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Runtime: 10:37
0:00 Car Dealers to Congress: Keep the EV Incentives!
1:10 U.S. Used Car Prices Up 40%
2:07 Xiaomi YU7 Gets Stunning Sales Orders
3:06 Xiaomi YU7 vs. Tesla Model Y
3:53 Xiaomi’s Founder Now Richest Man in China
5:26 Chinese OEMs Put Tesla Model Y in Their Crosshairs
6:08 Uber In Talks to Buy Pony.AI U.S. Ops
7:08 BYD To Buy Austrian Steel
7:41 Car Ship Sinking Cost Over $560 Million
8:25 Autoline Poll: U.S. EV Incentives
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
CAR DEALERS TO CONGRESS: KEEP THE EV INCENTIVES!
Just when you thought the U.S. incentives for EVs were dead and done, maybe they’re not. Auto dealers are pushing back against Republicans in Congress that are trying to eliminate the $7,500 EV sales incentives. Several dealerships and dealer groups, including Car Max and Carvana, sent a letter to the Senate saying ending the subsidies would threaten dealers that have made significant investments in EV sales and service. They say tax credits for new and used EVs as well as incentives for battery production “must continue, even in a reduced form, for at least the next several years.” The dealers are also opposed to the House version of the bill that imposes a $250 annual fee on EVs and a $100 fee on hybrids. One dealer near Seattle estimates that its sales would fall 25-30% without the incentives.
U.S. USED CAR PRICES UP 40%
It’s becoming more difficult to find an affordable used car in the U.S. According to iSeeCars, in 2019, used cars priced under $20,000 made up nearly 50% of the 3-year-old market. Today that’s barely over 11%. The average price of a 3-year-old used car is now more than $32,000, up from just over $23,000 in 2019. That’s a 40% increase. Production shutdowns caused by the pandemic and the chip shortage a few years ago meant fewer new cars were sold, and that means that now, there are fewer used cars in the market, which is causing prices to shoot up. With tariffs pushing up new car prices, more people will likely turn to used cars, and that will only send prices higher.
XIAOMI YU7 GETS STUNNING SALES ORDERS
They say it’s the most anticipated new car in China, and the sales orders are something like we’ve never seen before. We’re talking about the Xiaomi YU7. In the first 3 minutes it went on sale 200,000 orders poured in. In the first hour that jumped to 289,000. They were coming in so fast that scalpers jumped in on the action. By the end of the day Xiaomi announced that production was sold out until early next year. When Tesla opened deposits for the Cybertruck it reportedly got 1.9 million pre-orders. But the deposits were only $100 and were fully refundable. And sales have fallen far short of what Tesla expected. Xiaomi is charging $700 and they’re not refundable. So we can be pretty sure that its pre-orders will turn into actual sales.
XIAOMI YU7 VS. TESLA MODEL Y
Here’s why the public is going crazy over the YU7. It’s aimed right at the Tesla Model Y, but with more features at a lower price. It starts at just over $35,300, or nearly $1,400 less than a Model Y. It comes with a 96 kWh LFP battery pack. It has 305 horsepower, or 235 kilowatts. And it offers 518 miles of driving range, based on the CLTC test cycle. So the battery pack is 30 kWh bigger, it has 10 more horsepower and it provides 100 more miles of driving range.
XIAOMI’S FOUNDER NOW RICHEST MAN IN CHINA
The rip-roaring success of the car pushed Xiaomi’s stock price to new highs, making its founder, Lei Jun the richest man in China, pushing his wealth well over $50 billion. Lei, who is 55 years old, founded Xiaomi in 2010 to make smart phones. The company did not start making cars until March of 2021.
CHINESE OEMs PUT TESLA MODEL Y IN THEIR CROSSHAIRS
Let’s go back to that comparison of the YU7 to the Tesla Model Y for a minute. Even though the Tesla Y was the best-selling car in China last year, that’s probably not going to be the case this year. Not even with the updated version called Juniper. It faces direct competition from 4 Chinese EVs in the next 4 weeks. Beside the YU7, there’s the XPeng G7, the Nio L90 and Li Auto’s i8. And the early results don’t look good for Tesla. For the first 5 months of the year, sales of the Model Y are down 24% in China.
