Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | May 18 2026 | VIEW ONLINE

VCs need to become very comfortable with failure. | LINK

What We're Reading:

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Automotive

Toyota reported the highest-ever revenue in company history in FY2026 of 50.7 trillion yen ($324 billion) with positive vehicle sales growth in the key markets of North America, Europe and Japan, the company reported in its full-year earnings results. Total vehicle retail sales for Toyota and Lexus were up 2% to nearly 10.5 million units globally, according to its earnings presentation, with an 8.5% year-over-year jump in North America to 2.93 million vehicles, the highest since 2017. But despite record-setting revenue and positive sales growth, the impacts of U.S. tariffs erased all of Toyota’s profits in North America for FY2026, resulting in a rare operating loss of $1.9 billion for the year ending March 31. | Wards Auto

Honda Motor on Thursday reported its first annual loss since becoming a publicly traded company in Japan seven decades ago, as the costly retreat from its ambitious electric-vehicle targets plunged earnings into the red. The automaker reported a net loss of $2.7 billion for the fiscal year that ended March 31. Earnings were weighed down by more than $9 billion in restructuring charges and write-downs after a retrenchment of its E.V. strategy. It is the first loss that the 77-year-old company has reported since listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1957. The sharp downturn underscores the extent to which Honda — and many other automakers that poured billions into electric vehicles — has been buffeted by cooling demand. “The business environment and customer demand have changed beyond our expectations,” Toshihiro Mibe, Honda’s chief executive, said in a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday. “We were not able to respond flexibly enough.” | The New York Times ($)

Volkswagen's U.S. brand Scout Motors was designed from the start to pursue a potential stock market listing or to ‌allow strategic investors to take a stake, its CEO Scott Keogh told daily Handelsblatt Live, as it explores new funding options. Scout was deliberately set up as a stand-alone entity, ⁠Keogh said. Outside capital was "an option that is on the table", Keogh said in the interview with the German business newspaper. | Reuters ($)

A new class-action lawsuit against Porsche claims the automaker has created an unfair repair monopoly by preventing independent shops from accessing critical vehicle systems. The complaint alleges Porsche owners are effectively forced to return to dealership service centers, even for routine maintenance work as simple as an oil change. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by Fleet Salvage Systems, a Florida-based company that owns a Porsche Cayenne. According to the complaint, an independent repair shop was unable to reset the SUV’s oil service indicator after completing a standard oil and filter change because Porsche restricts access to the required software tools. At the center of the lawsuit is the growing debate over vehicle software access and the broader “right to repair” movement. As modern vehicles become increasingly dependent on encrypted electronic systems, automakers have gained greater control over diagnostics, calibration, and software-related functions that independent mechanics once handled routinely. The case targets Porsche vehicles sold in the United States from January 1, 2021 onward. Plaintiffs argue the company’s practices have created an anti-competitive environment that drives repair costs higher while limiting consumer choice. | Yahoo!autos

Evidence continues to accrue supporting the benefit of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and the technology’s ability to reduce crashes. The latest research is from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), which studied the real-world performance of 12 million 2020-2024 General Motors vehicles equipped with specific crash-prevention technologies. Researched looked at these vehicles’ performance among more than 700,000 police-reported crashes to learn the potential benefit of the ADAS equipment. The GM cars had an 86% reduction in backing crashes, and the automatic emergency braking system cut rear-end crashes that produced injuries by 57%. The study also found that the front pedestrian braking system cut crashes with injuries by 35%. Lane-keeping assist and lane change alert provide a slight benefit, with a 15% reduction in roadway departure crashes and 13% reduction in lane-change crashes, respectively. | DesignNews

The tension between nostalgia and practicality is familiar to swaths of Gen Xers and millennials who find themselves inheriting cars from loved ones. Hagerty, a media firm and automotive insurance provider, estimates that 12 million enthusiast vehicles will transfer to a new generation in the US over the next 15 years in estate plans or inheritances. That’s roughly $570 billion in cars, according to data provided to Bloomberg. The market for collectible cars — vehicles desirable for their heritage, performance and design — has mushroomed over the past two decades, according to Hagerty. It encompasses more than 43 million vehicles in the US, representing an estimated $1 trillion in total insurable value. As older owners pass away, their beloved cars become part of the legacy they pass down. It’s a vehicular spin on the $90 trillion Great Wealth Transfer, a massive shift in assets from the Silent Generation and baby boomers to their offspring, which is primed to change the global economy over the next few decades, according to the research firm Cerulli Associates. | Bloomberg ($)

