With no end in sight to one of the weirdest trade wars in history, we’re bound to see prior norms uprooted, old ties severed, and new alliances formed. Case in point: A new report claims that Honda might use batteries made by Toyota in North Carolina to limit the impact of proposed blanket tariffs.
At the same time, Chinese automaker BYD just unveiled an electric car that can charge about as quickly as it takes to fill up the tank of a gasoline-powered car, California’s electric vehicle HOV lane perk might be coming to an end, and Ford just facelifted a 34-year-old vehicle. Think buccal fat removal, but for a van. All this coming up on today’s edition of The Morning Dump.
Honda Might Use Toyota Batteries To Avoid Tariffs
By now, we’ve covered how potential tariffs can make entire vehicles more expensive along with little parts to make cars, but what about major powertrain components like hybrid batteries? Well, on-shoring might need to happen quickly, and Nikkei Asia reports that Honda will soon get American-made batteries from Toyota to put into its U.S.-market hybrid models like the Civic, Accord, and CR-V as a way of mitigating tariff risks. As the newspaper wrote, “Starting in fiscal 2025, Honda will take in batteries for approximately 400,000 vehicles, enough for all of the HVs it sells in the country.”
This tracks with Toyota’s timeline for its North Carolina battery plant, which is slated to open in April. The plant is expected to have 14 battery production lines for hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric models, so it makes sense for Honda to tap Toyota for any potential excess capacity.
It’s also worth noting that cars like the Civic, CR-V, and Accord aren’t just seriously popular, they also sit on the more affordable end of the new car spectrum, which means consumers would certainly feel any pass-through of tariffs into final retail prices. Even on models made Stateside, the effect of these proposed tariffs could be profound, as the Nikkei reports.
Honda estimates that 25% reciprocal tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods could cost the company around $4.7 billion annually. The company plans to shift some production from Canada and Mexico to the U.S. and restructure its supply chain to minimize the impact on its business.
Considering a prior Reuters report that Honda might keep Civic production in Indiana to avoid tariffs, it seems like the Japanese automaker is taking some heavy proactive measures to avoid the potential impact of a prolonged trade war. While we still have yet to see what effect this has on models made in Canada and Mexico, I wouldn’t be surprised if we learn soon enough.
BYD Might’ve Just Fixed Charging Times
Even in 2025, one of the worst parts of the electric vehicle experience is DC fast charging. It’s improved substantially from the early days of supplying just 50 kW, but even at up to 350 kW, it’s nowhere near as fast as filling up a combustion-powered car. After all, I just pumped half a tank into a Cayenne GTS in about four minutes, and that’s a reasonably large tank. Well, it seems that the nut of ultra-fast charging might’ve been cracked. Chinese automaker BYD just unveiled a platform that can charge at 1,000 kW, and it comes with a series of bold promises.
The new 1,000-volt, 1,000-amp Super e-Platform features a higher nominal voltage than anything we get in North America, batteries with a 10C rating, and a new electric drive unit that can crank out 777 horsepower all on its own. With the right charger, BYD claims models on this architecture like the “Han L” can add 249 miles of range in just five minutes of charging. On paper, that’s nearly ICE car fast, but there are a few catches.
Let’s start with that claim of adding 249 miles of range in five minutes. That’s likely on China’s economy testing cycle, so it wouldn’t directly translate to 249 miles of range as we know it under EPA test procedures. It’s also quite likely that due to differences in rolling resistance and drag, not all future models will add precisely 249 miles of range in five minutes. As ever, your mileage may vary.
However, the bigger catch is infrastructure. Even in China, Megawatt chargers aren’t exactly everywhere, and BYD doesn’t have a firm timeline on its rollout of 4,000 DC fast charging stations that can take full advantage of this new platform. It’s worth noting that many cases of range anxiety are really cases of infrastructure anxiety, and while the capability of charging at 1,000 kW is cool, spotty charger availability will put some limitations on the technology for now. However, it’s cool to think that in a decade, we could see 1,000 kW DC fast charging out there to add an LA to Vegas trip-worth of juice to a car in just a handful of minutes.
