Automakers in CRISIS MODE: VW Loses $12 BILLION in One Year | Episode 1028

It's noon here in Venter City, New Jersey, and our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.,

and this is Car Edge Live for Tuesday, March 10th with your host, me, Ray, here in Venter

City and Zach hanging out in front of his bike in Washington, D.C. How are you today?

Handsome.

I'm not in crisis mode.

Automakers are, however.

I also haven't lost $12 billion in a year, so I'm doing great, Dad.

How are you doing this morning?

Well, I'm happy to say I haven't lost $12 billion in a lifetime, let alone a year.

I don't know that that's a great claim to make, but it gives me a goal now, doesn't

it?

Today's show, folks, is brought to you by CarEdge.com slash Beta.

We're working on a whole new experience for CarEdge.com, and this is now in Beta as well,

so if you could do me a huge favor, go to CarEdge.com slash Beta and play around on this

new site, Dad.

One of the few things or one of the things I like in particular about this site, I'm

going to go ahead and do Ford here.

We'll do an F-150 on the new car search, again, in Beta that we're working on.

Every dealer has their integrated CarEdge dealer ratings, so I could click here.

I could view this Ford F-150 Platinum, and boom, right there, I can see that this dealership

has been rated by CarEdge.

I see their dock fee.

I see there are 15 verified quotes over on CarEdge.com.

Anyway, this is in Beta.

We're seeking out feedback and input CarEdge.com slash Beta.

Can't wait to see the response.

It's now, Dad.

The big story this morning, Volkswagen Group, they're operating profit, excuse me, fell

54% in 2025.

VW is in trouble, man.

We know that as well because the slowest selling car in the United States of America

right now, it's the Volkswagen ID4.

The third and fourth slowest selling car is the United States right now, the Audi S3 and

Q5.

VW Group, which includes Audi, is struggling mightily, Dad, and they lost $12 billion in

just one year.

What the heck is going on here with Volkswagen?

Nothing good.

Obviously, obviously nothing good.

You know, one of their plans for the future was that, you know, right now they have a

little over a 4% of the US new car market.

Yep.

And one of their plans has been to attain a 10% market share in the United States.

And they've put that off for a while now.

They've decided that's much more of a future goal than anywhere near a timely goal.

I saw that and I was like, this is like when you say that you had ambitions of being

six feet tall.

It's like, sure, but it's not going to happen.

Yeah, you know, so where are we?

You know, listen, Volkswagen sales are nowhere near where they want them to be.

Audi lost ground last year and expects to lose ground again this year.

Porsche, which is part of the VW group, lost 98% of its yearly profit from one year to

the next.

That's in that article, the first article.

So where are they?

They are in some universe that they had no intentions of ever being in.

They are like flotsam in space, just floating around out there, trying to get their

bearings and trying to come up with a plan to save themselves.

It is, you know, I guess when you think about it, this could all date back to

dieselgate.

OK.

When the fines for dieselgate, when they fixed the software to indicate that the cars

were polluting less than they were, I believe the fines were somewhere between 25

and 30 billion dollars globally.

And so you combine that with their bad bet on EVs, with the decline in sales, with a

major 54% drop in VW group profits last year, 98% drop in Porsche profits last year.

Audi's struggling.

Yeah, you can say they're in crisis mode and apparently they decided to follow

the plans of Nissan or something with their hopes of getting out of it.

And it doesn't seem that it's working for Nissan and my guess is it probably if they

follow the same plans isn't going to work for Volkswagen.

Dad, I am shocked by Porsche's 98% decline in profitability.

But then when you dig in a little bit, it's the same story our community has heard time

and time again, quote, from the article, Porsche, whose stalled EV strategy dragged

the parent deep into the red in the third quarter.

Boom.

I mean, that's what it is.

All of these automakers that went way, way, way in off the off the deep end on

electric vehicles are eating the pain of that right now.

They are realizing both financial losses of those decisions.

The Porsche had been for a long time, dad, where they made a ton of money, especially

Audi as well, these luxury brands, you can make a bunch of money, not anymore.

And this is at the same exact time when the ID for, for example, is the slowest selling

vehicle in the United States of America.

It has an oversupply.

It doesn't have enough demand.

I already saw a comment from Igor in the chat dad saying, well, the Q5 sells, they've

just dramatically oversupplied the dealers.

Fair, but if they're oversupplying the dealers, it still puts pressure on, on sales

prices and things like that.

This is an automaker in crisis mode.

And, and if you, if you, if your decision is to oversupply the dealers and then

suddenly make that a dealer problem.

