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Runtime: 9:46
0:00 Corvette Drops More Hypercar Hints
1:15 Kia Profits Hit by Trump Tariffs
1:43 Hyundai Profits Hit by Trump Tariffs
2:20 VW Hit by Trump Tariffs
2:46 Skoda Makes More Money Than Porsche
4:40 BEV Sales Soar in Germany Without Incentives
5:50 Mitsubishi Pulls Completely Out of China
6:44 Russian Heavy Truck Sales Come to Screeching Halt
7:26 Honda Prelude Coming Out of Civic Type R Parts Bin
8:00 AMG Teases New GT Series
8:21 John & Sean Live Q&A
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
CORVETTE DROPS MORE HYPERCAR HINTS
Is Chevrolet trying to warm us up to the idea of a Corvette hypercar? In April GM opened a new design center in the UK and along with it a sleek new Corvette concept, developed by the new UK design team. But the company also revealed that it had invited multiple design studios to come up with their own Corvette-inspired hypercars and here’s the second, which comes out of GM’s design center in California. I find it interesting that the overall shape of the two concepts are pretty similar, but the details of the cars are vastly different between the two studios. The windshield of the California Corvette concept is massive and extends down far into the hood, while there’s no window out the rear. I think the interior looks like a futuristic fighter jet, but I also see little hints from the current Corvette as well. GM says that the rest of the Corvette concepts will be revealed throughout 2025 and we’ve probably got three more to go since there’s also design studios in Michigan, China and South Korea.
KIA PROFITS HIT BY TRUMP TARIFFS
More automakers are reporting their second quarter earnings, and more automakers are complaining that tariffs in the U.S. are hammering their bottom lines. Kia said it sold 792,000 cars in Q2, which was up 4%, and pushed revenue 6% higher. But its operating profit and net profit sank by more than 23%. Amongst other things, Kia blames the tariffs for the profit hit.
| KIA Q2, 2025 EARNINGS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Sales | 792K | +4.2% |
| Revenue | $21.2 B | +6.5% |
| Operating Profit | $2 B | -24.1% |
| Net Profit | $1.6 B | -23.3% |
HYUNDAI PROFITS HIT BY TRUMP TARIFFS
And it was a similar story at Hyundai. It sold more than a million vehicles over the last three months, up fractionally. Revenue hit nearly $35 billion, an all-time record. But its operating profit fell almost 16% coming in at $2.6 billion, and its net profit of $2.3 billion was down 22%. You know, it’s got to be really frustrating to set record revenue and see your profit fall off like that. Hyundai didn’t directly blame Trump’s tariffs, but blamed it on the “global trade environment.”
| HYUNDAI Q2, 2025 EARNINGS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Sales | 1.0 M | +0.8% |
| Revenue | $34.9 B | +7.3% |
| Operating Profit | $2.6 B | -15.8% |
| Net Profit | $2.3 B | -22.1% |
VW HIT BY TRUMP TARIFFS
Meanwhile, Volkswagen didn’t hold back. It blamed U.S. tariffs for its profit hit. The group sold 2.2 million vehicles in the quarter, essentially flat compared to a year ago. Revenue was also flat at €80 billion. But the group’s operating profit dropped almost 33% to €3.8 billion, and its net profit fell more than 38%, coming in at €2.2 billion.
| VW AG Q2, 2025 EARNINGS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Sales | 2.2 M | +0.2% |
| Revenue | €80.8 B | -0.3% |
| Operating Profit | €3.8 B | -32.8% |
| Net Profit | €2.2 B | -38.5% |
SKODA MAKES MORE MONEY THAN PORSCHE
Just to show you how much the situation has changed at Volkswagen, Skoda, one of its mass market brands, posted higher profits than Porsche. And it wasn’t even close. Skoda’s operating profit came in at €739 million, while Porsche made €154 million. And that’s not the end of it. Porsche is warning its employees to brace for more job cuts and says that its business model is no longer working. Remember, up until very recently, Porsche was the profit powerhouse within the VW Group. So to see it fall so far behind Skoda is not only shocking, it’s worrying. And from the sound of it, Porsche is getting ready for some major surgery.
BEV SALES SOAR IN GERMANY WITHOUT INCENTIVES
BEV sales are up sharply in Germany and the Volkswagen Group is leading the way. In the first half of 2024, sales of BEVs dropped 16%, after the country eliminated incentives at the end of 2023. But according to Dataforce, BEV sales in Germany in the first half of this year were up 35% from a year ago with automakers selling just under 250,000 electrics. And that easily outpaced the overall market, which was down 5%. The top 3 selling BEVs are all from the Volkswagen brand, the ID.7, ID.3 and ID.4, respectively. In fact, the VW Group has 8 of the 10 best-selling BEVs, including models from Skoda, Cupra and Audi. The only two non-VW models on the list are the BMW iX1 in seventh place and just behind it in 8th is the Tesla Model Y, which saw a 62% plunge in sales. The overall increase in BEV sales in Germany is impressive, since those incentives have gone completely away.