EV HOV Lane Access Is In Limbo
If you live in California, you’ve probably been tempted by the EV perk of single-occupant carpool lane access. I certainly can’t blame you, because those little stickers could be your ticket to get home sooner, which means less time in rush hour and more time to do the things you want to do in life. It’s a great little incentive, but it’s one that might be coming to an end. As Automotive News reports:
The federal statute says public authorities can allow use of carpool lanes by single-occupancy vehicles meeting certain conditions until Sept. 30. California legislators want to extend the window, but lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have yet to introduce a bill or otherwise move to authorize an extension.
On the one hand, I can understand sunsetting the incentive since zero emission vehicles made up 25.3 percent of all new cars sold in California last year, and a whopping 194,486 Clean Air Vehicle decals were issued. Once you hit that level of market penetration, there’s a good chance taking the HOV lane might not always be faster with so many vehicles eligible to access it. As California Air Resource Board air pollution specialist John Swanton told Automotive News:
“You’re going to reach some point where you’ve exhausted that excess capacity. We’re not at the point where, no matter what we do, it’s totally exhausted, but the challenge to our legislature is how to keep this a meaningful incentive.”
On the other, with many automakers readjusting their powertrain mixes and the federal government potentially cutting EV programs in the near future, is now the right time to end this program? Only time will tell, but for now, don’t count on an electric vehicle to get you through traffic faster beyond September. [Ed Note: My 2021 BMW i3 is eligible until September 30; is it worth trying to get those stickers for just 5 months of HOV access? -DT]
Not Dead Yet
I don’t know about you, but general news in these unprecedented times can be a bit exhausting, so here’s something that’s delightfully boring, The oldest current Ford just got a new grille.
Yes, the E-Series Cutaway van that debuted in 1992 has received the lightest of facelifts, with a subtle riff on Ford’s C-clamp grille that’s sure to go relatively unnoticed unless you really know what to look for. This is the E-Series’ first cosmetic update since 2008, and while it won’t move the needle spectacularly, the first time you see a 2026 E-Series Cutaway in the wild should be a mild delight.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
When it comes to post-hardcore bands, few have a repertoire quite as accomplished as that of Alexisonfire. From getting past the censors on “Open Mike” because nobody on the production team knew the words to “Pulmonary Archery” to one of the best House of Strombo performances ever, the St. Catharines, Ontario outfit has a catalog of banger after banger. In that discography, “Passing Out In America” is a weird one because it’s actually a Moneen cover. Are there technically better Alexisonfire songs out there? Absolutely, but for some reason I find myself drawn to this performance time and time again, perhaps due to its grand riffs and perhaps due to its lyrical poignancy. “I wanted to cry” indeed.
The Big Question
It’s been half a freaking decade since many of us were told to take two weeks off work and got some extra time to work on our project cars, so I want to know what you did with that unexpected free time. I ended up buying my 325i and helping a friend who used to live next door with a suspension rebuild on his Celica Supra, how about you?
Top graphic credit: Honda
Thomas, I had my second kid in January 2020. My “extra free time” was mostly spent openly crying during (virtual) meetings and drinking Barefoot Chardonnay.
Is it Alex is on fire, or Alexis on fire?
Anywho, my last full day of work at the dealership was Saturday, March 21st. As a non-essential employee, I went home and basically stayed there for 9 whole months. My wife was considered essential and kept working from home, so I (out of both obligation to hold up my end of the relationship, as well as boredom) cleaned the house from top to bottom, landscaped the entire yard, wrote and recorded a full album of music, but most importantly spent time with my family (my work hours sucked back then and I was largely absent).
It wasn’t a horrible experience until later, when I got COVID and then gave it to my wife, but that’s a story I won’t retell now.
I didn’t have any extra time off from the rona. I was an essential employee and all my work required hands on work (how it was essential I don’t know it was testing magnets for a particle accelerator). So not much changed for me besides my commute taking less time so that was nice the weird empty apocalyptic roads.
A bit prior to lockdown I had just quit my full-time job to work for myself. My partner and I celebrated by working remotely from Portugal for a couple of months. While there the news of people being sick on cruise ships started to intensify and become ore ominous. We were considering heading home when I got sick.
I got a cough so bad I couldn’t lay down without going into fits. It was truly terrible, but the idea of going to a doctor in a foreign country was daunting, so I just waited it out. We didn’t really think it could be the illness from the cruise ships in China, but where we were staying also had cruise ships docking, and later, we found out they had opened a medical ward near our apartment for people who started getting what looked like this new sickness.
