March 11, 2026 | Plug CEO isn’t buying prediction of used EV price meltdown; Ran revives ProMaster City small van

Welcome to Daily Drive from March 11th, 2026. I'm Kellen Walker in Las Vegas today on the show.

Ram revives the pro master's city's small van after abandoning the segment just a few years ago.

Porsche reconsideres its product lineup to boost profitability after a rough 2025.

And VW Group's CEO warns the Middle East conflict could hurt demand and profitability.

Plus, analysts say there's a used EV price meltdown coming this year as hundreds of thousands of them come off lease and hit the market.

We're here from Plug CEO Jimmy Douglas who says he's not buying it.

Some of that artificial deflation in demand for newer used EVs has gone away and all inventory of all price points is flying off the shelf right now.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

Ram is reviving the pro master's city's small van for 2027. With the move, the brand jumps back into a segment it and rivals abandoned just a few years ago.

The brand discontinued the model in 2022. It was part of an exodus that also saw Chevy Ford and Nissan leave the space.

But Ram says there's still demand. The segment once topped 100,000 sales a year representing a $4 billion revenue opportunity.

The new van will be priced to under $40,000. It will be built in Turkey and upfitted in Baltimore.

It adds modern safety features like automatic emergency braking and offers up to 167 cubic feet of cargo space.

We'll have more on the story in a minute with our own Vince Bond Jr. Porsche's new CEO, Michael Lighters, is reviewing the auto maker's product lineup to boost profitability after a turbulent 2025.

The company's operating margin collapsed to just 1.1% last year from 14.1% in 2024, hit by electric vehicle missteps and tariff costs.

Lighters says Porsche will focus on high margin products like its iconic sports cars while cutting 3900 jobs by decades end.

The turnaround effort comes as China's sales plunged 26% and the brand fell out of Germany's benchmark DAX Index.

And Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Bloom is warning that escalating conflict in the Middle East could hurt demand in the region.

Bloom talked about it this week at the auto maker's annual media conference. He said, quote,

The Middle East represents only a low single digit share of VW Group's global sales, but executive say it's disproportionately important for profitability, especially for luxury brands like Porsche and Bentley.

And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories at autonews.com joining me now to dive deeper into the ramp story is our own Vince Bond Jr. who covers the Lantis for us at automotive news.

Vince, welcome back to daily drive. Thank you. So Vince ramp says this segment represents a $4 billion opportunity. What makes them think they can succeed now when they and everyone else abandon it just a few years ago?

Well, you just made the point yourself, everybody abandon it. And so now there's just, you know, why wide open opportunity for them.

If you look back, so the the pro master city was discontinued back and after the 2022 model year.

And that was around the same time that GM left the space. Nissan was leaving that space for it also dropped their vehicle.

And so slanness now sees a chance to, you know, capitalize on that opportunity. A lot of those customers who wanted those small vans back in the day.

You know, they didn't go anywhere. They just tried to, you know, feel that void with, you know, maybe miss eyes pickups or larger vans that really didn't fit, you know, the knees of their jobs.

And so slanness is a chance to really improve their fleet sales and go after these customers again.

Well, how are dealers reacting to this news and how soon before they see these vans on their lots?

Yeah, well, so production begins later this year. And then it'll be on lots the first quarter of next year.

And dealers had a chance to see this vehicle a few months ago during a confidential preview.

And Ram said that dealers loved it and they can't wait to get on their locks.

And so, you know, they're all excited about this is opportunity to move some, some vehicles for commercial customers out there and business owners.

Perfect. Good stuff. Vince Bon Jr. as always, man. Thank you so much for joining me.

You're welcome.

Coming up next, more than 300,000 electric vehicles are coming off least this year. Industry forecasters have warned about a potential used EV price meltdown.

But plug CEO Jimmy Douglas sees it differently. We'll hear from him next on Daily Drive.

Are you a dealer creating a workplace culture your employees are proud to be part of? Applications are now open for the 2026 automotive news best dealerships to work for program.

This isn't just an award. It's a chance to get real insight into what's working at your dealership and where you can improve.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellan Walker.

More than 300,000 electric vehicles are coming off least this year, a 200% increase from 2025. Industry forecasters have warned about a potential used EV price meltdown from this influx.

But Jimmy Douglas says that's nonsense. Douglas is the CEO and founder of Plug. An online wholesale auction platform built exclusively for used electric vehicles.

