Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | Mar 23 2026 | VIEW ONLINE

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Automotive

Tomi Mikula, 33 years old, spent more than a decade selling cars and auto financing at dealerships. Now he deploys his fluency in car-dealer speak and his encyclopedic knowledge of dealer inventory to try to talk down the sticker prices. Some dealers hate him enough that they won’t take his calls. Others relish the chance to go toe-to-toe with a dealmaking foe. Negotiating a car price has become something of a lost art, but it is one Mikula has become practiced at in the three years since he started his business. For a flat fee of $1,000, he negotiates on a buyer’s behalf. He also livestreams some of his conversations to 600,000 subscribers across TikTok and YouTube. In Mikula’s view, car buying has become so absurd that what he’s doing makes perfect sense, even if it is a little offbeat. “You’re hiring a middleman to deal with the middleman to make the middleman more efficient,” he said. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

As car prices, auto loan interest rates and insurance and maintenance costs continue to rise, owning or buying a car is becoming harder to afford. The war in Iran has pushed gas prices up, adding to greater affordability concerns. President Trump said in a recent interview with Reuters that he was willing to tolerate higher prices for strategic priorities. Vehicle prices climbed during the pandemic as supply chain disruptions slowed production and manufacturers focused on building more profitable vehicles. In the years since, rising interest rates have made the situation even tougher on households. The average interest rate on a 60-month new-car loan from banks was 7.22% in November, according to the Federal Reserve Board. Higher rates have pushed monthly payments further. The average monthly new-car payment reached $774 in January, up from $588 in January 2021, according to Edmunds, an auto research firm. A growing share of buyers are taking on even larger loans: More than 20% of new-car borrowers agreed to pay over $1,000 a month at the end of last year, which was a record, Edmunds reported. But loan payments are only part of the strain. When insurance, gas, repairs and maintenance are included, the total cost of owning a vehicle has risen more than 40% since January 2020, according to an index from Navy Federal Credit Union. All of this pressure has begun to weigh on many households. | The New York Times ($)

U.S. tariffs have cost automakers at least $35.4 billion since 2025, an enormous sum that reflects how dramatically and quickly President Donald Trump’s trade policies have impacted the industry. That’s according to an Automotive News analysis of automaker financial reports that were available through mid-March. It includes full-year tariff costs for 2025, as well as projections through March of this year, when available. Tariff costs vary wildly by automaker. They are dependent on how much of a company’s U.S. lineup is shipped from overseas and where they source key parts from for U.S. production. | Automotive News ($)

According to a new report published by the ITF (International Transport Forum) at the OECD, the nearly 40,000 people killed on U.S. roads in 2024 works out to almost 12 roadway deaths for every 100,000 inhabitants, more than twice as many as peer nations including Australia, the Czech Republic, Israel and South Korea. The U.S. has become such a road safety outlier that the ITF now shares aggregated safety trends for the OECD both with and without the country included. But America’s roads look safer if you look at a different metric: crash deaths per billion vehicle miles (or kilometers). According to the ITF’s new report, by that standard U.S. roadways are still more dangerous than most, but traversing them is slightly safer than in the Czech Republic and only modestly more deadly than in Israel and South Korea. In the U.S., many transportation professionals favor this deaths-per-distance metric, because it supposedly accounts for uniquely American factors like the country’s physical enormity, the scale of national infrastructure and residents’ “love affair” with the automobile. | Bloomberg ($)

A new research paper by paper by Navdeep Sahni and Yifan Yang of Stanford University Graduate School of Business, asks why well-known brands need to keep advertising. The authors run an experiment in which they look at the effects on consumers of being exposed to online ads by car-insurance firms whose brands are already well known. On the day that consumers see an insurer’s ad, there is an immediate surge of visits to that advertiser’s site but no discernible effect on the number of visits to competitors’ sites. On the following day, however, competitors do see a drop in traffic. The authors hypothesize that the advertisement has dislodged rivals from the top of consumers’ minds: if they think of car insurance, the brand they have been exposed to most recently is the one that comes to mind. If advertising is a way of occupying the memory, then it doesn’t matter that brands are already ubiquitous or have no new information to impart. They have to keep promoting themselves in order to dislodge rival advertisers from the car-insurance part of the brain. | Stanford Business School