Since there weren’t any tests, I will never know for sure, but if it wasn’t COVID, it sure was a strange set of coincidences. The lockdown went into effect shortly after we got home. We care for three elderly friends/family so that was the biggest fear. I also ended up with numbness over most of my left leg that lasted over size months. IT took about that long for the cough to go away completely as well.
The plus side is that I had nothing to do but work on my new business. A combination of boredom and panic seemed to be productive for me. Five years with no boss and only setting the alarm on days when I need to fly is lovely. 2020 feels like it was when everything got thrown up into the air and we are still finding out where they land.
I was allowed to WFH during Covid. And I was efficient and effective too. I have some great memories of that time, especially since my wife got flooded with Puppies in her work with Animal Rescue and I seemed to have a puppy untying my shoes in every meeting.
As for cars, this gets into my latest WFH story.
Long story short, back in 1992, I broke a bone in my back. Working on cars at all became painful and no longer fun. I finally broke down and had surgery late last year (leading to more WFH and disability) and I’m not recovered yet.
What I find about project cars is that they aren’t as big a deal to me today. I loved working on cars with my dad. Now, my wife is remodeling the house on her own and I’m enjoying trying to teach her how to fix stuff. It’s more of the relationship thing when I think about it. Maybe we can try a car if we ever get the house done, sometime around 2125.
Looking at the grille in the topshot makes me want to play Arkanoid.
I was already WFH for about 7 years before the pandemic and I work in tech, so my job was pretty much BAU. After work I did a ton of running and biking because the exercise helped me deal with the stress (my Mom had also died about two months before the lockdown, which sucked but could have been even worse if she’d gotten sick during the pandemic). That year I got in the best shape I had been in for a long time because there was basically nothing else to do.
I didn’t really have a project car at the time, although now that I think about it I did buy a bunch of old snowblowers and fix them up. Most of my wrenching happened on small engines.
This might be worth defining, since us shadetrees are still learning EVs. As I understand it, 1C means you charge or discharge a battery at a rate of 1 battery capacity per hour. So if the battery pack stores 100Ah, 1C is 100A.
10C means 10x that. So a theoretical 100Ah battery pack would be charging at 1000A.
Someone please correct my crude understanding.
You’re correct, though I think it’s better to use kWh instead of Ah though since these packs use multiple battery cells and may have different voltages. A 50kWh battery at 1C is 50kW, while 5C is 250kW. Another way of calculating it is that a battery which charges from 0-100% at an average of 2C would take 60/2=30 minutes, or 60/5=12 minutes at 5C.
However, this calculation is rarely done properly like that, as you’ll usually see something like 5C peak charge rate (the charging curve could be trash), or 10-80% in 12 minutes being called 5C charging, where they’re defining the battery capacity as only 70% of the usable capacity. The latter is still quite impressive, but it’s debatable whether it’s misleading (b/c it’s not 100% of the battery) or not (DCFC users are advised to charge to 80% max anyways). The C rate is pretty commonly advertised by marketing in China, but not yet in NA or the EU.
I (and my co-workers) got no mandated time off. We in the IT branch were sent home early to load test the upgraded VPN in advance of full remote for all non-manufacturing jobs, and were expected to keep delivering full time. Two months in the CIO told all of us if we weren’t using all our newfound time to learn new stuff, we weren’t lacking time, we were lacking disclipline. You know, because working from home 10 hours a day, manging two kids doing remote learning, and trying to not go completely insanse wasn’t enough to manage already. The message was clear, and I left in Nov 21. Still fulltime WFH to this day, I don’t think I will ever go back to fulltime in the office.
We went fully WFH. Then I got laid off, right as it seemed every place began doing hiring freezes as it became clear this was going to last for a while. Networked into a job with some former coworkers now at a new place, they had an opening coming up but it would be in May. With my severance it timed out basically the same week I started the new job, so it worked out well fortunately (and been pretty flexible hybrid ever since).
At the start of the year I had been getting in a rhythm of meal prep so I was more used to bigger shopping trips and cooking for myself, that wasn’t too bad of an adjustment. I had also been getting more into running again, so with the gyms closed I did a lot more longerish runs and alternated days with long walks. My apartment gym eventually made it so you could ‘reserve’ a time, which people didn’t always follow, but I sure did get used to working out without others around.
