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Runtime: 8:41
0:00 U.S. New Car Sales Fall
1:18 Trump to Eviscerate Biden MPG Regs.
1:59 GM Loses Another Software Exec.
2:41 Cadillac Using Super Bowl to Announce F1 Livery
4:31 Archer Launching VTOL Service in Miami
5:20 Hyundai Readies Commercial AV Platform
6:04 JLR Fires Head Designer
6:47 Bridgestone Improves Its Performance Tire
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This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
U.S. NEW CAR SALES FALL
We’ve got the latest sales for the US market in November and it sure looks like things are slowing down. Based on the numbers posted by the companies that still report on a monthly basis, the new car market dropped 2.7% from a year ago. Obviously, EV sales took a nose dive after the Trump Administration eliminated the federal tax credit. Models like the Ford F-150 Lightning fell 72%.The Hyundai Ioniq 5 was down 59%. And the Honda Prologue was down almost 87%, but it’s also getting phased out. However, it wasn’t just EVs. Even Toyota’s, Honda’s and Ford’s hybrid sales were down. Only three of the reporting brands managed to eke out a sales gain: Toyota, Kia, and Genesis. Meanwhile, Ford, Lincoln, Honda, Acura, Hyundai, Mazda, Subaru and Lexus all posted lower numbers.
By the way, we’re going to have Warren Browne on Autoline After Hours tomorrow and he’s got some disturbing numbers on how all those tariffs will affect US sales, production and automotive jobs next year. So, don’t miss out on that show.
TRUMP TO EVISCERATE BIDEN MPG REGS
The White House is holding a big meeting today with auto executives to announce it’s dismantling the fuel economy standards set by the Biden Administration. Under those regs, new cars were supposed to average 65 miles per gallon by 2031. That’s 4.6 liters per 100 kilometers. Light trucks were expected to hit 42 miles per gallon, or 5.6 liters per 100 km. We think the Trump Administration will probably freeze the standards where they’re at and eliminate fines for falling short of the regs. Over the last decade automakers collectively paid over $1 billion in fines for missing those standards.
GM LOSES YET ANOTHER SOFTWARE EXEC
General Motors is experiencing a software brain drain. Baris Cetinok, who joined the company in 2023 and was VP of Software and Services Product Management, is leaving the automaker later this month. Before joining GM, Cetinok worked at Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Last month, Dave Richardson, the company’s VP of Software, left. And just last week, Barak Turovsky, the company’s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, announced he’s leaving after just eight months on the job. GM’s software development is now mostly led by Chief Product Officer, Sterling Anderson, a former Tesla executive who joined GM in June.
CADILLAC USES SUPER BOWL TO ANNOUNCE F1 LIVERY
And in other GM news, Cadillac will reveal the livery of its new F1 car in a Super Bowl commercial in February. That’s an awfully expensive way to show off a paint job. The team declined to reveal how much they spent on the ad but according to AdWeek, the average cost for a 30-second ad in next year’s Super Bowl is $8 million. Of course, the ad is about a lot more than just some paint. It’s all about General Motors bragging to the American public that it’s getting into Formula One. Cadillac F1 is a joint venture between GM and TWG Motorsports, and will make its debut at the Australian Grand Prix in March.
ARCHER TO LAUNCH VTOL SERVICE IN MIAMI
Archer Aviation revealed plans for its air taxi network around Miami. It will connect Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach via 10-20 minute flights, replacing car rides that normally take 60-90 minutes. The network will offer travel options to the area’s three major airports as well. It will also include Hard Rock Stadium where the NFL’s Miami Dolphins play and Apogee Golf Club, which already features existing helipads that will be modified to handle Archer’s air taxis. But no timetable was given for when the service will start operations. And if you’re wondering how this is automotive related, Stellantis is a strategic partner with Archer and also its largest investor.
HYUNDAI READIES COMMERCIAL AV PLATFORM
Hyundai has continuously developed a piece of tech that it first showed off at CES in 2022 and now it’s ready for production. The Mobile Eccentric Droid or MobED for short is an AI-enabled fully autonomous platform that can be adapted for all kinds of tasks, even operating on uneven surfaces. MobED is able to carry about 100-125 pounds of weight and special drive-and-lift modules work to keep the package level on the platform. A suite of sensors, including lidar, help the robots navigate their environment and they’re able to operate for about 4 hours at a time. Hyundai says sales kick off in the first half of next year.
