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AD #4053 - California ZEV Mandate Showdown; German Dealers Skeptical of Chinese Brands; Filosa First In-Line for Stellantis CEO

Autoline Daily May 12, 2025 9 min

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About this episode

The discussion centers on California's ambitious zero emission vehicle (ZEV) sales mandate and its challenges, including dealer pushback and penalties for non-compliance. Chinese new energy vehicle sales surge domestically but face skepticism and slow growth in Germany due to brand unfamiliarity and strong European competition. Nissan plans significant job cuts amid financial struggles. Audi may sell Italian design house Etel Design to raise cash. Stellantis is poised to appoint Antonio Filosa as CEO amid declining sales. ZF introduces a rare earth-free electric motor to reduce environmental impact. Listener feedback on reviving the Yugo as an affordable EV reveals skepticism about its market viability.

Topics: california zev mandate chinese electric vehicles german dealer skepticism nissan job cuts audi etel design sale stellantis ceo appointment rare earth free electric motor yugo ev revival automotive market trends ev regulations and incentives

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Speaker 1: This is Outline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. We are fast approaching a showdown

over California's stricter zero emission vehicles sales mandate that goes into effect this year. It requires that thirty five percent

of new vehicles have to be zero emission. Five other states, Vermont,

New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and Oregon also follow the mandate starting this year, and then next year Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Washington d C. Will join

the mandate, which increases to forty three percent of sales.

The mandate then increases eight percent a year until twenty thirty five, when it becomes one hundred percent. But this

is going to be virtually impossible for those states to hit.

This year, eves only account for about twenty percent of californ Is new car sales, and it's about half of that in the five other states that start enforcing the rule this year. And get this, automakers face fines of

twenty thousand dollars for every none compliant vehicle they sell if they don't hit their targets, or they can buy ZEV credits from other automakers to meet the mandate, but car dealers are lobbying hard to get those states to drop their mandate. They say it's going to force them

to limit the kinds of vehicles that they can sell.

Thanks for cash for Clunkers program, new car sales are going strong in China. Automakers sold one point seven million

passenger vehicles, up fourteen point eight percent compared to last year.

That suggests that sales for the year will come in around twenty one million vehicles, which is about the average for the market over the last decade. Nevs, or new

energy vehicles, were up almost thirty four percent in April, capturing just over fifty percent of total market share, but exports were down two point two percent. The Chinese government

is offering a trade in program where car buyers can get a subsidy for trading in an old car. So

far this year, over two point seven million clunkers have been scrapped thanks to the program. And you know, one

reason why Chinese exports were down may be due to this next development. Automotive News reports that German car dealers

are increasingly skeptical of Chinese brands. For one thing, sales

are weak. Chinese brands only account for about one point

five percent of the German market and they're barely growing.

Byd planned to sell fifty thousand cars in Germany this year.

So far, for the first four months, it's only sold seven thousand, two hundred and forty five And I'll say that's because Europeans and especially Germans, place a lot of value on brand equity. Most car buyers are reluctant to

take a risk on an unknown brand. Also, European automakers

are coming out with more competitive BEVs and peehebs, so German car dealers are not taking on Chinese franchises. Just

to show you how tough things are going for Nissan, it's going to more than double the number of job cuts that it originally planned. Last fall, Nissan said it

was axing nine thousand jobs globally and slashing production by twenty percent, all to cut costs. But now reports from

Japan say Nissan is going to cut twenty thousand jobs globally.

Nissan reports it's yearly earnings tomorrow, and it has already warned investors that the numbers don't look good.

Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with heavy metal, hey light enough, but with world class composite material Taging Automotive Technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.

Speaker 1: Audi could sell the renowned Italian design house Etyle Design because it needs more cash. Lamborghini, which is a subsidiary

of Audi, bought ninety percent of Etel Design in twenty ten and the Volkswagen Group got the remaining shares in twenty fifteen. Et All Design has around one thousand workers

in Italy, Germany, Spain, China and the US, and if you want to learn more about the design firm's new offices in Detroit, check out my interview with Etel Designs from Breeziomina and David Kolinowski about why they came to Detroit and why its biggest opportunity for growth is actually in engineering. Stilantis is finally getting close to Chuesday a

new CEO looks like they're going in house. Bloomberg reports

that the automaker's head of North America, Antonio Filosa, is the top candidate to get the job. Stilantis has been

without a CEO since December, when Carlos Tavares was invited to leave and the automaker said it would pick a new CEO in the first half of the year. Pilosa

started his career at Fiat in nineteen ninety nine and has been part of Stilantis's executive team since the company formed in twenty twenty one. But man he sure has

an uphill fight. Stella's sales and profits have tumbled and

the automaker lost sixty five billion dollars of market capitalization just in the last year. With the supply of rare

earths potentially threatened by export restrictions from China, automakers are keenly interested in eenie motors that don't use rare earths.

So ZF is launching a magnet free motor in a fairly compact package. It creates a magnetic field in the

electric motor with an inductive excider within the rotor shaft.

Creating the magnetic field within the rotor is different from most synchronous motors, and it reduces losses of energy transmission by fifteen percent, and by not using rare earths, the carbon footprint needed to manufacture it falls by fifty percent.

It doesn't use brushes or slipperings, and it's ninety millimeters or about three and a half inches shorter than a conventional synchronous motor ZF is making it available for four hundred and eight hundred volte Eves say, we've got the latest results of our latest poll where we asked you what you think about the idea of bringing the Ugo back, but this time as a fifteen thousand euro electric car.

Eight percent of you who voted loved the idea and said you'd rock the hell out of that you go, But twenty nine percent the specs on the car, like its range of only one hundred and seventy miles, would make it unappealing to most consumers. Forty two percent of

you said this was just a marketing stunt, like with so many other evy startups, and twenty one percent of you said none of the above and left your comments.

Irvin Wright had an interesting point. He says, if the

Yugo investors we're serious about producing a small, no frills bev, wouldn't they choose another name? And min Soup doesn't hold

much hope for it. It will probably sell in Serbia

or nearby countries, not other places, he said, and that Dave March said that it seems like a design school exercise with publicity that some journalists got too excited about.

So based on your read of the situation, that New Yugo sounds like a dead on arrival. Hey, thanks for

your feedback and a special thanks to all our Patreon and YouTube members who took part in the poll. Remember

if you'd like to become a member, it's really easy.

It only costs a few bucks a month to help out of line in our mission to provide you with the best information and insights that you can find about the global automotive industry. Anyway, that brings us to the

end of today's report. Thanks for watching.

Speaker 3: Auto Line Daily is brought to you by Intrepid Control Systems Over the Air Engineering Boost your Game, Tajent Automotive Technologies, the Formula for Better Mobility and.

Speaker 4: By Things Things Things as

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