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EVs

The number of cars sold in the United States in April fell 7 percent from a year earlier, to 1.4 million, according to Cox Automotive. In April 2025, many people were rushing to buy cars before President Trump’s tariffs on imported vehicles and parts took effect. Sales of new electric vehicles plunged 23 percent from a year earlier, according to Cox. That occurred even though CarGurus and similar websites have reported an uptick in searches for electric vehicles. But electric vehicle sales rose compared with January and February, before gasoline and diesel prices began to climb. And sales of used electric vehicles jumped 17 percent, a sign that many buyers prefer the technology when they can afford it. | The New York Times ($)

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China

Oil prices surging from the Iran war delivered Chinese automakers an unexpected global boost, sparking electric vehicle demand from pump-shocked buyers worldwide even as the conflict choked off their vital Middle East market. The Middle East upheaval may turbocharge the international expansion of Chinese brands such as BYD and CHERY. BYD just raised its overseas sales forecast to capture the upswing. Any increase in global demand is welcome news for China’s auto industry. The Iran war choked off Chinese automakers’ access to their vital Middle East market in March sending shipments plummeting 60 percent. It echoes how the oil crises of the 1970s and early 1980s similarly propelled Japanese carmakers’ conquest of the U.S. as soaring gasoline prices pushed consumers to fuel-efficient Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans. “We could see a similar effect in speeding up the rise of Chinese brands in the global market,” said John Zeng, director for Asian forecasting at GlobalData Plc, a London-based consultancy. Chinese automakers sidestepped the Middle East disruption by pivoting quickly to other markets — a flexibility rooted in their export-focused factories and low-cost production. The war revealed the resilience of a business model built to capitalize on sudden demand shifts. 2014. | Automotive News ($)

China exported more electric vehicles and plug-in vehicles than gasoline or diesel cars for the first time in April, as automakers expanded aggressively overseas to offset subdued demand in the domestic market. China exported 769,000 automobiles in April, with new-energy vehicles, a term that includes EVs and plug-in hybrids, accounting for 52.7% of total exports, the China Passenger Car Association said Monday. Exports of new-energy vehicles more than doubled to 406,000 units in April, the data showed. The surging exports came as the domestic market continued to face pressure from weak consumption sentiment. Retail sales of passenger cars in April fell 21.5% from a year earlier to 1.38 million units, the CPCA said. Sales declined 16% compared with March. Rising oil prices also weighed on demand for traditional gasoline-powered vehicles, the agency added, as consumers increasingly shifted toward new-energy cars to avoid higher fuel costs. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Sometimes the world’s biggest car market is not enough. Struggling with ferocious competition at home, China’s big electric-vehicle makers, led by BYD, have turned to growth abroad. New horizons though, can’t hide the fact that the industry’s growth is shifting down a gear, and racy valuations are increasingly only seen in rear-view mirrors. From the BYD Dolphin to the MG4, made by SAIC-owned MG Motor, Chinese cars have become commonplace in the driveways of Europe, Australia and swaths of Latin America. China’s EV exports doubled last year to 2.6mn units. Of those, just under half were produced overseas in one of the 16 countries in which BYD and rivals have, or are planning, plants. By 2030, their overseas operations will produce about 3.4mn cars, AlixPartners estimates. China Inc’s total overseas sales still pale next to the estimated 3.5mn vehicles BYD alone sold at home last year, but a chill in their backyard is what fuels their race around the world. Government policy helped boost EVs to roughly half of new car sales in the biggest Chinese cities, but Beijing is switching its attention — and subsidies — to newer sectors such as AI and robotics. | Financial Times ($)

