BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | Sep 29 2025 | VIEW ONLINE

Automotive Ventures is very excited to announce our investment in EchoTwin AI. LINK

🚗

Automotive

The auto industry is flashing warning lights on the state of the U.S. economy. Automakers’ profits are getting squeezed by tariffs. A subprime auto lender recently collapsed, and some car retailers are warning that consumers are pulling back. CarMax, the biggest seller of used cars, said Thursday that its sales and profit plunged in the latest quarter. The company’s results, which sent its stock tumbling 20%, is the latest in a series of unsettling developments in an industry under strain from President Trump’s tariffs and carmakers’ recalibration of expensive electrification strategies. Ford Motor Company said this week it was offering lower interest rates to buyers with the weakest acceptable credit histories as it tries to unload unsold F-150 pickups, its bestselling model. Honda said it was scrapping an electric Acura SUV after just one model year. Other brands are offering steep discounts on EVs to capture buyers before a federal tax credit expires next week. Tricolor Auto Group, LLC, a subprime auto lender and car dealer owner, abruptly filed for bankruptcy liquidation earlier this month amid government investigations and a bank partner’s allegations of fraud. The Dallas-based company offered auto financing to customers who lacked credit history or a Social Security number and operated 65 dealerships. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Carvana’s second push into new-vehicle sales will be in Texas. The Tempe, Ariz., used-vehicle retailer plans to acquire Park Cities Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram-Fiat in Dallas in a transaction expected to close the evening of Sept. 22. The Park Cities store will be the second franchised dealership for Carvana, which sold used cars and trucks entirely online before 2025. In February, Carvana bought Jerry Seiner Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Casa Grande, Ariz., roughly 45 miles south of its headquarters. Financial terms of the Texas deal were not disclosed. The Dallas Morning News reported the transaction earlier in the day. | Automotive News ($)

The Trump administration canceled grants for street safety measures, pedestrian trails and bike lanes, citing that the projects aren’t designed for cars. The Department of Transport (DoT) rescinded grants for projects in various cities, including San Diego, Fairfield, and Boston, stating that they are "hostile" to cars or could "impede vehicle capacity and speed". Local officials and transit advocates are looking for alternative funding sources to make up for the shortfalls, with some saying that the cancellation of federal grants may actually allow their projects to move faster. | Bloomberg ($)

The new Chinese Yangwang U9 Xtreme electric hypercar just blasted its way to a staggering 308.4 mph top speed on a German test track, seizing the “world’s fastest car” crown and busting the last traces of the myth that electric cars are slow. Just weeks after BYD announced that the nearly 3,000 hp, all-electric Yangwang U9 Track Edition model set a new global speed record for electric vehicles after hitting a ridiculous 472.41 km/h (~293 mph), the Yangwang crew returned to Germany’s Automotive Testing Papenburg GmbH (ATP) test track with the U9 Xtreme with its sights set on a new goal. They didn’t want the world’s fastest EV title – they wanted the world’s fastest production car title.  The BYD Yangwang crew got that record, rocketing all the way to 496.22 km/h (308.4 mph). | Electrek

⚡️

EVs

Amazingly, and somewhat worryingly, urban EVs are nudging into supercar performance territory. Volvo Cars, a brand built on driving safety, has the EX30 Twin Motor Plus AWD. Now, the EX30 is marketed as an urban EV aimed “at a younger demographic” so they can “make it their first Volvo,” but the Twin Motor Plus AWD can rocket from standstill to 60 mph just shy of 3.5 seconds. That's a full second faster than the Porsche AG 911 T and almost on par with the new Ferrari Amalfi. The entry level EX30 trim model does it in just over five and a half seconds. Either, it could easily be argued, is too much for younger, less experienced drivers. | Wired ($)

Affordability, or the lack thereof, has long been a major stumbling block for electric vehicle adoption. But with a wave of deeply discounted offers, EVs on average are cheaper to lease than gas-powered cars. All told, the average EV lease works out to $624 a month (including a down payment), compared with $670 for internal-combustion cars and trucks, according to Edmunds. Though for certain cars at certain dealerships, bargain hunters can find a monthly payment below $100. Indeed, car companies are offering screaming deals on battery-powered machines in a push to lock in loyal customers before losing federal tax credits of up to $7,500 per transaction at the end of September. The low prices are also intended to move a backlog of machines before next year’s models start rolling off assembly lines en masse. Much of the current inventory is made up of machines that were made before tariffs drove up their cost, so there’s more room to discount while maintaining some margin. | Bloomberg ($)

