For its 75th anniversary celebration, the Pebble Beach Concours will host four famous cars from the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ Carmakers including General Motors, Ford, Stellantis, and Mercedes-Benz are banking on $2.3 billion in future tariff refunds, risking the wrath of President Trump. More at CBC News.
+ Ford posted a sharp earnings rebound in the first quarter of 2026, with net income rising to $2.55 billion from $473 million in the same period last year, raising its annual outlook. More at Yahoo! Finance.
+ The 10 most frequently stolen cars in the United States in 2025 included the Hyundai Elantra and Solantra, Honda Accord, Chevrolet Silverado 1500, and the Honda Civic. More at Autoweek.
+ Veteran IndyCar and sports car driver Katherine Legge is set to make her fifth Indianapolis 500 for A.J. Foyt Racing, becoming the 33rd and final entry in the race. More at Motorsport.com.
+ Used car retailer Carvana reported record first-quarter revenue of $6.43 billion and $405 million in net income, driven by a 40 percent surge in sales to 187,393 vehicles. More at CBT News.
+ As Honda’s start/stop lawsuit nears approval, owners are set to receive up to $7,500 each while the lawyers are seeking around $36 million in fees tied to the settlement. More at Autoblog.
+ General Motors will spend $505 million to upgrade its St. Catherines, Ontario propulsion plant, a significant investment in both Canadian operations and in V8 engines. More at Car and Driver.
+ Mercedes-Benz reported a sharp drop in operating profit at the start of 2026, beset by higher raw material costs and further tariff pressures, but still beat expectations. More at World Auto Forum.
+ As part of its 75th anniversary celebration, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance will serve as host to four noteworthy cars designed for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. More at Old Cars.
+ The Cadillac Formula 1 team will race its first upgrade package at this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, which team principal Graeme Lowdon hopes will help to close the gap. More at Racer.
Photo courtesy of Kimball Studios / Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from April 27 here.
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The Indianapolis 500 has had fewer than 33 starters only once since the 33‑car standard was established in ’34, originally derived from a “safety calculation” of 400 feet of track per car.
The ’47 500 only had 30 cars take the green after the ASPAR driver boycott over prize money (American Society of Professional Auto Racing). Like always, the AAA Contest Board refused the demands, and when the entry list closed on May 8, many well‑known West Coast competitors were not entered, FAFO.
An Indy 500 with no Bump Day drama, such as the 2022 race, is like a drag race with no burnout, or cookies with no milk. Tradition broken, might as well draw peas…
A.J. Foyt is 90 years old and entered 3 drivers this year but no Offy roadsters. Does that make you feel old? Just kidding, be safe my friend!
There are no known plans in place to convert the Indianapolis 500 into a fully electric, EV‑only race. The series is instead moving toward hybrid power, not full electrification. The most significant change is the introduction of hybrid power into IndyCar. This system mates a 2.2 twin‑turbo V6 with an ultracapacitor hybrid boost system. This hybrid unit can provide short bursts of extra horsepower and recharges quickly, without the weight penalties of large batteries. This hybridization aligned with engine suppliers Chevrolet and Honda’s desire toward electrification.
However, the two major structural and competitive factors make a fully electric Indy 500 highly unlikely until the 2040s (or later) are called energy density and race length. The Indy 500 is a 500‑mile, 200‑lap race at speeds approaching 240 mph. Current and forseeable future EV battery technology cannot support that distance and speed without multiple long recharging stops or battery swaps, which would fundamentally change the race format.
While the race itself is not going EV, the 500 pace car selection has showcased the technology, the 2024 Indy 500 used the Corvette E‑Ray. The Corvette ZR1 pace car used for 2025 was not a hybrid. It was a pure internal‑combustion V8, no electrification at all.
It’s especially interesting to learn the benefits of a hybrid system in track racing where they’re not in stop-and-go traffic.
You mentioned the 2025 Indy 500 pace car being a non‑hybrid ZR-1, that sure looks like a step backward. But that choice was probably marketing, not policy. GM’s actual EV strategy is still aggressive. When GM EVs lost the federal tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in January 2024, EVs no longer qualified for the $7,500 credit if any battery component is manufactured or assembled in countries labeled as “foreign entities of concern” including China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
GM is restructuring battery supply chains to meet IRA rules.
The pace car switch was probably based on the temporary loss of these subsidies and credits, actually a sourcing compliance hiccup, not a retreat from electrification at all.
According to publicly available technical estimates (mr. internet), an “electric 747” is not feasible with current or foreseeable battery technology. A typical Boeing 747 burns the energy equivalent of about 309,000 pounds of jet fuel on a long‑range flight. Jet fuel has an energy density of roughly 5,440 watt‑hours per pound, while the best experimental batteries today theoritically reach only about 180 watt‑hours per pound. That’s is THE well‑known 30× energy gap.
