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How tariffs in China could cause a meltdown in the American South

While BMW is clearly a German company, the crossovers that are exceedingly important to it are actually made in Spartanburg, South Carolina. And more than that, the Spartanburg plant (physically located in the town of Greer) is where the corporate know-how and capability for those vehicles is concentrated. These are the vehicles – specifically, the BMW X3, X4, X5, X6, X7 – that drove record growth for the company in 2018, according to BMW. But whatÂ’s most notable about BMW Group Plant Spartanburg, given current events, is that according to the U.S. Department of Commerce it was the largest automotive exporter by value for the fifth year running in 2018. ThatÂ’s worth emphasizing: largest automotive exporter by value. Not GM. Not Ford. BMW. And where might one assume that more than a few of those X vehicles are shipped to? China. Some 360 miles southwest of Spartanburg is Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, Inc., in in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. It started building vehicles in 1997. Since then, Daimler AG has invested in excess of $5.5 billion in the facility. It manufactures the crossover now known as the GLE, formerly the ML-Class. It also makes the GLE coupe and GLS. Daimler describes the Tuscaloosa facility as “the traditional home of SUV production” for those vehicles. When it reported its global 2018 sales, Daimler noted that on a global basis SUVs account “for more than a third of all Mercedes-Benz sales.” According to the Chinese finance ministry, on December 15th the Chinese government will impose a 25% tariff on automobiles (and a 5% tariff on auto parts) from the U.S. Certainly this is going to have a direct effect on the sales of vehicles that are manufactured in the U.S. and exported to China. BMW and Mercedes are going to take it on the chin for the vehicles that they make in plants that they invested in so heavily in the U.S. Which could potentially mean that people in places like Greer, South Carolina, and Vance, Alabama, are going to find themselves in the crosshairs of the combatants. Soo too could Lincoln, which produces vehicles in places like Louisville, Kentucky (Navigator), Chicago, Illinois (Aviator) and Flat Rock, Michigan (Continental). Although the Tesla Gigafactory 3 is rapidly nearing completion in Shanghai, it is worth noting that vehicles built in Fremont, California, are being sold in China in numbers that donÂ’t make Musk unhappy.

Man chases down truck thief and steams it all on Facebook

A Washington man chased down a truck stolen from his family's dealership last Saturday and livestreamed the event on Facebook. According to KOMO, a 2005 Ford F-250 was stolen from Sunrise Auto Sales in Eatonville, Washington on the morning of October 8. Aaron Babcock, who co-owns the small dealership with his father David, told reporters that after reviewing surveillance footage, he later spotted the truck while riding his motorcycle on Webster Road East. "I watched my cameras and found the video of a man lurking around and ending up taking off with my truck," Babcock told KOMO. "Cops came and made a case. Three hours later I was on my motorcycle in Graham, and they drove by me oncoming. It still had dealer stickers on it. It said diesel on the window and it had our dealer plate on it. It stuck out like a sore thumb. It was really easy to see." Once he spotted the stolen Super Duty, he wheeled his bike around and gave chase. He attempted to call 911, but was unsure if the dispatcher heard him due to noise from the wind and the bike's engine. So he fired up Facebook live and started streaming his chase, giving running commentary and updating his location as he chased the slow-moving truck. "I wasn't going to let him get away. I was going to try follow him down. I had no idea what to do," Babcock said. "Nobody could hear me on the phone so I just figured the first thing to do is pull up Facebook live." Babcock's Facebook friends pitched in by calling 911 to report the chase and even jumping in their own cars to follow the truck. At one point, he pulled alongside the truck and recognized both men in the cab. The driver was the man seen lurking around the dealer lot in the surveillance video, and the passenger was an old friend of Babcock's. "I know who you are!" he shouted at them, but the hunkered down and kept driving. Eventually, Babcock lost cell phone signal and the livestream ended. Eatonville police, who by this point were well aware of the incident, caught up with the truck in the 8400 block of 356th Street South in Eatonville. The driver was arrested and the passenger was questioned and released. Both denied stealing the vehicle or knowing it was stolen. Two sets of keys from Sunrise Auto Sales and a stolen credit card were also recovered from the truck. Related Video

Ford opens research center in Silicon Valley

These days, the software running a vehicle's myriad of electronic systems seems to be getting nearly as much development focus from automakers as the traditional mechanical parts that keep a car going. Constantly improving that technology requires a lot of experimentation, though, and Ford is expanding its presence in Silicon Valley with the just-opened Research and Innovation Center Palo Alto to make that progress possible. Ford opened its first office in the country's technological hub in 2012 to draw talent and devise ways to deal with vast amounts of sensor data. Apparently, setting up shop in Silicon Valley was deemed a success because the Blue Oval decided to create this new lab in the Stanford Research Park to focus on five areas: connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, customer experience and analytics. Among the center's potential projects, Ford is hoping to develop better natural speech recognition, which is absolutely vital for improving infotainment systems. Assuming the tech eventually works well enough, your voice might even be used to adjust a vehicle's power seats, according to the automaker. The Blue Oval is also letting engineers from Stanford University test autonomous driving algorithms on a self-driving version of the Fusion. In a smaller stakes venture, researchers are working to get a Nest smart thermometer to automatically adjust the temperature at home depending on if an owner's vehicle is leaving or coming back. To really show that its serious about these ventures, Ford hired Dragos Maciuca away from Apple as the center's technical leader. The automaker also wants to have 125 researchers at work there by the end of the year.