Well, the dealer turns around and makes it a manufacturer's problem and says, we can't

keep sitting on, we need help, we need incentives, we need something.

So if the idea was to oversupply the dealers and have the dealers floor

planned companies write Audi a check for each one of those vehicles so that

Audi could improve their cash flow, because they can say, well, we sold the car.

We wholesale it.

That's what we do.

Ultimately, that's going to come back and bite them in the butt, because now

we're going to have to put huge incentives on them to move them.

Either those incentives will be customer focused or they will be dealer sales

incentive focused in, in that they will be given sales goals to hit.

And the amount of money that they will be able to earn per vehicle sold for Q5s will

be astronomical.

So it was, it was a way to manipulate the books or the cash flow for a time being,

but it's going to come back to bite them.

Dad, what does this mean for Volkswagen shoppers, for Audi shoppers, for Porsche

shoppers?

And I bring this up in the context of every single month we do the best and

worst new car incentives.

And we had on the best list for the month of March, the 2026 Volkswagen Atlas,

0% financing for up to 60 months plus $1,000 bonus cash, excuse me, from Volkswagen.

So what does this mean tactically and practically when VW, the parent company

loses $12 billion when operating profits are plummeting, does that actually

signal opportunity for customers who have been waiting on the sidelines and keep

in mind again, 0% financing for 60 months.

That's a big offer.

So do you expect to see more of this, less of this?

How do you expect to see this play out?

Well, let me just say one thing for people out there's they understand this

because I have seen many comments where with 0% interest, you have to pay MSRP.

You do not.

Okay.

One has nothing to do with the other.

You negotiate the best price that you can on the vehicle.

And then if you qualify for the 0% interest, then you will get 0% interest.

So it's not true that in order to get 0% interest, you have to pay MSRP.

You do not.

Now, you do need good credit though.

Yes, that is correct.

You have to be top tier credit wise in order to qualify.

Now, let's face it, if Volkswagen Group is running into a cash flow crisis or

cash flow issue, there's only so much that they can apply towards incentives.

But the dealers who are sitting on this inventory, they don't want to keep

paying the floor plan interest on it.

So there will be some dealers out there who will be more motivated and more

aggressive in trying to figure out how to relieve themselves of vehicles in

stock than other dealers.

You need to find the dealer that's willing to work with you.

If you can't find the dealer in your market area, look outside your market area.

It's pretty simple.

You're the one spending the money.

They desperately need you to spend the money.

So you have the leverage at the moment.

And the real leverage is that they can't look at you and go, well, if you don't

buy it, the person behind you will because, well, there's no person behind you.

So this is one of the few times where as a customer, you really have leverage

and utilize that leverage.

And remember to negotiate the discount, negotiate the price of the car and a

discount on the price of the car before you even start concerning yourself with

that special interest rate.

One has nothing to do with the other.

Pops, let's just use the word.

I know we say it all the time.

Negotiate the out the door price.

Here's another useful resource for all those, for those of you, excuse me, out there

shopping for our car and in particular Volkswagen, we have the dealer ratings and

dealer review platform.

So caredge.com slash dealer dash ratings.

Instead of searching for a region, search by brand, do Volkswagen.

You can see here we've got a bunch of different Volkswagen dealers.

I'll click on Hock Volkswagen of Juliet.

They've got a 100 out of 100 dealer transparency score.

That means their dock fee is at or below the national average.

They don't have mandatory add-ons.

They don't have markups above their advertised price.

I'm going to click on shop inventory dad and that's going to take me here.

And now I can see they have 319 vehicles for sale right now and I can come and I

can actually look at how long they've been sitting on the dealer's lot.

For example, how big of a discount they're offering off of MSRP.

So here's a 2026 Volkswagen Atlas.

They've had it for 58 days.

They're already just off the top offering $4,000 off of MSRP.

Obviously, we know from looking at their transparency score, we should really

only expect a $368 dock fee.

That's all we're going to expect on top of this.

No dealer add-ons, things like that, plus 0% financing.

So this is a little bit of a way you can use these tools and this information

to find a good VW dealer to go get that deal because they are, to your point,

dealing the pain right now and looking to move on from their inventory.

Yes. And here's another thing that people need to understand.

The agreed upon out the door price from the dealership, the dealership, when

there's these specialized finance rates, they're not underwriting the specialized

finance rate, the manufacturer is.

And so that's why when I say they're separate, they are.

The one has nothing to do with the other.

Man, Volkswagen is paying to the cost of bringing down the interest rate to zero,

not the dealership.

So the dealership is motivated to sell the car because they want to get the damn

thing off the floor plan books and they want to get it off the lot.

So, yes, you have as a VW consumer at the moment.

