A reader showed up to one of our taxi meetups this week with a new-ish Audi (shoutout Tam), and I thought it looked good. I also had to pause for a second to remember which one it was. I presumed it was an A4, but for the first time in a long time, I needed to check. This is just one of the problems that Audi has as a luxury automaker.
A big thanks to Thomas for covering The Morning Dump while I’ve been on the road. It looks like I missed a lot, so hopefully I don’t repeat things too much. Let’s try a topic of conversation that’s always a topic of conversation: What is Nissan doing? Right now, its new CEO is trying to buy himself enough time to turn the company around while also not revealing how much he thinks the company will make (or, more likely, lose) this year.
What’s another topic I touch on a lot? Tesla’s European sales continue to slump, in spite of the new Model Y starting to roll out across the continent. Early issues with the Robotaxi service certainly aren’t helping things. How should I end the day? With Škoda, as somehow Thomas didn’t cover that. We apologize for the oversight.
Audi Disproves The Theory That Having More Models Is A Good Thing
Is it better to have a single vehicle that is the leader in a class or have multiple vehicles that make you a segment leader? That’s the open question today. The Jeep Grand Cherokee is the best-selling upper midsize utility vehicle so far this year, according to S&P Global Mobility, but Kia sells more total cars in the segment when you combine the Sorrento, Telluride, and EV9.
You can play this game all day. Honda has the best-selling CUV, but Toyota just eclipses it with the RAV4 and BZ4X.
Why does it matter? S&P Global’s Tom Libby explains:
In the US automotive market, segment leadership is a powerful asset. A top-selling nameplate delivers clear marketing wins. But for many automakers, total brand performance within automotive industry segments—across multiple models—can be just as valuable, even if no single model takes the crown.
In fact, brand-level leadership often reflects a broader product strategy, especially when multiple models span price points and propulsion types.
It’s an interesting question, and I think the long-term answer will likely be that having multiple powertrains so you can continue to grow/maintain a customer base is going to be better than just having one model. In the short term, I don’t think either Toyota or Kia is making a ton of money from their EVs, even if it’s important to be in that space.
What’s the exception to this? When you have a bunch of cars in one category and still get your butt kicked:
Yikes!
Mercedes has the class leader S-Class, with about 21% share of the segment, and has 32% of the overall full-sized luxury sedan segment. BMW has a ton of models here and edges Mercedes overall with nearly 38% of the segment. BMW probably has too many variations in this class (and I’m not sure why the 760 and 740 are considered two different models, I guess the 750 is because of the electrified powertrain), but it seems to be working for them.
Audi, though, only has 5% of the class and has three different models if you break out the A8 and S8. That’s not great. The e-tron GT is not popular. The new S5 looks interesting, but overall Audi’s sales have fallen as it’s become harder to explain what Audi is supposed to be. In particular, a look at sales shows a drop across every sedan other than the A7 in Q1. As Manager Magazin puts it, 2024 was supposed to be a big year for Audi with new products, “but the VW subsidiary remains mired in crisis at the beginning of 2025.”
Tariffs against non-USMCA-compliant cars built in Mexico could absolutely devastate Q5 sales, which is something Audi can’t afford right now. In general, the cards feel very stacked against Audi.
It could be worse, I guess. Maserati sold just 13 Quattroportes this year, apparently.
New Nissan CEO Gets Hazed By Investors
Nissan’s new CEO Ivan Espinosa seems like a pretty chill dude as far as auto execs go, but he’s stepping into an extraordinarily hard job, as the automaker flails around after years of confusion following the ouster of Carlos Ghosn. Step one in taking over the top job at a public company is to talk to investors, and — bad timing for Espinosa — Japanese investors have gotten a lot more active in recent years.
How did his first big shareholder meeting go? It was a little testy according to Automotive News:
One shareholder who attended the three-hour meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity said that the new CEO was “quite smooth and fluent” in outlining his recovery plan but equivocated “without substance” during the question and answer period. He called the meeting “more stormy than I expected.”
Espinosa said he understood and shared the frustration with Nissan’s problems. But he said the company has a solid revival plan and promised the turnaround has already started.
“We have to continue with the restructuring, which as I said is very painful,” he said. “It’s far from what we want to do. It’s far from what we want to achieve. But we’re starting to see the company move in the right direction.”
The biggest issue seems to be that Nissan is mostly keeping its executive board in place while cutting mostly frontline workers. This feels a bit unfair to some given that frontline workers had little to do with the failure of the company, whereas the executive board has a lot to do with it.
Another big issue is that Nissan hasn’t yet put out a full-year guidance for what it expects to make (or lose).
Tesla’s European Bloodletting Continues
Another month, another opportunity for me to look at Tesla’s European sales numbers and go “blurgghhhhh.”
The market overall is trending heavily towards electric cars, with those vehicles making up about 15% of new car sales so far this year. In particular, EV sales are up heavily in Germany, which is the largest market in Europe.
Tesla is doing dog-crap sales, though, and is down 45% year-over-year through May, and down about 40% in May itself. I presume that even with the Elon-Musk-Of-It-All, the revised Model Y will probably help stem the sales slide a bit, but it’s a bad sign that you’re losing share so quickly in a market that’s starting to embrace electric cars more widely.
