Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Wednesday, March 26.
It's easy to forget that Nissan Motor Co. sought to be like Tesla 15 years ago — long before Tesla or Elon Musk were relevant. But history shows us former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn championed the mass-market Leaf EV that launched in 2010.
Fast-forward to 2025 and Ghosn is an international fugitive from Japanese justice after his dramatic ouster from Nissan and related criminal charges. The pioneering Leaf has endured for two generations in the company's product portfolio (11,226 Leafs were sold in the U.S. in 2024). While the EV couldn't save Ghosn's job at Nissan, it could help save the company as part of several new products in the pipeline, as reported by Urvaksh Karkaria in this story from today.
"The U.S. is of critical importance for us — we want it to grow," Guillaume Cartier, Nissan chief performance officer, said in the story. "Products are central to our efforts."
As for the third-generation Leaf, it ditches its hatchback design for more contemporary crossover styling. The third-generation model rides on the same CMF-EV platform as the electric Ariya. The Leaf will launch in the U.S. in the third quarter, followed by Japan and Europe.
Read more: Live updates on tariff news and impacts
Meanwhile, this story by John Irwin gives the latest updates on tariff chaos in North America. Trump was scheduled to hold a press conference on tariffs this afternoon. And, of course, we'll update our coverage after the presser concludes.
In Canada, new Prime Minister Mark Carney was in Windsor, Ontario, earlier today and promised a $2 billion Canadian ($1.4 billion) "strategic response fund" to help Canadian auto manufacturing and strengthen the supply chain as it braces for U.S. tariffs, Bloomberg reported.
While tariff uncertainty permeates the auto industry, there is something a bit more certain emerging in the world of autonomous vehicles. Google's self-driving affiliate Waymo has demonstrated that it still takes an actual human being to pay parking tickets. Waymo accumulated 589 parking citations in 2024 totaling $65,065 in penalties, according to municipal data obtained by The Washington Post.
In other news today, Toyota North America brought more clarity to its recent management changes. Less than a year after creating a chief strategy officer role, Toyota Motor North America said it is eliminating it, dividing up retiring Chris Reynolds' duties across four executives, Larry P. Vellequette reported.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
If you want to view this story in your browser, click here.
— Philip Nussel, online editor
No comments:
Post a Comment