Ford is betting that what CEO Jim Farley calls "the most radical change" to how it builds vehicles since the Model T will lead to not only lower sticker prices but also smaller repair bills. Starting with a $30,000 midsize electric pickup next year, Ford says it will replace hundreds of smaller components with two large, aluminum “unicastings” — one in the front and one in the rear. The approach is similar to a process Tesla uses on its Model Y crossover that it calls gigacasting and that is also known as megacasting. The technique is meant to reduce manufacturing cost and complexity, but it raises questions about repairability: Will customers’ bills skyrocket if collision centers have to replace one large component instead of smaller pieces? Would such parts be readily and widely available? Early research shows that, in some instances, vehicles made with large castings are less expensive to fix, as long as they’re intentionally designed that way from the beginning. Executives say repairability was a priority from the outset. | Automotive News ($)

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EVs

Automakers are easing back on ambitious electric vehicle rollouts after racking up billions in write-downs, yet analysts warn the cost of pulling back could be far higher as emissions rules tighten and Chinese rivals accelerate. The industry faces a stark choice: continue absorbing heavy losses on EV programs that have yet to deliver expected volumes, or continue to scale down investment and risk falling short of regulatory targets while ceding ground on technology and cost competitiveness to Chinese rivals. By early 2026, global automakers had booked about $50 billion (€46 billion) in EV-related charges after overestimating demand, according to Automotive News analysis. Stellantis alone has disclosed more than $26 billion in write-downs, while Honda, General Motors and Ford Motor Company have also reported significant hits. Despite the financial pressure, analysts argue the long-term direction is unchanged. Juergen Reers, global automotive and mobility lead at Accenture, said electrification remains inevitable, it’s just happening slower than originally expected. Rather than a reversal, Reers describes the situation as a timing mismatch between expectations and market reality. He expects a multi-technology landscape over the next 10 to 15 years, with plug-in hybrids and alternative fuels playing a bridging role. Battery-electric vehicles remain the most energy-efficient solution with the strongest long-term outlook, supported by declining battery costs and anticipated technological advances. BEV growth in Europe continues to be “very strong” from a relatively low base, Reers said. | Automotive News ($)

Electric vehicles had it rough last year in the U.S. Sales fell off a cliff, plagued by weaker demand and the end of the $7,500 tax credit. One bright spot: America’s EV fast-charging infrastructure has gotten much better. Fast-charging sites—public stations that can recharge an EV more quickly than a plug in a homeowner’s garage—grew by roughly 87% from January to November 2025, according to a recent study by EV charging analytics firm Paren. The number of plugs at each site is increasing, and they are becoming more powerful, able to recharge cars more quickly, the study found. Industry experts say that robust charging infrastructure is key to EV acceptance. Still, the U.S. lags behind China, where new vehicle models are starting to recharge in about as much time as a gas car would need to fill up. One holdup, charging company executives say, is the cars themselves. In the U.S., fast-charging sessions can take around 20 to 40 minutes or more, depending on the vehicle. By contrast, Chinese automakers are rolling out EV charging that can take only a few minutes. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

