You know you’re having a bad shareholder meeting when one of your investors suggests, apparently seriously, that it would be better off to have the now-fugitive ex-CEO in charge of the company. That’s what happened at the Nissan shareholder meeting in Yokohama earlier today, and that’s maybe not even the worst moment of the rough gathering for new CEO Ivan Espinosa.
The French are back! When I started writing The Morning Dump, one of the big concerns was how exactly Renault and Nissan would get on after the Japanese arm of the company successfully sent the supposedly French-aligned CEO to jail. Everyone played nice up until a potential merger with Honda blew up, and now Renault seems to be leaning on the Nissan board. And on the topic of going to jail, there’s a new kind of fraud and it sucked up about $250 million in loans last year. It’s called “Bust-out Fraud” and it utilizes a loophole in the credit reporting system.
It’s not clear if anyone is going to jail in the accident between a Tesla and a house that resulted in a fatality, but no one seems to agree what actually happened. Rival Lucid doesn’t have that problem at the moment, but one of my favorite CEOs to reference has maybe been shown the door.
‘He Had Bad Aspects, But He Had Good Aspects As Well’
I feel like the entire annual subscription we pay to Automotive News was worth it for the retelling of the Nissan shareholder meeting earlier today. If you were curious, this was the 127th Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders, but it didn’t sound that ordinary in Hans Greimel’s retelling:
“We need a person like Carlos Ghosn. He had bad aspects, but he had good aspects as well,” said one attendee who wanted to restore the indicted fugitive executive to the board he was ejected from following his 2018 arrest on financial misconduct charges. “I want such a leader.”
Espinosa fended off the challenges but at times had trouble restoring order. It was his second outing at the annual gathering since taking office in April 2025. He told one interjecting woman “please be quiet” and threatened another unruly shareholder with ejection from the hall.
“I have no fear of being in front of you because you are my shareholders and I owe you explanations,” the 47-year-old Mexican executive told the auditorium full of Japanese investors.
Dukes! Double dukes!
Ok, some background here for those who don’t follow the Nissan-Ghosn Saga like it’s El Señor de los Cielos. Nissan was one of the companies to be worst hit by the fallout from the Japanese Asset Bubble. After limping along for a while, a torpid Renault came in and rescued the company before it went bankrupt, creating the ‘Alliance.’ Who could lead such an organization? Carlos Ghosn, who came in, cut quickly, and earned the trust of regular employees and investors by improving the company’s prospects and increasing the share price.
However, the Alliance was a marriage of inconvenience that only got worse after it became a thruple with Mitsubishi. Buried within the original agreement was an unequal distribution of control that reflected Renault’s stronger position at the time of the wedding, which seems to have irked the Japanese arm of the company to no end. The whole thing blew up when leadership within Nissan worked together (or conspired, depending on whom you ask) to get Ghosn arrested and imprisoned before, allegedly, he could cede more of the company permanently to Renault. He later escaped to Lebanon, where he lives in what is essentially exile.
I tend to follow the narrative put forth within Sean McLain and Nick Kostov’s excellent book Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn, which is that Ghosn’s ouster was done out of fear of Renault, but that Ghosn’s dislike of his relatively low pay led to some sketchy moves that gave Japanese prosecutors plenty of ammunition to go after him.
Whatever line you believe, Nissan was in a bad way, and when Foxconn came in and attempted to buy the company it resulted in a failed merger with Honda that exposed all the issues Nissan was facing, and that’s before tariffs or electrification.
Nissan’s board finally reacted, booted the old CEO and put in charge the relatively young Mexican exec Ivan Espinosa. My general view is that Espinosa is a seemingly smart guy who loves cars and is a pretty skilled drummer, and he’s doing the best job anyone in a nearly impossible position could do. The company has way too much production capacity, and shutting down plants sucks, but it probably had to be done. Before they started making Carlos Ghosn tribute manga, Japanese investors and employees were wary of him, too. All of this takes time and Espinosa deserves the time to get it right.
