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
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
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
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
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
Nsane already took the prejudice I let go of (CVTs are all bad) so here are some automotive prejudices I’ll never let go of:
Beware of any ’00s Nissan product.
Any car with the pink license plate frame that Auto Nation slaps on is going to be driven by someone who is paying more attention to their Instagram feed than the road.
Beware of any ’10s Nissan product.
As much as Chevrolet talks about world-beating Corvette performance, the natural habitat for a ‘Vette is in the left lane doing 5mph under the speed limit.
Beware of any ’20s Nissan product.
Porsche 911s are mostly bought by people who think they should have a sports car but don’t actually like sports cars.
the fact that hybrids are getting to be that normalized is great.
Why does everything Nancy Sinatra sings sound to me like she is filled with some latent disdain? Does anyone else hear it? Am I projecting my utter hatred for songs from that era that sound like this one? Does this one sound like a total throwaway ’60s western soundtrack song? Can Lee Hazelwood actually sing? Is this actually an AI generated prank played upon us by Matt? Was Paint Your Wagon produced around the same time? WTF was going on in Hollywood during the late sixties that caused music like this to exist? Are anyone else’s ears bleeding? So many questions.
I think I’m getting closer to moving past my bias that Korean cars age poorly in terms of quality, but I think I still need a little more time on that one.
I’m not so certain about people buying a hybrid “by accident”. Buying one w/o realizing it is or w/o intending to purchase a hybrid is another story. I can see Toyota buyers who are returning for a new Sienna, Camry, or RAV-4 not realizing that the new ones are hybrid and hybrid only and buying one because it is the only option.
Overall I’m pretty disappointed in how long it took before Toyota started offering Hybrids across the board like they do now and how long it took before they started dropping the ICE powertrains.
But yeah pretty much every vehicle should have offered a hybrid powertrain years ago and for many models it should probably be the only choice. I’m particularly annoyed with Ford, one of the early adopters in that they just dropped the Escape and of course the Hybrid with it. Meanwhile where is the Bronco Sport, Bronco, Ranger, Expedition, Mustang (which they promised years ago) and Vans, not to mention the fact that they have dropped retail availability of the Explorer Hybrid.
The Bronco Sport shares its platform with the Maverick and Escape so the majority of the work is done. The Bronco, Ranger, Expedition, Mustang, Van and of course Explorer all use the same basic 10sp that gets hybridized for the F-150 so the big piece is on the shelf already and they would only need some unique battery packs depending on the available space. Also they need a MPG focused F-150 hybrid with the 3.3 as previously used in the F-150 and currently used in the Police Interceptor Utility. I don’t need class leading HP and towing capacity, I want more MPG and the other benefits of a Hybrid. I’d even settle for a 2.7 EcoBoost Hybrid.
How weak must your ego be, if you hem and haw and agonize over your vehicular choice and finally come to a conclusion and then hear it’s a hybrid and you didn’t even know, and you despair?
You wanted power: done. You hoped for economy: sorted. “But not no goldang hybrids! This thing ain’t no hybrid, and it’s great!”
“But it is a hybrid.”
“Unacceptable!”
“Didn’t you just say it was great?”
Tools.
“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?” I still hear this said loudly and often in rural MN, WI and ND.
I know there are car prejudices I have give up, I just cannot think of any but I can still think of some I still have and am trying to give up.
As someone who does their own car repairs I used to have a prejudice against hybrids. I figured all the complexity of an ICE engine plus an EV = maintenance headache. Not any more. A contractor at work has a fleet of RAV-4 Hybrids that have ~300k miles and nothing goes wrong. My Moms 2020 RAV-4 hybrid keeps chugging along with nothing but oil changes. I want to learn how to work on hybrids but I may never need to.
I think an EV is an even better maintenance proposition but I’m not ready to pull the trigger on one.
Of the various things that went wrong with my Prius on its way to 325K miles, not one of them was the drive motor or battery. Electrically, it was relentless.
When it finally failed to the point that I was ready to just let it go, the hybrid system wasn’t even tangentially related to the problem.
Before the Prius, I had a Civic Hybrid (first gen) and it did have battery issues; Honda fitted a smaller battery and taxed it harder, and gave it virtually no capacity to balance the cells in its pack. I became very skilled at bottom- and top-balancing a HCH battery pack manually. It takes a while. But Toyota builds bigger packs and leaves more room at both the top and bottom of the packs’ capacities to ensure the batteries are well cared for. They’re solid.
I remember everyone clutching their pearls about battery replacements back in the day. If I needed another car right now I’d get a Prius V.
I used to think that cable throttles were better than Drive by Wire. In the last decade I’ve seen the light and embraced modernity.
When new I found the 1971 Riviera too much and disliked it. Now I’d love one and think they look terrific.
The surge in Chinese EV’s in Mexico might be due to a pending 50% tariff on them.
Congrats to Matt on NYT’s Frank Bruni selecting this as one of the best sentences of the year:
“You don’t buy a Subaru so much as you ascend into your final form as an outdoorsy Subaru owner when a ray of light beams down from the nearest REI, and all your clothes vanish from your body and are replaced by Patagonia.”
