BYD is a Chinese car company that makes lots of electric vehicles and batteries. The episode mentions BYD aiming to become the biggest automaker in the world by 2030.
Wang Chongfu is the top leader at BYD. He’s explaining why he thinks BYD will grow quickly, including mentioning fast charging and energy-price pressure.
A “flash charging battery” refers to a battery system designed for very rapid charging—fast enough to reach a large state-of-charge quickly. In this segment, it’s described as hitting 70% capacity in five minutes, which is meant to highlight how charging speed can reduce range anxiety and improve EV usability.
DRAM is a kind of electronic memory used in many devices. When DRAM prices jump like this, carmakers can get squeezed because their cars need lots of chips to run electronics and computers.
ADAS means “driver-assistance” tech. It includes features like keeping you in your lane or helping with braking, and it uses sensors and computers to work.
Here, “autonomy” means how much the car can drive itself. The more self-driving features a car has, the more computing and memory it needs to make decisions quickly.
A “software-defined vehicle” means more of the car’s features are controlled by software. That can let manufacturers add or improve features over time, but it also requires more powerful computers and memory inside the car.
NAFTA was a trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico. It made it easier for parts and cars to move across borders, which matters a lot for car manufacturing.
Here, “unwinding” means undoing a trade setup that companies have been relying on. The point is that if those rules change, making cars can get harder and more expensive.
Connected vehicle technology refers to the systems that let cars communicate with networks and other devices (often via cellular or Wi‑Fi) for services like navigation, remote diagnostics, and over-the-air updates. The speaker notes a proposed ban on Chinese-developed versions of this tech.
The US Department of Commerce is a government agency that helps set rules for trade and business. In this discussion, it’s involved in creating regulations that impact Chinese cars coming into the US.
A connected car can send and receive information over the internet or wireless networks. That can enable helpful features, but it also means the car can collect data, so people worry about privacy and misuse.
Here, “surveillance tools” means the car’s ability to observe things—like using cameras or sensors—and then share that information. The worry is that it could be used to monitor sensitive locations or people.
This means the car uses advanced sensors to “see” and measure what’s around it. If those sensors can record detailed images, people worry they could capture sensitive places.
Unfair competition means one group is competing with an advantage that isn’t just about better products or better efficiency. In this case, the speaker links it to government support and pricing tactics that can distort the market.
Dumping is when sellers push products into another country at very low prices, sometimes lower than it really costs to make them. The idea is to undercut local competitors and win sales.
Concept
outsourcing of their over capacity
Overcapacity means factories are making more than people are buying. If that extra production gets sent elsewhere, it can flood other markets and drive prices down.
General Motors, or GM, is a big car company. In this segment, it’s brought up because GM leadership is part of the conversation about what U.S. policymakers should do next.
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This podcast is brought to you by Reynolds and Reynolds.
There are three waves of AI transforming our industry.
Explore what they are, where AI technology is headed,
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Welcome to Daily Drive.
For Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026, I'm Kellen Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, Nissan's CEO survives a shareholder revolt,
but the credibility crisis is far from over.
Porsche's new CEO lays out a new restructuring plan,
and a memory chip shortage is quietly hitting automakers where it hurts.
Plus, Alliance for Automotive Innovation's CEO, John Bozella,
joins the show to explain why he thinks dismantling USMCA
could hand China exactly what it wants.
The challenge is not competing with a Chinese company.
It's competing with the country, China.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
Nissan CEO Yvonne Espinoza faced a bruising annual shareholders meeting Monday,
fending off a no-confidence vote, calls to remove him as meeting chair,
and a proposal to reinstate fugitive former chairman Carlos Gown to the board.
Shareholders also rejected a company-backed director nominee,
a rare rebuke for management.
Proxy advisors ISS and Glass-Lewis had recommended voting against the candidate
over independence concerns.
The tumultuous meeting underscores Nissan's lingering credibility crisis,
with the stock down 43% over five years as investors push back on years of decline.
Porsche CEO Michael Leiders told Shareholders Monday that the automaker will slim its model
lineup. Deep in cooperation with Volkswagen Group and cut more jobs to revive profitability.
