Mitsubishi had a strong 2024, offering affordable cars that the market wanted to buy, including hybrid crossovers. A closer look at how dealers performed, however, shows that the boost in sales wasn’t necessarily a huge boost to dealers. Even worse, a new electric platform might not be the Mirage replacement everyone wants.
A big thanks to Thomas for helming The Morning Dump earlier this week while I was traveling/attending an ad tech conference. I’ll have a little update on that at the bottom of TMD.
I want to talk about electric cars today because there’s been some interesting news on that front. From Mitsubishi, we’ve learned that a new vehicle is coming that’ll be similar to the new Leaf. Is that a good thing? It’ll depend a lot on how much it costs. Tesla continues to struggle in China, where it’s losing market share to companies like BYD. Lucid missed its earnings expectations, but narrowed the amount of money it’s losing per vehicle as it expands production.
Does all this talk of electric cars bore you? Congrats, I’m ending the week with the good news that one of the coolest car events anywhere is coming to the United States.
Mitsubishi Dealers: A $40,000+ EV ‘Won’t Work’
Mitsubishi is still associated with Nissan, in spite of all the merger/sales talks, and the company’s product roadmap includes a small electric car based on the upcoming and entirely redesigned Nissan Leaf. It’s possible this is going to be a great car, but for budget-oriented Mitsubishi dealers, the most important thing is that it be an affordable one.
Even though the company reported a sales increase of 25% year-over-year to about 110,000 vehicles last year, not all of those deliveries were normal retail transactions for dealers. In fact, according to a new report, only about 66,000 of those vehicles were retailed through Mitsubishi’s U.S. stores. With about 320 retail stores, that comes out to about 17 vehicles per dealer per month. With high costs of vehicles last year, I’m sure a lot of Outlanders ended up at rental counters.
Here’s what dealers are telling Automotive News:
Mitsubishi financial data provided to Automotive News showed that average net profit per store plunged by nearly half from the pandemic’s start in 2020 to $434,199 last year. Average dealership net profit as a percentage of sales slipped to 0.92 percent last year from 2.2 percent in 2023.
A Mitsubishi dealer welcomed the lineup expansion, but tempered expectations in a product information vacuum.
“If we get an EV that’s $40,000-plus, that won’t work,” the retailer said, requesting not to be identified. “We need affordable vehicles. That’s where the market is.”
Absolutely. All of these expensive two-row electric crossovers are fighting over a relatively small market, whereas there’s a huge opportunity for cost-effective electric vehicles, hybrids, and gas-powered cars. It’s why the Chevy Equinox EV and Honda Prologue are selling so well. If this re-imagined Nissan Leaf can come in at an affordable price, then maybe Mitsubishi will have something, although I can’t imagine it’ll be a replacement for the bargain basement Mirage.
The brand already has affordable PHEVs, so I’ll reserve judgment until I see pricing.
Tesla Is Running Out Of Excuses
Another day, another story about Tesla sales dropping in a key market it used to dominate. This time it’s China, where the automaker continues to face intense competition from new car companies.
Tesla Inc.’s vehicle shipments from its China plant declined for a seventh consecutive month, exacerbating the carmaker’s early-year slump.
Elon Musk’s automaker shipped 58,459 Model 3 sedans and Model Y sport utility vehicles from its Shanghai factory last month, 6% fewer than a year earlier, according to preliminary data released Wednesday. China’s Passenger Car Association didn’t yet offer a breakdown of domestic sales and exports.
China-wide wholesales of new-energy vehicles — which include electric cars and hybrids — are estimated to have risen 42% to 1.14 million units for April, the PCA data show.
Tesla, as a company, has started to note that CEO Elon Musk’s political activities have harmed sales in places like California and Europe. Those political concerns seem like they should be less of an issue in China, where strong competition has led the American company to increasing declines in a country where it was once thriving.
The company’s global switch to a refreshed Model Y, as well as the Lunar New Year, have been used as an excuse for why deliveries might be down in China in the past. That’s no longer in play here, which means that any decrease in sales going forward is probably just demand.
Could politics eventually play a hand, though? China and the United States aren’t exactly playing nice with one another right now. I’ve yet to see Musk or anyone else at Tesla try to explain concretely what’s happening.
