I had two interesting conversations this weekend that reminded me of how well General Motors is doing relative to the historical perception of the company. One was from a Tesla owner who asked me which company I thought was doing the best with electrification. Globally, that’s still probably BYD, and Tesla will probably sell the most EVs in the United States for years to come, but GM has positioned itself quite well for the future.
A different Tesla owner asked me what I thought about the Chevy Traverse, specifically because it’s a nice way to get into Super Cruise. I just finished driving a nice RS model (review coming eventually), and so I was able to relay to him that I not only liked the car, but also thought Super Cruise was still the ADAS system I trusted the most among the current offerings. It turns out that Super Cruise isn’t just functional; the company also sees a lot of profits coming from the service in the future.
While The Morning Dump may start this week with a company preparing well for the future, that seems to be the exception. First Brands allegedly played the long game poorly, and now most of its brands are being sold off before the whole company collapses in on itself. China was supposed to be a growth market for Škoda, but that is clearly not happening. And the Middle East is where luxury carmakers go to reap huge profits, but even delivering cars is dicey right now.
GM’s Playing The Long Game With Super Cruise
The bad rap that GM gets is that it abandons technologies and markets right as they’re becoming popular. It’s not entirely unfair, as the company does have a history of doing just that. Though, how much of GM’s current leadership can really be blamed for walking away from airbags or touchscreens a half-century ago?
Recently, the original founder of robotaxi company Cruise accused GM of falling into old habits after abandoning the self-driving startup. That sounds wrong to me. Cruise was a terribly run company, and it would have taken years for GM to recoup its investment, if it ever did. Closing when it did and rolling what it could into its excellent Super Cruise ADAS system seems like the best of a lot of bad choices.
Will GM, having gone so far with Super Cruise, abandon that, too? I don’t think so, and GM CFO Paul Jacobson told a crowd at the Bank of America Global Automotive Summit that the company sees “exponential growth” for subscription services, which is currently a mix of OnStar and Super Cruise.
As Automotive News reports, the GM strategy is to offer new vehicles with eight years of basic OnStar and three years of Super Cruise if the vehicle is so equipped. That gives the owner plenty of time to decide if it’s something they want and use.
About 13 million people are subscribed to GM services, generating about $20 in monthly revenue per person, the company said.
“What I like about it is by giving everyone the basic package for eight years, you’re casting the widest possible net,” said David Whiston, a senior equity analyst for Morningstar. “You almost have to push it to [consumers] rather than hoping they’re going to volunteer or get sold on it at the dealership. You just want to let them have it with no obligation.”
About a third of customers with the basic OnStar subscription upgrade to access additional features, including advanced safety and video streaming services that can be paid for on a monthly or yearly basis. At least 30 percent of the 35,000 GM drivers whose three-year subscription to Super Cruise expired in 2025 renewed.
The article also goes on to point out that subscriptions, while potentially annoying, are high-margin for the automaker. GM isn’t alone here, as plenty of other automakers are pursuing a similar strategy. Ford’s also added a host of workplace subscription services under its Ford Pro banner. I don’t like short trials, and I think basic things, like heated seats, are silly to charge for as they’re not going to get any better with an OTA update. Super Cruise and OnStar offer services that require constant upkeep and can improve over time.
I also think this new attitude also applies to GM’s electrification strategy. While other automakers are in the process of tossing most of their plans either for something entirely new (Ford) or nothing at all (Honda), GM has continued on basically the same path, albeit with some reasonable revisions.
First Brands Sells Fram, Autolite, And Trico For $25 Million
I remember going to Las Vegas for SEMA and the associated industry-focused show AAPEX and marveling at just how huge the First Brands section was. It made sense, First Brands built a portfolio of most of the recognizable aftermarket brands, including Fram, Autolite, and Trico. Still, it felt like an entire floor.
First Brands has now filed for bankruptcy after it was alleged that the auto parts maker had committed fraud on a grand scale to pay for all those acquisitions. What has been sold, has been shut down, as the company has been unable to get the emergency credit it needs.
PGI Northstar will also take on certain liabilities related to the 12 brands in the deal — which include Fram, Autolite and Trico — according to court documents dated Thursday.
First Brands, which recently had to shut down more factories, had been trying to sell the units while they were still operating. But potential bidders pulled out as orders dried up and the company ran out of cash to keep the businesses open, court documents show.
“Unfortunately, the high cost and associated funding requirements for resuming operations of these business lines have catalyzed key customer departures,” the company said in the filing. A judge must approve the sale before it can close.
For their part, the company’s founders have plead not guilty to numerous fraud chargers.
The Middle East Might Be More Important Than China For Luxury Carmakers
While there aren’t as many consumers in the Middle East as there are in China, buyers there historically spend big money on wild custom and limited versions of cars from Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and more. Those companies are facing a threat from the Iran War, as delivering a car to a war zone has gotten a little harder, at least according to this Reuters article:
Brands including Lamborghini, Ferrari, Jaguar Land Rover and Porsche are watching nervously. “It’s very high margin,” Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume said of Middle East sales in a media briefing earlier this month, adding of the Iran war: “We will see an impact there for sure.” VW Group owns the Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche luxury brands.