When Porsche AG prepared investors for its stock-market debut three years ago, its finance chief vowed that the company’s electric vehicles would soon out-earn its roaring gasoline counterparts. Now, battered by waning demand for its Taycan EV and rising production costs, the German manufacturer has shelved plans for a battery-powered luxury SUV, delayed several other electric models and announced plans to add more hybrid and combustion-engine vehicles to bolster its lineup. Porsche’s struggles are symptoms of a worrisome trend for the auto industry. Manufacturers around the world are failing to convince their richest customers to switch to cars that run on batteries rather than gasoline — even after pouring billions of dollars into developing them. | Bloomberg ($)

Porsche is postponing the introduction of a new software-led architecture until “well into the 2030s” amid the brand’s pivot back to combustion engines. Porsche had been developing its own version of Volkswagen Group’s Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) electrical and electronic architecture that it calls SSP Sport. The platform was planned to be used for the brand’s new flagship SUV above the Cayenne internally called K1, as well as for replacements for the Panamera and Taycan sedans. The SSP Plus’s postponement will hit suppliers lined up to deliver new technologies to vehicles on the platform, which was set to deliver Level 3 eyes-off, hands-off autonomy. | Automotive News ($)

The largest U.S. EV charging networks. | Axios

🇨🇳

China

China produced a massive 11.9 billion tonnes of carbon emissions at the last count in 2023, per data from the Global Carbon Budget — more than the next five top carbon-polluting nations combined. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the world’s largest carbon-polluting country — responsible for over 31% of global CO2 emissions — would aim to reduce its emissions by 7% to 10% by 2035. Xi pledged that the country will increase its wind and solar power sixfold from the level reported in 2020, helping to cement its contradictory position as both the world leader in renewables as well as the world’s biggest polluter. | Sherwood

This chart from The New York Times' recent piece on China's clean energy dominance isn't really about climate tech—it's a map of the future of all manufacturing. We pioneered the science behind lithium-ion batteries, solar cells, and EVs. China captured $143 billion in exports by mastering something we've dismissed as boring: process innovation. Here's what that means on the factory floor: While we chase the next breakthrough, Chinese manufacturers run millions of repetitions—tightening process windows from ±10% to ±0.1%, driving first-pass yield from 60% to 99.5%, cutting cycle times by seconds that compound into competitive advantage. They treat factories as learning systems, with in-line metrology feeding back to digital twins, SPC charts wallpapering control rooms, and playbooks that replicate success across dozens of facilities. The path forward isn't abandoning innovation—it's recognizing that process is innovation. Instrument every line. Protect recipes and process IP like the crown jewels they are. Publish OEE curves so teams see progress in real-time. Build right-sized, replicable modules instead of monument factories. Breakthroughs open doors. Process builds empires. The question is whether we'll trust the process before China owns every industry we invent. | NextGen Industry Group

Under Donald Trump, the world has taken a sharp turn back toward the 17th century doctrine of mercantilism — the notion that trade is a zero-sum game in which countries should be self-sufficient and focus on exporting far more than they import. It worked for Louis XIV and other early European empires, and the aim of America First is to reintroduce it with the U.S. this time the victor. Adam Smith developed the doctrine of free markets in response. To quote George Magnus of Oxford University’s China Center, he “saw the emphasis of mercantilism on the acquisition of gold and silver, and the associated suppression of imports and promotion of exports, as incompatible with the accumulation of wealth for citizens.” Smith’s philosophy animated the liberalism that dominated the West for most of the last century. The aim of the tariffs launched on April 2, Trump’s Liberation Day, was to bring back the world that Smith had reacted against. Since that announcement, which imposed trade barriers far higher than had been expected, the progress of the new mercantilism has presented two surprises. First, despite the initial horrified market reaction, the tariffs remain in place at much the same rates. Indeed, they’ve risen for countries as important as India and Brazil. Second, barely anyone has retaliated. The world has acquiesced in tipping the terms of trade sharply in favor of the U.S. So far, this looks like a crushing victory for America First. But it ignores one critical factor. There is already one country that has been practicing mercantilism for decades, it’s very good at it, and it appears to be a step ahead of the U.S. as it starts to play the same game: China. | Bloomberg ($)

