The Infiniti QX80 is a big, fancy SUV that can carry a lot of people and stuff. Recently, they made a super strong version with a really powerful engine to make it faster and more exciting to drive. People talk about it because it's a mix of luxury and speed.
Negative equity means you owe more money on your car than it's worth. When many people have this problem, it can make buying and selling cars harder for everyone.
The BMW M Coupe is a small, sporty car made in the 1990s that’s fun to drive and looks different from regular cars. People like it because it’s fast and handles well, kind of like other fancy sports cars. It’s special because it’s both cool and good to drive.
Used vehicle values are how much second-hand cars are worth. These prices can go up or down depending on how many cars are available and how many people want to buy them.
A seven-year loan means you have seven years to pay back the money you borrowed to buy a car. While this can make monthly payments smaller, it might cost you more in the long run and make it harder to sell the car later.
The Jeep Grand Wagoneer is a big, fancy SUV that looks like an old classic but has new technology inside. People sometimes talk about how much money it can cost to keep it running or fix it. It's popular because it’s both stylish and good for driving off-road.
Leasing a car means you pay money every month to use it for a few years, but you don't own it. After the lease ends, you give the car back or sometimes buy it.
Ownership cycles mean how long people usually keep their cars before they sell or trade them. If people keep cars longer, it changes how many used cars are available.
A car subscription means you pay every month to use a car, like a subscription to a magazine. You don't own the car, and sometimes you can switch cars easily.
Depreciation means your car loses value the longer you own it. So if you buy a car for a lot of money, it might be worth less when you want to sell it later.
New car incentives are deals that car makers or dealers give to help people buy new cars more cheaply or easily. These can make new cars less expensive or easier to pay for.
A 96 month loan means you pay for your car over eight years. This makes monthly payments smaller but can cost more money overall and might cause you to owe more than the car is worth.
If you owe more on your old car than it's worth, rolling over negative equity means you add that extra amount to your new car loan. So you start your new loan already owing extra money.
LIVE
Welcome to Daily Drive, for Tuesday, March 10th, 2026, I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, Jeremy Papin leaves Nissan amid turnaround struggles.
Infiniti fast-tracks a 600-horsepower QX80 Red Sport, and Slate Auto names a new CEO
ahead of its launch this year.
Plus, Edmunds director of Insights, Ivan Drury, joins the show and says the negative
equity crisis is here to stay.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
Nissan is replacing CFO Jeremy Papin, who's stepping down for personal reasons.
George Leondis will take over April 1st as the automaker braces for a $60 billion operating
loss this fiscal year.
Papin oversaw North American operations from 2021 to 2024 and became CFO just last January
under former CEO Makoto Uchida.
Leondis inherits a tough job shepherding Nissan through CEO Yvonne Espinoza's revival plan
to close seven factories, cut 20,000 jobs, and slash fixed costs through May 2028.
Meanwhile, Infiniti is fast-tracking a 600-horsepower QX80 Red Sport for spring 2027, aiming for
quicker market entry before rolling out an even more powerful variant.
The Red Sport model targets around 600 annual sales.
Infiniti says it represents the first step toward a roughly 680-horsepower full-performance
QX80 expected in 2028.
The strategy acknowledges Infiniti's need for speed to market as it struggles with
brand awareness.
Sam Fiorani of Auto Forkast Solutions says Infiniti would be leaving money on the table
if they didn't take advantage.
We'll have more on this story in a minute with our own Urvash Kakaria.
And Slate Auto has named a new CEO, former Amazon executive Peter Faracy, will lead the
Jeff Bezos-backed EV startup ahead of launching its bare-bones electric pickup this year.
Faracy replaces Chris Barman, who becomes president of vehicles.
He previously led Amazon Marketplace and brings marketplace and strategic leadership experience.
The company's two-door pickup, called the blank slate, comes stripped of creature comforts
and paint to hit a starting price in the mid-20,000s.
Production at Slate's Indiana factory is planned for late 2026.
And those are today's headlines.
You can read more about all those stories at AutoNews.com.
Joining me now to talk more about the Infiniti story is automotive news Atlanta
bureau chief Urvash Kakaria.
Urvash, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Hi, Kel. Thanks for having me back.
Urvash, you mentioned Infiniti is adopting a pragmatic approach with the red sport variant
before the more extreme track spec inspired version.