While some of the latest EVs can recharge in 20 minutes or so, many take much longer. Yet some EV drivers could soon be back on the road much more quickly. Companies are developing ultra-fast charging systems which can refill a battery in almost the same amount of time as it takes to top up a fossil-fuel car. Rapid recharging could dispel the last remaining obstacles to widespread EV adoption. One such system will be unveiled in Paris on April 8th by China’s BYD, the world’s biggest EV maker. It consists of a powerful 1,500kW drive-through charger, which looks like a large overhead gantry from which recharging cables descend. When plugged into a Denza Z9GT, BYD’s new premium model, the car’s 122kWh “Blade Battery” can be boosted from 10% capacity to 70% in five minutes. The car can be fully charged in nine minutes. Topping up an EV battery requires a charger to convert alternating current, as delivered from the mains, into a direct current, which is the type used by batteries. A charger contained in the cars themselves can handle slow overnight charging when plugged into a household supply. For quick top-ups, much beefier kit is required. This is contained in public fast-chargers, which convert power directly from the grid, bypassing the charger in the car. This allows more power to be pumped into the battery more quickly. There is, though, a limit to how fast a lithium-ion battery, the type commonly used in EVs, can be recharged. When the battery is plugged in, charged particles called lithium ions migrate from the cathode to the anode, where they are squirrelled away and stored. When the battery is discharged, the ions migrate back. The difficulty is that as the charge rate increases, bottlenecks can build up in the flow of ions, particularly into the anode. This creates resistance which produces damaging heat. BYD says its Blade Battery uses cathodes and anodes that have been engineered at the molecular level to allow ions to flow more readily. In part this is done using thin battery components, which reduce internal resistance. For these batteries to live up to their potential, BYD will need to install its mighty 1,500kW chargers at service stations, where most existing fast-chargers operate at 100-350kW. BYD aims to install its big chargers globally and expects to have 20,000 operational in China by the end of the year. | The Economist ($)

BYD will launch a premium electric vehicle in Europe next month that can charge in just minutes, far faster than anything on the market today, as it pursues rapid overseas expansion amid flagging sales in China. Combined with a range of up to 800 km (497 miles) that is well above most available EV models, BYD’s Denza Z9 GT model illustrates Chinese automakers’ competitive edge over legacy European automakers when it comes to electric-car technology. Using the “flash charging” capabilities of the latest battery technology it unveiled last week, BYD says the Denza Z9 GT can charge from 10 percent to 70 percent in five minutes and from 20 percent to 97 percent in 12 minutes at temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. One of the challenges for mass EV adoption has been that fast-charging electric models need about 45 minutes to refuel, while the Denza Z9 GT comes much closer to the time it takes to refuel a conventional combustion-engine model. | Automotive News ($)

The war in Iran and surging gas prices are reinvigorating interest in electric vehicles after months of slowing sales, with U.S. drivers paying an additional $1.65 billion at the pump this week. Car shoppers are starting to go electric for the first time or are looking at hybrid vehicles, with search traffic for electric vehicles up 20% in the week following the initial attack on Iran. High gas prices may influence people who are currently shopping for a car, and if prices stay high for three months or more, even those who weren’t in the market for a new vehicle may consider electric vehicles. | Bloomberg ($)

Growing global adoption of electric vehicles helped avoid the consumption of 2.3 million barrels of oil per day last year, according to a modeled scenario from BloombergNEF. Electric vehicles are expected to cut more oil demand later this decade as they become more common, with avoided daily consumption projected to more than double to 5.25 million barrels by 2030 under the economic transition scenario. Electric vehicles avoided consumption of 1.7 million barrels of oil a day last year, according to a separate report by Ember, with countries such as China, Europe, and India saving billions of dollars a year in reduced oil imports. | Bloomberg ($)

The energy shock from the Iran war has policymakers around the globe rethinking ways to reduce long-term dependence on oil and gas imports, with proposals to expand nuclear energy and renewables, grow strategic stockpiles and domestic production, and diversify foreign sources of supply. Iran's closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane, after the U.S. and Israel attacked on February 28, marks the third time this decade that an international energy shock has forced governments to reckon with the risks of a world dependent on the free flow of vast quantities of petroleum to fuel its economic engine. It has also stoked the view that the fossil fuel age ‌must end, after pushback in recent years to ongoing efforts to mitigate climate change. The world’s biggest energy consumer nations are now back at the drawing board: Europe last week unveiled new financial guarantees for atomic power after decades of closing nuclear plants. Other major importers are planning to source fuel from a broader array of suppliers to hedge their risk. | Reuters ($)

