Oct. 13, 2025 | First Brands CEO resigns amid bankruptcy; De-Leon Energy CEO Shmuel De-Leon

This podcast is brought to you by AutoVision and its new AI Assistant, Avery. Avery delivers data-driven appraisals, pricing, and detailed strategies for every vehicle. Visit AutoVision.com to learn more about Avery where precision meets profit. Welcome to Daily Drive from Monday, October 13th, 2025. I'm Kellen Walker in Las Vegas, today on the show. The CEO of Supplier First Brands resigns during

its bankruptcy process. Stellantis delays its strategic plan amid tariffs and regulatory hurdles, and price hikes loom as import duties erode profits. Plus, Samuel Dalyan, CEO of Israeli Battery Consulting firm Dalyan Energy, talks about the safety and performance benefits of solid-state batteries in EVs.

This is the hot potato trend in China, almost every company are jumping into the solid arena.

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

First Brands founder, Patrick James, has stepped down as CEO. Chief restructuring officer Charles Moore will step into the role on an interim basis as the Auto Partsmaker advances its Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.

The Ohio-based company makes filters, breaks, and lighting systems. It filed for bankruptcy protection in late September, disclosing liabilities of about $11.6 billion.

Stellantis will delay the start of its new strategic plan to the second quarter of next year.

The move will give CEO Antonio Filosa more time to address major uncertainties in the automakers' key markets.

The automakers grappling with rising trade barriers in the US and evolving regulation in the European Union.

In July, Filosa warned that Stellantis faced a $1.7 billion hit from US tariffs in 2025.

And General Motors has told about 280 employees at its electric vehicle assembly plant in Detroit that they won't return to work until after the new year.

In early September, GM temporarily cut one of two daily shifts building the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Escalade IQ at the plant known as Factory Zero.

Those workers, along with about 120 who have been laid off since April, were scheduled to return last week but will instead remain idled through December.

The layoffs do not affect production of the Chevrolet, Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV.

And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories at autonews.com.

The 2026 model year is loaded with updated technology and fresh designs.

It's also an opportunity for automakers to raise sticker prices to cover more tariff costs.

That's what our own Lindsey Van Hully and John Irwin wrote in a story on the front page of this week's automotive news print edition, which you can find at the top of autonews.com as well.

Lindsey joins me now from our offices in Detroit to talk about it.

Lindsey, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Hi, Cal.

So we've been asking for months when automakers would start passing on tariff costs to consumers.

What evidence do we have if any that these new 2026 models are the beginning of that?

It's pretty small so far.

What we've seen so far really since the tariffs have been imposed back in the spring was a lot of muted price increases.

And a big part of that is because automakers have really absorbed all of those costs into their bottom line.

And so we've seen impacts to profitability that they've talked about on their earnings calls.

They've tried to find workarounds, trying to add domestic sourcing when they could to get around the tariffs, looking at things like can you repackage some things to keep prices comparable for consumers.

But that impact a lot of analysts have said is going to begin to get passed on more most likely in higher prices, just the longer that this goes.

As the impact to profitability increases as tariff costs continue to increase as new models go up in a given model year, there's a number of price increases that often happen because of updated designs, new technology changes to trim levels and content.

And so the question is, how can they navigate the extra tariff costs as part of that while still keeping their vehicles competitive and not pricing them out of a segment.

So so far, the increases have been small, but we've seen some brands already talking about some higher prices, Volkswagen being one of them, talking about prices on 2026 models rising from about 2% to about 6.5%.

They're executives have talked about needing to really be strategic, that you can't really push all of those extra costs on to consumers or in a particular segment.

I think the concern is, does that just make our vehicles too expensive? Do customers look at other brands that don't have that same tariff price increase?

There's already an affordability crisis hitting the industry. What could it mean for the overall market if automakers do pass along those tariffs?

I think that's the big question. And we saw it in comments from Autos Drive America, where they talked about that already being the biggest concern for automakers.

And that's part of why so many of them have tried to absorb those costs themselves and not pass it on because of that concern about affordability.

If prices get too high, it does make it very challenging for consumers to consider vehicles.

And I think if that in clinician to purchase goes down because affordability is a big issue, we're likely to see sales fall as a result of some analysts have already predicted that sales are going to go down affordability being a piece of that.

So it's definitely all very interconnected.

Gotcha. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

Coming up, Dalyon Energy CEO Samuel Dalyon talks about the state of the solid state battery race and why the technology is gaining traction in China.

That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellan Walker. The US needs to hurry up and get a national program in place to support the battery industry.

Otherwise, China will win out and the American auto industry will lose. That's according to Samuel Dalyan, CEO of Israeli battery consulting firm, Dalyan Energy.

He spoke with our own Richard Truitt at the battery show in Detroit. Here's a piece of their conversation on the automotive news shift podcast.

Now, you've been to China and you've met executives from the Chinese battery companies. What's your impression of their determination to win the race to bring solid state batteries to high volume mass market production?

So, to answer that question, we need first to understand what is the motivation to go into solid state solutions.

