

1st gear: every Apple manager ends up doing the car thing

With the previous advance Doug Field leaving for Ford, Apple’s Titan project is once again changing hands. Kevin Lynch, who had started at the company as the head of its watchOS software and migrated to the automotive team earlier this year, would now manage the entire operation, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman:

The executive started working on the project earlier this year when he took over the teams responsible for the underlying software. Now he oversees the entire group, which also includes hardware engineering and work on self-driving car sensors, said the people, who have asked not to be identified because the move is not public.

It remains to be seen whether Lynch will fill this role on an interim basis or whether he will be the permanent manager:

It’s unclear whether the company will end up bringing in another leader for its automotive effort – known internally as Project Titan – if it progresses enough that Apple has confidence in launching a fully autonomous vehicle. . Field’s departure for Ford was seen as a sign that an Apple car was not going to arrive in the near future. Work on the product remains early, with Apple employees predicting that it will not launch for many years.

The Apple Car has been on the sidelines for many years now. Wait a minute, the company is poaching former Tesla employees left and right; the following, it is rejected by the big car manufacturers who do not want to subjugate their brand to the cult of Apple personality. I’m sure Apple will eventually fit into cars in some kind of software capacity, as everyone in the tech business is doing it these days. But the prospect of a fully-built car seems more and more murky with every change of personnel.

2nd gear: Huawei Panic finally reaches automatic chips

Speaking of tech companies turning into auto companies, remember Huawei? The Chinese telecommunications giant that has effectively been blacklisted from the US market for fear that its hardware may endanger national security? Now it is setting up an auto components branch, and U.S. lawmakers are worried about it as well. A group of 13 Republican members of the Energy and Trade Committee wrote a letter to Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg asking if he too is affected. Of Reuters:

Republicans, led by Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a senior member of the Energy and Trade Committee, said the United States “must not give in to China and its efforts to dominate our high-tech sectors, including (autonomous vehicles) “.

The letter asked Buttigieg if he thought that “Huawei intends to do with the automotive sector what it has done with the communications equipment sector?

Huawei told Reuters in August that it is “positioning itself as a new supplier of components for connected intelligent vehicles” and helping automakers “build better vehicles.”

The commercial blacklist against Huawei that the Trump administration put in place in 2019 is still in place, and the Biden administration doesn’t seem interested in going back. At the end of the day, if the company can’t already do business with the automakers that sell cars here, I’m not sure what further action the committee could reasonably expect. The US government cannot ban Huawei from existence, as much as some of its members clearly want; it can only deprive Huawei of a foothold in one of the world’s largest markets, which it already owns.

3rd gear: Tesla just exploited the strangest loophole to get away with direct sales in New Mexico

There is now a Tesla sales and service center north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It resides in a building that was once a casino. Tesla’s retail establishments have been banned in the state, but it is doing well because it resides on land owned by the Nambé Pueblo tribal nation. Seriously. Of Albuquerque Journal:

The leaders of Nambé Pueblo joined the Sens on Thursday. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján to highlight the partnership and promote electric vehicles as part of a broader climate change strategy.

The new Tesla sales and service center is the first in New Mexico. It is also the first Tesla installation, officials said, on Native American lands in the United States.

“It really represents a historic moment,” Nambé Pueblo Governor Phillip Perez told a crowd gathered for the event on Thursday.

The location of the pueblo is critical.

New Mexico law prohibits automakers from selling directly to consumers rather than through a franchised dealership, and efforts to license Tesla storefronts and service centers have repeatedly failed in the Legislative Assembly, often in the midst of tense debates.

But the Tesla store is within the confines of a tribal nation, not subject to state law.

For what it’s worth, Nambé Pueblo Gov. Phillip Perez spoke encouragingly of the opportunity:

Perez, the governor of the pueblo, said Tesla would support the tutors and scholarships of Nambé Pueblo students. He delivered some of his remarks in Tewa, a native language, as he greeted visitors to the site along US Route 285.

The company’s values, said Perez, match the pueblo’s commitment to protecting the environment.

4th gear: Toyota’s manufacturing problems continue

Toyota avoided production setbacks at the start of the pandemic, thanks to a stockpile of semiconductors. However, stocks don’t last forever, so supply chain disruptions have recently caught up with it in recent months. Today, the automaker is reducing its annual production target by 300,000, according to Reuters, but not primarily due to hardware bottlenecks:

“It’s a combination of coronavirus and semiconductors, but at the moment it’s the coronavirus that’s having an overwhelming impact,” said Kazunari Kumakura, an executive of the world’s largest automaker, after the company revised its production target.

Toyota’s projected operating profit remains the same, but its expected overall production has declined:

Toyota now plans to build 9 million vehicles by March 31 instead of 9.3 million. It did not revise its operating profit forecast of 2.5 trillion yen ($ 22.7 billion) for the year.

5th gear: the new dodge

Dodge has been riding the same handful of cars for almost a decade at this point, while regularly removing the oldest nameplates from the list. With the Journey gone, there are only three cars left in its repertoire: the Charger, the Challenger and the Durango. A plug-in hybrid and finally an electric muscle car is on the way, but it is still a few years away.

South of the border, however, there will be a new Dodge much sooner than that. The Stellantis Mexico A Twitter account recently teased him.

The thing is, this new crossover appears to be a badge version of the GS5, an SUV made by Chinese automaker GAC Motor that is offered in parts of Latin America. This makes it easy for Dodge to make a few changes to the branding of a car already on sale in the region. The Dodge lineup for Mexico Much like what it does here, except it offers its own version of the Mitsubishi Mirage G4 sedan called Attitude. This unnamed new crossover could serve as a proper replacement for the Journey in a pinch.

Reverse: the first of many