The Nissan Rogue is a popular Nissan crossover SUV. In this news, Nissan is planning to sell the next Rogue only as a hybrid at first, which changes what kind of powertrain it uses.
Toyota is cited as dominating the hybrid market, which helps explain why Nissan is accelerating its hybrid strategy for the Rogue. It frames the competitive pressure Nissan faces in compact crossovers.
This is talking about the popular SUV category that includes small crossovers. The key point is that hybrids are taking a bigger share of sales in that category.
“Derivative products” means things made from steel or aluminum, like metal-based components. The key point here is that the tariff is being applied as a percentage of the whole product’s value, which can get expensive.
This is aluminum that comes from another country. The key point is that tariff rules may tax the aluminum’s value specifically, which can make the total cost either smaller or larger.
Concept
tariff applied to component value vs full product value
They’re changing how the tax is calculated. Previously, they taxed only the part related to the material (like aluminum); now they tax the whole imported item, which can raise the bill a lot.
An executive order is an official rule change made by the government’s executive leadership. It can change trade rules fast, which can affect what it costs automakers to import parts.
Concept
Supreme Court decision
The Supreme Court decision is a legal ruling that can change how government policies work. If it affects tariffs, companies have to rethink their costs and strategies.
Tariff revenue is the money the government earns from tariff taxes. If the government wants more of it, tariffs may not be reduced even if companies are struggling with costs.
A supply chain is the whole path from raw materials to the final product. If tariffs depend on materials like steel or aluminum, companies may need detailed records from many suppliers.
Concept
calculated
They’re talking about how the government figures out what you owe for tariffs. If the method changes, companies can’t predict their costs as easily.
USMCA is a trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico. It can affect how much it costs to move car parts and vehicles across borders, which matters for car companies and suppliers.
They’re talking about a policy change for steel and aluminum. Since cars use a lot of these materials, changing the rules or taxes on them can change how expensive it is to build vehicles.
Car
Ford BlueCruise
BlueCruise is Ford’s system that can help drive the car in certain situations, including letting you take your hands off the wheel. Investigators are looking at what happened in crashes and whether the driver was properly monitored.
Partial automation means the car helps with some parts of driving, but it still isn’t fully in charge. You still have to watch and be ready to step in.
The point here is that some driver-assistance features are meant to make driving easier, not necessarily to improve safety in a guaranteed way. Regulators want to be careful about how these features are treated.
Level 2 means the car can help with steering and speed at the same time, but it’s still not fully driving for you. You have to stay alert and ready to take over whenever the system asks.
Some driver-assist features are mainly about making driving easier, while others are meant to help prevent crashes. This discussion is saying the crash-prevention ones matter more for safety.
“Hands free L2” refers to marketing or system behavior where the driver may not be required to keep hands on the wheel while L2 functions operate. The segment expresses concern that the driver should not be hands-free while relying on systems that still need the driver to supervise and be ready to intervene.
A work zone is an area where road construction or maintenance is occurring, often with reduced speed limits and heightened risk due to changing traffic patterns and workers. The segment references a Philadelphia crash in a work zone to show why speed control is especially important.
This is the speed-limit help feature the system is supposed to use. The discussion suggests the driver still went faster than allowed, implying the feature wasn’t actually doing its job.
LIVE
Welcome to Daily Drive for Monday, April 13, 2026, I'm Jake Nier in Detroit, in for
Kellan Walker.
Today on the show, Nissan will debut its new Rogue as Hybrid Only, VW and Audi post brutal
first-quarter numbers, and new steel and aluminum tariff math could cost automakers more.
Plus, we'll hear from the NTSB's Kristen Poland about why the agency is investigating crashes
involving Ford BlueCruise and the challenges that Level 2 systems present for regulators.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
Nissan is making a big bet on hybrids with its next Rogue crossover, launching it late
this year as Hybrid Only, with a gas version following in 2027.
It's a catch-up play, Nissan America's chairman Christian Munier told Automotive News they're
late to the hybrid party, but he expects the e-power hybrid to become more than half of
Rogue sales within two years.
The company needs it, Rogue sales have been sliding for years, while rivals like Toyota
and Honda dominate the hybrid market, which now makes up a quarter of compact crossover sales.
Volkswagen and Audi are having a rough start to 2026.
VW sales dropped 16% in the first quarter to just under 74,000 vehicles.
That's the brand's fourth straight quarterly decline.
Audi had it even worse.
According to the Automotive News Research and Data Center, sales plunged 30% to under
30,000 deliveries.
That's the brand's weakest quarter since early 2012.
Audi blamed tariffs and market headwinds, the brand also raised prices across the board last year.
And the Trump administration just changed how it calculates steel and aluminum tariffs,
and while the new math is simpler, it could actually cost automakers more.
Here's the deal, derivative products now face a 25% tariff on their entire value
instead of a 50% duty on just the metal inside.
Sounds better, right?
Not so fast.
Here to explain it all is our own John Irwin, who's been covering the story for us at Automotive News.
John, a pleasure as always, sir.
Thanks for having me on.
Seems simpler, right?
But it sounds like this might actually cost automakers more.
