Technology
Oct. 6, 2025 | Stellantis’ $10B plan for U.S. investments; Magna International’s Todd Deaville
In this episode of Daily Drive, Stellantis unveils a $10 billion investment plan for U.S. operations, while JLR seeks financial support for its suppliers post-cyberattack. Magna International's T...
Oct. 6, 2025 | Stellantis’ $10B plan for U.S. investments; Magna International’s Todd Deaville
Technology •
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Speaker A
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Speaker B
Daily Drive for Monday, October 6th, 2025. I'm Kellen Walker in Las Vegas. Today on the show, Stellantis reportedly plans $10 billion in U.S. turnaround investments. A report says JLR is working on a loan to help out its suppliers. And Senator Bernie Moreno says President Trump is considering significant tariff relief for vehicle makers. Plus, Magna International's Todd deville talks about how the supplier is implementing AI and machine learning to make its production more efficient.
Speaker C
Imagine you have millions and millions of data points that don't quite align. That's where the AI tool sets can come in and really accelerate that very quickly.
Speaker B
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up. In the auto industry, Stellantis is planning to invest about $10 billion in the U.S. that's according to people familiar with the situation who spoke with Bloomberg News. The people say Stellantis may announce about $5 billion in fresh money on top of a similar amount earmarked earlier this year in the coming weeks. The investments over several years could be funneled into plants, including reopenings, hiring and new models, the people said. It can go to states including Illinois and Michigan, a Stellantis spokesperson told Bloomberg. Quote, as part of the preparations for the company's strategy update and Capital Markets Day next year, the CEO is leading a thorough evaluation of all future investments. The process is ongoing. The spokesperson declined to elaborate. The Times of London reports that JLR is preparing a loan of as much as $674 million to support its suppliers. That's after a cyber attack last month brought the automaker's production to a standstill. The loan is separate from the 1.5 billion euro state backed guarantee by the UK government. A phased restart of JLR's global production facilities is due to begin today, although the Times of London said there was a broad consensus that the company is not likely to be fully up and running again until after Christmas. And President Donald Trump is considering significant tariff relief for US Auto production that could effectively eliminate much of the costs major car companies are paying. That's According to freshman U.S. senator Bernie Moreno and auto officials who spoke with Reuters. Moreno said, quote, for Ford, for Toyota, for Honda, for Tesla, for gm, they'll be immune to tariffs. Moreno is a longtime auto dealer from the Cleveland area. He said he thinks Trump will make A final decision soon. And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all Those stories@autonews.com Automakers are under a lot of pressure in 2025 to cut costs, and they're telling suppliers to find ways to be more efficient. In a few minutes, we'll hear from Magna International's Todd deville about how North America's largest auto supplier is using AI to do that. Joining me now to talk about it is our own John Irwin, who covers the supply chain for us at Automotive News. John, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Speaker D
Thanks for having me back.
Speaker B
So, John, you wrote a piece in this week's edition of Automotive News about how automakers are putting pressure on suppliers to use AI tech in their factories to be more efficient. We're about to hear how Magna is reacting. But what about smaller suppliers? Are they going to be able to adapt?