This summer, after years of delays, Tesla plans to begin shipping mass-produced Semis from its Nevada Gigafactory. The company is expected to deliver between 5,000 and 15,000 Semis in 2026 before ramping up to 50,000 trucks a year, according to a recent report by Tigress Finanical Partners. Surprisingly, Tesla is winning over a hard-to-please and influential group—truckers. Truckers who drove it in pilot tests say they loved features including a centered driving position, faster charging and longer range for about $100,000 less than other battery-electric trucks. When Tesla announced its plans for the Semi nearly a decade ago, it was seen as a chance to change heavy-duty trucking just as its affordable and versatile Model 3 helped popularize electric cars. But since then, Tesla’s focus has shifted to services such as artificial-intelligence, robotics and driverless Cybercabs. And the U.S. automotive and transportation market has largely shifted away from battery power since the Trump administration ended EV subsidies and eased fuel economy regulations. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Makers of electric-vehicle batteries are pivoting to make energy storage for data centers and utilities, including the likes of Ford Motor Company. Battery manufacturers made significant investments in the U.S. in recent years, buoyed by policy support for EVs. That changed when President Trump’s administration took away carrots incentivizing EV buyers and did away with sticks that punished automakers for making gas-guzzlers. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence expects energy storage to make up 41% of total U.S. battery demand this year, up from 26% two years ago. At the same time, there are clear incentives to make grid-scale batteries in the U.S. Even though Trump’s signature One Big, Beautiful Bill Act took away tax credits for solar and wind, subsidies remain for energy storage as long as the equipment doesn’t contain too much content from China. Chinese-made batteries themselves face high tariffs. The Iran war’s destabilizing impact on fossil-fuel markets could be yet another catalyst for data centers to consider batteries over diesel or natural-gas-fired power. While higher gas prices could boost the appeal of EVs, the policy challenges they face in the U.S. make hybrids a more likely beneficiary for the foreseeable future. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

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China

Major auto trade groups urged the U.S. government to keep Chinese carmakers out of the country, according to a letter seen by Reuters, potentially ‌complicating President Donald Trump's planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The groups raised "serious concerns about China’s ongoing efforts to dominate global automotive manufacturing and to gain access to the U.S. market. These actions pose a direct threat to America’s global competitiveness, national security, and automotive industrial base." The five groups representing automakers, car dealers and parts manufacturers called for maintaining a 2025 Commerce Department cybersecurity regulation that effectively keeps nearly all Chinese vehicles ⁠out of the U.S. market. The Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the criticism, saying Chinese-made cars are popular globally "not by using so-called 'unfair practices' but by emerging from the fierce market competition with technological innovation and superb quality. China’s door has been open to global auto companies, including U.S. auto companies who have fully shared in the dividends of China’s big market." The auto industry letter also criticized Canada's announcement it would allow some Chinese vehicles into its market. | Reuters ($)

Americans will soon catch a glimpse of something North American politicians once tried to keep far away: cheap Chinese electric vehicles. As Canada begins importing the EVs, U.S. residents in border cities like Detroit and Buffalo, New York, may see their northern neighbors at the wheel. Or American tourists visiting Canada may experience brands like Xiaomi, Leapmotor and BYD when taking a ride-share. It’s a situation that the U.S. and Canada sought to avoid for years, worried that the introduction of China’s low-cost, high-tech EVs would undermine domestic automakers and lead to Chinese surveillance. But President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff on Canadian autos and auto parts has scrambled the North American auto market. Canada is diversifying from its once-reliable, now-unpredictable American partner and seeking a new global role as a maker and exporter of EVs. That could provide China with a beachhead that will familiarize Chinese automakers with American tastes — and help them enter the only major global market they haven’t yet cracked. | Politico

BYD, Chery and Geely, gearing up to enter the Canadian market, will have a head start in the race among Chinese automakers planning to someday expand into the United States. That’s because American and Canadian safety and emissions standards are largely aligned. If a vehicle passes Canadian crash and emissions testing, automakers can sell it in the U.S. with only minor modifications to lighting systems and speedometers. Nearly all vehicles certified for U.S. sale can also be sold in Canada with no major changes. This means BYD, Chery and Geely will each have just one engineering bill come due to homologate their vehicles in both markets. "If you homologate to Canada and want to [sell] across the border, you are good to go,” said Terry Woychowski, president of automotive ar Caresoft Global, the Detroit firm known for its engineering analysis and cost studies derived from vehicle teardowns. | Automotive News ($)

