Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | Feb 23 2026 | VIEW ONLINE

Automotive Ventures is very excited to announce the acquisition of our portfolio company AlgoDriven by Emergence Software.

Congratulations to Glenn Harwood, Jaron Crossland and the entire AlgoDriven team!

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What We're Reading:

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Automotive

The average sticker price for a new car or truck now sits above $50,000 — about 30 percent more than in 2019. Even with incentives and specials, the out-the-door price reached above $50,000 for the first time in September and stood at $49,191 in January — a record for the typically sluggish sales month, according to Cox Automotive. That’s helped push the average monthly payment to buy a new vehicle to an all-time high of a little over $800, according to J.D. Power. Some customers go further. About 1 in 5 new auto loans have monthly payments of at least $1,000, S&P Global said, projecting that share could double by year’s end. The auto industry is increasingly worried how much more consumers can take. Signs of stress are growing. Severely delinquent auto loan rates have soared to levels last seen during the pandemic shutdown. “Affordability” was a buzzword at the 2026 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. And there is growing talk about the need for automakers to offer more budget-friendly vehicles, especially when little relief is to be found in the used car market, with average prices of about $25,000. | The Washington Post ($)

Over 15 years, Tesla sold hundreds of thousands of the Model S. (The company doesn’t break out sales numbers between the Model S and X, but their cumulative sales total is higher than 630,000.) By 2023 the Model S had helped make Tesla the only automaker in the “Magnificent 7,” a term coined to describe seven stocks leading gains in the S&P 500 index: Alphabet Inc., Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Tesla. Things have shifted since those heady days. Its first-mover advantage long gone, the Model S has grown outdated among the wide range of EVs now available in the U.S. These are cars every other automaker had developed to keep up with Tesla. Today, Tesla is the only member of the Magnificent 7 whose reported earnings have declined since 2023, and Musk says Tesla will now emphasize robots rather than passenger vehicles, sales of which have suffered because of a stagnant product lineup and the loss of federal incentives. On Jan. 28, he announced Tesla will discontinue the Model S (and X). But that doesn’t diminish the impact of this revolutionary vehicle. Love it or hate it, the success of the Tesla Model S forced every legacy automaker to jump into the race that Musk created — to fill the world with electric vehicles. It changed everything else along the way — and will continue to drive what comes next. | Bloomberg ($)

Online used-vehicle retailer Carvana is doubling down on its goal of selling 3 million retail vehicles by 2030 to 2035. Growing ADESA, the company’s wholesale auctioning and reconditioning business it acquired in 2022, is a major part of its strategy. CEO Ernie Garcia and CFO Mark Jenkins said in their Feb. 18 fourth-quarter earnings letter to shareholders that the retailer will rely on a four-part plan to reach 3 million in annual sales at an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization margin of 13.5 percent: It’ll need to increase staffing, integrate retail production lines at more ADESA auction facilities, build new lines at ADESA facilities and eventually build greenfield inspection center production locations. | Automotive News ($)

The momentous end to the federal government’s legal authority to fight climate change makes it official. The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be. That’s the practical result of the Trump administration’s yearlong parade of regulatory rollbacks, capped on Thursday by its killing of the “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gases because of the threat to human health. “The U.S. no longer has emission standards of any meaning,” said Margo Oge, who served as the E.P.A.’s top vehicle emissions regulator under three presidents and has since advised both automakers and environmental groups. | The New York Times ($)

The Biden administration’s carrots-and-sticks campaign to try to ramp up the sales of electric vehicles found little traction with the car-buying American public. That’s the lesson from a series of recent announcements by Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — that all are shifting production away from electric vehicles and back to gas-powered cars and hybrids. By pulling EV models from their lineups, repurposing EV battery plants and laying off workers in some EV factories, the automakers are taking $50 billion in combined write-downs on their EV investments. The electric-vehicle investment bubble egged on by the Biden administration reflected a classic disconnect between a government’s lofty policy goals and a public that wasn’t convinced. Biden set the fantastical goal that half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 should be EVs. Currently, that number is just six percent and dropping. The Biden administration tried to juice demand for EVs with a $7,500 credit on new EV purchases. It also imposed tough new tailpipe emission standards that the carmakers would be mathematically unable to meet without shifting half their future production to EVs. The subsidies ran out Sept. 30, and demand for EVs flagged. This month the Trump administration effectively ended the emissions mandate by revoking the legal authority the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used to regulate carbon dioxide. The car-buying public already had plenty of reasons to be skeptical of junking gas-engine cars and trucks. Outside of the major coastal cities, America just doesn’t have the charging infrastructure in place to sustain a massive EV shift. Who wants to be driving an electric car on an isolated interstate in the Midwest or the Rocky Mountains as the battery approaches zero? The Biden administration spent billions to build out EV-charging infrastructure; fewer than 1,000 federally funded chargers are available. Biden tried to sell his EV shift as part of U.S.-China competition. Beijing has already met Biden’s goal for Americans; 55 to 60 percent of all new car purchases in China are EVs. The government has built out a vast charging infrastructure, made gas cars far more difficult to register and showered EV companies with massive subsidies. But the United States can’t ape China’s command-and-control economic model, which is inseparable from its system of one-party rule. If Washington outcompetes Beijing, it will be by leveraging America’s free market strengths. | The Washington Post ($)

