Oct. 7, 2025 | Nissan seeks partner to share electrified model; new revenue streams

Want to win the inventory game? With Kelly Bluebook instant cash offer, you can lock in trade-ins before your competitors even blink, faster deals, better margins, lock in and load up today at b2b.kbb.com Welcome to Daily Drive for Tuesday, October 7th, 2025. I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas, today on the show. Nissan talks with Ford and Stellantis about sharing an electrified model.

A fire at an aluminum supplier could disrupt business for months, and Jeep is dropping the Wagon Air while the Grand Wagon Air lives on. Plus, experts weigh in on how automakers and retailers can diversify their businesses with new revenue streams.

You've got to have this really strong link between the software and the consumer. Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

Nissan is in talks with multiple automakers to supply an electrified vehicle based on its top-selling road crossover. That's according to two people with knowledge of the talks who spoke with us at Automotive News. According to one of the people, the potential partners include Ford and Stellantis, but not General Motors.

The compact crossover would feature Nissan's e-power hybrid system which uses a battery-powered electric motor to drive the wheels and a gasoline engine to recharge the battery.

Nissan would assemble the vehicle alongside the Rogue in Smirna, Tennessee. We'll hear more about this story in a minute with our own, Irvash Kakaria.

A fire that broke out at Novellis's New York plant in Oswego will disrupt business at Ford and other automakers for months. That's according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

Ford is the biggest user of the plant's aluminum. People familiar with the matter say the automaker will likely flag potential implications of the setback to investors when it discloses quarterly financial results later this month.

Novellis is the world's largest recycler of aluminum. It reported a fire incident at its Oswego plant on September 16th. No one was injured.

President Donald Trump says 25% in duties on medium and heavy-duty trucks would begin on November 1. The proposal has been subject to an intense lobbying campaign by Detroit three automakers.

Trump originally said last month that heavy-duty truck levies would start October 1, but that timeline slipped as officials heard appeals from companies concerned about the impact.

In Jeep is dropping the three-row Wagonier SUV after the 2025 model year. Meanwhile, the Grand Wagonier will soldier on as the brand's largest and most luxurious model.

The move comes ahead of the fourth quarter arrival of the freshened 2026 Grand Wagonier. And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories at AutoNews.com.

Automotive news Atlanta bureau chief Irvash Kakaria broke the news today about Nissan's effort to get a partner to share a hybrid or EV model.

He spoke with our own Jake near about it this morning.

Irvash Kakaria, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Thanks for having me, Jake.

I'm going to start y'all with a curveball here, Irvash. Have you ever worked in an ice cream parlor?

I have not. I've been in an ice cream parlor more than I'd like to be, but I haven't worked there.

Well, you would have fooled me because you keep giving us all these scoops.

And now that Kell is thoroughly horrified listening to this right now. We can go back to the subject matter.

So in all seriousness, I'm curious what Nissan would get out of a deal like this other than the obvious that they get a model.

And especially what would a potential partner get out of a deal like this?

Sure. So for Nissan, I mean, obviously Nissan is financially struggling.

It's trying to turn the business around from its steepest financial loss in a quarter of a century.

So everything it can do to reduce the cost of product development and manufacturing is helpful.

So in this case, if they develop a model and they share it with another OEM, they're going to get substantially more volume.

And not only does that reduce the cost of development, but it also reduces the cost of manufacturing.

And it helps Nissan utilize its US factories more. And that's one of its biggest challenges.

So this vehicle will be built in Smurna, Tennessee by Nissan. And that factory has a annual production capacity of 640,000 units.

And it currently has a utilization rate of about a half, about half that. So 51%.

As much as Nissan can add volume to a model, it helps them in multiple ways.

Now regarding the OEMs, so Stellantis and Ford are said to be negotiating table with Nissan.

And Stellantis's case, the company is trying to stock up its mainstream brands, but Dodge and Chrysler are sort of being stopped of product.

And maybe this vehicle, which is a compact hybrid crossover, could be a replacement of the imported hornet, the Dodge Hornet.

And it could also, for Chrysler, it could also be a niche product that they can sort of add that Stellantis can add to the lineup.

So that's how Chrysler might benefit. From Ford's perspective, Ford has sort of focused on affordable electric vehicles.

But they now also need to pay more attention to their mainstream gas power models while they make this EV transition.

And maybe bumping the Corsair or the escape from the lineup was a bit premature for the company.

And that forced Ford to sort of rely on the Bronco sport and Maverick to fill the gap.

And maybe this vehicle will help sort of address that gap or that challenge that Ford faces because both those models are made in Mexico and are imported and therefore face tariffs.

