Jan. 21, 2026 | Hyundai’s market value surge; Teradar's Matt Carey on sensors

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Welcome to Daily Drive. For Wednesday, January 21st, 2026, I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas. Today

on the show, Hyundai overtakes GM to become the world's fourth most valuable automaker. BMW's

Keeping U.S. Electric Vehicle production on track despite its battery supplier halting construction

and dealer confidence slips in the fourth quarter as affordability challenges intensify. Plus,

Teradar CEO Matt Carey explains how the company's sensor technology combines the benefits of radar

and lidar at a fraction of the cost. We can pick up a ball with a kid chasing after it in the pouring

rain at 200 meters all behind the fascia so that way you don't see us you don't have to know we're

there we're just helping keep you safe. Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up

in the auto industry. Hyundai Motor just overtook General Motors to become the world's fourth most

valuable automaker. The South Korean company's market cap hit $76.4 billion, topping GM's $72.6

billion, driven by an 85% stock surge this year. What's fueling the rally? Hyundai's Robotics Push.

The company unveiled its Atlas Humanoid Robot here in Las Vegas this month at CES

built by its Boston Dynamics Unit. Hyundai wants the robots to start working in its plants in 2028.

Add in partnerships with Nvidia and Google DeepMind and analysts say Hyundai is the only company

that can rival Tesla in the physical AI market. BMW's keeping its U.S. Electric Vehicle production

on track for late this year. That's despite its battery supplier halting construction. AESC

stopped work on its South Carolina plant last June, citing Trump administration tariff uncertainty

and subsidy cuts. The fix? AESC will supply battery cells from its existing global facilities

until the local plant comes online. BMW's Battery Assembly operation in Woodruff

still opens in 2026, with the first electric model likely the IX-5 hitting U.S. showrooms in

early 2027. The automaker plans at least six electric SUVs from its Spartanburg factory.

And dealer confidence slipped in the fourth quarter down five points from Q3 to a rating of 62.

That's according to the latest automotive news auto industry confidence index,

which tracks automaker, dealer, and supplier confidence each quarter. Consumer affordability

proved the biggest challenge for retailers. Rising interest rates squeezed budgets while

growing inventory compressed margins as dealers competed aggressively on pricing.

Nearly one in three dealers expect new vehicle gross margins to worsen in the next six months.

Service and parts operations remained bright spots. 67% of dealers called fixed ops profitability,

excellent or good. Used vehicle conditions continued to challenge retailers as older

trade-ins with higher miles complicated inventory decisions. Joining me now to talk more about

this story is our own John Hutter, who covers retail for us at Automotive News. John, welcome back

to Daily Drive. Hey, great to be here. So John, we surveyed dealers about their business conditions

in Q4. What's driving this drop in dealer confidence despite still favorable ratings?

Yeah, well, you know, I did wonder a little bit if it's the, you know, coming off of

great Q3 where everybody had, you know, big EV sales because of the tax credits expiring,

but there does seem to be, I mean, just looking at the answers and things like that, there does

seem to be just a big concern with affordability going on among the dealers right now. And so,

to me, that was kind of the biggest kind of the factor drawing. I mean, people cited different

things like, you know, just a general affordability or, you know, some of the dealers wrote in about

interest rates. But yeah, that definitely seems to be a concern on dealers' lines in the fourth

quarter. And when dealers look ahead six months, they're noticeably more pessimistic than they were

last quarter. What specific areas are causing the most concern? Right. Yeah. And, you know,

it's important to note that most of them still thought that things would stay the same or improve,

but we did notice kind of sentiment souring looking ahead compared to the last time we did

the study. And a big point here seems to be the, one of the big points seems to be new vehicle,

gross profit margins. Dealers thought that's up to like nearly, it's 31% of dealers now,

and that was up from previous quarters. I think that's going to be worse in six months. So,

definitely a concern for dealers there. So I think that's going to be, that's probably

driving part of their sentiment going forward. Perfect. John, thank you so much for joining

me. Hey, thanks guys. You can read more about all those stories, including all of our coverage

of the latest automotive news auto industry confidence index at autonews.com. Coming up next,

Teradar CEO Matt Kerry discusses how the company's pioneering sensor technology combines the best of

radar and LiDAR and why he says it can enable level three autonomous driving at a fraction of the

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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellan Walker.

Autonomous vehicles rely on a combination of sensors,

but each has weaknesses. Cameras lack depth perception

and struggle in weather. Radar can't provide high resolution and LiDAR is expensive,

has moving parts, and struggles in fog. Teradar is pioneering a new sensing technology

meant to combine the best of both radar and LiDAR. Automotive news Europe managing editor,

Doug Bolduck, spoke with Teradar CEO Matt Carey at CES this month about the technology

and the company's path to market. Hello, everyone. This is Doug Bolduck from Automotive news at CES.

We are here at the biggest technology show in the world, and we have a special guest here today.

