To celebrate its entry into Formula 1, Cadillac is offering a collector edition of the CT5-V Blackwing. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ Toyota is expected to report a fourth consecutive year-on-year decline in quarterly profit due to rising material and labor costs, the Iran war, and the impact of U.S. tariffs. More at The Sunday Guardian.
+ Sedans may be returning to favor among U.S. car buyers versus SUVs as sales of the Honda Accord, Honda Civic, and Toyota Camry have been surging in recent months. More at The Drive.
+ A controversial federal mandate to provide impaired driver detection by 2027, known as the “kill switch law,” lives on despite a missed deadline and operational challenges. More at CBT News.
+ Driving for Kalitta Motorsports, driver Shawn Langdon clocked the fastest speed ever recorded for a Top Fuel dragster at 345 mph at South Georgia Motorsports Park. More at Autoweek.
+ A federal monitor has found significant governance, communication, and oversight failures in the United Auto Workers’ delayed reinvestment of $340 million in strike funds. More at MSN.
+ Mazda engineers are reaching out to Miata ownership communities for structured input on the direction and features to be included on the sports car’s next generation. More at Autoblog.
+ President Trump’s plan to increase tariffs on cars from the EU shows that the U.S. is an unreliable trading partner, says EU parliament trade committee chair Bernd Lange. More at World Auto Forum.
+ To celebrate Cadillac’s entry into Formula 1, the CT5-V Blackwing F1 Collectors Series will offer special blackout paint and graphics and greater supercharger boost for 685 hp. More at Car and Driver.
+ Rivian has renegotiated its Department of Energy loan for its upcoming Georgia plant from $6.57 billion down to $4.5 billion, but it is increasing its production capacity. More at Automotive World.
+ Alex Zanardi, the colorful two-time CART champion who invented the post-race victory donut and became a champion paralympian after losing both legs in a horrific 2001 crash, is dead at 59. More at Racer.
Photo courtesy of Cadillac.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from May 1 here.
Join Mac’s Motor City Garage on Facebook and X to receive notices when every new story is published.
>> Mazda engineers are reaching out to Miata ownership communities
Smart move. I hope they don’t ask for a turbocharger or thirty more horsepower.
>> To celebrate Cadillac’s entry into Formula 1
I don’t understand the desire to have your new car look like an old heap that has lost all of its trim pieces and you can’t afford to paint.
R.I.P. to the great Alex Zanardi, who lost both of his legs on September 15, 2001, during a CART Championship race in Germany.
I saw it live on TV and can close my eyes and still see it to this day: while leading the race with 12 laps to go, he just exited the pit lane, something broke then he spun into the path of Alex Tagliani, who was traveling at approximately 200 mph. The broadside collision was so violent that it severed the Zanardi car in two.
Mr. Zanardi lost nearly 75% of his blood volume and his heart reportedly stopped seven times while being transported to a hospital in Berlin, where the amputation of both his legs was completed, one at the hip, the other at his knee.
Mr. Zanardi’s post-injury life was defined by his refusal to accept a “disabled” label, instead using his genious technical mind to refine his own prosthetic equipment, and live on to achieve elite results that rivaled his pre-accident racing career…
“For a few seconds, the accident didn’t seem that bad,” Alex wrote. “If the car hadn’t split in two, I would have had to have absorbed all the energy from the impact, and I hardly felt a thing – my helmet didn’t even have a dent. I must have realized something though when I looked in front of me and saw no front to the car… and no legs. Before fainting, I must have realized something. From time to time, if I really try hard – I don’t know if it’s my imagination or disjointed memories – but some images come to the surface in my mind. Maybe one day the whole event will come back to me. I’m not afraid of it though, because all the damage has already been done.” -Alex Zanardi: “My Greatest Victory” pub 2011…
https://james.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1294
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-government-mandated-kill-switch-1983010/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/05/04/volkswagen-likely-to-allow-chinese-automaker-to-build-in-shuttered-volkswagen-auto-plants/
As May 6, 2026, our investigation has now revealed NINE states that have now assumed full NEPA assignment responsibilities from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).
Yes indeed, public autonomous vehicle testing and deployment is active or planned for all nine states with NEPA assignment. Here are the states with their initial FHWA assignment and most recent available renewal dates:
*California: Initial assignment on July 1, 2007; most recently renewed on May 27, 2022.