So I'm wondering if maybe you could walk us through an example of how this new tariff
calculation actually works and why it might end up costing more.
Yeah, like you said, on the surface it seems simpler, and it is simpler.
Not to be dismissed, but yeah, it could cost more.
I mean, if you take a hypothetical example of just a part or the robot, what have you,
let's say it's worth $1,000 for simplicity's sake here.
You're importing that, and it has $200 worth of foreign aluminum in it.
In the past, you would pay 50% on that $200 just on the value of that aluminum,
which of course would make your tariff bill for that good robot, whatever it is, $100.
Now you're paying a 25% tariff on the entire value of that good,
which would bring your tariff bill.
It's 25% of $1,000, so it's $250.
That's a pretty sizable increase.
Obviously, that's just a hypothetical example.
Automakers, suppliers are still really sorting through this.
It was an executive order that was signed at the beginning of the month,
went into effect just a few days later.
It's very much something that's still being sorted through.
Obviously, there are going to be scenarios where maybe the total tariff cost for any given import
will come out to be maybe about the same.
There could even be some examples where maybe the tariff bill is lower,
but I think just talking with some of the trade experts, advice suppliers and
automakers in their decision-making on tariffs and that sort of thing,
I think a lot of them are expecting the tariff bill to be higher in large part,
because just that basic math, but then also the Trump administration isn't at this moment
looking to reduce tariff revenue, especially after the Supreme Court decision recently,
they're looking to increase that revenue for it.
Any move that they're looking to make broadly won't be designed to decrease tariff revenue overall.
That said, like I said, it is simpler, much simpler automakers and suppliers,
especially if really in the past lamented just how difficult it was to calculate
exactly how much of any given import and its value comes from steel or aluminum in it.
That can be really tricky and difficult to do, and you have to go really deep into your supply
chains in certain cases. In many cases, it just proved to be extremely difficult time consuming.
In some cases, even almost impossible to figure out. Obviously, this will be a lot simpler.
You kind of know what the value is going in, but the tariff bill could be higher for certain
imports, that's for sure. It's been about a year, a little over a year now,
since the tariffs are in place. Where are we at right now? What are you hearing from auto
companies about the ongoing changes to how all these things are calculated?
Yeah, it's definitely something where once they feel like they have a good sense of where they're at,
there's usually some sort of change. We've seen that this year with obviously the Supreme Court
decision earlier this year, and now with these steel and aluminum tariff changes. There are
things on the horizon too that companies are keeping eye on. We've talked in the past about
the USMCA and what does the future of Canadian and Mexican trade with the US look like, but
companies have on the one hand kind of to an extent gotten used to just these rapid changes.
Like I said, this steel and aluminum change, the executive order or the presidential proclamation,
I should say, was signed in early April and went into effect the following Monday. It was just a
how much of a difference that's going to make in their overall tariff bill at the end of the day,
which can prove tricky, especially for suppliers that are dealing with. It can take months sometimes
for them to negotiate with their suppliers or with their customers to try to figure out if they
want to push tariff costs up the supply chain, up to their customers, that you have to come out
to an agreement obviously with your customer. That's something that they're going to have to
do again. If they just kind of figured out in the past few months how that was going to look,
well, now that calculation has changed. So you're kind of back to the bargaining table.
But again, that's not anything new. I mean, there's just been kind of one change after
another over the past year or so. Companies have sort of found a way to maybe not get used to it.
That might not be the right way to put it, but it's not new. And I think it's fair to expect
that to continue, especially with the USMCA on the horizon. We're going to see kind of where
those negotiations land. Obviously, that's going to be really important for the auto industry. And
no matter what happens, it's going to have a pretty significant impact on
automakers and suppliers. So yeah, they're always on their toes right now, that's for sure.
Well, John Irwin has been covering every twist and turn for us. He's been with us
through the entire roller coaster. John, really appreciate you joining us today to explain this.
Thanks so much.
Coming up, the NTSB's Kristen Polin talks about why the agency began its investigations into
Ford Blue Cruise crashes. That's next on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Jake Neer. The National Transportation Safety Board is looking
into fatal crashes involving Ford's Blue Cruise hands-free driving system. Kristen Poland is
Deputy Director of the NTSB's Office of Highway Safety. On the latest episode of the Automotive
News Shift podcast, she talks with our own Molly Boygon about why the agency is looking into those
crashes and how level two systems present new challenges for regulators. Here's a piece of
that conversation. Dr. Kristen Poland, Deputy Director of the NTSB's Office of Highway Safety,
thanks so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having us, Molly.
So the NTSB addressed fatal crashes involving Ford Blue Cruise at a board meeting last month
and the NTSB has been investigating the fatal crashes from 2024. Why is this of interest now?
So for the NTSB, we have investigated numerous crashes that involve partial automation systems
or SAE level two systems. And these two crashes were involving Ford Blue Cruise,
but also hands-free aspects. So that was new to us where it's an L2 system operating hands-free.
