Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | July 7 2025 | VIEW ONLINE

What We're Reading:

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Automotive

Ferrari has succeeded in boosting sales while adhering to the maxim of Enzo Ferrari, who founded the firm in 1947, that it should sell “one less car than the market demands”. Despite its expansion, Ferrari insists that it is as exclusive as ever, having grown fastest in places such as the Middle East where sales were once small. In recent years it has also raised prices at a far faster pace than in the past. As Stephen Reitman of Bernstein, a broker, points out, the price of new models used to be 3-5% higher than those they superseded, whereas the new 12Cilindri is a whopping 30% more than the 812 Superfast it replaces. The firm is able to charge such eye-watering prices thanks to the devotion of its loyal fans. Some 80% of customers are already owners. Many make a pilgrimage to the factory; some, overcome by emotion, are said to shed a tear. Judging the mood of its customers by keeping in close contact with around 180 dealerships worldwide allows Ferrari to draw its most avid collectors into an inner circle. Tariff-induced price rises have made no difference to orders from America. | The Economist ($)

The Tesla Model Y disrupted everything by becoming the world’s best-selling car in 2023. It did so with an 11% jump in volume, up to 1,223,000 units—nearly 150,000 more than the Toyota Motor Corporation RAV4. It was the first EV to sit atop the global sales chart, and through 2024, it looked like it might retain its spot. Data shows, however, that the RAV4 pulled ahead and closed out last year as the world’s best-selling car with 1,187,000 units. JATO Dynamics automotive analyst Felipe Munoz tallied up the totals, pulling from national statistics offices, dealer associations, and various contacts in the industry. The Model Y still came extremely close to the RAV4, as it lost out by an estimated 2,000 units. That’s impressive considering that Model Y production slowed down when a facelift was rolled out mid-year. Sales of Tesla’s crossover dropped 3% and the brief manufacturing halt likely had something to do with it. | The Drive

U.S. auto sales are losing momentum after a springtime surge fueled by shoppers racing to buy cars before President Donald Trump’s auto tariffs drove up prices. The annual automotive selling rate likely fell to 15 million in June — the slowest pace in the last 12 months — from 17.6 million in April as consumers grow cautious about big-ticket purchases over worries about the economy. With already high car prices expected to rise further as automakers manage billions of dollars in tariff costs, it may only get worse from here. | Bloomberg ($)

President Donald Trump suggested his administration would “have to take a look” at deporting Tesla CEO Elon Musk as the two former political allies escalated their feud over the budget bill making its way through Congress. Musk, a native of South Africa, is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Speaking outside the White House July 1, Trump was asked by a reporter if he would deport Musk. “I don’t know, we’ll have to take a look,” he said. The two earlier traded barbs on their social media platforms, Musk on X and Trump on Truth Social. | Automotive News ($)Tesla sales are in a deep funk. Elon Musk insists he doesn’t care. The electric-car pioneer is stuck in one of its worst sales streaks, with the company reporting Wednesday that global vehicle sales fell 13.5% in the second quarter, compared with a year ago. Vehicle deliveries also dropped 13% in the first quarter. “I’d encourage people to look beyond the bumps and potholes of the road immediately ahead of us,” Musk told investors in April. “Lift your gaze to the bright shining citadel on the hill.” Up on that hill is Musk’s promise of self-driving taxis and humanoid robots. Even though three-quarters of Tesla’s roughly $100 billion in revenue in 2024 came from selling cars, Musk has been telling investors that he has shifted his focus to transforming the company with autonomous vehicles and robots. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Automakers and suppliers are losing at least 18 months of forward planning because of the variable and changing Trump White House tariff policies, says Michael Robinet, vice president for forecast strategy at S&P Global. Robinet notes with caution that Chinese automakers, with whom Western automakers are competing in the global electric-vehicle industry, will continue to grow and are not impeded by the U.S.’s unpredictable tariff policies. “We are shooting ourselves in the foot…with respect to having to deal with these short-term issues and navigate them,” when there are already issues to solve with critical minerals, changing battery-electric targets, compliance with regulations that may or may not be changing and Chinese domestic OEM competition, says Robinet. | Wards Auto