UBER IN TALKS TO BUY PONY.AI U.S. OPS
Uber is serious about expanding its autonomous operations. Earlier this week, it started offering robotaxi rides with Waymo in Atlanta. And now the New York Times reports that Uber is in talks with its founder, Travis Kalanick, to buy the U.S. operations of the Chinese AV company Pony.ai. Bloomberg estimates that the deal would likely be valued under $500 million, since Pony has no U.S. revenue yet. If the deal does go through, Kalanick would run Pony.ai, while continuing to lead his current company, CloudKitchens, which is similar to DoorDash, a food delivery company. Kalanick was ousted as Uber CEO in 2017 and he left the board in 2019. But a tie-up between Uber and Pony.ai wouldn’t be too surprising, the two companies previously signed a deal to offer robotaxi services in the Middle East.
BYD TO BUY AUSTRIAN STEEL
Chinese automakers are embedding themselves deeper into the European auto industry. As we’ve reported before BYD is building an assembly plant in Hungary to make the Dolphin and Atto 3 electric cars. And it just announced it will buy steel to make those cars from a supplier in Austria called Voelstapine. That will certainly ease tension with European steel makers who have accused the Chinese of dumping steel in their market, and led to sky high tariffs on certain types of Chinese steel products.
CAR SHIP SINKING COST OVER $560 MILLION
That cargo ship carrying thousands of cars that caught fire and sunk in the Pacific Ocean is going to be costly. According to the Anderson Economic Group, it’s going to cost shippers and the industry an estimated $560 million. And that figure doesn’t include downstream business losses, medical expenses, replacing the ship or an environmental cleanup plan. The ship, which was travelling from China to Mexico, was carrying more than 3,000 vehicles and around 750 were EVs and hybrids. The cause of the fire isn’t known but crew members reported seeing smoke coming from the area where the EVs were being stored.
AUTOLINE POLL: U.S. EV INCENTIVES
We’ve got the latest Autoline Poll that we’re opening up to all our viewers. At the top of the program we reported that Carvana and Car Max want the U.S. Congress to keep EV incentives in place. How would you like to see Congress vote on this?
1. Keep all those incentives in place.
2. Just keep the $7,500 sales rebate.
3. Just keep the incentives to manufacture batteries in the U.S.
4. Kill all the incentives.
We’ll report the results of the poll, but not for another week or so, because we’ve got a programming note here. The Autoline crew will be taking a well-earned, mid-year break and we’re shutting the shop down next week like we do every year. But we’ve prepared videos that will get posted every day on some great technology that I think you’ll find fascinating.
So that brings our reporting for the first half of the year to a close, and we’ll kick off our second half reporting on the first Monday in July. So we hope to see you then, and thanks for all your support.
Thanks to our partner for embedding Autoline Daily on its website: WardsAuto.com
Kill the incentives and restructure the amount BEV’s and Hybrids pay for road taxes. Road taxes should reflect some sort of average of ICE vehicles not the inflated 250 and 100 dollars proposed.
China is disincentivizing foreign car makers (while propping up their own industry(s)) as they gleaned most of what they wanted from previous foreign invitations to produce. China has some vial, self-serving antics and while they have innovated a lot of the industry, they did it after appropriating knowledge from said companies. I do blame some of these companies as they were looking for quick cash and weren’t thinking (for the long run).
Will miss your daily reporting! Have a great vacation. Thanks for all your hard work! Can’t thank you enough!
EV manufacturers need to take a page from the small appliance manufacturer’s playbook. Have a piece of clear plastic sticking out from the hood. Pulling it would connect the battery to the car. Until then, it’s all safe.
kill ALL the incentives NOW, and screw the damned stealerships.
Chuck: how do you know that $250 or especially $100 in worthless 2025 dollars is an ‘inflated’ highway damage fee to pay for a BEV?
BEVs, who are 1000s of pounds heavier than similar ICEs, and do MORE, not LESS, damage to the roads, if driven enough miles, will pay a pittance, if they pay $250, than if they were ICEs and paid the gas tax per gallon!
While it might sound harsh, I do believe in free markets, & my vote is
4. Kill all the incentives.
& have a good week off – Enjoy
I think the Xiaomi YU7 in the photo looks good. Maybe it’s the color.
I think the incentives for battery plants should stay, because companies have committed to spending billions of dollars to build them. As far as consumer incentives, either end them, or make them available only for lower income people. Don’t favor trucks with the rules as is now the case.
