Japanese automakers have become obsessed with the idea of ‘China Speed,’ which sounds like a made up drug that has to be stopped in Rush Hour 6 but is actually just a way to describe the efficiency of that country’s manufacturing. Instead of waiting the typical 4-to-6 years (or longer) to develop and produce a new car, Chinese automakers seem to be able to get products to market in as fast as 24 months.
Nissan wants to be the first Japanese automaker to truly embrace China Speed with its next round of North American trucks. As any Morning Dump reader knows, sometimes moving fast means breaking things, and I have my concerns. That desire for speed stands in contrast to another Japanese automaker, which is going to wait more than a decade to replace a key vehicle.
The downside of China Speed is that sometimes technology gets ahead of the governments ability to regulate it, which is why Tesla is going to join other carmakers in its biggest recall ever. Perhaps that speed is better than slowness of Volkswagen, which is apparently in ‘Cloud-Cuckoo-Land’ with its visions of the future.
Nissan Can’t Hardly Wait
I 100% get it, and I am 83% on board. Nissan wants to build a new series of vehicles on a new body-on-frame platform, including a brand new Xterra. CEO Ivan Espinosa has only so long to prove he deserves the job, and waiting until 2033 to roll out a bunch of good products isn’t going to work.
Is 2028 too soon, though? According to Nikkei Asia, that’s where the company is heading with its Family Strategy, which involves creating a base platform and building models off of that, as opposed to building a lot of individual models. This is the modular approach used by Volkswagen and many other automakers, so it’s a little amusing that it’s taken Nissan this long to come around to it.
How much will it quicken the pace?
It aims to reduce that to 37 months for projects requiring development of a new platform, meaning a basic vehicle frame, and to 30 months for follow-on projects that use an existing platform.
To accelerate development, Nissan has overhauled the process. Previously, decision making often took longer because authority was split among three leaders responsible for profitability, product appeal and execution within each project. The company has since had its product planning and profitability leaders work as a team and leave engineers to focus on execution, enabling leaner and faster decision making.
Nissan uses AI and digital technologies as well to improve the efficiency of vehicle testing.
AI! Certainly nothing will go wrong by using AI. That never happens.
Unsurprisingly, Nissan is going to attempt this first in the United States. It sounds like Hans Greimel was at the same press conference and had this to report:
The first of three product families will be frame-based trucks geared for the U.S. market and made at the Japanese carmaker’s Canton, Miss., plant. The lead nameplate, the revived Nissan XTerra, will land around 2028 and be followed by four sibling spinoffs by the end of the decade.
The advance puts Nissan Motor Co. in competition with Chinese rivals that are churning out cars in 24 months or even faster, a breakneck speed legacy players call China Speed.
Again, in abstract, this is a good idea. Super long development periods means you’re often on your back foot as a car company, and if things change (tariffs, electric car subsidies) it’s painfully slow to switch directions.
On the other side of this, going too fast means the potential for huge quality risks. I don’t have any specific insight into whether or not Nissan can do this or not–it’s on the lower end of recalls by brands in the US–but history is history. Remember when Toyota rushed an electric car onto the market and the wheels started literally falling off the things? Remember the Fisker Ocean? [Ed Note: A body-on-frame vehicle using preexisting powertrains should be a lot simpler to crank out than an all-new EV. I think this is doable. -DT].
If Nissan can pull it off, it’ll be great, though it’s not worth it if the company can’t come close to nailing it on the first try.
The Mazda CX-30 Has Been Delayed Until At Least 2031
The Mazda CX-30 is a good car that’s basically impossible to sell at a competitive price in the United States after tariffs. As Japan’s Chugoku Shimbun (via Motor1) explains, that means we’re going to be waiting a while for a new one:
Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro told Japan’s Chugoku Shimbun that the next-generation model will not land until fiscal year 2030, which runs through March 2031.
That is a 12-year run for the current CX-30 without a full overhaul, an unusually long stretch even by Mazda’s conservative product cycles. Moro pinned the delay on cost pressure the automaker cannot ignore.
Cheap cars run on slim margins and, in the United States, that usually means foreign production. Now that foreign production is subject to higher tariffs, cheap cars are going to be a lot harder to come by.
China Moves To Fix The Damn Doors
Motorized doors are largely dumb, and a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Even worse, in an accident they create a need for secondary systems to operate that are either difficult to locate in an emergency or don’t function at all.
China has decided to discourage the use of these doors in the future, and is now forcing Tesla, Xiaomi, and other automakers to recall vehicles to make it clearer how to escape and/or to reprogram systems to make them operate better.
Tesla is the largest participant in this round of recalls, with 2 recalls covering a combined 5,716,552 vehicles, according to CnEVPost’s calculations.