So maybe this helps Ford offset that issue.

Nissan has some very ambitious electrification plans.

If a partnership does not materialize here, what would that mean for those plans?

I mean, it's just going to make the math harder, but I think Nissan is committed.

I mean, they see that there's no other option that the EVs are going to be needed, are going to be required.

Most likely when the next presidential administration comes to power, if it's the Democrats, it's going to basically be somewhat of a reversal of the current administration's policies.

So they know that they need to have EVs.

So the question is when does that happen and how do they get there in a sustainable way from a price standpoint, from a cost standpoint.

So they basically canceled, they have these grand plans of having five EVs by the end of the decade.

The sedans, there were two sedans and there were two crossovers.

The sedans have essentially been killed because there's really no market for, or there's a dwindling market for sedans in the US.

The SUVs have basically been put on ice, partly upon, because they're trying to figure out the volumes that we had anticipated for these crossovers were this and now they're this.

And how do we financially, how do we reduce the cost of the models or do we have to think of a entirely different platform that's more cost efficient so that we can, you know, make the math work.

Irvach, thank you again so much and really appreciate your reporting on this story and we'll be paying close attention to it.

We know you will be too and keeping us up to date. Thanks again for joining us on Daily Drive.

My pleasure, Jake. Have a good day.

Coming up, a panel of experts talks about how automakers and dealers can lock in new revenue streams in 2025.

That's next on Daily Drive.

Automotive news shift podcast brings you the latest on automotive technology, trends and transformation. I'm Hannah Lutz.

And I'm Molly Boygon. We're the new co-host of shift and we're excited to bring you new conversations with experts and industry insiders like this one

with Larry Dominique, president of LD Management Consultant.

Do you believe the legacy OEMs are falling into a trap? They've got to find a way to in some ways build new airplane while they're still in flight.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellan Walker. Innovative technologies such as in-car software subscriptions present new revenue stream opportunities for automakers and vehicle retailers alike.

If those advancements click with consumers. That's according to a panel of industry experts who spoke with our own Molly Boygon at Automotive News Congress in Detroit last month.

Aruna Anan is president and CEO of Amovio North America. Jason Jameson is chief customer officer at Hear Technologies.

Paul Thomas is president of Bosch North America. And Alan Wexler is senior vice president of strategy and transformation at General Motors. Here's a piece of their conversation.

I think about the customer experience and also this kind of avoiding people feeling like they're being bombarded with advertising and just constantly being sold to.

I think about that same dynamic with AI in the vehicle. Aruna, can you talk about some of the opportunities with AI in the vehicle?

Yes. First is, you don't want to use AI just because it's cool and everybody says AI. You need to have a reason and a good use case.

One of the things that we have done, for example, in collaborating with Google, some of the use cases is how car has become an extension of a living room, so to say.

You want to have that seamless experience when you're inside your vehicle. And that starts with how you enter the vehicle, your vehicle automatically recognizing you for who you are without you having to press a button or come close and so on and so forth.

And having these or your lift gate opening when your hands are full, it already can detect who you are and do those personalized action because your car knows it's just you.

And then as you drive, maybe it provides you contextual information. Hey, you have a doctor's appointment coming up or your last one was two months ago. Do you want to schedule one? I could do it for you.

Things like that, which prove to be really efficient for the end user otherwise, as you mentioned, it is very distracting and the challenge is what information is relevant and what information is found effective that we are able to then monetize that because not all.

Some of this stuff you do it for branding and convenience and safety and to have that extension, you don't monetize those things you can't. And then to understand, okay, what are those things that can be easily monetized and then maybe we wait for the next round to talk more about that.

Yes, great, great idea.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the pitfalls that we've sort of touched on so far. So, Aruna, you mentioned, you know, making sure that information is relevant, that the technology in the vehicles not distracting drivers and companies have a lot of concerns about data privacy and functional safety.

Paul, can you kind of run us through how the industry is thinking about this and addressing this issue?

First, I want to just frame at least my view when we start talking about how to make money with software and vehicles.

I think right now, when you look at the history of where we are with cars and we all have these dreamscape images, we've seen them before, tons of videos, getting your car, virtual assistants, drive you to coffee shops, all these great things.

But before we can get there, I think there needs to also be a fundamental belief that software divine mobility has to create from today forward,

the separation between hardware and software. Before we can have these dreamscape, sorry, activities where we're trying to do all these great things in a vehicle, you've got to have this really strong link between the software and the consumer.

And where the consumers can then lead into your question, where the consumers can not be concerned is that when their data is being collected or when they're sharing information with the vehicle, they've got to feel that that software platform similar to your iOS or your Android software.

