Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | Jan 26 2026 | VIEW ONLINE

We hosted the second Automotive Ventures “Future of Mobility” Conference at the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta. The theme was AI’s impact on Mobility.

Here are the top takeaways.

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What We're Reading:

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Automotive

Upside-down, also called negative equity, is when a new-car buyer owes more on their trade-in than the trade-in is worth. An increase in negative equity makes it harder for dealers to get new-car buyers financed affordably, analysts said. According to Edmunds, 29.3% of trade-ins toward a new-car purchase carried negative equity in the fourth quarter of 2025. That was the highest share since the first quarter of 2021, when it was 31.9%, Edmunds said. The average amount owed on underwater trade-ins in Q4 2025 was a record $7,214, vs. a recent low of around $4,000 in Q1 2021, according to the Edmunds research. That’s on average. But 27% of upside-down trade-ins carried $10,000 or more in negative equity, also a record, Edmunds said. | Wards Auto

Today, most automakers rely on a module-based architecture, where individual cells are grouped into rectangular modules, which are then assembled into a battery pack that is bolted to the car’s chassis. It’s a proven, flexible approach used by most of the industry, but it comes with trade-offs in complexity and space efficiency. Modules require more parts, which increases the weight of the pack. The newer cell-to-pack batteries eliminate modules by stacking cells directly into the pack, resulting in better energy density and lower weight. Volvo Cars is pushing the concept further with their new EX60 by adopting cell-to-body construction. In this design, the battery pack itself becomes a load-bearing part of the vehicle’s structure. That means sections of the floor directly integrate the cells, and they effectively become part of the car’s skeleton. The approach stems from the automaker’s quest to reduce parts and weight. | Inside EVsThe Volta Foundation has published their "2025 Annual Battery Report." 131 slides of great content on the state of EV batteries. | Volta Foundation

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China

The Biden administration levied steep 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs and then essentially banned them for reasons of national security. (U.S. officials have said that the cars could transmit sensitive data back to Beijing.) For its part, the Trump administration has continued to keep out Chinese imports and push American-made gas cars instead. Recently, however, the wall around Chinese cars has started to crack. Earlier this month, in a speech at the Detroit Economic Club, President Trump expressed enthusiasm for letting Chinese automakers build their vehicles in the United States: “If they want to come in and build the plant and hire you and hire your friends and your neighbors, that’s great,” he said. Then, last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country would open the door to China’s cheap cars, slashing the tariff rate from 100 percent to just 6 percent. Canada’s car industry is deeply intertwined with America’s; those 100 percent tariffs were enacted in solidarity with Washington. If Chinese imports can gain a foothold in America’s neighbor to the north, then perhaps it is only a matter of time before they do so in the U.S. as well. “It’s the first step,” Dan Hearsch, an auto-industry analyst at the consulting firm AlixPartners, says. “It’s an inevitability that Americans will buy Chinese cars.” These developments don’t mean that a Xiaomi Technology YU7 will be in millions of American driveways by the end of this year. But the road map for how Chinese cars could come to the U.S. has never been clearer. The deal to spin off TikTok, finalized this week, proves that any cybersecurity concerns around Chinese EVs are surmountable if policymakers want the cars badly enough. Similar to how TikTok is now run by a U.S. entity, Chinese-designed cars could be manufactured in factories in Michigan or Ohio—even with American-made parts. Reuters reported that the Trump administration has pushed out the U.S. Department of Commerce official whose office spearheaded the ban on Chinese car tech. (The personnel change “should not be read that deeply into as reflective of broader Administration thinking or decision-making,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, says.) | The Atlantic ($)

President Trump has an unconcealed hunger for natural resources from abroad and the power they could grant him. He declared that the United States intervened in Venezuela to “take the oil,” betting that investors would put up at least $100 billion to revive a decrepit industry. His gamble is that countries will still want to buy oil from America to power their cars, trucks, ships and planes for decades to come. Though China is the world’s largest oil importer, its leader, Xi Jinping, is less brash about coveting foreign resources. The country’s leadership is pushing intensively at substituting electricity for oil. Chinese technology companies are paving the way for a world that will be powered by electric motors rather than gas-guzzling engines. It is a decisively 21st-century approach not just to solve its own energy problems, but also to sell batteries and other electric products to everyone else. Canada is its newest buyer of EVs; in a rebuke of Mr. Trump, its prime minister, Mark Carney, lowered tariffs on the cars as part of a new trade deal. | The New York Times ($)

