Last year I wrote that the BYD Seagull was the most important car that debuted last year, and certainly the most important one named after an Anton Chekov play. That was back when this thing cost about $14,000 in China. Due to an ongoing price war in China, BYD has managed to drop that price below $10,000. How?
A price war is about the only war that I have any stomach for at the moment, but eventually, a price war turns into a trade war, and the EU is considering proactive/retroactive tariffs as it investigates if Chinese cars are unfairly subsidized (hint: they are, as are European cars). Nissan dealers appear to be in their own protracted battle against Nissan and its addiction to fleet sales.
And, finally, we’ll talk about Our Next Energy.
This Thing Costs $9,700 If You Can Believe It
Sure, Chinese cars have been subsidized by the government. Yes, they have benefited from a huge national effort to be good at batteries. Yes, Chinese automakers probably learned a lot from joint ventures with U.S. companies. Yes, Chinese automakers benefit from laxer environmental regulations and fewer moral compunctions when it comes to either child labor in the Congo or slave labor.
None of that is a guarantee that you can build a good car. Decades of government-backed car companies utilizing questionably motivated labor in the Soviet Union never managed to produce a truly great car.
Chinese automaker BYD’s Seagull (Dolphin Mini elsewhere) is an attractive city car with a reasonable range of about 130-180 miles (depending on the measure you’re using). At $14,000 it was a steal. At $9,700 I don’t even have words for it. This car will cost about $21,000 in Mexico and even that seems like a decent deal for a roughly Honda Fit-sized subcompact EV city car.
The how of this is important and has a lot to do with BYD’s huge lead and huge scale. The why is even more important, and I’ll look to this Reuters report on China’s wild price war for more information:
BYD has become a relentless discounter in the price war Tesla began in the world’s largest auto market last year. That aggressive stance has helped it unseat its U.S. rival as the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles even if most of BYD’s cars are sold in China.
I enjoy the mention there that, essentially, Tesla started this price war and seems to be losing it. You come for the king, you best not miss, as Joey Tribbiani once famously stated.
The next question is, of course, what happens to margins if you discount this much? Tesla has already struggled with lower-than-usual margins in its price war. Reuters addresses that as well:
Gross profit margins for the Warren Buffett-backed automaker have to date held up reasonably well. It logged a 22% margin in the third quarter, up from 18.7% in the second quarter, according to Reuters calculations.
That’s not bad!
EU Is Thinking About Retroactive Tariffs Against Chinese EVs
I’ve already written at length about the general hypocrisy of the EU’s investigation into whether or not Chinese cars are unfairly subsidized. Sometimes it’s ok to be a hypocrite, however, and I don’t necessarily blame European Union officials for being worried about the sudden influx of cheap Chinese electric cars.
But, because the EU is a big European bureaucracy, it has to do the whole let’s-investigate-it thing. That’s nice and all, but the volume of Chinese car imports has risen 11% since October. There’s not enough time to wait.
In order to address this timing issue, the EU is saying it’s going to start keeping track of every import into the company so that, if the investigation finds out something fishy is going on, it can retroactively charge duties on those vehicles that are already here and, presumably, already sold to consumers.
From The South China Morning Post:
The document says that if the EU waited to impose duties, its own manufacturers would “suffer from diminishing sales and reduced production levels if imports continue at the current increased levels”.
It can also be assumed that the commission is satisfied it has enough evidence to put duties on EVs made in China, but wants to expedite the process.
The note, which was published in the EU’s official journal on Wednesday, said that regarding subsidies, “the commission has at its disposal sufficient evidence tending to show that imports of the product concerned from the PRC [China] are being subsidised”.
I’m shocked, shocked that there are unfair government subsidies going on in this establishment!
Beijing is almost certainly going to get big mad about this and who knows where it goes, but I think even that great poet Nelly would note that our Trade Cold War is getting hot in here, though, given the folks involved, I suggest everyone keep their garments on.