It is Matt Carey, CEO of Teradar, and Matt, you guys have kind of done something that

I believe the market is needed. Cameras, okay, everyone's got them. LiDAR, a lot of people

want to have them incredibly expensive. You've seemed to have kind of found some place in between

the two. Can you tell us a little bit about your technology and how it is being accepted

within the industry? Sure. Yeah, so thank you for having me on, Doug. You're absolutely right. So

there are different sensors that we use on cars today, right? So you're very familiar with radar

and LiDAR and cameras, and they each have their weaknesses, right? So cameras work really well.

The downside is they don't give you depth information. And of course, during weather,

it's a very difficult proposition, just like your eyes. So if you're driving into a setting sun,

you're kind of squinting into it, right? We put radars on a lot of cars, and radars are great.

They see through weather. You can hide them behind the fascia of the car. But there's this physics

limit called the Rayleigh criterion. And it basically says, for a given size radar, you can

only get so much resolution. And if you want more, you have to make the radar way bigger.

And for some reason, us as consumers have said, we don't want the entire front of my car turned

into a giant radar, right? So we invented LiDARs from that. And LiDARs are fantastic on resolution.

Unfortunately, as you mentioned, they're really expensive. They have moving parts,

so it's difficult to have them last for 20 years. And of course, they struggle in weather,

especially fog, right? What we've done is between the spectrum on radar and LiDAR,

we've gone to the last part of the spectrum that no one's ever built a sensor app before,

invented a new type of sensing akin to when the X-ray was invented. But what we've done,

because we're between these two, is combine the best of both. So we're flexible, solid state,

we can see through weather like radar, but we also give you the high resolution that LiDAR provides,

and you can put us behind the fascia. And so in conversations with OEMs, even though, you know,

you've seen them struggle financially over the past year or two, it's been great, right? So they've

done pay development programs with us. We've been on their test tracks that they open up for us,

Germany, Detroit, you know, around Boston, you'll see our cars going around collecting data.

It's a fantastic experience for them to welcome us in and say, they recognize they need a new

sensing modality, one that solves the problem that LiDAR and radar brings, and they compare

with their camera to ultimately provide value to their consumer, which is safety, but level three

for you and I to be able to drive around. And what's incredible too, is we've spoken a little

bit about the technology is that you guys are trying to get into a very difficult sweet spot

when it comes to price, because LiDARs are still extremely expensive. How are you guys working

on making your product available to the masses? You're absolutely right. So I actually, I drive

a Ford Focus. There is zero chance you are going to put a LiDAR on a Ford Focus, right? The sensor

budget on that, they're not even made in the States anymore, is like 100 to 200 bucks. Like

that's the deal. And so it's actually a struggle to put just a camera and a radar onto it, let

alone a really fancy LiDAR. We've started at that. We've built this sensor to say we're not just

going on a Mercedes-Benz S-Class. That's where some of the LiDAR companies might have started,

right? We're building this so that way it can go not just on the expensive ones, but every car,

including my Ford Focus, right? In order to do that, it's got to be very, very low cost. And the way

we've accomplished that is we've said, there's nothing on the sensor that is going to move in

anyway. There are no, what's called MEMS, so tiny micro structures that move around. There are no

spinning mirrors. There's nothing that moves at all. In fact, the secret sauce to our technology

is in bulk silicon CMOS that's made by foundries all over the world in vast quantities already.

In fact, the development of your cell phone helped pay for the advancements that we needed for

Teradar to be around. So I appreciate you buying a cell phone at low cost for this sensor. And so

that's what allows us to be able to say, yes, we can meet the cost points, not just for a really

high-end XC90, but also for the Ford Focuses of the world. That's what we're aiming for.

And one of the challenges also with the LiDAR was that it seemed to be the only place to put them

was up on the top of the car. It was very hard. We've seen some of the applications a little

bit difficult to blend naturally into the vehicle. You don't have that problem, right?

No, this is where we are low enough and close enough to radar that we can borrow the best of

that piece, which is, you know, we're a sensor company. And I love to say that, you know,

I've got the best team in the world behind me when it comes to working at Terahertz.

We are not vehicle designers. We will never be vehicle designers. I never want to tell an OEM,

this is how you have to design your car. They have designers for that, they do a fantastic job.

And so what we do is we say, you can put us behind the grille, you can put us behind the

bumper, you can mount us anywhere, and we can go through that plastic, we can go through that fascia.

And so we aren't ruining kind of like the way you want to design your vehicle,

but more importantly, it also means you don't have to clean the sensor, right? So you might have

a lighter up there at the top, bugs and dust get in, you have to figure out a cleaning solution

that's more moving parts, that's more expense. Just put us behind the bumper and frankly forget

about us, except for the fact that we're giving you really high quality data, like we can pick up a

ball with a kid chasing after it in the pouring rain at 200 meters, right? All behind the fascia,

so that way you don't see us, you don't have to know we're there, we're just helping keep you safe.