A reversal in electric vehicle ambitions has resulted in a hit of at least $65bn for the global car industry in the past year as executives warned of more pain ahead in resetting their strategies. Carmakers were forced to overhaul their EV product and investment plans following a radical reversal in climate policy in the U.S., with companies that had made the biggest pivot away from petrol hit the hardest. The cancellation of EV credits in the U.S. and President Donald Trump’s determination to further roll back regulations to cut vehicle emissions mean industry executives now expect EVs to account for just 5% of America’s new vehicle market in the coming years — about half the current level. In addition to sweeping regulatory changes in the U.S., Bernstein analyst Stephen Reitman said Stellantis and other carmakers left consumers behind as they tried to replicate the early success Tesla had when it revolutionized the EV market in the US. Their shortcoming was failing to offer vehicles that met drivers’ price and range expectations, while charging infrastructure was also lacking. Since then, Tesla too has suffered a significant decline in EV sales due to competition from Chinese rivals and backlash to Elon Musk’s political activism, prompting it to end production of its top-end Model S and X cars. | Financial Times ($)

A legal clash between the Trump administration and California over auto-pollution rules is coming to a head, with enormous financial implications for EV makers including Tesla and traditional automakers dependent on fossil-fuel vehicles. California is challenging an unorthodox move by congressional Republicans to kill a waiver allowing the state to enact its own emissions regulations. If California wins, it could force U.S. automakers to comply with two diametrically opposed regulatory schemes: President Donald Trump’s anti-EV policy and California’s pro-EV regime, which 11 other states have adopted. | Reuters ($)

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which President Trump signed into law during his first term, is set to be reviewed by the summer. The text of the U.S.M.C.A. says the review must be completed by July 2026. Mr. Trump and his advisers have indicated that the three-country pact could be scrapped altogether. Instead, the United States could end up with bilateral deals with Canada and Mexico, the advisers have suggested. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. That could be catastrophic for companies that have structured their business around the trade agreement. Trillions of dollars of trade happens under the pact, and leaving it could cause pain for American farmers and automakers and dent U.S. economic growth. Some trade experts and executives believe the idea of abandoning the North American trade deal is probably a pressure tactic from a president who has walked back from some of his biggest economic threats. But Mr. Trump has been dismissive when asked about the future of the agreement. “There’s no real advantage to it — it’s irrelevant,” he said in January. “Canada wants it. They need it.” | The New York Times ($)

Just over a year after President Donald Trump announced his plan to implement a broad swath of tariffs on global friend and foe alike, their impact on new-vehicle prices has started to reach dealer lots. But not equally. A VIN-level analysis of new-vehicle pricing data gathered daily from franchised dealer websites nationwide and sorted by country of origin found manufacturers’ retail prices rising fastest over the last seven months on vehicles assembled in some of America’s closest allies: Canada, Japan, Germany and Mexico. The study, conducted by data firm CatalystIQ, looked at millions of advertised vehicle prices in the U.S. from the third quarter of 2025 until early February to include automaker pricing adjustments baked into model-year changeovers. It found that sticker prices on vehicles assembled in Canada had shot up almost 10 percent over the last seven months, while those of South Korean-assembled vehicles had actually declined slightly over the same period. | Automotive News ($)

