Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | Mar 2 2026 | VIEW ONLINE

While Team, TAM and Defensibility are good rules of thumb to get the attention of a VC and earn your right to the second call, the truth is (at least at the Seed and Pre-Seed stage) that “Team” trumps all of these other factors.

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Automotive

Our most viewed post of the week. | Car and Driver

Tariff costs are becoming unsustainable for automakers, the president of one of the largest public dealership groups said last week. Like many in the auto industry, Sonic Automotive is warning that sooner or later, prices will rise or automakers will start cutting features to stabilize costs. “The tariffs are too high on some of these brands, and they’re going to pass pricing on,” Sonic Automotive president Jeff Dyke said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. “It’s already happening.” | CNBC

General Motors is making a major change to its purchase agreements, joining its Detroit 3 competitors in attempting to tighten supply contracts for more operational flexibility as rising costs weigh on the industry. The automaker in recent weeks has inserted a new clause into its purchase orders giving GM the ability to extend contracts indefinitely — and dictate pricing adjustments, according to a Crain's Detroit Business review and legal analysis. The “Program Extension Clause,” which applies to all contracts amended on or after Sept. 20, states: “Buyer may, at its option, upon six months notice to seller, extend the term of this contract (which may include multiple subsequent term extensions).” The extension clause breaks with GM’s traditional fixed-term contracts, which give suppliers clarity on program end dates, better allowing them to plan their business as well as leverage for better pricing. The real rub for parts makers, though, is the last sentence of the clause: “In the event that buyer and seller are unable to reach agreement on any pricing adjustments related to the term extension, the price will be equitably adjusted by buyer based on a fair cost assessment after receipt of documentation.” | Automotive News ($)

Ford and General Motors, America’s two leading auto giants, are both claiming to be bouncing back after taking big earnings hits last year from tariff-related costs and EV writedowns. But the industry still faces hard questions, including how to reorganize supply chains in response to Trump’s tariff policies and the upcoming renegotiation of a key trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The optimism spurred by the prospect of selling more high-margin petrol-powered and hybrid trucks and SUVs has also been tempered by anxiety over a growing affordability crisis in the sector, with middle- and lower-income Americans increasingly priced out of the new car market. Executives are also nervous about the prospect of sophisticated low-cost Chinese rivals entering the U.S. market, something Trump has indicated he could be willing to support as part of a wider accommodation with Beijing. That raises the spectre of an acceleration in the Detroit carmakers’ long-term decline. Glenn Mercer, an independent automotive researcher, noted in a recent analysis that the worldwide market share of Ford, GM and the U.S. operations of European group Stellantis, which owns the Jeep, Dodge and Ram brands, had already declined from 29 percent in 2000 to 13 percent today. “At present the Detroit three are on course to become niche manufacturers on the global stage,” he wrote. “Simple extrapolation . . . says the domestic American industry is entirely gone before 2050.” | Financial Times ($)

Imagine turning the key or pressing the start button of your car—and nothing happens. Not because the battery is dead or the engine is broken but because a server no longer answers. For a growing number of cars, that scenario isn’t hypothetical. As vehicles become platforms for software and subscriptions, their longevity is increasingly tied to the survival of the companies behind their code. When those companies fail, the consequences ripple far beyond a bad app update and into the basic question of whether a car still functions as a car. Over the years, automotive software has expanded from performing rudimentary engine management and onboard diagnostics to powering today’s interconnected, software-defined vehicles. Smartphone apps can now handle tasks like unlocking doors, flashing headlights, and preconditioning cabins—and some models won’t unlock at all unless a phone running the manufacturer’s app is within range. However, for all the promised convenience of modern vehicle software, there’s a growing nostalgia for an era when a phone call to a mechanic could resolve most problems. Mechanical failures were often diagnosable and fixable, and cars typically returned to the road quickly. Software-defined vehicles complicate that model: When something goes wrong, a car can be rendered inoperable in a driveway—or stranded at the side of the road—waiting not for parts but a software technician. | Ars Technica

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EVs

Detroit automakers are selling more gas-burning trucks and SUVs after President Donald Trump gutted climate regulations, allowing them to make higher profits from large vehicles with big engines. This shift risks sending American automakers off a cliff long-term, as they fall behind on electric vehicle technology and sales outside the U.S. may decline due to government regulations and incentives in other countries. Auto executives claim they will use the profits from selling gas-burning vehicles to invest in an electrified future, but for now, they are focused on making money from fossil-fuel vehicles in a moment of loosened regulation. | Bloomberg ($)