And whether it be VW or Aldi, you have more leverage today than you have had

in quite some time.

And the people who do the research and understand that are the people that are

going to get a better deal than those who walk into a dealership without having

any of this knowledge, without having done any of this research.

So you need, the important thing here is to, you need to be an informed buyer,

an informed shopper.

You need to load yourself up with as much information, market information and

everything else as you possibly can so that they understand that you understand

the situation that they're in.

And I think that's especially true for the automakers who are in crisis mode

because that's where you can get the best possible, best possible deal from the

automotive retired guy.

Thanks for that contribution, David.

You can add my two, add my, he had two Volkswagen 94 BiVax from Volkswagen.

You can add them to why they're struggling.

The fact that there are 11 law BiVax on the ID force doesn't help them sell either.

There's another automotive brand that's in crisis mode right now and that would

be Nissan and this is folks, one of our favorite things that happens in corporate

America.

This is the stepping down for personal reasons while the company loses $400

million, right?

For this, that Nissan appoints George Leonidas, no clue who he is, CFO, as

Jeremy Papin steps down amid losses.

Now, here's my favorite part about this.

We'll talk about what this means for Nissan.

Second year, Nissan has appointed George Leonidas, it's new CFO, replacing Jeremy

Papin, who will step down for personal reasons as the company braces for massive

losses, the problems as Nissan expects a 60 billion yen loss, $391 million loss in

the current fiscal year, ending March 31st.

Let's talk Nissan down.

Let's talk your favorite game of corporate jargon and nice speak, but Nissan's

another automaker who's in crisis mode right now.

Yeah, well, I would step down for personal reasons too if they said to me, you

either step down or you make up the $400 million loss, okay?

Because it happened on your watch.

So yeah, personal reasons, he decided to pursue other opportunities that he didn't

know were out there at the time because he didn't know he needed to.

But yeah, it's a nice way of Nissan saying, we're kicking you to the curb, okay?

And we're bringing in another guy who hopefully can figure this stuff out because

so far nobody's been able to.

And Nissan is another one that's financially not on the strongest of footing.

You know, it's amazing how these corporations can lose millions and then

billions of dollars for how many years they can before things get turned around.

But as that's happening, it impacts your ability to develop new product to make

some of the changes that need to be made because you can't afford to.

You know, cash flow is one of the most important things there are for business.

If you have no cash flow coming in, it makes it harder to have cash going out.

It just does.

You can't buy as many things.

You can't do as many things as you'd like to do.

So when I first read that article, I thought to myself, what Nissan needs to do

from the CFO perspective, from an accounting perspective is to bring in the good folks

from Carvana and they'll teach them how to make it look better, okay?

Because it's all perception.

Let's make it look better.

It's like, you know, what can you do to make me look better?

You know, it's the old situation of putting lipstick on a pig.

It's still a pig.

It just has lipstick.

You can put lipstick on me.

I'm still a pig, okay?

But I just have lipstick.

So I don't know.

That was the first thought that came to my mind was there.

There are pointing a new CFO who who is the wrong CFO.

Nonetheless, folks, Nissan is yet another in my opinion.

Nissan is yet another automaker that's in this crisis mode right now.

They're losing money.

They're desperate for sales.

They've oversupplied their their dealer network that they've reduced their their

workforce globally by 15, 20 percent.

They've cut shut down seven of their global production facilities.

So this is a brand where again, if you're looking for deal, deal, deal.

And you know, just trying to get from point A to point B with something

that is generally reliable, Nissan is a great option right now.

It is also interesting that Nissan, I'm thinking back to the article we read

last week about Honda using the fleet sales valve to try and sell more vehicles.

Well, Nissan obviously sells a lot of vehicles via fleet.

They're now working on a new partnership with Waymo to power their next generation of fleet.

So Nissan is just desperate to find ways to sell vehicles.

And that creates an opportunity.

And obviously what they're doing here with their corporate hierarchy

also just signals the struggles that they're having.

And then, you know, there was another article on Automotive News

today about Infinity coming out with like a 800 horsepower AMG Bavlar.

And I'm thinking to myself, why?

Why? Why? Why do you go down that route?

I mean, you know, AMG is AMG, BMW has their M series.

Both of those brands, Mercedes, Benz and BMW are known for those things.

Nissan is Nissan, Infinity is Infinity.

And just because you can doesn't mean you should try to compete with with

BMW's M series or Mercedes AMG series.

So it's like, you know, we're bleeding money, we're losing money.

That's a 600 horsepower, I'm sorry.

And and so now we're going to invest money in a dying brand.

OK, to try and compete against AMG and the M one.

