July 2, 2026 | Honda CR-V tops first-half sales; why DRAM shortage hits autos especially hard

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Welcome to Daily Drive for Thursday, July 2nd, 2026.

I'm Jake Nier in Detroit, in for Kellan Walker.

Today on the show, Honda's CR-V just knocked the F-150 off its throne.

Toyota's hybrid lineup is roaring back, while GM and Ford both stumble in the second quarter.

And Nissan's CEO says the Renault Alliance is just fine, thanks for asking.

Plus, a look at why the DRAM chip shortage is hitting automakers so hard,

and why it's the suppliers who may feel the most pain.

They're servicing all of these different verticals.

They're going to go where the margins and the volume are.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

Honda's CR-V has dethroned the Ford F-150 and Toyota RAV4 to become America's best-selling

light vehicle through the first half of 2026. The CR-V moved more than 226,000 vehicles,

beating year-to-date estimates for the F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado,

that's according to global data. Rival inventory woes played a role,

an aluminum plant fire has hobbled F-150 output, and a RAV4 model changeover caused RAV4 sales to

tumble 36%. But Honda's lease retention strategy and hybrid demand have kept the CR-V flying off

lots on its own merits. We'll have more on this story in a minute with our own Urvaksh Karkaria.

With that in mind, the RAV4 does seem to be making a comeback as of last month.

Toyota's hybrid lineup drove a 10% June sales gain, with the RAV4 up 91% and the Forerunner up 127%.

GM, meanwhile, posted its third straight quarterly decline down more than 4%.

Ford's Q2 sales slid 10%, hurt by weaker F-Series output after that aluminum supplier fire,

and the discontinued escape. On the upside, Stellantis notched its fourth straight quarterly gain

on strong RAM volume, and Nissan extended its retail sales winning streak to 16 consecutive months.

And speaking of Nissan, CEO Ivan Espinosa is pushing back on speculation that the

automaker's alliance with Renault is fracturing. Speaking at Bloomberg's New York headquarters,

Espinosa downplayed Renault's decision to abstain from reappointing longtime board member

Moto Nagai, saying Renault simply felt Nagai had been with Nissan too long. Espinosa said,

quote, The reality is, now we are collaborating better than ever. The comments come as Nissan

works to recover from one of its largest ever annual losses, and targets a return to profit this

fiscal year. And those are today's headlines, you can find more details on all of those stories

over at AutoNews.com. Joining me now to talk more about the new top-selling vehicle in the US

is Ervach Karkaria, who covers Honda and other automakers for us at Automotive News.

Ervach, welcome back to Daily Drive. Hi, Jake, good to be back.

Okay, so how much of this CRV surge is Honda's own doing, and how much of it has to do with Ford

and Toyota just having their own problems? I mean, it's definitely sort of in the

man bites dog category, that a model like CRV came out of nowhere, and, you know, dethroned

both the F-150, and to a lesser extent, they're more direct competitor in the SUV segment,

or in the crossover segment, the RAV4. It definitely has to do with Toyota and Ford's

supply issues. Ford has struggled with the F-150 ever since, you know, the novellus plant in New

York, state New York, caught fire in 2025, that's made a significant dent in the ability to supply

dealers with the F-150. RAV4 was also an issue with Toyota. The model got redesigned. There were

multiple changeovers in several North American plants, which, you know, I don't know what exactly

happened, but it definitely, you know, was not as smooth as expected. So for sure, the CRV benefited,

but that's not to take away anything from Honda. You know, Honda positioned itself,

did everything it needed to capitalize on its rivals' troubles. So good for them.

Specifically on CRV, you know, they have seen a surge in lease maturities this year,

which means that that's created a demand for additional new CRVs. They've also done a good

job with lease penetration, with attractive incentives on leases. So they've kind of primed

pump to be in this position, and, you know, they've capitalized on it.

So as Toyota and Ford ramped production back up of their best-selling models,

how long do you think Honda can sustain this top spot? Is there a chance that they might

hold on to it through the end of the year even? Yeah, that's a great question. I think

Honda has put itself in a position to even end the year as number one with the CRV as the best

selling model according to an analyst at Global Data, just based on the numbers. It's on pace to

still be the number one segment at the end of the year. Now, whether that happens in practical

terms is to be determined. And, you know, Honda brand head of sales, Jessica Laudermilk said,

you know, they aren't, you know, stepping off the gas just because they think that the Toyota and

Ford will increase their supply. They're going to continue to be aggressive. However, she also

said that Laudermilk also said that, you know, they may have to pull back on some incentives

because the car is doing really well. So why give more incentives for a car that's doing so well?