And now to the top stuff, when will we start to see what's your path towards being into your

first vehicle? So the reason why we're out and having this conversation is that we'll be bidding

on our first vehicle programs this year, actually in Q1 and Q2. We're very excited about it and that's

for SOP 2028, which on one part of my brain, I'm like, man, that's so far away. And then the other

part, you're just like, my God, that's like tomorrow for automotive, right? And so we're

really excited by it. Obviously, I have a fantastic engineering team that I work with in order to

make this possible. But yeah, we're on track for SOP 2028. And that's what we're working with OEMs

to support. And how have you been doing when it comes to raising your funding in order to make

sure you can keep paying the bills? Because as a startup, again, I don't have to tell you, it is a

challenge every day. Yes, yes. You're absolutely right. So we've been really fortunate that investors

have recognized that what we're doing is fundamentally different, right? We had our seed

led by MIT Engine, very, very good deep tech firm. Our series A was led by Ibex, Capricorn,

participated also deep tech folks that understand it takes a lot of capital and a lot of time to

invent something that's truly new. And then VXI just led our series B. So our announcement came out,

we closed $150 million series B. And that money is critical because we're very careful about how

we use it. It is automotive, everything takes time. But it gives us the time and the money to

do development correctly and take the time we need to get to that SOP 2028. And the vehicle

program is beyond that in order to get to cash flow positive. Okay, we're excited. It's great to

have that behind us. And you guys just had an announcement. We did. What's going on? What's

happened? So we announced our first product. So this is the one that we're bidding with. It's

called Summit. And this is our premium product. So think of a very similar performance to a LiDAR,

but with all the advantages of a radar, right? One of the key pieces about our product is it's

actually modular. We call it the modular Terrahertz engine. So you have a core processing chip, we call

that the TerraCore. And then we have receivers and transmitters, right? If you want more performance,

you add on more receivers, transmitters. If you want less performance, you put on less. So this

first product we're releasing in partnership with tier ones, it's the big one that allows you to

like really perceive everything you need all the way past 300 meters, 0.1 degrees resolution. It's

now in the future, because of the way that our stuff is modular, you can actually, we will be

releasing other products that match, say, different OEMs or other OEMs requirements for vehicles that

might be lesser costs or lesser power. And there you don't have to redesign the entire thing from

scratch. You just remove transmitter chips and receive chips. And then you're off and running.

It's on a normal printed circuit board after that. So the modular Terrahertz architecture,

we're super excited. And now built off of that is our very first product that we're releasing,

which is the TerraDAR summit. And that is, it's a thing of beauty for keeping both people safe.

And then also allowing an automaker to pair that with a camera. And then you're essentially at level

three, even in poor weather. Okay. And when you're looking forward to it, CES. So CES for us is we're

actually in a hotel with a private suite, and we invite OEMs in, which is a lot of fun because

you get to sit down a little bit. This floor is awesome. I can't wait to tour it, by the way.

I'm really kind of missing this in some ways. But the thing I'm looking for is we have essentially

every single OEM out there in the market and tier one coming to visit us. So we have, I don't know,

40 meetings lined up over the course of the next week. And I get to show them the power of this new

type of sensor, this technology of putting it through weather and showing them the range and

showing them the resolution, getting their feedback and seeing the excitement on their faces where

they're like, okay, we're ready. Put you on a test track. And then literally like in the room,

we're booking dates for test tracks, for development programs from that. And that to me,

like, that's why we're here. That's why we're doing this. Okay. Well, we wish you lots of success

this week with all of those meetings. Thank you so much for stopping by, taking the time to meet

with us here at Automotive News. This is Doug Bolduck, been very happy to be joined today by

Metcari from Terradar, the CEO of the company. And we'll be more than likely seeing your product

in the 2028. So fantastic. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Doug. Appreciate you.

That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellan Walker. Thanks to Automotive News executive producer

Jake Neer, as well as our own John Hutter for his reporting for today's podcast. We also had

reporting from Michael Gerster and Nathan Eddy of our sibling publications, Automobile Volca,

and Automotive News Europe. You can get the latest news on tech and innovations,

Hyundai's market value surge, and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.

Come back tomorrow for a conversation with Marcus McCammon, CEO of Karma Automotive.

This is part and parcel to the way that software and tech are going to play into automotive into

the future. It won't be that you build a single one version vertical solution and it fits everyone.

You have to create a baseline from which the consumer can find the experiences that matter

to them, and then you can deliver it to them in a quality, packaged and repeatable way.

Jan. 21, 2026 | Hyundai’s market value surge; Teradar's Matt Carey on sensors

About this episode

GM

Hyundai

Electric Vehicle

BMW

lidar

Teradar

General Motors

Boston Dynamics

Tesla

BMW iX5

electric SUVs

automotive news auto industry confidence index

autonomous vehicles

Rayleigh criterion

level three

Mercedes-Benz Sclass

MEMS

CMOS

Volvo XC90

bumper

fascia

sensor

high quality data

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