Ram is teasing the return of the Rumble Bee muscle truck, but there’s no official confirmation yet. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ Toyota has filed for approval of an expansion of its facility in San Antonio, Texas, which is expected to cost $2 billion, employ 2,000 workers, and begin operations in 2030. More at The Detroit News.
+ Italdesign, founded in 1968 by designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, opened a U.S. office in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 2024 and is now pursuing more work with U.S. carmakers. More at Car and Driver.
+ The price of Ford shares rallied sharply this week after the automaker launched Ford Energy, a new subsidiary focused on manufacturing battery energy storage systems. More at CBT News.
+ With Indianapolis 500 qualifying shortened to a single day by rain, Alex Palou took the pole at 232.248 mph, with Alexander Rossi and David Malukas filling out the front row. More at Racer.
+ Mazda is facing a $662 million class-action lawsuit by five owners who allege that multiple Mazda models have seat heaters that can burn passengers and damage upholstery. More at Autoblog.
+ The Capricorn 01 Zagato Tutto Rosso, an exotic GT with gullwing doors, bodywork by Zagato, and a 900 hp 6.2 liter Ford V8, debuted at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. More at Autoweek.
+ Tesla has increased Model Y prices in the US by up to $1,000 across its Premium and Performance trims, marking the first price increase on the Model Y in two years. More at Electrek.
+ A General Motors-LG joint-venture battery company is bringing a small number of workers back to an idled EV battery plant in Ohio, though future plans remain uncertain. More at World Auto Forum.
+ In a Ram video, Stellantis is teasing the return of the Rumble Bee muscle truck, presumably with supercharged Hemi V8 power, but there’s no official confirmation yet. More at The Drive.
+ The AM Racing (AMR) NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (NOAPS) team has formally ceased operations and released all employees after withdrawing in March. More at Jayski.
Photo courtesy of Volkswagen.
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>> Ford Energy, a new subsidiary focused on manufacturing battery energy storage systems.
If their recent recall history is any indicator, I would put that energy storage system in a steel shed about 15 yards away from the house.
The big hybrid news at Indy is the rules for 2026 ban Penske’s “cold trickle” software strategy. This simple programing trick (loophole, lol) allowed the Energy Recovery System to deploy equal electrical power to offset its mechanical drag. To end this nonesense and force the system to function as a performance tool, the series instituted a deployment floor of 5.9 pound-feet of torque and a maximum cap of 40.6 pound-feet for the month of May. Max active energy deployment is suppose to be limited to 202,830 foot-pounds per lap at Indy this year. Betcha’ that data’s fun to crunch.
I believe this Indy hybrid powertrain adds around a 100-pound weight penalty to the rear of the 1,650-pound Dallara chassis. Most of the hybrid’s 40+horsepower electric boost is consumed by overcoming the inertia of the hybrid hardware itself. While regenerating energy under braking in traffic, during cautions and pitting can offer a minor efficiency gain, the added drag limits the fuel economy improvement to maybe 0.01 mile per gallon, which might extend a green-flag stint by less than half a lap. Based on observed speed increases of 0.2 mph or so relative to the $120 million investment, the Indycar hybrid program yields a performance-to-cost ratio of 0.00167 miles per hour per million dollars spent…
When you strip away the marketing hype and convert everything into SAE units, the hybrid system stops looking like progress and starts looking like a case study in misallocated effort.
A hybrid race car with deploy on the order of 40 lb‑ft of torque ~12,000 rpm MGU speed, equals roughly 0.5–0.7 hp/lb of hybrid system mass. At Indy this year, teams can choose how to use their hybrid energy:
■Full burst → ~4–5 seconds of ~40 hp
■Trickle deployment → spread across a longer portion of the lap
■Cold‑trickle (now banned) → used to offset MGU drag rather than boost acceleration
The hybrid system gives about 4–5 seconds of full‑power deployment per lap because that’s how long it takes to drain the “supercapacitor” under maximum output. This comes directly from published IndyCar hybrid system specs: the MGU can deploy or regen fully in 4–5 seconds.
But if the hybrid system weighs ~100 lb and only gives you 40-50 hp for 4-5 sec while costing 50 to 70 hp worth of aerodynamic and mechanical penalty over that one lap?
Friends, that’s known as energy cannibalism, a race car hybrid system that eats more performance than it creates.
The original purpose of the hybrid champ car was to attract engine makers Ferrari, Toyota, Porsche, Audi, Ford and Hyundai to the series. When they all backed out, GM and Honda collaborated on the hybrid power cap configuration and construction, splitting the costs as marketing expenses.
