Dec. 30, 2025 | Tech Year-In-Review: Tariffs, Tesla and the EV shakeout

Welcome to Daily Drive, for Tuesday, December 30th, 2025, I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.

Today on the show, on this special year-end edition of Daily Drive, we continue our conversation

with the automotive news tech and innovation team, with a look at the impact of tariffs

and trade policy, as well as the year EV makers like Tesla and Rivian had in 2025.

Molly Boygon covers vehicle software, connected technology and more,

and host of the automotive news shift podcast. John Irwin covers tariffs and the supply chain.

Lawrence Ilyff covers Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, and other automakers from Silicon Valley,

and Richard Truett covers engineering and JLR. Here's a piece of our conversation.

Lonnie, you are kind of, I guess, boots on the ground in Silicon Valley. You are our eyes and

Tesla had a complicated year. I mean, we had their sales, their financial performance,

Elon Musk's political involvement, and the impact on the brand. I mean, what happened this year?

I think, you know, Tesla is trying to be a technology company. Tesla is trying to get

in on the, you know, the AI and robots and robotexies, because the auto industry,

even though Tesla's margins have been pretty good, they're coming back down to the auto industry

margins. And that's not what Elon wants. He wants it to be a tech company. He wants it to make a

lot of money and move into the future. So Tesla's really got kind of a two feet situation. It's got

one foot in the car industry where it has to make cars and sell cars and make money. And then it has

one foot in, you know, artificial intelligence, robots, robotics, where it sees the future,

right, of its business. And so I think that it's been a juggling act all year, right? It's

been a juggling act. They've had to really incentivize their cars to sell them. They've kind

of tried to freshen them up, you know, kind of sales are down, you know, a little bit in the US,

a lot in Europe, kind of flat in China. So they're kind of, you know, fighting for their

market share in the automotive industry. That is complicated by Elon Musk's politics, right?

Because he will get on a rampage on Twitter and get really focused on one thing, like the right

wing party in Germany and why they're the only one who can save the country. Or, you know, what's

going on within Britain with some of these other political things that sometimes are even kind of

obscure. So that has hurt sales, I think, in the US to people. He's obviously very closely

associated with Donald Trump. You know, he was part of the administration, they had a big fight,

and now they've kind of made up. And so that has kind of, you know, complicated consumers,

you know, attitudes toward Tesla. But I think that, you know, I was feeling a little bit

pessimistic about them when there was a lot of blowback from his politics and the products were

getting stale. And, but I'm seeing a lot of progress on what they say is really their next

business. And that is robotic cars, right? Their Robotech C rollout hasn't been very impressive.

It's only about 30 cars in Austin, and they still have safety drivers. But you can see,

you know, people using their software, millions of people using their software,

not millions, hundreds of thousands of people using their software. And the videos they show,

and you can really see that they are progressing. And they may very well have actual self-driving

cars that consumers can buy, and actual self-driving cars that you can hail as a Robotech C in a few

years. And that could be a big pivot for them. I think that that people can separate the man

from the brand. And here's how they're doing it in Detroit. It's coming to work the other day,

and I got behind the model, why someone had put a Pontiac emblem right in the center where the

T was. And I've seen a Mazda one there before. So I think people are going to buy Tesla's,

but maybe not associate themselves with the man so much. What do you think?

Well, you know, California was what launched Tesla, right? This is where the first plant was,

and this is where people bought Tesla's. I mean, overwhelmingly, you know, really bought into the

brand. And you know, California sales have for Tesla have fallen as EV sales have grown,

but they haven't fallen that much. There's still a lot of people, and I think it comes down to

one thing. And that is, if you are an early adopter, if you are really into this technology,

if you love the software, Tesla is, you know, the brand, it just really is, they have really

dedicated a lot of time and a lot of energy, a lot of engineering talent. And when you talk to

like the CEO of Rivian, he's like, yeah, it's, you know, Tesla and us. I mean, if that's what

you're into right now, obviously, most Americans aren't into that yet. Most American cars into

hybrids and gasoline, I want to do that. But I think they are really laying the groundwork for

the future. And I do not think that there's going to be billions of humanoid robots, right?

You know, turning the globe into a utopia, where nobody has to work, as Elon Musk said.

But I do think that the next step, which is to self-driving, I think that that could be a big

deal. Lonnie, on the self-driving thing, how has the conversation evolved around the cameras versus

LiDAR debate? Because I expected that that would end up being a bigger problem for Tesla,

you know, the reliance on cameras, but it doesn't seem like that's been the case.