Nissan Dealers: ‘We’re Getting Crushed’
There are many reasons why, if you’re a dealer, you don’t want your parent company to dump a lot of its cars to fleets. The biggest is that it’s bad for residual values as fleets, specifically rental car companies, turn over cars quickly, meaning a flood of cheap and relatively new cars (depending who borrows them) that make it harder for you to charge for your actual new version.
I highly suggest you read this piece in Automotive News because it’s thorough and extremely brutal about Nissan, which is going back to its old ways of relying on fleet sales. The data is great, specifically that 44% of February sales volume went to fleets, and that about 25% over the first 11 months of fiscal 2023 also ended up as fleet sales.
But the quotes, it’s the quotes. The quotes are rough:
Nissan’s dependence on rental fleets to move metal is “catastrophic” for its retailers, said a dealer, one of four interviewed for this article. They asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the automaker.
“Nissan is selling around the dealer network, half of whom are already unprofitable,” the dealer said.
Here’s another one:
“We’re getting crushed,” one of the dealers said. “Honda is selling 100,000 a month, Toyota is selling 170,000, and we’re selling 30,000.”
Dealership lots are piling up with last year’s models, including reportedly more than 30,000 Rogue and nearly 5,000 Ariya crossovers.
This is bad for consumers as well. There are consumers who bought a Nissan Rogue in 2022 or early 2023 and paid above MSRP and still owe money on that car, which means when values plummet they’re underwater and, as one dealer put it, “will never get out of their Nissan.”
‘Our Next Energy’ Lays Off More Staff
Last summer I paid a social visit to a friend at Our Next Energy, the Michigan-based battery startup, and there were so many employees crammed into its HQ that the company had to hire a valet just to park staff cars. I saw a Rivian R1T shoved up on a curb.
This was a big contrast from a couple of years earlier when I shot a video for them at my old company and it felt like ONE was approximately nine people in a big office.
The expected slowdown in the EV market has impacted the company, with CEO and Founder Mujeeb Ijaz moved over into the role of CTO while a new CEO, Paul Humphries, instigating another round of staff reductions.
Per The Detroit News:
The latest reduction includes 37 jobs, 24 of which are in Michigan, as the company deemphasizes administrative roles in favor of its technical work, according to a statement. That’ll leave about 240 employees in Michigan and closer to 270 nationally.
The company is still making batteries as it tries to scale up toward profitability, but it just goes to show that building a battery industry, even with heavy subsidies, is tough work.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I accidentally ended up at a Gin Blossoms concert a couple of years ago. I was visiting a friend at a ski town and her husband worked there and invited us to the summer event they were having and, lo and behold, the Gin Blossoms were playing. They put on a good show, and this throwback review on Pitchfork of the album’s sad history reminded me to listen to that album:
Since regrouping around the turn of the century, they’ve carried on as a workhorse touring act, sharing ’90s nostalgia packages with bands like Everclear and Sugar Ray and headlining county fairs and gatherings like Canton, Ohio’s Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival Ribs Burnoff or the Mid-South Great Steak Cookoff at Southland Park Gaming and Racing—wherever masses are charring meat outdoors, there’s a chance Gin Blossoms could be there. It’s not a bad living, really.
The Big Question
What was the last car you rented? Did you like it?
Last rental car I had as a service loaner: 2013 Chevy Malibu. I was given to me when my ’13 Sonic Turbo decided that its poorly designed water pump had already had enough.
Last rental car I had as an insurance-paid rental: 2015 GMC Tahoe. I’m still irritated about that, since I was stopped 10 cars back in a line at a red light and the dude who hit me FREAKING T-BONED ME IN THE DRIVER’S SIDE after pulling an extremely illegal and ill-advised U-turn directly in the path of a glass truck.
Last car that belonged to a rental fleet that I drove: My Mustang. It started its life in California as a rental car. Yeah it probably was hooned a bit then, but the second owner took meticulous care of it, and only put about 5k miles a year on it during their ownership.
Last rental I had was a while back, a 1500 Ram. I liked it for the couple days I had it.
The better part was when I went to get it and asked if they had “anything with a stick” available.. I couldn’t quite figure out if they were more confused about what I was asking for or why. Obviously, they didn’t have anything.