As President Donald Trump prepares to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, the U.S. auto industry and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are hammering him with a simple message: Please don't offer China any access to the U.S. car market. Trump in January told the Detroit Economic Club that it would be "great" if Chinese automakers wanted to build ‌plants in the U.S. and employ Americans, adding: "I love that. Let China come in, let Japan come in." His comments rang alarm bells in an industry that had systematically lobbied successive administrations to bar Chinese cars from the U.S. market with tough data security rules and high tariffs on electric vehicles. So automakers, suppliers, steelmakers, unions and politicians have redoubled their efforts, arguing that Chinese automakers, with limitless state support, massive scale, an EV technology edge and rock-bottom prices, would crush domestic and other foreign producers, hollowing out the core of the U.S. manufacturing base. Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan went to the same forum in Detroit on Thursday specifically to urge Trump not to make a deal with Xi to allow Chinese investment in the U.S. auto sector that brings Chinese-brand cars into U.S. dealerships. | Reuters ($)

Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation to toughen a U.S. government ban on Chinese automakers from ‌entering the American market just before President Donald Trump headed to China for talks. The legislation would codify a regulation imposed by the Biden administration that effectively bans all Chinese automakers from selling passenger vehicles in the U.S. and take other steps to prevent China from entering the U.S. light-duty market. Representatives John Moolenaar, a Republican, ⁠and Debbie Dingell, a Democrat, are introducing the legislation after a version was introduced in the Senate last month by Republican Bernie Moreno and Democrat Elissa Slotkin. The legislation would ban vehicles designed in China if they had advanced connectivity as well as vehicle software. | Reuters ($)

China’s Leapmotor is targeting a bigger slice of Europe’s largest auto market with an electric vehicle costing less than a typical monthly mobile phone bill. Drivers in Germany can lease the Leapmotor T03 city car from €49 ($58) a month, a plan that factors in a new EV subsidy and is roughly half the price of the similarly sized Fiat 500. The model comes standard with perks including a rear-view camera, six airbags and a panoramic sunroof. The offer is an example of how Chinese automakers led by BYD, SAIC’s MG Motor Europe and GEELY are challenging European rivals with a range of affordable electric and hybrid vehicles. In Germany, the region’s biggest EV market, Chinese brands are free to tap into a €3 billion subsidy program introduced this year. Leapmotor is benefiting from having access to the sales and distribution network of its partner Stellantis. Stellantis’s electric Fiat 500 can be leased from €99 a month. Stellantis has said it sees no risk of Leapmotor cannibalizing its sales. While Chinese automakers face tariffs on EVs imported to the European Union, they are still able to sell cars profitably in the bloc thanks to low manufacturing costs at home. Their models are competing with entry-level EVs from local manufacturers including Renault’s R5 E-Tech and Volkswagen’s ID Polo. | Automotive News ($)

Chinese electric vehicle startup XPENG is in talks with Volkswagen Group and other automakers about buying a factory in Europe, the Financial Times reported. The development comes days after VW Group CEO Oliver Blume said the company could bring its cars developed in China to Europe or even share factory capacity in the region with Chinese partners. VW is exploring alternative uses for its Dresden and Osnabrück factories under a cost-cutting drive to pare back its German operations. However, Thomas Schaefer, VW’s brand chief, told FT’s Future of the Car summit there was no interest from automakers in using the automaker’s German plants that are due to be shuttered. He called the reports “nonsense.” Elvis Cheng, Xpeng’s managing director for northeastern Europe, told the event that the Hong Kong-listed company is in talks with the German automaker to see if “there is any possibility we can find a location here in Europe.” | Automotive News ($)

BYD is negotiating with Stellantis and other European automakers about taking over underutilized factories in the region, according to the Chinese company’s top international executive. The world’s largest seller of electric vehicles is discussing potential deals to take on plants in countries such as Italy, BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li said in an interview Wednesday. “We are talking to not only Stellantis, we’re talking to other companies too,” Li said on the sidelines of the Financial Times Future of the Car conference in London. “We are looking for any available plant in Europe because we do want to utilize this kind of spare capacity.” | Automotive News ($)

The three Chinese automakers with an early lead expanding into Canada are scaling back their network development plans or pushing back timelines to start sales as regulatory and economic realities collide with initial ambitions, according to buy-sell and advisory firm DSMA. BYD, Chery and Geely are continuing to advance their plans for Canada, but are rethinking their strategies, said Jason Zhao, director of Asian market development at DSMA, which is brokering discussions between Chinese automakers and Canadian car dealers. “In phase one, they’re going to be very conservative,” he told Automotive News Canada. Instead of cross-country footprints, the automakers are looking at opening one or two dealerships in each of Canada’s largest markets in the short term, he said. | Automotive News ($)

