It’s All About The Bordens

ICYMI: Sir Robert Borden, Canada’s eighth Prime Minister, is the face of Canada’s $100 dollar bill.

The average new car in Canada now costs $63,264.

The average amount financed is $56,938.

That’s a lot of Bordens.

At 6.45% over 72 months, that works out to $955 a month. In Alberta, it breaks over $1,000.

That is not a car payment. That is a second rent cheque. Or, at least it was 30 years ago when rents were affordable.

About 20% of Canadian car buyers are underwater on their trade-ins, meaning they owe more than their vehicle is worth. The average negative equity carried into a new loan is $7,600.

Car Help Canada has surveyed dealers from coast to coast and found negative equity on individual deals running as high as $50,000.

To make the numbers look manageable, buyers are stretching loans to 84- and 96-month terms.

We have normalized taking seven or eight years to pay off a car.

The average new car loan in Canada runs 72 months. A vehicle loses most of its value in the first three years. The math does not work in your favour.

In Canada, insolvency experts are now seeing something they have never seen before: people contacting them specifically to ask how to return their car. Scott Terrio at Hoyes Michalos says that in 17 years on the job, 2025 was the first year clients called, intending to return their vehicles. “They’ve recognized that their car is killing them financially.”

The situation south of the border is worse. In the US, nearly a third of trade-ins carry negative equity, with an average of $7,183 rolled into the next loan. More than one in four of those cases involves over $10,000 in rolled debt.

When REO Industries, founded by Texas real estate entrepreneur Zach De Bernardi, announced a $21,500 USD gas truck with hand-crank windows called the Runabout, they got 5,500 reservations in six days.

When Slate confirmed pricing for a $24,950 USD electric pick-up, 180,000 people raised their hands. At that price, it is the cheapest EV in the US market.

The demand for cheap, simple transportation is enormous.

The legacy automakers abandoned the bottom of the market to chase margin.

They dropped small cars and loaded up big trucks with fine leather and wide screens.

The now infamous BYD Seagull sells in China for around $10,300 USD. The Chery QQ3 EV starts at $8,500 USD. Reviewers who have driven them describe them as genuinely good small cars.

Chinese battery production costs have now dropped below the cost of manufacturing a conventional combustion engine. The price gap between what China builds and what North America sells is not a rounding error. It is structural.

BYD is planning to build six dealerships in Canada this year.

Chery is targeting late 2026 for its Canadian launch.

Geely is already shipping Lotus EVs to Canada under the Carney-Xi trade deal.

Nobody knows yet what these vehicles will actually cost in a Canadian showroom once you add tariffs, shipping, dealer margin, and compliance costs.

A Reddit user ran the math on the Seagull earlier this year and landed around $29,000 CAD. That is still $26,000 less than the average new car Canadians are currently financing.

The Donald’s Administration doesn’t appear to be that concerned with affordability.

Geely’s Polestar was just denied authorization under the US Connected Vehicle Rule and cannot sell new cars in the US past the 2027 model year.

Polestar has been actively selling vehicles in the US for about 6 years.

Sure, Polestar wasn’t the poster child for affordable vehicles.

But kicking them out of the pool signals a “we don’t want your kind” vibe that will keep affordable Chinese options out of US buyers’ hands for the foreseeable future.

IMHO

Nobody is rooting for a race to the bottom on vehicle quality.

But when one in five Canadian buyers is underwater on their trade-in and insolvency experts are fielding calls from people who want to give their car back, the status quo is not working.

A reliable $20,000 to $30,000 vehicle doesn’t just make transportation more affordable; it makes everything else more affordable. That frees up funds for rent, groceries, and those regular road trip stops at Tim Hortons.

Cheaper vehicles might actually let us afford our lives again.

Maybe then we can save up a few Bordens so we can go on vacation.

Just not to the US anytime soon.

Chery Rely P3X diesel plug-in hybrid truck challenges BYD Shark. carnewschina.com

BYD’s chairman wants to be the world’s largest automaker by 2030, surpassing Toyota. BYD sold 4.6 million vehicles in 2025. Toyota sold about 10 million. It is an ambitious target, but BYD has surprised people before. autonews.com

BYD, Chery, and Geely all told Canada’s industry minister they are open to building cars through joint ventures. autonews.com

A second worker died at BYD’s factory construction site in Hungary. cnbc.com

Chinese EV brands cannot sell cars directly in India, but their technology is getting in anyway through licensing deals and parts supply. reuters.com

