Intel Report: The Weekly Mobility News That Matters

BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | Sep 8 2025 | VIEW ONLINE

What We're Reading:

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Automotive

General Motors CEO Mary Barra sold about 40% of her personal stock and options in the company in August, according to a government and company filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In total, Barra sold stock and exercised options worth approximately $35.4 million from the sale of 994,863 shares of stock last month, a GM spokesperson confirmed Sept. 4. In the past six months, Barra has cashed out nearly $58 million across four transactions. Wall Street immediately took notice because insider selling at this scale — especially by a long-tenured CEO — raises questions. Was this routine profit-taking, a signal of caution, or something deeper about GM’s near-term prospects? | Detroit Free Press ($)

Tesla has unveiled its "Master Plan Part IV":"Since Tesla’s founding, each iteration of our master plan has focused on our north star: to deliver unconstrained sustainability without compromise. Humans are toolmakers. At Tesla, we make physical products at scale and at a low cost with the goal of making life better for everyone. As the influence and impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technology increases, the mission set forth in Master Plan Part IV should come as no surprise. This next chapter in Tesla’s story will help create a world we’ve only just begun to imagine and will do so at a scale that we have yet to see. We are building the products and services that bring AI into the physical world. We have been working tirelessly for nearly two decades to create the foundation for this technological renaissance through the development of electric vehicles, energy products and humanoid robots. Now, we are combining our manufacturing capabilities with our autonomous prowess to deliver new products and services that will accelerate global prosperity and human thriving driven by economic growth shared by all. We are unifying our hardware and software at scale, and in doing so, we are creating a safer, cleaner and more enjoyable world. This is sustainable abundance." | Tesla

Tesla has proposed a new 10-year compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk that could be worth as much as $1 trillion even as the EV maker’s car business stumbles and it sets its sights on humanoid robotics and AI. The company has tied the compensation to a number of benchmarks, one of which involves increasing Tesla’s overall valuation from around $1 trillion to more than $8 trillion. The plan would grant Musk more than 423 million additional shares in the company, boosting his level of control to around 25%. Musk has previously threatened to leave Tesla if he didn’t receive more voting power. The proposal will be voted on by shareholders at Tesla’s annual meeting, which is scheduled for later this year. The details of the plan come just one month after the company announced a $29 billion compensation package meant to make up for a plan that was struck down by a judge in Delaware. | TechCrunch ($)

A $1 trillion pay package isn’t simple to construct: A Tesla committee met with Elon Musk 10 times, delayed the company’s annual meeting and enlisted six outside advisers before finalizing the plan. The negotiations were part of an extraordinary series of talks that led to the offer, which is designed to keep Musk at the electric vehicle maker for at least seven and a half years while he strives to meet a series of ambitious benchmarks in order to earn the full payout. During the meetings, Musk threatened to quit if he didn’t receive certain promises, while the committee wanted to end his foray into politics and secure his commitment to Tesla. | Automotive News ($)

BMW's new vehicle – known as iX3 – has been presented to the world. And even if a global company’s future should never hinge on a single model, BMW Group’s future does this time. The Bavarian automobile executives have set the bar so high that the entire company is at risk if they fail to clear it. It is envisioned as a "project of the century,” one that will "redefine the future of the automobile.” It may sound like bloated marketing jargon. But the company’s CEO, sitting in his office at BMW headquarters in Munich, some 750 kilometers away from the new factory, says it's not. "It is meant completely seriously, in every aspect,” says Oliver Zipse, 61, who has been with BMW for 34 years and led the company for the last six. And indeed, it isn’t about just a single new model, but about an entirely "Neue Klasse,” as it has been dubbed. Nothing less than the reboot of all 57 BMW models. The iX3 is just the first. | Spiegel

In New York, 48% of workers rely on public transportation. If they didn’t, permanent gridlock would ensue because we cannot fit more cars on the roads. But the prospect of a car ride, if it’s cheap enough, can lure people away from subways and buses. We saw this in the mid-2010s, when Uber and its smaller competitor Lyft, in the absence of city regulations capping the number of for-hire vehicles on the road or requiring minimum driver pay, engaged in a price war for market share and strained the congested streets even more with cheap rides. Speeds on Manhattan’s streets slowed down, ride-hail apps replaced subway and bus trips, and there was major disruption to economics of the taxi business. | The New York Times ($)