Before founding Plug in 2023, Douglas spent years at Tesla as director of sales and delivery operations. He says auction competition remains fierce as dealers prepare for a wave of inventory around Jake nearest spoke with Douglas about what's really happening in the used EV market.

Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us today on Daily Drive.

Thanks for having me, Jake. It's always great to be here.

All right, so we keep hearing about this so-called used EV price meltdown coming in 2026. So many leases expiring on EVs this year.

You've said that this narrative about falling demand couldn't be farther from the truth. So walk us through what you're seeing on Plug's auction platform right now.

Where do we begin? Demand has actually sustained to a degree that surprised us. Our primary metric for demand in Plug's auction is the level of competition on every vehicle.

And if there's at least three dealers fighting for every vehicle on average, then we know we're in a pretty healthy market. And that is remained true all the way through.

We had a slight dip at the very start of October. But at that point, there was also a bit of a shortage of inventory. And now we're totally back to normal as if nothing had ever happened.

But our volumes have nearly doubled while the throughput has remained the same. But more interestingly, the average selling price of a used EV on Plug has gone up.

It was more traditional for us to see $25,000 vehicles, a lot of tax credit cars dragging that average down. But now our average has gone up to $35,000.

And the reason is because dealers have a much greater appetite for used EVs that are less than a year old, whereas those were untouchable before because they were otherwise competing with a new EV on the lot that had a $7,500 tax credit.

Some of that artificial deflation in demand for newer used EVs has gone away. And all inventory of all price points is flying off the shelf right now.

So is it safe to say that the end of the federal EV tax credits is actually maybe helping used EV sales?

I want to be fair and say that the tax credits had some very noble intentions and some of them did come to fruition, particularly unused EVs. It was accessible based on a lower income threshold than the new credits.

And it brought people into the EV market that were otherwise not necessarily looking. They were looking for the most affordable car for their monthly payment money.

And that got people behind the wheel of electric vehicles that otherwise weren't necessarily always looking for that.

At the same time, yes, there was some artificial inflation in the used EV market, particularly older vehicles that probably didn't deserve to sell for as much as they were.

But then there was also deflation on newer ones because they were competing with more heavily subsidized new EVs.

And people didn't expect me to say this Jake, but quite honestly, I think the market is better off in this true free market state and letting the people truly set what the market value of these vehicles are without any government intervention.

I have heard that, you know, we were pretty close to the point of the EV incentives not really being needed anymore, even even some EV evangelists have said that.

You know, on the used side, there is a bit of a bit of a misnomer that the whole market was being boosted by the credits.

But the fact is that the credits topped out on $25,000 cars in the average selling price of used EVs last year was 35,000.

The vast majority of used EV sales didn't even benefit from the credit. It was impossible.

So looking forward to the rest of the year, though, I mean, as you and I have actually talked about before at NAD, you know, my car is going to be one of these cars, maybe that comes off lease this year and then goes into the used market, unless I decide to buy out my lease. But like,

are we going to see, you know, as more and more of those cars come in though, could that change the direction of the price points and the way that things are headed right now? Do you see that possibly happening?

Well, certainly more inventory entering the market will have an impact on the pricing. However, there's a couple of factors also at play.

The first is we're not totally sure what's going to happen with oil prices, but given the state of the world right now, it stands to reason that we might see some pretty expensive trips to the gas pump for the foreseeable future.

And I promise you, you will see a direct correlation between EV sales and the price of gas. Secondly, as you and all of your listeners are probably aware, we're actually in a used car shortage right now, not EVs by any means, but used cars in general, because we're a few years trailing some lingering shutdowns and chip shortages that came out of COVID.

All of that to say, the used EV price point has come down to parity with used gas powered cars that are five years or newer. They're basically about the same price point now, but used EVs days of supply as of January was slightly lower than gas powered cars.

So it's hard to say exactly where we're going to land here, but more affordability is actually better. And I think that will open up the market even wider. So it's a good thing.

You know, you mentioned the price of oil. I believe you predicted not too long ago that we'd see $100 for barrel of oil in the market. Obviously recent current events have already driven us to that point.

So what does that mean? And of course, when I say recent current events, I mean the the central effective shutting off of the Strait of Hormuz related to the Iran conflict. So what is that? How do you see that affecting the market?

Yeah. So if I can accurately predict the price of oil on an ongoing basis, then I'm just going to walk out of here and start day trading.

All of that to say you can you can quote me in my statement that you will see EV sales very closely follow the price of gas.