The joint electric car project by Sony and Honda saw its annual operating loss more than double to ¥52 billion ($362 million) as they work to begin selling their first car, the Afeela, this year. Sony Honda Mobility disclosed the deficit in a report for the latest fiscal year through March, which was released on Monday. The prior annual loss was ¥20.5 billion. Electronics and entertainment conglomerate Sony and carmaker Honda unveiled their collaboration in 2022 with the goal of targeting the premium EV market by combining Honda’s vehicle development and production capabilities with Sony Group’s expertise in image sensors and entertainment. The Afeela is scheduled to go on sale this year with a sticker price starting at $89,900. | Bloomberg ($)

The forward blind zones of six top-selling passenger vehicles grew substantially over the past 25 years as pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities soared, a comparison technique developed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) shows. A recent study led by researchers from the U.S. DOT Volpe National Transportation Systems Center is the first to use the new method that IIHS developed for measuring a driver’s direct area of vision around a vehicle. The technique promises to enable much broader studies of the role that vehicle design plays in driver visibility and crash risk. Over multiple redesign cycles from 1997 to 2023, forward visibility within a 10-meter radius fell as much as 58% for three popular SUVs, the researchers found. For a top-selling pickup, close-proximity visibility declined by a smaller 17%, but even the earliest model had extremely large blind zones. In contrast, the early models of the two cars provided relatively good visibility that fell less than 8% in later generations. | IIHS

⚡️ EVs

President Trump has said his policies will revive auto manufacturing in the United States. But Republican attacks on electric vehicles could do just the opposite, some industry experts say, by surrendering leadership in an emerging technology. China already has a formidable head start in electric vehicles and the batteries and minerals needed to produce them. Companies like BYD, SAIC and GEELY produced 70% of the electric cars sold globally in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Automakers in the United States produced just 5%. Tesla is the only American company that ranks among the world’s 10 largest electric vehicle makers. General Motors and Ford Motor Company are minor players. Even Tesla, which made electric cars mainstream and held the No. 1 spot for several years, has been overtaken by BYD and Geely, according to SNE Research, a South Korean research firm. The more electric vehicles that Chinese companies make, the more difficult it will be for U.S. carmakers to catch up. The Chinese companies can spread the costs of developing new technology across more vehicles. They can buy parts at more favorable prices and reap other benefits of the economies of scale that are critical to success in the auto industry. | The New York Times ($)

Tesla delivered 384,122 vehicles in the second quarter of this year, wrapping up another weak quarter for the company as it struggles to bring the pace of sales back up to 2023 levels. That represents a 13.5% drop from the number of cars Tesla delivered in the second quarter of 2022, and it means Tesla runs a real chance of underperforming its total sales figure from 2024. If that happens, it would mean Tesla’s sales will have fallen two years in a row — despite the company once promoting the ability to grow deliveries at 50% annually. This quarter’s sales were only slightly better than in Q1, which was the company’s worst quarter for deliveries in more than two years. | TechCrunch ($)

An ongoing slide in lithium prices even as demand for the battery metal continues to climb is a frustrating "paradox" not likely to be resolved before at least 2030, the world's largest producers told a major industry conference this week. Once a niche metal used primarily in greases, ceramics and pharmaceuticals, lithium's use in electric vehicles, large-scale battery storage and other electronic applications has grown rapidly, with demand up 24% last year and likely to grow 12% annually for the next decade, according to data from consultancy Fastmarkets. Oversupply from China, however, has dragged prices down more than 90% in the past two years, fueling layoffs, corporate buyouts and project delays across the globe. | Reuters ($)

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China

Michael Dunne from Dunne Insights wonders if we might see car dealers in San Diego, Phoenix, and San Antonio begin importing “lightly-used” Chinese vehicles from Mexico and delivering them to American buyers. (In China itself, EV companies are already selling “zero-mileage second-hand cars” to get around regulations intended to end price wars.) Today, America imposes a 147.5% duty on new electric cars imported from China, according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, a formidable wall that has slammed the doors shut on direct imports from the PRC. But used car imports from Mexico are subject to only a 25%. | Dunne Insights

Only 15 out of the 129 brands that currently sell electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in China will be financially viable by 2030, as intense competition forces consolidation and some to exit the market, consultancy AlixPartners said. The 15 brands are projected to account for approximately 75% of China’s EV and plug-in hybrid market by the end of the decade, each averaging annual sales of 1.02 million units, AlixPartners said July 3, without specifying brand names. However, consolidation in China is expected to proceed more slowly than in other markets, said Stephen Dyer, Ph.D., head of AlixPartners’ automotive practice in Asia, because local governments may continue supporting non-viable brands due to their importance to regional economies, employment and supply chains. China, the world’s largest automotive market, is facing a price war and significant overcapacity, both of which are straining profitability. Aside from BYD and Li Auto, no other publicly listed Chinese EV makers have achieved full-year profitability. | Automotive News ($)