Chery Automobile of China said March 10 that establishing a long-term presence and delivering competitive products are two of its key focuses as the company weighs expanding into the “important” Canadian market. Chery is China’s top automaker by vehicle export volume and sells cars in more than 130 countries globally. Chery is one of three China automakers expected to begin shipping electric vehicles to Canada by the end of 2026, according to Jason Zhao, director of Asian market development at buy-sell and advisory firm DSMA - Dealer Solutions Mergers & Acquisitions, which is brokering discussions between China automakers and Canadian dealers. | Automotive News ($)

Mercedes-Benz has held early talks about deepening cooperation with China’s GEELY, part of an effort to bolster vehicle development in its largest market, according to people familiar with the matter. The early-stage discussions center on possible cooperation for models coming after Mercedes’s current generation of electric vehicles, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Relying more on Geely may help Mercedes shorten development times and lower engineering costs in China, where domestic brands are surging ahead on speed and pricing. | Automotive News ($)

China is famous for pushing growth zealously, so much was made of its recent decision to lower its GDP target to 4.5-5 per cent. But this was a marginal change, and China’s irrational hopes for growth are an increasingly big problem for the world. The target is not based in economics. It’s a political goal, reflecting Beijing’s ambition to surpass the US and become a developed economy by 2035. Pursuing that aim, Beijing has been overinvesting for years, but lately it has been dumping the excess output it can’t sell at home. In the past, China’s export volumes rose with prices; this decade, Beijing has dropped export prices by nearly 20 per cent, producing a 40 per cent surge in volume. Booming exports along with weak imports increased China’s trade surplus last year by 20 per cent to a record $1.2tn. Net exports accounted for almost a third of its 2025 GDP growth, a bloated share even by China’s standards. As a share of global GDP, no nation has ever had a larger trade surplus, and that includes Japan during its 1980s heyday. China’s dumping offensive is deindustrialising rival exporters the world over, idling car factories in Thailand and textile plants in Indonesia. Across Asia, nations where Chinese imports are rising fastest also tend to have the weakest job growth. | Financial Times ($)

The combination of a chronic energy crisis, the US trade war and the rise of China’s industrial capacity is pushing Europe into a corner. Chinese overcapacity is overwhelming European markets and turning China into Europe’s biggest competitor. Not all EU countries and not all businesses are equal in front of this economic tidal wave, which is a grave threat in some parts of the continent and makes a collective economic response difficult to craft and implement. Policy debates have been wrongly reduced to a binary choice between “Made in Europe” provisions, to protect EU industry, or a more limited “Made with Europe” approach that would limit tariffs, local content rules or EU subsidies in order to include Europe’s free trading partners. France has argued for the former while Germany and Nordic countries tend to favour the latter. But this facile opposition obscures the fact that Europeans are confronting several policy choices that present a number of difficult trade-offs: US-China competition, the sustainability of trade rules and multilateral institutions, viability of climate and decarbonisation objectives, threatened supplies of critical materials and the continent’s industrial future. Neoclassical economic models do not present obvious answers. EU leaders will have to mobilise trade, industrial and competition policy to find the best strategy vis-à-vis China, under multiple constraints. | Financial Times ($)

Chinese electric freight trucks are rolling into Europe at pace this year, following the trail blazed by Chinese EVs and threatening to upend the market with better technology and lower prices. Reuters has identified more than half a dozen Chinese manufacturers planning to launch European heavy truck sales in 2026. They include EV giant BYD; GEELY unit Farizon Auto; China’s top-selling electric truck brand SANY Group; Sinotruk; and startups Windrose Technology Inc and SuperPanther. Founded in 2022, Windrose will build trucks in Europe and is exploring U.S. production with Xos Trucks, which makes delivery trucks for UPS and FedEx. That would put it in direct competition with Tesla’s Semi big rig, which CEO Elon Musk recently said will start mass production this year, nine years after its 2017 unveiling. In Europe, the new arrivals aim to price their trucks up to 30 percent below the European average price of €320,000 ($380,000), managers at Chinese and European truckmakers told Reuters. Their cost advantages stem from their greater scale in China, where zero-emission heavy-duty trucks account for 29 percent of sales, as well as China’s lower-cost electric-vehicle and battery supply chain. | Automotive News ($)

