Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | Apr 13 2026 | VIEW ONLINE

The second episode of our Automotive Ventures podcast:

hear from WarrCloud CEO Jim Roche, who discusses the origin story, Jim's management philosophy, and his vision for the next five years.

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What We're Reading:

🚗

Automotive

The head of a group representing nearly all major automakers on Wednesday called for scrapping the U.S. government's 18.4-cent per gallon tax on gasoline and replacing it ‌with a vehicle fee to pay for road repairs. John Bozzella, who heads the Alliance for Automotive Innovation that represents General Motors, Toyota Motor Corporation, Volkswagen, Hyundai Motor Company, and other major car companies, said in a proposal first reported by Reuters the government should address the increasing financial shortfall in the highway trust fund by imposing a single fee on every ⁠vehicle based on weight. Congress has not raised the federal gas tax since 1993 and as more Americans drive EVs and more fuel-efficient vehicles, gas tax revenue has not kept up with highway repair needs. Because it was not indexed to inflation, the tax has lost more than 60% of its value in real terms. Bozzella said the fee would be collected like a registration fee. "This policy would guarantee every vehicle on the road contributes something to maintaining America’s transportation network," Bozzella said. "Those driving older, less fuel-efficient vehicles or who travel long distances ‌bear ⁠the financial burden. That’s not fair." | Reuters ($)

In a doleful press conference last month, Mibe Toshihiro, chief executive of Honda, announced that the Japanese carmaker was on course to post its first net loss since 1957 in its fiscal year ending in March—a failure for which he took personal responsibility. In a sign of his contrition, Mr Mibe said that he would dock his pay by 30%, along with that of his deputy. Honda is not the only Japanese carmaker under severe strain. At an industry event the following week, Mr Mibe issued a stark warning: “The Japanese automotive industry itself is on the brink of survival.” He was hardly exaggerating. Nissan Motor Corporation, once the sixth-largest carmaker in the world by sales, is entering the second year of a brutal restructuring, with seven factory closures planned by 2028. A 25% tariff on cars imported into America has bitten into the industry’s profits. Yet it is the blistering rise of Chinese competitors that has hit hardest. In 2019, Japanese carmakers accounted for 31% of sales globally; by last year, their share had fallen to 26%. The shock has been greatest in Asia. In China itself, sales of Japanese cars have slumped by a third since 2019. In South-East Asia, once a stronghold, their share of the market was 57% in 2025, down from 68% just two years earlier. Japanese carmakers once seemed unstoppable. How did it go so wrong for them? The heart of the problem is that, even more so than their Western counterparts, Japanese carmakers have struggled with electrification. Many have been sceptical of the staying power of electric vehicles (EVs), which account for a vanishingly small share of their sales. Conventional petrol vehicles make up more than half of sales for all Japanese carmakers; at beleaguered Nissan, it is 80%. Rather than plug-in cars, most have opted instead to emphasise conventional hybrids, which rely on the engine and regenerative braking to power the battery, as the assembly of these fits more easily into a production line built for internal-combustion engines. Japan’s carmakers have expressed interest in alternative technologies such as hydrogen-powered cars for much the same reason. | The Economist ($)

David Brancaccio from Marketplace catches up with John Krafcik and Jamie Kitman to explore the origin of the "Chicken Tax" and how it stimulated demand for full-sized pickup trucks in America. | Marketplace

The NADA 2025 Data Book is now available. | NADA

⚡️

EVs

As the war with Iran continues, gas prices have soared and early signals suggest the added fuel costs may be nudging Americans toward hybrid or all-electric vehicles. Notably, several brands have reported an uptick in electric vehicle sales in the opening months of 2026. Tesla has reported a modest year-over-year increase in sales, and Hyundai Motor Company and General Motors’ Cadillac division have also seen electric car sales increase. | The New York Times ($)