So we may see a pullback in CRV incentives. The other challenge that Honda also has is that

they are running CRV at capacity. According to auto forecast solutions, CRV production is up,

you know, about 1% in the second half of this year versus the same period last year. I mean,

the dealers are like, we need more CRVs, there's demand, let's go. But at the same time, you know,

Honda has like got to deal with the practicality that, you know, they are pumping out as many

CRVs as possible right now. Where do they find capacity for additional CRVs? What Laudermilk

said is that while production is unlikely to increase on CRVs overall, they're evaluating or

studying the possibility of switching the mix of CRV more towards hybrids. As you know, hybrids are

getting more and more popular, especially in the near term with rising gas prices.

I got to say, Irvaksha, I did not expect to see this news in my inbox this morning. And

it's a really interesting story. I know that we will be hearing more about it through the second

half of the year. Thanks so much for joining us on Daily Drive. Thanks for having me and have a

great fourth weekend. Coming up, a look at why the DRAM chip shortage is an especially painful

problem for the auto industry and why your tier one suppliers may be the ones taking the hardest hit.

That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to daily drive. I'm Jake near. We've been covering the dram chip shortage from a few

different angles in the last couple weeks from Kearney structural analysis to Qualcomm's view

from the silicon side. Today we're getting into the nuts and bolts of what it actually means for

the vehicles being built right now. Alex Euler is consulting director at SBD automotive North America

and he breaks down why automakers are in a uniquely tough spot stuck between legacy computing

platforms and next generation architectures and why that fragmentation is making an already painful

shortage even worse. One note since this interview was recorded, Euler actually has announced that

he's leaving SBD automotive for a new position. He hasn't said yet what that position is. He spoke

with our own Molly Boygon. Alex Euler, consulting director at SBD automotive North America. Thanks

so much for joining us. Thanks, Molly. So let's start at the very beginning. What is DRAM? What

a fun acronym we have here today. Yeah, I mean, every computing device has a thing called RAM or

Random Access Memory and it's part of the fundamental building blocks of any computer. So

like I said, your laptop, your smartphone, all of the electronic components in your cars use RAM

and it goes in generations through different standards and a lot of the other components

in your computer modules have to support those different generations of DRAM as those evolve.

So what's really changed is AI really pushing adoption and acceleration of the newest generations

of DRAM so that you get the best performance possible for really high computing workloads

that are being driven by AI. So that's a bit of a double-edged sword, it seems like,

you know, as you say, these AI models are using DRAM, the auto industry is using DRAM.

So what's going on? Why are DRAM costs up these days?

There's no one cause, it's actually a confluence of factors and there's some uniqueness to the

automotive industry that plays a factor here. We're very familiar with long sourcing cycles

and in a lot of cases, you know, the computing modules that are going in your car were

designed and specified, you know, five, sometimes even 10 years ago and you can imagine that then,

you know, that's using generally last generation or in the best case current generation

technology across the board. So it can be very difficult for automakers to keep pace with the

design of their modules with what's happening in consumer electronics data centers and that

the suppliers who actually supply the memory modules, you know, they're servicing all of

these different verticals, they're going to go where the margins and the volume are and if you

look at automotive, the volume isn't there and the margin is okay, but because they're stuck on,

you know, a lot of that volume is committed to older generation technology, you know,

it puts them in a difficult position of where to dedicate that fab time, you know, the plant time,

right? Do you spend it on your high margin customers who are paying top dollar for the

latest technology to power data center growth, to power, you know, iPhone volume, for example,

or do you dedicate it to kind of the older gen tech that, you know, is probably getting harder

and harder to create economies of scale on. So I think, you know, there's the automotive sector

kind of being a little bit of an orphan in that entire process, but software defined vehicle

is actually also an element of this because you're in this active transition phase for

automakers where not only do they not necessarily have a standardized technology stack across their

entire portfolio, you're actually splitting it between generations where part of it is using

older generation technology, including older generations of memory and newer generations

of technology, which are using newer generations of memory. So even that at that level, economy of

scale is failing us a little bit here. So that's really interesting. I think I had misunderstood

the origins of the shortage. I thought that it was that the auto industry is sort of competing

with AI companies for DRAM, but it sounds like in fact the producers of DRAM, the manufacturers,

are incentivized to focus on the AI companies because those are the ones using the most cutting

edge technology. Those are the ones with the most significant margins and volume rather than that

two sectors are competing for the exact same technology. Is that right?

Well, it's both of those things, right? So what makes it especially stark for automotive is

the uniqueness of the industry, the lower volume, the fragmentation of the technology

generations, but at the base level, memory costs are going up regardless because of

an increased demand and how long it takes for supply to ramp up. And if you look at the FAB

companies, the memory providers, Samsung, etc., they were really burned in COVID. They had an

oversupply as a shock of COVID and found themselves in a reverse situation where

pricing tanked because they were way oversupplied. So it's really hard for

discrete manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing companies like that to quickly

respond to rapid changes in supply and demand. And so economics is just taking hold here.

Demand is outstripping supply and so prices go up and the lower margin, lower volume

elements of that demand curve tend to be the ones that feel the most pain.

I wonder if you have a sense of if any OEMs are more exposed than others or if it's sort of a

blanket hardship that applies evenly across the industry?