I had an Audi Q3 as a rental a few months back, I liked it! Cool color, nice interior, pretty fun to drive except there was approximately zero steering feel. My wife liked it even more, which is problematic now that we’re shopping for a new car LOL. On a different trip last year I had reserved an economy car and was given a Challenger! That was fun. I don’t want one of those, but I was very happy to spend a long weekend with one.
Gosh, has it been this long? Probably the (manual!) Fiat 500 I had in Germany, which was a fun little runabout until I got the key locked inside and had to have it towed back to the rental agency. I’d left it there to unload luggage, then closed the back hatch without thinking twice in between trips, as surely the car wouldn’t lock itself with the key inside.
Well, it did just that.
This was a whole back and forth with Enterprise that resulted in me getting a refund for the half-day I got with a car I’d rented for longer as no one could just send a dude to unlock the door. IIRC, they found an issue with the key later and that’s how I got a refund? Also, I’m still baffled on this—was there no German version of Pop-A-Lock?!
Here’s hoping I have better luck with the Lemons Rally. We reserved a luxury-class car, so if it mysteriously dies in the desert, I’m never renting with frickin’ Enterprise again.
I had a Frontier rental in Moab back in 2017, I hated the rubbermaid interior, but it actually drove pretty decently. I liked the Nissan 4.0 much better than the 4.0 in my 4Runner, the Nissan felt torquey, which is something nobody has ever accused the Yota 4.0 of.
I actually like the look of the current Frontier, but prob wouldn’t buy one.
I think you forgot about the Nissan Cherry Orchard.
Bravo. Almost as good as the Tesla Model 3 Sisters
I rarely rent cars, but I had a VW Passat when my car was in for bodywork after an idiot in another VW rear ended me in stop-and-go traffic. Nothing special, but it did everything perfectly well and I didn’t mind driving it in spite of my hate for VW.
One before that was after my mk3 Focus got totaled. Brand new 2016 KIA Rio. Worst car I’ve ever driven or been in hands down and I had a friend with a ’75 Nova with a rear shock rotted through the tower and doors that flew open in turns, plus others with “parts cars” driven around on long-expired stickers by hyperaware people who could spot 5-0 at a mile and cut into parking lots to hide with mantis shrimp reflexes. I drove an ’83 Subaru GL all summer with the front caved in from a tree that fell on it, having to watch the temp gauge to play shut/restart or pull over and cool off in traffic due to a cracked radiator. Still a better driver that felt better put together. KIA got shit mileage—23 mpg. TWENTY-THREE! F’n how?! My Focus ST and my GR86 average/d 29-31! And it wasn’t just gutless and the power didn’t just only start to come on when it was halfway up the tach, every single component lagged. Stomp it and the engine took a moment or five to respond, then the transmission did the same before it would start to move, then someone pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks would outrun it until it finally hit something around 3500 rpm and it started accelerating OK. Never felt so unsafe pulling out of anywhere as I did in that horrible, ugly POS that made that Subaru with 65 less hp on paper (practically half that of the KIAs “horse”power that were really geriatric cats in costumes photographed using forced perspective) feel like a tuned drag car off the line in comparison.
As someone who drove multiple 80s Subarus in various states ranging from ‘eh’ to ‘Mildred don’t pull out in front of that!’, that is quite the evocative paragraph there. I salute you.
My last rental was actually a 2022 or 2023 Altima. I had it almost a month as I had to get my Volvo S60 T8 Recharge repaired by a body shop.
Honestly…I kind of liked it. Yes I beat the piss out of it because rental car. But it still returned 38 mpg mixed (mostly highway) over that month. The basic HVAC controls not being in the screen was a nice change from my S60. Everything just worked like a car should. Controls were intuitive, it was quick enough, and it felt fairly nimble.
I have no idea how this car would be after 5 years mechanically or utility-wise, but for the rental car purposes, it was solid.
38mpg mixed is impressive for a car rated 28/39/32 at the highest. I guess sometimes a N/A engine, CVT and decent aero just works well.