Ford is promising to deliver an EV truck next year that starts at $30,000 and can compete with Chinese automakers without undermining profit margins. A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking, and a bounty program will help the company hit that target, Ford said Tuesday. The company said at the time that its line of EVs would be built on a universal platform with single-piece aluminum unicastings — large components cast as one piece to eliminate parts and allow for faster assembly — and lithium iron phosphate batteries with tech licensed from China’s CATL. The focus of the bounty program was efficiency. Numerical metrics were assigned to every aspect of the UEV, including vehicle mass, aerodynamic drag, and even specific vehicle parts. In practice, this meant Ford might decide to use a more expensive part if it helped decrease the weight of the EV, thereby making it more efficient and cost-effective. A natural place to focus was on the battery, which can account for about 40% of a vehicle’s total expense. A lighter, more efficient vehicle allows Ford to use a smaller battery, which reduces cost. The end result will be an EV truck with about 15% more range, or 50 miles, than an equivalent pickup powered by gas. The efficiency push also led the team to adopt manufacturing tactics adopted and popularized by Tesla, including the use of aluminum unicastings and moving from a 12-volt system to a 48-volt power system that will be used for some vehicle functions. | TechCrunch ($)

Renault Group has managed to cut development time to less than two years for its newest EV, the Twingo minicar, in an effort to match the speed and efficiency of Chinese rivals. Now, it’s trying to reduce new-model costs by up to 40 percent, using lessons learned from its Shanghai R&D center, CEO Francois Provost said. or Renault and Provost, cutting the so-called entry ticket price is an existential quest. Renault’s future viability can be ensured only by matching Chinese automakers’ development times and costs, they say. | Automotive News ($)

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China

The U.S. has long been closed to China’s fast-moving automakers. But it seems America is now willing to entertain ideas about lowering the barriers to entry. On Friday, Bloomberg reported exclusively that Ford CEO Jim Farley spoke to senior Trump administration officials about a potential framework in which Chinese automakers could build cars in America. The idea discussed last month involved Chinese carmakers partnering with U.S. companies through joint ventures in which the American company holds a controlling stake, according to people familiar with the matter. Both partners would share profits and technology in the JV, the people said. No decision has been made and the discussion was characterized as informal and preliminary. Still, the setup is intriguing — partly because it mirrors what China did three decades ago. Back then, Beijing required Western automakers to partner with the country’s still-fledgling local manufacturers if they wanted to open factories there. For a while, the concept benefited both sides. It handed companies like General Motors and Volkswagen access to a rapidly growing market, while providing Chinese companies with technology and manufacturing expertise. The balance of power has since shifted. The discussion took place days after President Donald Trump indicated that he’d be open to allowing Chinese automakers into the US if they built plants and hired Americans. They’re already close: Canada has decided to allow some Chinese EVs into the country, while BYD vehicles are becoming commonplace in Mexico. Gaining a foothold in the U.S. would have massive implications for domestic automakers, their supply chains and consumers. China’s carmakers have rapidly gained market share in Europe and South America with lower-cost models that feature advanced batteries and software. Once allowed into the U.S., there’s no reason they can’t achieve the same there. | Bloomberg ($)

President Donald Trump spooked the U.S. automobile industry last month when he told business leaders during a visit to Detroit that he would “love” if Chinese carmakers built plants in the U.S., creating jobs and hiring “your friends and your neighbors”. Hints by GEELY that it could enter the U.S. market within the next three years, have put American auto executives on edge over the possibility that the world’s second-largest car market could soon have cut-throat competition with Chinese rivals that has swept across Europe, south-east Asia and Latin America. Executives in the U.S. and China remain cautious about the possibility of a sudden policy shift in Washington ahead of the president’s planned visit to China in April, where a trade deal could be signed. Tu Le, founder of Detroit-based consultancy Sino Auto Insights, said there has been a jump in enquiries from anxious North American manufacturers seeking advice on the question of whether they should defend against Chinese competition or whether it was better to partner with the rivals. Mark Wakefield, global automotive market lead at consultancy AlixPartners, also said senior leaders at U.S. carmakers were feeling “quite paranoid and concerned” about the prospect of Chinese rivals entering the U.S. market. | Financial Times ($)