So, solid state means that we replace the liquid electrolyte inside the cell, the isolated solution. You don't have liquid, it's meant that you don't have leaks.

And the next important thing is that the liquid electrolyte in the cell is the only organic materialized. So, if you have a safety event or a fire, it all start with the electrode.

Now, if you get rid from the electrolyte, it's meant that theoretically you have no fires and much safer batteries.

However, going into solid state, open the door to use much better anode like liquid metallur.

In that case, we are earning also high energy density, much higher than the current utility amount selling production in the market.

So, we are seeing two generations. Generation one, solid state batteries that are going to use graphite or graphite with small amount of silicon inside, then you will gain safety.

And second generation when you are going to have liquid metallur, you will gain much better performance plus the safety to gain.

Since that the case and since solid state solution are under the vaping for many years, the Chinese decided to speed up the crisis.

They founded the consortium, not including the leading Chinese companies, heavily funded to develop the solid state technology and to bring it to the market.

Since it's difficult to make it, they also decided to have some midterm solutions like semi solid state, quasi solid state, and full solid is what we call also.

So, the semi solid state is 5 to 10% liquid inside the cell by mass compared to ordinary cells when you have a 15%.

And quasi solid is 0 to 5% while you have again 15 for ordinary cells.

We see that this is the hot potato trend in China in the last few years.

Almost every company, which are making liquid my own cells with NMC cathodes, are jumping into the solid arena.

When I analyze the Chinese market, I can find that we have already first pioneering companies, that having a pilot scale like 200 megawatt production of solid state cells, companies like Pharisees, like Goshen,

but we also see that the largest company in the world, C-A-D-L, V-Y-D, if those companies also heavily developing solid state solutions,

with plans to have first pilot production 2027, from 2028, and to be with mass production 2030.

We also need to talk about the cost, early days the cost is high, so it's not going to reach the automotive market at the moment.

But with the performance and production capacity, we are going to face within several years a cost that we match the needs of the automotive market, and then we are going to see that there.

If I understood your presentation correctly yesterday, another big advantage of solid state batteries is how much they weigh versus how much density of power that they can contain.

Does that mean that electric cars can have smaller battery packs and go further?

So the answer is yes. Today, the electric cars in the market are fitted in general to two types.

Cars, vehicles that are using NMC, cut-off, and in that case we are talking about a long driving range for the car, but the car is much more expensive.

More than 50% of the market, those are cars that are living by LFP, cells, and in that case the energy density is much lower, like 60% of the NMC.

So the driving distance is again like 60% of the NMC, but the cost is much more affordable.

If you are talking about energy density, that's what defines how much is going to be the battery weight.

So today, the LFP cells are around 160 to 180 watt per kilowatt cell. The NMC is around 300 to 330 watt hour per kilowatt.

We are talking about solid state solution that can today go to 400 up to 600 watt per kilowatt.

That's mean that we are reducing the size of the battery, dramatically, or the weight of the battery, dramatically.

So automotive oil can select.

Photon increased the driving range to 100 mile per kilowatt, or there is say no.

We will just reduce the size of the battery, and it's such a way to reduce the cost of the battery, and we'll make much more affordable electric car to the market.

Do you think that solid state batteries can be produced for the same price or less than the current lithium ion batteries?

The answer is yes on the long run.

Early days, of course, everything is expensive, but we know how more demand, economy of scale.

It's we take the cake, or even a little bit more, but we are going to get into a situation that solid state batteries have affordable prosperity to motivate us.

The first market to adopt the solid are going to be the military market, elected aviation, or markets that will to pay the cost for supreme performance.

Automotive is not one of them at the moment.

After your presentation, I walked the show floor looking for solid state batteries.

I went over to the EV display and they have everything but solid state batteries.

If this show were in China right now, would we see solid state batteries on display?

In China, we have CLBF. This is the largest battery event in the world.

It's like three times more larger than what we have in the battery show indeed.

I was there in last May, I'm visiting that event every year.

And many of the living Chinese cell makers presented solid state solution.

And I showed like 20 companies at least in my presentation yesterday.

But they are more.

And also we saw a loud supply chain, companies which are making materials to make the solid state.

So I can say that China is much, much, much beyond the US or Europe on the solid state arena.

You can hear our own Richard Truitt's full conversation with daily on energy CEO, Samuel Daylyon, on the latest episode of the Automotive News Shift Podcast.

That's available now, wherever you get your podcast.

That's daily drive for today, I'm Kellyn Walker.

Thanks to Automotive News Executive Producer Jake Near, as well as our own Lindsey Bendholy,

John Irwin, and Riley Hodder for their reporting for today's podcast.

You can get the latest news on tech and innovation, supply chains, and everything happening in the auto industry at autonews.com.

Come back tomorrow for a look at Pinewood AI's plan to blitz into the US DMS market.

Once they get through with Lithia, the largest publicly traded dealership group in the US, they're going to pursue everybody else.

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Oct. 13, 2025 | First Brands CEO resigns amid bankruptcy; De-Leon Energy CEO Shmuel De-Leon

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