The Jatco CVTs grenade at about 45,000-60,000 miles like clockwork and getting a new one installed is about $5,000 out the door. They’re absolutely horrible. Apparently if you do frequent fluid changes (I think it’s at a crazy rate like every 15,000 miles or something) you can keep them alive a little longer but they’re timebombs. I know 3 or 4 people who needed full transmission replacements in their Rogues.
If I recall correctly Nissan claims the transmission fluid is good for a lifetime and doesn’t include the changes in their recommended maintenance….and it’s one of the reason their cars shit them out at an absurd rate.
My stance is that “lifetime fluid” means the old fluid will kill the part, thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Til death do us part” doesn’t mean much if you murder your spouse.
This is a problem for a lot of modern automatics. The auto in my Voyager supposedly has lifetime fluid in it. Do I trust Chrysler at all to make anything that lasts a lifetime? No, not unless it’s the lifespan of a hamster.
I will be changing the fluid for sure.
I know my old boss is still driving his 13 Cube*. We went round & round with Nissan Corporate multiple times, and they refused to admit there was even a way to check the fluid, much less change it. As he puts ~30k a year on his cars for business, he is really, really preemptive about maintaining them. We finally figured it out & he started changing fluid every year.
‘Lifetime Fluid’ yeah: Nissan can go bite a dipstick!
*distinctive wrap: saw him less than 6months ago
Last rental car I had (pre-pandemic) was a Fusion hybrid. Loved it. Great on gas, big enough to be comfy. Trunk configuration with the hybrid battery was… odd, but it fit all our luggage for the trip, so no complains.
Of course China can offer a brand new EV under 10k. They can undercut ANYBODY, and they are NOT afraid to play dirty, or even do the same shit that the US and Europe does LOL
China sucks, but the other car companies absolutely deserve it for gouging and leaving the bottom end of the market open. Mitsubishi doubled the price of the Mirage as its competition disappeared.
People can’t afford new cars anymore, stuck buying used.
US standards aren’t “higher” just different. Red turn signals is definitely NOT a “higher” standard. It’s also another type of tariff, a non-monetary trade barrier.
We need to accept UNECE standards.
Also protecting un-belted passengers isn’t a higher standard. It’s just stupid.
Let Darwin take its course.
The last 4 rentals I had were equal parts Doge Charger and Nissan Altima.
I hate both of those cars.
I actually like the Altima and Charger, but only as a rental. The Charger and Altima definitely beat having some low trim level Equinox, Malibu or Rouge.
I hear you, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear.
I rented a Jeep Patriot once and that was rock bottom for me. The Doge and Nissan were at least predictable quality.
I’ll take a rental Charger any day, but I hate it when they hand me the keys to an Altima.
Rental: Polestar 2 from Hertz. My first EV experience. Car is good. I know, Chinese. Very Volvoish, including all the error messages it throws about parking sensors and “driver aids.”
Matt, that was a very muscular Chekhov name check. Chekhov check? But the pop culture, the Tribbiani, the Nelly, David needs to cry Uncle and you should stop torturing him .
Previous rental? Nissan Rogue. If you don’t think it’s a penalty box, you haven’t driven at steady 50 mph and been enveloped in that drone.
Last rental was a Cadillac XT6 that we had the immense joy of paying ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS TO RENT FOR A DAY after a car purchase fell thru several states away.
Aside from the fact it cost ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS TO RENT FOR A DAY, it was a magnanimous turd that could barely overtake on the highway. At least the A/C was good and I could charge my phone to get us home.
Before that, I had a convertible ecoboost Mustang. Flimsiest car I have ever driven and not very inspiring. It was whatever.
A few years ago, I had a Cadillac CT erm.. something. The big FWD sedan one. My defining memory of that car was the heated seats and steering wheel turned on automatically on cold mornings, which was nice. Oh, and that I did FWD burnouts leaving every red light cause why not? Also fit an entire dining room table and chairs and a bench in it. That one was ok.