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Autonomy & Robotics

After a recent spate of autonomous-vehicle deals, it’s feeling like 2016 all over again. Maybe this time the streets will really flow with robot cars. The vibe shift could be felt in the past two weeks, in particular, as Uber detailed partnerships with several AV companies, including Amazon’s Zoox and Motional. The ride-hailing behemoth also announced on Thursday an agreement to possibly invest as much as $1.25 billion in electric-car maker Rivian for its planned autonomous vehicles. Meanwhile, the Alphabet CEO’s new comp plan is now tied, in part, to Waymo, the self-driving car unit that grew out of Google and helped ignite the original excitement for the technology. And the real tell that the AV hype cycle has begun anew? Travis Kalanick, Uber’s ousted founder, and Anthony Levandowski, the tarnished O.G. of the Google car project, returned to the scene in a dramatic way. The two entrepreneurs came to epitomize a certain swagger of the first hype cycle roughly a decade ago when Silicon Valley was betting it could replace a world of human-driven cars with robots. That sent chills down the spines of Motor City executives who fretted—fairly perhaps—about safety and their pecking order in the world. The two men drew headlines this past week. Kalanick revealed he has been the biggest investor in Levandowski’s latest self-driving startup, and the former Uber CEO was working to fold that company into his reimagined venture called Atoms, which aims to automate food, mining and transport industries. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in electric vehicle company Rivian through 2031 in a deal to add up to 50,000 of the company’s new R2 SUVs to use as robotaxis on the Uber ride-hailing network, Rivian announced in a press release. The initial commitment includes the purchase of 10,000 Rivian R2 vehicles by Uber or one of its fleet partners, with the option to negotiate the purchase of 40,000 more in 2030, per the release. “We couldn’t be more excited about this partnership with Uber — it will help accelerate our path to level 4 autonomy to create one of the safest and most convenient autonomous platforms in the world, ” Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement. | Wards Auto

Since autonomous cars started roaming San Francisco streets almost four years ago, they have elicited an array of reactions from humans, including angry protests against the vehicles. That has created an unexpected hazard for passengers of self-driving cars all around the city: being stuck inside the vehicle during an anti-robot rant. Self-driving cars are designed to stop moving if a person is nearby. People can take advantage of that function to harass and threaten their passengers. In 2024, a San Francisco man tried covering the sensors of a self-driving car that had stopped, effectively disabling it, while passengers were inside. Another video from that year showed three women screaming as a group of vandals tagged their autonomous taxi with spray paint. | The New York Times ($)

Waymo, a self-driving car company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, is in 10 American cities, including Miami and Dallas, and is eyeing New York City, London and Tokyo next. The company has its own app and partners with ride-hailing services like Uber, and by the end of this year it expects to serve up one million rides weekly. Last month, Waymo raised $16 billion, giving it a valuation around $126 billion, to help with its expansion plans. Still, many people are wary of self-driving cars. The company’s co-chief executive, Tekedra Mawakana, knows she needs to earn the public’s trust. | The New York Times ($)

There’s no question that finally putting driverless semi trucks into regular interstate runs will be a turning point for the industry. A driver’s salary is 26% of the per-mile cost of operating a truck, TruckersReport.com says, while other studies have found it to be around 40%. Going driverless would result in considerable savings for the U.S. freight-truck business, which generates more than $900 billion in annual revenue. An acute driver shortage — frequently mentioned as a motivation for going autonomous — is no longer a major factor in the United States, though some cite a global shortage last year of 3.6 million drivers. “Currently there is not a big U.S. shortage,” said Bob Costello, chief economist at the American Trucking Associations. “We’ve seen demand fall so much in recent years.” A consensus is emerging that fully autonomous Class 8 trucking on major highways will arrive in 2027, with multiple companies prepared to roll out fleets, mostly in Texas, beginning later this year. (Trucks are classified from 1 to 8 and 8 is the biggest.) | The New York Times ($)

Humanoid robots are having a financial moment as advances in artificial intelligence fuel the promise of greater capabilities. But industrial leaders say fully autonomous robots that meet the strict safety and operational standards of factory assembly lines and construction sites remain a longer-term goal. And it’s not clear that customers actually want or need those machines to look like people anyway. | Bloomberg ($)