Of those, 2,975,910 vehicles are being recalled over the emergency mechanical door releases, effective September 25, 2026, including 973,156 domestically built Model 3s and 1,956,713 domestically built Model Ys.
Imported models account for 35,590 Model 3s, 8,328 Model Xs and 2,123 Model Ss.
Tesla will add warning labels free of charge and update the window control software via OTA to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy. Some vehicles that already carry the labels will not need them applied again.
I cannot wait for this era to end.
VW’s Management Is In ‘Cloud-Cuckoo-Land’
Having grown up in a German household, I’m aware that bluntness can sometimes border on cleverness. Such is the case with Christiane Benner, the head of Germany’s IG Metall trade union and current VW AG supervisory board deputy chair, who called CEO Oliver Blume’s goal of reaching a 9% operating return as belonging in “cloud-cuckoo-land.”
Lol.
Bloomberg has her full reasoning:
“How is Volkswagen supposed to achieve an operating return on sales of 9% — as reported in the media — under the current geopolitical conditions?,” Christiane Benner, who is also chair of Germany’s powerful IG Metall labor union, was quoted as saying Friday by magazine WirtschaftsWoche.
“When the executive board sets such targets, it has massive repercussions on model strategy and on the plants,” she added. VW, which has set its sights on an operating return on sales of 8% to 10% by 2030, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
One way is to close plants, though I don’t think Benner is necessarily on board with that.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
The remarkable Count Basie was born on this day in 1904. Here’s Basie and his Orchestra at the 1979 North Sea Jazz Festival doing “Sweet Georgia Brown.” He was 75 and absolutely still had it.
The Big Question
What’s the most rushed car in history?
Top photo: Nissan
an ambulance?
Oh good. More disposable vehicles that won’t have repair parts availability after an even shorter time than now because the OEM moved on to a later part even faster.
I’m sure that’s fine and in no way will it lead to consumers being pushed to buy (finance) new cars more often because their current one became an irreparable lawn ornament.
The spiral down will continue until someone reaches the bottom.
What’s the most rushed car in history?
Whichever car contained Elvis.
The Mazda shown here is an MX-30, not CX-30. It has been dead in the US since ’23.
Is that make five new trucks over two years in total? Seems like a low goal.
The secret to China Speed is forcing your workers to ingest China Speed.
Wrenching SOS guys . . . trying to remove the upstream oxygen sensor in my 17 year old car. It’s almost certainly original and it has cold-welded to the cat converter like a mother. I’ve hit it with PB Blaster a few times. Walked away for an hour to let it do it’s thing. I’ve cranked on it with my hands. I’ve hit the wrench with a hammer to try to loosen it. I even tried to use the oscillating tool touching the wrench to “vibrate” it loose. I’ve sacrificed (what I deem) an adequate amount of knuckle skin to the Wrenching Gods but no dice. Any suggestions?
Longer pry bar on the wrench?
The space is so tight I can only get one hand in and can’t take a full swing with the hammer.
Time to break out the torch.
Not that Torch. The one that heats things up. The first one would just recommend a chainsaw.
No torch but I have a heat gun. You think that might help? And also, I don’t want to set the car on fire given all the PB Blaster I’ve sprayed on that area.
Doubtful. A butane torch from Walmart isn’t that expensive and will work just fine. If the PB Blaster flames up, it shouldn’t burn for long, and you can likely just blow it out.
buy a sensor socket and a 1/2″ breaker bar. the socket has side and end keys for the bar. It was an expensive socket, I don’t know why I didn’t buy it sooner.
I have the specialty socket but it seems like a lot of force is lost when cranking on it vs. a straight wrench.
I have never had luck using wrenches on O2 sensors, gotta get the proper O2 sensor crows foot socket from the auto parts store, usually $20 or so. that way you can get more leverage on it.
Maybe I’ll wait until midnight, look in the mirror and say, “Iron Oxide,” three times and David Tracy, The Rust God himself, will appear and give me a hand.
I don’t know if this makes any sense or not without looking at what you’re doing, but a flare end wrench might give you better grip if you can get it in there.
If you can get to it from the top. A high torque impact and extension can do wonders.
Your took kit can beat up my tool kit.
Good suggestions, everyone. I think the plan right this second is to eat lunch, let the PB Blaster work on it and give it one more try before escalating to heat.
Send me a pic? (david@TheAutopian.com).
Have you done this with the engine warmed up and this thing piping hot from the motor?
I have not done it with a hot motor because I understand that the cat converter gets stupid hot. I’ll send a pic/video. Thanks.
Do you need to save the sensor? When I have had stuck sensors that are being replaced, I cut the wire and use impact deep sockets on them. Don’t overlook the loosen/tighten method once it starts to move. Running it back and forth a little lets the rust work its way out.