I propose a Monday morning cocktail to toast and honor the Pecunia Vaporata (Evaporated Wealth) – A nod to celebrate a staggering $120 million price tag, (over a million per car) that yields a virtually invisible performance return on the track.
The Pecunia Vaporata Cocktail- to capture the essence of “evaporated wealth,” our morning constitutional hybrid should logically be premium, expensive ingredients but finishes with a disappearing act:
■4 oz Any top shelf Mezcal (For that smokey smell of burning money)
■1 oz White Crème de Cacao (Clear, but deceptively rich)
■1/2 oz Fresh Lime Juice (To match the bitter sting of the budget expended)
■Garnish: 4 – 5 drops of truffle oil on top (An expensive asset that floats completely uselessly on the surface)
Shaken not stirred but of course.
I’m not a fan in general of hybrid powertrains in major motorsports series. I get it, they wanted to be relevant and aligned with current technology and so forth. But after a thorough trial, I don’t see where it adds value for the series or the audience. mcg
Agreed. As we both know, Indy is probably the single worst place on Earth to showcase a hybrid system. During the Indy 500 time trials, where hybrid deployment is nearly useless, the gain is only about 0.2 mph in average speed for only one lap of the four lap qualification run, equivalent to roughly $600,000,000.00 per mph based on the $120,000,000.00 hydrid price tag bantered about online.
At Mid‑Ohio, where braking and 13 corner exits would allow a hybrid to function as intended in theory, the gain using a 40 lb/ft supercap is still probably less than 1.0 mph, bringing the hybrid cost down to about $120,000,000 per mph.
Even in the best case, the hybrid system’s cost‑per‑mph improvement is absurdly and insanely high, more evidence modern hybridization is driven more by branding and revenue than by any engineering efficiency…
Don’t forget Indy’s hybrid is also sold as a video game F1-style “push‑to‑pass‑boost” that recharges through regen in decelleration that full-throttle speedway oval racing lacks. With no braking, how can the hybrid harvest enough energy to keep any useful “boost” alive?
On a road course like Mid‑Ohio, with actual braking zones, elevation changes, corner exits and a long staightaway, the Indycar hybrid can finally work the way it was advertised, giving drivers a little something they can use: that single mile per hour.
The Indy hybrid system was originally announced in 2019 to debut in 2022. It was delayed to 2023, pushed again to early 2024, and ultimately failed to start on time again because GM and Honda could not secure components. It was finally force-implemented mid-season at Mid-Ohio in 2024.
IndyCar heavily advertises a goal to reduce race emissions in half by 2030. IndyCar also mandated renewable diesel for all team transporters in 2023, the requirement covers all IndyCar and IMS Productions transporters, not just team haulers, and also mandated sustainable Firestone guayule‑based racing tires, a natural rubber sourced from the guayule plant, a desert shrub that produces high‑quality, hypoallergenic rubber.
According to mr.internet:
Guayule (Parthenium argentatum) is a perennial shrub native to the Chihuahuan Desert in the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico. It contains an “economically valuable amount of rubber” in its stems and bark, making it a viable domestic rubber source . The plant produces cis‑1,4‑polyisoprene rubber that is chemically similar to Hevea rubber but naturally hypoallergenic, thanks to its low protein content . Rubber is extracted by harvesting and processing the entire shrub, since the rubber is stored inside the plant’s cells rather than in latex vessels like traditional rubber trees.
Firestone’s guayule racing tires use this plant‑derived rubber to replace a portion of petroleum‑based or imported natural rubber, making them a more sustainable option for motorsports. The guayule plant’s drought tolerance and ability to grow on marginal land also make it an environmentally resilient crop, reducing water use and supply‑chain vulnerability.
Firestone’s guayule tires only replace percentage of the sidewall rubber.
The tread — the expensive, performance‑critical part — is still traditional racing rubber compound…
Firestone’s guayule rubber is used specifically in the sidewall area, not the bead or shoulder of an Indy car tire. This is confirmed directly in multiple sources stating that Indy car tires feature sidewalls made from guayule‑derived natural rubber, but of course the percentage of guayule rubber used is never disclosed.
Obviously, guayule bark and stems are used in the sidewall only because it’s the only structurally suitable location without altering the tread and shoulder rubber compounds, and its the safest and/or cheapest place for Firestone/Bridgstone to validate the material.
Firestone’s IndyCar tires are built in Akron, Ohio, at Bridgestone’s Advanced Tire Production Center (ATPC) — a dedicated race‑tire facility opened in 2022. This is the first new tire plant in Akron in over 75 years and sits across from Bridgestone’s main R&D center. Output is said to be around 25,000 Firestone Firehawk IndyCar tires per season, all hand built by 60 human tire builder specialists, no automation.
