Ford is recalling 1.4 million F-150 pickups to repair a transmission defect than can cause a downshift without warning. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ Average gasoline prices in the United States may not return to pre-Iran war levels under $3 per gallon until sometime next year, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on CNN. More at Axios.
+ Audi will deepen its partnership with SAIC of China for future generations of models under a co-owned new brand, with four to be launched in China in the coming years. More at The Economic Times.
+ More customers are ditching dealerships for vehicle service, as independent shops increased market share by six percentage points year over year according to a recent study. More at CBT News.
+ American Colton Herta will make his Formula 1 practice session debut for Cadillac in June at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, a circuit he says he “Is super familai with.” More at Racer.
+ Stellantis NV has hired longtime Hyundai Motor executive Michael Orange for a top role under CEO Antonio Filosa as the automaker attempts to jumpstart its U.S. sales. More at Yahoo! Finance.
+ Tesla is recruiting semiconductor engineers in Taiwan, a chip-making leader, for Terafab, its vertically integrated semiconductor factory to be constructed in Austin, Texas. More at World Auto Forum.
+ Unifor and the Canadian government have rejected a Stellantis plan to assemble knock-down Leapmotor EVs from China at the automaker’s Brampton, Ontario plant. More at Motor Illustrated.
+ A 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit pickup reported stolen 44 years ago was recovered from the bottom of a local pond in Leicester, Massachusetts after it was discovered with a fish finder. More at The Drive.
+ Ford is recalling 1.4 million F-150 pickups from the 2015 through 2017 model years to repair a sensor-related transmission defect than can cause a downshift without warning. More at Car and Driver.
+ IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward says that given the current technical regulations in Formula 1, he has lost interest in the series and IndyCar now offers the best competition. More at Motorsport.com.
Photo courtesy of Ford.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from April 17 here.
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>> Audi will deepen its partnership with SAIC of China
This will not end well for Audi or the Volkswagen Group. China is a gold digger.
>> Stellantis has hired longtime Hyundai Motor executive Michael Orange
Hyundai is a good company to steal from but I don’t think that Stellantis’ most pressing problem is sales. They need to hijack more designers and engineers in order to figure out how to reconfigure French cars into something that appeals to Americans.
>> Ford is recalling 1.4 million F-150 pickups
Sorry Mr. Farley. I know that you aren’t building these vehicles but the ‘buck stops here’. It’s time for you to clean out your desk. Mary Barra made almost 3 billion in profit last year and did it with fewer recalls. You lost 8 billion and had nearly that many recalls. And to the UAW: You want to go the way of the British auto industry? Fire your leaders and accept responsibility for your fifty year campaign of shoddy work.
To clarify, California is the only state besides Ohio that holds the exact combination of full NEPA assignment from both the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration. Crazy California pioneered this dual role of eliminating all federal oversight, holding highway assignment through Caltrans since ’07 and officially added railroad assignment through the California High-Speed Rail Authority in early ’19. Ohio joined Crazy California on December 3, 2024, when the FRA executed its NEPA MOU with the Ohio Department of Transportation.
NEPA was supposedly built on one core idea: If a risk is foreseeable, (like an active railroad crossing, truck detour or a school bus route) you must evaluate it and consider alternatives. Sadly, Ohio ambulance chasers wargamed countless loopholes to breach NEPA from the beginning to maximize “crash tax” revenue and consumer insurance costs, treating school buses like cement mixers and garbage trucks. Thats plainly obvious from outerspace. Conveniently, there is no mechanism in place to force Ohio compliance with Federal Laws like the MUTCD and 23CFR since December 2015 of course.
My advice is always wear a helmet and tighten your seatbelts if unlucky enough to be on any Ohio road, be especially vigilant at ALL Ohio railroad crossings from now on especially in ODOT District 1.
Poor Ford Motor Company, tsk tsk tsk…
Under FHWA NEPA Assignment Program authorized by 23 U.S.C. 327, the ODOT assumed FHWA’s NEPA responsibilities for all highway projects in Ohio However, ODOT may delegate NEPA to ANY CITY in Ohio as a Local Public Agency (LPA) NEPA federal level decision‑making authority, including approvals and determinations. ODOT NEPA is suppose to be subject to FHWA oversight but only through a statewide audit.
ODOT exploits the structure of it’s NEPA Assignment and project classification to avoid triggering any NEPA review for public AV testing so this activity falls into a category that NEPA does not regulate. Under NEPA, ODOT decides what needs NEPA review. For public AV testing, ODOT probably classifies the activity as non‑project operational testing or
a categorical exclusion (CE) under 23 CFR 771.117(c).
Cities in Ohio are not suppose to receive NEPA authority for AV testing even if a city hosts or conducts the testing. A city cannot approve NEPA, cannot act as FHWA, cannot act as ODOT because ODOT retains all NEPA authority for any public AV testing in the state.
Under NEPA Assignment, ODOT approves all its own NEPA, so justification can be created AFTER the decision. Because FHWA delegated NEPA authority to ODOT, ODOT decides the project, programs all federal money, writes the NEPA document then approves it’s own NEPA document. There is no federal check at all on whether the justification is real, complete, or even collected at the right time.