China's industrial might is hard to capture in numbers. The country accounts for more than 30% of global manufacturing, or more than America, Germany, Japan and South Korea combined. That figure understates the growing terror that Chinese-made stuff inspires in foreign competitors and governments alike. Chinese goods are cheap and getting cheaper, because firms there are both efficient and locked in a domestic price war of epic brutality. After nearly three years of continuous falls in factory-gate prices, many firms are bleeding money and desperate to sell into foreign markets, where margins are fatter. Chinese export growth is impressive when measured by value. It is positively fantastical when measured by volume. Just before the covid-19 pandemic, a third of all containers carrying exports around the world contained stuff assembled, grown or processed in China. Today China’s share of global export containers is over 36%, though the country represents around a fifth of world GDP. A foreign business boss in China foresees a reckoning: “There will come a point in time when China and the world simply cannot absorb more Chinese goods, and I think that point is approaching.” Meanwhile, valuable markets in China are being walled off. New rules limit imports of computer chips, medical devices and more, as the Communist Party puts economic and national security above short-run growth. Though exports to America have plunged, hit by President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariffs, China’s overall trade surplus is on track to exceed $1trn this year, with record-setting shipments to Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. From Brasília to Berlin and Bangkok, politicians hear calls to protect established industries from Chinese competition. Yet many of the same politicians want Chinese investors to help them build industries of the future, by opening plants to make batteries, say. That limits their desire to confront China. | The Economist ($)

For over a decade, China has meticulously orchestrated a strategic ascent in the global electric vehicle (EV) batteries market, culminating in a dominance that now presents a formidable challenge to Western manufacturers. From government-backed gigafactories to proprietary technology in crucial materials, China has established what one industry expert describes as “almost a moat” around its battery production, leaving Europe and the United States scrambling to catch up. | EE Times

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has fully exited Chinese automaker BYD, a filing showed, ending a 17-year investment that grew over 20-fold in value in that period. The filing by Berkshire's energy subsidiary recorded the value of its BYD investment as zero as of end-March, down from $415 million at the end of 2024. Buffett's company began investing in Shenzhen-based BYD in 2008, when it paid $230 million for about 225 million shares, equivalent to a 10% stake at the time. | Reuters ($)

🤖

Autonomy, Robotics & AI

San Francisco’s robotaxi boom raises a question: when technology automates a profession, what happens to human workers? You might think that the city’s drivers are doomed. In fact, so far, the rise of autonomy has played out in two different ways. First, it has raised overall demand for taxis in San Francisco, limiting job losses. Second, it caters to a lucrative corner of the market rather than to the masses. Take the size of the market first. We find little evidence Waymo has put many humans out of work. According to official data, in 2024 the number of people in San Francisco working for “taxi and limousine service” firms grew by 7%, against a year earlier. Total pay in the industry rose by 14%. Figures from the city suggest the number of old-fashioned taxi trips is about the same as it was last year. It can still be hard to find a yellow cab at peak times. “As self-driving cars enter the marketplace, they will actually expand the market,” David Risher, chief executive of Lyft, a human-powered ride-hailing firm, recently suggested. | The Economist ($)

Junko Yoshida outlines how “End-to-End (E2E)” AI learning, in theory, enables autonomous systems to learn directly from data instead of objects that have been painstakingly labeled. That means, “you can reduce staff size and increase velocity,” Philip Koopman notes, because E2E lets companies to eliminate people hired to label objects, while you also need fewer programmers because you are not writing all the glue codes between modules. On stage at The Autonomous event in Vienna last week, several German automotive executives described E2E AI as a “big topic” that will alter vehicle architecture and pave the way to L4 and L5 autonomy. These predictions, predictably, came without actual plans. | Junko Yoshida

California has long served as the proving ground for autonomous vehicle technology. Companies like Alphabet’s Waymo, General Motors’ Cruise, and Tesla have used the state’s roads to test, refine, and now deploy self-driving ride-hailing services. Waymo, in particular, has led the charge in San Francisco, while Cruise has expanded operations in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Tesla, meanwhile, is reportedly piloting airport rides between San Francisco and San Jose using its “Full Self-Driving” software. The sharp rise in usage can be traced back to a key inflection point: in August 2023, regulators fully approved paid autonomous taxi services. This removed a major legal barrier and unlocked pent-up commercial demand. | Visual Capitalist

Over the next several years, humanoid robots will change the nature of work. Or at least, that’s what humanoid robotics companies have been consistently promising, enabling them to raise hundreds of millions of dollars at valuations that run into the billions. Delivering on these promises will require a lot of robots. Agility Robotics expects to ship “hundreds” of its Digit robots in 2025 and has a factory in Oregon capable of building over 10,000 robots per year. Tesla is planning to produce 5,000 of its Optimus robots in 2025, and at least 50,000 in 2026. Figure believes “there is a path to 100,000 robots” by 2029. And these are just three of the largest companies in an increasingly crowded space. Amplifying this message are many financial analysts: Bank of America Global Research, for example, predicts that global humanoid robot shipments will reach 18,000 units in 2025. And Morgan Stanley Research estimates that by 2050 there could be over 1 billion humanoid robots, part of a US $5 trillion market. But as of now, the market for humanoid robots is almost entirely hypothetical. Even the most successful companies in this space have deployed only a small handful of robots in carefully controlled pilot projects. And future projections seem to be based on an extraordinarily broad interpretation of jobs that a capable, efficient, and safe humanoid robot—which does not currently exist—might conceivably be able to do. Can the current reality connect with the promised scale? | IEEE Spectrum