As President Trump prepares to meet China’s top leader at a summit in Beijing this week, one of the most pressing issues facing the United States, the European Union and Japan lies in China’s restrictions on exports of rare-earth metals and magnets essential to advanced manufacturing. Manufacturers of commercial aircraft, electronics, cars, semiconductor manufacturing equipment and military hardware are facing acute shortages of rare earths, many of which are refined almost exclusively in China. Prices for some of these metals have soared as much as a hundredfold since Beijing halted most exports in early April last year. China announced on Oct. 9 that it planned to impose sweeping new restrictions on exports of rare earths and products containing even trace amounts of Chinese rare earths. Three weeks later, Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, agreed at a meeting with Mr. Trump to postpone those measures for a year, though the restrictions issued in April remained in place. A senior administration official said Sunday that the United States was in frequent contact with China about rare earths, and that it remained unclear whether this week’s summit would produce an agreement to extend the one-year reprieve. But the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity before the diplomatically sensitive meeting, said he was confident the two sides would reach an extension before the postponement expired. | The New York Times ($)

For its $3 billion BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, Ford linked up with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, or CATL, the Chinese behemoth that leads the world in battery tech. Antagonism between the superpowers has made even this kind of licensing agreement increasingly rare — and controversial enough to draw flak since it was announced in 2023, from the streets of Marshall to the halls of Congress. The plant got built anyway. On a sunny April afternoon, crews were installing a few last bits of equipment, and prepping parking lots for some 1,700 employees who are slated to start production of electric-vehicle batteries within months. One possible question for Trump and Xi, at their May 14-15 summit in Beijing, is whether this collaboration could be a blueprint for more. | Bloomberg ($)

China’s chokehold is likely to loosen on some of the more abundant light rare earths used in a huge proportion of consumer electronics by the end of this decade. But when it comes to some of the key so-called heavy rare earths — essential for high-performance magnets and military technologies and targeted by China’s export curbs last year — Beijing’s dominance will likely persist longer, until at least the mid-2030s, according to projections and data supplied to Bloomberg from three critical mineral consultancies. For two of the most important elements, dysprosium and terbium, countries outside of China will still meet less than a fifth of demand by 2035, according to data from one of those consultancies, McKinsey & Company. CRU Group and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence offered similar projections and interpretations. | Bloomberg ($)

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Autonomy & Robotics

Street racing at 125+ mph on the I-10 in LA led to a crash, but the Waymo Driver saw it coming: it detected the anomalous situation early, tracked the reckless vehicle post-crash, and maneuvered defensively to safely bypass the scene. | Waymo

Waymo is expanding its coverage area by 200 square miles in several existing markets, including Miami, the San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, Austin, and Atlanta. That will bring its total coverage area to more than 1,400 square miles. The autonomous car service is currently offering public rides in 11 markets, after expanding to Nashville last month. | Sherwood

As the autonomous vehicle dreams of a decade ago succumbed to practical challenges, other companies have found new applications for their innovations, such as ground-penetrating radar, 3-D radar and advanced lidar (which stands for light detection and ranging). These new applications cover a diversity of uses, including smart city systems and in-home elder care services, as well as managing 1,500-ton gantries in shipyards and monitoring 800-foot-tall wind turbines. Such technology is even being used to improve robots and artificial intelligence systems. Lidar has experienced the widest adoption. Lidar sensors can generate three-dimensional views of their surroundings by bouncing near-infrared light off objects. The technology can create detailed data for traffic monitoring systems, where regular video cameras can be stymied by bright daylight or total darkness. | The New York Times ($)

