Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | July 14 2025 | VIEW ONLINE

What We're Reading:

🚗

Automotive

The next time you rent a car, that ding on the door might not slip under the radar. Powerful new A.I.-driven tools are helping Hertz and other companies catch every little scratch, and puzzled renters are being asked to pay up. Hertz, one of the world’s largest car rental companies, debuted the technology last fall at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and it’s now in use at five other U.S. airports. Developed by a company called UVeye, the scanning system works by capturing thousands of high-resolution images from all angles as a vehicle passes through a rental lot’s gates at pickup and return. A.I. then compares those images and flags any discrepancies. The system automatically creates and sends damage reports. An employee reviews the report only if a customer flags an issue after receiving the bill. Hertz notes that fewer than 3% of vehicles scanned by the A.I. system show any billable damage. Still, unexpected charges for damage that’s barely visible to the naked eye are leaving renters wondering what’s going on. | The New York Times ($)In the oldest part of Toyota’s first U.S. assembly plant, where 40 years’ worth of Camry sedans have sprouted from disparate boxes of parts into finished vehicles, something that was long considered an industry pipe dream is coming into focus. The Japanese automaker will have the ability — or more accurately, the flexibility — to make almost any vehicle it needs, when it wants and all on the same line. A nearly $1.8 billion, decade-long project internally known as “K-flex” and initially undertaken as an innovative experiment in what could be done, is transforming the original part of the Georgetown plant, known as Line 1, into perhaps the most flexible auto assembly line in the world. How flexible? With the right logistics support, Line 1 will be able to build almost any Toyota vehicle designed on its TNGA-K global platform — the top-selling Camry and RAV4, whether hybrid, combustion or plug-in hybrid; larger crossovers including the Highlander and even the Sienna minivan, as well as skateboard-based EVs in that size range. | Automotive News ($)Automotive suppliers are under increasing pressure as they continue to face challenging market conditions. According to a recently study conducted by Roland Berger and Lazard, stagnant production volumes, geopolitical uncertainty, increasing competition and rising cost pressures have driven average profitability down to just 4.7%. Weak demand and challenging price negotiations with OEMs are placing additional strain on suppliers. While OEM profitability is still higher, it has also declined. That is predicted to put sustained pressure on supplier margins in the coming years. “What we are currently observing in the European and North American automotive supplier industry can best be described as a phase of ‘stagformation,’” says Felix Mogge, a partner at Roland Berger. “On the one hand, suppliers are facing stagnant volume growth, while on the other, they are undergoing a fundamental transformation that requires them to urgently reshape their business models. “While suppliers have slowly regained revenue growth since the Covid-19 pandemic, their profitability has structurally declined,” explains Mogge. “A significant portion of revenue growth has been driven by inflation, which has also increased costs. | AssemblyPorsche announced delivery figures for the first half of the year and, like a lot of other European luxury car companies recently, stalling sales in China remain a big issue for the German brand. Global shipments slumped 6% from the first half of 2024, with deliveries to China sinking 28% in the same period. | SherwoodFord and Stellantis are working to plug potential holes in their supplier contracts as they attempt to mitigate billions of dollars in U.S. tariff exposure and other costs within their supply chains. The automakers are forcing suppliers to sign onto more stringent terms in exchange for tariff cost relief and new business, according to supplier executives, attorneys and a Crain's Detroit Business review of contract terms. | Automotive News ($)