What's the intent with this more muted performance version?
Yeah, so Infiniti is planning a full-blown performance line that would rival Mercedes
Benz AMG or BMW M. But that's going to take a little work.
It's going to take a little time.
They're going to partner with third parties to develop these high horsepower vehicles,
sporty designs.
So instead of waiting until all that gets developed and materialized,
Infiniti is sort of taking an interim step where they're taking their QX80, which is their flagship
SUV, and they are producing a red sport version.
So red sport was a performance line.
It was applied to the Q50 and the Q60.
So in this case, the QX80 red sport will be a 600 horsepower vehicle.
That's compared to about 540 horsepower that the standard QX80 is.
So it's not going to be as extreme as that AMG type model,
which would be a 600 and almost 680 horsepower vehicle.
So it's kind of an interim step.
It gets this performance vehicle to market sooner and it creates buzz.
One of the challenges Infiniti has is that it needs to raise its brand awareness,
which is critical to driving sales.
And by creating a vehicle like this, which won't be very high-volume,
it'll get people aware of the company, it'll draw in the enthusiast crowd,
it'll bring people into Infiniti stores, many of whom may not necessarily buy the red sport,
but they will look at the rest of the lineup and they may buy one of the more standard vehicles.
Now, the article notes Infiniti is targeting just 600 units annually for the red sport with dealer
allocation based on QX80 sales performance.
How does that limited volume fit into Infiniti's broader strategy to compete with established
performance brands like AMG and BMW M and what would success look like for this program?
So, you know, Infiniti is a luxury brand.
They're not they're not into mass volume.
Their goal is as a luxury brand is to, you know, drive the price, sell at a higher profit margin.
And by limiting supply, they're able to get more profit out of each vehicle sold.
So for dealers, this means, you know, a faster way to profitability.
It also is about creating scarcity.
If you're going to appeal to sort of the enthusiast market with a high performance vehicle,
you want to make sure that not everyone has one.
You have to create demand.
And again, this vehicle is not about volume.
It's about creating awareness off the brand, creating excitement in the brand,
which will then help Infiniti sell its more volume models.
Perfect, Arvash Kakarya.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you, Kel.
Coming up, record levels of negative equity are trapping car buyers in loans they can't escape.
Edmunds Director of Insights, Ivan Jury talks about why this problem isn't going away anytime soon
and what it means for dealers trying to move metal.
That's next on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive.
I'm Kellan Walker.
The average amount owed beyond a vehicle's value hit $7,200 in the fourth quarter.
And the share of trade-ins with negative equity is creeping back up.
Our own John Hutter recently spoke with Ivan Jury, Edmunds Director of Insights,
about why the pandemic era spike wasn't temporary
and why he thinks the problem is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
I saw the large article you did on negative equity, which was just fascinating stuff.
I mean, now that we're hitting record levels and even the hair is starting to creep back up.
I guess one of the things I was trying to figure out, and I thought I'd ask you,
is this just going to be a temporary problem?
Everyone who bought during the inventory shortage,
they're the ones that are actually driving this up.
And then in a couple of years, it'll work its way back through the system.
And so just get your thoughts on how long the negative equity thing is going to stick around as an issue.
Yeah, let's put it this way.
The only reason why we saw the number go down years ago, back in 2022 and 2023,
when these loans originated that we're now seeing today, is buyers were saved from themselves.
It had nothing to do with systematic changes in the way people were thinking,
the purchasing of cars or how long they're holding them.
It literally was, used values were so high, you could do no wrong.
We're back to a normal trend where people are like, hey, it's been like 30 years.
Let me go buy something else.
It's like, yeah, but you signed a seven-year loan.
You don't remember that and you pay like 50 days.
So this problem is here to stay.
It's exacerbated by the problems of 2022 and 2023 that helped to go away in one sense.
You had people say, look, I'm good.
I'll go back.
I truly wonder if that same consumer is thinking, my used vehicle should be worth more.
And then they're like, whatever.
I'll roll over that and we're back to business as usual.
Okay.
So that's interesting.
So you think both the share and the, because the share was kind of up.
Like, I mean, you pointed that out in your work that pre-pandemic and everything,
the share of people with negative equity was higher than it is today.
But the magnitude, the amount they have is a lot higher.
Is that's the record.
I guess do you see both persisting, both the share and the amount?