Nikkei reports that Chinese automakers have now surpassed Japanese rivals in traditional combustion-engine technology, not just EVs. carnewschina.com

The Economist notes that China’s EV market now has 143 brands, and new ones keep arriving from unexpected places. Dreame, a robo-vacuum company, plans to start selling EVs in 2027. If you can build a robot that cleans your floors, apparently, you can build one that drives you around. economist.com

BYD’s pick-up truck was spotted in China wearing a noticeably different exterior. A formal reveal is likely coming soon. techcrunch.com

Experts at the Center for Automotive Research warned that North American supply chains are not ready to compete with China on cost or speed. Building that capacity will take years, not months. autonews.com

Wall Street expects Tesla to deliver around 406,000 vehicles in Q2 2026. That is 5.7% growth over last year. electrek.co

NHTSA closed its power steering investigation into 376,000 Tesla EVs. Tesla issued a recall last year, and regulators called it good enough. reuters.com

The NTSB opened a formal investigation into the Texas crash, where a Model 3 driver using Autopilot plowed into a home and killed a 76-year-old woman. techcrunch.com

Elon went on record saying Autopilot did not cause the Texas crash. Tesla is blaming the driver. NHTSA is still investigating. Oh, Elon. arstechnica.com

Tesla’s European sales more than doubled in May, the fourth straight month of growth. wsj.com

Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home are teaming up to pull power from home solar panels, batteries, and thermostats across millions of US homes to feed AI data centers during peak demand. nytimes.com

A SpaceX-Tesla megamerger is being floated. nytimes.com

SpaceX raised $25 billion in a debt sale just two weeks after its IPO, after seeing $90 billion in orders. cnbc.com

A prominent tech investor is betting against Elon’s AI ambitions, arguing that the physics-first approach that works for rockets and cars does not translate to building general intelligence. wsj.com

Saudi Arabia is expected to slash the official selling prices of its crude bound for Asia in August, as the Middle East’s crude benchmarks crashed amid the tentative reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and an increase in oil supply from the region. oilprice.com

The Canadian federal and Alberta provincial governments agreed last month to set a Canada Day deadline for the province to submit a proposal for a new pipeline. cbc.ca

Renewables hit 30% of US electricity generation in the first four months of 2026, according to the EIA. That is a real milestone, and it happened without a lot of fanfare. electrek.co

CATL hit a $0.051 per watt-hour cost benchmark for its 175 Wh/kg sodium battery packs going into new Changan EVs. carnewschina.com

Honda is bringing back the Element in 2029 as a boxy hybrid crossover. Production starts in Q2 of that year. It is aimed at Ford Bronco Sport buyers. autonews.com

Stellantis and Nissan are reportedly in talks to buy assets from Marelli, the struggling Japanese auto parts supplier. reuters.com

GM revealed the redesigned 2027 GMC Sierra with new V-8 engines, upgraded tech, and better materials. Sales start late 2026. cnbc.com

Ford won the J.D. Power Initial Quality Study for mass-market brands. reuters.com

Ford dropped the V8 from the top-spec F-150 King Ranch and Platinum trims. If you want a premium Ford half-ton now, you’ll get an EcoBoost V6. thedrive.com

Ford and Unifor sat down to start contract talks. autonews.com

Toyota is closing in on GM in US sales. cnbc.com

Lucid cut about 18% of its US workforce. cnbc.com

Dan Neil at the WSJ called the Rivian R2 awesome. He put it among the best vehicle designs in the world. wsj.com

Ferrari’s head of product development says the backlash against the brand’s first EV needs time to settle down. reuters.com

Subaru’s Uncharted EV is now the brand’s best-selling and most affordable EV in the US. electrek.co

Pedestrian deaths in the US are up 75% since 2009. thedrive.com

Used vehicle inventory is piling up on Canadian lots. autonews.com

Zoox showed off a redesigned robotaxi with better seats, softer colours, and improved audio. cnbc.com

Waymo opened up fully driverless rides in Nashville this week. techcrunch.com

Waymo hired Canadian fleet manager Element Fleet to help run part of its robotaxi operation. autonews.com

A new robotaxi scorecard shows Chinese AV companies are ahead of Western rivals on fleet size, coverage, and technology maturity. techcrunch.com

The auto industry and AI data centers are now competing for the same DRAM chips. autonews.com

Reuters published a tracker of the biggest job cuts across global automakers. VW is at the top of the list, but it is not alone. The whole industry is cutting. reuters.com

It’s my birthday tomorrow, and imma gonna eat a hamburger.