Any genuine honest and ethical engineer approaching FHWA NEPA doesn’t start with trying to “get a project through.” They start with protecting the public, because NEPA is fundamentally about disclosure, alternatives, and avoiding harm, not rubber‑stamping. Here’s what that looks like in real‑world practice:
1. They begin with the problem, not the preferred solution. An ethical engineer asks what is the actual safety or mobility problem? Is the project even necessary? They NEVER start with “we already know what we want to build.”
2. They document impacts honestly, even when inconvenient because
NEPA requires full disclosure of environmental and community impacts, transparent safety data and clear explanations.
3. An ethical engineer does not hide, minimize, manipulate or “massage” anything to justify a predetermined design.
4. They engage the public early and respectfully. Ethical NEPA practice means listening before deciding, responding to comments with substance, documenting concerns accurately, not treating the public as an obstacle. Public input is part of the engineering record, not a box to check. Ethics separate engineering judgment from political pressure, this is the hardest part. An ethical engineer refuses to manipulate data, refuses to pre‑justify a decision, refuses to sign off on something unsafe and always documents dissent when necessary.
5. NEPA is a legal process. Engineering ethics require honesty in that process.
6. They sign their name only when the analysis is complete and defensible. A real engineer knows their signature is a professional statement, they are accountable for the technical accuracy, they cannot ethically approve something they know is flawed.
Tragically, NEPA allows ODOT to program federal funds before collecting any data or producing any NEPA documentation at all. It is a deliberate structural loophole that allows ODOT and Caltrans to behave like a grant‑farming machines, the same agency that wants the money is the one that approves the justification using baked in NEPA loopholes, formally known as theft.
FHWA and FRA NEPA assignment truly allows ODOT and Caltrans to invent and use safety language to justify decisions that cause real harm an wealth extraction from an unsuspecting public. Then these state agencies redefine (or hide) the harm as safety to protect itself (and contractors/consultants) to justify and extract more federal funding and Highway Trust Fund money, the backbone of all state DOT funding since 1956…
Re 2007 Caltrans-FHWA NEPA Assignment timeline, it’s worth noting that President Bush’s administration and California Governor Schwarzenegger’s administration piggybacked the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 with California’s FHWA NEPA Assignment in 2007.
When a state DOT leaves out, obscures, excludes or hides major hazards like active rail crossings or school zones, then its safety studies can’t be trusted and the public pays the price. ODOT in Ohio almost always uses technical loopholes now since it’s NEPA Assignment, like ODOT’s outrageous “50‑foot no railroad involvement cerification” policy/rule granfathered from the 1950’s to exclude real hazards from safety analysis. This allows ODOT in Ohio to claim and pretend federal compliance while deliberately ignoring extreme risks and dangers that the public is forced to live with…
You fellas just missed the public comment period by two weeks for the “Renewal Package From the State of Ohio to the Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program and Proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Assigning Environmental Responsibilities to the State of Ohio”-
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/05/2026-04354/renewal-package-from-the-state-of-ohio-to-the-surface-transportation-project-delivery-program-and
The outrageous ODOT FHWA NEPA Assignment MOU is designed to tie FHWA and the public’s hands. The structure of oversight leaves both the federal government and the public unable to stop any dangerous situation in Ohio, even when the harm is obvious and documented. Evidently no elected represtative or public servant in Ohio wants or desires to offend ODOT in any way now. FHWA nor FRA can no longer intervene in Ohio without extensive litigation, the public can no longer force any corrections at all without extensive litigation, local governments can’t override ODOT mistakes, MUTCD violations don’t trigger action so blatant truck detour failures can persist for a year then repeat at will…
It’s the NEPA FHWA/FRA Assignment that allows the executive order in Ohio for the statewide outbreak of AV public testing because it instantly transformed ODOT from a state agency that originally had to “show its work” to a federal referee into an all-in-one authority that acts as its own judge, jury and executioner. Unfortunately with no more professional engineering, courtesy nor ethics from the looks of it.
Before this MOU, if a local engineer or a community member raised a red flag about something so obvious as lethal 1,100-foot train queue errors for a “death machine” roundabout configuration sketched on a cocktail napkin, the FHWA acted as a secondary layer of professional review. There was always “courtesy” because everyone had to satisfy a higher federal standard.
Now all that professional tension is gone, replaced by a “closed loop” of total executive power, it means the death of peer review at ODOT in Ohio. Because the FHWA is legally barred from intervening in project-level disputes or correcting safety defects under the MOU, there is no longer any “higher office” to appeal to. ODOT knows that as long as they follow the paperwork process loopholes, they are bulletproof no matter what the outcome.
“Loophole safety” means NO safety at all ladies and gentlemen.
A Chinese‑made car that’s legal to sell in Canada but not certified for sale in the U.S. can be driven temporarily in the U.S. on Canadian plates, but it cannot be imported, registered, or permanently operated here by a U.S. resident because it doesn’t meet U.S. safety and emissions rules, even if Canada allows it. Good news the Stelantis-Leapmotor knock down kit bait and switch scam for Bramton died.