The impending entry of Chinese automakers into Canada will introduce a set of unfamiliar, competitive brands to the country, but whether the change will be merely disruptive or mark a wholesale reshaping of the retail side of the industry has auto experts divided.“This is not a new player, this is a new operating system,” Paul Antony, CEO of MAP Investco, told attendees during a panel discussion at the Automotive News Canada Congress in Toronto Feb. 12. The cost, quality and technology of Chinese electric vehicles, plus the vertical integration and iterative abilities of the automakers, are a significant departure from the Canadian status quo, he added. While Chinese brands entering Canada represent a reboot of the system, he said, the change is not without opportunity. Consumers facing high new-vehicle prices could find relief, while local dealership groups are going to land franchise or distribution deals, Antony said, as the likes of BYD, Chery and SAIC Motor circle the market. | Automotive News ($)

When it comes to electric vehicles, Detroit was in denial for too long. Then it panicked and launched a flurry of flawed initiatives and hurried Hail Marys. That knee-jerk reaction is now costing the auto companies—and America—a fortune. How did we get here? The easy answer—that American consumers simply never wanted electric vehicles—is a lazy one. The harder truth is that Detroit’s retreat from EVs is the result of a spectacular cascade of failures: by automakers who never took the transition seriously, dealers who actively undermined it, and a political environment that turned the simple act of buying an electric car into a toxic political statement. This matters because America is now falling behind in what may be the most consequential industrial transformation since the automobile itself. Batteries that power electric vehicles are the same ones America needs to power next-generation products like drones, humanoid robots, and AI data centers. These technologies are crucial to our national security. | The Free Press

Why are Chinese EVs so cheap? Comparing costs between Western and Chinese automakers in China shows that subsidies matter, but they’re only part of the story. Chinese carmakers benefit from fundamentally lower cost structures, driven by tighter control over their supply chains and a stronger focus on the China market—both of which significantly reduce operating costs. They also make more aggressive use of supplier-backed financing, a practice Beijing is now cracking down on. These advantages will narrow somewhat as Chinese EV makers expand abroad and their costs rise. Even so, closing the cost gap would require Western OEMs to follow a difficult path—investing more deeply in China to build local R&D and supplier ties, while cutting costs and jobs at home. That strategy increasingly puts automakers at odds with Western governments whose industrial policies are geared toward protecting domestic auto employment and value creation. | Rhodium Group

Back in 2018, when Donald Trump was first menacing the global trade system, the world’s largest car market suddenly went into reverse. After decades of uninterrupted growth, car sales in China began to backslide as its economy sputtered. Foreign carmakers, which then controlled around three-fifths of the market, were hit hard. Now forecasters are expecting China’s car market to once again go backwards. Local carmakers, which dominate the market today thanks to their prowess in electric vehicles (EVs), may bear the brunt this time. Even so, foreign carmakers will not be spared as Chinese rivals accelerate their expansion abroad. The scale of the current reversal in China is still uncertain, but the hazard lights are flashing. Having returned to growth in 2021, annual sales of cars hit 23.8m last year, around 4% more than in 2024, according to the China Passenger Car Association (cpca), a government-backed trade body. Yet in the final quarter sales fell every month compared with the year before. The ever-hopeful cpca expects sales to remain flat this year, but others are far more pessimistic. Bernstein, a broker, predicts a decline of 5-9%. There are other signs of trouble. Last month the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, another state-backed trade group, appears to have deferred the publication of its weekly sales data—a sure sign of growing anxiety over weakening numbers. What is more, after years of bumper growth, even the sales of EVs may dip this year, thinks Gavekal, a research firm. | The Economist ($)

China, which is still the world's top carbon emitter, has been building an unrivalled green energy grid. The country's leader Xi Jinping told the United Nations in 2020 that China would aim to hit peak emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. This goal now appears to be within reach with analysts from Carbon Brief saying its CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 21 months. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's White House has been pedalling back American commitment to green energy - last week it reversed a key scientific ruling that supports all federal action to curb emissions. So Beijing finds itself in an unexpected position: at the helm of a renewables revolution. This has been driven by both Beijing's ambition as well as the competition that it unleashed. So much so that there has been an oversupply: of panels, key components and solar power. This has sparked price wars and a sharp decline in electricity rates, which has battered Chinese firms in the renewables supply chain. The speed of the transition has raised concerns that opposition from locals and environmental questions have been swept aside, while communities that powered its coal industry are being left behind. It has been an extraordinary expansion. Bejing has focused on three key industries: electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. Already, China makes more solar panels than the rest of the world combined. | BBC