Porsche's operating margin collapsed to about 1% in 2025 and deliveries fell 10%.
The stakes are high.
Shares have dropped from a peak of nearly 120 euros to around 48.
Leiders said a full capital markets day is set for October 7th,
but warned investors not to expect a quick turnaround.
And BYD chairman Wang Chongfu wants to be number one.
Wang told Shareholders at BYD's annual meeting earlier this month
that he expects the Chinese automaker to surpass Toyota as the world's largest by 2030.
That target would require more than doubling BYD's
4.6 million annual sales to match Toyota's 11.3 million.
Wang says two things are driving growth, high oil prices tied to the Iran War
and a new flash charging battery that can hit 70% capacity in five minutes.
And those are today's headlines.
You can find more details on all those stories at AutoNews.com.
The auto industry is losing a memory chip war.
According to consulting firm Kearney,
DRAM chip prices surged roughly 450% in just four months.
GM, Ford, and Honda have each reported hundreds of millions in losses
with no relief in sight.
Joining me now to talk more about it is our own Molly Boygon,
who has a story on the issue on AutoNews.com today.
She's also the co-host of the Automotive News Shift podcast.
Molly, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Thanks for having me, Kel.
All right, Molly.
So GM, Ford, and Honda have all reported big losses tied to this.
What's the near-term outlook for automakers trying to manage these costs?
Auto industry companies are competing with AI companies for DRAM,
which is a type of memory that powers vehicle functions
like infotainment and ADAS and autonomy.
And the outlook is not good because prices have surged,
as you noted in your introduction.
But the manufacturers of DRAM have not increased their capacity
in meaningful ways because these are the same manufacturers
that experienced a glut and oversupply of production in 2022 and 2023.
So they've hesitated to bring more fab capacity online,
more manufacturing capacity online.
And so the analyses I've read say that meaningful relief
isn't coming probably until after 2027,
which also means that automakers are locking in their DRAM contracts
at these high prices.
Now, you mentioned automakers may have to rethink which trims get advanced features.
How significant a shift could that be for the software-defined vehicle push?
That's right.
One of the main challenges of this DRAM shortage and the high DRAM costs
is that it's just as the auto industry really needs this memory
to enable all of these advanced vehicle functions that the costs are going up so much.
So the way that the automakers can kind of absorb some of the costs
or deal with some of the additional costs
is to basically apply these advanced features that require DRAM to higher trim levels
and just basically ask consumers to sort of bear the cost of that additional memory.
And that means that you may see ADAS and autonomy features less as standard
and more as additions to the car that consumers actually need to pay for.
Good stuff.
Molly Boygon, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks, Cal.
You can find Molly's full story on the DRAM chip shortage at AutoNews.com
and we'll hear her interview with an analyst
about the situation on tomorrow's episode of Daily Drive.
Coming up, Alliance for Automotive Innovation CEO John Bozella
on China, USMCA and what the auto industry actually needs from policymakers right now.
That's next on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive.
I'm Kellan Walker.
With USMCA renegotiations formally kicking off July 1st,
there's a lot of debate about what the agreement should look like going forward.
Alliance for Automotive Innovation CEO John Bozella has a clear answer.
Don't think of it as a trade deal.
Think of it as a competitiveness platform.
And without it, he argues the US hands China a significant advantage.
Bozella sat down with her own Hannah Lutz on the sidelines of the Center
for Automotive Research's Management Briefing Seminars in Ypsilanti, Michigan, last week.
Hi, I'm Hannah Lutz, Assistant Managing Editor of Content at Automotive News.
I'm at the Center for Automotive Research's Management Briefing Seminar in Ypsilanti,
Michigan today.
And John Bozella from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation is joining me.
So hi, John.
Hi, Hannah. How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thank you.
Learning lots today.
I can imagine.
I am too.
And if you and I are both learning something, that says a lot about the conference.
Yes, success.
So trade and global automotive competition has been major topics today and throughout the year.
And much of that conversation revolves around China.
