Rivian has removed the lowest-priced models from its R1T pickup and R1S SUV lineups. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ New vehicle retailers are facing an affordability squeeze among consumers as prices have jumped more than $11,000 since 2019 and buyers are taking out longer-term loans. More at CBT News.
+ Analysts at consulting firm Bain & Company predict that annual auto sales in the U.S. could shrink by two million cars by 2040 from the 2016 peak of 17.6 million cars. More at CNBC.
+ In the 2026 Cars.com American Made Index, Hondas and Toyotas took six of the top 10 spots, leaving only two Teslas and two Jeeps in the rankings of domestic content. More at The Drive.
+ Aided by a World Cup football lead-in, the IndyCar race at Road America drew more than 1.8 million TV viewers, the second-largest audience outside the Indy 500 since 2011. More at Racer.
+ Ferrari marketing chief Enrico Galliera has quit after 16 years at the company, weeks after a backlash over the launch of the supercar maker’s first-ever electric car, the Luce. More at BBC News.
+ Volkswagen is weighing up to 100,000 job cuts—around 15 percent of its global workforce—and the closure of four German plants, including EV hubs in Zwickau and Emden. More at MSN.
+ Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe won support for reappointment to the board at its annual meeting after apologizing to shareholders for the company’s poor financial performance. More at World Auto Forum.
+ Startup electric truck maker Telo confirmed it plans to deliver trucks by the end of the year with pricing at $41,520 for the single-motor RWD and $46,019 for the dual-motor AWD. More at Autoweek.
+ With the arrival of the lower-priced R2, Rivian has removed the least expensive models from its R1T pickup and R1S SUV lines, leaving the Large Pack as the standard battery. More at Car and Driver.
+ Denny Hamlin, co-owner of 23XI Racing, said NASCAR has kept all its promises in their out-of-court antitrust settlement and their relationship is now stronger than ever. More at Yahoo! Sports.
Photo courtesy of Rivian.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from June 26 here.
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So Mibe apologized for Honda’s first annual loss in ~70 years, eh?
“Honda Motor Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe secured support for his reappointment to the Japanese automaker’s board at its annual meeting on Friday after apologising to shareholders for the company’s poor financial performance… a shareholder filing proposed a motion that called for Mibe’s dismissal, but the chief executive declined to put it to a vote, saying the issue was not on the agenda and the proposal could therefore not be considered.”
Honda’s annual meeting does indeed look like “winning investor backing,” but only because the structure of the meeting made any other outcome impossible.
The automtive culture of simulated accountability. Oversight illusions exist, but substance and safety optional, consult your local dealer for availabilty…
Under the cute little Autoweek Telo “rhymes with fellow” article is “Tesla Under Scutiny in EU”
SAE “Level 3” is not possible with Tesla’s current architecture.
What Tesla sells is the illusion of “Level 3”, but really “Level 2”. Kraftfahrt‑Bundesamt (KBA), Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (their equivalent of the U.S. DOT + NHTSA combined) certified a very narrow, heavily restricted, geofenced, low‑speed operational mode that Tesla could meet only because the bar was set so extremely low for a specific use case.
KBA curently has three open Tesla safety defect investigations in Germany- phantom braking, unsafe lane change and its FSD compliance in joint EU review to “independently analyze how the software handles road anomalies” (crazy European roundabouts, emergency manuvers, pedestians, rr xings?) before a Tesla “Level 3” is greenlit on the German public.
Level 3, 4, and 5 cannot become mainstream until legal liability shifts away from the human. All current ADAS/AV systems rely on waivers and legal disclaimers because the law still treats the human as the responsible operator. Without liability reform, autonomy will always be the dog‑and‑pony show it is- impressive (to some) demos, but no real transfer of responsibility or safety.
According to the SAE J3016 standard, when a Level 3 system is active, the vehicle’s automated driving system (ADS) is legally the driver. The human is just a “fallback user” who can completely disengage, watch a movie, or check text messages. The manufacturer actually assumes all legal and financial liability while a Level 3 system is engaged.
True Level 3, 4, and 5 autonomy requires transparency, liability, and engineering rigor. The current political green‑tech fad and American EV/AV ecosystem is optimized for wealth extraction and data capture, not for delivering real autonomy or safety. Until these incentives change (which will never happen IMHO), the EV/AV industry can only produce liabilty and illusions of safety rather than the real thing.
Very few among us understand the FMVSS is written in legal language, not engineering language because it is a legal standard, not a safety or technical standard. This is why vehicle safety is self-certified and EV/AV “Kluge stack” software blended brakes have no regulations and likely never will. The American FMVSS is written by lawyers for lawyers on purpose, and professional automotive engineers are expected to “interpret” it into “safety”. This way all legal and financial liabilty, especially using EV/AVs and “Level 0-5” remains with the human operator.