Luckily, my office had laptops for everyone as primary computers already and we had remote access set up, so we pivoted really quickly to working remote. The only hiccup was getting enough VPN licenses for everyone and getting everyone a docking station and extra monitor for home. Since we are a 100% ESOP company (employee owned), we all worked hard to keep working. The hardest part was balancing work with keeping the kids busy or paying attention to classes later. It did result in us continuing to be 2 days in the office and 3 days optional, so it’s had some good changes for us. Bad changes for the people in my life that we lost, but at least some good too.
We did end up eventually buying the MGB during that time, and then later a 2nd camper, because our vintage camper doesn’t have a bathroom and campground bathrooms were closed.
I’m simultaneously glad that Ford did the facelift (implying they plan to make them for many more years), and also confused why they’d go through the trouble of making a (purely(?)) aesthetic change on them.
Perhaps U-Haul made the request.
Could be RV manufacturers, too, I suppose…
Meanwhile we’re hoping that, just as the Chevy Express from 2003 and 2023 are similar, that the 2323 model will also be similar.
As it should be.
My marriage went to crap and I ended up divorced. All in all, the silver lining of 2020, if I’m being honest.
While I wasn’t off of work, I did use the lockdown and corresponding lack of other people buying stuff that wasn’t toilet paper to get a killer deal on a then-new Miata. Whenever quarantine was needed, Miata was (and still is) always the answer.
My work went to 100% WFH overnight. None of us lost our jobs, thankfully. I quickly realized I am someone who needs to be onsite in order to be productive and actually enjoy my job and took a new job in late 2021 that put me back in the office/hospital.
I’ve wondered since then if I could have gotten used to WFH it hadn’t happened so suddenly and without the collective trauma of COVID. It was also hard to focus with a “remote learning” 7 year old in the next room who needed frequent checks to make sure she actually was paying attention to class.
I was in the office full time, because my boss didn’t want to be at home with his wife and kids while she had to WFH and the kids’ schools were closed.
He also took one of those “don’t have to pay it back” government Paycheck Protection Program loans even though our workload and billable hours didn’t go down. Technically he’d ordered a new Jeep Gladiator to be his company vehicle just before covid hit, but the PPP loan pretty much exactly covered the cost of the vehicle.
Then he fired one of our “interim” new hires one day before he’d have hit the 160 hour internship requirement he needed for the final step in earning his CS degree, so I’m not 100% he lived up to the PPP rules.
Speaking of the Gladiator, he wanted to use it (freshly decked out in company logos) in a parade, so he bought three large (but cheapest available) screen TVs, and informed us we all had to show up at my house after work one night to build a frame to hold the TVs. He brought a couple of Little Caesars pizzas, and we used up a crap ton of my leftover dimensional lumber and screws (which he later offered to pay my $25 for, arguing is was all leftover scrap – not sure that would have even covered the cost of the lag screws) building a frame to hold the screens.
I didn’t go to the parade, but reports are the TVs weren’t bright enough for viewing in sunlight, so nobody could see the video feed, and it looked like he was just driving around with three large, unpowered TVs hanging off the sides and rear of the truck. (Note to everybody – if you’re thinking about displaying a TV outside, make sure you spend the money for a screen built for that purpose. They do exist, but they aren’t cheap.)
So glad to be out of there.
I’m pretty sure a lot of businesses didn’t. I’ve heard plenty of stories of straight up fraudulent PPP claims and since we’ve fired all of the watchdogs nobody is ever going to get in trouble for it.
Which is exactly what this administration wants, since a bunch of them are part of the fraud group.
It was a license to steal….
I can’t believe WFH is even debated – I have clients who have mandated their staff back to the office and nobody is happy about it (except the commercial building landlords and foodcourt vendors). It seems an easy way to attract high achievers – offer WFH.
I’m lucky in that I’m old enough and experienced enough in my industry that I can choose my clients and I exclusively WFH. Earlier in my career, I averaged 50% of my time on the road. Now, I decline any work with a requirement to be “in the office” as do most of my peers.
We need to fight to make WFH available to as many jobs as possible.
