• Canada opens the Door to Chinese EVs

    Canada will now allow up to 49,000 EVs to be imported per year as part of an updated agreement with China that reduces Canada’s tariff from the 100 percent enacted in late 2024 to around 6.1 percent.

    There were multiple Chinese OEMs at CES last week. Geely and Great Wall Motors (GWM) both had large presences and showed off a cross section of models. All were impressive. While CES is definitely an international affair (40% of visitors in 2025 were from outside the US and that number has been growing steadily), the audience majority is US-based. It would seem these OEMs wanted to use CES in significant part to make an impression with North America.

    Car and Driver’s January 7 story (CES day 2) included test drives, initial impressions, and, toward the end, mentioned that “on the sidelines, officials were willing to paint a picture of a two-to-three-year process” which would establish manufacturing, address tariffs, and bring their cars to the US market.

    So: How far behind will the US be?

  • Accelerating into Car Subscription Services

    Telsa is moving to a subscription-only model for Full Self-Driving, eliminating the current $8,000 one-time payment option.

    A single $8,000 purchase doesn’t make sense here: It’s a lot of money at once, and it would take 80 months (six years, eight months) to pay out that amount in a subscription, not accounting for the time value of money. Many folks would trade it out the car long before then.

    Yet Car and Driver did a poll at the bottom of their story and the majority would prefer a single $8,000 purchase to a $99 subscription:

    Customers have reacted poorly to car subscriptions—people still remember BMW’s heated seat attempt—but mainline automakers are easing folks into them, and Tesla, as it often does, just gave the market a hard push.

  • Acura RDX Takes a Couple Years off: Transition Pains

    Acura is suspending RDX production “as key suppliers exit,” and there won’t be a replacement for at least two years. This is a big deal for Acura given RDX is a top seller, as any line’s compact SUV tends to be.

    This is the pain of a strategic bet not playing out as planned. Later this year, Acura will introduce what is presumably an indirect replacement—the RSX—but it’s EV-only, which leaves the brand without a true volume offering in the interim. Acura, like many others, seems to have thought the fully EV future would arrive faster and doesn’t seem to have planned to keep the RDX alive. Hence green lighting a new version too late to deliver before the current RDX sunsets.

    Other players with longer-in-the-tooth models have kept them on the road with light updates—Audi Q7/Q8 and Volvo XC90, both launched in 2015, are two that come to mind—so it’s curious Acura wasn’t able to stretch the RDX a little longer. Platform constraints? Supplier economics?

    There are many variables in a transition like this—consumers, regulation, infrastructure, technology—plenty of well-respected players have struggled on strategy here and all have had to iterate and adjust in meaningful ways.

  • Simulated Gears in EVs

    BMW Blog: 

    BMW has confirmed that its upcoming 2027 M3 electric will feature simulated gear changes, joining a trend that began with the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and which Porsche will likely follow with its electric Cayenne.

    This is an interesting example where maintaining something that is an artifact of a different technology and is, strictly speaking, unnecessary, actually delivers a benefit: 

    Gear shifts provide audio and tactile reference points that help drivers gauge speed and acceleration, particularly useful on track where precision matters.

    Using “shifting as timing” was arguably an unintended byproduct of ICE engine transmissions; it will be curious to see if other, more tailored-to-fit modes (reading ahead and adjusting shift timing based on upcoming turns, for example) might be developed for track use and other specialized scenarios. 

  • Apple Creator Studio: From Sideshow to Strategy

    Apple announced Apple Creator Studio today. Creator Studio packs a lot into a $12.99 per month (or $129 per year) bundle—roughly the cost of a Canva subscription and meaningfully less than standalone Adobe’s photography or video plans (and a fraction of the cost of combining them).

    Creator Studio should hit a healthy segment of prosumer-to-pro users who need (or would like) more than the included iWork, iMovie, and GarageBand and are patching together other services. The fact the apps will also be sold as a single purchase should reduce subscription hand-wringing.

    Apple has consistently maintained its modern pro apps, but for years they’ve felt like a sideshow rather than a strategy. This is a significant milestone: Apple has named and defined the segment (“Creators”, which are “professionals, emerging artists, entrepreneurs, students, and educators”), expanded the portfolio (via the Pixelmator acquisition), augmented the collection’s capability set, and has implemented a modern monetization model.

    From a customer perspective—like subscriptions or not—subscription pricing signals long-term investment. If you care about Apple’s creative tools, this is a good thing.

    Selfish ask: Please add to the collection a lighter version of Lightroom (or, heh, dust off Aperture).