Sept. 27, 2025 | Weekend Drive: Cyberattack fallout for Stellantis, JLR

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And looking forward to what's in store in the days ahead. Joining me today is Larry Velliquette, covers Toyota and Subaru for us at Automotive News. Larry Legend, welcome back to Daily Drive.

What's up, Kale? How are you doing this week?

I'm good buddy. And Richard Truitt covers JLR and Engineering. Richard, welcome to the show.

Yep, thanks.

We're finally starting to get some updates this week about what's going on with JLR and the wake of a cyber attack that forced it to shut down production in the UK. Richard, what did we learn this week?

We learned several important facts. Number one is that JLR is not going to run out of vehicles in the US at any time soon.

We've got about 20,000 vehicles on the ground or in transit. That's good news in one respect and maybe not so good news in another.

A big chunk of JLR's business is when ultra rich guys and women go to their stores and custom order six figure range rovers with all sorts of exotic materials and stuff.

Well, until they get their factories back online, that business is shut. There won't be any custom orders for a while and those are some of the most profitable vehicles they make.

And the other big thing that we learned is that not only have vehicle production been stopped for a month but there's been no parts shipped.

And so in the UK and some of their other markets dealers are scrambling to get customers vehicles fixed and out the door and they've been doing that by trading parts and selling and bartering among themselves to do the best they can.

Over here, this is Land Rover and Jaguar Land Rover's biggest market and so we're not going to have that problem thankfully because they've got five warehouses spread all over the country with months and months worth of parts.

So it looks like we're going to dodge some of the bigger bullets that have hit elsewhere.

You know, there was a time where if you bought a jag right that used to come with its own tow truck or they would say that you needed to one for when you could drive it and one that's in the shop.

But but actually Larry's joking makes a good point. There's a metric that we use called UIO that's units and operation and JLR has 1.3 million units on the road in the US about 800,000 of those are are still under warranty.

And JLR's quality ratings shall we say have been scraping the bottom for a very long time. So there's a constant demand on those parts in the warehouses, but it looks to me like they're going to be OK because just today the news came out that they were starting to ship parts again.

So is JLR is it safe to say they're completely out of the woods?

No, not at all, Kell because one thing that JLR constantly wrestles with is recalls they've had for this year. If there's a recall say tomorrow on some safety item that needs to be re-engineered, that's going to take a long time to get here because Jaguar supplier network has been down for a month and it's not like you can just flip a switch and everybody goes back to work and turns on the machinery and it takes a lot of prep to get everything all the supplies ordered and in and everything up and running and for the quality to be right.

So no, there's still a pretty perilous situation if you ask me.

You guys need to throw in a drop there of turn those machines back on. Turn those machines back on.

Well, Larry, this is for you.

The Lantis also reported that it was also the victim of a data breach at a third party provider for North American customers.

The Lantis says that it only compromised basic contact info, no financial details or sensitive personal data.

Now Larry, what do you make of all these attacks against auto companies and the fallout?

Well, so here's what we know.

Criminals, no matter who they are, tend to focus on places where there is money, right?

And this industry has money. It may not have very many other things, but it does have money.

It is a very capital intensive industry top to bottom.

And that makes it a very attractive target for criminals around the globe.

And we saw this was CDK. We will continue to see this.

And until we figure out a way to shut all that stuff down, it's going to keep happening.

And so it's really it's up to companies to be vigilant.

And here, if you notice, right, this is a third party vendor that got hacked.

You are only as defended as your weakest link, right?

That same axiom holds true in cybercrime as it does in guarding your perimeter

and when you're in the army, you are only as strong as your weakest link.

And it only takes one person.

We've seen this over and over again.

It only takes one person to screw up on an email, right?

To figure out that an email isn't legit.

And suddenly the, you know, the wolves are in the chicken coop.

I guess those would be coyotes in the chicken coop, but whatever.

Interesting stuff.

Well, let's talk a bit about the battle that seems to be brewing over the EPA's emissions rules.

So early this year, the agency proposed getting rid of the endangerment finding that gave the EPA the power to regulate greenhouse gases.

Now, this week, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation sent a letter saying it wants the EPA to ease those restrictions,

but not to nix the endangerment finding altogether.

Later in the week, Tesla asked the Trump administration not to repeal vehicle emissions standards

or the longstanding US finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health.

What do you both make of this?

Larry, let's start with you.

What I make of it is I'm glad I don't live in Florida.

At two feet above sea level.

Right?

It's yet another reason not to live in Florida.

To me, this, this, I wrote a column earlier this year was supposed to be sarcastic, right?

But we don't live in a time where sarcasm is recognized apparently, encouraging that the incoming Trump administration just burn it all down.

Just, just take away all the regulations and why do we need regulations?

We don't need them, but you know, we'll just let people buy what they want and build what they want.

And the hell of the environment, because we'll be dead by the time any of the, any of the stuff comes to fruition.

And I don't know many real estate in Florida, so what do I care for?