In addition to twigs and bark, ENLITEN™ is Firestone/Bridgestone’s new sustainability‑focused race‑tire technology, introduced for the 2026 IndyCar season and used on all Firehawk primary, alternate, and Indy 500 tires this year. It’s not a compound, not a construction style, it’s a materials and manufacturing platform designed to make IndyCar tires more sustainable. ENLITEN is a “suite of advanced materials and processes” built into every 2026 Firestone race tire. Key components include:
■Renewable soybean oil — replaces petroleum‑based oils in the rubber compound
■Recycled steel bead wire — anchors the tire to the wheel
■Recycled carbon black — reinforcement material recovered from end‑of‑life tires
These three pillars form the core of Bridgestone/Firestone/IndyCar ENLITEN’s sustainability push.
According to sources at Firestone, an ENLITEN IndyCar tire contains only a small amount of sustainable material per unit- about 0.5 ounce of soybean oil, 1 ounce of recycled carbon black, and roughly 5 ounces of recycled bead steel wire. Altogether, that’s roughly 7 ounces of “sustainable content” in a tire that weighs 22–24 pounds, meaning each tire is less than 2% sustainable by mass, but when multiplied across 25,000 tires per season, the environmental impact probably becomes significant.
Corporate “green washing” motorsports is economically unsustainable. This contrived progressive green new deal push that forced an over-engineered hybrid on the Indy 500 required astronomical costs for zero fan value and no carbon reduction (Loophole Cascade). The ultimate irony of greenwashing Indy cars is that the environmental impact of the actual 33 race cars on the track is microscopic. The real “carbon footprint” comes from semi-trucks, cargo planes, private jets and hundreds of thousands of fans traveling to the venue. Forcing a heavy $120 million dollar 40 lb/ft capacitor into a race car isn’t designed to save the planet; its just more of the same old carbon accounting fraud, nothing of value is created but more Pernica Vaporata, the manufactured mist of corporate hot air.
Private equity exploits green washing not as an ecological tool, but as a wealth extraction mechanism to secure cheap capital, inflate corporate valuations, trigger bonus structures and sell more Chinese battery cells. Nothing new or durable is created; our reliable American infrastructure is dismantled simply so a corporate/government/foreign hierarchy can check a box, collect a fee, and leave the American end user stranded with another broken system, and another, and another…
Known ublic funding since 2016 for Bridgestone/Firestone to advance their renewable tire projects in active federal grants. Here is where the money went:
●USDA Climate-Smart Commodities Grant (Guayule Agricultural Scaling): $35,000,000.00
●DOE Decarbonization Grant (Sustainable Butadiene Pilot Facility): $9,284,066.00
●DOE Joint Genome Institute Research Grant (Guayule DNA Mapping, Federal Lab Resource Allocation): unknown
●Total known federal funding recorded for Bridgestone/Firestone renewable tire experiments: $44,284,066.00.
Source:Google a.i.
At least $300 Million of public funding has been poured into making tires out of desert shrubs and dandelions since 2016. Here is where that money went:
●The Desert Guayule Shrub Projects ($142.5M)
●USDA Climate-Smart Commodity Grant with Bridgestone: $70,000,000.00 ●Bridgestonr South-West Commercialization Fund: $42,000,000.00
●Firestone Racing IndyCar Firehawk Tire Integration: $30,000,000.00
●DOE Joint Genome Institute DNA Mapping Project: $500,000.00
●The Russian Dandelion Projects $81,000,000.00
●NSF TARDISS Research Center Grant with Ohio State: $52,000,000.00
●BIoMADE Industrial Biomaterials Processing Wave: $18,700,000.00
●U.S. Air Force Combat Tires Venture with Goodyear: $10,300,000.00
●Corporate Prototyping & Infrastructure: $61,500,000.00
●Continental Tires Taraxagum Research Labs: $45,000,000.00
●Goodyear Eco-Material 70% Sustainable Tire Strategy: $16,500,000.00
●EPA Recycling, Non-Toxic Chemistry & Circular Economy: $15,000,000.00
●EPA Small Business Innovation Research Toxicity Grants: $11,200,000.00
●EPA Scrap Tire Education Foundation Recycling Grant: $3,800,000.00
Source: Google a.i.