Most luxury automakers don’t disclose regional profit margins, and some, including Bentley and Rolls-Royce, no longer publish global sales numbers. But Ferrari reported volumes in the Middle East made up 4.6 percent of overall sales last year, more than it sold in China and up from 3.5 percent in 2024. The Italian sports car maker’s sales in the region are stable for now, a spokesperson said.
Former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said during his tenure he would first call wealthy collectors in the Middle East to offer high-margin special editions. Palmer told Reuters the Middle East collectors were so eager for exclusives, ‘You almost didn’t need to ask.’
In this current environment, there’s almost nowhere 100% safe to sell a car. And don’t worry, these buyers are likely to be able to still get around with their 15-20 other cars.
Škoda Is Out Of China
You blew it, China. You had excellent Czech carmaker Škoda in your country, but you were too busy buying BYDs and Geelys. And now, the South China Morning Post is reporting that the brand is leaving:
Established in 1896, Skoda entered the Chinese market in 2005 through a partnership with SAIC Volkswagen. Following the 2007 launch of its first locally produced model, the Octavia, the brand leveraged Volkswagen’s technical platforms to position itself as an “affordable German-engineered” alternative.
By 2018, the brand reached its peak in China with about 341,000 deliveries, making China its largest market. At that time, it maintained a network of more than 500 dealers selling cars including the Octavia, Superb and Kodiaq.
Despite aggressive price cuts, the brand sold 15,241 vehicles in China last year, according to company data, a 95 per cent plunge from its height and far short of its previous strategic goal of 500,000 annual deliveries.
What a waste.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
The New York Auto Show is happening this week, so I’m going to feature some live performances from New Yorkers. Here’s the incredible Fiona Apple doing “Extraordinary Machine” with her longtime collaborator Jon Brion. Is this my favorite Fiona Apple song? Today, yeah.
The Big Question
What is your best subscription? It doesn’t have to be car-related. What’s your silliest?
Top photo: GM
“exponential growth” for subscription services, which is currently a mix of OnStar and Super Cruise.
Counterpoint: Immediately after purchasing my Volt, in a WalMart parking lot before driving the 600 miles home, I installed a 50Ohm terminator on the OnStar box under the dash, disabling the antenna and thereby GM’s default location tracking.
It’s a nice car, but their not getting anything from me!
My best subscription outside of The Autopian? I’ll have to say YouTube Premium. You get zero ads and YouTube Music with the sub.YouTube is unusable on free tier imo. Silliest sub would probably be Playstation network seeing how I get to play my PS5 about 20 total hours a year.
#1 – Autopian The first website I’ve ever paid for and the *only* internet based content that I subscribe to.
#2 – Amazon Prime The blue truck stops at our house almost every day, sometimes more than once a day. The free shipping and expedited delivery are paid for by the end of the first month of the term. Prime streaming is the only other benefit we use occasionly.
#3 – Costco Not sure if this counts as a subscription but we renew every year. We have a costco 5 min away and shop there about once a month.
#4 – Sirius XM Mainly for no commercials. Have you tried listening to commercial FM lately?
My silliest subscription is obviously The Autopian. Like, have you seen this place?!
Most useful is probably a tie between Prime and YT Premium. I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon and I like Prime Video. I also spend way too much time watching various repair, fab, and other similar vids on YT so skipping the ads is nice.
My best subscription is probably a toss-up between Spotify and The Autopian, I access both daily and Spotify still gets me a “free” version of Hulu w/ads. Aside from those I support MPR and Radio K….so I guess Radio K and The Autopian are tied for silliest.
Did anyone figure out how to jailbreak/work around BMW to get heated seats without the subscription? At the end of the day, you just need to send 12v to the heater element, right?
Sirius XM.
Except for about once per year when my sub comes up for renewal and they jack the price up to about 30 bucks per month.
Then it’s an hour on the phone with their fucked up customer service dept, talking to someone for who English is not their “preferred language.”
Exhausting…eventually I get my monthly charge back to a somewhat normal rate.
Ting Mobile. Most months I pay $10 for unlimited talk and text, the flex plan I’m on just charges me $5 for every gig of data I use.
I used to have “unlimited” plans that cost me over $100 each month just because with a regular plan I’d end up using all my data on road trips I’d take once or twice a year, and what sucks even more about the “unlimited” plans is that they throttle your data speeds past a certain amount of data usage, so it’s not unlimited, it’s “unlimited”.
As for the silliest I’m a Patron of Steve1989MREInfo.
I used to buy foreign MREs to sample foreign cuisine on a budget, and found my favorite tea in one of them (Russian black tea that comes in the Russian MREs) that I still use to make iced tea regularly.
A positive story about GM? Oh boy, Torch is going to be pissed.
Not sure if it counts, but setting up auto ordering for things I need rarely but do need like furnace filters is really nice. Not only to I get the thing I need but also the reminder to do the work
VW had to do something in China. The Chinese liked VW because they got there early. That might be the skota problem in markets that look at vw as a cheap car something under a cheap car is a tough sell. Add in actual cheap cars that do things your allegedly cheap car can’t and where is the market.