Sales of used electric vehicles are surging in the U.S. as models bought during a post-pandemic boom flood back on to the market, offering prospective buyers relief from a sharp rise in petrol prices. First-quarter used EV sales rose 12 percent compared with the same period last year and 17 per cent on the previous quarter, according to Cox Automotive Inc. estimates. Sales of new EVs in the first quarter are estimated to have slumped by 28 percent year on year following the Trump administration’s withdrawal in 2025 of a $7,500 consumer tax credit. Analysts attribute the surge to a glut of hundreds of thousands of cheap pre-owned EVs that were purchased on leases in the early 2020s and which are now returning to market as those leases expire. According to credit bureau Experian, EVs will account for 15 percent of all off-lease vehicles at the end of this year, up from 7.7 percent in the first quarter. The supply glut helped drive the average price of a used EV down by 8.5 percent between February 2025 and February 2026, according to Cox, closing the average price gap between used EVs and used petrol-powered vehicles from $4,923 to $1,334. | Financial Times ($)

There's a new trend brewing amongst some American automakers. It's all about flipping the Covid-era "value over volume," high-dollar approach to manufacturing and instead focusing on making EVs cheaper. "Cheaper" is the keyword here. Because they're not making cars more affordable by radically rethinking battery chemistry or even focusing on new manufacturing processes like gigacasting. They're simply paring back the feature set. They're trying to do less so they can charge less. That means fewer buttons, fewer features, and a clear expectation conveyed to consumers that they are offering a no-frills experience on base trim vehicles. Leading this philosophical garage clean-out is newcomer Slate Auto, but legacy brand Dodge is now wading into the debate, too. Both of these brands seem very interested in answering a question that no one was urgently asking: how stripped-out can you make a car before customers lose interest? | Inside EVs

U.S. electric vehicle charging networks are still racing to catch up to demand, with 605 public, high-speed EV fueling stations switched on in the first quarter, a 34% increase over the year-earlier period. The country now has nearly 13,500 places to quickly add electrons to a car or truck, 25% more than it did a year ago, with most of the demand driven by the private sector, including truck stops adding electron pumps. Despite several months of slumping EV sales, U.S. fast-charging infrastructure is expected to expand by 8% in 2026, with charge-point operators building for long-term growth, and elevated gas prices potentially driving more people to consider switching to electric vehicles. | Bloomberg ($)

Last year, global hydrogen passenger car sales just barely surpassed 16,000 units, while those of electric vehicles exceeded 12mn. Despite the growing disparity in the numbers, Toyota has continued to offer hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles as part of its portfolio. While that looks increasingly difficult to justify, the carmaker may still be on to something. That something is not car sales. While global sales of hydrogen-fuelled cars rose nearly a quarter over the year in the second half of 2025, according to SNE Research, the numbers are still paltry. Hyundai Motor Company leads with 6,861 units while Toyota sold 1,168 units across its Mirai and Crown models, a 39.1 percent year-on-year decline. Honda also re-entered the segment last year. It is hard to escape the conclusion that hydrogen fuel-cell cars are not competitive in the mass market passenger vehicle segment, even more than a decade after their launch. The biggest constraint is infrastructure. Last year, there were fewer than 1,400 hydrogen refuelling stations worldwide, compared with more than 5.7mn public EV charging points. Hydrogen cars are also significantly more expensive to produce than battery-powered ones, meaning higher sticker prices, especially as many regions have phased out their most aggressive hydrogen incentives. Yet even if hydrogen never becomes viable for mass-market passenger vehicles, it may still have a role to play in commercial transport. The economics of hydrogen refuelling stations are easier to justify when supported by consistent demand along fixed routes. If a station serves 200 trucks a day, it would process over 8,000kg of fuel, which would be enough to begin justifying the higher capital cost of infrastructure. | The New York Times ($)