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EVs

Foxconn, the aspiring Taiwanese electric vehicle maker chasing deals with Nissan, is still on track to sell an EV crossover in the U.S. this year and has added a new partner in its quest to go global. The company, perhaps best known as the world’s largest contract manufacturer of iPhones, said the North American variant of its all-electric Model C is now undergoing U.S. certification. Despite U.S. tariffs on imported vehicles and the end of EV incentives, Foxconn plans to start production of the Model C for the U.S. in Taiwan, the company told investors. | Automotive News ($)

It’s broadly understood that electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than their counterparts that burn only gasoline. And yes—that includes the impact of manufacturing batteries and generating power to charge them. But even then, such generalizations gloss over specifics, like which EVs are especially eco-friendly, not to mention where. The efficiency of an electric car varies greatly depending on ambient temperature, which is less compromising for gas-burning vehicles. We now have the data and math to answer these questions, courtesy of the University of Michigan. Last week, researchers there released a study along with a calculator that allows users to compare the lifetime difference in greenhouse gas emissions of various vehicle types and powertrains from “cradle to grave,” as they say. That includes vehicle production and disposal, as well as use-phase emissions from “driving and upstream fuel production and/or electricity generation,” per the university itself. | The Drive

When EV owners complain about charging—as many do—they're normally grousing about the frustrations of dealing with the public network, where non-functional chargers and long lines at popular spots are sadly commonplace. But Porsche is debuting a new system targeting a lesser gripe: that of having to deal with home charger cables at the beginning or end of a journey. The new Cayenne EV is set to pioneer inductive charging for the car itself. This will allow the battery to be topped off at rates of up to 11 kW by simply driving the car over a pad in the driveway or garage.| Road & Track

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China

Many of the people who run China are engineers, and it shows. Since the 1980s China has built a motorway network twice the length of America’s and a high-speed rail network more than 15 times the size of Japan’s. It uses almost as much solar and wind power as the rest of the world combined, and it produces around one-third of the world’s manufactured goods. In his illuminating new book, “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future”, Dan Wang argues that China is an “engineering state”, locked in competition with America, which is run by lawyers. China builds things quickly. America debates endlessly about whether they should be built at all. How did China, a country that was once known mostly for intellectual-property theft and child labour, become a technological powerhouse? | The Economist ($)

Modern China has been on a building spree. It began in the 1990s, after its economic reopening took hold, and then received another boost in 2008, when the central government approved vast public works to respond to the global financial crisis. China’s first expressway opened in 1993. By 2011, its system was longer than the U.S. interstate, and by 2020, it had built a second batch of expressways that again totaled the length of the U.S. system. The first expanse of highways took 18 years to build; the second, half that time. From 2003 to 2013, Shanghai added as much subway track as in the entire system in New York City. In 2025, 51 Chinese cities have subway lines, 11 of which are longer than New York’s. China now has a longer high-speed rail network than the rest of the world put together. Sleek railcars in silver zooming on elevated bridges are telegenic things, their pictures adorning billboards and book covers. This system completes around two billion passenger trips each year. In addition to using fossil fuels, China builds a third to a half of the world’s new wind and solar capacity each year. It’s also investing in nuclear power. In 1991, China’s first commercial nuclear power plant started producing electricity. This was more than 30 years after the world’s first commercial plant was established in Pennsylvania, but by 2025, China had caught up to the United States in the number of nuclear plants. The U.S. has just one nuclear reactor under construction; China has 31. The only U.S. nuclear plant built in the 21st century took 15 years and $30 billion. In August 2024, China’s nuclear authority approved construction of 11 new reactors, which are collectively expected to cost the same amount. | The Free Press

China is conquering the world in electric vehicles. Its automakers produce far more than any other country and outpace them on innovation. China’s appetite for gasoline-powered cars is fading by the week. In each of the last five months, battery-powered and plug-in hybrid cars made up more than half of all cars sold. But look closer at the industry and the picture is not pretty. Already, fierce competition among automakers has gotten ruthless, with about 50 automakers fighting for customers by slashing prices again and again. Manufacturers facing ruinous losses are struggling to pay the companies that supply their parts. And yet they keep borrowing from state-run banks to build more factories, leading to extensive overcapacity. The frenzy has captured the attention of the highest levels of China’s government. Officials have started a campaign against “involution,” which they define as excessive competition. Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, led a Politburo meeting on the economy on July 30 that ended with a statement declaring, “It is a must to reinforce industry self-discipline to prevent vicious ‘involution’ competition.” | The New York Times ($)

