Leasing Is Coming Back. The Deals Aren't as Good, and That's an Opportunity.
Americans still want to lease, but the deals aren't what they used to be, and the gap is quietly pushing more buyers into loans that will follow them for seven years.
Toyota Built an AI Version of Its Chairman. Here's the Line It Shouldn't Cross.
Toyota created a digital twin of Chairman Akio Toyoda, an AI avatar built to teach management philosophy at scale, and it already got basic facts wrong in its first public interview.
🚙 Edmunds found the average has grown nearly $4,000 since 2021, largely because buyers who couldn't get into the market over the past few years simply held onto their cars longer and paid them down.
Tesla's China Split Isn't About China. It's About SpaceX.
Tesla may be preparing to separate its China business as Elon Musk weighs a potential merger with SpaceX, a move driven more by defense-contractor restrictions than by competition on the ground.
Hybrids Just Took Back the Lead, and Franchise Dealers Are the Ones Who Win
For the first time in four years, hybrid registrations overtook EVs in California, and the shift structurally favors franchised dealers over direct-sales brands that don't offer hybrids at all.
Your Best Trade-In Customers Don't Know They're Sitting on $13,000
Two-thirds of trade-in customers are walking into dealerships with record positive equity averaging $13,330, and most of them have no idea it's a ready-made down payment.
🚙 Wholesale values are softening, trucks, SUVs, and now luxury cars leading the drop Retail affordability is moving the other way, the income needed to buy an average new vehicle rose again in June Transaction prices are still climbing even as wholesale gets cheaper to acquire
Amazon's Zoox Just Cleared the Bar No One Else Has
Amazon's Zoox became the first company approved in the U.S. to commercially deploy paid robotaxis built without a steering wheel or pedals. The approval is real, but it's narrower than the headline suggests.
This Is How You Make Kids Fight to Join the Industry
Sinclair College just ran a three-day automotive camp for middle schoolers, and it's doing more for workforce recruiting than most dealer job postings ever will. Paul's take on why is the real story here.
Carvana just posted its biggest quarter ever, selling 197,325 vehicles for $7.4 billion in revenue, up 38% year over year. The headline number is impressive. What Paul and Kyle pulled out of the call is more useful.
Wholesale Is Getting Cheaper. Retail Buyers Aren't Feeling It.
Dealers are getting a break at auction this week. Customers aren't getting one at the desk. Data from Black Book, Cox Automotive, and Kelley Blue Book all point to the same widening gap: wholesale is loosening while retail affordability keeps tightening. That gap is this week's opportunity, for stores built to catch it.
