Welcome in, today is Tuesday, August fourth, and we begin with Nissan, where Automotive News reports a return to profit that arrived with a trimmed forecast attached. Nissan booked consolidated operating profit of seventy-seven point eight eight billion yen in the three months to June thirtieth, a year-on-year improvement of one hundred fifty-seven billion yen, according to Just Auto. That marks a return to profitability in the fiscal first quarter. The outlook did not follow the profit. Automotive News reports Nissan lowered its global sales forecast, with its China business deteriorating and Middle East conflict disrupting deliveries. Against that downgrade, CEO Ivan Espinosa called the United States launch of the Rogue e-Power the most important introduction of the company's year, per that reporting, which adds that executives want the hybrid version of Nissan's top-selling American nameplate to lift volume and cut incentive spending. One nameplate is now carrying a recovery the company itself just marked down. Industry reaction leans toward treating hybrid crossovers as table stakes rather than a differentiator, with a recurring question being whether everyday buyers will notice, or pay for, the series-hybrid drive feel that separates this system from a conventional parallel hybrid. Also today, July's United States sales split along powertrain lines. Automotive News reports the Accord rose fifty-five percent, the Civic twenty-one percent, the CR-V nineteen percent and the HR-V sixteen percent, putting four of Honda's five core models up by double digits. Hyundai and Kia rode the same hybrid and crossover strength to a July record, per that account, while deliveries slipped at Toyota Motor Corporation and Mazda. The gainers are the hybrid-heavy lineups, which sharpens the mix question heading into the back half. Forecasters did not agree on the month either. Automotive News reports the market was expected to rise slightly, though Mobility Global had volume falling. Retail-level chatter alongside the figures skews toward discounting mechanics, sizable advertised price gaps between neighboring markets and buyers pushing harder in negotiations, which some read as a sign the volume gains may be leaning on incentives as much as on underlying demand. Separately, a development on the Chinese push into Europe we covered last week, where the analyst projection was the headline. Automotive News now measures the ground already taken: Chinese brands hold nine point five percent of the European market, up from half a percent in twenty twenty-one. That same reporting names Stellantis as the period's biggest share loser, and describes BYD, SAIC and Chery climbing the sales tables far enough to threaten Ford and even Mercedes-Benz. Poland sits among the most exposed markets, at thirteen percent. Analysts cited there expect legacy brands to close factories if the trajectory holds, which turns a share story into a capacity story. Reaction leans toward reading the shift as self-inflicted, a recurring view being that incumbents had years of warning from their own China operations. Staying with Chery, the company has agreed to invest seventy-five million dollars in South Korean automaker KG Mobility, the SUV builder formerly known as SsangYong. Automotive News reports the money goes in through convertible bonds that could translate into a ten percent stake, and that Chery is eyeing United States expansion off the tie-up. That is distribution bought rather than built, giving Chery access to overseas channels it does not currently own. Just Auto frames the arrangement as a strategic partnership that strengthens KG Mobility's new product development. Automotive World adds a production angle, reporting that KGM denies any concrete plans for contract manufacturing while Chery's own president has noted how valuable such an arrangement could be. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Honda has suspended output at two plants building the Civic and Prelude, Automotive News reports, pushing combined automaker losses from the July twenty-eighth quake toward twenty thousand vehicles. Waymo returned to Phoenix freeways on July twenty-ninth. Tech Times reports Hunter College researchers put its serious-injury crash rate at one and a half times that of New York for-hire fleets per mile; Waymo disputes the methodology. BYD's July sales jumped, but Automotive World reports domestic weakness puts the full-year twenty twenty-six target out of reach even as overseas growth beats the top end of plan. And finally, Tesla's July registrations in Europe came in uneven, per Automotive News, with France and Denmark posting double-digit gains while Norway crashed and Sweden and Spain fell.