Volkswagen plans to reduce its model line by up to half to reverse its historic financial crisis. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ Mercedes-Benz reported that sales in its core car business continued to fall in the second quarter, declining 8 percent year-on-year due to intense competition in China. More at World Auto Forum.
+ Production of the 2027 Toyota Highlander EV has been delayed by a minimum of eight weeks “to make final adjustments prior to launch,” a Toyota representative confirmed. More at Car and Driver.
+ The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is warning that autonomous vehicles must never obstruct the paths of police and first responder vehicles. More at TechCrunch.
+ Veteran open-wheel mechanic, team manager, and team leader Neil Mickelwright, most notably at the Forsythe Racing Champ Car team with driver Paul Tracy, has died at 69. More at Racer.
+ Waymo reports it will soon begin fully autonomous operations in four new cities, with driverless vehicles running on the streets of San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, and Denver. More at CBT News
+ Kia is recalling nearly 463,000 Telluride SUVs to correct defective power seat motors that could overheat and cause a fire, and is warning owners to park the vehicles outside. More at Autoblog.
+ At the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Maserati unveiled the Project GT4, a GranTurismo-derived track car with 700 hp targeted for GT4 competition starting in 2028. More at Automotive World.
+ In Paris in February, Artcurial Motorscars will offer at auction the Thierry Dehaeck collection of 60 cars and assorted automobilia, which are expected to bring up to $25 million. More at Old Cars.
+ Volkswagen plans to drastically cut its model line by up to half and further pare back capacity in a far-reaching overhaul that sources say could cost around 100,000 jobs. More at Reuters.
+ On Conor Daly’s Speed Street podcast, Arrow-McLaren driver Pato O’Ward announced he no longer has any interest in pursuing a Formula 1 career and will focus on IndyCar. More at Motorsport.com.
Photo courtesy of Volkswagen.
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R.I.P. Neil Mickelwright, he served as team manager for Doug Shierson Racing, winning the 1990 Indianapolis 500 with driver Arie Luyendyk.
IMHO, since NHTSA Administator Morrison is a career gov’t lawyer, his warning letter to AV companies is just an instruction sheet to dump even more liability on human road users, just like the NTSB BlueCruise dog and pony show hearing did, and the absurdity of including the word SAFETY in any new AV FMVSS framing.
It is a deeply dark and very ugly topic to look at. Under the polished “green saving the world” slogans, arm waving, dirty tricks, illusions, and data delimation lies a sick system built on literal third world slavery at one end and forced financial extraction of American citizens at the other. Looking closely at how all this “green sausage” is made by loophole lawyering, not engineering, with carbon cult/global warming exploiting human beings at every single level worldwide, has become genuinely grim…
NHTSA Administrator and government attorney Jonathan Morrison, appointed by President Trump directly from previous his role leading Apple’s autonomous vehicle legal policy teams, issues a 2026 directive “warning” to AV companies addressing vehicle obstructions at emergency scenes, not to mention ignoring school buses and construction zones, and running over people.
Rather than triggering mandatory safety recalls or offering any engineering solutions at all, Morrison’s directive frames all these AV hazardous failures as “functional insufficiencies” to be managed by a corporate reporting “honor system”. This indeed is nothing more than a tactical instruction sheet for AV co. lawyers to systematically dump even more legal and financial liability onto human road users and first responders. By reducing blatant public safety failures to mere administrative classifications of “edge cases,” this protects Morrison’s tech developer/private equity friends while generating more loops of corporate compliance revenue, legal settlements, and billable hours for his corporate attorney fraternity brothers.
Morrison’s jump from Apple’s AV legal unit straight to running NHTSA is an undeniable matter of public record.
Carbon culture substituting actual engineering blocks and safety with administrative definitions and loophole cascades is where this all broke down. When standard-setting shifts from mechanical safety to revenue events and software risk management, all priorities warp. If an FMVSS “safety standard” allows an empty vehicle to drive without a steering wheel or pedals, then the “safety” being verified is just arbitrary data compliance. The AV is audited on whether its software logs an event, not whether it safely navigates a chaotic real-world scene.
Speaking to those in the back, true engineering safety requires a fail-safe mechanical block: if a self driving vehicle cannot perceive a flashing road flare, a police officer’s hand gestures or a school bus full of children, it MUST SAFELY STOP OR PULL OVER! But when government oversight safety regulatory agencies switches to an “honor system” compliance report, it “legally” permits these machines to continue operating, effectively treating the American public as nothing more than non-consensual test subjects and revenue streams.
Al Gore’s 1993 “National Performance Review” (NPR) is the exact historical pivot point where our federal government officially shifted from traditional top-down oversight to the inbred corporate-style “compliance” model of today. Gore’s explicit goal was to make government “work better and cost less” by importing corporate private-sector efficiency models (loophole lawyering) directly into federal safety agencies.
When Mr. Global Warming himself posed on the White House lawn in 1993 next to diesel forklifts with pallets of federal safety regulations, it was marketed as a victory for the little guy over red tape.
In reality, it was the formal birth of the administrative “edge case” loophole cascade for the big guy- replacing absolute engineering accountability and safety with an infinite loop of corporate data management, revenue events, legal settlements, and of course more billable hours…
>> Volkswagen plans to reduce its model line by up to half
Wouldn’t it be strange if we went back to one or two cars with multiple trim levels to represent a manufacturer as it was before the Sixties.
>> warning that autonomous vehicles must never obstruct the paths of police
This is not far from the police remote “off switch” that was rumored to be coming for so long.
VW lost its way decades ago. How difficult is to ask your customers what they want and build it.