You might think, from BYD’s scale and headlong growth, that the Shenzhen-based carmaker was striking investors with the same awe it inspires in rival auto executives. Far from it. Its shares have, instead, just suffered their worst three-month performance since the end of 2023 and plunged almost 4% Monday after second-quarter results missed analysts’ expectations. One crucial reason: The Chinese company is failing to effectively tout its greatest asset - a battery-manufacturing business that the market appears to be drastically undervaluing. BYD’s debt and equity is worth just 6.7 times blended forward 12-month earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, putting it below less profitable private and state carmakers — not to mention China’s battery manufacturers, which are having a moment right now. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL, the biggest producer of lithium-ion cells, hit a three-year high Friday after a supplier gave hints of improving demand. That discount might be because BYD’s vaunted vertical integration — its unusual ability to manufacture both electric vehicles, and the batteries that power them — is holding the company back more than it’s helping. | Bloomberg ($)

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Autonomy, Robotics & AI

As vehicles become autonomous, the onus of liability changes. When a car under its own control is in a crash, the car is responsible — meaning liability lies with the OEM or autonomous technology provider. This marks a foundational shift in how auto policies are structured. New policy models are being considered to reflect these realities. Some policies separate human-driver liability from that of system failures. Others cover specific components such as vision systems or decision engines. In commercial-use cases like robotaxis or autonomous freight, insurers are already exploring system-centric policies that treat the vehicle more like a mobile software platform than a traditional car. Because commercial deployments in logistics and ride-hailing are progressing more quickly than private autonomous vehicle (AV) ownership, many insurers are using insights from these early deployments to shape next-generation products for broader markets. | S&P Global

Waymo’s benchmark self-driving car program is at an inflection point. In the robotaxi space, it has no meaningful U.S. competition at the moment, though Amazon’s Zoox hopes to change that with the looming launch of its service in Las Vegas. Globally, perhaps only China’s Baidu, Inc. is shaping up to be a major rival. Elon Musk’s incessant boasts aside, Tesla is not a leader in the space. Its Austin robotaxi pilot, with safety drivers on board and remote operators standing by, is less impressive than the first fully autonomous car trip on public roads–which also took place in that city–when Waymo gave legally blind passenger Steve Mahan a solo ride in late 2015. | Forbes ($)

Academic and corporate workshops have built humanoid robots for decades, but they have largely been oddities, not productive workers. Putting machines on two legs instead of wheels or a fixed base introduces a host of engineering and safety problems, limiting how much they can lift and increasing the risk of falling onto nearby humans. Now, advancements in robotics that make humanoid designs more capable and affordable are combining with the surge of investment in artificial intelligence to create a new drive to make humanoid robots practical. Years of steady progress have made legged robots better at balancing and stepping through tricky terrain. Improved batteries allow them to operate for longer without trailing industrial power cords. AI developers are adapting the innovations behind services like ChatGPT to help humanoids act more independently. The progress has triggered a frenzy of investment in humanoid robots and made them into a mascot for the idea that AI will soon reorder the world on the scale tech leaders have promised. | The Washington Post ($)

🚘 Car of the Week

Our Automotive Ventures "Car of the Week": a 1991 Isdera Imperator 108i. | Mouse Motors

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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📺 In The News

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Mark Hollmer (Automotive News) and Steve had a great discussion on how "Vibe Coding" may be used by automotive dealerships. | Automotive News ($)

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Newswise captured the origin story of Automotive Ventures portfolio company Safire Technology Group. | Newswise

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Congratulations to the Privacy4Cars team. The recognition is very well deserved, and Automotive Ventures is proud to be on this journey with you! | Privacy4Cars

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Steve had a chance to guest-host ASOTU with Kyle Mountsier. ASOTU

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Automotive Ventures portfolio company Kinetic launched their second Northern California hub: serving body shops and dealerships needing ADAS repair and calibration. | Autobody News

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Steve caught up with Yossi Levi and Sam D'Arc on Car Dealership Guy to discuss the current state of automotive technology/venture capital. | Car Dealership Guy

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On this week's "Future of Automotive" segment on CBT News, we explore the biggest issues impacting automakers. | CBT News ($)

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