Lucid Misses Earnings, Which Isn’t That Terrible
Sales and financials at electric car startup Lucid weren’t great, but they were better, and better seems good enough for a company sitting on a Scrooge McDuck-level pile of Saudi cash. Sensing that Tesla was weak and having, generally, the best-performing electric cars on the market, Lucid’s strategy has been to drop prices and increase incentives to gain market share.
This seems to be working, with Q1 deliveries of 3,109 vehicles and $235 million of revenue, a little short of the $250 million the market predicted. The company only lost $0.24 per share, which is better than Q1 of 2024, when it lost $0.27 per share.
Here’s what CEO Mark Winterhoff, pictured above, had to say:
“We continued to build momentum in the first quarter as we achieved yet another delivery record, further strengthened our market position, and executed against operational priorities,” said Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO at Lucid. “Lucid Gravity is beginning to arrive in more customers’ driveways and at our studios, and combined with our progress toward future initiatives, our company is well positioned for future success.”
With the Gravity coming out this year, Lucid expects it’ll produce 20,000, which is a lot of cars for them. While the automaker seems far from profitability, it’s at least closer than it was last year.
Retromobile Is Coming To The United States
For the last two years, we’ve told you that Retromobile is the place to find some of the strangest, most historically interesting classics. For Europeans, it’s a short jaunt to Paris to attend the show; for the rest of us, it’s a bit of a hike.
Sensing we were missing out, Retromobile is coming to New York, and Gooding & Co. will be doing the auctioning. Hell yeah!
Bloomberg‘s Hannah Elliott (who else?) has the skinny:
New York presents a unique opportunity for Rétromobile to infiltrate America, since the city lacks a premier global automotive event like the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in Carmel, California; the Amelia Concours d’Elegance on Amelia Island, Florida; and Formula One races like those in Austin, Las Vegas and Miami. It’s logistically easier to access from Europe than car centers such as Los Angeles, and many of the country’s most fervent enthusiasts house their collections in relative proximity in Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts and even Michigan.
But the Big Apple has its own challenges too. The venue for the event, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, is notoriously difficult to access by subway and on foot, and the dates of the American Rétromobile show conflict with the F1 race happening the same week in Las Vegas.
I find Javits relatively easy to get to by the subway, and if you’re coming via Hudson Yards, it’s not that bad on foot. The F1 race issue is real, though.
Between the two, I think I’ll go to Retromobile… assuming they’ll let me in (and I don’t risk walking away with a car).
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
It feels like “Monday, Monday” after being out the last two days, so let’s enjoy some music from The Mama’s and the Papa’s.
The Big Question
I went to an ad tech conference yesterday, which is a sentence I never hoped to write. The reality is that, as the publisher, it’s my job to make sure we’re sustainable (I never want to lay anyone off), so it’s important I understand how all of this works. My big takeaway is that the current environment sucks for publishers because everyone says they want more “quality” and yet the market is designed for “quantity.” Our bet is that quality will win out in the long term, which is why we aim to have an advertising load that’s 51% of what our competitors offer.
After doing some soul-searching, we’re now considering turning off display ads for members. If you pay, maybe you shouldn’t have to see an ad (how we deal with the video player, which also has editorial videos, is another question). At the same time, if we do that, we’ll probably have to turn up the ads for non-members a little bit (let’s say to 75% of what the market offers).
How would everyone feel about that? Would that motivate you to become a member?
Top photo: Mitsubishi
As a current member, I see few enough ads that I don’t find them to be a problem. Would I enjoy ad free? Certainly. And if it gets more people to join, that would be awesome.
There are still Mitsubishi dealerships?
Our local Mitsubishi dealership is owned by a regional used car dealer (multiple locations, step up from typical BHPH).
They got fined big time by the state regulators for selling new Mitsubishi’s at the used car locations vs. limiting them to ‘new car dealership’ location. I’m sure another dealer narc’d on them.
They were trying to move ’em!
I’m a member but do not stay logged in. I have trust and do not track issues.
As a non-payer, if you guys need to increase ads to keep the lights on i support it. It’s not like i’m not constantly bombarded by ads everywhere i go already. That is the world we live in now.
I’ve got the Adblock off for you all, I am currently a member, I don’t find the ads intrusive, frankly they are more often amusing for what weird stuff shows up.
I am not logged into the site on all my devices though, so I have some idea of what the ads look like in both directions, I would say that I would not enjoy the experience as a non member if they increased.
tbh, if I don’t enjoy the website when it’s free, that doesn’t make me want to pay for it.