It just it makes no sense to me at all.

I mean, how much do they think they can move the needle?

How many of those damn things do they think they can sell?

OK, because it doesn't have the same panache as an AMG.

You know, you can build that thing and you really think people are going to go,

I don't know, Infinity, that thing, G-Wagen, Infinity G.

Yeah, G-Wagen.

I mean, who the hell is going to buy that, Infinity?

And it's and it's not like and it's not like Infinity sells that.

What would it begin with?

I mean, it's like I sometimes think to myself,

how how far up your ass can you stick your head?

And and and I probably am not allowed to say that on air, but I said it.

And and and and the reason I say this, because it's true.

I mean, how blind do you have to be?

How out of touch do you have to be?

How far up your ass does your head have to be for you to go?

Oh, yeah, we need a 600 horsepower Infinity QX 80

to compete against an M series BMW and an AMG Mercedes.

That's your head out of your ass and get into the game.

I mean, really, in my opinion,

really bold of you to triple down on cursing.

I know that was really special.

Let's switch gears, y'all.

Wall Street Journal had an article this morning

soaring gas prices are the latest blow for auto industry in constant whiplash.

Now, we talked about this a bit yesterday.

Yeah, gas prices have continued to increase.

We have the latest data here from Triple A.

We're up to three dollars and fifty three cents caught fifty four cents.

And you can look just over the past, you know, month or so here.

We've gone from two dollars and ninety one ninety two cents, excuse me,

to three dollars and we'll call it fifty four cents, even just day over day.

Dad, gas prices going up by about six cents.

So what's the story here with gas prices?

Has it evolved at all from yesterday?

Or is it really going to be the same narrative that we talked about

yesterday for the foreseeable future?

You know, as I like to say that anything you hear out of Washington,

the devil was always in the details.

Typically, there's very few details.

And the reason there's very few details is because, well, if they shared the details,

then it would probably look worse than what it really is.

So, yeah, I mean, it is it is as if the United States

government is trying to manipulate the markets

and and doing a damn good job of it at a certain point.

Do you mean that the government's intentionally trying to increase gas prices?

No, I mean, yesterday, yesterday, oil had peaked at one hundred and twenty

dollars a barrel, OK?

And then and then the government said, oh, my goodness, the war is almost over.

And the next thing you know, oil dropped back down to like eighty dollars a barrel.

Yeah, I got you got you got you.

So it is through government statements,

ways for the government to manipulate markets so that there's more fear or less fear.

But the problem is that there's no details to really know if any of it is true.

And so we find ourselves in a situation where we we don't know.

Nobody really seems to know.

And so, yeah, it's like oil, literally oil yesterday went up to, I think, one hundred

twenty one dollars a barrel and then back down to eighty dollars a barrel.

And I think it's up to ninety some dollars a barrel today.

And and so when there is no certainty in the market,

we have no idea how this could play out how it could last.

And I know there's people who think, oh, well, gas prices will stabilize in a couple

weeks. Yeah, it's kind of like everybody who said, you know, well, when manufacturers

raise the prices of cars to expect them to go back down, that's never happening.

That, you know, oil companies will ride this as long as they can.

So it's hard to see.

It's a good thing we have a Henry Strains in our cars for that whiplash.

That's the reason you have them.

Let's talk about what impacts we think this might have on buying and selling cars.

And we'll just pull this chart up from New York Times.

Change in oil and gas prices since the war began.

You can see U.S. oil prices up in the down, like you mentioned, international oil prices

up in the down and then gas prices just steadily up.

They're up about 20 percent since this all began.

But that let's talk specifically about the impact on the auto industry.

Let's prognostic it about what may or may not happen.

And just what this does for both consumer demand, like, for example, that we just

got the latest blackbook data.

I haven't even looked at it yet today.

Let's pull it up together.

Let's see.

Moment of truth, y'all.

What's this doing to use car prices?

Anything?

Here you go.

The same week last year, the use car prices dropped three and a half

tenths of a percent.

This year, they're up a quarter of a percent.

That's what a almost a six tenths of a percent swing.

So it is the prices are higher.

And if you scroll down, you will you will notice that that prices have

keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

I'm going to show you.

Keep going, keep going, keep going.

Wholesale weekly price index.

OK, look at what has been going on with the wholesale prices of two to six

year old used cars since the beginning of the year.

And and that's the black line.

And then look at the green line and look at the divergence between those two

between last year and this year.

This indicates to me, excuse me, that wholesale values of used cars are

going up much more quickly this year than they did last year.

Hell, they dipped first last year before they went up.

And we're not seeing any dip here at all.