Will he get that time? It seems like Renault is starting to throw its weight around, as Bloomberg reports:
The French carmaker, which holds 15% of voting rights, abstained from voting for the re-appointment of influential outside director Motoo Nagai at Nissan’s annual meeting Tuesday, resulting in his ouster from the board.
Nagai, a former banker from the company’s main creditor Mizuho Financial Group Inc., played a pivotal role during Ghosn’s own ejection from the company in 2018 and held sway over subsequent executive appointments as the only director serving on the nomination, compensation and audit committees.
There are a lot of ways to read this. Is it Renault finally getting revenge for Ghosn? I don’t think Renault was that happy with Ghosn’s questionable side quests, either, so maybe not. Nagai was also reportedly influential in getting Espinosa put in charge. Here’s what Renault said, again via Bloomberg:
In a statement, the French carmaker said it chose to abstain instead of opposing the nominees as a “deliberate decision which reflects Renault Group’s restraint, not opposition.”
“We could not support their appointments as they are linked to Mizuho, the main creditor of Nissan, and hence cannot be considered independent,” Renault said. “In addition, Nagai-san has served Nissan as statutory auditor, board and committee member for 12 years.”
Sometimes, when you’re doing something right, it has to suck for a while. You gotta crawl through a few hundred yards of crap and hope you come out clean on the other side. It seems like Espinosa is still in the crawling phase.
Goodbye, Winterhoff
Will I never get to use this photo of David Hassehloff in front of a mountain again? Perhaps, as interm CEO and former Lucid COO Marc Winterhoff gets the boot along with 18% of the company’s workforce, which is the second time Lucid has done a round of layoffs this year.
Did Winterhoff leave or was he forced out? Here’s what Car And Driver says:
The executive shakeup at Lucid also continues. Former CEO Peter Rawlinson, who was instrumental in the brand’s launch, stepped down in February, and now COO Marc Winterhoff, who also briefly served as interim CEO, has left, with Lucid fully eliminating the COO position. Lucid has also lost key engineers recently, including Emad Dlala, the senior vice president of powertrain and engineering, and Zach Walker, who was leading the development of the new platform that will underpin the Cosmos and two other SUVs.
Hmm… Here’s what Lucid said in an SEC filing:
On June 22, 2026, Lucid Group, Inc. (the “Company”) announced a plan (the “Plan”) designed to advance the Company’s path toward profitability and positive cash flow generation by streamlining its organizational structure, optimizing operating expenses, and aligning production plans with anticipated demand. This involves a reduction of the Company’s current U.S. workforce by approximately 18 percent, including full-time employees, contractors and hourly production workers in manufacturing. As part of this reduction, the Company has eliminated the second shift of production at its AMP-1 factory. The Plan is expected to provide the Company with annualized cost savings of approximately $158 million. The Company estimates that it will incur cash charges of approximately $32 million related to severance, employee benefits, and employee transition. The Company expects to substantially complete the Plan by the end of the third quarter of 2026, subject to local law and consultation requirements.
As I wrote earlier this month, it’s gonna be a tough go for Lucid, though if I’m cutting Espinosa some slack I suppose I should do the same with the new guy at Lucid as well.
‘Bust-Out Fraud’ Led To $250 Million In Fake Auto Loans Last Year
When you get an automotive loan it takes some time for it to be reported, meaning that the credit agencies wouldn’t necessarily notice if you suddenly took out a dozen car loans and then shipped the cars overseas after skipping town. This is called ‘Bust-Out Fraud’ and it’s been made worse by AI tools that are faster than the various institutions involved in stopping that from happening reports Bloomberg:
Bust-out fraud generated at least $250 million in dodgy loans last year, up 83% over the past five years, Point Predictive says. That figure, though, is likely a significant understatement, according to both Point Predictive and payroll processor iSolved Inc., which says bust-outs may account for as much as 10% of all auto loan defaults.