China is seeing a double-whammy of the rise of Chinese brands with brilliant product, and it’s just not possible to separate, at this point, Elon-Trump-Tesla – so opinion with one will absolutely weigh into an opinion on another.
RE: Mitsubishi
As the former owner of a 2007 Outlander LS AWD with the Sun+Sound package that also got his parents to buy a 2008 Outlander XLS AWD because they were so impressed with mine *both of which sadly got totalled by a drunk driver and a dumb teen girl texting and not noticing vehicles stopped in a turn lane, respectively SMDH), and someone that also lived in NZ and AussieLand on working holiday for 1.5 years and got to sample the ‘forbidden fruit’, Mitsubishi has long baffled me with their refusal to offer their truly good products in the North American market and just let the brand wither away on the vine here.
First things first: Mitsubishi’s worst decision was to sell the Bloomington/Normal, Illinois plant off. They should have started building the Triton and the Challenger there in 2008 when they dumped it for pennies on the dollar. HUGE missed opportunity there, they could have been competitive in the light truck market here for the last 15+ years. Honestly, maybe they should try to buy it back from Rivian since they are close to finishing their new Georgia plant.
The Delica: Y’all, van lifers have been absolutely BEGGING Mitsubishi for them to sell the Delica in the US/Canadian market for generations now. I know that they have a plan to sell it starting in 2027 or so, but nah, get that thang federalized and get sales going ASAP. Offer it as a PHEV, price it in the upper 30’s to mid 50’s to undercut the ridiculously overpriced I.D. Buzz and it’ll fly off showroom floors.
The L200/Triton: has always been an extremely well regarded truck in other markets, and is even sold in Mexico. Why didn’t they federalize it for US/Canada sales, and, frankly just not sell the diesel version in areas that have the insane CARB standards and give everyone the manual turbodiesel work truck they always wanted? The next gen Triton is going to be sharing the Frontier/Navara platform, so it would be easy for Mitsubishi to meet US standards with minimal adjustments.
The Pajero/Montero Sport: Absolutely a toe-to-toe competitor to the Land Cruiser/Expedition/Tahoe/Yukon and has the off road chops to boot. Again, built and sold in South America, but Mitsubishi won’t federalize it for NA market sales. Uh, seriously? They could sell 30-50k units annually if they priced it in the 45-65k range and undercut the others by a significant margin. Old Montero’s still sell for good money, and the name has brand recognition with Gen X and Millenial buyers.
The Xpander/Xpander Cross: This is the spiritual successor to the old school Colt Vista Wagon and MPV (though Mitsu should really just put sliding doors on it, call it the Chariot and have a direct Carnival/Sienna/Odyssey/Pacifica competitor but that’s a whole nother topic) and would be a solid Traverse/Pilot/Highlander competitor. It, too, also has a PHEV powertrain option. Price it around 35k for a base FWD model and go up to around 50k for a loaded PHEV version. It’ll compete well and offer something different for the soccer/lacrosse parent crowd. It also comes in a rugged Xpander Cross version that has the requisite cladding and skid plates to tickle the pickles of the suburban dads that wanna cosplay as rugged individuals, or for folks that live out in the country and need some extra protection from random objects and rough roads.
Mitsubishi has the products that could fairly easily reinvigorate the brand, and frankly, with the current market, they could probably get a really attractive tax incentive offer to build a new plant in the US, or buy out Rivian and restart production in Illinois. I’m sure that Pritzker would be delighted to get them back and build out a full fledged production line and bring a couple thousand more jobs to central Illinois.
I’m a huge Mitsubishi fan, and I want to see them succeed. They just need to pull their head out and re-establish their presence in the NA market.
I used to drive by that plant regularly in the early-to-mid 1990’s.
They can buy that Lordstown plant from Foxconn, no automotive production has ever gone poorly in that factory.
Lots of cool cars were built there (eg BelAir). That is also where the Cavalier, Cobalt, Cruze lineage was made. If you define success in financial terms alone, very solid history. My wife’s father worked there his whole professional life and ended his time as union leadership there. He loved that plant. It’s a damn shame what happened to that proud facility.
Re: the Challenger/Triton – 2008 would have been awful timing to introduce those here. Sales of most vehicles cratered but it took years for truck-type SUVs to recover and most midsize pickups had disappeared. They would have been set up for a better back half of the 2010s but that’s a long game they couldn’t really swing at the time. It does seem like syncing with Nissan makes a Mitsu return to the segment very easy.