Renault Group will deploy 350 humanoid robots in its factories in 2027 to perform repetitive tasks as it seeks to cut production hours per vehicle by 30%, making it one of the first automakers to bring the technology to the production line. The robots, named Calvin-40, were developed with Wandercraft, a French startup in which Renault holds a minority stake. The matte black, headless robots can carry up to 40 kg (90 pounds), have cameras at their “waist,” and use LED lights to communicate their status. Automakers have embraced humanoid robots in recent years, as both customers and potential manufacturers. Among them are Tesla, which is ending Model S and Model X production in favor of manufacturing its Optimus humanoid robots; Hyundai Motor Company, which will deploy robots from its subsidiary Boston Dynamics; and Mercedes-Benz AG-Benz and BMW Group, which are investing in startups and have already put in place pilot projects. | Automotive News ($)

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

No one has a perfect road map to the future, but researchers at GovAI, which studies technology policy, and The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, used a novel approach to estimate which workers may be most and least able to adapt to AI. They concluded that many people most at risk if AI transforms work are also the best placed to find new jobs. | The Washington Post ($)

In 2025, Tomasz Tunguz from Theory Ventures predicted that 2026 would be the year agents would earn as much as a person. It’s already happening. In markets where there’s a labor shortage and an urgent need to hire people, we are seeing agents command 75%, 85%, even 100% of a human equivalent salary. This is faster than we were anticipating. The first-order benefit is completing the work. But there are second-order benefits that are now starting to appear. Training agents is significantly faster since all materials can be presented at once & in parallel to the AI. Agents typically require less management burden. They can work 24 hours faster or slower as the team needs. Capacity scales as a function of willingness to spend on inference. Then, a third-order benefit: significantly lower tax burden. Robotic workers are not taxed to the same extent as humans. No FICA. No state unemployment insurance. No benefits. At least a 25-30% cost reduction for the same salary. Plus agent software cost is tax-deductible up to $2.56m. | Tomasz Tunguz

What began as a way to autocomplete code quickly evolved into semiautonomous AI bots, or “agents,” that can work for hours on end with little human oversight. We can tell a bot to create a presentation for work, coordinate the family’s schedules and pick a March Madness bracket, all while it learns our personal preferences, no coding needed. The shift has permanently changed the lives of coders and sparked a $1 trillion market selloff as investors and executives contemplate the technology’s potential to reshape industries, including finance, legal and healthcare. Tens of thousands of job cuts have already been attributed to AI. For OpenAI and Anthropic, winning the market for non-coders is the next frontier, especially as both companies race toward initial public offerings that could come as soon as later this year. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Silicon Valley made risky bets in recent years on developing defense-related technology and providing services to the U.S. military establishment. Now those bets are paying off. From behemoths providing data systems to smaller companies offering novel weapons, tech firms such as Google, Palantir Technologies and OpenAI have found themselves at the heart of the U.S. war effort. Their central role amounts to an “I told you so” moment. For years, the tech industry’s efforts on defense-related offerings faced skepticism and opposition, with no clear or immediate business rewards. Many Silicon Valley engineers opposed the use of powerful technologies for killing, battles and other military purposes — concerns that persist. Despite those fears, venture capital firms have poured billions of dollars since last decade into start-ups building drones, lasers and other military systems. In January, Andreessen Horowitz, which was founded by the entrepreneurs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, closed a new, almost $1.2 billion fund to invest in defense technologies. | The New York Times ($)