Chinese automakers are pushing to unlock Africa's underdeveloped potential, with a focus on electric and hybrid vehicles, as restrictions on exports to the United States and Europe send them on a global quest for new markets. Though home to over a billion people, low incomes and high import duties have long hampered manufacturers' efforts to sell more cars in Africa. Unreliable power availability and a lack of charging infrastructure have meanwhile held back EV uptake. | Reuters ($)

Depicting endless rows of uniformed workers, Edward Burtynsky’s iconic images of mid-2000s Chinese factories spoke to the seemingly inexhaustible human labor behind China’s economic miracle. Just two decades later, the photographer’s glimpse inside a BYD electric car plant near Shanghai presents the opposite phenomenon: a complete absence of people. | CNN

China’s emerging automotive dominance owes largely to a singular manufacturing achievement ― slashing vehicle development time by more than half, to as little as 18 months for an all-new or redesigned model. The average age of a Chinese-brand electric or plug-in hybrid model on sale domestically is 1.6 years, versus 5.4 years for foreign brands, consultancy AlixPartners found. That speed has rattled legacy automakers, which have historically redesigned vehicles about once every five years, or once a decade for pickups. | Automotive News ($)The New York Times does a deep dive into the stunning divergence between the U.S. and China’s energy strategies. Put simply, China has taken an enormous lead in clean energy and is extending that lead by the month. In May, for example, solar panels in China generated as much energy as one-third of all American power generation, combined. The U.S., meanwhile, under President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, is turning its back on renewables and doubling down on fossil fuels like gas, oil and coal. The implications of these dueling strategies are vast, including for climate change. How fast the world’s two largest economies decarbonize will matter for the whole planet. Yet the rush to embrace renewable power matters from a strategic standpoint, too. China has already developed a stunning lead in almost all of the key renewable technologies. And China is innovating: its biggest automaker, its biggest battery maker and its biggest electronics company have each introduced systems that can recharge electric cars in just five minutes. | The New York Times ($)

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Autonomy, Robotics & AI

Mario Herger provides a perspective on the Waymo / Tesla LIDAR vs. Camera debate and concludes that both approaches will ultimately be successful. | Mario Herger

Robotaxis have proven to be one of this year’s most prominent autonomous vehicle technologies. Goldman Sachs reports that the TAM (Total Addressable Market) opportunity will total $47 billion by 2035 and have positive growth margins in early 2026. Waymo notably provides more than 250,000 rides every week throughout cities in the US, including Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, TX, and has plans to bring driverless ride-hailing services to Atlanta, Miami and D.C. in 2026. Additionally, Toyota Motor Corporation and Waymo are collaborating to bring Waymo’s ride-hailing technology to consumer vehicles. This month, Uber and WeRide released their plans to bring robotaxis to 15 more cities outside the U.S. and China. Uber and Momenta are also teaming up to bring robotaxis to global markets and Pony.ai is partnering with Shenzhen’s Xihu Group with plans to deploy 1,000 robotaxis on roads throughout the city. And, of course, Tesla just announced plans to put their newly launched robotaxis on the streets next month to launch their ride-hailing service in Austin using their Full-Self Driving Solution. | Wards Auto

Over the years, Tesla has built part of its reputation on hosting big, bold events to generate authentic hype for upcoming releases. The robotaxi launch in Austin, Texas, last week wasn’t one of them. Coverage of the rollout was dominated by a close-knit cohort of Tesla influencers and Elon Musk superfans, many of whom are openly supportive of the CEO’s vision. Journalists and tech bloggers who might have been more critical of the technology were not only excluded but also actively ridiculed and mocked by Tesla fans and some of their followers for attempting to ask basic questions about the service. In Austin and online, Tesla fans were taking a cue from Musk, who has spent years fomenting a culture of resentment toward critical media. | The Verge ($)

Although the bright idea behind robotaxi development might have been to get “terrible” human drivers off the road and save people’s lives, it turns out that “driverless” cabs still need humans—remote teleoperators for whom a driver’s license, apparently, is optional. These remote humans intervene, when needed, to help “computer drivers” contextualize the road environment. Humans are back in the loop, and it’s a good thing. Somewhat alarming, however, is the cascading impact that teleoperators could trigger. They pose the danger of introducing more human error into the process. As robotaxi companies lean on third-party teleoperator outfits to take care of unanticipated safety problems, they might push liability issues downstream. | Junko Yoshida

