Automaker write downs happen when a car company lowers the value of something it owns because it isn’t worth as much as they thought. This usually means they lost money on that part of their business.
The Acura RSX is a small two-door car made by Acura, a luxury car company. It was designed to be sporty and fun to drive while still being practical for daily use.
An EV platform is like the base or foundation that electric cars are built on. It helps make the cars work better and lets the company build different kinds of electric cars using the same parts.
The EV charging network is all the places where electric cars can be plugged in to get more power. Having more chargers makes it easier to drive electric cars.
Supply chain pressure means problems and delays in getting car parts from factories to where they need to be, caused by things like conflicts or shipping problems.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow sea passage where a lot of the world's oil ships pass through. If there are problems there, it can make fuel more expensive and harder to get.
Operating costs are the money a company spends every day to keep working, like paying for fuel and materials. For companies that make car parts, these costs are important.
Transparency means knowing what's going on with all the companies that supply parts for cars. This helps car makers avoid problems if something goes wrong somewhere in the chain.
Some companies make parts and sell them straight to car makers (Tier 1). Others make parts for those companies (Tier 2), and so on. Knowing this helps understand where problems might start.
Battery electric vehicles are cars that run only on electricity stored in batteries. They don't use gas or diesel.
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Welcome to this weekend drive edition of Daily Drive
for the second week in March, 2026.
I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.
We're breaking down some of the biggest stories
in the auto industry from the past week
and looking forward to what's in store in the days ahead.
There have been all kinds of developments this week
on the EV front.
We'll talk about Honda's costly retreat
as they cancel three EV models,
the growing tally of automaker write downs,
and the new market forces that might reverse
some of those trends,
like if the war in Iran pushes gas prices up
to six bucks a gallon.
Joining me today to talk about it is Michael Martinez,
automotive news reporter who covers Ford and the UAW for us.
My man, Mike, welcome back.
Kell, when you were out,
Jake was able to do everything in one take,
so, you know, no pressure.
Here you go.
And in for Larry Velikwet this week,
we're joined by Lindsey Van Hulley,
deputy editor at Automotive News,
covering the electric vehicle ecosystem.
Lindsey, welcome to this madness
that we call Weekend Drive.
Long time listener, first time co-host.
Happy to be here.
All right, so Michael,
let's start with probably the biggest story of the week.
Honda's canceled three EVs,
the Zero Series SUV,
the Zero Series Saloon,
and the Acura RSX.
They're expecting losses up to nearly $16 billion.
What's your take on this, Mike?
Well, I don't think it's a stretch to say
a lot of automakers got the whole EV thing wrong,
but I think some automakers got it more wrong than others.
And I think Honda's one of those automakers,
and I don't just mean the demand curve.
Seems like everybody, you know,
is a swing and a miss in terms of how many customers
actually want this type of product.
But I more so mean the type of EVs
and the kind of platform you need to develop them at scale
and to hope to make any money at them.
Honda always seemed to be behind the eight ball.
They tried to catch up by partnering with GM
that led to the prologue,
which is apparently going away after just a couple of years.
Probably, you know, paint that as a disappointment.
After that, they decided to pivot to the zero series.
It looked like probably something they should have done
from the start, a dedicated platform
that could underpin multiple models.
The concepts looked really sleek and cool.
Maybe that would have been something
if they had started five years earlier or 10 years earlier.
But as they said in their announcement,
they needed to stop the bleeding.
They didn't see any way to turn a profit
in these current market conditions.
It seemed like they were always playing catch up
and they ultimately realized it was a race
that was too long for them to ever hope to win.
And Lindsay, this brings the industry's total
EV restructuring bill to what, around $70 billion now.
What does that mean for the industry?
I mean, I think Mike just touched on it, right?
It really reflects the degree
to which automakers really overestimated
how fast this market was going to develop.
And, you know, it's everything from, you know,
write downs of investments, you know, losses,
just basically trying to get out in front of this.
And I think some of them have said, you know,
if we take all of this upfront,
we can sort of get it out of the way
and reset and move forward.
And I think that's what a lot of this really just reflects
that, you know, they don't need as much factory capacity.
They don't need as much battery capacity.
Maybe some of the models that they were planning
may not have as much demand.
And so I think that's what we're seeing here
with, you know, canceled vehicle lines,
converting some planned EV capacity to internal combustion,
investing more in hybrids than in EVs.
It's sort of this reflection that, you know,
they're trying to match where demand is
with the capacity that they have
and the investment that they have.
It's interesting because, you know,
the analysts I've talked to have said, you know,
they don't expect this to be kind of a wholesale retreat
from EV and battery development.