All the Uhauls I’ve rented have been great for cargo capacity, but drive terribly. 6/10
Oh yeah, I guess a Uhaul was most recent for some impromptu furniture moving. It was also about like every other Uhaul except a GMC cutaway instead of the usual Ford. However…it was nighttime and the taillights weren’t working, as I was informed after the first leg of the journey. Guess at least it was brightly colored!
This car will cost about $21,000 in Mexico and even that seems like a decent deal for a roughly Honda Fit-sized subcompact EV city car.
Hyundai Tuscon. Did not like it. Can’t exactly say(remember) why, but it just didn’t do it for me.
Play stupid games win stupid prizes. Nissan has been absolutely desperate for the better part of the last decade because their products have objectively been inferior in almost every class they compete in. What class does Nissan or Infiniti have anything truly compelling in? I’ll wait.
Publications are desperately trying to make the Rogue a thing, and I guess it looks fine and comes in at an appealing price point but a Jatco CVT and VC Turbo 3 cylinder? Have fun when the thing’s mechanically totaled at 60,000 miles. I’ve watched too many coworkers over the years get burned by that godforsaken transmission, and there are huge issues with the VC turbos that have the potential to be catastrophic.
Since the products suck Nissan has had to rely on fleet sales and subprime financing to keep stock moving. No shit that makes residual values ass and keeps customers who can afford/get qualified for something nicer looking elsewhere. I feel like we’ve been in this cycle with them forever at this point…and let me get out the world’s tiniest violin for the dealer who’s sad that the customers they preyed on won’t be able to get into a new Rogue at 27% APR as easily anymore because they saddled them with so much debt.
Eat shit. It’s YOUR fault. The car payment/perpetual debt culture in this country is out of control. But anyway…Nissan has no one to blame but themselves, as usual.
To be fair to Nissan, the lack of new product was due in part to Renault. Can’t necessarily blame the french for the CVTs though.
Nope! Japanese companies insist on using as many Japanese parts as possible. If I recall correctly it’s largely for financial reasons…but there’s a reason why you barely see ubiquitous transmissions like the ZF8 in any Japanese products. It’s almost entirely Aisin and Jatco stuff.
Nissan made a terrible choice, but they didn’t necessarily willingly shoot themselves in the dick repeatedly. They were, you know…highly encouraged to shoot themselves in the dick and given a loaded gun
Tbh this really isn’t accurate. Nissan hasn’t really been managed by the old Nismo guard since the triple alliance since 1999. Ghosen’s push for scale increases really water-down the Nissan line-up into what we have today. Really see a big dive in quality at Nissan when the more global RNM cars started appearing in the early 2000’s. Very noticeable if you poke around a Tochigi or Musashimurayama built cars and the Mexican built car right after.
And the reason you see JDM brands primarily use Jatco and Aisin is because they own them. And they’re often made miles from the assembly facility.
Useful information, thanks for sharing.
I rented a pretty recent Ram ProMaster 1500 in December to schlepp my furniture from PA to Miami for a show in December. Drove up and down the east coast, and around Miami for almost 2 weeks and honestly it was pretty decent, and certainly did the job it needed to and then some. Man I honestly could have put an air mattress in and slept in it had I not wanted to pay lodging haha
Was just sitting down in a Sentra and thinking “this is the hardest, most brutally uncomfortable seat I’ve ever been in” when a late model Camry pulled into the row, still dripping from the car wash. Grabbed my stuff and booked it over there before anyone else could beat me.
Served well as the platonic ideal of a rental car for a full week.
Geez, and my parents complain about the seats in their Camry all the time, too hard, bottom too short, no lower back support, etc, I keep telling them it could be worse, my Hyundai is tied for the 2nd worst ones I’ve experienced (with a couple Ford Escapes I had as company cars). Worst is still a ’90s Chevy Malibu I rented from a Rent-A-Wreck-style place, drivers seat was collapsed and the frame was poking through the fabric, nothing tops that
Wife has a (relatively loaded) escape that I find quite comfortable. I do wish it was quieter at highway speeds though. Something, somewhere on that car whistles.