Michael Granoff from Maniv reflects back to a pivotal decision in 2009, and argues that a single missed inflection point left the United States far behind in the industry it once defined. Now, the question in America has shifted from whether to permit Chinese cars into the market to how to manage their inevitable entry. And with the loss of automotive dominance and manufacturing dominance in general, the U.S. must grapple with the vulnerabilities of supply chain dependence and other knock-on effects, such as military readiness. | Michael Granoff

A new study found that used EV battery packs are healthier on the whole than you might think. Generational, a UK-based firm that evaluates EV battery health, collected data from over 8,000 EVs tested in 2025. Most of the cars the company tested had healthy batteries with close to their original capacity. "Battery degradation is not the systemic risk it was once assumed to be. Real-world data shows that most EV batteries comfortably exceed warranty thresholds, even at higher ages and mileages," the company said in its report, adding that in "most cases, the battery is likely to exceed the lifespan of the vehicle." The average score was surprisingly high: 95.15%. The study included over 8,000 electric vehicles from 36 brands, ranging from ones less than a year old to 12 years old and with up to 160,000 miles on the clock. | Inside EVs

Plug-in hybrid electric cars (PHEVs) use much more fuel on the road than officially stated by their manufacturers, a large-scale analysis of about a million vehicles of this type has shown. The Fraunhofer Institute carried out what is thought to be the most comprehensive study of its kind to date, using the data transmitted wirelessly by PHEVs from a variety of manufacturers while they were on the road. PHEVs, cars which combine a petrol or diesel engine with a battery-powered electric motor that is charged from an external energy point, give drivers the flexibility to be able to switch between the ecologically safer power source, and the more conventional, but environmentally more damaging one, as and when conditions allow. Manufacturers typically market the vehicles as energy efficient. On paper at least, the vehicles are said to use much less fuel, between one and two litres per 100km, than conventional cars. However environmental groups have long since voiced scepticism over the claims. According to the study (in German), the vehicles require on average six litres of fuel per 100km, about three times more than previously claimed. The scientists of the Fraunhofer Institute found that the main reason for the higher-than-stated fuel usage was due precisely to the fact that the PHEVs use two different modes, the electric engine and the combustion engine, switching between both. Until now it has been claimed by manufacturers that the vehicles used only a little or almost no fuel when in the electric mode. The studies showed that this was not in fact the case. | The Guardian

Plug-in hybrid vehicles are often touted as a bridge to battery-electric vehicles, promising to slash emissions by operating as EVs for short trips while relying on fossil fuels for longer ones. They only deliver on that promise if they’re regularly charged. Real-world data drawn from the vehicles’ onboard computers shows that’s often not the case. Using that data, the Fraunhofer Institute could determine how much of that energy came from charging when plugged in. It found that less than a third of 1 million PHEVs in Germany plugged in either occasionally or not at all. The new study shows that PHEVs seldom deliver on their efficiency promises. At best, Toyota drivers used electricity for 44% of the energy used for driving, suggesting they plugged in the most frequently. The worst? Porsche AG drivers, at just 0.8%, an average of 7 kilowatt-hours over two years. In other words, the average Porsche PHEV driver charged their battery less than 50% of its capacity — once. Studies have previously shown that PHEVs produce about 3.5 times more emissions than their official ratings would suggest. This new study explains why since it directly assesses how much electricity the vehicles gained from charging. (PHEVs, like all hybrids, can operate in a mixed mode, using both gas and electricity. The study used data straight off the vehicles to disentangle the two.) | TechCrunch ($)

David Wallace-Wells notes that globally, sales of gas-powered cars have declined by more than 20 percent since their peak, which we already passed a decade ago. Since then, sales of electric vehicles have grown almost 30-fold. In 2019, only 3 percent of car sales globally were electric; in 2025, a quarter were. In the European Union, full E.V.s and hybrids were more than half of all sales. In China, the world’s largest car market, it’s more than half. And the global pattern pops up in some unexpected places. In Nepal, for instance, 76 percent of new cars sold in 2024 were E.V.s. In Ethiopia — where the government was so desperate to stop importing so much foreign oil, it took a heavy-handed policy intervention in 2024, banning the importation of gas-powered cars — E.V. sales grew from close to zero to more than half of all new registrations that year. By global standards, the United States is a relative laggard — enough so that the climate scientist Zeke Hausfather recently suggested the country could end up, 30 years from now, looking like Cuba does today, with roads crowded with gas-guzzling clunkers. But even here sales of gas-powered cars between 2016 and 2024 were down more than 2.5 million per year. Over the same period, American E.V. sales are up 10-fold.

| The New York Times ($)