But – Lancer and Outlander would have been ideal to set up production. I can’t imagine they got that much more value running out Galant/Endeavor production there when those mostly went to fleets, not like Lancer/Outlander couldn’t have also filled fleet markets while also being a credible retail entry.
Xpander would be too small to be a true minivan or Traverse/etc competitor, it’s smaller than the Outlander even. It’s not off the shelf, but if they could manage some kind of extended Outlander+, like Jeep did in some global markets with the late Cherokee and Compass, that might give them something that aligns more with the Sorento/Santa Fe here, and maybe even Outback if they clad it up. Especially in PHEV form.
“to build a new plant in the US, or buy out Rivian and restart production in Illinois.”
The problem with an existing factory is that it needs new tooling. It is basically always going to be cheaper to put up a new greenfield building and bring in the tooling than to remove the old tooling, bring in new tooling, and get the new tooling to work in a building layout that it was not specifically designed for.
I was just in Australia, and from the small percentage of the country I saw there were a lot of Mitsubishis on the road. Like maybe 5% of the vehicles?
Their economy and car culture isn’t that far off from the US, so the difference was pretty interesting to me, but I don’t have the faintest idea why that’s the case.
Mitsubishi does well in selected markets, with southeast Asia at the top of the list. In the US they are fundamentally damaged brand, with most dealers using the sign to lend an air of legitimacy to a used car operation specializing in damaged credit customers.
The Stellantis brands are rapidly headed in that direction.
I generally don’t mind ads too much (member here) as long as they don’t impact my enjoyment of the site by blocking off the entire page on mobile devices. If the business case for increasing memberships by turning off ads is valid then by all means do so, but I’m here for the quality and if it takes a few ads to pay for that quality I’m not bothered.
This for me, too.
It’s not the ads so much that bother me, it’s the effect all the ads have on site readability. There is nothing worse than than being 3/4 of the way through a David Tracy dissertation (guess I could stop right there; kidding) and having the page blink and reload taking me back to the top of the post. And then, at least half the time, I can’t scroll back down until it loads a couple more times. I’d join the site if I could, but I’m on a severely fixed income which simply doesn’t allow it. Willing to tolerate more ads because I love The Autopian, but something’s got to be done to eliminate annoying page reloads.
As a member, I support this, as a non-member I don’t support this. Welcome to politics?
Seriously, I’m generally okay with what is here as a member, and I leave ad-block off for your site only. I’d love to feel the pain of what 75% looks like to make a better judgement on if I think the pleabs can take it or not, then re-vote.
EDIT to add:
Are you able to share numbers on “click throughs” or what ever you call them of members vs. non-members? If it was small, then I would be more for this.
As a member, I’m fine with ads if it’s helping the site. That said, the site is incredibly slow vs almost any other website (trying it on multiple computers and connections). If disabling ads would help improve performance, then sure, that’d be great, but guessing that’s an entirely different problem.
THIS is something that’s always bothered me. Why does it consistently take 5-10 seconds longer to load a page than virtually every other site I regularly visit?
The Coleco Adam cassette drive can only spin so fast.
I know Torch likes the vintage stuff, but can’t we get him to a 286 at least?!
I’ve noticed this too. I just did a traceroute and the last hop appeared to end at an AWS IP address in Oregon. I’m located outside Chicago. I know websites can have their content served from multiple data centers around the country or world, to speed things up for site visitors. Maybe The Autopian is setup to only be served from one location and that is why it takes longer to load? I’m sure being setup to serve content from multiple locations would cost more.
When I did a traceroute on a couple of sites that load quickly for me, they led to data centers in the Chicago area and all the hops were 15 ms or shorter. The last 2 hops for me to reach The Autopian were 35 ms (Chicago-Denver) and 68 ms (Denver-Oregon).
My tech knowledge is only enough to be dangerous, so of all this could just be me talking out of my rear end.
I’ll second this. I generally split my time on the site between desktop and phone, both Safari browser and the site load times are quite slow.
And more than that, I find it strange on mobile that it is the only site I can think of that does not show any form of progress bar on the load. Most of the time I can’t tell if it’s doing anything until several seconds later when the page begins to load.