Real quick, Larry.

Real quick.

Respectively to our Florida listeners.

He's joking.

Respectively.

Okay, Larry, go ahead.

It's a rhetorical, it's a rhetorical device.

And it was sarcastic because of the danger of doing this.

I mean, all these automakers from just from a purely business standpoint, all these automakers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the years,

making their cars better, making them more fuel efficient, making it lowering the emissions.

I mean, all you had to do was see a picture of Los Angeles from 1973, and one today, where you can actually see Los Angeles, as opposed to then, to know that we've made progress.

And we are continuing to make progress, and to throw it all away is the height of, of idiocy.

But to me, the real thing is that it makes the American auto industry, the US auto industry, uncompetitive globally, because the rest of the world isn't doing this.

China is not doing this.

China is leaving us in the dust, and even Europe is the advances that have been made.

The administration wants to throw all that away.

I just, I don't see the logic of it.

Larry has it pretty much nailed, Cal, and I would just say that mostly it's just noise in the machine, because as Larry said, the investments have been made.

And the public demand for cleaner vehicles is going to drive this more than any kind of repealing of regulations.

What might happen is, will it slow down investments in new technology in the interim it might, but the next time we have a regime change here, and we get some more, how can I say this diplomatically?

Fresh, sensible people in Washington DC, then we'll start moving the ball forward again on cleaner vehicles, but really I just think it's mostly noise in the system, because as Larry mentioned, we're not going to be globally competitive if we don't have clean vehicles.

And even though the Detroit automakers have lost considerable ground overseas in places like Eurasia and Europe and South America to Chinese auto makers and others,

we still have to be competitive globally and we will be and making clean cars as part of that.

Good stuff, guys. So coming up federal EV tax credits are set to expire next week, plus we'll talk about the passing of the father of the Miata Tom Matano.

That's next on Weekend Drive.

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Welcome back to Weekend Drive. I'm Kellyn Walker with Larry Velliquette and Richard Truitt.

So guys next week, the $7,500 EV tax credit goes away under the GOP's new tax and spending law. Larry, if you had to predict, do you think EVs have enough momentum to eventually become the dominant powertrain in the future regardless of the tax credits?

Or do you think this dooms them to being a relatively small segment of the US market?

Well, Cali, tell you what, I think we're pulling the plug at the exact wrong time because we don't really have broad acceptance yet.

What we're seeing right now, this month, this weekend is the ultimate clear.

At dealerships around the country, right, for anybody that wants to, wants an EV, you don't want to wait till Wednesday because that's when payday is you want to be there today signing the damn contract.

Otherwise, it's going to cost you a point. That might be me, Larry, somebody go get a new car.

Well, you know what? And why wouldn't you? Exactly. You'd be selling that.

I mean, they're giving away free money and Wednesday, the spigot terms off.

So, you know, from that standpoint, we are seeing this incredible run.

And we ultimately, EVs are going to have to stand on their own, right? Everybody knew this.

Everybody knew it going in. It was a good technology, but it was it was never going to be you're never going to have a hundred percent penetration just because the technology is not going to be there for certain places and certain use cases out in, you know, across this vast varied geographically varied land.

So, I think what we're seeing, we're going to see is EVs are going to stand on their own and they're going to be hobbled for a long time.

The technology will still advance. And so when the next technological advance comes, the solid state battery, whatever it is, and the price comes down and it's starting, you know, we're almost at parity now.

EVs are ultimately cheaper, right? And they're not going to need the subsidy eventually. They still need it now.

Okay, oh, this is one of those rare occasions where Larry and I don't quite see either. What?

And let me let me tell you why people who drive EVs tend to really, really like them. They are not going to go back to gasoline.

Yeah, it's the $7,500 tax incentive is a nice carrot, but if we heard at the recent automotive news world Congress, a number of experts say they still see EVs continuing to grow.

And if you look at the number of name plates that are coming out in the next few years, we're just going to be a flood of them because a lot of automakers have invested and it takes, you know, years for a vehicle to go through the product development system and hit the market.

And we're just going to start hitting their stride here in the next couple of years. I think my colleague and dear friend Larry has forgotten one thing about dealers.

Yeah, the price is basically going to go up $7,500, but dealers know how to sell stuff. They'll figure out attractive leases. They'll come up with longer loans. They'll get that monthly payment exactly where they need it to sell EVs.

Do I think they're going to sell down a little bit? Yeah, but I can tell you that this week I test drove the new Nissan leaf over at the Nissan Technical Center and I wrote about it coming up in cars and concepts Tuesday.

It starts at $29 grand. I have to tell you that that vehicle is fantastic. People are not going to be thinking about the $7,500 tax credit when they drive that. They're going to want to buy it. It's really, really nice.

The first of a bunch of really great EVs that are out there. Hyundai, Kia, the new Chevrolet Bolt is coming. So no, I think EVs are going to continue to grow. Maybe not at the rate that we've seen, but they're not going anywhere.

