News
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GM Just Invented a New Way to Owe Money for Parts It Hasn’t Bought Yet — And Wall Street Won’t See the Bill for Years
General Motors did not spend the last week protecting itself against a shortage of any specific part. It spent the week protecting itself against the next unknown one. On August 7, GM quietly signed a financing agreement worth up to $4.5 billion that has nothing to do with horsepower, batteries, or infotainment screens, and everything…
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Hiroshi Okuda’s Real Legacy Isn’t the Prius. It’s Teaching Toyota to Build Where It Sells
Hiroshi Okuda died this week at 93, and most tributes will lead with the Prius. That’s the obvious headline: the Toyota executive who greenlit the car that made “hybrid” a household word. It’s not wrong. It’s just not the important part. Toyota confirmed Wednesday that Okuda had died. A company spokeswoman said the date and…
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What Florida’s eVTOL Test Site Actually Means For Drivers
Governors love a podium with a future on it. Ron DeSantis got a good one this week: a concrete pad in Auburndale, Polk County, with the word “vertiport” attached to it and the phrase “flying cars” printed in his own press release. Strip out the Jetsons framing and there’s a real story underneath, though it’s…
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The Physics Behind Tesla’s Forced Headlight Recall, Explained
Tesla spent two years and change arguing that its headlights weren’t too bright. It lost, and now roughly 20,000 owners are waiting to find out what the fix even is. The 20,349-vehicle recall that showed up in NHTSA’s database this week isn’t a surprise development. It’s the endgame of a regulatory fight that started in…
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Why Used EV Prices Are Climbing While Diesel Values Slide
UK pump prices did something unusual this spring, and the used car market is still working out what to do about it. Between the first week of March and mid-April, according to the government’s weekly road fuel price series, the average UK diesel price went from 142.15p a litre to 192.14p. That is fifty pence…
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Cops Called Him ‘The World’s Worst Businessman.’ His Tesla Fraud Ring Still Made More Sense Than You’d Think
Daytona Beach police arrested two men last week over what they’re calling a multi-state Tesla theft scheme, and the arrest video is worth watching for one moment alone. An officer stands over a handcuffed 23-year-old named Liwei Sun, listens to him explain how the operation worked, and delivers the verdict: “You’re the world’s worst businessman.”…
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388 Fake Driver’s Tests: Indiana BMV Bribery Case Explained
Two former counter clerks at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles are now defendants in Marion County criminal court, accused of manufacturing driver’s knowledge tests that no human being ever sat down and took. The Indiana Office of Inspector General says Gabriella C. Perry and Winters Ann VanDyke, both formerly assigned to the BMV’s Midtown…
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The FTC Just Handed Car Dealers Back Their Favorite Financing Trick — And Called It Colorblind
Somewhere in a dealership finance office this week, a compliance manager who spent the last few years building spreadsheets to prove their store wasn’t accidentally overcharging Black and Latino customers for auto loans got some very good news. The math they were tracking no longer matters. Not because the discrimination stopped. Because the federal government…
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Nobody Actually Owns a Ford Dealership. Ford Does – And a Kentucky Court Just Proved It
There’s a Ford store in Grayson, Kentucky, a town of about 4,000 people, with a sales staff that shows up every morning and an owner who thought he had the right to sell a piece of his own business. A federal judge has now told him, twice, that he was wrong. The case is Ford…
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Watch: Florida’s Super Speeder Law Just Met Its Most Honest Excuse Yet — And Arrested Him Anyway
That’s the real story hiding in this clip. Not the girlfriend. Not the 1 a.m. bad decision. The story is that Florida quietly turned extreme speeding into an arrestable crime, and this stop is just the newest proof that the law does not care why you were going that fast. What Happened on the Road…
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The $20,000 Used Car Didn’t Disappear. Automakers Discontinued It
Ask a dealer why a three-year-old Camry costs about what a loaded new one cost seven years ago, and you’ll get an inflation lecture. That’s the wrong answer. Inflation didn’t do this. A production decision automakers made during the 2021 chip shortage did, and the bill just came due. A new analysis from iSeeCars, which…
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How Europe Calculates a Billion-Euro Truck Penalty Without Testing a Single Tailpipe
Fines for emissions usually mean somebody got caught cheating. Not this time. Daimler Truck’s problem is that it might build clean trucks nobody buys, and get billed for the shortfall anyway. CEO Karin Rådström has been putting numbers on that scenario. In remarks last week she estimated roughly €120 million in penalties for every percentage…