So let's talk about that.
As we approach the formal renegotiation of the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement,
which is July 1st, starts July 1st, I've heard industry leaders say that China
is really the elephant in the room.
Yeah. So how would a dismantling or a significant change of the USMCA affect
the US and North America's global competitiveness, especially with China?
Yeah, I think this is such a great question.
And I did hear a similar theme in the parts of the conference I listened to.
Here's how it works.
If you think about what's happening in China, China is the world's largest auto market.
It is the world's largest car manufacturer.
It's the world's largest car exporter.
So it's a formidable force, competitive force for the auto industry in the US,
even if that competition were fair.
It's not, hold that thought, we'll come back to it.
But if you think about competition, what the US really needs,
the auto industry in the United States needs, is a competitiveness platform.
It needs a competitiveness platform that can allow manufacturers to build affordably,
to provide consumers with choice, and to be able to
create products they can export around the world.
That's what USMCA does.
So think about it not just as a free trade agreement,
but as a competitiveness platform.
And when you look at other regional automotive manufacturing platforms around the world,
there are variations on this theme.
So European automotive manufacturers in places like Germany
are supported by lower cost Eastern European suppliers and producers.
And so what we have similarly in North America
is a platform where the US, Canada, and Mexico share together
a platform that provides parts that flow across the border,
supports affordable manufacturing, consumer choice, and competitive exports.
That is what we need to compete against China.
So we've heard this idea too of a fortress in two ways,
a fortress United States and then also a fortress North America.
What is the risk to a fortress country,
a fortress United States versus North America?
Yeah, so I think the challenge here is, well, first of all,
we've been operating in a North American,
seamless North American platform for over a quarter of a century.
We go back all the way to the mid 1990s when what was then called NAFTA was fully implemented.
And since then, the North American auto manufacturing platform has grown up
to support more jobs, more ingenuity, more engineering talent,
and globally competitive production.
And so unwinding that creates significant challenges for manufacturers
in any of the three countries, certainly in the US.
But the challenge with fortress America as opposed to fortress North America
is I think fortress America becomes a little bit less competitive.
And what I mean by that is we don't enjoy the opportunity to have more,
for example, more labor intensive work being done in Mexico.
We don't have the opportunity to leverage platforms, manufacturing platforms,
and assembly platforms that have existed for generations in both Canada and the United States
in Mexico. So unwinding that, I think, certainly in the near to mid term makes us less competitive.
And there's a sense of, I think, protectionism happening in regards to China as well,
protecting the North American auto industry.
And I know that senators Moreno and Slotkin introduced a bill to ban the import sale
and operation of vehicles made in China.
The bill would also ban the use of Chinese developed connected vehicle technology.
To what extent do you think Chinese vehicles could enter the US without such guardrails?
Yeah, I think it's challenging now for two reasons.
One, the United States has established very, very high tariffs,
over 100% tariffs on Chinese built vehicles that would be exported into the United States.
Secondly, as you know, the US Department of Commerce recently established a set of regulations
designed to address the security and surveillance threat of connected vehicle technologies that
are made by Chinese companies that are either controlled or influenced by the communist Chinese
government. The concern of policymakers there is that the data on these vehicles or the
surveillance tools that these vehicles have available could be used for nefarious purposes.
And data could be sent back to China, which would imperil the privacy of the driver or occupants
of the vehicle. Or the vehicles, of course, have sophisticated sensing technology driven by a US
military base. They could film or take visuals of that military base and send it back to China.
That's what the policymakers were concerned about with that regulation. What the legislation that
you've referenced does is effectively codify or put into the law similar restrictions that were
built into that regulation. And so the authors of those bills are focused on two things.
One, the economic threat of unfair competition from China. The companies I work with every day
can compete with any company on earth. The challenge is not competing with a Chinese company,
it's competing with the country, China. And so in all of the unfair competition, the dumping of
vehicles, the outsourcing of their over capacity, the heavy subsidies that are put into the industry
in China create unfair competition. And then the second thing the bill does is address those
national security and those surveillance threats. So why a bill if there's already a rule and there's
already tariffs? I think the bill is designed to have more permanency and more durability
than a regulation that could change with a changed administration or that might have some
flexibility or loopholes in it that could be used in a way that would allow Chinese actors to be
present in the U.S. market. And so I think that's what the members of Congress are focused on.