Had a Nissan pickup once with a steel member inside the seat that was squarely under the driver’s left hip bone and had long since pulverized the foam to nothing. Didn’t even have cruise control or intermittent wipers. Miserable, but unkillable with the KA24DE and manual gearbox, and the fuel economy was quite good for a truck in those days.
I can say the base cloth seats in Escapes are garbage, rock hard and the seat bottom is way too short to support your thigh. I was putting 30,000 a year on them and it got very noticeable.
Also had two that had sections of paint blister and peel off, and one that had one side of the dashboard laid over the A-pillar moldings on one side but tucked under on the other side, was distracting, the same way when you notice a misaligned wallpaper seam in a room and then immediately look at it every time you go in there afterward
I should probably have also mentioned that escape is currently on it’s third 1.5T engine in 75,000 miles. Nail biter on whether to keep it after the last replacement, as it’s now out of warranty, but it apparently got a revised block casting to correct the issue.
It has inconsistent dash-to-pillar gaps too.
We had a lot of problems fleet-wide specifically with the turbos failing, no block casting defects that we ran into as far as I’m aware, but we would keep them for about 3 years/90,000 miles and major mechanical repairs were not unheard of.
My understanding is less “casting defect” than “design fault”. The block deck had grooves machined in it between the cylinders to allow coolant to flow between the block and head gasket, cooling the hot space between the cylinder liners. which over time ate the head gasket. New design has a hole drilled under the deck surface.
Wow, did the PowerShift engineers transfer from the transmission department to engines?
I was so excited when we got a Titanium trim Escape for a rental a few years ago. What a disappointment that was. Smaller than you’d expect inside, no place to stash anything in the interior, and there was frequently the smell of gas inside it when we would first start driving after it had been sitting for a while. It got crossed off all our shopping lists after that trip.
I had 3 of them as company cars, over 120,000 miles combined, the whole time I wished we’d have just bought minivans. But, our entire global fleet was Escapes and Kugas, someone at the head office had a hard-on for them vs Transit Connects.
Not enough space for what we used them for, poor ride quality, and mediocre fuel economy (only a couple mpg better than the Lincoln Town Car I owned at the time, in real world driving)
Decent looking though, and the higher spec trims could feel premium inside (they moved managers out of Tauruses, Fusions, and Explorers into upper level Escapes)
I’d have been pissed to get moved out of a Fusion into an Escape. The Fusion was a much nicer vehicle. RIP.
I had forgotten about the terrible mileage too. It was Toyota truck-level disappointing.
Last car I rented was a Charger. Loved it. Great car, even with the V6. Went looking at them when I was shopping for a new car two-ish years back
The last 3 rentals I had were:
4runner – did not like it. Felt slow and outdated
Modern Explorer – liked a bit. Drove okay but wouldn’t buy
2016ish Frontier – drove like an old truck but after a few days I liked it for reasons unknown
My last rental was a Malibu that I quite liked overall, but I could not get used to the CVT. I really hated it. It was poky off the line so you keep pressing harder on the gas and then all of a sudden you’d zoom forward like it got slapped on the ass. I just wanted a smooth throttle tip-in.
Under the “Our Next Energy” section:
I’m guessing that’s meant to be ONE.
Yup, got me!
I rented a Corolla on Turo a few weeks ago. It was exactly what I needed – reliable, efficient, and cheap to rent ($29 a day).
I cannot get any rental around here for less than $60 a day. That is even the Costco Travel price which is usually a bit better price than any other option. I could rent a U-Haul for less as long as I kept the milage way down.
The last car I rented was an Infiniti QX80 and my god…it was not good. Big on the outside but small on the inside, slow, outdated infotainment, terrible MPG, sloppy handling, and ugly (to my eyes). I couldn’t believe that a) they still sell these things and b) have the audacity to charge $75k starting MSRP. I believe a new QX80 is inbound, and can’t come soon enough.
There are consumers who bought a Nissan Rogue in 2022 or early 2023 and paid above MSRP and still owe money on that car, which means when values plummet they’re underwater and, as one dealer put it, “will never get out of their Nissan.”
“You’ll Never Get Out of Your Nissan” sounds like either their next ad campaign or the deepest circle of Hell.
100X this