Software is robust. And I think that's where we are right now, at least in my mind, with the software defined mobility is creating the separation between hardware and software and then making the software a household name that's robust enough and strong enough that consumers feel real comfortable using it.

You have a lot of bespoke solutions in software. You all know you'll get certain devices that ask you to scan a QR code and sign up for software that you don't really want, but you have to use that software to have maybe a house camera work or a light switch in your house or a smart switch.

People don't want that. And I think we need to deliver some level of trusted software from both a reliability, a sustainability, and then of course a security stand.

The consumer electronics, I feel like the consumer awareness of some of those household names like I'm thinking about Apple iOS took so long to sort of be absorbed.

Do you have concerns about even if there is a standard platform across the industry that consumers would sort of fail to recognize that?

Well, the one reason why I'd like to come in solution across the industry is it's so expensive to develop multiple solutions.

So if you have multiple solutions with multiple generations of the way you collect data, the way you manage data, you won't find a framework that works financially.

So first of all, if it doesn't work financially, no one will buy it. The consumer won't afford it and no one will use it.

As far as how you make the move to let's I won't use the word household name, but how you get something that's robust through our strong partnerships with our OEMs like General Motors or some of the other OEMs we use, that's where the value needs to come.

Because the consumer will buy from them and they need to have this trusted software in their vehicles.

I want to just talk a little bit more about the security and the cybersecurity aspects now you have big compute modules and you put a lot of things in there.

Most of your product functions are in there and so there's a lot of risk involved and we need to take care of cybersecurity.

Then you have as well what you mentioned all the technology companies like Google or Apple and so on that want to integrate more and it's nice to provide that seamless experience.

And that's where automotive suppliers also come into play because you need to have expertise in integrating IT solutions into the automotive environment that follows all the safety standards.

At the end of the day a car is needed to drive us from point A to point B in a safe manner and if it can be fun and exciting along the way that's great but we shouldn't lose that focus.

And that's when we are one of the very few companies the first and very few companies to be considered as a technology provider to be able to work with the Googles and apples of the world to integrate those technologies alongside the OEMs into the vehicle.

So it is cyber security ready, let's say.

I want to talk a little bit more about the role of big tech and all of this because you know for years a significant consumer touch point the central infotainment display has been seated to big tech through smartphone mirroring services like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

How are automakers reclaiming the infotainment experience let's throw to Allen.

Sure love the question for us we really feel as if we need an integrated seamless experience for our customers and one that we can control control from the perspective of we want to delight our customers in a unique way from a competitive perspective.

We also are not trying to do everything on our own so similar to the platform question like it's it's in our best interest if we can find commonality relative to working with Google and working with Apple and others to build a common platform so at some day we can invite app developers and others to this common to this common platform for us.

Our partners yesterday we just we just went live with Disney plus in our passenger our passenger screens we last month was to be we obviously we have Spotify.

A very partner we're really proud of is working with Amazon and title and Dolby Atmos so for those who aren't aware or uptick I believe it has 17 speakers in it.

Experienced Dolby Atmos in an uptick and Vistique is I think 19 speakers the immersive experience that you're getting from a sound perspective is unlike anything you can't get it in your home and eventually when we get to like full autonomy those experiences that we need to create we don't expect to do them on our own so Google Apple Amazon Microsoft they're all like very strong partners as well as to help us get there.

It sounds like you see them as not not using the infotainment display as an opportunity to mirror their own software but partners in eventually developing a larger app ecosystem for access to different functions capabilities in the vehicle.

100% so you have access to things like audible through the play store but you know for us it's less about screen takeover and just mirror imaging your phone I think everyone's aware of our announcements and our strategy there is very much an experience where we want to provide.

The different offerings like audible and.

You know Amazon music and things of that nature but not in a takeover fashion.

Jason you were talking a little bit earlier about the importance of the customer experience at the center of all this and not just sort of charging people for things you know willy nilly and.

Industry strike stakeholders will recall an infamous attempt but he did seeds behind the subscription how should companies in this space be thinking about price gouging concerns from consumers.

Yes so I think that you know where we are with the software defined vehicle is it you know is Paul you know joke about is that there is a sort of you know future vision that that I think that you know in a way it is right here right now you can do that.

But you know in terms of price gouging people are going to pay for an experience they're going to pay for convenience they're going to pay for something they identify with when it comes to a brand.

And in fact that's where a lot of the premiums can be extracted if you represent your brand digitally as strongly as people identify with the beautiful design the propulsion system all that sort of thing people will will actually want to stay connected if you provide a compelling environment.

