There’s no action better fit to remind you of your age than consuming a diet primarily of cookies, booze, and cookie-themed booze* for a few days. Another surprisingly good way to count how many trips you’ve made around the yellow dwarf at the center of our solar system is the dissolution of certain prejudices.
Are you old enough to remember when large swathes of the population thought that hybrids were some sort of left-wing, Hollyweird conspiracy to neuter America’s manhood? The Morning Dump remembers. Times, they are a-Changli.
Tesla is a company that’s become political in nature, and the symbol of that change has been the Cybertruck. Do you want more proof that the market has changed? Tesla decreased its contract with a supplier of cathode material for the 4680 cell used in the truck by 99%!
Chinese automakers exported a ton of EVs, and the biggest importer might surprise you if you haven’t been to Texas recently. And, speaking of surprises, it looks like Detroit is going to have two separate newspapers again.
Hybrids Are The New Normal
Photo: Hyundai
If I’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that moving the Overton Window has been less about slowly appealing to people in the middle and more about trying to normalize an extreme point until enough people shift halfway in that direction. This is often far from ideal, from a little-d “democracy” standpoint, but it’s just the way it works right now.
As someone who cares about the environment and drives enough electric cars to know that they’d work for a lot more people than currently own one, I’m a little troubled by the likely flattening of EV demand next year. Some of this is a price thing, as automakers prioritized the wrong vehicles. Some of this is infrastructure. Some of it, sadly, is the politicization of electric cars.
If there’s one positive outcome of this, it’s that hybrids, once looked down upon as an emasculating toy for the Larry Davids of the world, are now just normal. [Ed Note: It helps that plentiful and affordable hybrid offerings these days don’t look like jellybeans, they’re big enough for the US consumer, and they offer a really nice driving experience. -DT]. I’ve been writing about the year/decade of the hybrid for a while, and a lot of that was based on the idea that people will make logical decisions and that, for many people, a hybrid is the most logical route.
There’s a fun read in Bloomberg this week that’s basically making the point that hybrids are just another car for people, and many of them don’t even give it a second thought:
It’s also increasingly difficult to discern a hybrid from a solely gas-powered model, said Scott Hardman, assistant director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California at Davis. Carmakers today often don’t even label a hybrid as such. Consider Toyota’s RAV4, one of the best-selling vehicles in America. The 2026 version of the SUV comes in six different variants, all of which include an electric motor and a gas tank.
“A hybrid is just a regular car now,” Hardman said. “You can buy one by accident.”
Kunes, the Midwest dealer, said most of his customers don’t pay much attention to how the vehicle propels itself; they’re just looking for the most affordable option. “People don’t necessarily come in looking for a hybrid vehicle,” he explained, “but they don’t mind taking one.”
Because vehicles like the Sienna and Camry are now hybrid-only, the technology is now reaching parity with purely gas-powered cars on average, although vehicle-to-vehicle hybrids tend to be slightly more expensive.
This is a great outcome for hybrids and for the environment. Are environmentalists celebrating this? Some are, probably, although the loudest people (primarily on BlueSky) are now suddenly anti-hybrid, because politics makes people insane.
Tesla Cuts Order From $2.9 Billion To Just $7k
Photo credit: Tesla
If you think you’re having a bad day, imagine being the person who negotiated the deal between South Korean battery supplier L&F and Tesla for nearly $3 billion in high-nickel cathode material. That $3 billion deal is now, according to a recent filing, just $7,400.
These materials were supposed to be used for Tesla’s supposedly inexpensive 4680 cell. So what happened? This Reuters article floats a couple of theories:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a plan in 2020 to mass-produce the 4680, a less expensive battery that he said would help it make a small, compelling $25,000 electric car that was fully autonomous within about three years from then.
However, as EV demand slowed and Tesla struggled to ramp up production and development of the 4680 cells, the company ultimately did not need as much cathode material from L&F as initially anticipated, analysts said.
The postponement (or cancellation?) of the $25,000 Tesla is a big reason, but the more immediate cause might be the market failure of the Cybertruck, which is the only vehicle using the cells. The Cybercab was also supposed to use 4680 cells, so I’m not sure what this means for Tesla’s expectations for that vehicle.
Mexico Was China’s Biggest EV Export Market In November
Photo: DepositPhotos.com
The renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is going to be the most pivotal test of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s leadership, at least as it relates to the car market.
So far, Mexico has done well in dealing with a sometimes difficult-to-read White House. It’s also managed to use the tension between the United States and China to its advantage.
Currently, it makes cars and parts for the United States, while also being able to import cheap Chinese cars and EVs. According to this Bloomberg article, Mexico was actually the biggest importer of Chinese-made EVs in November.
China’s EV exports to Mexico in November rose 2,367% y/y to 19,344, the highest among all nations or territories, according to data from China Customs.
Obviously, this isn’t usual, as most Chinese EVs go to other Asian countries and Europe. I haven’t been able to find good reporting on why this happened, so I’m open to an explanation. China has huge overcapacity issues, but I think this might be a weird quirk of delivery.
Currently, the BYD Explorer No.1 RoRo ship, with a capacity of 7,000 vehicles, is in port in Mexico, and the BYD Shenzen, which can carry 9,000 vehicles, just left.
The Detroit Free Press And The Detroit News Are Two Papers Again
Photo: The Detroit News
There aren’t many cities in America that have two flagship papers these days. I remember growing up with the Houston Post and the Houston Chronicle. Detroit is one of those cities, although a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) for the last four decades has seen the papers operating thanks to a lot of shared resources.
That agreement is done, now, and so Detroit will have two independently operating newspapers in the new year. Did the JOA work? Here’s a Detroit News article on it, arguing that it did:
Bitterly contested in court when it was first proposed in 1986, the Detroit joint operating agreement remains a subject of debate over whether it was a success, although its primary stated goal — preserving two editorial voices — was fulfilled.
“Ultimately, what it intended to do was to keep two papers in Detroit,” said the Poynter Institute’s Kelly McBride, who advises news organizations on best practices. “So yeah, I guess that means it was successful. Clearly, I don’t think Detroit would have two papers now if the (joint operating agreement) had not existed.”
But McBride and former editors of both papers said it’s difficult to separate the role of business partnerships in the survival or death of newspapers compared to the existential loss of funding widely blamed on digital advertising.
If you live in Detroit and have been missing a Sunday edition of the Detroit Free Press, get excited.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Here’s Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood with “Lady Bird” for no obvious reason.
The Big Question
Is there a car prejudice you once held that you’ve let go of?
*My brother-in-law and I polished off a bottle of this. No regrets.
Topshot credit: Toyota; DepositPhotos.com