That's definitely something that you should expect. And we're already in a bit of an affordability crunch, right? The prices of new cars right all time highs interest rates are very high.

The used EV as an affordable option was something that worked out really well when we had a $4,000 tax credit, whether people were looking for EVs or not. And I believe the same will be true as people are really considering the total cost of ownership when it comes to fueling or powering the vehicle.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about dealer behavior right now. Are you seeing more dealers coming on to the plug platform specifically because of used EV price points.

And what's their appetite looking like right now compared to maybe six months or a year ago.

It's not because of price points. In fact, some of our most active dealers like to complain to me that the car sell for too much money when they're buying them.

But that's but that's generally the case because they are the most aggressively bidding on the vehicles that deserve to sell for more money.

One of the things that makes plug special is 100% accurate representation of EV specific features in battery health gets a whole lot of attention, but it goes deeper than that because these are computers on wheels and they have specific computer hardware versions.

They have software enabled features that the self driving technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated and suddenly a vehicle that can plug into a Tesla supercharger doesn't have to just be a Tesla anymore and that's worth a lot.

So we're seeing dealers enter the arena at a faster velocity than we'd seen in historic times more dealers are starting to get interested in this line of business presumably because of the broader use car shortage.

But also because some of them are starting to build the muscle memory in anticipation of the least return wave.

But they're not coming to us because they're trying to get a cheaper deal. They need great cars for the right money.

And what are they telling you at this point about their customers and what customers are thinking right now when it comes to EV price points, EV availability, that sort of thing.

You know, the biggest change since last year is the focus was all about affordability find me tax credit cars get me model 3s and bolts anything that I can get leaves below $20,000 so I can retail up below $25,000.

And now the emphasis is on very well equipped high end vehicles we're talking Model X is we're talking Lucids we're talking Rivians Cadillac lyrics vehicles that are really well appointed as an alternative for customers who are otherwise looking at brand new high end vehicles.

And so so is there some crossover between I'm curious.

These well appointed vehicles like you said the lyrics that are on on the lots and sort of lower end new cars or is it is it just high end used and high in new.

It's all over the map right and it depends on the strategy of the store and the market and the buying team and all of that there's there's a but for every seat as they like to say but I would say the biggest change that we've seen is almost like a 180 in the density of emphasis from tax credit qualifying budget options to highly appointed alternatives to brand new luxury vehicle purchases.

So I wanted to also ask you about something that's come up in our reporting at automotive news we we're hearing that like a two or three year old off lease EV same model same features is selling for thousands of dollars less than the new version on the lot right next to it.

How big is that price advantage right now where we sit in in 2026 and does that create a problem for new EV sales in your estimation.

Yeah a lot of new cars in general let alone new EVs are just too expensive and meanwhile one of the things that's unique about used EVs over these last few years is they've been appreciating about 50% faster in the first three years of their life meaning the deal that you're getting it on a vehicle that's just a couple years old is sort of unbeatable and the exacerbating factor here is that on new EV sales the days of supply is well over 100 days.

Dealers have too many of these on the lots right now and people are not buying what they're selling and they cost a lot more money than the slightly used alternative so that's going to continue to be a problem and affordability as we continue to reach volume production on these new EV models should be the focal point and of course that's a bit at odds with the residual value equation.

It's difficult to maintain positive residual values over a few years if the new models keep getting better and cheaper every year but the truth is is they do need to get cheaper the cars generally are still too expensive right now for most people and that's the biggest hindrance to adoption outside of charging infrastructure challenges in certain regions.

And how does that compare with with ice vehicles because most ice vehicles are also too expensive for most buyers so how does that the fact that there's an affordability crisis throughout the entire industry affect.

The way that you think about EVs specifically yeah that's a problem to Jake but the data shows that new EVs still cost quite a bit more than new gas powered cars on average and non coincidentally the days of supply on new EVs are quite a bit higher than new gas powered cars.

For many vehicle buyers it really comes down to that monthly payment even if the total cost of ownership might be lower if you factor maintenance or fuel savings people are really buying based on monthly payment for the most part and we won't see sales velocity improve until there are products that are more affordable comparatively to the gas powered alternative.

You can hear more from plug CEO Jimmy Douglas's interview with our own Jake Near on this week's bonus episode of the show available Sunday morning.

That's daily drive for today I'm Kellan Walker thanks to automotive news journalist Vince Bond Jr. and William Boston for their reporting for today's podcast.

You can get the latest news on the used EV market product plans and everything happening in the auto industry at auto news.com.

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