0:00 / 0:00
AD #4005 - Rivian Says More OEMs To Buy Its Tech; Cadillac IQL Gives GM More EV Scale; Did Trump Just Blink on Tariffs?

AD #4005 - Rivian Says More OEMs To Buy Its Tech; Cadillac IQL Gives GM More EV Scale; Did Trump Just Blink on Tariffs?

Autoline Daily Mar 05, 2025 11 min
0:00
0:00
Immersive Mode

About this episode

The discussion covers President Trump's potential tariff relief for USMCA-compliant vehicles, easing of EU CO2 regulations benefiting major automakers, and the growing presence of Chinese EVs in Australia. Tesla faces declining sales in Germany and China, prompting new incentives. Volvo unveils the versatile ES90 EV with advanced tech, while Cadillac announces its premium Escalade IQ with impressive range and power. Alpine prepares to launch its first electric SUV, and Mercedes tests autonomous mode indicator lights. Rivian's software deal with Volkswagen positions it as a key tech provider for multiple automakers, signaling future growth opportunities.

Topics: usmca tariffs eu co2 regulations chinese ev market australia tesla sales decline volvo es90 ev cadillac escalade iq alpine electric suv mercedes autonomous lights rivian volkswagen software deal ev incentives
Select text to request an explanation
Speaker 1: This is Autolying Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Our number one story in the
auto industry today is still President Trump's twenty five percent import tariffs on parts and components coming into the US from Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 2: The news sent automotive stock.
Speaker 1: Prices down, triggered warnings that car prices would go up by thousands of dollars and threaten to wipe out profits at automakers and suppliers. But a huge reprieve might be coming.
The Commerce Secretary says the administration is considering giving terror relief to any vehicle that's compliant with the USMCA Free Trade Agreement. Guess what that would include almost every vehicle
imported from Canada and Mexico. Reuter's reports that Trump may
provide a thirty day exemption from the tariffs if an automaker shows it will increase manufacturing in the US. However,
that could also so heard an automaker like Audi, which makes cars in Mexico but not in the US. The
Commerce Secretary said Trump wants to meet Canada and Mexico in the middle, which suggests the tariff.
Speaker 2: Will not be twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: The current tariff on imported cars is only two and a half percent and zero on USMCA compliant cars.
Speaker 2: As we reported earlier this.
Speaker 1: Week, it looks like automakers in Europe won the battle to ease CO two regulations, and Volkswagen, Stlantis and Renault are going to benefit the most from the change. They
account for more than half of all sales in the EU, and Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that the company's earnings will increase three billion dollars if the rules are officially relaxed. Automakers
wanted the targets ease because they said they face fines of up to fifteen billion euros for missing the targets, so earlier this week, the EU proposed a three year window for meeting twenty twenty five CO two targets. Companies
can miss the targets this year as long as they're over compliant the following two years. While governments in the US,
Canada and Europe have enacted tariffs to keep Chinese EV's out, it's a different story in Australia, where there are no protections against them and consumers are starting to embrace Chinese evs, especially because of their lower prices. Chinese evs account for
about one third of EV sales in Australia, and if you include testless China made vehicles, the share jumps to two thirds. BYD is also making big gains. Last year,
about one in four evs sold in Australia were a BYD, and the company expects to double sales this year. That
would put BYD on track to pass Tesla by the end of the year, and thanks to the influx of Chinese EV's, electric vehicles now account for ten percent of Australia's car market and the share is expected to double by twenty twenty seven. The bad sales news at Tesla
keeps getting worse. In January, Tesla sales in Germany fell
fifty nine percent, and last month, according to the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, they plummeted seventy six percent, with only one thousand, four hundred and twenty nine cars sold. Meanwhile,
the overall EV market was up thirty one percent in February.
So far, Tesla sales are down seventy one percent in Germany this year, and while some of that has to do with the ramp up of the new model why it appears elon Musk political meddling in Germany is a bigger factor in driving customers away. But it's not just
Germany where Tesla is having demand issues. As we reported yesterday,
Tesla's deliveries in China fell forty nine percent in February, so to help boost sales in the country, Tesla announced an eleven hundred dollars insurance subsidy for purchasing a Model three until March seventeenth, and over in the US it's offering zero percent APR financing for new Model three buyers and owners that qualify for the seventy five hundred dollars federal tax credit can get a deal for zero dollars due at signing and zero point nine nine percent APR.
Speaker 3: There's nothing wrong with heavy metal, hey light enough, but with world class composite material, Tagent Automotive Technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.
Speaker 1: Volvo revealed the all new ES ninety EV, which it says has styling traits of a sedan, a fastback in even an suv, So it's going to let you decide what to call it. But the fact that the ES
ninety shares its platform with the ex.
Speaker 2: Ninety Suv and has a big.
Speaker 1: Battery in the floor, also likely played a role in its appearance. The electric Suv and the ES ninety feature
similar looking dash layouts with a four teen and a half inch display screen in the middle, but the ES ninety runs off a slightly different computing system. It's the