What was also new for us was the driver monitoring system. So in the past, our investigations have
focused on driver monitoring where we're looking at steering wheel torque as a surrogate for the
driver being engaged. And we had criticized those types of systems before focusing on camera-based
systems. The Ford Blue Cruise includes a camera-based driver monitoring system. So that was also new to
us and gave us information that we wanted to be able to investigate these two crashes to be able
to understand what was going on. Got it. So the fact that it's an L2 hands-free system and also
the presence of this camera-based driver monitoring were issues that NTSB wanted to look into a bit
more. Exactly. And Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at the hearing that these systems or at the
board meeting that these systems function primarily as convenience features rather than safety enhancements.
You know, I'm sort of asking you to speak for her, but is that contention applying to
all level two systems in general or to all automated driving systems in general,
how sort of broad does that go? So the aspect where we're talking about convenience versus
safety is coming from an insurance institute for highway safety study. And what they were looking
at was systems that have L2 capabilities. And the L2 system obviously is the controlling the
longitudinal position, either a set cruise speed or a set following distance behind that lead vehicle
and the lateral position. So lane centering. So how do those types of systems when they're
pushed together and we have both the lateral and longitudinal control
compare when we're looking just at the safety aspects to the base systems? So automatic emergency
braking systems, electronic stability control systems, lane departure prevention systems.
And what the insurance institute for highway safety was showing was that there wasn't an
additional safety benefit when we combined those systems together into an L2 system.
They were seeing the safety benefit with those base systems that automatic emergency braking
and lane departure prevention systems. And so that's where they were saying that these systems
are really more convenience based systems. They may reduce driver workload, they may have some
convenience aspects in terms of how the driver is interacting with them. But base safety,
we're really seeing it from the those safety components that are talking about last minute
intervention. I see. So the real additive value in terms of safety comes from those base systems,
things like lane departure prevention and automatic emergency braking rather than the
lateral and longitudinal control of some of level two systems. That's what the insurance
institute for highway safety was bringing out in their study. And of course, that's one of the
aspects that we were pulling out in the board meeting last week was that if our safety is coming
from, for example, automatic emergency braking, we want automatic emergency braking to be engaged
when we have an L2 system engaged. So we don't want the driver to have a hands free L2 system,
but also be able to turn off automatic emergency braking if that's the system that's giving us
the major safety benefit. Right. And this is something that came up at the board meeting that
BlueCruise allows drivers to disengage automatic emergency braking and tweak the intelligent
adaptive cruise control. Is that common across the industry? In other words, how many other
manufacturers or what other shared manufacturers offered drivers the opportunity to disengage
A, B when they're operating a level two system? So the NTSB has experience with a couple manufacturers,
so I can't speak for the entire industry. But what we're seeing is that there are inconsistencies.
And one of our recommendations that came out of that board meeting is focusing on the DOT to
provide guidance on what these base systems are that need to be engaged for L2 activation.
We're just seeing that there's not a lot of guidance for how manufacturers are adopting L2
systems, and we believe there are safety features that need to be incorporated there.
In terms of the speed component, that's something that the NTSB has addressed in
other investigations. Speed is a problem. We know that speed represents a huge number of our
fatalities. Speed related crashes are almost a third of the crashes, third of the fatalities
that we see on our roads today. So we have other recommendations where we've talked about
intelligent speed assistance, whether that's a passive system that just provides a warning or
an active system. Importantly, what we were seeing with the Ford Blue Cruise is that
even if it was engaged, which we don't believe it was engaged, but even if it was engaged,
it really gave a huge range that that speed limit could be. So if you have a speed limit of 65,
you could set the speed limit much higher than that. 20 miles per hour would have been that
differential. And of course, in Philadelphia, in the Philadelphia crash that we investigated,
that was in a work zone. The speed limit had been reduced to 45 miles per hour. So the driver,
if they had that intelligent speed assist system, still could have set the speed at 65 miles per
hour. Of course, we were seeing the driver going over 70 miles per hour. So we know
that that system wasn't engaged. But again, that comes back to that DOT guidance that we think is
essential, that speed needs to be a component in this, because we don't want drivers to hop into
a vehicle, have an L2 system that they can set hands free, and then really allows them to go at
unsafe speeds for the environment that they're operating in. The NTSB's Kristen Poland spoke
with our own Molly Boygon on the latest episode of the automotive news shift podcast. You can hear
the full conversation on shift available now, wherever you get your podcasts. That's daily
drive for today. I'm Jake Nier in for Kellen Walker. Thanks to our own John Irwin, Jack Wallsworth,
and Irvach Karkaria for their reporting for today's podcast. You can get the latest news on tech and
innovation, tariffs, and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back
tomorrow for a look at automotive news's 2026 top dealership groups in the US. 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 enjoyed the
podcast, remember to like, leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
About this episode
Nissan plans to launch the next Rogue as hybrid-only late in 2026, betting its e-power system will become more than half of sales within two years as Rogue declines and Toyota/Honda dominate. Volkswagen and Audi post steep first-quarter drops, with Audi blaming tariffs and price hikes. The show also breaks down new steel/aluminum tariff “math,” where a simpler formula can still raise costs for automakers. Finally, NTSB Deputy Director Kristen Poland explains why the agency is investigating fatal Ford BlueCruise crashes, highlighting gaps in how Level 2 systems and driver monitoring are regulated.