Well, that's a very interesting debate because the only, in the United States, the only real

robot taxi company successful, amazing, you know, safety record is Waymo and Waymo believes in all

the sensors, right? It believes in the LiDAR and advanced radars and, you know, there's all different

kinds of sensor stacks. So they've taken the approach of we're going to be careful and, you

know, we're going to have, and their safety record is amazing. And so that's kind of the training

wheels, let's call it, right? And Tesla wants to take off the training wheels. It wants to get all

that stuff off the car and use cameras. And I think there was an argument that, or is an argument

that, you know, that can't work because you don't have enough data going into the car

for it to make all these complicated decisions. And the more types of sensors, LiDAR, radar,

cameras, your car will make better decisions. But I think, you know, talking to people in the industry

is that AI is changing that, right? AI and these crazy compute platforms and these

NVIDIA chips are getting to the point where cameras can make a lot of really good decisions

based on their AI training. And so I think you could have a situation where

robo taxis with cameras may not be able to operate in, you know, snow and like the most

challenging conditions, but probably could do a lot of the work, you know, and then maybe,

you know, maybe Tesla will add some sensors on there. We'll see.

Lonnie, you recently interviewed Rivian CEO RJ Scorange. I wanted to touch on Rivian because

we spoke about them a little earlier. But what's going on there? Let's dig a little deeper. You

know, they had their partnership with Volkswagen Group. Volkswagen invested $5 billion. Of course,

as we spoke earlier on, the R2 launched planning for next year. And then Rivian's vision for

software defined in self-driving vehicles. What's happening with Rivian?

I think Rivian is trying to get to the next level, right? As you know, as a startup or a

former startup, right? They, you know, it's been about four years since they launched their first

vehicles, pick up SUV and Vans for Amazon, right? And then they revised that platform

to be from kind of a more traditional type platform to a more of a software defined platform.

And so now they're trying to follow the Tesla playbook basically, they're trying to get to the

next level as quickly as possible with a mass market vehicle, followed by more mass market

vehicles, a new factory in Georgia. And then, you know, get in on the self-driving and all the

technology that Tesla and some of the Chinese companies have pioneered. And it's going to

be really difficult for them because, you know, it's a, it's a heavy pull with everything that's

going on with the lack of the EV credits. And that's not just a consumer credit. There's other

credits in there, right? And all the money they're going to need to do what they have to do.

But I think that they are looking, you know, for five years from now, if they can just grind it

out, they could be the next Tesla. And Lonnie, is the VW partnership, is that like, is that a

lifeline for Rivian or is it a sign that they just can't do it by themselves? Well, it's interesting

because it's also a sign that Volkswagen can't do it by themselves. Good point. So Rivian basically

spent a lot of money developing this technology, but Rivian needed money to keep going to make cars,

right? And so Volkswagen's the opposite, right? Volkswagen makes a lot of cars, but Volkswagen

needs the technology. And so they came together and, you know, I went to an event with Volkswagen

and Rivian at their Palo Alto offices where they're doing all this stuff. And it's really

impressive, you know, it is really interesting how these platforms also bring down costs,

right? Other than having 100 chips in a car and hoping that, you know, your supply chain will come

through. You have three computer processors that are doing all that work. You cut down a lot of the

wiring. And so I think that their joint venture isn't just like Rivian gives something to Volkswagen,

it's them developing these things together for their own companies. And Volkswagen said, you

have troubles financially, the joint venture will continue on. And eventually you're going to have

the platform developed by Rivian and Volkswagen. You know, Rivian did most of the work, now

Volkswagen is working on it, on tens of millions of Volkswagen cars. That's what Volkswagen says. So

it looks like it could be a good partnership if everything goes well, which, you know,

there'll probably be rocky moments for sure.

Cal, allow me to retort. It's one thing to have a vision and it's quite another to execute it in a

consumer friendly way. And last week, Consumer Reports came out with its brand report card.

And Rivian to me was the most interesting. On one hand, it was the brand that consumers said

they love the most or most loyal. On the other hand, it finished dead last in reliability rankings.

So in other words, people like what Rivian is trying to do, but they don't love the way it's

being performing in the marketplace. And Lonnie, I think that's a big problem. They've got to get

reliability under control. You know, I think what's interesting, and I have not had time to look at

that. But in these Consumer Reports things, and they have a podcast, so I've listened to their

podcasts and I know about some of this. Some of this is just a technology, you know, like if you

have a very complicated, you know, over the air software update, right? And it has, you know,

bugs and glitches and oh, I have a software update. Now my wipers don't work. Well, the automatic

wipers don't work and had a software update. And now when I go up to my car, it doesn't unlock

automatically. And so I wonder how much of it is just, you know, software teething page because

we've seen, you know, Tesla used to be at the bottom too. And now they've come up quite a bit.