Individuals can generally bust out only within a single monthlong window. But some enterprising hustlers have begun to industrialize the practice by recruiting straw borrowers and creating false identities cobbled together from stolen data. Law enforcement in Miami last year uncovered a ring that fraudulently obtained more than $5.5 million worth of vehicles. Investigators in Texas are chasing a person who, using a variety of tricks, got more than 100 vehicles in California, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.
This isn’t just bad for the industry, it also makes things worse for everyone as it drives up costs associated with lending.
Feds Probe Tesla Autopilot After Fatal Crash Into House
Tesla has not generally earned the trust of reporters or all of the public given the company’s habit of exaggeration. That becomes an issue when, say, a vehicle allegedly using Autopilot crashes into a house at high speed and kills someone. Here’s what CNBC is reporting:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Monday that it has opened a special crash investigation into a Tesla incident where a Model 3 slammed into a home in Katy, Texas, killing 76-year-old Martha Avila.
Harris County authorities said that the driver, Michael Butler, was cooperating with their investigation on the scene and said that he had been using Tesla’s partially automated driving systems when his vehicle barreled out of its lane and into the home in the Houston suburb.
That’s strange, right? After the Toyota unintended acceleration debacle I am usually skeptical of claims like this. Couldn’t the driver have hit the brakes? Was he paying attention?
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
As you can see above, CEO Elon Musk and execs are denying that this is what really happened, and, based on what they’re saying, it sounds conceivable that the driver could have, possibly, not been paying attention and then panic-reacted and hit the accelerator instead of the brakes, maybe? Or maybe the system didn’t work and Tesla is intentionally misreading the data? The investigation will likely reveal the true cause and, in the meantime, we’ll have to all deal with Tesla stans claiming it’s a media conspiracy and anti-Tesla folks saying that the company is lying.
What this reveals, no matter what the actual cause, is that self-driving-type systems invite a huge number of complications. Unless the driver is making the whole thing up, his lack of attention could have still contributed to the crash as the car handed back control of the vehicle.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
There’s a new Arcade Fire album and, hmm… here’s ‘Breaking Into Heaven.” Gonna have to think on this one for a while.
The Big Question
Who would be the most entertaining CEO to put back in charge of a company they once ran?
Top photo: Nissan
Sam Allen at John Deere. He came up through industrial engineering. The current CEO is a finance guy. Deere is an engineering company. They need an engineer for CEO.
Bring back Wiedeking
Lol I am no Tesla fan, but there is no way anyone with a brain would believe the autopilot went 73 MPH on its own into a wall. Even with FSD, that simply does not happen. Does it go into wrong lane? Yes. Does it bonk other cars driving to pick you up? Yes. Does it go 3x the speed limit at random into a brick wall? No lol. Very much no. Just like the toyota case, this is a moron or someone speeding. Likely both given the brand.
Nissan CEO seeing everything wrong with a publicly traded company. Whole lot of people who want immediate results and have unrealistic expectations.
Nissan needs to sell the Mexican NP300 pickup in the USA, then they would have a customer.
If there is any justice in a cruel universe, you’ll get a chance to use that photo again…
“indicted fugitive executive to the board he was ejected from following his 2018 arrest on financial misconduct charges. “I want such a leader.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Thanks for the laugh. Talk about delusional…probably someone who would have voted for NAZI Trump if they weren’t international
“bust-outs”
All I can think of is the Kool-Aid man busting through the wall:
“OOOhhhh yeah!”
Or that old Corn Nuts commercial:
“Bust a nut! Bust a nut!”
“it sounds conceivable”
No, it’s “inconceivable!”
TBQ: I think it would be hilarious and awesome if John Delorean (if he was still alive) was back at Delorean again. For a while they could keep using all of their “new-old” stock and make new Deloreans. Then when they run out, just go Back to the Future to get more. Also, use it that way to get John back, ha ha
Despite reading this site and the other one for years I still don’t know if Carlos was guilty of what he was accused of. The Japanese justice system has a reputation.