At a one-hour press conference revealing the appointment of Kenta Kon as Toyota Motor Corporation’s chief executive last week, not one word was said about an existential threat to Japan’s auto industry: electric vehicles. The replacement of car-loving engineer Koji Sato with the chief financial officer has focused attention on how the world’s largest car manufacturer plans to deal with the rise of EVs in an increasingly turbulent global environment. Kon, a former secretary of Toyota chair Akio Toyoda who is viewed as a temporary steward, vowed to eliminate “any wasteful penny” to withstand tariffs and rising competition. He said he would create the foundation for “courageous and bold decisions” as digitization and electrification reshape the industry. Auto industry executives and analysts said the leadership change signalled Toyota was entering a new era of cost control to build a war chest for the battle against Chinese EV rivals taking market share in Japan, south-east Asia and Europe. | Financial Times ($)

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China

U.S. auto dealers are increasingly wary of a possible industry shakeup ahead: Chinese vehicles entering the American market. National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) CEO Mike Stanton recently stated that the group would not interfere with dealers adding Chinese franchises if the vehicles are ultimately allowed in the United States. Michael Dunne, CEO of Dunne Insights and an expert on the Chinese auto industry, said dealer interest in Chinese vehicles has ratcheted up since last month when President Trump made the comments in Detroit indicating he's open to them being built here. Retailers don't want to miss out on the latest up-and-coming foreign brand, like Hyundai and Toyota once were in the United States, Dunne said. Selling Chinese vehicles would also help dealers combat rising affordability concerns in the U.S. market. But many are also keenly aware that adding such low-cost Chinese cars could hurt sales at their existing stores. A recent survey by The Presidio Group, a dealership mergers and acquisitions adviser, underscored these conflicted feelings, finding that almost half of dealers surveyed viewed Chinese brands coming to the United States as both an opportunity and a threat. | The Detroit News ($)

By almost every metric, the Chinese carmaker BYD looks unstoppable. After a decade of struggling to establish itself in the automobile industry, BYD has surpassed Tesla to become the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. The company’s sales are rapidly expanding in Europe and Latin America, and new and potentially lucrative markets like Canada could soon open to it. But investors are cooling on BYD’s ascent from a little-known battery maker to the top of the automotive world’s fast-growing segment. The company’s stock has fallen roughly 40 percent from its peak last May, making it among the hardest-hit names in a broader sell-off in Chinese E.V. stocks that accelerated last week after companies reported weak sales numbers for January. Intense competition is crushing profit margins, government subsidies are vanishing, and faster production cycles mean that no company can hold a lead for long. BYD is emblematic of how Chinese electric vehicle companies are becoming victims of their own success. The domestic market, fueled partly by government subsidies, has grown rapidly, but Chinese companies are “maxing out the number of people for whom it makes sense” to buy one, said John Paul MacDuffie, a professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. | The New York Times ($)

Tesla’s factory in Shanghai produces far more cars per worker as its plant in California. The gap reflects something unsettling about China’s broader edge in manufacturing: It has figured out how to organize production around large-scale deployment of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence. The United States has not. Reindustrialization is one of the few economic goals that now commands bipartisan support. Successive administrations — first Joe Biden’s, now President Trump’s — have made rebuilding American manufacturing a priority. In Washington, the gap between American factories and global competitors is often explained as the product of unfair subsidies, distorted markets or other forms of cheating. Those factors matter, as does the power of China’s political structure to command fast change from the top down. But the central challenge for the United States is not that China bends the rules. Around the world, modern manufacturing no longer resembles the mid-20th-century factory floor. Robotics, automation and A.I. now make it possible to produce more with fewer human workers, though those who remain are more skilled and better paid. Unlike China, America has failed to reckon with this reality and organize manufacturing in ways that turn its own technological strengths into comparable gains. | The New York Times ($)

The U.S. has been trying to revive its industrial base since manufacturing employment started to decline after hitting a peak in 1979, with the latest effort being the most aggressive. The push for more U.S. manufacturing is driven by a sense of urgency due to the country's dependence on China for essential goods and the need to regain control of supply chains. Success in recapturing production in the U.S. will likely be thanks to automation and robots, not an increase in factory jobs, as machines can drive down labor costs and make domestic production more viable. | Bloomberg ($)

Stellantis is considering tapping electric-vehicle technology from its Chinese partner Leapmotor to help lower costs across its mass-market European brands such as Fiat, Opel and Peugeot, according to people familiar with the plans. The automaker is weighing an expansion of the scope of its joint venture with Leapmotor to access the Chinese company’s more advanced battery and EV powertrain technology, the people said, declining to be named discussing internal deliberations. | Automotive News ($)

