News
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China’s Largest Headlight Supplier Fired 107 New Grads in Weeks — But Still Found Cash for a Dividend
Xingyu Automotive Lighting Systems makes the adaptive LED headlights that bend light around oncoming traffic on Volkswagen’s ID electric hatchbacks and BYD’s flagship Han sedan. It’s the largest automotive lighting supplier in China and one of the largest in the world. Last week it also became the company that hired 440 college graduates, fired 107…
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Hyundai Just Buried A New Truck And Cheaper N Under One Boring Number
Hyundai spent Wednesday in Seoul telling investors it will launch or refresh more than 100 vehicles by 2030. That’s the number every headline grabbed, and it’s the least interesting thing in the deck. Buried further down are a body-on-frame midsize pickup, a second performance tier below N, and a battery strategy that says more about…
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Nissan Recalled 149 Altimas Over Airbags Bolted On With Truck Hardware
Somewhere on Nissan’s assembly line in Canton, Mississippi, a parts runner grabbed the wrong bin. For two days last December, the bolts holding the front passenger airbag and knee airbag modules into 149 Altima sedans weren’t Altima bolts at all. They were hardware built for the Frontier, a pickup truck assembled on that very same…
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Manual Nissan Z Nismo Arrives in Japan: Gearing, GT-R Brakes and Real Costs
The Fairlady Z Nismo went on sale in Japan today with a third pedal, four years after the RZ34 arrived and roughly eight months after Nissan first showed the car at Makuhari Messe. Nissan says the six-speed was added because customers kept asking for it, which is corporate-speak for “we finally read the forums.” The…
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Senator Hawley Is Investigating Flock Safety’s 120,000 Cameras. Your License Plate Was Never the Point
Flock Safety’s cameras do not need to read your license plate to know it’s your car. They can do it from the dent in your bumper, the roof rack you never removed, or the faded parking sticker from a job you quit two years ago. That single fact, buried in the company’s own marketing copy,…
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F1’s Engine Report Card Says Red Bull Is Winning. Even Red Bull Doesn’t Believe It.
Formula 1 released its midseason engine report card this week, and the team sitting at the top is the one complaining loudest. The FIA’s own numbers say Red Bull Powertrains builds the fastest internal combustion engine on the grid. Red Bull’s team principal says that is not true. So does the man running Mercedes. When…
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A Belgian Chip Deal With BYD Reveals How EVs Really Get Sourced
Melexis signing a purchase agreement with BYD is, on its face, the least exciting automotive story of the week. A Belgian chip designer and a Chinese carmaker put pen to paper. Nobody’s 0-60 time changed. Stay with it, though, because the boring version of this story explains a lot about how your next EV gets…
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Corolla’s 60th Birthday Trim Is Four Different Cars Depending On Your Country
The Corolla turns 60 this year, and Toyota is marking it the way Toyota marks everything: with badges, decals, and a paint color you can’t get on anything else. Fine. That’s the Corolla’s whole personality. What’s actually interesting is that Toyota has issued at least four different versions of this anniversary car across four markets,…
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Rocket-Powered EV Dies With Chinese Vacuum Maker’s Car Division
A Chinese company that makes very good robot vacuums told the world it would build a car that hit 62 mph in 0.9 seconds using strap-on rockets. Roughly four months later, that car is gone, along with the division that was supposed to build it. Dreame Technology posted a statement to its official Weibo account…
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VW Plant Closures Blocked by a 1960 Law, Not Boardroom Politics
Volkswagen’s supervisory board meets in Wolfsburg on September 4 with three competing blueprints for the company’s future sitting on the same table: one from the management board, one from the labor bench, and one from the state of Lower Saxony. That is not a negotiation. That is a standoff with a date on it. CEO…
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Porsche Sold Its Own Consulting Arm, Then Paid Four Times as Much to Rent It Back
Porsche spent three decades building a consulting firm from scratch, spent 2023 buying out the last outside shareholders so it would own all of it, and on August 24 sold the entire thing to an Indian technology conglomerate that most Porsche owners have never heard of. That’s not even the interesting part. The interesting part…
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Thieves Didn’t Hack This Lamborghini’s Security System. They Just Pointed a Gun at the Guy Holding the Keys
Nobody bypassed an immobilizer in Old City early Thursday morning. Nobody cloned a key fob, ran a relay attack, or spent forty minutes fighting a steering lock. Three men allegedly walked up to a parking booth on Race Street, broke the glass with a window punch, pointed a handgun at the attendant inside, and asked…