But around price gouging I think that that's where you know there's a little bit of cynicism that that creeps into man we've got to make some profit from this and it's like why don't we charge them for heated seats is the description and unfortunately that's something that people say hang on the hardware is there it's all you know so people will react to that but if you give something that's a rich experience.

That gives people convenience maybe give some time back I think that you'll find that the folks will will actually want to pay for that.

I want to add a few points because we talk about price and features but that comes kind of late but there later there are fundamental topics that we need to address how much hardware do we think is sufficient.

How much hardware is the right level of hardware for the functions that are going to come two years three years four years down the road.

Who knows that answer we don't and we have to have that fine balance and what happens if we lose that balance then the price is too much for consumers to pay so we got a worry about that a little bit then when you talk about monetizing and so on if you take consumer application like your smartphone.

We change our phones if it's very slow or if it needs memory we change our phones right away we don't think about it and say phone costs like thousand dollars and we approximately change our phones every 18 months but it took a long time to get here 25 years ago we still had land lines for which we paid for hardware we never think of doing that for a software upgrades in our car.

And now we have come evolved from land lines to phones to smartphones and we are okay to pay for these things so it takes some time and then the question is what can you monetize and maybe if you provide features that are value creative like adding more safety and so on and so forth then maybe everyone wants to spend to make their families safer so these are things that we need to think about.

And we are nowhere close to that as Paul had mentioned then what is the next step is we are looking at we are talking in leaps where we need to go in steps.

To optimize the hardware from what we have today to make maybe his own controllers to reduce the weight of the vehicle reduce the amount of cables amount of copper and so on you make things more efficient and then you go to the next progressive step my opinion.

Everyone wants to jump in on this one let's hear from Paul first I just want to comment I agree with you that when you get to a point where your hardware is agnostic and let's just talk with the title is how do we make money with with software right how does the only make money out of the tears make money.

First of all there's a couple things you can do with driving dynamics which is very simple you can have a way that you handle your actuation your steering your breaking your suspension and you'll never get up you should never really get a penny from that as a tier one from.

We should work with our we are so they can offer those features and that's something that you can do today in a very smart way.

When you start thinking about different services you know if you look into fleets or if you look into all the over over on the highway trucks that are running today.

You have a lot of good opportunities in an environment of sustainability for maintenance for driver activity for up time.

And what we're starting to see is in a connected vehicle or software defined vehicle or system that if you're able to offer those services to people that need it to make money.

So if that truck needs to run 12 hours a day with a guy that has or a person that has the right tools.

We see that that's really starting to pull the industry a little bit and I think that that's what's going to have to happen is you're never going to be able to force somebody to pay for something that they think they should have.

But if you can provide something to people that this is novel of course that they don't have then they'll start paying for it especially in mobility.

Especially when you can promise up time on vehicles when you can promise to a rental company smoke detection or something where creates revenue streams for them in a very simple software defined way.

So I mean that's the challenge I'm dealing with not only how we work with our OEM customers but how we go business to consumer and how you do it in a way that's fast enough and again not this dreamscape environment.

These real hard core money earning revenue streams that make transportation and mobility better.

Paul Thomas is president of Bosch North America.

Aruna Anan is president and CEO of Amovio North America.

Alan Wexler is Senior Vice President of Strategy and Transformation at General Motors.

And Jason Jamison is Chief Customer Officer at Hear Technologies.

They spoke with Automotive News Tech and Innovation Reporter Molly Boygon at Automotive News Congress in Detroit.

That's daily drive for today. I'm Kellen Walker.

Thanks to Automotive News Executive Producer Jake Near as well as our own Irvash Kakaria and Vince Bond Jr. for their reporting for today's podcast.

You can get the latest news on tech and innovation. Automaker Partnerships and everything happening in the auto industry at autonews.com.

Come back tomorrow for a conversation with Automotive News Asia editor Hans Grimell about the tenure anniversary of Hyundai Group's luxury brand Genesis and where it goes from here.

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Send us an email at dailydriveatautonews.com or leave us a voice mail at 313-444-2774.

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Oct. 7, 2025 | Nissan seeks partner to share electrified model; new revenue streams

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Lucid Air

Stellantis

compact crossover

e-Power hybrid system

Nissan Rogue

Novelis

Jeep Grand Wagoneer

Jeep Wagoneer

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production capacity

Dodge Hornet

Hudson Hornet

Ford Escape

Lincoln Corsair

Ford Bronco Sport

Ford Maverick

electrification

EVs

Kelly Bluebook

in-car software subscriptions

General Motors

Apple CarPlay

Android Auto

infotainment display

Audi 100

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