Speaker D
Yeah, it's interesting. Smaller suppliers, you know, as we've talked about on the podcast many times over the past couple of years, are under a lot of, you know, financial pressure themselves, obviously, lately with tariffs and those costs. But I mean, going back before that to, you know, just rising labor costs, various, you know, supply chain issues that have, you know, really taken their toll on suppliers, especially smaller ones over the past several years, a lot of them aren't, you know, as well, capitalized maybe as some of the larger ones like a Magna per se. So, yeah, those smaller suppliers, you know, like a larger supplier like Magna might be under, you know, some pressure from automakers to adapt a lot of new technologies like that, utilize AI to help to make their factories more efficient, to help, you know, data maybe transfer, I guess, between automaker and supplier and throughout the supply chain a little bit more kind of increasing transparency throughout the supply chain. As companies like to, you know, figure out what's going on in their supply chains, make sure that they're going to keep production moving. But like I said, a lot of these smaller suppliers are maybe less well capitalized. They would like to maybe implement some of this stuff if they had the ability. But in a lot of cases, they might not be able to but on their own. But that's where we're seeing a lot of partnerships come into play. You know, some of the larger suppliers are working with smaller suppliers to, you know, maybe help them implement certain things where possible. Obviously, kind of a long process. There's so many suppliers throughout the supply chain. But, you know, clearly, you know, we've heard from gm, for instance, about how they want to, you know, maybe essentially create a digital twin of their entire supply chain. And that sort of requires a lot of cooperation between suppliers and automakers to make that happen. And, you know, the CEO of martinrea International, which is a large supplier in and of itself, maybe not on the scale of Magna, but a large tier one, you know, he was mentioning how that a recent center for Automotive Research event, he was mentioning essentially how automakers and suppliers should work with these smaller companies to help them find resources to implement some of these tools where possible, making sure that they know they don't have to reinvent the wheel here, that there are tools that they can go out and purchase or maybe work with some of their customers. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see kind of the pace at which some of the smaller suppliers adopt some of the stuff, some of the concerns they might have about sharing data and making sure that they, they don't give up any competitive advantages they have as well. That's an interesting topic that that's being brought up, but, you know, we'll see what happens. It's, it's, it's definitely. They're definitely under a lot of pressure from automakers, and even they're larger for talking about a tier 2 supplier. A lot, a lot of the large tier ones are also kind of applying pressure on them to adopt a lot of this stuff. And I'm sure some of them will be receptive. Others might want to push back a little bit more, but we'll see what happens.
Speaker B
And you spoke with Magnus Todd Deville on the latest episode of Shift, which we're about to hear a bit of. What did you take away from the conversation?
Speaker D
Yeah, that was a really interesting conversation. You know, he's basically in charge of Magna of, you know, thinking about what the factory of the future might look like. And, you know, for a company like Magna, you know, the largest North American supplier, you know, extremely diversified, you know, they work in, you know, so many different spaces, supply for a lot of different companies, they have factories all over the world. It's really interesting to kind of hear his perspective on, you know, what the factory of the future looks like, considering every factory that Magna has might be kind of set up differently depending on where they're at, what they're building for, etc. But it makes clear that a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about with artificial intelligence and some of these AI tools, you know, they're not something that that's just being talked about. I mean, they're being implemented already in, you know, their factories. I know that's the case at other large suppliers as well. They're able to spot, you know, maybe potential issues on, you know, efficiency issues on the factory floor sooner than they would have otherwise. Or maybe, you know, it comes to product quality. We're already seeing a lot of that. And, you know, I think moving forward, I think Magna and a lot of other suppliers as well are you kind of see an opportunity to become even more efficient and more nimble. And I think that's something that companies coming off of the last several years, you know, with the pandemic all the way through, now with, you know, changing trade policy, they're really more than anything else wanting to become nimble. And I think they're, they're seeing an opportunity here. Obviously, with a lot of, you know, these tools, there's always a concern, you know, from some about is AI, are, you know, robotics, are they going to replace labor, human labor? And, you know, at least in Magnus case, you know, he had mentioned how, you know, for them, it's not about that. It's more about, you know, making sure that, you know, they're reskilling and training their workforce to, you know, be able to utilize these tools so that they can, you know, become more efficient in the factory and that sort of thing. So that'll be curious to see how that evolves moving forward as more of these tools are adapted. But it was a really interesting conversation again coming from someone kind of in charge of thinking about how this massive company is going to evolve over the next several years. And it should be a good one for everyone to listen to.
Speaker B
Perfect. John, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker D
Thanks so much.
Speaker B
Coming up, a piece of John's conversation with Todd deville, Magna International's vice president of advanced manufacturing and corporate R and D. That's next on Daily Drive.
Speaker A
Automotive News. Shift Podcast brings you the latest on automotive technology, trends and transformation. I'm Hannah Lutz. And I'm Molly Boygon.
Speaker D
We're the new co hosts of Shift.
Speaker A
And we're excited to bring you new.
Speaker D
Conversations with experts and industry insiders like.
Speaker C
This one with Larry Dominique, president of LD Management Consulting. I do believe the legacy OEMs are falling into a trap. They've got to find a way to, in some ways, build a new airplane while they're still in flight.
