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 member I don’t have any problem with the current level of ads, I don’t feel the need for it to be turned down.
Think of the children! I’d hate to see free readers/members have a higher ad ratio than what they already see. I like to think that there are some younger readers out there enjoying free content and becoming inspired. I am a paying member, and I am fine with the current ad ratio. I know not everyone can afford or justify paying for access, and I just assume that The Autopian continues to be the people’s automotive publication. Also, while we know that DT can deal with some serious S*&%, let’s make sure that we don’t cut into the diaper fund.
As a member I’ve been content with the lower ad load I have now. The video player is a little “trashy” looking (for lack of a better word), i.e. not one I associate with higher end websites, but overall as long as they’re fairly non-intrusive and don’t hurt the browsing experience I’m ok with you leaving them in place for members.
Not sure how you balance the non-member ads, I think less ads should be one of the main draws of subscribing so by all means load them up to whatever level you can that still allows David and Mercedes’ mile-long blogs to not crash a smartphone browser.
Agreed. As a member, I don’t mind the level we’re at now. I would worry about cranking up the ads for non-members potentally turning people away from this woderful crazy community of car nuts. I’m far from a business professor or accountant, so what do I know? I just know this place feel special and want to see it stay as accessable as possible for everyone.
Mitsubishi should pivot to being a fleet only supplier. There are already hundreds of brands/sub-brands vying for slices of the market. Why not own that slice?
Here’s the idea, cars are so full of crap these days that it takes a driver quite some time to get to know how to use their vehicle. Rental customers aren’t engaged that long. Mitsubishi should take a selection of Nissan’s platforms and make a straightforward low gadget experience series of vehicles in the key rental categories. Subcompact, mid size sedan, compact CUV, minivan. Make them so it takes less than ten seconds for a customer to understand all of the controls. Make the interiors durable and low maintenance for the fleet owner, much like fleet trade vehicles. Now go and work exclusive or volume incentive deals with the fleet owners to create enough volume to fill your production capacity.
When I rent a car for a couple of days, I don’t need a consumer class vehicle full of toys. I need a transport solution. Period.
That would put more thought, effort, and development dollars into the rental car business model than I think both manufacturers and operators put in.
That a rental car may have too many gadgets isn’t really by design, they’re usually just making a bunch of cars and offloading to rental fleets. But people have been struggling to figure out how to use an unfamiliar car for ages and sometimes don’t even fully know the car they’ve owned for years.
Plus there’s the secondhand market when they need to take them out of service. A fleet-only model from a regular brand can get away with it, Chevy Classics or Captiva Sports at least have a recognizable brand backing it, they can sell them as CPO even. A fleet-only brand will just be associated with cheap, flogged rental cars. There’s plenty of commenters here that mention turning around and demanding something else if they get issued a cheap Nissan or Dodge or something, people might eventually stop renting from a company entirely.
That’s David Hasselhoff, of Nightrider and German fame.
I think Mitsubishi may go the way of Isuzu in the US. Mitsubishi Fuso trucks are the only small cabover competing with Isuzu and probably sell better.
Tesla was always in a race between Tesla becoming a real car company, and everyone else making a better Tesla. China is a tough EV market because they make so many better ones
Retromobile would be cool, but I never want to go back to NY.
Here’s my probably unpopular take. Don’t take the ads away for members… because in XX years when it’s not sustainable anymore and you have to put them back, now it’s a broken promise to members, a la Netflix and amazon. My thought would be if you have to add more ads, members get ads at 1/2 the rate of the regular website.
Also, whatever ads type that makes the web page autoscroll down to the middle of the article please fix. I hate having to hold left click on my mouse so I can read the article. Though arguably it could be related to works IT rules. As it is I have to hop on my mobile device in order to comment
Regarding Tesla in China, they are very litigious against both owners and journalists there who complain about their products or try to fault their tech for causing a crash. It’s a really bizarre strategy to take and it’s scaring away a lot of buyers.
Here’s an AP article on it: https://apnews.com/article/tesla-china-lawsuits-musk-investigation-58b10ccace488784fcc63646ab78b410
Yuck!
Yes, turn up the ads on those freeloaders and turn them off for those of us who pay!
Here I was thinking you were attending a conference on Ad Hominem attacks. Which is what I’d expect from a glasses wearing New Yorker.
Also, I’d love to be a member, but the Moose Dollar exchange rate is too much for me to justify. So I’ll look at the ads and not complain about it.