I don’t doubt for a second he was doing lime financial shenanigans. The thing is, I don’t doubt it happens at plenty of Japanese companies, with Japanese executives. They just stay on the good side of those who could bring charges, and being a foreigner makes it worse for you. I’m sure it’s no different in most countries though.
Well he had Renault Nissan paying for using the castle of Versailles for the location of his wife’s birthday party. Don’t think that would have been mentioned in the CEO contract
A driver panic-inducing event by design when the system fails suddenly—as it commonly does—is itself a failure of the system. It’s made worse in that the kind of people who wand to use such a system and would trust the technology are some of the least capable people to have manage such events. I’m really stretching my diplomatic voice at this point, so that’s all I have on that.
Renault Alliance? Worked for AMC!
I find it hilarious that anyone would say to Espinosa that Ghosn had good qualities, when in reality Ghosn is the reason the company is currently such a shit show. I get that the early years weren’t all bad, but goddamn did Nissan poop out some real garbage later on in his tenure.
Espinosa is there to fix the sins of the Ghosn era.
That “facts” of a crash are being publicly aired on Twitter is being used as publicity to drum up support speaks volumes here.
The owner of X/Twitter is one of the prime culprits.
It’s a very stupid thing to do, and one I’m sure is causing quite a lot of heartache in the legal department. Also, pretty low-class given someone died in the crash. But historically, “the car took off on it’s own! Clearly there’s a software failure!” argument has come down to user error virtually 100% of the time, so were I a gambling man, my money would be on Tesla rather than the driver being more truthful about the facts.
I would argue it’s still a Tesla failure in that the system induces panic when it fails in its purpose suddenly. FSD is a complete failure because it is intended to be operated by humans, humans who are inherently lulled into a complacency by the system’s operation, who are then required to snap out of it and immediately intervene to correct the car’s failure. This is not what the human mind is good at and complacency is the natural response to inaction, which needs to be actively fought to resist. For a human to maintain constant vigilance, to be in a heightened state of arousal, is more stressful than simply operating the vehicle themselves, so they don’t, they zone out, then they panic when SHTF. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bored warrior manning a remote outpost for months suddenly overwhelmed by the sight of an enemy army or a nebbish Tesla owner whose car suddenly gets confused after driving miles without trouble on FSD and hits the throttle instead of the brake, something they probably rarely use with 1-pedal driving, so their muscle memory makes them even more likely to make the wrong choice. Tesla is blaming the user for their failure, yet another in a long line of scumbag parasite corporations who pawn off any responsibility for the failures of their stupidly conceived and terribly implemented products or the environmental effects of their morally bankrupt actions on the public.
The fail-over mechanisms you describe are not unique to Tesla, all Level 2 systems share the same flaws in the automotive world. In aviation, adverse pilot response to loss of automation systems is an entire category of accident that is extensively studied- and yes, the “panic” from losing computer assistance is a very real threat that should be minimized in all ways possible. That being said, the number of lives saved by superior automation vastly, vastly dwarfs those lost in fail-over accidents. Don’t believe me? There are insurance companies who charge reduced premiums for every FSD mile driven in a Tesla, vs manual control. An insurance company converts the math of risk management into profit, and they have done the math to increase their profits.
I don’t like Tesla for their UX choices, but FSD is statistically far safer than the legion of morons that infest the roads currently, so some reddit-tier screed about greedy corpos is pretty fucking cringe in this example.
That’s a very low bar. Instead of sending out poorly implemented and conceived driving software tied to inadequate hardware, we’d be better off enforcing driving rules and banishing manufacturer-included distractions, the very thing I’d attribute to being behind a large number of crashes while often not showing up in the stats. For instance, a crash investigation will conclude excessive speed as a cause when, while a factor in making it worse, the underlying issue is distracted driving. (This kind of thing is also an issue with medical tracking stats as a final cause of death can be more of a final straw thing, not reflecting the actual cause.) A large increase in driver distraction was led by Tesla with the stupid massive screen everyone adopted like a lazy babysitter keeping an infantilized populace occupied while they do something else, so once again, tech creates or exacerbates an issue then does a half-assed job of fixing it.
