News
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Waymo Puts Robotaxis Back On Freeways — Here’s What Actually Broke
Waymo’s freeway program is back on, starting in Phoenix, after a two-month benching that the company announced with a cheerful three-word post on X: freeways are back, gradually resuming, more cities to follow, express interest in the app. Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Austin and Miami get theirs in the coming days. What that post…
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Ford Buried a Timing Belt in Motor Oil to Save Gas — Now the Feds Say 135,000 Cars Are a Safety Risk
On a highway in Wilmington, Delaware, a Ford Focus driver watched an oil pressure warning light blink on. Within an eighth of a mile — less distance than it takes to read this paragraph aloud — the engine gave out entirely. The driver later told investigators the car “lost all power and the engine began…
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Stellantis Worker Dies in Fall at Center Line Facility
On Saturday, Aug. 1, a 57-year-old UAW Local 1248 member, identified as Brasher, died after falling approximately 25 feet from a second-story loading bay at Stellantis’s Mopar National Parts Distribution Center in Center Line, Michigan. According to Center Line Director of Public Safety Paul Myszenski, Brasher was removing furniture and equipment from an office space…
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Ford Is Now Planning For Chinese Automakers To Land In America
Jim Farley spent a chunk of Thursday’s employee town hall telling Ford staff something that would have sounded paranoid five years ago and now just sounds like scheduling: plan on Chinese automakers selling cars in the United States sometime in the next five to ten years, probably closer to ten. The remarks, first reported by…
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What Really Happens If You Never Change Your Oil: A Timeline
Picture two identical cars rolling off the same factory line, same engine, same badge, same new-car smell. One owner changes the oil like clockwork. The other treats the dashboard reminder as background noise and never gets around to it, not once. Ask any mechanic how that story ends and you’ll get the same wince every…
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Porsche Sold 24,000 Fewer Cars and Made a Third More Money — Here’s How
Porsche’s first-half numbers landed the same week it agreed to cut another 5,000 jobs, and the two documents tell a story that’s more interesting than either headline. The company sold 24,085 fewer cars than a year ago and made 34 percent more operating profit doing it. That’s not spin. That’s arithmetic, and it’s worth walking…
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Ford’s Quarterly Loss Hides a Worse EV Number and a Very Good Trade
Ford’s second quarter produced a $1.3 billion net loss, a raised profit forecast, and a press release that manages to be accurate about both. Fine. The interesting numbers are the ones nobody put on a slide. Start with the ledger. Revenue of $48.3 billion, down $1.9 billion. Wholesale volume of 1,039,000 units, down 12 percent.…
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Tesla ‘Fixed’ This Suspension Failure Twice Already. NHTSA’s New Files Say That Didn’t Work.
Federal safety regulators just opened a new investigation into Tesla’s front suspension. That’s not really the news. Tesla has been down this exact road before, twice, and both times the company said, in effect, that it had already fixed the problem. A single sentence buried in NHTSA’s own paperwork now says otherwise. On July 29,…
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Carvana’s Record Quarter Wasn’t Built on Used Car Prices — Here’s What Actually Happened
Carvana just printed the best quarter in its history, and the press release invites you to credit execution. Fine. But before anyone files this under “used car market goes brrr,” go look at what the federal government says used cars actually cost right now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the used cars and…
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Jeep Recalled 641 Wranglers Over Cracking Steel Wheels — Which Defeats the Entire Point of Steel Wheels
Jeep wants this to read as a story about 641 wheels. It isn’t. It’s a story about which failure mode is supposed to be impossible on a Wrangler, and which one just happened anyway. Steel wheels have stayed on the Wrangler and Gladiator order sheet for one specific reason, and it isn’t cost. Buyers who…
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Rhode Island Will Send Your Home Address to Firefighters If You Drive an EV
Rhode Island’s DMV is about to start mailing your local fire station a list of everybody in town who drives something with a big battery in it. Not a database firefighters can query. A list. Twice a year. On paper or in a spreadsheet — the law doesn’t say. Governor Dan McKee put his signature…
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Amazon’s Zoox Just Got a Government Hall Pass for Its Steering-Wheel-Free Robotaxi – And the Rulebook Is Still Being Written
The federal government just gave an Amazon-owned company permission to charge people money for rides in a car with no steering wheel, no brake pedal, and no driver’s seat. That will be the headline everywhere else. It’s not the real story. The real story is buried in the same announcement: the agency policing that decision…