🇨🇳

China

Honda CEO and President Toshihiro Mibe recently traveled to China to gain insight into how domestic companies are churning out so many products in such a short timeframe. After visiting an auto supplier factory in Shanghai, he made a stark remark: “We have no chance against this," Nikkei Asia reports. You might have heard about “China Speed” and how local automakers can develop a brand-new model in two years or less. By comparison, legacy brands often need twice as long, and sometimes even more, to engineer a new product. With an astronomical number of companies developing vehicles at a record pace, it’s no wonder it feels like China is launching a new car every other day. Chinese suppliers are not only able to match this pace but also do so with cost efficiency that the industry’s biggest names can only dream of. Mibe’s statement shouldn’t be seen as an admission of defeat, however. Upon returning from China, Honda’s CEO told suppliers, “We must act quickly” to accelerate development. | Motor1

BYD of China is opening some 20 sales locations with partners in Canada this year as the Government of Canada is considering Chinese auto industry investments to reduce dependence on the United States. “The overture of Canada is a very important one,” Alfredo Altavilla, a former FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles manager who now advises BYD in Europe, said in an interview in Paris. “We immediately took action to establish a sales network there.” Canada has been courting Chinese investments to bolster its car industry amid a broader trade deal with Beijing. In January, the government agreed to allow in as many as 49,000 Chinese-built electric vehicles a year, after previously keeping them out with high tariffs. Last month, BYD said it’s actively considering building a factory in Canada, while also keeping its options open to acquire a more established global automaker. The company has also been expanding in Europe, where it’s among a range of Chinese brands increasing sales with affordable electric and plug-in hybrid models. | Automotive News ($)

Three Democratic senators called on President Trump to crack down on the manufacturing and sales of Chinese vehicles in the U.S. Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York wrote a letter to Trump also calling for a ban on Chinese vehicles manufactured or titled in Canada and Mexico from entering the U.S. They additionally argued against letting Chinese automakers open factories in the U.S. and said the administration should work with allies to “address the serious threat posed by Chinese vehicles.” They said the U.S. should support American automakers and their supply chains, adding that Chinese high-tech vehicles could pose a national security risk. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Car exports, an increasingly important source of growth for China's hyper-competitive auto sector, picked up pace in March despite shipment disruptions from the crisis in ‌the Middle East, one of the industry's key overseas markets. Exports grew 73.7% from a year earlier to nearly 700,000 vehicles last month, faster than the 54.1% in the first two months, data from the China Passenger Car Association showed on Thursday. "Car exports have entered a stage of super high growth, beating our expectations," ⁠said Cui Dongshu, the association's secretary-general. Domestic sales dropped 15.2% from a year earlier to 1.67 million vehicles last month, a sixth straight month of decline, as rising fuel prices dampened demand for conventionally fuelled models while electric vehicle sales continued to feel the impact of reduced incentives amid a sputtering economic recovery. | Reuters ($)

The energy shock caused by the war in the Middle East caught China, the world’s top buyer of oil, by surprise. But Beijing has been preparing for a crisis like this for years. China has stockpiled increasingly large amounts of oil. It has pursued renewable sources of energy like solar, wind and hydropower so aggressively that its demand for refined oil, diesel and gasoline is falling. And it has harnessed technology to reduce its reliance on the foreign-sourced raw materials that go into the massive output of its factories. China’s ruling Communist Party has long viewed its industries as the foundation of its national security strategy. It has sharpened — and expanded — that approach since President Trump’s first term. China has doubled down on policies to build up local industries, in turn strengthening its global dominance over resources and supply chains. Energy was the linchpin. A decade ago, China was the world’s biggest market for internal combustion engine cars. Today, it is the top market for electric vehicles. China used to be the largest buyer of foreign-sourced petrochemicals, the raw materials derived from oil that are used to make plastic, metal, rubber components and other crucial ingredients in the goods its factories churn out. Now it uses mostly domestic coal to make certain chemicals, like methanol and synthetic ammonia. Government planning and investment were crucial to those advances. | The New York Times ($)

Brazil has put China's BYD on a ‌registry of employers who have subjected workers to conditions similar to slavery, after a 2024 scandal in which Chinese workers were said to have been victims of human trafficking and abusive contracts. The list, published by Brazil's Labor Ministry, carries further reputational risk for the automaker in its biggest market after China. It also bars BYD from obtaining certain types of loans from Brazilian banks, but does not affect the operation of its sole ⁠auto plant in the country that the workers were hired to build. | Reuters ($)