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Connectivity

The growing complexity of connected cars and their network of potentially vulnerable components makes modern vehicles a lucrative target for hackers. Sensitive driver information remains at risk, even as federal and state regulators have notched some recent wins against automakers in data-privacy cases and by procuring bans of Chinese car parts. Modern vehicles can collect a trove of information about drivers, including their speed, acceleration, seat-belt use, precise location and trip history. When paired with a phone, cars can access contacts, call logs, text-message metadata and other information many consumers don’t realize is collected or shared. With no national data-privacy law in the U.S., the auto industry must follow a mix of rules from states, agencies and industry groups. Last year, a U.S. Department of Commerce ban on the use of Chinese and Russian hardware and software in internet-connected vehicles on U.S. roads went into effect. Federal lawmakers recently introduced a bill to codify the ban. Meanwhile, attorneys general in California, Montana and Texas are suing or investigating major carmakers over how they handle driver data. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Potholes are a pesky problem — just ask scooter company Lime, which listed them as an official risk to its business in its IPO filing last week. History is littered with claims that technology can help solve or blunt the problem of potholes, and still they persist. But as cars become increasingly laden with advanced sensors, they are becoming a tool that can quickly alert cities to potholes and other municipal problems. Last month, Waymo and Waze announced a pilot program to share pothole data with local governments. Now, fleet management company Samsara says it’s one-upping that idea with its own AI-powered offering that it calls “Ground Intelligence.” Samsara has spent the last decade giving its customers cameras to mount inside millions of trucks for driver monitoring, theft prevention, and helping with liability claims. The San Francisco-based company has taken all that data and trained its own model that can detect multiple different types of potholes and determine how quickly they are deteriorating. The idea is that Samsara-equipped trucks are far more prevalent than Waymo’s robotaxi fleet, which currently stands at just around 3,000 vehicles. Even as that number grows, Samsara believes it will be able to collect more data and, crucially, more repeat data from the same locations that show how potholes change over time. | TechCrunch ($)

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Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders don’t agree on much. But both think that AI is a disaster for the working class. The Vermont senator recently wrote that “AI oligarchs do not want to just replace specific jobs. They want to replace workers.” Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, made similar comments last week: Silicon Valley does “not care about the little guy,” he said in a podcast episode titled “Stopping the AI Oligarchs From Stealing Humanity.” This emergent “Bernie-to-Bannon” coalition points to the growing bipartisan anxiety over AI. In polls, the United States ranks among the countries most concerned about AI. America is both the world’s foremost developer of AI and its chief hater. Recently, Maine passed the country’s first statewide data-center moratorium (though the bill was vetoed by the governor). Nationally, a record number of proposed projects were canceled in the first quarter of this year following local pushback. Meanwhile, in extreme cases, concerns about AI appear to be tipping into violence. In April, someone shot 13 rounds at an Indianapolis councilman’s house and left a note under his doormat: “NO DATA CENTERS,” it read. Days later, a man threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s home before heading to OpenAI’s headquarters, where he allegedly threatened to burn down the building and kill anyone inside. (The man has since pleaded not guilty to several charges, including attempted murder.) Social-media posts applauding the attack racked up thousands of likes: “I hope that Molotov is okay!” wrote one commenter. | The Atlantic ($)

A university degree no longer seems to offer much protection from joblessness: recent graduates are likelier to be unemployed than the average American. The current cohort feels particularly gloomy. Less than a fifth of them think this is a good time to find a good job—the lowest share in over a decade, and well below the figure for Americans overall, at more than a quarter. A slump in on-campus recruiting is not helping. Job postings on Handshake, a search platform for university students, are 50% below their peak of 2022. Many suspect AI is to blame. More than half of employers say they have considered replacing entry-level workers with the technology. A recent poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found that, similarly, more than half of young Americans see AI as a threat to their job prospects. Economists are more divided. | The Economist ($)Benedict Evans has published his 2026 "AI eats the world" presentation. | Benedict Evans

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Investing

A must-read for any entrepreneur in the auto dealership-facing software world. Last month Salesforce announced it would open its APIs and launch a headless product, essentially betting that in an agentic world, its value lies in the data layer, not the UI. It’s a smart repositioning. (Although it’s worth noting that not much appears to have changed technically: the APIs Salesforce is now marketing as a “headless product” have largely existed for years. In other words it was a classic Salesforce marketing launch.) The idea behind the new product is that agents can access the data from the system of record without needing to interact with the UI, which is designed for humans to track workflows. The announcement is a useful prompt for a more interesting question: if you strip away the UI and expose the database, what are you actually left with? How is that different from a Postgres database, a well-designed schema, and an API? Do the classic factors that make systems of record durable persist, or is there a new set of criteria? In the SaaS era, the system of record was defensible because humans lived in the interface. In the agentic era, that advantage weakens. The defensible layers shift downward into data models, permissions, workflow logic, and compliance, and upward into networks, proprietary data generation, and real-world execution. | A16Z

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 2004 Ferrari Enzo. | RM Sotheby's

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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