Or is it the amount starts to get less again, but the share continues?
I think the share will increase.
And it's kind of like one's a function of another.
You can only get that loan if you buy that expensive car.
If you have that much negative equity to roll over.
So we know there's people being rejected who've got like 15k upside down,
but they're trying to downsize to a $30,000 car.
Sorry, that's just not going to happen.
Right.
So we kind of have these both moving the same direction.
But that percentage tells me there's more people that want to do this.
Right.
There's more people who are being denied that loan.
They're shown to the dealership.
They're like, Hey, I'm itching to get out of this car.
The payment's too high or something.
They're like, sorry, can't help you.
You're not buying an expensive enough car to get that LTV
to be an acceptable rate for the bank.
So there's more consumers that want to do it.
The only question is how many are willing to?
How many can find financing that dollar amount that they're upside down?
I mean, yeah, we see that average 7, 200, but it blows my mind.
And I look at this data at the VIN level sometimes,
just to make sure I'm like, let's drill it down.
Yep.
That's $20,000 being rolled over in that Grand Wagoneer.
You know, it's like, it happens.
And the thing is that it's like, as long as you have like the handcuffs on,
some people can't do it, but you take the handcuffs off this, this number,
both numbers are going higher, guaranteed.
Okay, interest.
So just going, you think going forward, they're both going to rise then.
Both amount.
And then used values kind of normalizing a bit, right?
We're seeing more off, we show up free, old values are going to come down,
more off rental showing up in history.
That really near new used, having lower values don't make this problem worse.
Because we know that when you look at the average age of who's trading these in,
yeah, it's around like four years.
That's actually one of the oldest years we've seen, which is kind of crazy.
Yeah.
You know, that is fascinating.
Yeah, I noticed it was, it was ticking up a little bit.
So you're thinking is that the, with the, the share is even a, like,
you're thinking it would be higher.
It's just that the, these guys can't get deals done at all.
You know, like today's share of negative.
Yeah.
I think that if we install banks go above 125, 130%, if they said,
I'll do 150 with one value, guaranteed the numbers would be higher without it.
Wow.
Interesting.
Do you see the amount dropping at all?
I don't know, like, you know, what we're kind of, like you said, the,
you've still got kind of low, you know, like used values being pretty high and everything.
I mean, do you see the amount dropping maybe in like, you know,
I don't know, like in that five to 10 year timeframe, does things kind of get
back to normal a little bit or, or no, maybe, maybe five to 10 years,
if we have some like systematic changes and like kind of how people approach ownership.
But I think the other problem is that as it stands, our current trend is fewer leases.
But there's so many people that think, okay, I need that new car three years.
Well, they're not having a special.
So I'll sign up for a, a seven year or like a, I'll go more than five years that I'm used to.
And it's like, I think with some of the other dynamics of how we finance cars and how we acquire
them, not matching up ownership cycles, this is how far where we are.
And it's like, well, would you have to have a subscription?
Well, yeah, maybe that comes back into play.
Like people say, oh, be made there.
It's like, well, I don't think we're there yet.
I think American idea of ownership isn't there yet.
But that sounds like a great solution.
I don't think it's the right one for right now.
But five to 10 years, like unless you really force people to change their current behavior
and call it nice to stop going up, which we're like, yeah, that's debatable too.
We'll just continue to see this issue.
Yeah. And you raised a good point there.
Because I've talked to people where they're like, well, it's a temporary, you know,
it was a temporary thing.
It was all the elevated, you know, during the, the, the inventory shortage.
But it's not like price new vehicle prices have really dropped back down to where they,
you know, were before the pandemic or anything like that.
No. And we have more vehicles being sold at such high values.
And guess what? They don't hold value, right?
Like this is on this problematic behavior that we see is that, yes,
you buy a more expensive vehicle, you buy fully loaded.
And yeah, that's nice to have while you own it.
But guess what? It falls at a quicker rate for depreciation.
Might not be as bad as, say, 10 years ago.
But what if you're buying a bunch of tech options?
What if you're buying options that really don't hold value?
Like leather, sunroof, they have an inherent value.
Everybody can get behind five year old tech and three year old tech.
Highly debatable. Right.
And the thing is, is that once we start seeing more new car incentives too,
we're starting to see cars sit even longer on the new car.
And it reflects the new car.