🚖

Autonomy & Robotics

Two Alphabet-owned businesses are teaming up to find potholes and share that information with cities. Waymo and Waze announced Thursday a data-sharing pilot program that will funnel pothole data collected by robotaxis to a free Waze platform designed for cities. Any city or state where Waymo operates will be able to access that data as the program expands. Waymo is already operating commercially in 11 cities and it’s testing in even more. For now, the pilot will focus on five initial markets — Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where Waymo says it has already identified about 500 potholes. The partnership is expected to expand to more cities over time. Cities won’t be the only recipients of that data, however. Anyone with a Waze app in the cities where Waymo operates will also have access to that data, and by the way, help verify those pothole locations are accurate. | TechCrunch ($)

Japan is running out of workers. Its population declined for a 14th straight year in 2024; its working-age population is projected to shrink by nearly 15 million over the next two decades; and a 2024 Reuters/Nikkei survey found that labor shortages are the primary force pushing Japanese firms toward automation and AI adoption. Last month, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry said it was looking to build a domestic physical AI sector, with hopes of holding 30% of the global market by 2040. The idea is to employ robots in logistics warehouses, on factory floors, and inside data centers—where they’re not taking people’s jobs, but filling the ones no one wants. | Fortune ($)

🛜

Connectivity

Farmers have been fighting John Deere for years over the right to repair their equipment, and this week, they finally reached a landmark settlement. While the agricultural manufacturing giant pointed out in a statement that this is no admission of wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $99 million into a fund for farms and individuals who participated in a class action lawsuit. Specifically, that money is available to those involved who paid John Deere’s authorized dealers for large equipment repairs from January 2018. This means that plaintiffs will recover somewhere between 26% and 53% of overcharge damages, according to one of the court documents—far beyond the typical amount, which lands between 5% and 15%. The settlement also includes an agreement by Deere to provide “the digital tools required for the maintenance, diagnosis, and repair” of tractors, combines, and other machinery for 10 years. That part is crucial, as farmers previously resorted to hacking their own equipment’s software just to get it up and running again. John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding in 2023 that partially addressed those concerns, providing third parties with the technology to diagnose and repair, as long as its intellectual property was safeguarded. Monday’s settlement seems to represent a much stronger (and legally binding) step forward. Ripple effects of this battle have been felt far beyond the sales floors at John Deere dealers, as the price of used equipment skyrocketed in response to the infamous service difficulties. Even when the cost of older tractors doubled, farmers reasoned that they were still worth it because repairs were simpler and downtime was minimized. $60,000 for a 40-year-old machine became the norm. | The Drive

🤖 Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In 2024, Google started giving A.I.-generated answers prime placement at the top of its search results page. The new product, AI Overviews, helped transform Google from a curator of information into a publisher. A recent analysis of AI Overviews found that they were accurate approximately nine out of 10 times. But with Google processing more than five trillion searches a year, this means that it provides tens of millions of erroneous answers every hour (or hundreds of thousands of inaccuracies every minute), according to an analysis done by an A.I. start-up called Oumi. More than half of the accurate responses were “ungrounded,” meaning they linked to websites that did not completely support the information they provided. This makes it challenging to check AI Overviews’ accuracy. | The New York Times ($)

OpenAI’s advertising effort is so new that the company is still working out the kinks in it. That hasn’t stopped it from setting ambitious aims for the business, which it expects to become the largest driver of its revenue by the end of the decade. OpenAI expects advertising to generate about $2.4 billion in revenue this year and to quadruple next year, to nearly $11 billion, according to financial forecasts from the first quarter. A year ago, the company forecast it would generate $1.6 billion in revenue this year and $5.9 billion next year from users who didn’t pay for subscriptions, an amount the company likely expected to derive from advertising and e-commerce. In 2030, OpenAI expects ads to generate about $102 billion, or 36% of its total revenue for that year. A year ago, it forecast nonpaying users would only generate $26.5 billion in sales that year. If it can succeed in hitting ad sales of $102 billion, that figure would be about half what Meta Platforms Ltd generated from advertising last year. Advertising sales are likely to increase in part through the growth of OpenAI’s audience. But forecasts for higher revenue per user suggest it also expects to charge more for ads, show ads to its users more frequently, or both. | The Information ($)