The EV and hybrid surtaxes would be punitive for people who don’t drive a lot. If they want to “make up lost gas tax,” come up with a way to charge by miles driven, and base the rate on the weight of the vehicle. A 9000 pound Hummer EV is going to damage roads a lot more than a 4000 pound Model 3.
I pay about $25 less in federal gas tax for the ~10,000 miles a year I drive my Prius than I would with a similar size ICE Civic hatchback. The $100 surcharge would clearly be punitive. Similarly, the surcharge would be punitive for my Highlander hybrid which I drive even fewer miles. It would be about a $70 a year more than the difference in federal road tax with the hybrid vs the ICE version. If the feds would give a portion of the money to the states, based on the state’s gas tax, the “break even” would be a lot few miles.
@daily driver thats the million dollar question makes zero sense to me. being told because bolts are lock tighted cant reuse them. were it me i’d put new lock tight reuse the ones came out. maybe dealership service dept are incompetent just like government motors.
I suppose those bolts are not a standard item, but you’d think dealers could get them. The Volt has been out of production for only 6 years. I’ve never had anything like that, including with a number of GM cars.
In any case, not having your car for weeks sucks, kind of like a friend’s not have his Rivian for more than two months after a minor crash.
There is a disconnect with the EV incentives and the fuel tax that ICE vehicles pay for road maintenance.
As I understand, US government gives big oil subsidies, incentives, tax breaks and loans, to produce their liquid gold! So, for the government to give direct incentives to citizens, companies that make EVs and other companies to built out the infrastructure to support them, seems like a no brainer! Yet, to compare the gas tax for the roads to the incentives given to purchase EVs and support that industry, is like comparing apples to oranges! Adding to that, while BEVs are heavier then comparative vehicles of their size, most/many boast that their interior can accommodate the volume of the of a vehicle the next size up, which in many cases Are heavier then the smaller vehicle. So, if a compact EV weights the same as a midsize ICE vehicle, where is the excessive damage to the road? Well, I have no figures to support this claim and even if it’s just anecdotal, has then been any hard proof and evidence that electric vehicles do more road damage than ice vehicles. With all the full-size, ICE trucks and SUVs on the road, I find it hard to believe that EVs do as much or more then they do.
Regarding the poll:
IMHO, the incentives should stay in place, yet, should be rolled back over time as was originally intended. In doing so, as in the case with MP3s, CDs and BlueRay, the market will decide what the next chapter will be. While the incentives will give OEMs impetus to build EVs, people still don’t have to buy them! As buyers demand more options, many want to close the door on this personal Choice all together! Why does it seem ridiculous to some to offer both? Tax dollars already support the fuel that ICE vehicles run on and oil companies would still have record making profits in the billions of dollars, if the government didn’t give them the money! IMHO, it’s not all or nothing, but a balanced approach is best and possible.
@ kit gerhart only thing i can say did not want to take it to chevrolet service dept, no one else would touch it
rick, yeah, I’m not surprised that only a Chevy dealership would work on a Volt for anything except maybe brakes.
Last summer my wife’s ‘19 Buick TourX rear differential failed. I was could not find anyone to work on it. It is really an Opel design built in Germany. Luckily I found that it had a 80k drivetrain warrantee. The dealer replaced it no charge but I did have to tell them that the rear end took 2 different oils. This is a rare car here but that is no excuse for a dealer.
Is it me or does the YU7 look a LOT like a mid 2000’s Mazda RX8. It just goes to show that offering the public a beautifully styled vehicle at a good price with more features and range is how it should be done. A simple concept as old as the auto industry. No excuse for having a bland or uninspiring designed vehicle. The YU7 shows that a reasonably priced vehicle does not have to look ‘cheap’.
Autoline Daily, have a nice and well deserved vacation.
Where is my pal Wim? I remembered his interest in my fiancial wellbeing a few weeks ago. I remembered it today, as I checked how part of my investments (those in Fidelity, which obligingly updates them in its webpage in detail daily) and I looked at the total, since I messaged him, my net worth went up another mill or so. It seems markets are very optimistic (and I say this as an optimist!) and expect everything to go perfectly, tariffs, the various conflicts around the world, etc. Which reminded me of the phrase “Irrational Exuberance” by Alan Greenspan, Former Fed Chief, and I looked him up in Wikipedia.