Hybrid normalization should have happened at least a decade ago. Also, lmao at Tesla. Imagine if they had shoveled all of that Man Child Truck money into the 4680 project? You know, that project that was actually strategically important to the company?
I think Tesla cathode supplier contract news is either an admission of failure or victory with the dry cathode process Tesla was developing. Since the value has been reduced so drastically, I suspect that Tesla has shelved the dry cathode process.
Toyota doesn’t even bother with “hybrid” badging anymore for the most part. My ’25 Camry just says HEV on the trunk lid and that’s it. Makes sense since there’s no other engine choice (not that I’m arguing – I bought it for the MPG’s).
It’s kind of funny to think about how many articles not that long ago that stated you needed badging and a unique shape or hybrids wouldn’t sell. I guess the Prius virtue signalers of old have moved to EV’s or bicycles now?
I have to admit that screens don’t bug me as much as they once did, although I still wish they came with buttons instead of touch interfaces. Thank goodness the aforementioned Camry is analogue for most things.
“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.”
A big part of it for me is my local price of electricity. At BEST its on par with gasoline (unless the boss is giving it out for free), at worst it’s a few times MORE than gasoline. Plus the losses, up to 30% of level 1 charging is lost as heat which doesn’t help the efficiency argument or cost. Level 2 is a lot better but still like 8%.
I haven’t priced out sales tax, insurance and registration costs either but I imagine the increase in those for ANY new car will quickly eat up any fuel cost savings. Which is another part of that math.
“Is there a car prejudice you once held that you’ve let go of?”
Actually I’m in the process of doing just that. I borrowed my BIL’s massive V6 hybrid crew cab RAM truck and was very pleasantly surprised to find it returned over 27 mpg. Yes that was doing 55mph in the right lane of the highway but that kind of fuel economy is impressive for that sort of vehicle.
Too bad they’re not all hybrids.
Welcome to the Dark Side.
Oh I’m just visiting. As well as that thing drove for such a giant truck it was still a giant truck. Parking was challenging and rough road was still rough road.
A Maverick though? Maybe.
Just bought a Maverick hybrid. Thoroughly enjoying the irony of “The Truck” being the most fuel efficient car we own. Competition is a Turbo CX5 (mid 20s MPG) and a Miata, which can beat the Maverick on highway (38 vs 35) if I baby it, but 1. Why would I baby the Miata, and 2. that’s with premium gas, but the maverick just wants regular. In the city the Maverick blows both of them out of the water.
On the actual question: The Maverick is working on my mild disdain for CVTs. I was expecting the lack of shifts to bother me, but I’m realizing that despite rowing my own in the Miata, modern automatics have gotten smooth enough that I’m used to not feeling a shift.
I wonder if MaxDot will take out an ad in the new newspaper?
I’m going to share a thermonuclear take and say that I don’t really care about cars having CVTs anymore. They’re not my choice of transmission and I do think their proliferation is cause for longevity concerns in modern cars, but the last few times I’ve driven a modern car with one I haven’t even noticed it. On the other hand there isn’t a single drive that I don’t notice the DCT in my Kona N, and almost always for the wrong reasons.
It’s a worthy tradeoff for my use case, but for normies and commodity cars? Who cares. Modern CVTs are inoffensive and I think they get more scorn than they deserve. They were hot garbage 10-20 years ago but they aren’t anymore and I certainly wouldn’t rule a car out because of one.
Ditto. Mine has one and it’s fine. Had the manual been available when I bought it I would be dealing with 4000 rpm at cruise on the highway during our big trips, and in heavy traffic the rest of the time. The 5 percent of the time I would have wanted the manual wasn’t worth it.
CVTs are fine if they’re maintained, but the typical car owner doesn’t do transmission maintenance at all and CVTs seem to be less tolerant of neglect
I just went from a DCT (Kia Forte GT) to a CVT (Acura Integra A-Spec). I went into the test drive with a healthy helping of skepticism since the last CVT I drove with any regularity was my mom’s ’09 Maxima that was completely ruined by its hateful transmission. I was very pleasantly surprised by the Honda CVT paired with the 1.5 Turbo… in sport mode it’s always ready to pull like a freight train whenever you want. I’ve never caught it flat-footed. It’s nowhere near as quick off the line as the Forte with the same horsepower, but the power delivery feels like a smooth but insistent surge.The DCT in the Forte was a lot of fun but it was obtrusive and not always in a good way.
Hybrid owners have been scorned by EV zealots for years, haven’t you noticed? Instead of taking on truck owners, they try to shame Prius drivers into going all electric, This is a well-known political phenomenon. People tend to attack their natural allies who aren’t quite pure enough.
You are right that this happens, but it kinda sucks. I’m a long time EV owner and I think Hybrids, EREVs and PHEVs are all fair options.