It's like, it all comes tumbling down.
You know, it's not going to be like falling off a cliff,
but are the numbers going to be kind of like eye popping every single, every month, every quarter?
Yeah.
Yeah. You better believe it.
Are you hearing more from dealers just that they can't get,
they just can't get customers placed with the negative equity they've got in terms of,
you know, kind of back to the point of the deals we don't even see,
because they don't even, you know, they don't even happen.
Yeah. That's the things that, you know, I haven't gone out and surveyed dealers yet on this data.
Yeah.
All the people are highly receptive to it.
And you got a lot of head nodding when it does come out,
when we look at comments and reactions.
But it's one of those things in which I think it was like Wells Fargo was even testing that 150%.
To see, hey, how many more loans can we get?
It's like, but if you see more of that behavior, that lets you just demand there, right?
And again, I keep getting reporters asking the same thing, 96 month loans,
how many of those are we seeing?
And it's less than 1%.
But it's like, look, if all the other mechanics are there to allow this kind of to happen,
it's wanted by dealers as well, right?
Because they do want to sell someone a call.
It's like, look, I could do everything possible.
I can get you the exact car you want.
And I can get like the color you want from the dealer across the way or whatever it is.
It's like, I can get you to work out, except for finance because you owe too much.
Then yes, we want that to happen.
In terms of a relief valve for the people with the high negative equity, is it,
do you see them as, is it you buy something just a really cheap used car and roll it into that?
Or is it a leasing?
Is that kind of the way they can kind of get it?
I guess any, I mean, you guys are more customer facing.
You know, any thoughts on the best play that, you know, if you're in that boat?
The best way, because if it's like, you've done it once, I get it, man.
Like things happen in life, or maybe now you've got a job you got to drive to instead or something.
And like, you bought the wrong quarter in the pandemic, totally understand.
Done this twice, shame on you.
You do it three times, you're a habitual offender.
You need to lease.
You didn't want a two year lease.
Don't even go three year leasing.
Like leasing is really the best way to get out of it because it fulfills all your needs, right?
And you know, it's technically more expensive.
Well, guess what's more expensive?
Paying for a car you haven't had in your driveway for five years now, right?
Because you're already on the car number two with that negative equity and rolled over again.
And again, it's telling people to buy like a lower cost option.
While yes, that would serve a very small portion of the population that can actually
keep that used car for a long time.
You just can't get the loan, right?
You got average used car that's around $30,000.
And now you're trying to roll over like 15k and negative equity.
The math, the math out in the end, it's not going to work for that.
You know, it's unfortunate because if somebody does like really have that like come to Jesus
moment where like, you know what, I've been doing it all wrong all this time.
And I want to make it right.
It's like, unfortunately you can't.
It's just not going to happen.
So most people honestly leasing is the way they should go.
And people have stigmas against leasing.
They're like, oh, well, it's just like renting.
I want to build equity in my car.
So we're not doing that anyway.
Or there's mileage on lease.
It's like you can buy more miles and it's like education could help.
But you first got to start researching and finding out where those pitfalls are.
And a lot of people is just like, well, it's a shiny new object.
I just want it so bad.
How do I make it happen?
Seven year loan, let's go.
And three years later, I don't like that car.
It's like, well, you got a problem.
That's Daily Drive for today.
I'm Kellan Walker.
Thanks to Automotive News executive producer Jake Nier,
as well as our owner, Urbash Khakharia, Hans Grimel and Lauren Syilif for their reporting
for today's podcast.
You can get the latest news on the negative equity crisis, executive moves,
and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.
Come back tomorrow for a look at how some dealerships are ready to test
whether AI can help them bypass third-party listing sites entirely.
Listing companies have been outdated for a long time.
That business model doesn't make sense in an agent-first world.
We'd love to hear from you.
Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we cover today.
Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
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About this episode
The episode covers major automotive industry updates including Nissan's CFO change amid financial challenges, Infiniti's strategy to boost brand awareness with a new 600-horsepower QX80 Red Sport model, and Slate Auto's new CEO ahead of its electric pickup launch. A key highlight is Edmunds' Ivan Drury discussing the persistent negative equity crisis, explaining why record levels of car buyers owe more than their vehicles are worth and why this trend is expected to continue. The conversation explores the impact on financing, dealership sales, and consumer behavior in the evolving market.