⚡️ EVs

One of Lucid Motors’ EVs went 749 miles on just one charge, having raced 100 miles ahead of the previous record, set in a Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ in Japan last month. As impressive as the feat is, it’s a long way from taking the crown away from combustion engines. According to Guinness World Records, the greatest distance driven on a single tank of fuel is 1,759 miles, achieved in an “unmodified fourth-generation Škoda Auto Superb.” | SherwoodRivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe told media that, “the [anti-EV] policy changes are bad for the world, bad for the U.S.” But he was quick to note, multiple times, that the shifting winds in Washington are actually good for Rivian in the long run. He was referring to the Trump administration’s now-successful push to eliminate various electric vehicle tax credits—including the $7,500 point-of-sale rebate for consumers—EV manufacturing incentives for automakers, and subsidies for green energy across the board. | The DriveThe electric-vehicle revolution has created a global rush for lithium, an essential component of EV batteries. Zimbabwe has one of the world’s largest lithium reserves and is the top supplier of the mineral in Africa. Its annual earnings from lithium exports surged from $1.8 million in total in 2018 to more than $80 million in the first quarter of 2025 alone, and experts still see untapped potential. Several of the country’s large lithium mines have been purchased or built by Chinese companies since late 2021. China has the world’s top EV industry and dominates the global lithium supply chain: About 70% of all lithium is processed there. As other nations race to catch up, Beijing has leaned into its long-standing role as a major investor in mining in Africa. In Zimbabwe, China’s relations with the government are particularly close, dating to when it backed eventual dictator Robert Mugabe’s guerrilla faction during the struggle for liberation in the 1960s. Mugabe’s successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, has supported Chinese takeovers of lithium mines, arguing they will bring economic growth for a country where close to half the population lives in poverty. But many residents in mining areas in Zimbabwe say the relationship with China is one of exploitation. The lithium boom has created little benefit for their communities, they argue, and in many ways has harmed them. Residents say they’ve been displaced from their homes by expanding operations at Chinese-run mines with little or no compensation. They say farmland has been degraded and water supplies contaminated. Some residents have complained that well-paying jobs in the mines are often filled by workers imported from China or Zimbabwe’s cities, while unions have criticized conditions and pay. Security crackdowns at the mines have resulted in arrests of illicit miners. | Rest of WorldStellantis is pulling back from hydrogen as a fueling option for its light commercial vehicles due to a lack of investment in infrastructure and incentives at national level. Fedele Ragusa, Stellantis senior product manager, told Fleet News: “It is not the right time to push hydrogen. There is no investment in incentives and infrastructure, so we are not pushing it commercially.” The move is part of a wider review of the global decarbonization strategy which has now shifted away from the target of becoming 100% zero emission by 2030, introduced by former CEO Carlos Tavares. Instead, Stellantis is focusing on a multi energy strategy which brings together full electric and internal combustion engines, plus “something in the middle,” according to Ragusa. This is likely to be plug-in hybrid or range extender. | Fleet News

🇨🇳

China

Michael Dunne from Dunne Insights in The New York Times: Most Americans have never even seen a BYD, and probably won’t anytime soon. BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” is essentially banned from American roads by tariffs imposed to protect U.S. automakers that double the price of imported Chinese plug-ins. Erecting tariff walls may buy the domestic auto industry some time, but it ultimately won't insulate American manufacturers from BYD or the bigger threat that it represents. The company embodies a Chinese industrial model that is leaving America in the dust. This model, which combines government financial support, methodical long-term planning and aggressive innovation, has already enabled China to achieve global dominance in a range of high-tech industries, from batteries to robotics to drones. Losing those markets to Chinese companies was bad enough. If the same happens in auto manufacturing, the impact would be far worse for America, due to the industry’s size and its economic, political and strategic importance. The success of BYD and several other upstart Chinese car brands should be a warning for U.S. auto manufacturing and our industrial sector as a whole. We need the courage to recognize how badly we are falling behind, shake off complacency and adopt an urgent government-led effort — think of a “Manhattan Project,” but for cars — to restore U.S. competitiveness. | The New York Times ($)The U.S. megabill that President Trump signed into law on July Fourth favors obsolete gasoline-powered cars and hands Chinese electric-vehicle companies a win globally, said the head of a Chinese auto industry group. “Chinese homegrown brands’ exports will see significant growth in the next few years, and the U.S. bill should give China greater room to develop in overseas markets,” said Cui Dongshu, the secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association, on Tuesday. He said the country’s companies would offer “intelligent EV models against the obsolete technology of internal-combustion-engine vehicles.” | The Wall Street Journal ($)Lei Jun, founder and chairman of Xiaomi Technology, the only tech company to have successfully diversified into making cars, couldn’t resist. Speaking at a triumphant launch event in Beijing late last month for Xiaomi’s second electric vehicle, a long-anticipated SUV, Lei pointedly mentioned Apple, which spent a decade and $10 billion trying to make a car before giving up last year. “Since Apple stopped developing its car, we’ve given special care to Apple users,” he said, noting that owners of the American giant’s iPhones would be able to seamlessly sync their devices to Xiaomi’s vehicles. The not-so-subtle dig was followed by a flex: Xiaomi then said it had received more than 289,000 orders for its new utility vehicle within an hour of its announcement, more than its first EV, a sedan launched in March 2024. Xiaomi succeeding where Apple failed has burnished Lei’s reputation, made his company one of the most valuable in China and shaken up both the tech and automobile industries. The collapse of Apple’s moonshot car program has only underscored the effectiveness of Xiaomi’s grounded approach, which took inspiration from proven designs from Tesla and Porsche AG while staying true to the affordable ethos that’s made it a cult brand for Gen Z consumers. | Automotive News ($)China’s auto sector is reeling from overcapacity and an extended price war, raising alarm among regulators and industry executives who warn the turmoil is undermining the sector's long-term viability. China's top leaders have pledged to step up regulation of aggressive price-cutting and support the orderly phasing out of outdated production capacity, state media reported earlier this month. LSEG data for 33 listed automakers headquartered in China show a broad deterioration in key financial metrics over the past six years, highlighting the impact of a brutal price war that began in 2023. | Reuters ($)John Jullens from Arthur D. Little observes that Chinese brands are challenging the automotive world order, especially in the EV sector, where the question is no longer if Chinese firms can compete but whether legacy automakers in the U.S. and elsewhere are ready. | John JullensAs the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” eliminates many clean-energy incentives in the U.S., China continues huge investments in wind and solar power, reportedly accounting for 74% of all projects now under construction worldwide. | The Atlantic