first Volvo to be powered by two in Vidia Drive Orange chips, which help run all of the vehicle safety and technology equipment. It's also the first at the company
to get an eight hundred volt architecture, which can add three hundred kilometers or about one hundred and eighty five miles of range in ten minutes of charging. Total WLTP
range is estimated to come in at seven hundred kilometers or roughly four hundred and thirty five miles for models with a one hundred and six kilowatt hour battery pack and all wheel drive. While Volvo says there will be
all wheel drive variants with an S at the end, it didn't reveal anything about the motor setups. However, it's
likely close to the ex ninety Suv, which has two all wheel drive setups. One is three hundred kilowatts or
nearly four hundred and ten horse power, and the other is three hundred and eighty kilowatts or about five hundred and fifteen horse power. The ES ninety can be ordered
right now in most of Europe and the UK, and Volvo says other markets will be added later this year and into twenty twenty six. Cadillac revealed what it's going
to charge for the Escalad IQL, or what I like to call the Escalate IKEL, the long wheelbase version of its full size electric suv, and since it's a premium product, it comes with a premium price about one hundred and thirty two thousand, seven hundred dollars including destination charges. With
a giant two hundred and five kilowad hour battery pack, Cadillac estimates it will deliver four hundred and sixty miles of range. It also boasts seven hundred and fifty horse
power and seven hundred and eighty five pound feet of torque.
Zero to sixty miles an hour falls in four point seven seconds, and it has a tow rating of seventy five hundred pounds. Production starts this summer at GM's Fact
zero in Detroit, which also makes the GMC Hummer and the electric versions of the GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado.
That's how General Motors plans to get manufacturing scale at that plant by building four different vehicles for three different brands that all sit on the same architecture, like Portia did in two thousand and five. Another automaker known for
its sports cars is coming out with its first SUV.
Alpine will debut the A three to ninety at the end of May. It's currently conducting cold weather tests on
models with Camo wraps, but it says they feature its final bodywork. While there's not a lot of details on
the new five seater yet, Alpine did reveal it will be available with a three electric motor setup five drive modes, including a track mode and active torque vectoring. The A
three ninety will be built at one of the company's plants in France. Mercedes wants other road users to know
exactly when its vehicles are operating in autonomous mode. It's
actually been testing special turquoise marker lights in the US in California and Nevada since twenty twenty three, but it now also has approval to try the system out in Germany, which is the first European country.
Speaker 2: To allow tests like this.
Speaker 1: The lights show up in the vehicle's headlamp and tail lamp housings anytime the company's autonomous system, called drive Pilot is activated. Mercedes hopes these tests lead to the marker
lights becoming legal so it can put them on its production cars. Rivian landed a big pot of gold when
Volkswagen agreed to pay five point eight billion dollars for its software to find vehicle architecture. But Rivian is getting
more than that out of the deal. It's also getting
enormous purchasing scale from VW. In a post, here's what
wasin Ben said that had a software at Rivian had to say.
Speaker 4: We expect that the JV will allow it to access a much more competitive pricing in terms of the shared SEU components through the incredible scale that the VW group brings.
And three, what is really important is that this positions us as a technology provider of choice for the electronic architecture, the software stack to address a broad set of vehicles of architectures, and really, eventually we believe getting that reference technology solution to many more OEA.
Speaker 1: You know, we think that's pretty interesting Rivian expects to sell its technology to more automakers and that could potentially bring in billions more to the company. But that brings
us to the end of today's show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning.
Speaker 5: In online Daily. It's brought to you by Intrepid Control
Systems over the year engineering boost your game and by Tagent Automotive Technologies the formula for better mobility.
Speaker 1: Developing today's vehicles. Issues can happen in an instant. When's
the best time to solve a problem?
Speaker 2: The minute you know you have one?
Speaker 3: Meet Wireless neovi Cloud. You're secure off the shelf solution empowering.
Speaker 1: Real time collaboration for quick resolution.
Speaker 3: With Wireless neov Cloud, your team can prevent issues before they can escalate.
Speaker 1: Driver communication, data and remote diagnostics to analyze and resolve your problems using OTA, allowing your executives oversight throughout the process.
Speaker 3: Wireless neovi Cloud your vehicle update, solution and productiction and on the road Intrepid Control Systems driven by your data

Request an Explanation

Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.

Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.

Want to learn more?

Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.

Explore Terms

More from Autoline Daily

AD #4312 - Can New Hypercar Turn Audi Around?; Trump Warns Industry About Right-to-Repair; Another Chip Shortage Brewing
Jun 5, 2026
AD #4311 - Uber Places Big Robotaxi Bets; Legacy Auto Getting AI Boost; Nissan Likely to Make Chery Cars in the UK
Jun 4, 2026
AD #4310 - Tata Pivots from JLR to China; Used EV Sales Surging; Lithium-Air Batteries Could Match Gas
Jun 3, 2026
AD #4309 - Kia Sets Sales Record Thanks to Hybrids; Tesla Faces FSD Lawsuit in China; Foxconn Takes Orders for 2nd EV
Jun 2, 2026