Not long ago, few would buy the idea that a Chinese electric-vehicle maker such as BYD could sweep European buyers off their feet, competing against Volkswagen, and even such luxury brands as BMW and Porsche. Yet BYD is leading a pack of Chinese automakers whose global export onslaught has surpassed even bullish expectations. The Shenzhen-based automaker delivered more than a million vehicles outside China in 2025, the company said, more than double the previous year’s total. China surpassed Japan in 2023 as the world’s No. 1 auto exporter. Last year, it shipped 7.1 million vehicles from its pool of domestic automakers, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, up from 5.9 million the previous year. BYD, which replaced Tesla as the world’s biggest EV seller, is one of Beijing’s national champions. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Chinese car company CHERY Automobile Co. is laying the groundwork to sell its electric vehicles in Canada, after last week’s announcement that Prime Minister Mark Carney had struck a deal with Beijing under which Canada will reduce tariffs on a limited number of Chinese-made EVs. Chery appears to be jockeying to be the first Chinese car company to sell mainstream passenger cars in Canada. Several Western automakers, including Tesla and Volvo Cars, manufacture cars in China, but homegrown Chinese car companies have yet to enter the Canadian market. So far, China has stuck mainly to taxis and buses, rather than mass-market passenger cars. | The Globe and Mail ($)

BYD is aiming to increase deliveries to markets outside China by nearly 25% as the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker grapples with challenges at home. The company aims to sell 1.3 million cars outside China in 2026. That compares with the 1.05 million overseas deliveries it made last year. While surging overseas sales helped the Chinese automaker overtake Tesla to become the world’s No. 1 EV maker last year, demand at home is coming under pressure as China scales back some incentives supporting EV purchases and domestic competition heats up. | Bloomberg ($)

Chinese lithium battery companies like CATL, BYD, and Gotion are now building factories on nearly every continent. The trend challenges traditional narratives about “Made in China,” which often center on cheap labor, heavy pollution, and government subsidies. WIRED found 68 battery factories outside of China owned by a Chinese company that have been built or announced over the past decade. The worldwide expansion of Chinese battery factories signifies the country is entering a new phase of manufacturing. Chinese companies have become so efficient and technologically advanced that they can now relocate their factories anywhere and still find ways to be more competitive than local players. The world is still grappling with what this paradigm shift will mean for the future of energy and geopolitics. But the batteries produced by these factories are already reshaping the transition to clean energy. The growing presence of Chinese batteries—and the overseas factories that make them—could transform everything from local labor relations to how technology is transferred across borders. | Wired ($)

Geely Holding released its five-year strategic blueprint “One Geely, Leading through Innovation and Integration” for 2030. Under the plan, Geely Holding aims to strengthen top-level coordination and global collaboration, build a strategic capability system, become a leader among global automakers, and pioneer high-quality globalization for Chinese enterprises. Geely Holding Group also announced its key targets for 2030: to achieve global sales exceeding 6.5 million vehicles (passenger cars + commercial vehicles), revenue exceeding 1 trillion RMB, ranking among the top five global automakers in sales, reached a new energy vehicle penetration rate of 75%, sales outside of China accounting for more than one-third of the Group’s annual total, and develop world-class new energy architectures covering A- to E-class models that reduces the average R&D cycle and overall cost per model by over 30%. | Geely

Mexico City is abuzz with cheap, battery-powered compacts made by the likes of China’s BYD. The world’s largest EV-maker nearly doubled its Mexican sales volume last year and now accounts for about seven of every 10 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles sold there, according to estimates from BloombergNEF. EVs or plug-ins account for 9% of new-car sales, making it a growing segment in Mexico that many other global brands have bypassed. It’s a sign of how Chinese automakers see opportunity in developing economies with infrastructure challenges, fragmented distribution and lower income levels. Middle-class city-dwellers are lured by these EVs’ affordability. | Bloomberg ($)

Renault Group has stopped producing fuel-powered vehicles in China, but it hasn’t left the country. Its tech center in Shanghai, tasked with churning out vehicles at a fast pace dubbed China speed, is leveraging China’s EV ecosytem to cut the development cycle for two derivatives of the Twingo E-Tech subcompact (minicar) electric car to a brisk 16 months. Renault has set a goal of developing new models from “concept freeze” to start of production in 100 weeks or less, to match new rivals from China who have taken increasing market share in Europe. The ACDC was established in Shanghai in October 2024 “to plug directly into China’s fast-moving EV ecosystem, accelerating time-to-market, scouting innovation, and building strategic partnerships,” Renault said on its website. In addition to engineering, the center also oversees purchasing and cost control for new model development. | Automotive News ($)

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Autonomy & Robotics

Digital insurance company Lemonade is launching a product for users of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which the insurer promises will cut per-mile rates by “approximately 50%.” It’s one of the first products geared toward pricing insurance based on how software systems handle driving, and a sign that companies may look to create new lines of business as partial autonomy and true self-driving start to proliferate. Lemonade said on Wednesday that it is leveraging “vehicle telemetry data that was previously unavailable” thanks to a “technical collaboration with Tesla,” though the insurance company declined to offer more specifics. Lemonade said it would train its own usage-based risk prediction models to determine when a driver is using Full Self-Driving or operating the vehicle themselves, and price accordingly. Lemonade is calling the new product “Autonomous Car insurance.” | TechCrunch ($)

Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley is predicting the “Cambrian explosion of bots”—a time in the not-so-distant-future in which fully autonomous vehicles, drones, humanoids and industrial robots grow large enough in population to rival the human race. His theory is deceptive in its simplicity: Anything that can be automated will be automated, he says, even humans. American companies either build that future themselves or cede their future to the countries and companies that do. “If we don’t, someone else will,” Jonas says. In a report last month, Jonas forecast 1.4 billion in annual robot sales by 2050, bringing in $25 trillion in global revenue. Many of those, he says, will be drones or autonomous vehicles, though they will also include hundreds of millions of humanoids and home robots. Each will make decisions about how to move around the world without the input of humans. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Hyundai Motor Company's labor union in South Korea warned the automaker on Thursday against deploying humanoid ‌robots without union approval, saying the robots would bring "employment shocks". Hyundai's plan to deploy humanoid robots starting in 2028 has sent its shares rallying to record highs, but it was not welcome news for workers, the ‌union said in an internal letter reviewed by Reuters. "Remember that without labour–management agreement, not a single robot using new technology will be allowed to enter the workplace," the union said. Hyundai Motor ‍Group unveiled the production version of the Atlas humanoid robot, developed by its unit Boston Dynamics, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas early this month. It ⁠said that it aimed to build a factory capable of manufacturing ‍30,000 robot units annually by 2028 and that it planned to deploy humanoid ‌robots ‌at its U.S. plant in Georgia starting in 2028, with a goal to expand adoption across all production sites. The union accused Hyundai of seeking to boost profits by deploying robots to reduce workforce. | Reuters ($)

Chinese humanoid robotics developer UBTECH Robotics has reached a new agreement with Airbus to supply robots for use inside aircraft manufacturing facilities. The deal marks a fresh milestone in the company’s push to take its industrial humanoid robots beyond China and into some of the world’s most demanding production environments. Under the agreement, the aviation company has purchased the Chinese firm’s Walker S2 humanoid robot and will work with the developer to explore how robots can support aircraft manufacturing tasks. The robotics developer said the partnership will focus on testing and deploying humanoid robots in aviation manufacturing settings. Aircraft production requires high precision, strict safety standards, and reliable performance, making it a challenging environment for robotics. | Interesting Engineering

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Google search traffic to publishers declined globally by a third in the year to November, according to new Chartbeat data. In addition, referrals to more than 2,500 publisher websites from Google Discover, a feed served to users on Google’s native mobile apps and within its Android operating system, were down 21% year on year. Since May 2023, Google search referrals were down 21% globally, with Google Discover down 18% and all external referrals down 24%. In the U.S. only, referrals from organic Google search were down by 38% year on year and Google Discover was down 29%. Since May 2023, they were each were down by 22%. | PressGazette

Publishers expect traffic from search engines to decline by almost half (-43%) over the next three years, following recent dramatic declines in referrals from social media. The latest concerns are focused on Google’s AI Overviews, which now appear at the top of about 10% of search results in the United States and have been rapidly rolling out elsewhere. A number of studies show that the proportion of ‘Zero-click searches’ – where the user doesn’t click through to any website – increases significantly when these overviews are shown. Meanwhile, the separate ‘AI mode’ tab is now available in 120 markets, with full multi-modal capabilities from Gemini-3 providing more reasons to switch. Expectations vary, with a few optimists believing the negative impact of these changes will be less than 20%. At the other end of the scale, around a fifth of respondents expect a loss of more than 75% of their company’s search traffic. | Reuters Institute

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Aviation & Space

SpaceX resisted going public for years. Then came the rise of artificial intelligence. Elon Musk’s rocket maker became one of the country’s most valuable private companies due in part to its ability to develop risky space businesses outside the scrutiny of public investors. Its executives liked to say the company wouldn’t IPO until its rockets were regularly flying to Mars. That was before the rush to build data centers for AI computing prompted Musk, Jeff Bezos and others to propose putting them in space. The idea has prompted skepticism from many engineers, given the technical challenges posed by building solar-powered AI data centers that zip around Earth. But it has continued to gain traction and Musk has become obsessed with the idea of SpaceX being the first to do it, people familiar with the matter said. Such a feat would be hard to attempt without the billions of dollars in capital an initial public offering could deliver in one fell swoop. The billionaire also sees a SpaceX IPO as a way to help his AI company, xAI, catch up to rivals, some of the people said. Musk has a long-running rivalry with OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, who last year explored buying a rocket company to deploy satellites with AI computing capabilities into space. Two of xAI’s competitors, OpenAI and Anthropic, are eyeing their own IPOs this year, and Musk seems eager for SpaceX to hit the public market first, some of the people said. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

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Investing

Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management has published their "Big Ideas 2026": focusing on critical inflection points across AI, robotics, energy, digital finance, and biology. | ARK Invest

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1967 Ferrari Dino 206 S. | RM Sotheby's

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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