Afeela Is Dead, But Sony And Honda Are Still Pretending They're Automotive Partners

Happy Tuesday! It's April 21, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift — your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning's edition, we're looking at the death and undeath of Afeela, as well as targeted pricing for the new Nissan Xterra. We'll also look at Volkswagen downsizing production, and China thinking German cars are out of style. 

The Afeela sedan and SUV are dead. Yes, they were only two products from the joint venture Sony Honda Mobility, but at a company that only had two products, that was quite a lot. Sony and Honda are now taking their workers back. From Automotive News: 

Honda and Sony said April 21 they will scale back operations of their ill-fated Sony Honda Mobility electric vehicle venture and absorb employees back into the parent companies, a month after canceling plans for two Afeela models bound for North America.

The automotive and technology partners will review the current structure to find an "optimal form of collaboration," Sony Corp. and Honda Motor Co. said in a joint statement.

...

"Going forward, while taking into account the changing business environment, the three companies expect to continue discussions on the optimal form of collaboration between them, with the aim of bringing new value to the user experience through software in anticipation of an era where advanced driver assistance systems become mainstream," the companies said.

Sony Honda Mobility has about 400 employees, Japan's Nikkei reported.

So we now have a company that exists as a collaboration between two companies on a product, who are no longer collaborating or making a product. The company will soon start shedding its few employees. In what meaningful way does Sony Honda Mobility still exist?

The Xterra is coming back, in full glorious yellow. It seems Nissan is really barking up the right tree here, because the company wants to make the car cheap: Less than $40,000 for a base model. That's a plan I can get behind. From Automotive News: 

Nissan is betting on body-on-frame construction, affordability and emotional appeal to reclaim lost ground in the off-road SUV segment.

By reviving the iconic Xterra and building an entire family of related models, the brand aims to restore the tough, fun-to-drive character that once defined it.

At a media event in Japan, Nissan executives outlined their strategy for the upcoming body-on-frame lineup, which includes a new Xterra slated for a late 2028 launch and a three-row midsized SUV. Infiniti also will receive variants of the Xterra.

"The Xterra represents the DNA of Nissan: affordable, durable and high quality," Nissan Americas Chairman Christian Meunier told Automotive News this month.

"We don't want to overengineer it and make it overly complicated or expensive," Meunier said.

Nissan is targeting a starting price for the SUV of less than $40,000 in a market where affordability has become a major barrier.

Nissan is looking to move 50,000 Xterras per year, which shouldn't be a problem at that price. Have you seen what a Wrangler costs nowadays? Just don't go parking it on piles of leaves. 

Volkswagen builds cars, millions of them, worldwide. You might say they're something of a manufacturing powerhouse, but its CEO is now wondering: Is this car company perhaps making too many cars? From Reuters: 

Volkswagen plans to cut its production ​capacity by another ‌one million cars, CEO Oliver Blume said in ​an interview with ​business news outlet Manager ⁠Magazin published on ​Tuesday.

"On the one hand, ​we're investing heavily in products. At the same time, ​we've already taken ​extensive measures. We're currently looking ‌at ⁠cutting a further million units of capacity to reflect the ​global ​market ⁠situation," Blume said.

Volkswagen obviously doesn't want to make more cars than it can sell, but we're now in an interesting place where companies are looking to make less of their product in order to make more money on their shares. I think we broke our economy somewhere along the line. 

China is arguably the most important automotive market on the planet, which is a problem for German automakers like Volkswagen. Namely, Chinese buyers are starting to lose interest in German brands. They're just not cool any more, it seems. From Reuters: 

More than 40 years after Volkswagen stole the show at its first Chinese auto fair, it has lost its cutting-edge status in the country, with homegrown brands setting the pace for a younger generation of tech-hungry drivers.

The combustion-engine heritage of "Made in Germany" no longer holds as much sway in what has become the world's largest ​car market, where local automakers are rolling out flashy, affordable electric vehicles that are essentially mobile phones on wheels.

"Maybe some younger customers perceive us as ‌the brand for the parents," the Volkswagen brand's China CEO, Robert Cisek, told Reuters.

As Esme Squalor would say, German cars are out. Chinese automakers are in. Unclear where parsley soda falls here. 

And it gets worse. I was watching a pot yesterday, and guess what it did? It boiled, mother.

When we started doing The Fuel Up, we were wondering when prices would break the $4 barrier.  Now we're coming back to that same line, but from the other side. 

Angine de Poitrine has been absolutely inescapable on my Instagram feed lately, and two months after their breakout KEXP session I think I'm ready to give the definitive take on the band: They're neat! Fun, even! I've seen people say that they're a perfect antidote to the wave of AI "art," since their microtonality and weird time signatures are the opposite of computer-generated generic 4/4 pop, and I definitely see it. I'd also definitely see them if they came through New York. Thank you for your attention to this matter!