The bigger issue beyond Musk may be that Tesla doesn’t offer the kind of cheaper and smaller electric cars that Europeans are buying from companies like Renault. Tesla also lacks PHEVs or EREVs, which are growing in popularity across the Atlantic.
The New Škoda Student Car Rules
Every year, the trainees at Škoda get to make their own car, and it’s usually quite cool. This year’s model is a Superb truck! A PHEV truck!
I’ll let the company explain:
With the support of their teachers and experts from various departments, the trainees invested more than 2,000 working hours in the planning, development and production of the Škoda L&K 130. It is the first Student Car to be based on the Superb Estate and the first to feature a plug-in hybrid drive. Thanks to its electric range, it is well suited for use as a support vehicle during bike races.
When running in all-electric mode, it uses a high‑voltage battery with a gross capacity of 25.7 kWh. Moreover, it offers generous space, which makes the Škoda L&K 130 the ideal support car for professional cycling races. The students transformed the estate car into a pick-up for this purpose. The vehicle now features a new rear window behind the rear seats separating the interior from the open loading area. It comes with a new, integrated bike carrier mechanism for transporting and quickly providing spare bikes.
I love it.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Are you ready for a vibe? This is Dinner Party, a jazzy supergroup that includes Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, Terrace Martin, and 9th Wonder. Griffin and I were in the car together for the last week, and he turned me onto this. Enjoy!
The Big Question
What’s better? To be the best in a class or to have multiple cars? Give me some examples!
Top Photo: Audi
Another problem Audi had was making A4, A6, and A8 look too similar from each other, starting in the early 2000s. Looking at the side and rear three-quarter profile, we couldn’t tell them apart. Something that is affecting Mercedes-Benz lately, too.
“Every year, the trainees at Škoda get to make their own car, and it’s usually quite cool. This year’s model is a Superb truck! A PHEV truck!”
Superb Yutes making Superb Utes.
re:Audi
Hear me out. IF Audi want’s to gain an identity again that makes it interesting, nostalgic, sporting, its going to have to resurrect the inline 5 (I5) and slap that badboy in everything. The body style looks great with the box flares, no need for change there.
Harken the days of rally, quattro and the sport quarttro coupe. V6’s and I4’s are everywhere. All I4’s are boooring no matter how much boost you throw at it (if it was a hot cammy high revver, maybe I’d say something different). It’d be the only car on sale today with an I5.
Matrix LED’s, OLED tail lights, central computing is cool, but boring. it’s not what gives a car soul.
My thought:
A5 should have inline 4’s/hybrid drive. Street and Allroad variants includedS5 should have a hot I5, port and direct injection, and/or I5 PHEV with the same power output as the RS5. Street, and Allroad variants includedRS5 should have the I5, higher revving, bigger turbo, 48V energy recoup to keep weight low but efficiency high. Track and Quattro (call it Quattro instead of allroad for its peak trim) variants included
How cool would it be to see an RS5 “Quattro” in same vein as a Huracan Sterrato?
They really should dig into the allroad brand, just like subaru’s “wilderness”, toyota’s “woodland” trims.
Throw all the money into a new I5 instead of recycling VAG motors. Please.
I feel like Audi is suffering from the same problem it had in the 90’s, good cars with high prices that are beat by other manufacturers in either price, features, or brand recognition. I feel like Audi suffers from the Buick problem, it’s nicer than a VW but not as great as a Porsche. Hell, it’s not equal in my eyes to BMW or MB when it comes down to it. That’s not to say they make bad cars, but if I wanted a large and luxurious German sedan, I’d be looking elsewhere first.
What made Audi stand out in the past was the Piech effect. Who cared about the S6 and S8 sedan in the 2000’s? Unless you were a fan of Ronin, you didn’t. That was until you learned it had a Lambo V10 or a Bentley TTV8. Hell even the SCV6 and NA/V8 were cool in their line up. That sort of exciting mashup of engineering is sorely missed in Audi’s lineup. Even the turbo I5 is relegated to one model and is the only reason most enthusiasts even consider the S3.
Audi won’t leave the big sedan market until their German rivals do. Their German stubbornness means loss-leader A/S8’s will fill a spot at a dealership until the boss either buys it or some shmuck with love for the 4 rings has enough cash to lease it.
The impression I have is that Audi’s have become increasingly joyless vehicles in the last 15 years or so, and never really recovered their reputation since that episode with the model 3, where the engine used to suddenly blow oil all over the exhaust causing drama and trauma.
Not helped by Audi then claiming the Audi garage bought and maintained vehicles were using the wrong sort of oil and refusing to cough up till forced to by the courts…
Compared to other krautmobiles like BMW and Mercedes, they just seem like fridges or stoves.
Not helped that you never see colour fun ones, only funeral black.
“When you have a bunch of cars in one category and still get your butt kicked…”
Sorry, this is a pointless and inaccurate analysis. Mercedes has two entries in this segment (S and EQS), BMW has two (8 and 7), and Audi has one (A8/S8). If you had the numbers for ALL the powertrain combinations, then you’d see EVERYONE has “a bunch” of cars in this segment.
Sorry—my error. Audi also has two entries (A8/S8 and e-tron GT).