So there's always a revolving door of policymakers in D.C. that will never change. But with so much
on the table with China, with tariffs, with multiple other things, what does the U.S. auto
industry need from policymakers right now? Yeah, I don't know if you heard, I had this
you might have been in the room or you might have been in a different session. I had this
conversation with Duncan Aldred today on the stage, who is the president of General Motors
North America. And I asked him exactly the same question. So his answer in mine may be
similar, although I may expand a little bit. First, there needs to be a sense of stability
and clarity about what the rules are, what the running rules are, what the direction
of travel is in the regulatory and policy space for the auto industry. Why is that?
We are a long lead time, high asset business, right? Our asset turns, our planning horizons,
our companies, automotive cycle plans are longer than election cycles. And so it's very, very
difficult to shift from one side of the boat to the other side of the boat with every election
cycle. So some sense of durability and stability. Now, there's no question elections have consequences.
Of course they do. I'm old enough to remember when the consequences of those elections for
auto policy meant a shift, a pendulum swing, a fairly moderate degree or to use a sports
metaphor. The game was being played inside the 40s. In other words, somewhat in the middle of the
field. What we've seen in more recent election cycles is that the game is now from one end zone
all the way to the other. We're not just making adjustments to regulations. We're tearing up the
playbook and starting completely over again. That's very challenging to the auto industry.
And so some sense of stability makes sense. If you're looking at specifically about emissions,
for example, what the auto industry wants to see is, yes, we do want emissions regulations. We do
need emissions regulations. It supports competitive marketplace and it supports the goal of reducing
emissions and making sure that people are healthy and the environment is clean and safe.
But what you want to do is you want to make sure that those regulations allow companies to be responsive
to consumer needs and wants and also to be able to plan for the future and invest in and be competitive
in the United States of America. So those are the balances that have to take place. And so
you need balanced, thoughtful regulation that supports innovation, drives for emissions reductions,
and supports consumer choice. Now you can make a similar argument with regard to safety and
advanced technology. We need to continue to make progress. We have to continue to ensure
that we protect our customers' privacy, that we keep them safe from cybersecurity risk,
and that we continue to produce safety outcomes. So really, it's about balance
along with progress in a way that responds to what consumers need and want today and tomorrow.
All right. Well, John, thank you so much for joining today.
Thank you. It's been a great to be with you, Hannah.
Alliance for Automotive Innovation CEO John Bozella spoke with our own Hannah Lutz.
That's daily dry for today. I'm Kellan Walker. Thanks to Automotive News Executive
producer Jake Nier, as well as our own Hans Grimel and Jan Gian for their reporting for today's
podcast. We also add reporting from William Boston of our sibling publication, Automotive
News Europe. You can get the latest news on USMCA, the DRAM chip shortage, and everything
happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back tomorrow for more on the DRAM chip
shortage with Kushal Fernandez, a partner at Kearney. You cannot outspend AI players. If you
really need to compete, then you consider decontenting or taking out those features and you would not
need the memory. 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.
Thank you.
About this episode
Memory costs are getting squeezed as DRAM chip prices surged roughly 450% in just four months, and hosts warn that automakers may have to rethink which trims get advanced features—so ADAS and autonomy could shift from standard equipment to paid add-ons. The show also looks at Porsche’s model-lineup slimming and BYD’s push to surpass Toyota by 2030. In an interview, Auto Alliance CEO John Bozzella frames USMCA as a competitiveness platform and argues dismantling it could hand China what it wants.
Alliance for Automotive Innovation CEO John Bozzella makes his case for the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement as a competitiveness platform — not just a trade deal — in the face of China’s growing automotive dominance. Nissan’s CEO survives a bruising shareholder meeting. Plus, a DRAM chip shortage is squeezing automakers.