China's automakers are outpacing foreign rivals in their push for assisted-driving technology, eager to woo motorists hungry for rapid innovation. Yet, Beijing has a nuanced message for its rising stars: move fast - but be careful. While Chinese officials want to prevent carmakers from overselling the capabilities of such systems, they are also threading the needle between innovation and safety to ensure their automakers don't lose out to U.S. and European rivals. Setting clear regulations for assisted-driving tech without slowing its advancement could give China's industry an edge over global competitors, analysts say. This approach is in stark contrast to the U.S. market, where companies pursuing autonomous cars have expressed frustration that the government has not implemented a regulatory system to validate and test the technology. | Reuters ($)The automation of Amazon.com facilities is approaching a new milestone: There will soon be as many robots as humans. The e-commerce giant, which has spent years automating tasks previously done by humans in its facilities, has deployed more than one million robots in those workplaces, Amazon said. That is the most it has ever had and near the count of human workers at the facilities. Now some 75% of Amazon’s global deliveries are assisted in some way by robotics, the company said. The growing automation has helped Amazon improve productivity, while easing pressure on the company to solve problems such as heavy staff turnover at its fulfillment centers. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

A brutalist complex somewhere in Kyiv, strewn with rubbish and weeds, offers a vision for Ukraine’s survival on the future battlefield. At one end is a recruitment office, where lines of 20-somethings are receiving their first orders. At another sit trenches, obstacle courses, and the 3rd Assault Brigade’s “Kill House”, a training ground for military robots. This is where the elite brigade is stress-testing the unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) Ukraine hopes will soon begin to carry the burden of war in place of men. UGVs are already rolling around the front lines, with the 3rd Assault Brigade among the pioneers. They have not yet appeared in large numbers, though that moment may be near. In spring Ukraine announced plans to deploy 15,000 ground robots. Some key players predict that the face of the battlefield will rapidly change this summer, likening the proliferation of UGVs to the explosion in aerial-drone manufacturing in 2023. “We don’t have the men to counteract Russia’s meat-wave,” says one manufacturer. “So we’ll send our own zombies against theirs.” | The Economist ($)

Three-and-a-half years of all-out war against Russia have transformed Ukraine into a factory of weaponry that’s redefining the battlefield. New kit is being developed and deployed at a fraction of the cost and on a hugely compressed timescale compared with just about anywhere else in the world. Ukraine is still dependent on U.S. intelligence and on allied air defenses to intercept Russian missiles. Kyiv, though, now gets about 40% of its weapons from its own sources, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That, the country says, can offer a model for how its allies in NATO can ramp up production for a more dangerous and volatile future. | Bloomberg ($)

⚓️ Marine

The Iran-Israel war highlighted a critical flaw in the satellite-based systems that makes the industry hauling 80% of global trade vulnerable to mass-jamming. Jamming and spoofing are when signals are interfered with to give false readings about a ship's location. Instances of that happening in places like the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that handles about a fifth of the world’s oil supply, highlight a problem taking place on a global scale. It’s worsening in a number of regions of tension as the world becomes more unstable, and potentially may have contributed to a fiery crash between two tankers this month. The signal interference caused by Israel-Iran tensions is another reminder of how vulnerable shipping routes are to conflict, given well over $2.8 trillion a year of all maritime trade passes through chokepoints. It also underscores a fundamental safety flaw in an industry responsible for delivering about 80% of global trade — one that has become reliant on electronic positioning systems to show mariners exactly where they and other vessels and hazards are. Alarm bells are also starting to ring in the insurance industry. Relying on maps, compasses and the heavens was how merchant ship captains like Tsotras criss-crossed oceans in centuries past. Today, the industry uses global navigation satellite systems such as GPS. While much quicker and simpler, they’re proving far easier to mess with. | Bloomberg ($)

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4. | Broad Arrow

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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📺 In The News

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Thanks to Mark Hollmer at Automotive News for interviewing Automotive Ventures for his article on AI hallucinations, and how auto dealerships can navigate through them. | Automotive News ($)

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On this week's "Future of Automotive" segment on CBT News, we recap the key takeaways from our conference in Atlanta last week, where our speakers provided a perspective on the threat the Chinese OEMs have on the legacy automakers and potential paths forward.

| CBT News ($)

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