You know, there's still going to be investment.
There's still work on bringing down battery costs.
There's still work on affordable EV platforms.
We don't know, you know,
under a new presidential administration,
do, you know, regulations shift again.
You know, there's still this discussion
about, you know, EVs are expensive.
And so they're trying to find ways
to bring down that price point,
not just the price point,
but the cost that contribute to that price point.
So I think it's a sign really of just this broader reset
that's ongoing and everyone sort of taking this view of,
you know, how much space and how much capacity
do we really need right now?
Well, Lindsay, that's funny, you bring up reset
because now we saw EV registrations drop 41% in January
with market share tumbling just 5%
and S&Ps Tom Libby called this a reset.
But do you think this is a temporary adjustment
or a fundamental shift?
You know, it's interesting.
I think to some degree we'll see, you know,
when I've talked to analysts about this,
they've talked about at some point,
EV sales are going to pick up again.
EV demand is going to pick up again.
There's going to be growth over time in this segment.
And so I think this is a reflection
of just where we are right now.
There's still price challenges that are out there.
There's still charging challenges, you know,
the network of EV charging nationwide is still expanding.
A lot of these things I think still need to be addressed
before we see a lot of that really big EV development.
I mean, it's hard to say what's going to happen
over the long term.
I think at least for the near term,
this is where it's going to be
and demand is probably going to be a lot smaller
without, you know, that federal tax incentive
that went away into the fall.
But, you know, long term, it seems like there's still going
to be at least, there's the belief out there
that there's still going to be consumers
who are going to want these
and the market will shift there eventually.
Mike, what are your thoughts on that?
Isn't everything in this industry
a temporary adjustment?
It's so cyclical.
We're riding the roller coaster,
things go up and down, things are in vogue,
they're out.
I think that, you know, to Lindsay's point,
everybody's making these adjustments
because of the current market conditions.
But look at what we're going to talk about
in a little bit, the war in Iran.
If those prices last, the oil and gas prices,
we could see a quick pivot back to EVs.
If there's a Democrat in the White House in 2028,
we could see a quick pivot back to EVs.
So temporary, probably, we just don't know
how long that's going to last.
Is it a couple of years, half a decade, what?
So I'm sure the levels will fluctuate,
but to Lindsay's point, at least in the near term,
we may be finding that baseline right now.
All right, coming up, we'll talk about how suppliers
are getting squeezed by soaring diesel prices
for its promise of better transparency
with suppliers and whether new EV models
could actually benefit from rising gas prices.
That's next on Weekend Drive.
The EV transition has been slower than many people expected,
and the financial strain isn't just hitting automakers.
On this week's episode of the Automotive News Shift podcast,
I'm joined by Mohamed Fatouri,
Director of the Engineering and Power Solutions Division at Bosch.
He explains how tier one suppliers are dealing with the pressure
of a software EV ramp, shifting customer demand
and policy uncertainty, and how they're adapting in real time.
From day one, you think about options and flexibility.
If you are planning based on a flexibility or optionality,
then you have the leverage in the future,
if need be, to pivot very quickly.
I'm Molly Boygon.
Join me on Shift, available this Sunday
wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to Weekend Drive.
I'm Kellan Walker with Mike Martinez and Lindsay Van Hully.
So, Mike, let's shift to suppliers.
This week, we reported how diesel prices have jumped 20%
because of the Iran conflict,
and that's really squeezing supplier margins.
There's so much pressure on the supply chain
between these geopolitical tensions
and just normal everyday logistics.
Are we reaching a breaking point?
Yeah, you know, Kell, there's a bunch of jobs I wouldn't want to do,
and when it comes to the auto industry,
I think working as a supplier is top of that list.
You just look at what they're dealing with
between all the abrupt cancellations in EV programs
that they've spent years and billions of dollars tooling up for.
You have the shift of automakers
trying to bring more and more supplier work in-house.
You have, you know, faster product development times,
and then obviously with this current situation
with the Strait of Hormuz,
you're losing a lot of not only oil
that's increasing transportation costs,
but also plastics materials, aluminum, liquid natural gas.
There's a bunch of building blocks to vehicle parts
that they're also probably not getting.
You might as well just add hail and locus to this list
of things suppliers are dealing with.
It's not great.
And what makes it tough is that this is already
a pretty low margin business, auto in general,
but specifically for the suppliers.
So when you talk about something that's going to raise their prices,
especially for these small guys,
even if it's just 1% or 2% of their overall costs,
that's going to have a major impact.
So breaking point, we have to be close,
given everything else that's going on.