I’m in the paying-members club, but I don’t mind the current amount of adds I see. That goes for the desktop – I rarely visit on a mobile device, so maybe that experience is different.
The worst offenders to me in general are anything that makes a page jump up or down when I’m in the middle of an article, or those little player-adds that jump down to the corner and seem to be impossible to shut off. I took a nice long break from thedrive because of those. Thankfully I haven’t noticed any of that here.
I also can’t stand auto-play videos of any sort, but I had a plug-in that kept those from doing their thing. It worked well for awhile, just replacing the auto-play vid with a jumbled image. However, that hasn’t been working as well anymore so I’ve had to finding the pause-button right away. Not too big of a deal once I got the muscle memory built up.
I don’t know if it’s mild ADD or what, but if there is something playing and I can’t shut it off while I’m trying to read text on any site, I generally just leave. I’d also hate to inflict that onto anyone else. In other words, if keeping the adds on the paying side the same keeps those more annoying type of adds showing up for non-subscribers, I’d say keep the current crop the way it is.
Just created an account to post a response as I have some definite opinions on the matter. As a long-time supporter of PBS, NPR, Wikipedia, and others, I have a sense of guilt for not supporting the Autopian (yet) which I discovered (via Hagerty) some number of months ago.
I’m cheap, and the $7/month is more than I want to pay. For comparison, PBS and NPR are $5/ month and the breadth and depth of the offerings there are superior to what the Autopian has, so the price seems high. I had a Wall Street Journal subscription for several years at their recurring discounted rate of $4/month (again cheaper than the Autopian). But eventually I canceled that as I didn’t want to pay the $4/month anymore.
So how can you give me the extra value I want? As the publisher, you won’t want to hear this, but incorporate as a non-profit (like PBS and NPR and Wikipedia) and give me a tax deduction (yes, I still itemize). The difference is less about the tax deduction, and more about not supporting a billionaire (presumably not a consideration for the Autopian, but every time I hear the New York Times asking for money based on their “good deeds”, that is what goes through my mind). My electric utility is a co-op (which I partly own) and I think shared ownership of infrastructure (roads, utilities, the media) is the correct business model. How much better would the world be if Facebook had the same business model as Wikipedia? (ie funded by donations rather than ads, greed, big data, etc). I get much more satisfaction sending my money to non-profits, co-ops, and employee-owned enterprises than for-profit ones.
Given that you’re not going to reincorporate as a non-profit, what else can you do to sweeten the pot? Get rid of the self-playing videos. Get rid of all embedded videos. Put them on a separate “Videos” page (like Hagerty), so I can find them easily when I am interested. You can link relevant videos from the articles, but don’t embed the video. I usually read the Autopian at work (where I don’t want videos showing) or in the car (where the videos burn through my meager data allowance). If you make no embedded videos a feature exclusive to members, I’ll sign up immediately – that is my “killer app”
Some other thoughts: Change “member” to “patron.” I know you’re trying to build a community – hence the member nomenclature, but patron gives a sense that you are doing good, which might be helpful when trying to separate folks from their hard-earned cash. Consider putting a “donate now” button at the bottom of every page. (Not the huge pop up Wikipedia uses at the end of the year, but something more discrete – although I suspect the Wikipedia year-end pop ups are quite effective – probably creates the right amount of guilt). Add a sentence or two to the donate now button about how you’re different than the billionaire-owned or private equity-owned media outlets. I think that would be far less intrusive than embedded videos and pop up ads.
Finally, I expect ZERO ads as a member. Showing me an ad as a paying member will get me upset (and canceled) in a hurry. Also, I have an ad blocker (part of the reason for the guilt I mentioned earlier). As a non-member, I basically see no ads already, except those annoying embedded videos, which I’ll gladly pay to see removed.
Again, get me a ZERO embedded video option and I’m a member today.
$50 / year is possible here, too, paid annually that a hair over 4/month..
Currently a member generates certain revenue and gains certain benefits. This would decrease the revenue they generate while increasing their benefits. To me keeping ads limited for everyone while making the other benefits attractive enough to keep members is the better route. There are plenty more opportunities to increase the benefits – exclusive commenting features (i.e. photos, badges), members only events, early content access, members only chat groups, increased access to writers/editors, etc.
As a member, I find most ads unobtrusive and would be ok maintaining them for members if it avoided a loss in non-paying site traffic.
The one exception is the full page scroll over ads. They are very obtrusive and make it difficult to stay engaged. If members avoided the scroll over ads that would be a perfect compromise for me.