JLR AXES HEAD DESIGNER McGOVERN
Did Jaguar’s controversial new cars cost the company’s design boss his job? Autocar reports that Gerry McGovern was fired on Monday after a 21-year career with JLR. Apparently he was asked to leave, his position was terminated with immediate effect and he may have been escorted out of the building. The company has not commented yet, so no word on if the firing is related to something like the criticism of Jaguar’s new design direction or a move by JLR’s new CEO, who just took over a week ago. McGovern worked on many models in the JLR portfolio and before that he worked at Ford and before that he worked at MG.
BRIDGESTONE’S RE-71RZ PERFORMANCE TIRE
Attention all you automotive enthusiasts who autocross, go to open track days, or just want a high performance summer tire. Bridgestone, which is an Autoline sponsor, is replacing its legendary Potenza RE-71RS performance tires with the upgraded RE-71RZ. Bridgestone claims the new tire does laps 7 tenths of a second faster in both the dry and wet. That’s a significant improvement. And the tire is designed to last a lot longer as well. It will be available in 45 different sizes and goes on sale at the end of the month.
But that’s a wrap for this show. Thanks for making Autoline a part of your day.
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Half of the people I know with EVs got them the last few weeks before the end of September, to beat the end of the tax credit. I “moved up” the purchase of a Prius, to beat the likely tariff-caused price increase. I’m not surprised that EV sales are way down, and when companies quit “eating” the tariffs, and start raising prices more, I’d expect big sales decreases for nearly all cars.
It will be interesting to see how Cadillac does in F1. It should be a good time for starting a new team, because everyone will be “starting from scratch” with major rules changes, both for powertrain and chassis.
Do you think someone less inclined to the Left would use the word eviscerate to describe the rollback of auto mpg standards? Is it possible that someone would pick a more efficient car because of higher mpg or lower emissions?
We own a MachE that we enjoy driving but it’s a marginal and city use car until the range at least doubles. I don’t think we are wise to assume car purchasers and owners are idiots making stupid choices unless Big Brother forces them. A truly free market can be awful until you compare the alternatives
Escorting someone out of the building with immediate dismissal does not indicate just displeasure in their design work.
He must have perpetrated enough criminal activity to make him eligible to run as a Republican presidential candidate.
As someone with a few summer only sports cars, I look forward to seeing the new Bridgestone tires out in the wild. The design is intriguing and the timing is perfect as I need to replace tires next year anyhow. Hopefully they come in the sizes that I need.
They make those new Bridgestone tires in a lot of sizes, but none to fit my Prius.
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/bridgestone-potenza-re-71rz
Click on “Sizes” below the picture of the tire, to see the list of sizes available.
I’m not defending the former JLR designer, but, though McGovern may have been the head designer, he did not run the company! He has been credited with a number of innovative and incredibly designs at JLR, he was not the head decision maker at the company. While he may have no doubt had a hand in designing the XJ replacement, he was not the one that axed it in the 11th hour, or the one that pulled to plug on the Jaguar full-size SUV, that was to be based on the Range Rover’s bones. Nor was he the Jaguar CEO, that decided to hold a competition, not only with internal JLR designers, but as external design firm for the styling for the next generation Jaguar models, only for McGovern and his team to win due to having the most experience designing Jags, which only wasted time and Tata money, only for that CEO to be removed and the next leader of the company to go in a different direction, up market and with the type of product to support that move! While many may not be in love with the Type 00 concept, designers are employees too! That concept went before a lot of eyes and heading nodding, clay models, focus groups, private notes and emails from leaders, before the public saw it and gave their reaction! When things look good, the head designer may get a lot of praise and maybe rightly so, yet they too may have to take it on the chin when they don’t, but they are hardly the only ones responsible for what the product on the road may look like! There are people above the head designer that might want to tread very lightly.
I don’t have much opinion about McGovern at Jaguar, but I do have an opinion about the direction they are taking the brand. It seems highly unlikely that they can sell very many so-so looking EVs at near Bentley prices. Maybe they plan to sell only 100-200 a year like Cadillac Celestiq, which might be doable.
Look forward to Cadillac in F-1, should be fun. Will consider Bridgestones for my next tire purchase.
Removing incentives affected sales as predicted. EVs struggle to sell on their own merit and now we see the real interest without gov influence!