All that aside, I am ok with some ads as a member. I would very much like for video to stop auto-playing. I had to install a content blocker that would take care of that for me. I whitelist the Autopian for my ad blocker but I cannot put up with the auto-play video. I thought perhaps this was the reason for my slow load times until I saw these comments.
I view almost entirely on one PC, and I thought this was just a quirk I was facing. Interesting to find that we’re all getting the slow loads.
Of course less ads is preferable to more ads, but the current level isn’t intolerable and I’d hate to think the site might lose some non-member (potential future member) clicks because the ads you’re taking away from me are being foisted on them.
The big clunky ads that take over your whole screen on mobile and encourage accidental clickthroughs seem to mostly be gone after popping up pretty frequently a few months ago – those are the only ones I absolutely can’t stand.
Does a browser Adblocker kill your revenue? I’ve turned mine off because some webpages give me a popup saying it hurts theirs and I’d rather see Autopian thrive for what is a relative inconvenience for a quality product. Some of those pages even go so far as to prevent access until I turn it off.
As a member, I don’t need ads completely turned off if it is going to completely ruin the experience of readers that don’t happen to be members. Maybe some kind of balance where members get significantly less ads and non-members get a few more. I wouldn’t mind an ad at the beginning or end but it would be a nice to have no ads stuck in the middle of articles for members.
Dealership Manager: “Hey guys, we sold 17 cars last month! Way to go!” The real question here is, who is still buying these things?
Seems to me that like some streaming platforms, you should have a lower end membership that has ads – then go Ad-Free for the higher membership levels.
I’m a paying member, but honestly, the ads don’t bother me at all. I guess I’m just used to them by now.
I’m a member, and I would appreciate that, but I think it’s important to balance things–if you push away nonmembers with too many ads, you may not have the chance to gain their membership. I don’t mind a small number of ads as a member in order to keep nonmembers from being inundated and driven away. The number of ads I see now seems very reasonable.
I’m OK with the number of ads I see as a member, I am actually paying for the quality and because I like what you do here. I just want the other membership stuff to work (please make a member service email for issues).
I actually don’t find the ads obtrusive, except on rare occasions when I am reading on my phone. As far as I am concerned, if you are making money off the ads I am ignoring, that’s great. I see no reason to reduce ads (and by extension revenue) if it isn’t adversely affecting the reader’s experience.
To me if you pay no ads is good and as long as you can adjust the ads so I can read the site natively in my smartphone unlike other sites, we’ll be good. It annoys me when companies have a bad format with ads on mobile platforms and then I quit going there.
Not sure I agree about the Javits center, in a walk friendly city it’s pretty far out there, especially after walking around a convention all day.
As for the ads, if possible I’d say reduce ads by tier, not a member 75%, cloth 50%, vinyl 25%, above vinyl none. But do want to mention that’s what drove a lot of folks from the old site.
Paying to not see ads is what I like to see!
I have no idea what our region’s only Mitsubishi dealer (which covers at least a million people?) is going to do once they run out of this last shipment of Mirages. I see the occasional Outlander which I can sort of understand the premise of (today’s Dodge Journey), but their other two only remaining models, the Eclipse Cross and Outlander Sport, are utter trash cars that don’t sell. Can these dealers really survive on just the Outlander?
And yes, if these dealers are given 40k+ EVs to sell, you might as well close up shop now.
Honestly, that still feels higher than I would expect. On both numbers, really. There is only one Mitsubishi dealer still active in Idaho, so I guess I figured they were closing dealerships all over the place due to really low sales.
Wow, I had to search our metro area of about 1.2 million…one dealer, and it’s definitely in a more out-of-the-way, working class spot (makes sense). Definitely not at the top of my mind, nor anywhere I’d pass by on a regular basis.
For contrast on other small/mainstream brands, we have 2 Subaru and 2 VW shops.
Yeah, I can get annoyed at the closest Subaru dealer and drive less than 20 minutes to get to the next one, and it’s that or better for most of the mainstream brands. Mitsubishi just has almost no presence here.
The Salt Lake area has three of them, though, so I guess there are regions that bump up the numbers.
At first I read it as 17 cars per year and it didn’t strike me as odd. Just “yeah, that tracks”.
Yeah, 17 per year would have felt about right. “Sure, they sell about a car and a half a month. That makes perfect sense.”
Customer walks in and the janitor has to text the salesman at home. At 2pm on a Saturday.
They can’t afford a janitor. Customer walks in and the salesperson takes their break from their real job at the lot next door.