GM is always trying to figure out subscriptions they did onstar and xm now super cruise. With the way both of those have gone. It makes me think the aftermarket guys like comma.ai are really on to something.
Hopefully the ecogaurd people can get to manufacturing and make less junk. Mann has been hit hard by the scammer nonsense. Only seem to be making the premium filters that they make more money. Good time to be mann I guess. Ironically I always see plenty fram on the shelves. Good luck turning that cluster around.
Best subscription? My library card – also includes HOOPLA free streaming!
No fan of Bezos but paying a little from above Prime for the extra Amazon Music option is worth it to me. It has a very large catalog, with nearly everything at least CD quality and quite a bit streaming in ultra-high-def (2x-10x better than CD digital resolution!). No commercials or ads. We listen to it all the time. Full albums as well as stations based on a song, album or artist. It has nearly every artist or group we’ve searched for.
The Autopian is my best subscription.
The silliest is the MyQ garage door opener subscription for our Tesla’s. The garage door opens and closes automatically when we arrive or leave. 85% of the time it works 100% of the time. I’m not sure if I will be renewing it since we can use the app on our phones for free. Or, go old school and keep a traditional garage door opener in the car.
So, I had a 3 month trial of Supercruise on our Bolt EUV, and wasn’t all that impressed. I realize it is not as good as the version on other GM vehicles, but it disengaged a lot and in areas around me that have had construction in the last year, the roads haven’t been remapped, so I can’t use it on a stretch of about 30 miles of I75 near me. It also costs $80 a month for Onstar One with Supercruise.
I do appreciate that at least you get 3 years included when you buy it from new.
I have the Comma 4 installed on my truck and it’s vastly better than Supercruise IMHO. Since it’s vision based, it works on all roads and the only time it needs some help is when the curves are too sharp. And no monthly subscriptions! And I love the Sunnypilot feature of the lane centering always being on, regardless of the adaptive cruise control being on. The ability to still operate the gas and brake while having the car do the steering is really neat.
My best subscription is also the Autopian membership.
My silliest is probably SiriusXM. The wife insists on having it for her short commute, but as a vehicle subscription. I don’t mind some of their streaming channel options, since they just play music, but most of the base music channels have annoying DJ’s or play dumb station ID bumpers all the time.
“What is your best subscription?”
Why, The Autopian…of course!
If I lived in China, there’s a zero percent chance that I would prefer a Skoda over a BYD
I don’t really do subscriptions. If you don’t count utilities for my apartment, and car insurance, I think that leaves my $19 CAD phone plan? So that’s both the best and the silliest, I guess
Damn, how lean is that plan? I have a corpo discount and my plan is $38/mo.
Mind you, that has unlimited talk/text and 150GB of full speed data across Can/US/Mex.
I just hope they don’t stick to the stupid “no android auto” thing.
Matt will never let China live this down. Although Skoda is a gem, given the incredibly flamboyant car options there now and VW’s non-existent marketing in that market, this is no surprise. I mean, hell, even Volvo is struggling a bit there.
I know, I know, but I still feel bad for Chinese consumers who can only now buy used Skodas.
My best subscription is the $10 internet plan I got with Comcast during Covid for remote learning for kids. Still active, they havent change the plan. I dont even complain if the internet goes down for whatever reason, I keep my mouth shut lol
Dang. And here I was thinking I was doing well for getting my comcast internet for $40/month.
Best subscription, beyond utilities and internet, is probably YouTube Premium for the no ads.
Silliest…probably a tie between my Gaijin Goombah and Failrace Twitch subs. GG has gone all-in on 40k Orks, and Alex and the filming crew have been quite entertaining.
Why, it’s the membership to this very site of course. What else would you expect me to say?
Also my silliest subscription, as it happens.
My best subscription is Old School Runescpe, the only game I play. Never miss a chance to plug it!
Let’s be honest, a General Motors that actually keeps progressing and updating its good ideas instead of looking for the quick quarterly profit is going to be capable of amazing things.
My best subscription is probably my home internet plan.
My silliest is my Patreon subscription to The Beaverton. Cause supporting satire news is sadly one of the few ways left to get honest journalism.
Actually, that’s a lie. The gym membership that is logistically difficult to cancel because the one I signed up for no longer exists and I have to drive across the city to cancel at another location.
Planet Fitness recently opened a franchise in my town. I fully intended to get a membership, but when I went to sign up, they wouldn’t accept credit card or debit card; they wanted to do auto payments through my checking account. Maybe that’s normal, but I noped out of there real quick.
It is normal for gyms to do that. But that doesn’t mean its ok. Good on you for telling them to pound sand.
I was also thinking home internet, although it remains stupid I have to call and threaten to cancel every 2 years to keep the price at a somewhat reasonable number, what kind of business model is that!?
Capitalism, baby!
I love how The Beaverton’s links kept getting blocked by Facebook as a “Canadian News Site,” and their response was “Hey, we are NOT a news site! We work hard to make up funny bullshit!”