The problem is that while WFH works great for high achievers who are self-motivated, it works terribly if you have slackers on your team. A couple of examples:
Now, my company has a ton of WFH employees and knows how to handle tracking whether someone is doing their job so the latter guy was headed for a PIP if he hadn’t left of his own volition, but not all companies handle WFH as well as mine.
That said, WFH is a great way to attract and retain the high achievers because a lot of them know their worth and won’t put up with back-to-the-office shenanigans (I’ve seen it happen where a company pushes for that, and it bites them because all the good people just leave and all the sucky people stay). WFH really is a part of your compensation in that case.
I agree that not everyone is a high achiever. I suspect those people who are slackers in the WFH model are also slackers in the office – maybe they are just better at hiding it or someone else is spending an inordinate amount of time baby sitting them. Those people are exhausting and toxic to any kind of team effort.
100%
It’s nice to have the option, but yes, it depends on the team. We are 2 days in the office and 3 WFH. We are engineers and the 2 days in the office are really important for collaboration and training of younger staff. I end up going in 4 days a week because I like the atmosphere on the optional work from home days. It might surprise people, but the people coming in on optional WFH days are 95% employees with under 10 years of experience. It’s more casual, and there’s a ton of great learning and sharing going on. I typically work from home on Mondays because I’m basically in meetings all day Monday and it’s just not worth going in to sit on a headset all day.
Counterpoint, I worked at a facility that was closed, the app team was made remote, I transferred to another facility so avoided the axe. One of the guys on the app team on chat was telling me how it was great and he was getting caught up on all his Netflix shows.
So yeah, slackers gonna slack, easier to manage when you walk up behind them and see them surfing car blogs instead of actual work.
I didn’t get any time off, just switched from doing in-person sales calls to selling, or attempting to sell, merchandising contracts and products over the phone. Which, considering many of my customers were shut down, and I couldn’t visit any of the ones who weren’t, didn’t really go all that well. But the company let us try, anyway.
Not commuting gave me 2- 3 hours more free time per day. Days I did have to be in the factory my commute dropped to 25 minutes.
My wife’s company starting doing a bootleg Peloton stream every morning so we started working out. Then we subscribed to Peloton for the yoga and strength training classes. We started working out every day and started running again. I ended up dropping about 20 lbs of weight and feeling a LOT better. Spending more time together and having more time to do the routine household chores also improved our marriage.
“When it comes to post-hardcore bands”
Oh, Thomas wrote today’s dump.
I built a Lego set that I had gotten as a Christmas gift that I originally intended to just end up leaving it in the box because I never thought I would have time to build it. I ended up getting more and more to pass the time.
I didn’t have a project car/bike anymore at that point and couldn’t justify something that level of expense because I had just bought my house a year before and was mostly spending money doing house stuff.
That march was the last time I was in the office full time, I don’t even have a designated desk anymore. we didn’t get extra time off, just turned into remote full time.
Nice! What set was it?
it was the Harley Davidson Fatboy set, I had first noticed it at the dealership when I had gone for a quick service on my bike, I got one for my dad because it was the same as his first motorcycle and we had liked Lego a lot as kids so I got myself one too just because.
That’s awesome! I have far too many Lego sets. They’re awesome!
When I was told to take an involuntary vacation, we went nuts and built a freaking two story, 18 ft tall playhouse in the backyard complete with climbing wall and 80 ft zipline. It was fantastic, and awful at the same time.
I’m curious about the BYD picture, it shows cables plugged in from both sides. Is that accurate? Is it hooking up to two chargers simultaneously to get that speed of charging or just demonstrating flexibility and it has dual charging ports?
BYD has higher end vehicles that are capable of charging from two charging ports simultaneously. I’m unsure if that’s being used for today’s new 1000kW capable vehicles, or if the image is from a previous event. It might be useful for 800V vehicles when only 400V chargers are available.
Interesting. That’s pretty cool
I did not get any time off but went 100% WFH. I did finish converting our Sienna into a minivan camper during the early stages of the pandemic and my wife and I went camping in it nearly every other weekend once the colleges opened back up.
At that time, I was the guy writing the paychecks, so with the doors closed all I had to do was watch my investment disappear, never to return.
No time off here and still had to work. It was nice that there was no traffic to deal with though.