Legacy North American Automakers did fairly major year over year changes for dozens of years. Granted they were selling tons of them and things were leaded together when the panels were no good and you might end up with the wrong engine in a car. But other than that it went swimmingly.
That being said I’m not sure that China speed is necessary. I may not like Tesla but they just ran the model S for some extended number of years and with very minor plastic changes it continued to look fine. Same with the Charger and Grand Cherokee. I’d rather see good designs that can stand the test of time than Kia style cars that look good for a year or two but look terrible used.
I cannot wait until I can get into a new Xterra. I just hope it is long enough for a 6ft person to sleep in the back. it had tow hooks, skid plates, and at least a rear locker and is thousands less than the wrangler/4runner/broncos
If Nissan is going to make five new trucks, they need to out-truck other trucks. Go all in. Truck them. Truck everything. Show everyone you really give a truck.
They need to have something with a factory lift kit, so tall (at the absolute limit of regulations), that they offer a rope ladder accessory so you climb into it. Factor angry headlamps. Fang-shaped fog lights or DRLs to put in the grill. I want to see a factory skull decal as an option to be on the hood at delivery.
Just imagine rolling into the local Wal-mart, seeing some weebles trying to clamber up the rope ladder into the thing, with the Metal Gear Solid 2 theme playing in your head.
Auto retracting running boards would be cool, also.
I read your first paragraph and thought, “Better have factor angry headlights.”
Do we have any solid and reliable data on whether this works? If unacceptable quality or testing benchmarks are waived or loosened to achieve it? Do Chinese consumers, or consumers of Chinese cars in other countries, have the same expectations for reliability and durability that Americans do? Obviously cutting development times by 50+% is great if it can be done. But can it really?
It sort of works, yes. I mentioned below part of this is attitude, Chinese corporations generally have less layers of administrative friction, one guy rules with an iron fist, and if he says “Go” you Go, instead of having five layers of management all putting their own spin on things, getting Buy-In, Circling Back, and Ensuring Stakeholder Satisfaction.
Another one that just occurred to me is government interactions, if you are a CCP-approved company, happen much, much faster. Getting the permits and regulatory approvals for a new car factory in NA or Europe can take a decade. In China you’re either breaking ground two weeks after first filings, or are told to get bent in no uncertain terms within days, there’s no lingering about and filing endless lawsuits.
If something can cut through endless red tape and allow us to Build Stuff again, that would be great. I don’t see it happening though.
Permit reform is a very bipartisan issue, and something that Mayor Mamdani has pushed hard here in New York: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/25/zohran-mamdani-small-business-policies
RE: Door handles. Europe, North America, and Japan/Korea should be hanging their heads in shame that China of all places took the lead in banning motorized door handles. I’ve ranted about it many times before, but seriously, this is a very obvious regulatory win that really shouldn’t be difficult to punch through.
RE: Nissan- good on them. The longer I work in manufacturing, the less I understand why development cycles are so long. Our tools are better than ever before, and surprisingly the regulatory environment for things has gotten a lot better in the past 10 years (except in CA… but that’s a CA problem). “China Speed” is not exclusive to China, and there are some Western companies that manage to match or beat it (SpaceX definitely comes to mind here). Mostly it’s about adopting the attitude that You Can Just Do Things, which in practical terms means cut your meetings by about 90% and let the people who actually know the most about things just make the decisions about them without going through 15 layers of useless suits. There is no technical reason the car industry in the West can’t match Chinese speed, it’s purely an administrative problem.
RE: Volkswagen- speaking of administrative problems… I’m not sure VW can survive in it’s current form. Between all of the competing ownership interests, which are not the same thing as board interests, and the massive but unfocused portfolio that outside of Porsche (which has plenty of problems on it’s own) has no real identity, they don’t seem to have any actual path to success. At this point I think the best thing might be an organized break-up, letting each brand go do it’s own thing, maybe with technology-sharing agreements between them, but independent leadership.
Most rushed car in history: The WW2 Bantam Jeep.
I seem to recall that in the early aughts a certain Japanese manufacturer run by a French guy dropped all sorts of new products at once and found itself with some quality issues.
If you have never seen a big band live, do yourself a favor and go. Like auto racing and hockey, watching a big band on TV doesn’t do it justice.
What’s the most rushed car in history?
The Nissan Altima that just rocketed by you on a bald space saver doughnut.
For me it’s usually the Dodge Charger that just spent 6 miles driving up my ass despite seeing the 719348723048721034 cars in front of me.
To be fair, sometimes it’s a Dodge Ram with a massive lift kit and no muffler, or a Dodge Durango with the racing stripes.
TBQ: Cimarronnnnnnnnnnnn