Speaker A
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Speaker B
Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellen Walker. Automakers and parts makers are quickly adopting artificial intelligence and machine lear their factories and urging their suppliers to do the same. On the latest episode of the Automotive News Shift podcast, our own John Irwin speaks with Magna International Vice president of advanced manufacturing and corporate R and D Todd deville. Here's a piece of their conversation.
Speaker D
You know, for Magna, what does AI and ML, how are you guys applying that in your factories today? I mean, I feel like a lot of times we've been talking about that as maybe the future, but in many ways this is happening right now.
Speaker C
For sure it's now, right. I mean, we think of these as theoretical and out there and advanced. The truth is used properly, these AI ML tools are embedded in everything we touch. And you don't even know if you think about some of them, you know, some of them you don't. But think about in the factory, which you asked about. Vision systems is a big one, an early one. Right. Because that sort of came out of early development in the last 10 years especially right. Coming from the tech industry using AI neural networks to analyze images, video, et cetera. Hugely powerful, relatively low cost, very accessible, something we can use and apply today. So that's in the plans now other areas, I would say the emerging. Right. Well, predictive maintenance is there now. A lot of standard analytics can be used. Where AI comes in is layered on top of that, when you want to look at like really massive multivariable scenarios with a lot of data coming from disparate places, the AI tools can kind of augment more classical data analytics tools and provide insights. So those are a couple of them. And then I think robotics I mentioned, right. Is the vision systems fit into robotics already. So those are running today in many, many places that is going to significantly magnify, I think over time as we get out of just using them for vision analysis and start using a tool sets for things like identifying objects, learning, training, programming, path planning, all of those types of topics.
Speaker D
Yeah, and there's so many applications. I mean I want to delve into a Few of these, but you know, we're dealing right now with I think, tariffs and everything else. Where, you know, companies are looking deep into their supply chains to learn, you know, where their parts come from, where their materials come from. Is magna utilizing AI and ML to really dig in on that. And you know, how are your suppliers thinking about AI and ML and those applications? Maybe others for sure.
Speaker C
I mean, what you're talking about is getting deep into highly complex data sources coming from many, many different places. The formats are all different. Huge issues around just data quality, cleanliness, the basics, naming conventions, these kinds of things is enormously challenging. Yes, that's where AI and some of the ML type tool sets can come in. To make that much, much easier, imagine you have millions and millions of data points that don't quite align in the old days, right, you had to sort of look at each text and you're looking at the characters and is this the same, is this different? Do I need to erase this space or this dash and that kind of stuff? That's where the AI tool sets can come in and really accelerate that very quickly. So that data cleaning, data handling layer, critically important, highly labor intensive, but you need it. Without that, you're not doing any of the analytics that comes next. So yes, that's being used. Then you get into the analytics of, okay, what do I do with this information now? Getting deep into the supply chain, what's coming from where, what's common, what's not common, how do I adjust and use that? Right?
Speaker D
How is the adoption of AI and these ML tools impacting maybe your, you know, relationships or your collaborative efforts with your customers? How are they thinking about this and you know, how are you guys working together?
Speaker C
Interesting question, right? Good question. I think our customers, obviously we follow our customers as we need to and should in many ways. I think it's the same on many of the AI tool set topics. And then as our customers need more and more transparency, they're building their digital twins of, you know, well, product engineering. We're already deeply involved. We use the same tools. We often co locate, right? We have to, you got to be right, embedded with the customer, using the same tools, the same functions. So at that level already there you get into the manufacturing side and you start to want to build. For our customers to build, say, a complete digital twin of their operations, they're going to need inputs from us because there will be pieces of this that only we have, only we can provide. Similarly, when you go down to our suppliers and vendors in the supply chain and it sort of works its way down the chain. We have to do this together, led by our customers, but we got to move together.
Speaker B
You can hear the full conversation between Magna International's Todd deville and our own John Irwin on the latest episode of the Automotive News Shift podcast that's available now. Wherever you get your podcast, that's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellen Walker. Thanks to Automotive News executive producer Jake near for his help on today's podC. You can get the latest news on suppliers, US investments and everything happening in the auto industry@autonews.com we'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we cover today. Send us an email at dailydriveautownews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774. And if you enjoy the podcast, remember to, like, leave a comment, review and subscribe so you never miss an episode.