Hi, and welcome to the Automotive News Shift podcast, where we bring you the latest on

automotive technology, trends, and transformation. I'm Molly Boygan, tech and innovation reporter

at Automotive News. And I'm Hannah Lutz, Director of Technology and Innovation Coverage. Today's guest is Aaron Keating,

the Senior Director of Economic and Industry Insights at Cox Automotive. She and our own Lawrence

Iliff discuss EV sales from October the first month without the EV tax credit. No surprise,

it looks like EV sales dropped after a surge of buyers in September.

But there's more to the story. I think more people than not in the new vehicle market. We already

know they're the wealthier buyers, that they're not necessarily so concerned about that 30,000

price spot. They're more concerned about which car do they like looking for and looking good in,

if you will.

And before that conversation, let's talk about the week.

Molly, what were you working on this week?

I was working on two stories related to rare earths, which kind of kicked off after the U.S. China trade deal was announced at the end of last month.

So the first story basically dove into some of the lack of clarity around the implementation of part of the deal. The U.S. and China agreed to reduce tariffs

in exchange for the lifting of export restrictions on rare earth metals. So the people that I spoke to said there's still some

confusion about how the end of those export restrictions is going to apply because there were

multiple kind of rounds of export restrictions imposed by the Chinese government. So that was the

first one. And then the second piece was about how China developed its rare earth's dominance. So at this point,

China processes 90% of the rare earths globally. And actually, the U.S. was the original kind of

rare earth miner and exporter. And we kind of blew a lead. So the story is a little bit about

how that happened. And when was that that the U.S. had a lead. So the story is a little bit about how that happened.

And when was that that the U.S. had a lead or had the opportunity to have a lead?

...