Their software is getting a lot better. And so with electric cars, a lot of times the real

reliability problems is the software and all these advanced features. And, you know, when your

software updates and then you can't do things that you could do beforehand, people get really

frustrated. And I think that, you know, following Rivian forums and Tesla forums for that and Lucid

forums, they all complain about the software and the software updates because we're in this,

you know, transition from little chips all over the car, where one chip does your windows up and

down to, you know, computers and big software stacks that can get messed up. So I know that

has been a problem for Rivian in terms of the software. Well, to your point, Tesla finished

10th on the brand report card for consumer reports, and that was their best showing ever.

And what that means, Jake Fisher said, is that they're getting a handle on their problems and

fixing them. Coolest tech of 2025. Richard, what tech did you see this year that impressed you?

Boy, I know Molly's going to light me up for this one, but you know what? There was no technology

that totally I thought, this is awesome. I am beginning to detest what cars are becoming,

which are basically iPhones on wheels. I sat in a Volkswagen ID buzz earlier, and I sat there

like a moron trying to figure out how to raise and lower the windows. Got into a Mercedes Benz,

I couldn't adjust the mirrors. That's not progress. That doesn't make the driving

situation any better if you have to sit there and think about what you do.

I understand that we need safer cars, and I understand AI has a role to play in that.

But turning the car into a mobile iPhone is the wrong direction. And I also see another thing

that maybe my esteemed colleagues there don't see is that the way cars are being designed now

is a very subtle thing that's happening. They're being designed to be thrown away like iPhones.

In other words, you'll have a car get out of the warranty period, and then you'll have something

fail. That's a $10 part, but it costs $3,500 to put it in and people just scrap the car.

They're not being designed for serviceability. If I sound like I'm down on the auto industry,

you're right, I'm down on it because they are fundamentally disrespecting the consumers that

have to pay tens of thousands for their cars. But, Kel, to answer your question on technology,

okay, there were a few things that were impressive this year, and I know that Molly and especially

Lonnie will agree with me. First of all, we saw battery technology improve really greatly where

now when an EV comes out, it can get 300 miles of range. We've seen charging technology get more

dependable and more reliable and less complaints about that. And I think we've seen the steady

improvement in hybrid powertrains, and that's been an improvement too. So, okay, I'm not totally

down on all technology, just the stuff I don't like. I can't argue with the serviceability

point. And I feel like that's, Richard, you're just the best because you offer such an interesting,

like, unique perspective on that type of thing. But I think that the larger transition

to increasingly software-enabled and software-defined features, we're kind of in this weird,

like, it's almost like a mullet. We're growing out a bad haircut because what you really want,

ultimately, is for the vehicle not to be controlled by touch of any kind because the whole task of

driving requires, like, your full attention. You ultimately want all of these things to be

controlled by voice. And we're kind of in this, like, weird transition period right now where,

you know, much too many people should grin. There's the removal of the physical buttons from the

vehicle. You have increasingly complex kind of touchscreen menus to navigate. The central

infotainment display is like a source of major distraction. But ultimately, all of this is

supposed to be controlled by voice, which is getting a little bit better as automakers move

these large language models off the cloud and basically build smaller models on board the

vehicle that can handle natural language commands. But in general, I think that the

perspective that you're espousing, which is very common, you know, my ability to control my vehicle

is being taken from me and, you know, whatever happened to my right to, you know, basically

do whatever I want. And, you know, you look at the fatality. So you have like 17,000 odd

fatalities from January through June. And my argument is that the consumer has basically

abdicated the responsibility that they own over the motor vehicle. Like, people are getting

increasingly reckless. They're driving drunk. They're driving distracted. And actually, I think

the automakers have a larger role to play in creating even more safety interventions in the

vehicle that they won't do. So the technology that I found really interesting this year is

New York State and a bunch of other states are implementing speed limiters in cars where people

have like many, many, many red light violations or other moving vehicle violations. And those

drivers will not be able to exceed a certain speed limit. And that's the type of thing that the

auto industry could feasibly do. But right now, it's sort of like an untouchable conversation

because of the sort of like American spirit of, let me do whatever I want in my vehicle and I

should be able to have full control. So agree to disagree. I'm not sure this is a question that any

of us here could answer, but how much of this is a generational thing? I have decades on you,

and I tell you about the generational thing. Richard, you still own a flip phone,

and I don't even know what kind of phone you own. But I assume you have a flip phone.

I'd love to get in a car and be the captain of my own ship. And I don't ever see that changing.

Yeah, no, I hear you. And I mean, it also must be said that I live in New York City. I

take public transportation. I don't own a car. So you and me are really kind of on the

opposite ends of the spectrum. And I think my age and, you know, but there is this increasing

as I said earlier in the conversation, brand agnosticism, focus on technology for the younger

consumer. And I actually think that the industry is probably not doing enough to meet the moment in

that case. But Lonnie and John, let me ask you guys this question. I have yet to get into a car

that has a Navi system that works as good as Siri. I can get into any car and I say,

Siri, take me to wherever and it works perfectly. And yet if I go into a Tesla or any other kind

of car, I'm punching buttons or they can't pick up my voice and it doesn't work as well. Why is that?