Mitsubishi isn’t getting it done with their current lineup. The Outlander is okay, but it is mostly a Rouge. Not a bad thing, but it is a thing. The Mirage is the second most seen vehicle, but that might be because it is the only other Mitsubishi out there. They have other vehicles that are competitive in other markets and those vehicles could be adapted to sell well enough in the US. Mitsubishi either needs to get in the game or get out of the US market.
A small truck might be a good option for them. They have the L200. Ford is doing well with the Maverick, thus proving a small truck can sell. Hyundai is missing the mark with their Santa Cruz, and I haven’t heard anything recently about Toyota releasing something smaller than the Taco. Might be a good time to put up or fold up.
If the Mirage was a CUV slotted under the Outlander, it would do better, but you can only go so low. At a certain point people will realize that a really cheap new vehicle isn’t worth it compared to some better quality used one. There will always be people that will buy the cheapest of the cheap new simply to have “New”. I don’t think there are enough of those people to sustain Mitsubishi at a level that would keep them here in the US.
I see loads of what appear to be new Mitsubishis in this area, but I couldn’t begin to tell you where a dealership is located. I can’t say that I’ve seen a Mitsubishi dealership ad either, but most of our local TV advertising is dominated by Leith Toyota.
Regarding the ads…I’m a member, and I do most of my reading on my work computer, which has the ad blocker on per IT group policy. The ads I see when reading on my phone generally don’t bother me unless I’m scrolling back up from the comment section; the screen goes blank for a few seconds for some reason.
Speaking as a member, I find his site’s information and entertainment value to be great enough that I would be willing to pay an additional fee for the privilege of going ad-free.
The Mamas and the Papas. Great music, but what a screwed up bunch of people.
Mitsubishi should sell the Twingo and Kwid here.
I’m not a member, the ads don’t bother me at all and the site loads just fine 99.5% of the time.
Keep up the great work. If adding a few more ads helps keep the quality up, so be it. The ad load on Autopian is tiny compared to most sites.
No doubt there were a lot of fluctuations throughout the year but I’d bet Outlander sales were pretty steady and more of the variation was based on how many Mirages you had that month. If you’ve been a Mitsubishi dealer for a while, you also probably became acclimated to having a strong used car business. A credit challenged customer that might have been moved to a new Mirage before, is back to being shown a used somethingorother.
Adwise, I am a member, sometimes adblock, sometimes read in private browser. But I would like to skip autoplay video, just from the slowdown it can have on the page. Some of that is biased by my own consumption which is rarely video when I’m at work and such. But also right now the video player on this page is just showing Honda’s B-roll from the prior-gen Accord so not even something specifically related.
Careful with that spelling or Trump is going to put a tariff on that accent aigu é
Does Autopian get paid for ad views or click-throughs? Or some combination? The other variable is number of members to non-members viewing pages.
I use an ad blocker because ads disrupt readability. Advertisers just cannot contain themselves. I don’t feel guilty about leaving my ad blocker enabled on Autopian because I’m a paying member. I’m shocked when I look at sites on a device without an ad blocker.
I support sites providing valuable content with my subscription dollars.
Agreed, and ad networks have consistently let through malicious content because they just can’t help adding more features, aka attack vectors. That’s partially why I’m a member. I’m in the cheap seats because this is far from the only place I subscribe/support and I gotta spread the wealth.
We get paid for views, though the higher the CTR the better some ads perform.
Ads are fine by me. I see it as payment for viewing the site. A few more wouldn’t kill it for me, as long as it doesn’t rise to the level of inducing Epileptic seizures.
I’ve even got used to the flipping video always running and always being in the way of the Notification drop down.
Occasionally part way down the page, the page will crash. I don’t recall the error, but from what I can tell, it’s likely due to some ad that’s trying to do some tracking callback with a badly formed data package. Might just be a lazy loading ad that is trying to dynamically load based on some page data, but it cannot complete the page data send to get back the ad.
Re: Ads
I am a member, but am only logged in on my phone but I do most of my reading on the computer. It’s possible the change could shift my habits but making a change would likely result in me seeing more ads even as a member.
I will say I don’t find the current level of ads obtrusive.
I’m in the same boat. Work computer won’t let me sign in, so any comments (like this one) have to go through the phone.
On my work computer, where I do most of my slacking off, the add level doesn’t bother me.
Do what you need to do Matt, I’m not going anywhere.