MITSUBISHI PULLS COMPLETELY OUT OF CHINA
Mitsubishi has pulled entirely out of the Chinese car market. It stopped making vehicles there in 2023 and it just terminated a joint venture to make engines, which means it no longer has any operations in China. Mitsubishi blamed its decision on the “rapid transformation of China’s automotive industry.” In other words, it wasn’t able to compete with China’s shift to EVs. Mitsubishi first entered China in 1973 with medium-duty trucks and by the early 2000s, its two-engine joint-ventures supplied 30% of the engines for vehicles built in China. But by 2022, Mitsu only sold 33,600 vehicles in the country and along with the drop-in demand for IC engines, the automaker decided to throw in the towel and leave the market altogether.
RUSSIAN HEAVY TRUCK SALES COME TO SCREECHING HALT
As we reported earlier this week, the Russian auto industry is going from bad to worse. The country’s largest automaker, Autovaz, whose sales are down 25% this year, says it’s going to a four-day work week to cut production. And now Russia’s largest truckmaker, Kamaz is also going to shorten its work week. It says the market for trucks 14-metric tons or larger, which is the equivalent to Class 4 or 5 trucks in the U.S., has fallen 60% in the first half of the year. Kamaz claims it has 30,000 trucks sitting around gathering dust because there’s no demand for them even though it’s offering them below cost.
HONDA PRELUDE COMING OUT OF CIVIC TYPE R PARTS BIN
Honda confirmed that the new Prelude, which goes on sale in the U.S. later this year, will feature the suspension, wider tracks and Brembo front brakes from the Civic Type R. Unfortunately, that won’t be paired with the Type R’s 315 horsepower engine. Instead the sporty-looking 2-door coupe will come with the same 200 horsepower two-motor hybrid setup found in the Civic Hybrid. But it does come with a new feature, called Honda S+ Shift, that’s supposed to provide a sportier driving experience.
AMG TEASES NEW GT SERIES
But here’s a car that will be a real track star. These teasers show a new concept from Mercedes AMG that is likely a preview of a new model for its AMG GT series of vehicles and will be powered by a V8 engine. The company says the vehicle is meant to “set new standards and record times.”
JOHN & SEAN LIVE Q&A
Next Tuesday afternoon we’re going to hold another live Q&A session with me and John. We’ve got a couple of topics sure to stir up some controversy that we want to get into, but we also welcome your questions too, but you have to be a YouTube or Patreon member. This is one of the bonuses that we provide to those who directly support Autoline. And if you’d like to join in on the fun, please consider becoming a member too.
But that’s a wrap for this show and this week. Thanks for tuning in and I hope that you have a great weekend.
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Oh darn the Koreans aren’t making as much money off Americans. Boo hoo. Their still making money.
Sean,
when i saw your sensationalistic title about EV German sales rise I became quite suspicious, so I read the transcript, and there you see that last year in H1, EVs were down 16%! So the 35% rise is not from average but from depressed sales.
Even more important, you give all those numbers and pecentages, except the most important one, which is, even with this big rise, what is the MARKET SHARE of EVS in the German market in H1 2025? If you don’t tell us, I will assume it is as LOUSY as in the US, or only marginally better, and not improving.
Watched After Hours yesterday. Interiors like living rooms and praise for big SUVs. One panelist said nobody buys cars anymore
Not in So Cal. Honda, Toyota, Kia, Hyundai. TESLA, cars everywhere. We have expensive gas and big SUVs not the main. Nowonder Detroit is losing market share. They don’t respect our market.
I’m not surprised that Porsche profits are way down. The US is their largest market, and so far, Porsche are “eating” the tariffs. Europe is Skoda’s primary market, so no trade war effects with them.
BEVs had an 18.4% market share in Germany, much higher than in the US, for the first half of 2025.
Regulus, I should have said in my previous post, but BEV market share in Germany for H1 was more that twice the ~8% of the US. That is a lot more than “marginally better” than Germany.
More than “marginally better than US,” that is.
18% may be much higher than the US, and I expected it to be higher, but it is still LOUSY, given the price of gas is DOUBLE there than it is in the US, and in some EU nations, triple.
Most EV models by German makers truly SUCK, not only the S class EV the EQS, which was such a dismal failure, that Merc is dropping the whole series (EQE, EQS etc), going back to the drawing board and renaming them to erase the terrible memories, but also VW, whose EVs are overpriced and underperform Tesla’s similar priced models, with really poor range to boot.
Even if some countries have stopped the direct subsidies, there are all kinds of other help they give EVs, such as no licence fees, fines to ICE cars entering city centers, which are really steep in some nations and a major burden if you commute there daily.
Even here where my summer home is, many EVs in the garages (and occasionally on the streets) despite the utter lack of a serious supercharger network. Those buyers are probably either green fanatics or mindless trend followers.
The future is plug-ins and hybrids, as long as EVs do not substantially improve performance and lower their costs, including the infrastructure.
Or the people where you are can do all of their driving within range of home charging, so public charging doesn’t matter.
Man, this is a great ALD! Look at all that tariff revenue being sucked out of foreign automaker’s profits and straight into US coffers. Volkswagen in particular is taking it in the shorts both home and abroad, I love it! They are so desperate that they want to make a direct deal with Trump. Maybe if we can get Shawn Fain to declare a work stoppage at the VW Chattanooga plant for whatever grievance is bugging him today, we can finally put VW in the ground.
Just remember that the tariffs are a tax on the American consumer & normally paid by the American consumer.
Yep, tariffs are a sales tax on consumers. So far, some companies have “eaten” them, and others have pre-imported inventory, like GM with their Korean stuff. In the end, the entire industry, and global economy will suffer.