And the day supply, the average day supply, if you scroll down even further,

keeps declining.

So that means if there's a shortage of cars

and the prices are higher, what do you think is going to happen?

It makes me wonder, though, Deb, will we see this line actually increase

even more as there's more demand for more fuel efficient vehicles or more?

I don't know. I'm like, I'm wondering if there's a connection here

between what's happening with gas prices, what's happening with the used car market.

I think what happens with gas prices is,

you know, we're 10 days into this.

So, you know, we've seen like a 20 percent spike in gas prices in 10 days.

Yeah. It's it's how long does that have to last before people out there go?

I can't afford suddenly five or six hundred dollars a month for gasoline.

As opposed to my two or three hundred dollars a month for gasoline.

And they start saying themselves, I'm going to get out of my gas guzzling vehicle.

I don't think that happens in 10 days.

Could happen in two months or three months.

If gas prices continue to go up at this rate.

Yeah.

When people really start to feel it in the pocketbook.

But it's going to take a little bit of time.

And so do I think ultimately if those gas prices continue to go up at the rate

they're going up? Absolutely.

I think I've lived through this where people don't use good common sense

and they suffer massive losses in this unreasonable attempt

to lower their monthly expenses

because they don't want to spend six hundred hours a month for gas.

They only want to spend two or three hundred.

So suddenly they look at a car that's more fuel efficient.

It's sometimes people are better served if they really look at the situation,

bite the bullet and hold on.

But too many people out there are reactive.

Not proactive.

And and so too many people I believe there's a there's a large percentage

of the population that will be reactive and will make stupid financial decisions.

And the only reason I can say that is I saw him do it any number of times

during my forty three years in retail automotive.

For sure. That was your mind, everyone.

Today's show is brought to you by CarEdge.com beta.

We need your feedback.

We need your input to check out the new beta experience.

Definitely want to get some of your thoughts and input there.

And also, y'all, we have another product in beta right now.

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CarEdge.com slash dealer ratings or dealer reviews.

You can find that back on the website as well.

You can find trustworthy and transparent dealers to do business with.

This is all powered by CarEdge AI that we have helped so many people

save so much money, even just yesterday.

Let's look at this again every day.

This chart updates March 8th, March 9th, March 8th.

We'll go there one hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars in savings.

That's from first out the door price quote to final out the door price quote.

Yesterday, the AI agent contacted four hundred and fifty seven dealers

on behalf of CarEdge community members.

We're up to fifty four thousand six hundred and thirty six negotiations

that we've started on customer behalf.

Really incredible.

And for those of you that are unfamiliar, if you just go to CarEdge.com,

none of our beta experience, the hardened and solid product

is our car buying service where we take care of research,

dealer outreach and even negotiation.

For the past six years, my dad and I and our incredible team

have been learning what matters to you, contacting dealers,

comparing real offers and helping you get the best deal.

All that and so much more back at CarEdge.com.

May I say something?

Sure.

I cannot tell you how many comments where I read where people go,

well, this is like a commercial for CarEdge.

What the hell do you think it's going to be?

OK, we discussed the news, OK?

And what do you think we're going to promote?

We think we're going to promote the cars, car gurus.

Come on, folks.

You know, I mean, what reality set in for a moment?

You know, yeah, we're going to we're going to we're going to hype our stuff.

We're going to promote our stuff.

You know, we're.

What the hell is wrong with people?

We're back tomorrow with more CarEdge.

Live, dad.

Enjoy the beautiful weather and thanks for.

Where you are.

Yeah, no, it's 83 degrees here in D.C.

I've got a couple interviews I have to do for my apartment here,

but then I cannot wait to go work outside.

It's 15. It's 50 degrees here.

All right. Well, you know, if you go outside, put a sweater on.

I'll put on a coat. Damn it.

We're back tomorrow, folks.

Love you, dad.

Yeah, love you too, handsome.

Thanks everybody for being here today.

If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe.

It really does help the show to grow.

Thank you for listening.

Automakers in CRISIS MODE: VW Loses $12 BILLION in One Year | Episode 1028

About this episode

Ford F150

Volkswagen Group

Volkswagen Id4

Audi S3

Audi Q5

market share

Dieselgate

EV strategy

dealer incentives

floor plan interest

customer leverage

dealer fees

dealer markup

Volkswagen Atlas

dock fee

dealer add-ons

floor plan books

corporate jargon

fleet sales

Waymo

brand identity

horsepower

Bmws M

Infiniti QX80

BMW Series Bmw

gas prices

Henry Strain

blackbook data

wholesale weekly price index

reactive vs proactive buying

dealer ratings and reviews

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