What we in the Detroit area have been missing is a Sunday Detroit News. Right now you get a “combined” Sunday edition that’s 99% Free Press with one or two pages from the News. I hope also they will consider daily delivery again; right now you get an actual paper on Thursday, Friday and Sunday. They print all week but you can only get the other days delivered by US Mail (which is of a “why bother” option).
And yes, some of us enjoy reading an actual newspaper still, and not staring at a screen.
Weirdly it is modern Nissans. I sat in a 25 Rogue and I get why people would buy them. The seats are fantastic and the cabin is a nice place to be. They still definitely have transmission and quality issues and still aren’t something I’d recommend to anyone but I can see how they manage to move units
Yeah, I can definitely see why someone would see them as a pretty darn good value. Combine that with their willingness to offer financing to everyone and it’s no surprise there are so many on the road. If you don’t have much credit history and/or don’t want to spend much money, but still want a new car that’s comfortable, they have some options for you.
I’ve shared this story a few times, but we wound up with a Rogue rental a few months ago (I wasn’t in charge of the rental car and would’ve chosen something different if I was). I gave my old man a world of shit for booking it, but I drove it a few times and it was completely inoffensive. It accelerated fine, you probably wouldn’t even notice the CVT if you weren’t trying to, it’s a great size, and even in the base trim the interior was nice.
The surfaces were all soft touch, the aluminum looking trim was totally acceptable, the base audio was fine, and no matter how hard I tried to embody Big Altima Energy it was always hovering in the high 20s/low 30s MPG wise. Rogues are perfectly cromulent cars…and honestly I think that is selling them a bit short. In most ways they’re downright decent.
That really changed my view on modern Nissans and I now understand why people like them. Would I go out of my way to buy one? No, but I’ll no longer roll my eyes when someone tells me they went with a Rogue or similar.
Similarly I drove a current version a friend rented and thought it was nice enough.
I had an Altima rental a few weeks back and it was perfectly cromulent.
My sister just bought a new RAV4.
She didn’t know it was a hybrid.
But she averaged over 40 mpg on a 500 mile trip with it.
No complaints. No regrets.
Similarly, we just got a Sienna for my wife. She didn’t know it was a hybrid, she just really liked seeing the range estimate of 550+ miles per tank and that it came with AWD. She doesn’t even notice the engine sounds like a bucket of bolts when you step on it because she never does. It’s been great.
The only actual complaint she has is that the heat is pretty mediocre when the temps drop. I gotta imagine it’s a battle between the hybrid wanting to shut the engine down for efficiency reasons and the engine wanting to stay on to keep temps up and the HVAC system satisfied on such a large cabin. The “eco HVAC” setting or whatever it’s called doesn’t seem to do all that much either way.
I have been shopping the RAV4s for about a year now.
Hate to buy a car “new” but the depreciation for these is pretty minimal in our area. Same with the Sienna van too.
I’m just waiting for my 5K from DOGE, and my 2K check from the Orange guy to arrive before pulling the trigger…/s
But really think a RAV4 will be my next car purchase.
A colleague of mine acquired a 2025 RAV4 Hybrid, then immediately sold it at slight profit and went with the 2018 version. He was concerned about the Hybrid cable corrosion issue, which Toyota seems to have not really fixed properly.
I just traded my 2023 RAV4 for a 2026 Mazda CX-50 Hybrid. What a refreshing difference. The difference is like a Japanese Chevy and a Japanese BMW. Although I thought I could get used to the looks of the car, I never did. In my frequent car rental days, I used to look forward to getting a Mazda3 and remembered how I enjoyed driving it. Big difference from a Corolla. The CX-50 Toyota drive train clearly has a different tune which is noticed on adaptive cruise control in heavy traffic as the sluggish RAV4 always left forward openings regardless of the settings. The Resume function at lights insulted my followers. I found the solicitation to purchase Toyota Connection every time the car was turned on to be extremely offensive. The spoiled dealer attitude was always “…you’re going to take what we give you and like it.”
I’m now driving like I did 30 years ago, zoom zoom.
My wife got a hybrid this year. That I was a hybrid had no effect on the decision – she got it because it was what she liked the best out of what met her criteria. I doubt it would matter to her if it ran on unicorn farts, as long as refueling was easy.
I’m more aware of the drivetrain technology when buying, but I’d still have no heartburn buying an hybrid or EV if it made the power I wanted and the vehicle checked the other boxes. Honestly I think I’d like charging at home and not visiting gas stations, but that alone is not enough to make me want an EV specifically.
Anyway, I wish more people didn’t care what propelled their vehicles (outside of the practical charging requirements). I’m not sure how we depoliticize electrical propulsion, but it needs it.
“By Accident” – that to me sounds like correct American English. Within the past decade, I have begun hearing “On Accident” as well, but that seems off to me.
By accident is correct, on accident has nonetheless become commonplace in recent decades
While “by accident” is correct, I don’t usually like either one when I am writing. “Accidentally” usually flows better. I’ll never correct anyone for saying “on accident,” though. It’s become so common I can’t blame anyone for going with it.
by accident on god
That’s better then (sic) “borrow it to”.