So Lindsay, kind of piggybacking off of what Mike just said,
Flavio Volpe of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association
said transportation is typically 5% to 6% of operating costs,
so a 20% fuel increase adds about 1% to total costs.
I know it doesn't sound huge,
but in context, it does sound pretty significant.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, it is.
And I think our colleague Greg Lason in Canada,
you know, talked about this, you know,
kind of summed it up pretty nicely
and just this idea of the just-in-time industry
that we all work in, right?
That there's very few alternatives to trucking.
We don't store parts for very long.
You know, they really get moved
when they're needed in the assembly plant.
And so that makes rail not necessarily an option.
Fuel costs are hard to get around.
And so it may seem small,
but when you're working in that just-in-time,
when, you know, it's so critical
that the part arrives when it's supposed to,
it just, it makes it so that it's a really hard thing
to get around.
Now, Mike, I've been waiting to ask you this all day
because you know how much I just love a good Ford story.
Now, we had news this week
that Ford is promising better transparency to suppliers.
Please explain to us what the story is here.
Yeah, so Liz Dore relatively new chief supply chain officer
at Ford within the past half decade or so.
They have a yearly meeting with their top suppliers
and this year she told them they're gonna be more transparent
and that they're gonna try to give them now three year windows
into their product cycles, which I love to hear
as somebody who needs to report out future product
every year, great job guys.
Bump it up to five while you're at it, that'd be great.
But in all seriousness, this is a ray of hope
for the suppliers after all the stuff
we were just talking about.
They need security, they need to know what the plans are.
So like I referenced, they're not spending a bunch of money
tooling up and preparing for a model
that's just gonna be canceled or shelved anyway.
So Ford's struggled with its supply chain relations
when Liz Dore first came in, she revamped
their whole supplier program from how it used to be
to how they reward contracts now.
They still struggled because obviously Ford's struggling
with a lot of things in terms of recalls,
in terms of what programs it is or isn't working on
moving forward.
So if I'm a supplier, I'm feeling pretty great
coming out of this meeting, obviously that was the intent.
So we'll see if the company can follow through on it.
I imagine if this works, it's the type of perspective
you're gonna wanna see suppliers asking
for from other automakers.
And that was what I was gonna ask you, Lindsay,
exactly what Mike just said,
because you used to cover GM,
do you expect other automakers to take the same route?
We've written a lot over the past couple of years
just about this issue with stranded capital, right?
And it's really difficult if you're a supplier
and you're trying to figure out where to make investments,
do you go all in on EVs?
Do you try and diversify?
How do you make those investments?
And it is difficult.
And I think for suppliers,
there as much of that kind of window
into product plans as possible,
I think is going to be really important.
I think to the points Mike made earlier,
there's a lot of things that throw wrenches and all of that.
It's like the EV demand curve that we've seen
kind of flattening out.
And whether it's tariffs, whether it's unforeseen events,
kind of like that fire at the aluminum plant
that's affected output of some of the pickups.
I do know there's a push for transparency
even deeper than that too, right?
And just trying to really get at,
how do you get visibility far enough down the supply chain
so that you can see when some of these things might happen?
Is there a disruption someplace
that might impact production someplace else?
And so this question of transparency,
I think is really interesting both from the product planning
and trying to figure out where you make that investment
and also how do you get enough visibility into Tier 1, Tier 2,
Tier 3, Tier N, so that if there's a tornado someplace
that you can know early enough and react enough
that you don't have this really costly downtime
which impacts both the automaker and the supplier.
All right, so here's a very interesting angle.
Now, Mike, gas prices have been climbing
because the obvious, the issue and situation in Iran
but we got these new affordable EVs on the way from Rivian
like the R2.
Could rising gas prices actually help revive EV demand?
Sure, if it lasts long enough,
I think customers would definitely take another look
to see if the dollars and cents make sense for them.
You mentioned the R2, it's interesting.
I don't know if that will benefit from this situation,
particularly because it was announced recently
that Rivian is launching with the more expensive model.
I know automakers typically do that,
but R2 is pretty important to Rivian.
You could argue it's a make or break moment for them.
Sales of its other models are not doing well.
It's losing a lot of money and they need this R2 to be a big hit.
They had been promising a lower priced $45,000 model
found out that's not going to come maybe for another year or so,
give or take.
It's going to launch with a $58,000 model.
Would that be the answer if gas prices are high?
Rivian's a lifestyle brand pretty much, right?
It's for outdoorsy type people, pretty high costs
on both the pickup and the SUV these days.
They're larger than I think what a lot of automakers today think
they need their EVs to be.
The R2 could be an answer.
I'm just not sure the early models it's going to come out with
would help save customers that much money.