🤖

Autonomy, Robotics & AI

“Driverless cars in an urban setting don’t work because they work too well,” Malcolm Gladwell said onstage at The Wall Street Journal’s Leadership Institute at Cannes Lions late last month. “If every car on the road is a driverless car, then there is no penalty whatsoever to pedestrians misbehaving,” Gladwell later said. Gladwell shared a story about making an episode of his podcast, “Revisionist History,” regarding Waymo in 2021. During the experience in Phoenix, his producer hopped in a vehicle, while Gladwell ran alongside it. He says it would grind to a halt whenever he jumped in front of it, “because it’s got like 58 sensors.” He says it would even “sit there patiently waiting” as he ran circles around it. Waymo, which operates autonomous taxi service in five U.S. cities with more to come, outfits its vehicles with a combination of lidar, radar, cameras, sensor data, custom maps and AI to perceive their surroundings and make decisions. He then described a hypothetical situation in which 11-year-old boys decided to play a game of soccer on 42nd street in Manhattan. Today, that might mean they “get hit by a car and killed,” Gladwell said. Waymo vehicles, however, are “going to stop and they’re going to wait there for hours until you finish their game,” he said. | INCWith no homegrown tech giants and more onerous regulations, Europe has largely stayed out of the autonomous-driving race. Now, it’s hitting the gas, eager to hedge its bets on the future of the auto industry and foster innovation after years of sluggish growth. Hamburg is the emerging epicenter of the region’s robotaxi push. About 30 specially adapted versions of the Volkswagen ID.Buzz electric minivan drive themselves around the city’s crowded streets, bearing the black-and-bronze livery of the company’s ride-pooling service, MOIA. With the technology still in test mode, human backup drivers sit behind the wheel ready to take over if it misfires, and rides are only bookable by staff. Moia plans to start carrying regular Hamburgers in the coming months. Americans will likely be next. In April, Volkswagen said it would deploy thousands of self-driving minivans in the U.S. through an agreement with Uber, starting in Los Angeles in 2026. | The Wall Street Journal ($)General Motors has put vehicles enabled with technology used in its failed robotaxi venture Cruise back onto the road. The Detroit automaker confirmed with the Detroit Free Press that it would accelerate development of GM's hands-free, eyes-off advanced driver assist system by “testing a limited number of Cruise Bolt vehicles on select highways in Michigan, Texas, and the San Francisco Bay Area,” according to a statement. The platform underpinning the vehicles, however, is new ― built by GM and former engineers that integrates technology of its advanced driver assist system, Super Cruise. | Detroit Free PressWaymo has a problem. They have a great product — a self-driving taxi that people love to ride, and even prefer to Uber — but they need a lot of custom vehicles to meet demand as they scale up to new cities. Their existing fleet is based on the Jaguar I-Pace. The I-Pace is a sleek electric crossover SUV, a great-looking car for 1-2 people to ride in, but it’s quite expensive. The I-Pace itself costs about $70,000 in the United States. Estimates have varied, but it’s believed they cost somewhere around $150,000 per vehicle right now, with some estimates higher. Enter the Zeekr RT, the world’s first mass-produced, purpose-built robotaxi. Like the Jaguars, these will be integrated in the United States, at the Waymo plant in Mesa, Arizona. And they’re already being tested on city streets. | Chris PaxtonExcellent visualization of Waymo's commercialization timeline from BloombergNEF - Waymo has managed to compress the timeline from roughly 4 years in Phoenix to just about 14 months in Austin and Atlanta. | @1444_krisWaymo and Tesla are racing to win the driverless taxi market, but only Tesla appears to be going above the speed limit to get there. A number of Tesla robotaxi videos show the vehicles going five or more miles per hour above the speed limit. Meanwhile, Waymo’s policy is to follow the posted speed limit, though the company says it will go below for construction areas or slightly above to change a lane, for example. | SherwoodTesla has applied to test and operate autonomous vehicles in Arizona in a bid to bring its fledgling robotaxi service to the Metro Phoenix area, the Arizona Department of Transportation confirmed to TechCrunch. Tesla contacted the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) under the Arizona Department of Transportation on June 26 to begin the certification process, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The company, which launched a limited robotaxi service in South Austin last month, expressed interest in operating within the Phoenix Metro area, according to the department. | TechCrunch ($)Phil Koopman lays out a proposed framework for autonomous vehicle (AV) regulation: a four-layer process based on existing regulatory and legal mechanisms will let us implement increasingly more effective safety guardrails as the technology matures, without stifling innovation. Each layer provides more robust guardrails to buy time for the next layer to mature. Think of it as graduated sets of training wheels for safety oversight. The layers are: (1) regulatory recalls, (2) tort liability reform, (3) regulatory rulemaking, and (4) product liability reform. | Phil Koopman