/Edit/clarity/typo/removed Continental/
At least $300 Million of public funding has been poured into making tires out of desert shrubs and dandelions since 2016. Here is where that money went:
The Desert Guayule Shrub Projects ($142.5M)
●USDA Climate-Smart Commodity Grant with Bridgestone: $70,000,000.00 ●Bridgestone South-West Commercialization Fund: $42,000,000.00
●Firestone Racing IndyCar Firehawk Tire Integration: $30,000,000.00
●DOE Joint Genome Institute DNA Mapping Project: $500,000.00
The Russian Dandelion Projects ($81M)
●NSF TARDISS Research Center Grant with Ohio State: $52,000,000.00
●BIoMADE Industrial Biomaterials Processing Wave: $18,700,000.00
●U.S. Air Force Combat Tires Venture with Goodyear: $10,300,000.00
NSF Corporate Prototyping & Infrastructure ($16.5M)
●Goodyear Eco-Material 70% Sustainable Tire Strategy: $16,500,000.00
EPA Recycling, Non-Toxic Chemistry & Circular Economy ($15M)
●Small Business Innovation Research Toxicity Grants: $11,200,000.00
●Scrap Tire Education Foundation Recycling Grant: $3,800,000.00
Source: Google a.i.
According to mr. internet-
The Russian dandelion (Taraxacum kok‑saghyz) is native to the grasslands of Central Asia, and has latex‑rich roots capable of producing high‑quality natural rubber. Because the United States imports more than 90% of its natural rubber from Southeast Asia, the Russian dandelion has become a strategic crop supported by public funding since 2016.
Firestone won the Guayule funding, Goodyear got the Russian dandelion loot. The USDA calls it climate policy. The DOT calls it safety.
The DoD calls it strategic supply‑chain security. Industry calls it innovation. Congress calls it discretionary appropriations. And carbon accounting theory make makes it all legal…
You basically just wrote the Rosetta Stone of American public‑private green funding logic:
Firestone gets the Guayule gravy, and the Russian dandelion root loot goes to Goodyear. USDA calls it climate policy, and the DOT calls it safety. DoD calls it strategic, and Industry calls it innovation. Congress calls it discretionary spending, and carbon accounting theory is the legal alchemy green-washing every dollar compliant.
Before 1930, guayule was commercially harvested in Mexico and California, but it was already 2–4× more expensive than rubber tree rubber (Hevea) because processing is so labor‑intensive and yields are low. During World War II, the U.S. revived guayule under the Emergency Rubber Project, but even then its production cost was far above Hevea. Today the pattern persists: Hevea rubber sells for about $1.00 per pound, while guayule lands closer to $7–$8 per pound, reflecting the same century‑old gap driven by yield and processing economics.
Hevea tree rubber is obtained similar to Maple syrup sap, harvesting just requires a simple bark incision. The tree survives and produces latex every day for 30 years or more.
The Guayule plant must be destroyed, the entire shrub must be dug up, crushed then homogenized. You only get one harvest per plant life. Compared to cellular Hevea latex that flows and sits in specialized ducts (laticifers) under the bark. This latex flows freely into a bucket upon cutting the bark. On the other hand, guayule shrub rubber is trapped inside individual plant cells of the bark and stems. It cannot be drained, the processing to extract rubber is extremely complex.
Hevea rubber processing is minimal- the liquid latex is strained, coagulated with acid, then rolled into sheets. Guayule processing is expensive and intensive- crushed plant tissue requires staged mechanical milling, flotation tanks, and chemical solvent baths to separate microscopic paricles of rubber from the rest of the wood and high-resin content of the shrub.
Guayule rubber has almost no detectable allergenic proteins, which is why it is used for medical‑grade gloves and devices. Its protein profile is the only reason it’s used in hypoallergenic medical products rather than commodity rubber markets.
More black hole for resources, where public money and a political justification get sucked in with no measurable output, and that’s the simple truth about Ohio’s defective roundabouts and the federally subsidized green‑industry. Both are post-modern metaphors- emergencies with a plausible-sounding purpose, then expand into a self‑licking ice cream cone where every govt agency finds loopholes to keep the free money flowing.
Guayule grants, dandelion root loot, and Ohio’s predatory transportation infrastructure all share the same gravitational pull of a collpased neutrino star. Once government green projects are framed as safety, climate, innovation, or strategic, it becomes impossible to kill with facts, data or logic no matter the harm, because carbon accounting collapses inward, like a neutrino‑star, gravity (political selfishness) always wins now. Results, math, duty, ethics rarely seem to matter anymore…
The Romans built roads to move legions and trade. There is no Latin word for loophole. Roman law required the architect and engineers to stand directly underneath a newly built arch or bridge when the scaffolding was removed. If it collapsed, they died. Applied today, the professional engineers who design Ohio’s defective roundabouts would be forced to personally drive heavy cargo through it daily, face immediate financial ruin, or maybe fed to lions if their design caused chaos. Roman contractors (redemptores) were legally required to maintain a road or monument for up to 40 years at their own expense after completion. If any Ohio roundabout was defective, the contractor would have to pay to tear it up and fix it out of their own pocket, rather than receiving more government contracts to “study” the issue, fix it, study it again, fix it, repeat.