Fear that the technology behind ChatGPT is about to cause upheaval in a wide range of industrial sectors has spread quickly this year — even if investors have been reacting mainly to theoretical threats, including some as far-fetched as that posed by Algorhythm. The impact has been felt most acutely in the software world, where worries have been mounting for some time as AI transforms how code is written. But 2026 is shaping up to be the year in which those concerns spill out more broadly. One catalyst was the news that AI company Anthropic had repurposed its software-coding agent to take on a wide range of white-collar work, which wiped $830bn off software stocks in the course of a single week. Suddenly, if the AI boosters are to be believed, AI might crop up almost anywhere and take on work that had previously required a human. Some trigger-happy investors have responded by selling at the drop of a press release. But previous waves of disruption, like the rise of the internet, have usually left more room for the incumbents than might have seemed likely in the white heat of technological revolution. Many markets don’t change as fast as the disrupters predict, giving incumbents time to adapt — sometimes by buying disruptive upstarts. | Financial Times ($)

✈️

Aviation & Space

Twenty years ago, Delta Air Lines was giving away its best seats. Back then, only about 15 percent of first-class passengers paid for their seats, while most of the rest were loyal customers the airline had upgraded for free. Delta has since flipped the script: Today, it sells over 70 percent of those prime seats, a shift that has helped it become the most profitable airline in the United States. | The New York Times ($)

Elon Musk surprised onlookers with the quick merger between SpaceX and xAI. Now analysts, investors and close Musk observers are debating the merits of what some see as the ultimate combination: SpaceX and Tesla. As SpaceX approaches an initial public offering, some investors are discussing the idea of a mega-Musk merger as a follow-up. Musk has said he thinks his companies are converging, but he hasn’t commented on speculation of a merger. Still, some Tesla supporters argue that combining the companies could accelerate Musk’s artificial intelligence ambitions by bringing his projects under one roof—and potentially create one of the most valuable companies in history. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Elon Musk’s revolutionary Starship Heavy aims to reach Mars, but it may sooner redraw the map of Earth by fundamentally changing the geography of warfare. The Defense Department has explored ways to reduce money and time required for military strikes. It has spent billions over decades developing hypersonic weapons to strike anywhere in the world within an hour. By decreasing the cost to place materiel into orbit, however, Starship makes possible major new alternative military options that would be at least as effective and a lot cheaper. Right now, the cheapest launch platform in the world is Falcon Heavy, at about $1,500 a kilogram, or $700 a pound, to reach low Earth orbit—compared with more than $10,000 a kilogram for competitors like the Delta IV Heavy. With Starship, Mr. Musk intends to bring that cost down to $10 a kilogram, though reducing it to $100 would be revolutionary. If so, then launch costs will no longer restrain the blasting of cheap, disposable equipment into space. Sending equipment to land anywhere on Earth will also become cheap. And fast—it takes about an hour in a suborbital path to travel between any two points on the globe. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1956 Aston Martin DB2/4 Mk I. | Broad Arrow

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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📰 In The News

📢

Automotive Ventures portfolio company Auriga Space featured in Startups Magazine. | Startups Magazine

📢

Automotive Ventures portfolio company Meter Feeder featured in this article about robotaxis. | Technical.ly

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Steve caught up with Mark Hollmer from Automotive News to discuss whether auto dealers will embrace self-service experiences in their showrooms. | Automotive News ($)

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On this week's Future of Automotive segment on CBT News, we discuss the pressure the Chinese automakers are putting on Honda. | CBT News ($)

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Automotive Ventures is hosting the first "Startup Symposium" at the Agent Summit this week. We have some amazing startups who will be pitching onstage.

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