⚓️ Marine

The largest container ship ever built in the United States is the Kaimana Hila. Completed in Philadelphia in 2019, it can transport 3,220 shipping containers, each 20 feet long. The largest container ships now on the seas, however, were built by Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Holdings near Shanghai, and have a capacity of 24,346 containers. They are, quite simply, in a different league. That comparison underscores the misguided logic behind the Trump administration’s plan to attack China’s maritime industry dominance. Starting Oct. 14, the administration aims to tax imports that arrive in Chinese-owned or Chinese-built ships, as well as any vehicles arriving in foreign-built vehicle carriers. (In some cases, the fees would be forgiven if the owner takes delivery of a similar U.S.-built vessel within three years.) For good measure, the White House also wants to hike tariffs on imports of Chinese-made shipping containers themselves, as well as ship-to-shore cranes and the chassis on which trucks move containers to and from ports. | Bloomberg ($)

✈️ Aviation & Space

Collapsing electric-vehicle sales, political fallout and an AI chatbot publishing antisemitic posts—much of Elon Musk’s business empire is in disarray. But the executive’s rocket-and-satellite company remains as dominant as ever, riding high on the strength of technologies that rivals haven’t mastered and deep relationships with U.S. government officials. Privately held SpaceX has been working on a sale of employee shares that would value it at $400 billion, up 14% from six months ago, according to people familiar with the situation. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1992 Ferrari F40 in Azzurro Hyperion over blue Alcantara trim. | RM Sotheby's

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

Forwarded this email and not yet a subscriber?

Subscribe Now

📺 In The News

📢

Mark Hollmer from Automotive News summarizes his findings from the AutosBuzz conference in Berlin. | Automotive News ($)

📢

On this week's "Future of Automotive" segment on CBT News, we discuss how Toyota’s $1.8 billion factory overhaul could future-proof U.S. auto production. | CBT News ($)

Enjoying this newsletter? Please share with others!

👀 Automotive Ventures Company to Watch

🌟 Go Eve's DockChain product provides a flexible EV charging system designed for speed and scale. | GoEve.com

🎪 Upcoming Industry Events

Northeast Ohio Auto Dealers Association Annual MeetingJuly 22 | Stow, OHSpeaker(Link)Automotive AI SummitJuly 22 | Virtual EventSpeaker(Link)MEMA WebinarJuly 29 | Virtual EventSpeaker(Link)CapitalOne AcceleratorAug 4 | Dallas, TXJudge(Link)