The old dog is still alive, you will be happy to know, at 99! More surprisingly for me, he is a registered Republican.
MEanwhile, as my faculty advisor had famously written and put on his wall, “It’s better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick”!
Today the stunning 280 SE white sedan was still parked, after 24 hours, on the curb near my place. Amazing that it is in such good shape and the owner leaves it overnight and during the day in the mercy of the elements. Not only is there sun and salt, but, worse, when you park on the curb you tempt your roof, hood and trunk lid being ruined by the resins that fall from the abundant pine trees in the area. I remember leaving our old 1991 Civic hatch out for convenience, rather than park it inside and having to open and close the manual gates all the time, and it was a royal pain to remove them from the roof etc. Basically they were never completely removed. As for the late 0s-early 70s 280SE, many owners of these old cars have them repainted after a few decades, but this one looks more professionally restored, because you cannot tell the paint job from new.
That Benz needs to be garaged any time it’s not being driven.
Earlier when I was suggesting a lower BEV cost for road taxes, I was extrapolating on 10,000 miles per year, 20 mpg and 18.4 cents per gallon (federal gas tax); a more equitable amount for BEV would be closer to 100 dollars per year and something less than 50 dollars for hybrid. Obviously, my numbers are arbitrary but the proposed higher numbers, to me, were punitive. While BEV’s are heavier, I don’t believe excessively heavy to degrade most roads; the damage to modern roads are the big trucks.
The 280 SE is now three days out on the curb, same position, I bet they did not even drive it, visited friends for the weekend and probably will leave this afternoon.
They could at a minimum put a plastic cover on it! Many owners, even of cheap econoboxes that are decades old, have covers that they put on their cars. We even had one tailor-made for the Civic hatch! (my parents had that made). I used to cover the Civic even just to avoid it being overheated and being unable to sit on the seats when we came back from a swim at a distant beach (have not done this for decades, I just walk down three blocks to the beach in front of my place.
Chuck,
That is true for your personal finances, however the sum total of road tax/fees collected does not include what exactly goes into your fuel tank. Fuel has to be delivered and then there are sales taxes and a variety of other fees associated with fuel extraction, refinement, and delivery that are not paid by the consumer in the “gas tax”. They are paid via the cost of the fuel, but not in added tax. All those hidden fees/taxes go unpaid with an EV. That is where the additional money above your calculated $100 per year is coming from. Hard to figure out because for whatever reason every state, liberal or conservative, hides their math on the EV road use tax. Should it be as high as $250? Maybe not in my view, but it would definitely not be as low as $100 per year. Either way, there is zero reason why EVs should get a free ride while everyone else has to pay. Especially poor people who can’t afford to buy an EV yet are forced to subsidize rich people via purchase incentives and gas taxes.
Which leads me to my next point, remove all EV incentives. These exact complaints will be spoken by the dealers and OEMs word for word whether you remove them now or 50 years from now. They are addicted to these incentives and will cry foul every single time anyone mentions removing them. You can’t even say that we should keep them on a temporary basis because guess what, the incentives were a temporary thing and yet they still remain way past their temporary status. Might as well rip the bandaid off now, get the crying over with and everyone will move on. If EVs are so wonderful, they do not need tax payers help in getting them to sell. Last I looked, no tax payer was paying $7500 towards the purchase of a Toyota RAV4. Thus no tax payer should fund the purchase or lease of a Model Y.
The policy I find truly disgusting is the tax deduction encouraging real estate sales people to use an Escalade instead of an XT5 to show houses.
If NADA wants to keep the subsidies, they should get rid of the direct sales lockout chicken laws across the nation.
Probably too many dealers are paying their state legislators to keep the franchise laws.
The last realtor I used was driving a Ford Edge with a missing front bumper. Another realtor at that time that I used was driving a Nissan Armada with rust and 200K miles. The head of the realtor association in my state, head of a realtor congressional lobbying group, and also a realtor for Berkshire Hathaway dealing in high end homes lives in my neighborhood. He is an amazing realtor. He drives a Ford Fusion Hybrid. I’ll have to speak with my neighbor to find out why he does not feel incentivized to buy an Escalade.
Here is the tax deduction incentive. Yeah, not all real estate sales people use it.