Larry, you know, I will say wrong. Yeah. I will say this. If I have a blind spot, it's that I always believe that everyone is as cheap as I am.

Right? The thrifty is I tell people I'm the weight I am because I'm the kind of guy that'll go to a candy machine and buy something I don't like.

If there's a chance that two of them will fall, right? I just I'm always I'm hunting for the deal. You squeeze water out of a buffalo nickel.

Yeah, exactly. Well, if there's an advantage to it, you know, and if I can give Buffalo nickels cheap, yeah, then exactly.

So I think that Richard's probably right that there are people. There are certainly people who will choose this technology because it is a great driving experience.

And it's cheaper to operate and it's cheaper to maintain. It is a valuable technology going forward.

Just the adoption rate. If we go back to where, you know, they can if I can start offering, you know, if I can get a Dodge charger for 26 grand suddenly because it's got an old iron block V8 that they had a bunch of them left over or something.

Then yeah, you know what? I'm probably going to buy that and just eat the gas for a while.

But you know, if you look at the long term fuel uses usages in the US, gasoline usage is not going up.

It hasn't been for several years, right? We talked about remember, remember peak, peak oil, right?

Or peak oil all of all of a sudden was about 12 years ago or so.

Yeah, it was peak oil. It was just peak oil usage. It wasn't peak production. Right.

So I don't think they're going to turn around those long term trends.

Well, Richard, before we go, you wrote an obituary for us at Automotive News about Tom Motano, probably best known as the father of the Mazda Miata,

who died September 20th just days before his 78th birthday. Talk about his career in legacy.

Boy, this one really hits home because Tom and I were Facebook friends and I saw them a few times at car shows and informally I knew Tom,

but I could count about every December 23rd getting a Christmas greeting from him every single year.

And that might not seem like much, but let me tell you, Tom was the kind of guy who just loved people and he wanted to create a car that brought people together.

And that's exactly what the Mazda Miata has done. There are car clubs and and amateur racers who every weekend take their cars out and enjoy them.

And even though Tom had long ago retired from Mazda, he would go to these events and he would meet with people and he would talk about the car.

He loved that car as much as everybody else did. It's a really rare thing to create a car like the Miata.

And it's one of those cars that's just more than a collection of rubber and steel and glass. It makes people happy. It gives them a hobby.

It's more than just a way to get to work. And Tom, just like the 65 Mustang and certain core events and other really cherished cars, the Miata was just one of those cars.

And still is that people just love Richard, you're not wrong. That is that is a vehicle that just it defies description, right?

It is people absolutely love it. And they will hold onto them and they will buy old ones and they don't care.

Just to put that top down and drive around with the wind blowing through their hair. And it's such a tight little machine and so much fun.

We live here in Detroit and we get to meet some of the executives and we get to see how passionate some of them are.

But if you're away from Detroit or a place that builds cars, the people who make cars are just kind of nameless, faceless people who you really don't get to see their passion.

But I went and looked at some of the tributes that people had written about Tom. And if you have a minute, Kel, can I just read?

Sure. It will help us get a better understanding in the sense of who Tom was.

Okay, I am sad for the world. We lost an innovator, an inventor, an artist and above all a teacher.

Tom valued his time teaching his students and said he would never want to do anything else. He truly felt it where he was was where he was meant to be.

That was from a student that Tom taught at the Art Academy of San Francisco. After his car design career ended in 2002, he began teaching design at the Art Academy.

And he was still working up until recently. His gentle voice and patience was what made him a great teacher in the industrial design group.

A business group I was in had a meadow lover in the group. And when I found out I knew Tom, he was all fanboy and the businessman persona melted away.

He wanted to know if I could introduce him to his car club. Tom's fame never went to his head. He was nice enough to talk to anyone about the work he did.

And there's just tribute after tribute after tribute about Tom. He was, you know, this might sound like a terrible caricature.

But when I think of, of soft spoken wise Japanese guys, I always think of Mr. Miyogi and karate kid. He was, Tom was kind of like that.

He was like, this all, this wise old soul who just love people and love to help improve people. He is just one of those, one of those guys who's marked in the auto industry is going to be felt for decades to come.

No, great point guys because if you don't like a meada, I can't trust you straight up. Like, that's the adult go kart. I love that car, especially a manual, a manual meada. Oh my gosh. Like, it's a go kart. It's so much fun. Well, rest his soul. And guys, thank you so much for joining me on weekend drive.

It was great to be here. Kellen. I'm absolutely shocked that Larry and I agreed on something.

It's good to see you again, bud. That is all for this weekend drive edition of Daily Drive. I'm Kellen Walker. Thanks to automotive news executive producer Jake near for his help on today's podcast.

You can get the latest news on electrification, cyber security and everything happening in the auto industry at auto news dot com. Come back on Monday for a conversation with experts about how they expect US sales to fair in the last quarter of 2025.

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Sept. 27, 2025 | Weekend Drive: Cyberattack fallout for Stellantis, JLR

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