FMVSS defines outcomes, not engineering or safety. Engineering standards (SAE and ISO, not FMVSS) change constantly. Legal standards cannot (in theory). All ISO and SAE safety standards are voluntary, also industry‑written by lawyers, and self‑certified by lawyers, and our FMVSS is written in legal language by lawyers for lawyers, not in engineering language for engineers. This inbred regulatory ecosystem is contrived so that liability always stays with the human operator, not the manufacturer, supplier, or any government agency.
FMVSS, NHTSA and ODI was originally created long ago with good‑faith safety intentions to be implemented by honest and ethical people, but was taken over by gov’t lawyers during the 90’s (remember Al Gore?) to facilitate the loophole cascades, data fraud and arm waving to justify the global warming/carbon culture.
WARNING:
EV/AV/Robocab/Roborig software blended brakes do NOT even have the fail safe redundency of the old fashion analog double master cylinder of 1968; they are a billion “Model T‑style” single‑point failure modes compressed into a single vehicle, coordinated by Kluge stack of software guesses that no safety standard exists for. These unlimited baked-in failure modes created our three new G.L.I.T.C.H. buckets of safety defect taxonomy: Decel Loss, Decel Error, and Decel Warning. No FMVSS standard covers any of this, regardless of what appears on the FMVSS certification door sticker label…
PROPOSED FMVSS‑COMPLIANT EV/AV BLENDED BRAKING SYSTEMS
TOP TEN LIST:
1. Night‑Solar One‑Pedal Braking
(Solar panels that only work at night, MAX regen during full moons)
2. Anchor‑Drag Chisel‑Plow Brakes
(Titanium farm chisel plow gangs slams into the pavement for sustainable high-yeild decelerations)
3. Retro‑Rocket Forward Deceleration
(Forward‑facing rockets fire using renewable CNG to slow the vehicle)
4. Wind‑Turbine Reverse‑Thrust Braking
(A rooftop turbine spins backward to generate drag, solar powered can get a tax brake)
5. Parachute‑Only Emergency Braking
(A calibrated ribbon slot drag chute made frum recycled sustainables deploys with ABS, then packs itself autnomously, who doesn’t like ribbons?)
6. Bowling‑Bag Deployment Braking
(a recycled bowling ball ejects forward in city limits to “anchor” the vehicle tethered by recycled “spare” tires)
7. Compound Steam‑Toaster‑Iron Jake Brake
(Steam generator + toaster coil + iron plate + Jake brake + carbon friendly OTA activation serves breakfast)
8. Fred Flintstone Adidas Metallics
(Metallic Adidas footplates punch through a retractable floor panel, converting all kinetic energy into heat energy that can be harvested)
9. All‑Wheel 12‑Inch Toe‑In Speed Brakes
(Every wheel forcibly toes in 12 inches at speed for maximum decel)
10. Explosive‑Bolt All wheel Tie‑Rod Adjusters (Advance environmental friendly single‑use NASA‑style explosive bolts detonate to instantly change steering geometry, demonstrated on Dearborn Proving Grounds.)
Genuine Engineering, especially aerospace, nuclear, and other safety‑critical fields, is built on physics‑enforced honesty:
■Root‑cause engineering — you can’t loophole gravity no matter how hard you try
■Systemic accountability — failures are owned, not cashed in like a lottery ticket
■Engineering redundancy — multiple layers protect human life
■Mandatory reporting — nothing gets loopholed or buried
■Human‑factors discipline — procedures protect people not profit
If an engineer cuts corners, people die. If they hide mistakes, systems fail. If they ignore physics, vehicles explode.
When lawyer cut corners, their institutions protect them. When they exploit loopholes, their system rewards them. If they hide mistakes, their framework absorbs it.
Lawyering is revenue‑stream preservation architecture. Engineering is life‑preservation architecture. They are diametrically opposed because their consequences are diametrically opposed.
An American society built on loopholes cannot produce safety. Safety requires minimum rules, enforced consistently.
This loophole “me first” culture makes safety mathematically impossible.
The Single-Point failure irony of the 1908 Model T, had a single mechanical band on the transmission for braking. If that band snapped, you had zero brakes.
Dual-Master Cylinders (1968): Regulators forced manufactures to split braking into two independent hydraulic zones. If front lines leaked, the rear lines can still stopped the vehicle. This created physical redundancy.
Roborigs (2026): They have complex elecro-hydraulic circuitry, but the command to brake routes through wires, multiple control units and software stacks. If any code or module freezes, glitches, experiences a single-bit flip, or suffers a power bus failure, safety redundancy is bypassed entirely.
Suddenly its 1908 again! Unregulated EV/AV “Kluge Stack” software blended brakes mimics 1908 mechanical brakes: No backup redundency! In any level autonomous vehicle, there is no human leg physically forcing a piston into a master cylinder as a last resort.The software stack must instantly guess how much braking comes from the electric motor (regen) versus the physical brake pads (friction) using preloaded ABS and stability opinion algorythms. If it miscalculates or encounters a data bug, it can vauses Decel Loss (no brakes) or Decel Error (unintended hard braking), effectively acting just like your great-great-great grandfather’s snapped Model T brake band, resulting in you have zero brakes.