Section 179 Deduction: Vehicles Over 6,000 lbs (2025 Updated List) https://share.google/DlKWMl0cZexZdBVrX
Maybe it was too long ago (2008) that I had a real estate agent show me mansions around Ann Arbor, but I never saw any real estate agent with an Escalade. The woman in 2008 drove a Lexus ES, which was an ill-fitting mix of cheap plastics and nice wood, as if it could not make up its mind. Not as nice as the LS. The one in 87 from which I bought my townhouse, I barely remember, I bet it was a Buick sedan.
Realtors choose vehicles after serious thought. In the past, they did not want to use Cadillacs and Lincolns, they thought the clients would notice them, and used Buicks or loaded Chevys and Pontiacs and Oldses instead.
if they use Escalades today, it must be that their CLIENTS like them better, otherwise they would not spend a fortune to buy and run them (they do a lot of miles, real estate agents), or the particular agent got too wealthy selling Macmansions to illiterates, and does not care, she drives whatever she wants.
The real estate people using Escalades are those who sell to NFL players and other people who tend to like them. More people use the tax deduction for Suburbans, Expeditions, etc. I last bought a home in 2002, and the sales person had a Lexus RX.
Earlier Lexus ES was Camry-based, with a somewhat nicer interior and more sound deadening. The current, outgoing one is based on the extinct Toyota Avalon. The next one will be based more on Toyota Crown, and will be available as a hybrid and BEV. I’ll be curious about what the new one looks like, especially the interior, but there is no way I’d find it worth the probably ~$15-20K more than a Camry it will cost.
From an email I just got, a daily “Automotive News” update:
” A record 19 percent of new-car buyers in the second quarter committed to a monthly payment of $1,000 or more, according to Edmunds, up from 18 percent last year, Paige Hodder reports.
New-car buyers in the second quarter also set a record for the highest share of loans with terms of 84 months or longer. Roughly 22 percent of buyers who financed with a loan signed up for that extended term, up from about 18 percent a year ago.”
Here is MY “Automotive Insight”, John and Sean:
“Economic Illiteracy and living well above one’s means are an epidemic in the USA.”
I recommend Toyotas to friends who are not auto enthusiasts, but want trouble-free reliable transportation from A to B. And Priuses to those who do tons of city miles, and/or want to impoverish the scum of the earth who uses oil revenues to fund terrorists (Iran above all, but also Qatar, the Saudis, and other shady actors).
Real cars are RWD. NO Fwd car can compete, no matter how cute they look or drive (Mini, Golf)
Hence I am only interested in the Lexus LS, and possibly the GS, both RWD. Both were available with V8s before Toyota RUINED them, or stopped offering them at all.
Toyota ruined its LS flagship after the 2013 change to the cow-catcher grille, but especially later, when the “new” and much WORSE LS came out.
I only follow very few auto sites (compared to 10 years ago) but one I look at daily is the very successful auction website of Doug De Muro, Cars&Bids, which I hear he recently sold and made even more millions.
One trend there, not just with exotics (many Ferraris and Lambos and Astons are auctioned there) but with many mainstream vehicles as a recently failed to sell immaculate looking Lexus LS460, is that owners do a ridiculously low number of miles per year. THat Lexus is a perfect example. Such 20 year old cars can do a trouble-free 250k miles over the same time period.
https://carsandbids.com/auctions/rjvwb0y7/2007-lexus-ls-460
This particular Lexus failed to sell, the bids were too low, because of serious concerns about the mechanical condition of the car raised by some bidders. So it happens even in the best (most reliable) families… This begs the question, is it smart to bid twice for an LS than for a superior performance and handling Magnificent 7 series of the same vintage?
The downgrading of the Lexus LS really shows up in sales numbers. They sold 35K in the US in 2007, and barely over 2K in 2024.
I recommend both Camry and Prius to people who want reliable, efficient transportation. I bought a Prius, because I like the hatchback body, and because it’s smaller size is better for getting in and out of the smallish garage at my condo. For people who have no need for the hatchback, and who regularly carry rear seat passengers, the Camry is better, and the LE trim with the narrower tires gets very close to the mpg of a Prius. Also, the Camry is quieter at highway speed.
Magnificent 7… THOR, is that you?
Joe S
As the nursery rhyme goes, “…The Thursday Child has far to go…”
https://photos.app.goo.gl/pLGwF93AZDNLvwXp7
A rare car at a local show