China’s grip on critical minerals has exposed the West’s most serious strategic weakness in many years. Last April, during its trade war with America, China restricted exports of seven crucial rare earths; it targeted another five in October. Nearly a third of Pentagon procurement programs faced the risk of shortages, as did industries from carmaking to renewable energy. The prospect of large-scale disruption prodded President Donald Trump into a trade truce with Xi Jinping, as well as a relaxation of American controls on some technology exports. Yet Mr Xi can deploy the weapon again whenever he chooses. Meanwhile, exports of rare earths for dual-use applications—the expanding grey zone between military and civilian uses—remain largely barred, sapping Western efforts to rearm. It would be nice to say that the best defence against China’s tactics is to double down on global markets. They certainly have a part to play. The oil crises of the 1970s boosted the development of commodity trading—in which prices for key materials are set on exchanges by millions of buyers and sellers entering 40m derivatives contracts daily. Time and again, hit by wars, industrial strikes and natural disasters, markets have handled shocks better than government planners ever could. However, America is right. China’s dominance over critical minerals means that continuing to place full faith in the invisible hand would be naive and unsafe. China has spent decades building control over minerals, bankrolling projects at home and acquiring assets abroad. Its producers have consolidated into behemoths that the state can control and which have the market power to deter would-be competitors by flooding global markets—even if that means taking temporary losses. America’s task, therefore, is to strike a balance. On the one hand, it needs to insure against the risk that China cuts off exports again, and to deter it from doing so by raising the cost of further restrictions. On the other, it needs to nurture markets. Subsidies and stockpiles are expensive. State-to-state mineral agreements invite rent-seeking, side deals and corruption—a risk with the Trump administration. Dirigisme muffles the price signals that encourage conservation and innovation. | The Economist ($)

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Autonomy & Robotics

Waymo added four new cities in Texas and Florida this week as self-driving cars begin to penetrate mainstream America. The newest markets are Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando. The service will start slowly, with riders invited on a rolling basis until Waymo adds more cars to its fleet and scales up necessary operations like vehicle charging, service and maintenance. By later this year, it will be more widely available, Waymo says. Now in 10 cities, Waymo has doubled the number of markets it serves in a matter of months. It's laying the groundwork for service in at least 20 cities, and is on track to provide more than 1 million driverless rides per week by the end of the year. It has about 3,000 robotaxis deployed nationwide, more than one-third of them in the San Francisco Bay area. | Waymo

Wayve’s self-driving tech has attracted a diverse set of investors in the company’s latest $1.2 billion funding round, including three automakers, top venture and institutional firms, and returning backers Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Uber. The total raise could reach $1.5 billion thanks to another $300 million from Uber contingent on deploying robotaxis, beginning in London. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the U.K. startup, which is now valued at $8.6 billion. The funding round illustrates the eagerness among Big Tech, legacy automakers, and the investor community to profit from the burgeoning automated driving industry. | TechCrunch ($)

Phil Koopman: There is a fundamental, crucial embodied AI (eAI) safety concern behind the recent headlines surrounding Waymo’s use of overseas remote operators for their robotaxis. The real question is not whether existing terminology standards call them “drivers,” or whether they have steering wheels. The question that matters is whether accountability is being swept under the rug for inevitable mishaps involving humans “assisting” embodied AI technology.1 In a practical sense, that is exactly what is happening. We might end up in a place where neither the designer or operator of an eAI system such as a robotaxi can be held accountable for harm under existing laws if remote operators are held to be “assistants” with no accountability for mishaps. | Phil Koopman

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Climate

The concept of "net zero" is effectively dead, as global energy policy has shifted away from it, with the term being mentioned only once at a recent gathering of the world's richest nations. The movement to achieve net zero by 2050 was always considered far-fetched, requiring a significant drop in consumption of oil, natural gas, and coal, which is unlikely to happen given current trends. Despite the death of net zero, renewable energy is still alive, and will continue to grow, with electricity being the fastest-growing form of energy and renewables covering a significant chunk of the increase. | Bloomberg ($)

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1990 Ferrari F40. | Broad Arrow

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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📰 In The News

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We're excited to see this news about Automotive Ventures portfolio company Treehouse: Toyota North America has partnered with Treehouse, an electrical contractor that employs a software-based operating system to quickly design and install residential Level 2 chargers for its electrified vehicle customers. With Treehouse’s proprietary “virtual scoping technology,” Toyota and Lexus customers will be provided an upfront, EV charger installation quote within 48 hours. | Wards Auto

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At the Haig Partners "Maximizing Value Conference" in Las Vegas, during the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Conference, Steve had the opportunity to present a developing area of our investment thesis:

how AI will help automotive dealerships unlock a new era of persistently more profitable operations. |

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👀 Automotive Ventures Company to Watch

🌟 PromptPath helps automotive dealerships listen to every conversation, eliminating blind spots that lead to losses in revenue and customer satisfaction. | PromptPath

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