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Good morning and welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short.
Short, dense, and quick, TDS gathers the latest automotive headlines from around the globe and brings them to one page. Stories are summarized in a single sentence accompanied by a link for those seeking more information.
The first cup of coffee is gone, a second is on the docket, so let’s get into it.
🚘 What I’m driving: Shuttling the kids around town in the Lexus LS 500 this week to remind myself what this game-changing luxury flagship is before it leaves the marketplace and find myself wondering how something built with such precision lost its way while trying to be too many things at once.
🔫 Speaking at the 2026 Detroit auto show former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said President Trump has given the auto industry “whiplash” and automakers “deserve policymakers who have their back” while noting that under Trump’s watch “over the last year, manufacturing employment has gone in the wrong direction. I can tell a similar story about the trends in manufacturing investment;” Buttigieg said China’s enthusiastic about confronting climate change without the finer points of environmental protection because “it’s economic security. It’s economic strength.”
⛓️💥 Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said he wants to and intends to keep the global automotive giant intact and not sell any brands.
💸 Executive Chair Bill Ford said the automaker’s $20 billion EV write down was about “recognizing what reality was in the marketplace.”
🤖 The robots are coming; Manufacturing experts now predict at least one automaker will achieve a fully automated and robot-operated vehicle assembly line in the U.S. or China by 2030.
📱 BMW’s CTO said the automaker is preparing for a time when cars might need a complete digital reboot as they move from one market to the next because of geopolitics, which means companies that have separated hardware from software will have a competitive advantage he believes.
🔋 Honda’s U.S.-made electric lawn mower has arrived and it has a bigger battery than the first modern EV.
🪦 Mercedes-Benz has scrapped its Level 3 eyes-off hands-free driver-assist system known as Drive Pilot; the system was only available in the EQS and S-Class and only worked in certain parts of California and Nevada at speeds of up to 40 mph.
🐣 Kia said the 2026 K4 Hatchback will start arriving in U.S. dealers this month and costs $26,235 including a $1,245 destination fee.
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