I think by and large, it's a blanket hardship. However, there is the angle of Chinese memory

suppliers and if there are suppliers there who are willing to ramp up production of

automotive trim at scale, if you're a company who is able to source that type of component

and not run afoul of Department of Commerce rules,

you could be less exposed. But I'm really on the edges of theorizing here. I think the other

dynamic is just thinking about the automakers who are caught in between that software-defined

vehicle and non-software-defined vehicle generation. In principle, the automakers who have been

slower to adopt new computing platforms could be more at risk because of that legacy issue,

especially if there aren't other suppliers who are willing to ramp up production of the equivalent

technology. But because how long it takes to ramp up that production, it's sort of an evolving

kind of question. In the meantime, actually, it's the tier ones who would be absorbing more of the

pain because their pricing contracts with the OEMs were negotiated well before the memory price

shock. Maybe there are clawback mechanisms or renegotiation triggers, but certainly in the

short term, compounded with the tariff problem, suppliers are the ones who actually might have

a bigger issue overall. Do you see manufacturers making significant investments in additional

fab capacity or are the companies just sort of betting that this is a temporary hike in demand?

Probably want to get input from an analyst who covers semiconductor as a dedicated topic on

that one. I think they'll have a better perspective on that. I guess looking at it from the automotive

lens, I could see... I mean, the demand feels pretty durable and there is kind of this

on-shoring trend for silicon manufacturing and fab. So, I think as part of that, there could be sort

of a natural growth to the supply available cross-sector, but I don't know that there's

significant investment happening specifically to serve automotive memory requirements. The economy

of scale just doesn't work in favor of those economics, I think. That makes sense. Maybe one

rubber band or like butterfly effect there is... We've seen a lot of OEMs in sourcing the design

of their silicon, right? So, instead of sourcing it entirely from an SOC manufacturer, they said,

hey, we're going to actually design all of that IP ourselves. That would give them a faster cycle

to upgrade their memory and compute architecture versus deferring that to a tier one, but it also

directly exposes them to the price shocks. So, it kind of is a two-way street there,

but I think that's an implication in all of this. The fallout from this could impact OEM design

cycles in that way. Yeah, that's really interesting. And when you talk about the suppliers being the

ones to absorb the price shocks and you mentioned also the tariff impacts on suppliers, then I'm

also thinking about, given that you mentioned SDVs, something that we've spoken about quite a bit,

which is the consolidation of vehicle architecture and therefore the reduction of hardware in the

vehicle. Basically, how significant is this on top of everything else that the automotive suppliers

are dealing with? I think broadly, it's a pressure, but not like something that's going to break them.

I would say that's a qualitative viewpoint. I haven't looked at the exact hit on margins that

this has, but I'm kind of looking at the broader set of challenges that suppliers are facing. This

feels like one that simply adds pressure to the business model, but isn't singularly

breaking its tariffs that are frankly the far bigger issue because that infects their entire

business. It's not just the electronics portion of the business. It's any component that is being

supplied by that supplier to the OEM. And then layering on top of that, the Department of Commerce

BIS rules that also govern electronic sourcing and the supply chain around that.

I'm not saying that that one is also a structural risk, but it creates a lot of

complexity that needs to be managed, and that results in costs.

Alex Euler, Consulting Director at SBD Automotive North America, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, Molly.

Alex Euler spoke with our own Molly Boygon. That's daily drive for today. I'm Jake Nier

in for Kellan Walker. Thanks to our own Irvaksha Karkaria and David Phillips for their reporting

for today's podcast. You can get the latest news on first half vehicle sales, the DRAM chip

shortage, and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back over the

holiday weekend for a special weekend drive edition of the show that'll post Friday morning.

Our own Larry Veliquette and Michael Martinez break down some of the week's top stories

and make their picks for the biggest story of the first half of 2026.

The numbers, like you said, are really, really interesting. Let's see how it plays out if it's

sustainable. I think there's a lot of intrigue and it's going to be fun to watch in the second

half of the year. 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 enjoy the podcast, remember to like,

leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

July 2, 2026 | Honda CR-V tops first-half sales; why DRAM shortage hits autos especially hard

About this episode

Hondas Crv

Ford F150

Toyota RAV4

Chevrolet Silverado

model changeover

lease retention

4Runner Forerunner

Ford Escape

Ivan Espinosa

Jessica Laudermilk

Alex Euler

DRAM

Dodge Ram

software-defined vehicle

tier one supplier

System on Chip

Oldsmobile Intrigue

Car Ford F150

Car Hondas Crv

Car Toyota RAV4

Car Chevrolet Silverado

Term model changeover

Term lease retention

Car 4Runner Forerunner

Car Ford Escape

Person Ivan Espinosa

Person Jessica Laudermilk

Person Alex Euler

Term DRAM

Car Dodge Ram

Concept software-defined vehicle

Term tier one supplier

Term System on Chip

Car Oldsmobile Intrigue

Request an Explanation

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