I also don’t trust the insurance companies’ data. Even if the data on crashes accurately reflected the true causes and wasn’t inherently pitted against the worst drivers, making FSD look a lot better than it is, too many large corporations seem clearly bent on controlling us as a population and FSD would be a great stone in the wall of that prison. Another element of FSD is that it removes responsibility from the offending party, passing it down to the consumer when the responsible party should be the one who was operating. I didn’t see a vote to allow these garbage systems exclusively programmed by morons onto the streets, these things were imposed upon us and there seems to be no available avenue for compensation by that party, which brings me back to insurance companies and some questions: who pays for these FSD crashes? Does the apparent legal limbo and court case quagmires help the insurance companies avoid compensating as the responsible party can’t be ascertained with certainty? Most people can’t afford to fight court cases to get compensation, so does this allow insurance companies to use that as leverage to settle cheaper with victims, at least in more minor events? If so, add that to the reasons I won’t trust their numbers. Follow the money to find the liar.
I’m all for screw the corpos, but c’mon, the amount of software bugs that would have to all be in the code to cause it to go “oh I’m going 25, we need to go 75 NOW” is ridiculous to even consider plausable. I know you want to hate Tesla, I despise seeing all these dbags in microwaves, but this is 100% a dude who either confused brake and gas, or more likely given the fact they were in a Tesla and they love to think they own the world, was probably just speeding and effed up.
That’s no way to treat women. You tell them “Shut up, piggy” and then you become President. Apparently.
TBQ: Mergio Sarchionne
When will Nissan want me back?
Jatco Xtronic CEO, anyone?
As the quote in the article says: “[It] had bad aspects, but [it] had good aspects as well”
You never left.
That’s why I’d only buy a modern Nissan if it has either a clutch pedal or a charge port.
The altered scenes of Ghosn with the Wind…
Scarlett O’Nissan: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow”
“Sir, you are no gentleman.”
Rhett Ghosn:
“And you, Miss are no lady.” “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
And close scene…
Alan Mulally.
MCCA: Make Carlos Chief Again.
I want to see a 2nd gen Murano CrossCabriolet
I honestly can’t think of another CEO who would be more entertaining in their glorious return than Carlos Ghosn.
He’d probably walk in, say “What up, MFers?” and start cramming 3.7 litre V6s into Sentras. And Altimas.
Then there’d be the sheer awkwardness of the board meetings. All those people that got him arrested would be sitting there watching him (probably) succeed where they could not. It’d be like watching Succession, but it would be real.
If he were being seriously nominated yes he would have my vote.
I don’t think he’s able to physically travel outside of Lebanon without being arrested any place his plane touches, but maybe he could work 100% remote
Working from home is the new normal, so…
It was fine, I guess? I listened to it and already kinda forgot about it. Maybe this will spur another listen.
TBQ: Lee Iacocca. Dig him up! He can’t do worse.
Iacocca was my first thought. And I liked the song.
Nsane in The MembraNe already covered my favorite suggestion to resurrect Piech, so I’ll go out on a limb and say that I desperately want to see what Iaccoca would do with Stellantis.
Hood ornaments, padded vinyl roofs, opera windows and tufted velour for everyone!
C’mon Bishop – Let’s make a New Yorker Brougham out of a Charger!
Gotta be a truck to sell. RAM it all the way. Hood ornament, padded vinyl, opera windows, trufted velour an Corinthian leather, and the pièce de résistance, wide white walls with wire hub caps.
You bet me to it. We need Iacocca back from the grave, make the team build a K2- car platform and get featured in ads with the good old saying: if you can find a better car, buy it!
Naming it K2 would be appropriate too, given the steep hill to climb and high Summit to conquer.
“If you can find a better car…ah, who are we kidding here?”