To match the energy content of commercial JP‑1 jet fuel, an electric 747 would require approximately 7.7 million pounds of batteries. For comparison, the maximum takeoff weight of a 747‑400 is about 873,000 pounds. In other words, the batteries alone would weigh nine times more than the entire airplane.
Conclusion:
A fully battery electric 747-size aircraft is not physically possible with any battery technology expected before 2100 or beyond…
The NASA EV Moon rocket will need over 30 millions of pounds of batteries, because lithium‑ion cells store far too little energy per pound to reach orbit, let alone the Moon. In practice, the battery mass would be so huge that an EV rocket couldn’t even lift itself off the pad.
The Indy 500 has evolved into a cultural event, not just a technical one. Why there will never be any wheel to wheel AV racing in the Indy 500 in our lifetimes? Even the best autonomous racecars (IAC, A2RL, Roborace) can only handle solo hot‑laps or staged duels, because true wheel‑to‑wheel racing requires abilities AVs will likely never have like real‑time prediction of other cars at race speeds and improvising strategy on the fly. Humans anticipate intent, AVs will likely always struggle to predict another car’s micro‑moves with inches of margin.
So when will the Indianapolis Motor Speedway see 33 AVs as a demonstration? Maybe by the mid 21st century if the sport even wants it, never if not. IndyCar and IMS see autonomy as a marketing revenue mechanism and research platform, not a replacement for human drivers.
DARPA stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It’s a U.S. government research agency inside the Department of Defense. DARPA doesn’t build anything, it funds high‑risk, high‑reward research that universities, labs, and contractors love to try to turn into real‑world technology. DARPA created most post-modern technologies like the internet (ARPANET), GPS, computer networking, machine learning, robotics, autonomous vehicles and stealth.
The first DARPA AV Grand Challenge was a 150‑mile desert course in 2004, no one finished. But it created the first AV research teams that later became industry leaders. 2005 was the “breakthrough”
Stanford’s ‘Stanley’ wins. The DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007 was the “big one” – DARPA → Google/Waymo (2009–2010)
Google hired DARPA challenge veterans and launched the first corporate AV program, and the rest is history.
AV hype = roadway design philosophy shifts 2015 in Ohio, adopting “systemic safety” redesigning roads for “future mobility” while prioritizing modeleling over any human driver experience.
Expanding defective roundabouts, reducing turn lanes, pushing freight into defective detours, preparing for that “AV‑friendly” infrastructure.
The 2015 NEPA Assignment to Ohio eliminated federal oversight
This allowed ODOT to approve all its own federal funding, justify projects using gibberish and accelerate construction without any federal review.
DARPA was the spark! It created the technology,
Google created the hype then FHWA and Ohio created the policy environment.
And by 2015, this shit was already unstoppable…
DARPA created the modern autonomous‑vehicle industry but the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also partners with universities, labs, and contractors to develop advanced technologies, especially in AI and autonomous systems. The CIA also operates CIA Labs, its in‑house research arm, supposedly not involved in any public AV development directly, but its venture arm (In‑Q‑Tel) invests in AI, sensors, and analytics companies, probably a rabbit hole too deep for Uncle Bill’s readers.
This absurdity comes from the fact that matching the energy in a single pound of jet fuel (5,440 watt‑hours) with batteries requires a 30+ pound battery pack whose manufacturing and recycling demand roughly 595,000 watt‑hours of energy, giving a one‑cycle energy return (R.O.I.) of only about 0.009- thats less than one percent! To “earn back” and break even on the massive upfront energy cost, the EV battery would need more than 11,111 full recharge cycles, a number far beyond what any real, experimental or theoretical battery could survive under repeat loads of use.
In other words, trying to replace jet fuel with batteries forces the physics into a shape it simply doesn’t fit, likely never wiil, and the math exposes how wildly mismatched the EV technology truthfully is.
A retired AEC contractor friend reminds us the 180Wh used is for experimental cells. Current high‑performance lithium‑ion cells used in aerospace applications typically store about 100-120 Wh/lb, while NASA’s good old reliable liquid hydrogen/oxygen propellant recipe delivers roughly 5,900 Wh/lb, making rocket fuel over 50X more energy‑dense than the best li‑ion batteries…
“Safety” has becomes a bastardized legal term, not an engineering outcome.
In post modern Ohio gov’t risk‑management culture, safety is now “We followed our manual”, “We used our approved data source”, “We met our minimum requirement.” It no longer means fewer crashes, lower insurance, fewer injuries, fewer near‑misses or fewer fatalities. It only means their paperwork is defensible in court.
Tragically, the fusion of both major political parties exploiting a state’s NEPA Assignment allows the auto industry, insurance lobby, private equity and government to all have contrived structural incentives that shape decisions running against real safety, real engineering, common sense and public interest. So tax chattle naturally concludes “Nobody cares anymore.”
But the deeper truth here in Ohio is ODOT registered professional engineers, elected officials and oath swearing public servants caring way more about liability, capturing grants/funding and prioritizing failures as revenue events (crash taxes), far more than any genuine public safety, since 2015…