China is making and installing factory robots at a far greater pace than any other country, with the United States a distant third, further strengthening China’s already dominant global role in manufacturing. There were more than two million robots working in Chinese factories last year, according to a report released Thursday by the International Federation of Robotics, a nonprofit trade group for makers of industrial robots. Factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined, the report found. American factories installed 34,000. While Chinese factories have been using more robots, they have also gotten better at making them. The government has used public capital and policy directives to spur Chinese companies to become leaders in robotics and other advanced technologies like semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Worldwide, robots and artificial intelligence are playing an increasingly prominent and disruptive role in manufacturing. Factory robots range from machines that weld car parts together to claws that lifts boxes onto conveyor belts. As technology helps factories become more efficient, some are making do with fewer workers and altering the roles of others. Over the past decade, China has embarked on a broad campaign to use more robots in its factories, become a major maker of robots and combine the industry with advances in artificial intelligence. | The New York Times ($)

Lead time for all-new vehicles can take anywhere from five to seven years for most automakers, and requires the input of thousands of people, according to BMW's development boss; soon enough, BMW says that number will be down significantly, in part thanks to artificial intelligence. "This will significantly accelerate our processes. In the future, only 1000 people will work on a new car," BMW's chief development officer Joachim Post says. "We’ve needed significantly more manpower in the past. Now we can leverage much greater efficiency potential. And A.I. is helping us massively in this regard, for example, with coding. We’re gaining incredible speed in software development, and with it, we’re gaining additional speed in the entire development process." BMW is far from the only manufacturer to praise A.I. for helping speed up the development of car production. Notably, Audi executives used similar wording around "China-speed" when referring the competing German brand's use of A.I. for vehicle production fine touches earlier this month. Toyota has dedicated an entire webpage to its use of generative A.I. while Mercedes-Benz says it uses A.I. for its user interfaces. | Road & Track ($)

Queries typed into sites such as Google, which accounts for more than 90% of the search market, have been central to online journalism since its inception, with news providers optimizing headlines and content to ensure a top ranking and revenue-raising clicks. But now Google’s AI Overviews, which sit at the top of the results page and summarize responses and often negate the need to follow links to content, as well as its recently launched AI Mode tab that answers queries in a chatbot format, have prompted fears of a “Google zero” future where traffic referrals dry up. “This is the single biggest change to search I have seen in decades,” says one senior editorial tech executive. “Google has always felt like it would always be there for publishers. Now the one constant in digital publishing is undergoing a transformation that may completely change the landscape.” The owner of the Daily Mail revealed in its submission to the Competition and Markets Authority’s consultation on Google’s search services that AI Overviews have fuelled a drop in click-through traffic to its sites by as much as 89%. | The Guardian

Carta provides performance benchmarking data for VC funds. | Carta

Marc Andreessen’s personal productivity advice from 2007. | a16z

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB Alloy. | Broad Arrow

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

📢 

Steve caught up with Yossi J Levi and Sam D'Arc of Car Dealership Guy to discuss Automotive Ventures portfolio company WarrCloud. | Car Dealership Guy

📢  

Chip Perry and sellmyride founder and president DOM POPE join the Auto Remarketing Podcast to talk about the origin story of the company, how they connected, vehicle acquisition and much more. | Auto Remarketing

📢  

On this week's "Future of Automotive" segment on CBT News, we ask the question: Have EVs gotten too powerful? | CBT News ($)

Enjoying this newsletter? Please share with others!

Share

Share

🌟 Upwell allows logistics operators to transform their accounts receivable workflow with the power of AI | Upwell

🎪 Upcoming Industry Events

AI's Impact on Vehicle MarketplacesOct 2 | VirtualSpeaker(Link)MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers Technology ConferenceOct 5-7 | Springfield, MOStartup Challenge(Link)Commercial Vehicle Business SummitOct 8-9 | Virtual EventSpeaker(Link) 

Oct 21-23 | San Diego

Speaker

(

Link

)

Oct 29-30 | Detroit

Speaker

(

Link

)

Are you an entrepreneur looking for funding?

🏎️

Early-stage AutoTech or Mobility founder? We'd love to hear from you.

🚀

Check out Automotive Ventures' portfolio companies. (Link)

📚

Looking for past editions of the Intel Report? (Link)