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Welcome to Daily Drive for Tuesday, December 9th, 2025. I'm Kellen Walker in Las Vegas. Today on the show, Nissan considers making hybrid powertrains in Tennessee to make the Rogue tariff proof. Redwood Materials shifts away from EV battery recycling. And Aspberry Automotives CEO is stepping down. Plus, we'll hear from Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson, who says 2026 will be a comeback year for the automaker.
With those three cars really now ramping up, I'm confident that we will return to growth.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry. Nissan's Tennessee powertrain plant was supposed to become the heart of its electric future. Now, it might build hybrids instead. The automaker pledged $250 million in 2023 to convert its Decherd factory into an EV motor producer, but those plans are now on ice because of cooling consumer demand and reduced government incentives. Nissan America's chairman Christian Mun says the company is studying US production of its e-power hybrid system which launches in the redesigned Rogue late next year. A decision comes early next year with production potentially starting in 2028. Mun tells us at Automotive News, quote, I'm pushing for it. More on this story in a minute with our own Irvash Kakaria. Battery recycling company Redwood Materials is shifting focus from EV batteries to energy storage systems. The company is responding to lower than expected EV demand and changing federal policies. At the same time, demand for electricity from data centers is expected to surge from 4 gigawatts in 2024 to 123 gigawatts by 2035. Redwood raised $350 million in October to fund energy storage and battery materials projects. It's already built North America's largest microgrid at its Nevada campus to power an AI data center. Asbury Automotive Group CEO David Holt will step back to an executive role in May, handing the CEO job to COO Dan Clara. Holt has led Asbury through major growth since becoming CEO in 2018, tripling earnings and shareholder value. That includes the nearly billion and a half dollar purchase of Herb Chambers companies in July. Clara, who's 45, started at Asbury in 2002 as a management trainee and worked his way up to COO and now CEO. Asbury ranks number five on Automotive News's list of top US dealership groups with retail sales of 173,000 new vehicles last year. And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories at autonews.com. Joining me now to talk more about Nissan's effort to make the Rogue tariff proof by possibly building hybrid powertrains in Tennessee is our own Irvash Kakaria. Irvash, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Oh, hi Kell. Good to see you again.
Now, Ervash, what are the most important factors for Nissan here and why is this an investment CEO Christian Mun wants to make?
So, Nissan is studying a plan to essentially localize production of its e-power hybrid system. This is a hybrid that Nissan has developed in-house and they're finally bringing it to the United States in their best seller, which is the Rogue. This is the third generation of e-power and the last two generations have been relatively underpowered for US consumer driving habits. So Americans like to go fast and they like to go far. And so until now this hybrid system which I'll explain what it is in a minute has been from a performance standpoint it probably would not have had much adoption by Americans. So now that Nissan is bringing e-power to the United States in the Rogue, they want to try and build it in the United States. That's for three major reasons. One is they want to offset the tariffs that they would have to pay if they imported the powertrain from Japan. It also gives them more flexibility when it comes to the supply chain. If you're building locally, you can get the product faster to the factory and put it into the Rogues. It also reduces the risk of overseas supply chain disruptions. And then the third reason which is probably more important than anything else is the fact that they have an engine factory in Decherd, Tennessee. And obviously, as Nissan's volumes have fallen, that factory is relatively underutilized. It has a capacity to build about 1.2 million engines a year and right now it's only building at about 35%. So by bringing the e-powertrain to the United States to the Decherd plant, it essentially increases utilization and it reduces the cost of operating that plant.
Well, why else is localization helpful for e-power? So Nissan is introducing e-power initially on the Rogue which as I said is their number one bestseller but they're also considering bringing e-power on their subcompact Kicks crossover. The Kicks is available with e-power in other parts of the world but it hasn't been brought to the US again because the technology was not ready but with the third generation, if Kicks is to get e-power they're going to have to lower the cost of building and developing the powertrain and so by localizing e-power production in Decherd, Nissan will have the tooling the equipment to also build e-powertrains for the Kicks. And by combining the volume, they'll be able to reduce the cost of production, making that equation doable.
And remind our listeners what the e-power hybrid system is and why it's different from other hybrids and how important is it for the future of the company.
So, like I said, it's been developed by Nissan, and it's what's called a series hybrid, but essentially what it is is it has a gas engine, but the gas engine is only used to charge a 2 kWh battery, and then the battery powers an electric motor, which powers the wheels. So, it has the same driving feel, the same instant torque as an EV, but it has a gas engine. And the benefit of that is that the gas engine then can keep charging the battery and get it to go a lot further than a 2 kWh battery would go which is nowhere. So unlike let's use an example of Toyota. Toyota's hybrid system also has a gas engine but that gas engine not only charges the battery but it also drives the wheels. Whereas Nissan's e-power only charges the battery and then the battery basically powers the motor and drives the wheels. So, it's more EV-like than say Toyota's system.
Good stuff, Ervash. Thank you so much for joining me.
Coming up, Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson talks about why he thinks 2026 will be a big comeback year for the company. That's next on Daily Drive.
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