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Connectivity

Farm tractors cost as much as a house, but you don’t really own them and you can’t really repair them yourself. If the software detects an error, the computer will shut down the machine. While your harvest languishes in the field, you will wait for a faraway technician to unfreeze the programming. Good luck baling that hay before the storm moves in. This reflects a bubbling frustration with an economy in which ownership is increasingly symbolic and control resides elsewhere. As physical goods become digitized — embedded with software, sensors and remote locks — manufacturers’ control no longer ends at the point of sale. It extends deep into the life of the product itself. In rural America, where distance magnifies dependency, that shift feels oppressive. When a silly, redundant sensor costs $200 and can’t be bought locally, when the nearest authorized dealer is 150 miles away and the planting window is a few days, repairs become a form of economic disempowerment. What’s emerging from this agrarian-rooted angst is an increasingly vocal battle for autonomy — a defense of independence, self-reliance and local capacity. At its core, the idea is simple: If you buy something, you should be able to fix it. Right-to-repair laws, introduced in all 50 states and enacted in a small but growing number, require manufacturers to provide parts, tools and diagnostic information to consumers and independent shops. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency clarified its stance as supportive of the right to repair for certain farm equipment. “For far too long,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said, “manufacturers have wrongly used the Clean Air Act to monopolize the repair markets, hurting … farmers.” | The Washington Post ($)

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Aviation & Space

U.S. air travelers are experiencing worsening conditions, including agonizingly long lines at security checkpoints due to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers toiling without pay. The energy crisis sparked by the war in Iran is boosting jet-fuel prices, making air travel more expensive, with jet fuel prices surging to $3.99 a gallon. Consumers' complaints about flying have broken records in four of the past five years, with nearly 67,000 complaints in 2024, and airlines are warning of higher costs threatening margins. | Bloomberg ($)

Early in 2025, Nikola Corporation, the hydrogen truck company Trevor Milton had founded, filed for bankruptcy. Milton had left Nikola in 2020 under a cloud, and by 2022 had been convicted of defrauding the company’s investors with what prosecutors said were his repeated lies about the development of the company’s zero-emissions trucks and technology. He faced a four-year prison term—he was free on appeal—and federal prosecutors were seeking roughly $676 million in restitution from him. It was wiped away with a phone call. In March 2025, Trump called Milton to tell him he had signed an unconditional pardon. Milton had styled himself as a political victim of the Biden administration, and Trump agreed. Milton and his wife had also donated at least $3.2 million to Trump’s 2024 election and to political groups and people in Trump’s orbit, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Milton said the donations weren’t related to his pardon.Now, Milton has joined an exclusive group of post-pardon businesspeople, seemingly anointed by Trump’s favor. “I walk into meetings now, and I’ll get high-fives from the most wealthy people in the world,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Welcome to the club. You can withstand the fire. We can trust you now.’” Milton has wasted little time embarking on his second act. He’s now CEO of SyberJet Aircraft, an ailing jet manufacturer, which he said he purchased with an investment group. He brought on dozens of former Nikola staffers to rejuvenate it. “I love to find products that are unreal and need someone with vision or guts to be able to bring it to market,” he said. He has unveiled plans for a new small jet that he says will have the highest speed and range—and largest lavatory—in the light jet category. Investor documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal said the goal is for the plane to be the first light jet to focus on artificial-intelligence flight. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

When Elon Musk flipped the off switch on Russian forces’ Starlink internet connections in February, Ukraine’s military went on the offensive. Russian commanders had lost access to live video of the battlefield and communications with troops. Ukrainian soldiers moved in on Russian positions with little threat from drones—normally an omnipresent danger. Now, Ukrainian forces have notched their biggest domestic territorial gains in more than two years, dashing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to gain leverage in U.S.-mediated talks. Ukrainian advances following Russia’s loss of Starlink—the satellite internet service of Musk’s SpaceX—underscore how vital the commercial satellite internet system has become in modern warfare—and the control that Musk himself is able to exercise over the conflict. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1975 Ferrari 365 GT4 BB. | Artcurial

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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📰 In The News

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On this week's Future of Automotive segment on CBT News, we reflect back on a pair of recent warnings from the worlds of technology and finance — both asking the same unsettling question: what if artificial intelligence succeeds so quickly that it begins to destabilize the economy? | CBT News ($)

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Justin will deliver the keynote address at the inaugural Startup Symposium. The half-day, agent-focused event will be held as part of the 16th annual Agent Summit, which kicks off with a welcome reception on the evening of Sunday, April 12, at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. | LINK

👀 Automotive Ventures Company to Watch

🌟 DealerCopilot deploys role-based AI agents that execute best-practice workflows consistently and autonomously — driving ROI, productivity, and a better customer experience. | DealerCopilot.ai

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