It’s also crazy that regulations were put in place that required automakers to pay over 2 billion in fines. We all know they didn’t pay that. It got rolled into each and every sale. So basically just another tax on the working man. Just as dumb as the whole diesel def debacle. Creating ways to increase cost with minimal if any impact to the actual goal of lowering emissions.
Able- I’d say criminal activity is fully encompassed within both parties as the auto pen scandal and nepotism given to joes family is becoming quite public now.
Car companies chose to pay fines, rather than make efficient cars. Big, thirsty expensive trucks have been profitable enough, at least for the “Detroit Three,” to make paying the fines better for the companies than, say, making cars that compete equally with Camry, Accord, Civic, Corolla, RAV4, CR-V, and various recent H/K products.
Those same car companies also have made very expensive EV trucks and SUVs, though. Ones that nobody wants to buy it turns out. Ford alone has lost multiples of billions more on the Lightning and the Mach E than they would ever have paid in fines. They would have been better off telling Biden to pound sand and never haven gotten into that space.
And a multitude of EV owners chasing that sweet $7500 credit now find themselves trapped to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in an upside down loan on the equivalent of an iPhone 8 with wheels. Old technology with a dodgy battery that any used dealer or prospective buyer fears.
Meanwhile Nature magazine, the climate shills’ journal, just had to retract a 2024 article full of Eco-Doomsday predictions because it was based on even more indefensible models than usual. And they could not correct nor defend them.
Things to ruminate on when doing that 50+ minute “supercharge” to 80% in a strange parking lot somewhere (hopefully in a safe area that doesn’t smell like an open bathroom.). If a working, compatible charger can be found of course.
Ford certainly overestimated demand for Lightning, by about a factor of five. They must not have asked many current pickup drivers if they wanted an EV. I know several pickup drivers, and none of them have wanted an electric pickup, even though some of them could easily afford one.
Mach-E sales US were 56,337 in 2024, its best year. I’ve read that there is capacity to build 200K a year, far too many, unless they can sell more in Europe and China than they are now selling. It’s in its 6th or 7th year, so maybe it needs a refresh.
Kit you sound like the typical leftist with comments like “just make vehicles that are more efficient”. That’s as far as the left thinks. That doesn’t solve the problem if no one is buying these vehicles. You just create huge losses as manufacturers build stuff that they can’t sell. As pointed out with all the EV trucks that had millions if not billions thrown at their development to have crap sales and scaled back production if not cancelled. Your dislike of Americans preference of full size trucks is well documented here but that doesn’t change the trend. The same problem automakers deal with. They tried economy EVs but with prices in the 50k range they bombed. So they moved to luxury EVs and while the segment can support the cost the market is limited. Then came the EV trucks and they were DOA. Before Tesla could even get production up the million reservations dropped to a pathetic number they wouldn’t even publicize. But what would have been over 5 years of production turned out you could order and get your cyberjunk within months of ordering after 6 months of production. Which anyone with some production experience tells ya they only had about 50k of those million reservations turn into actual sales. GM paused production Ford cut production and ram cancelled altogether. Notice Nissan and Toyota didn’t even bother to launch a EV truck.
Don’t mean to sound so disrespectful but geez man the simple answer to avoid gov fees isn’t just manufacture garbage you can’t sell. The gov needs to put in place achievable targets that customers will buy while upping the fuel economy standards. That balance requires common sense and some knowledge of the auto industry. Something DC has no clue obviously.
The “Detroit Three” made a decision to pay fines, rather than compete with Toyota, Honda, and H/K for some of those million plus sales of compact and mid-size sedans. GM is not competing with hot selling RAV4 and CR-V hybrids. Equinox sold a decent ~200K unit in 2024, but that’s less than half as many RAV4 and CR-V. Not having a hybrid may be a lot of the reason they sold half as many as those two.
As far as EVs, that is still sorting out, but after Tesla Models Y and 3, Equinox EV and Mach-E are the best selling EVs in the US. That indicates that more “moderate” priced EVs is where the market is. I suspect the returning Bolt will do ok.
It seems that Ford and GM did very poor market research to think there was a big market for electric pickup trucks. With Tesla, they came up with something strange that few people want, especially since Elon has turned off Tesla’s former fan boys and girls, but pickup buyers in general don’t want EVs, even people I know for whom an EV would work well.