You know, I think it's a learning curve. I think it's a learning curve, just like I remember when

you know, my older brother first got a smartphone and he was just like looking at it and like,

what? And, you know, over time, that was great at it. You know, he posts videos, he does all kind

of stuff. And so I think, you know, once you, once you learn how to do it, once there's a voice,

once you, you know, get into that owner's manual and, you know, do the work, then those tasks become

easier. You know, there is a thing that Tesla has right now where, you know, you get in your car and

you say, I want to go to the gym and you press a button and that's it. You don't do anything.

It takes you to the gym and it parks for you and you get out of the car and someday you'll

probably be able to do that at the back seat. And to Molly's point, I mean, all these systems are

just so safe. I don't have the numbers in front of me from Waymo, but you know, some of their

safety things are down like 90% from human drivers. And I think sometimes we forget that, you know,

a lot of people die on the road, a lot of pedestrians die on the road and a lot of

bikers die on the road. And here in California, we have skateboarders and stuff. I have to drive

like at 25 miles an hour because there's so many different possible connections that I could have,

you know, just going down the street. And so I think, I think I agree with Molly that the

biggest technology thing is going to be safety. It's going to be all these sensors and software

and all this stuff that we don't like. We're not going to even drive our cars someday, maybe on,

you know, a lot of the time. And I think that's hard, you know, for people who are really steeped

in the nostalgia where every single car has, you know, different buttons and they're in different

places and cars have personality. They make different sounds, you know, the gear shift feels

different, the clutches feels different, you know, remember clutches, right? And so I think that is

going to be hard. Before we wrap up, John, any supply chain innovations that solve problems this year?

Yeah, I'm going to shift gears a little bit. I've been so basically just neck deep in tariffs

and trade stuff this year that the thing that comes to mind, you know, for me is,

you know, I've heard so much from suppliers about how they're utilizing, you know, new AI tools

just to help them get a better grasp of their supply chains. And I think that's really helped

them this year, just considering all of the turmoil that we've seen and all the changes in

trade policy, etc. You know, I remember going back even in January around CES last or this year,

almost a year ago now, where I visited Aptiv and they were touting this new AI tool that they had

that helped them basically map out their entire supply chain, which you'd think every company

would have that mapped out. But in a lot of cases, it's basically impossible once you get

into like deep into, you know, several tiers deep. And that was a big problem for them during

semiconductor shortage, you know, you might not, you know, a part's not going to arrive at,

you know, your factory, you're trying to figure out, okay, where is the hang up? Well, it's,

you know, five tiers deep, there's a little company that's not getting whatever part,

and it's not getting to you. And that's leading to all sorts of issues. Now they're able to see

that they're able to pinpoint, okay, here's a potential issue here. We can dial up who to talk to

pretty much instantly. That was a big issue before you might, you know, maybe you get wind

of where an issue is in the supply chain, but you might not have a contact there, or you might not

know exactly who the best person to reach. I think it's an interesting example of, you know,

there's a lot of talk about AI and there's a lot of hype, I think, in a lot of cases of, you know,

a lot of overhype and a lot of cases when it comes to AI or certain uses of it that are,

you know, maybe thinking as a writer here less than ideal, but there are examples of AI as a

tool that helps to, you know, make everyone's jobs easier. And for supply chain managers and

purchasing managers, maybe the most thankless job in the auto industry, it's helped to make

their lives at least a little bit easier amid all the chaos and all the changes that we've seen this

year. That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellen Walker. Thanks to automotive news executive

producer Jake Neer for his help on today's podcast. You can get the latest news on tech

and innovation, trade and tariffs, and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.

Come back tomorrow for the first piece of our year-end conversation with the automotive news

retail team. We'll talk about regulatory wins and losses for dealers, as well as the growth

of Amazon Autos through 2025. Tariffs, I think, a lot of the automakers actually

ended up taking on some of the price increase. We'd love to hear from you.

Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we covered today. Send us an email

at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774. And if you

Dec. 30, 2025 | Tech Year-In-Review: Tariffs, Tesla and the EV shakeout

About this episode

Tesla

Rivian

EV makers

Lucid

margins

incentivize

EV

self-driving

LiDAR

sensor stacks

advanced radars

cameras

Volkswagen Group

software defined vehicles

joint venture

over the air software update

electric cars

software reliability

Volkswagen ID. Buzz

Mercedes-Benz

battery technology

hybrid powertrains

software-defined features

speed limiters

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