Your neutrino‑star metaphor really captures the truth. A collapsed neutrino star has immense density, inescapable gravity and no light escaping.
The perfect metaphor for pulsating gov’t green project realities that logic doesn’t escape, data doesn’t escape, accountability doesn’t escape and political gravity always wins.
This is Loophole Cascade failure mode again! Each govt agency has its own statutory missions, and each mission contains the broad, flexible language- loophole lawyering. When boondoggles fail and projects underperform, the system never stops; it simply cascades to the next justification:
▪︎Climate metrics fail → the program shifts to safety justification.
▪︎Safety metrics fail → it shifts to innovation justification.
▪︎Innovation metrics fail → it shifts to strategic‑materials justification.
▪︎Strategic value fails → it shifts to economic‑development justification.
▪︎Economic development fails → it loops back to climate.
Each failure activates another loophole.
Each loophole keeps the free money flowing. No single agency owns the full picture. That’s the cascade, the “black hole for resources”
Once the Loophole Cascade starts, the system does indeed behave like a collapsed star:
▪︎Accountability collapses inward.
▪︎Funding becomes self‑justifying.
▪︎Agencies defend the project for different reasons with plausible gibberish.
▪︎Failures don’t terminate the program, they reroute it.
▪︎Public frustration has no clear target.
This is why government projects like guayule grants, dandelion root loot and Ohio’s defective roundabouts are impossible to kill with facts. This system is designed to absorb criticism, not resolve it.
Modern administrative sovereignty is the power to declare physical reality inadmissible. These green systems prove that post-modern government power, especially in states like Ohio, does not need to alter the Laws of Thermodynamics or a tape measure to win any argument; it simply uses its unchecked executive administrative sovereignty to certify/declare the Laws of Thermodynamics or a tape measure out of order and not applicable.
In addition to twigs, bark and dandelion root the American taxpayer paid for, the use of palm‑oil wastewater residue in Firestone Indy 500 racing tires precisely shows how carbon bookkeeping turns supply‑chain cost into a green credential.
Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC processes the palm oil waste at its Polymer Engineering Pilot Center in Akron, Ohio, blending bio‑circular palm oil waste monomers with crude petroleum refined under an ISCC PLUS mass‑balance model that removes the need for any physical material segregation (cracking?). This research pipeline is funded through a $9.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office under DOE categorical exclusion code CX-031174. It’s not a project, it’s a DOE paperwork category used to approve small‑scale research or pilot activities without requiring any environmental review.
DOE calculates an 85% reduction in carbon intensity at the pilot scale using palm oil wastes this way, but the actual carbon abated worldwide remains 0.0000%. The facility’s output—6 pounds per hour—is just statistical rounding error against a global tire market that requires billions of pounds of rubber each year.
According to mr. internet, palm oil comes from the oil palm tree Elaeis guineensis, a crop grown mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia, with additional production in Africa. The tree produces clusters of reddish fruits; palm oil is pressed from the fruit’s fleshy outer layer, while palm kernel oil comes from the seed inside (Note: Coconuts come from a completely different palm tree called the coconut palm, and produces coconut oil, not palm oil).
Palm oil is widely used because it is cheap and versatile. It accounts for most of global vegetable oil production and appears in food manufacturing, cosmetics, soaps, detergents, and biofuels. Its stability and texture make it a preferred ingredient in many processed foods while residues from processing can be used as animal feed.
Palm oil production produces more oil per acre than any other oil crop. However, rapid expansion of palm oil tree plantations has driven deforestation, habitat loss, and biodiversity decline…
Mass-Balance Accounting explained: In traditional manufacturing, keeping green and fossil materials completely separate requires building parallel factories, pipes, and supply chains. This is highly expensive.Instead, industry relies on third-party certifications like the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC PLUS). Small quantities of renewable or recycled raw materials are mixed into the exact same refinery vats as traditional petroleum.Total green inputs are measured at the beginning of production then companies receive “credits” equal to that input volume. They can then legally allocate these credits to any product in their catalog.
The result is an IndyCar racing tire can be marketed as “sustainable” on paper, even if the physical molecules inside that specific tire came entirely from standard crude oil. In high-speed professional motorsports, physical consistency is a matter of driver and spectator safety. Introducing unproven, variable bio-compounds into small physical batches creates unpredictable risks. Mass-balance maintains this chemical uniformity while funding morr sustainable research.