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Autonomy & Robotics

The 6th-gen Waymo Driver cuts the sensor count dramatically: 13 cameras (down from 29), four lidars (down from five), and six radar units, a 42% reduction in total sensors compared to the 5th-gen system running on the Jaguar I-PACE fleet. Despite the reduction, Waymo claims the new suite delivers greater resolution, range, and compute power. At the core of the camera system sits a 17-megapixel imager that Waymo says is a generation ahead of other automotive cameras in resolution, dynamic range, and low-light sensitivity. The lidar system leverages industry-wide cost reductions over the past five years, with custom-designed chips and optical components built in California. Short-range lidars provide centimeter-scale accuracy for navigating around pedestrians, car doors, and other urban obstacles. The entire package is designed for weather resilience with hydrophobic coatings, mechanical cleaning systems, and modular sensor components that can be swapped for specific climate conditions. Waymo has been testing its 6th-gen system in some of the snowiest cities in the country, validating operations in winter weather that the I-PACE fleet was never designed to handle. The cost reduction is significant. As we reported when Waymo shut down the “can’t scale” argument with its rapid Texas expansion, the 6th-gen Driver is expected to cost less than $20,000 per unit (on top of the vehicle cost), more than a 50% reduction from the 5th-gen system. | The Electrek

China’s humanoid robotics industry is bustling. More than 14,500 automatons were delivered last year globally, up from around 3,000 in 2024, according to company reports and estimates from Omdia, a research firm. Nearly all came from China. AGIBOT and Unitree Robotics, the country’s two leading humanoid-makers, accounted for around three-quarters of the total; Elon Musk’s Tesla shipped just 150 of its Optimus bots. What is more, China is also home to the world’s deepest supply chain for humanoids. This worries some in the West who believe that humanoids will eventually become one of the largest industries in the world. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, reckons that 1bn could be wandering about by 2050, with annual spending in excess of $7.5trn. For now, however, the path from back-flipping bots to a viable business is unclear. Most humanoids being purchased are, like those at the gala, purely for show. Few do any real work. China’s state will probably remain the biggest source of demand for some time. Without local governments buying the machines, it would be difficult to keep the more than 100 Chinese humanoid-makers alive—along with the thousands of suppliers that increasingly rely on them. It is not the first time China has lavished money on a new technology before there is much of a market for it. But doing so in the case of humanoids could prove a costly waste. | The Economist ($)

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Digital marketing has been in flux ever since the first banner ad appeared online in 1994. Each new digital format — from video to podcasts to social media — has spawned its own set of tech tools and self-styled gurus promising killer results, even as just as many skeptics warned against the hype. Spending on digital advertising overtook traditional media in 2019 and soared to $350 billion in the United States last year, according to eMarketer, a research firm. The rise of chatbot marketing is happening as A.I. tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini hit mass adoption. OpenAI has said that 800 million people use ChatGPT weekly, while Google says its Gemini chatbot has more than 750 million monthly users. Some see A.I. marketing as an extension of old-fashioned search engine optimization, or SEO, which brands have done for decades to try to ensure they show up on the first page of Google’s results. The new A.I. marketing is called AEO or GEO, for “answer engine optimization” or “generative engine optimization.” Like SEO, it involves running test queries, analyzing the results and making recommendations on how to improve them. For A.I. companies like OpenAI, this means a business opportunity. The company has said it will begin selling ads alongside the answers provided by ChatGPT. (OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.) In the meantime, companies are trying to influence what the chatbots say. To do so, they are focused on providing specific information — lots of it — for the chatbots to soak up. And they are homing in on certain online corners that chatbots view as trustworthy and authentic, including Reddit, LinkedIn and Quora. | The New York Times ($)

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Aviation & Space

A bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives would require the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to “streamline” its type certification process for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxis and other advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft. That could include the use of standards agreed upon by the developers themselves to prove the aircraft are fit to carry passengers. Introduced in the Senate by Senators Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), and John Curtis (R-Utah) and in the House by Representatives Troy Nehls (R-Texas), Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.), and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), the Aviation Innovation and Global Competitiveness Act contains an array of measures designed to simplify eVTOL air taxis’ path to market. | Flying

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1990 Porsche Singer 911 DLS (Dynamics and Lightweighting Study). | Tom Hartley Jnr

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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Automotive Ventures is excited to announce our investment in Skygrid Engineering.

Skygrid is building an intelligence orchestration layer that turns idle electric vehicle GPUs into a distributed AI compute network. |

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On this week's "Future of Mobility" segment on CBT News, we discuss our latest investment in SkyGrid Engineering. | CBT News ($)

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