Maybe a better option might be the Chevy Bolt 2.0, right?
Our colleague John Irwin was just out test driving it.
It seems like it could be a nice option,
although that limited run seems like it's going to be very limited.
So will Chevy be able to produce enough of them?
So a lot of questions,
but there are some interesting new EV offerings coming
if it makes sense for you as a customer.
Well, that's all I was going to ask you, Lindsay.
You are our former GM expert.
Is everyone going to be buying bolts?
Does everyone want bolts?
Chevy will tell you that there is a very loyal bolt ownership base
and that there's this customer base that have been in these older bolts
that may want to trade up for the new one.
It's at a price point and when I've talked to dealers,
they've said we're excited about it even being an EV,
even in this market because of its price point.
Whether demand is high enough that makes that case that this is the place that EVs need to be
to really spur that demand, I think we'll need to see.
It just went on sale earlier this year.
So they're just now beginning to really get out there.
But when we start to get sales numbers from GM every quarter,
it's going to be interesting to see what happens there.
But when I've talked to dealers about it, they've pointed to that,
the Equinox EV really to another degree just for those price points
because right now without the tax credit, you might get some automaker and dealer incentives,
but you still have to have the price point at a place where people can actually get into it.
Do you think with American consumers how we have our love for big vehicles and SUVs,
that the bolt, I'm not going to say would fall on its face,
but not do as well because of the size?
I don't know. I think it did really well when it was out originally.
And so I think the question is going to be just,
does it continue to resonate with those previous bolt owners?
And does it help bring people in from other brands?
I've been looking for an EV at that price point.
So I think it's going to be really interesting to see how 2.0 does.
Gotcha. Now, Lindsay, we talked to plug CEO Jimmy Douglas this week on Daily Drive.
He made the argument that predictions of a used EV price collapse are flat wrong.
He says interest and prices for used EVs have only gotten stronger so far this year.
What do you make of that?
I think it's going to be very interesting as more of these
least EVs return to the market.
And we know the projection is going to be this is going to be increasing over the months and years
ahead as more of these leases are expiring.
And so I think we'll get a better read on what actually happens in that market
when more of these are out there.
It is interesting when I have talked with analysts, with some dealers recently,
just reporting on the potential impact from higher gas prices and what that might do,
the used EV argument has come up a lot.
And the idea that there are a lot of incentives right now to try and move new EVs
and they're competing against one, two, maybe three-year-old versions of the same model
at potentially a lower price point.
And so if you're coming into it and you're looking for an EV, maybe you're a first-time EV buyer,
maybe a used EV at that price point is a good way to get into it.
Maybe a lease might make more sense.
But I think the used EV question is going to be very interesting to see what happens.
The dealers I've talked to, one actually recently said he's already looking for used EVs at auctions
to try and get ahead of potentially demand shift there.
Analysts have said it's a way to potentially educate consumers, give them a more affordable
way to get into an EV and try it out.
So I don't know, I think a lot of it I think is going to be determined once more of these
return to the market and we begin to see what that actually looks like.
But at least the people I talked to say there's an opportunity with used EVs
that we're going to begin to see this year that maybe we just haven't yet because of numbers.
Perfect. All right. Mike, Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks, Bill.
Thanks.
That's all for this weekend drive edition of Daily Drive.
I'm Kellyn Walker.
Thanks to Automotive News executive producer Jake Nier for his help on today's podcast.
You can get the latest news on Honda's EV retreat,
supplier cost pressures and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.
Come back on Monday for a conversation with Mohammed Faturi,
director of the Engineering and Power Solutions division at Bosch.
He talks about how tier one suppliers are dealing with financial strain
from a slower than expected EV transition.
The take rate of the battery electric vehicles in the market were not as expected by the industry,
but this was also a trend that we had in our scenario planning.
So we had other plans based on the approaches that we had
to be able to shift our product portfolio,
as well as our investments commensurate to the needs that we have from the market.
We'd love to hear from you.
Let us know to 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.
If you enjoy the podcast, remember to like,
leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
About this episode
Automakers are facing major challenges in the EV market, highlighted by Honda's cancellation of three EV models and a $16 billion loss. Industry-wide, EV investments have been written down by around $70 billion as demand slows and market conditions shift. Experts discuss whether this is a temporary reset or a fundamental shift, with factors like rising gas prices potentially reviving EV interest. Suppliers are also under pressure from rising diesel costs and supply chain disruptions. Ford's new transparency promises to help suppliers plan better, while new affordable EV models like the Chevy Bolt 2.0 may help stimulate demand. The used EV market is also gaining attention as a potential entry point for buyers.
