Auto dealers are lobbying Congress to maintain EV incentives, warning that removing them could severely impact sales. Used car prices in the U.S. have surged 40% due to supply shortages and tariffs. In China, the Xiaomi U7 EV has smashed sales records with nearly 290,000 orders in its first hour, challenging Tesla’s Model Y with a bigger battery, longer range, and lower price. Meanwhile, Tesla’s Model Y sales in China have dropped amid rising competition. The episode also covers Uber’s expansion into autonomous taxis and Chinese automakers’ growing footprint in Europe, plus the costly sinking of a cargo ship carrying thousands of vehicles.
Topics:ev incentivesused car pricesxiaomi u7tesla model y competitionautonomous taxischinese automakers in europecargo ship firebattery production incentivesus car market trends
- Car Dealers to Congress: Keep the EV Incentives! - U.S. Used Car Prices Up 40% - Xiaomi YU7 Gets Stunning Sales Orders - Xiaomi YU7 vs. Tesla Model Y - Xiaomi’s Founder Now Richest Man in China - Chinese OEMs Put Tesla Model Y in Their Crosshairs - Uber In Talks to Buy Pony.AI U.S. Ops - BYD To Buy Austrian Steel - Car Ship Sinking Cost Over $560 Million - Autoline Poll: U.S. EV Incentives
"...g crazy over the U seven. It's aimed right at the Tesla model Why, but with more features at a lower price. It ..."
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Speaker 1: This is Outline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. You know, just when you thought
that the US incentives for evs we're dead and done, maybe they're not. Auto dealers are pushing back against Republicans
in Congress that are trying to eliminate the seven thousand, five hundred dollars EV sales incentive. Several dealerships and dealer groups,
including CarMax and Carvana, sent a letter to the Senate saying ending the subsidies with threatened dealers that have made significant investments in EV sales and service. They say that
tax credits for new and used evs, as well as incentives for battery production and I quote here, must continue, even in a reduced form, for at least the next several years close quote. The dealers are also opposed to
the House version of the bill that imposes a two hundred and fifty dollars annual fee on ev es and a one hundred dollars fee on hybrids. One dealer near
Seattle estimates that its sales would fall twenty five to thirty percent without the incentives. It's becoming more and more
difficult to find an affordable used car in the US.
According to ic Cars, in twenty nineteen, used car prices under twenty thousand dollars made up nearly fifty percent of the three year old market. Today, that's barely over eleven percent.
The average price of a three year old used car is now more than thirty two thousand dollars, up from just over twenty three thousand dollars in twenty nineteen. That's
a forty percent increase. Production shutdowns caused by the pandemic
and the chip shortage a few years ago meant that fewer new cars were sold, and that means that today there are fewer used cars in the market, which is causing prices to shoot up. With tariffs pushing up new
cars prices, more people will likely turn to the used car market, and that's only going to send prices higher.
You know. They say it's the most anticipated new car
in China and the sales orders are something like we have never seen before. We're talking about the shaw Mee
U seven. In the first three minutes it went on sale,
two hundred thousand orders poured in. In the first hour
that jumped to two hundred and eighty nine thousand. They
were coming in so fast that scalpers jumped in on the action. By the end of the day, shaw Me
announced that production was sold out until early next year.
You know, when Tesla opened deposits for the cyber truck, it reportedly got one point nine million pre orders, but the deposits were only one hundred dollars and they were fully refundable, and sales have fallen far short of what Tesla expected. Shaomi is charging seven hundred dollars for a
deposit and they are now refundable, so we can be pretty sure that its pre orders will turn into actual sales.
And here's why the public is going crazy over the U seven. It's aimed right at the Tesla model Why,
but with more features at a lower price. It starts
at just over thirty five thousand, three hundred dollars or nearly one thousand, four hundred dollars less than a model Why.
It comes with a ninety six kilowat hour LFP battery pack that's about thirty kilowatt hours more than what Tesla has.
It has three hundred and five horse power that's about two hundred and thirty five kilowatts, and it offers five hundred and eighteen miles of driving range, but that's based on the COLTC test cycle. So the battery pack is bigger,
it has ten more horse power, and it provides one hundred more miles of driving range. The roaring success of
the car pushed Shami stock price to new highs, making its founder Lee Juhn, the richest man in China, pushing his wealth well over fifty billion dollars. Lee, who is
fifty five years old, founded shall Me in twenty ten to make smartphones. The company did not start making cars
until March of twenty twenty one.
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Speaker 1: Let's go back to that comparison of the U seven to the Tesla Model Y for a minute. Even though
the Tesla why was the best selling car in China last year, that's probably not going to happen this year, not even with the updated version called the Juniper. It
faces direct competition from four Chinese evs that are launching in the next four weeks. Besides the U seven we've
already talked about, there's the x pun G seven, the Neo L ninety and Liauto's I E and the early result VOLTZ don't look good for Tesla. For the first
five months of the year, sales of the Model Y are down twenty four percent in China. Looks like Uber
is serious about expanding its autonomous operations. Earlier this week,
it started offering robotaxi rides with Waimo in Atlanta, and now The New York Times reports Uber is in talks with its founder, Travis Kollanik, to buy the US operations of the Chinese av company pony Ai. Bloomberg estimates the
deal would likely be valued under five hundred million dollars since pony has no US revenue yet. If the deal
goes through. Calanic would run pony AI while continuing to
lead his current company, Cloud Kitchens, which is kind of like door Dash and delivers food to your house. Colanic
was ousted as Uber CEO in twenty seventeen and he left the board in twenty nineteen, but a tie up between Uber and PONYII not be too surprising. The two
companies previously signed a deal to offer robotaxi services in the Middle East. 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 the Auto three electric cars, and it just announced it will buy steel to make those cars from a supplier in Austria called Volstalpin. That will certainly ease tensions
with European steel makers, who have accused the Chinese of dumping steel in their market and that led to sky high terraffs on certain types of Chinese steel products. That
cargo ship carrying thousands of cars that caught fire and sunk in the Pacific Ocean is going to be costly, according to the Andersen Economic Group. It's going to cost
shippers and the industry and estimating five hundred and sixty million dollars, and that doesn't include downstream business losses, medical expenses, replacing the ship, or an environmental cleanup plan. The ship,
which was traveling from China to Mexico, was carrying more than three thousand vehicles, including around seven hundred and fifty 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. Hey, we've got the
latest out a line pole that were opening up to all of our viewers. At the top of the program,
we reported at Carvana and CarMax want the US Congress to keep EV incentives in place. How would you like
to see Congress vote on this one? Keep all those
incentives in place. Two, just keep the seventy five hundred
dollars sales rebate. Three just keep the incentives to manufacture
batteries in the US. Or four kill all the incentives.
We'll report the results of the pole, but not for another week or so because we've got a programming note here.
The autoline crew will be taking a well earned midyear break, and we're shutting down the shop 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 up reporting for the
first half of the year to a close and we'll kick off our second half on the first Monday in July, so we hope to see you then and thanks for all your supporting.
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