*Texas: Initial assignment on December 16, 2014; most recently renewed on July 17, 2025.
*Ohio: Initial assignment on December 28, 2015; most recently renewed on December 14, 2020.
*Florida: Initial assignment on December 14, 2016; most recently renewed on May 26, 2022.
*Utah: Initial assignment on January 17, 2017; most recently renewed on May 26, 2022.
*Alaska: Initial assignment on November 13, 2017; most recently renewed on April 13, 2023.
*Arizona: Initial assignment on April 16, 2019; most recently renewed on June 25, 2024.
*Maine: Initial assignment on January 30, 2026 (currently in its first term).
*Nebraska: Initial assignment on February 23, 2026 (currently in its first term).
As of May 6, 2026, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has fully assigned its NEPA responsibilities to two states, with others actively pursuing the program.
*California was the first state to receive this authority on July 23, 2019; this assignment was recently renewed on July 22, 2024, for a ten-year term extending through 2034.
*Ohio became the second state to achieve full FRA assignment, with its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) executed on December 3, 2024.
Other states having filed formal Statements of Interest in FRA Assignment are Texas, Florida, Arizona, Maine and Nebraska.
The “compensation” for the public during broad technological rollouts, such as autonomous vehicle testing, typically occurs now only if an individual is physically or financially harmed. Unlike participants in controlled clinical trials who are paid for their time, the general public does not receive direct payments for “living alongside” new AV technology. The public is compensated through post-injury settlements. Most of this compensation comes through the tort (lawsuit) system after an incident occurs.
Implied consent in the legal sense- by using public roads governed by state laws, the public is subject to traffic laws and regulations, including those that allow for any and all unlimited autonomous testing on public roads, passed by their elected representatives.
For those curious about the term “Lab Rats,” it now refers to a popular Disney XD sitcom that premiered on February 27, 2012, featuring bionic teenagers.
Public AV testing is evidently legal under any Executive Order, because such orders carry the “force of law” and direct a state agency to exercise existing local regulatory authority to manage AV technology. While an executive order is not a statute passed by the legislative branch, it seems to somehow serve as a valid legal framework for public testing with no formal AV laws enacted.
The modern presumption of “legality” according to legal experts, whom all seem to agree that in the absence of any laws explicitly banning public testing of AVs, their operation is perfectly legal, provided a “pinkie promise” to behave by following existing traffic laws and safety regulations exists first.
The “loophole” is just liability, by taking over the FRA/FHWA roles, a state essentially shields the federal government from all lawsuits while using “streamlining” as a buzzword to skip the deep-dive safety audits that used to be mandatory.
This is simply a top-down merger of corporate and state executive power, where the public tax payer’s right to “informed consent” on their own roads is traded for an obtuse promise of being a “global leader in innovation.” This turns the public square into a private AV laboratory where the “rules” are written by the blokes running the experiment.
According to mr. internet: Washington state has no FHWA NEPA assignment. So for its public autonomous vehicle testing, it operates under its own state laws that loophole/bypass all federal triggers.
RCW 46.92.010 created the “Self-Certification Pilot Program,” which allows companies to test on any public road simply by notifying the Department of Licensing (DOL).
RCW 46.30.050 sets a safety floor by requiring an AV companies to carry a $5 million liability bond/insurance.
Additionally, Executive Order 17-02 served as their original foundation that directed state agencies to support all AV testing and established a Work Group to oversee needed policy changes…
Michigan evidently bypassed federal oversite like Washington state did: currently, there are currently an estimated 400+ autonomous vehicles including platooning big rigs being tested or deployed on Michigan roads, led by major fleet operations from GM (200 vehicles in its latest phase), Waymo, Torc Robotics and May Mobility…
In profit-driven green systems, loopholes are a feature, not a bug. Whether it’s “carbon credits” that let private equity keep polluting or “safety standards” written by the regulated, the goal is to find the path of least resistance to the next revenue event.
Compliance game algorythms replaces real engineering and safety, treating regulations as the maximum effort required rather than the minimum. If there is a legal way to cut a corner to save or pocket a billion dollars or a buck, “loophole engineering” is the standard operating procedure. The “fuel vs. battery loophole” is only marketing, using plausible nonesense in selling the idea of a green future to secure subsidies and stock bumps, even when the raw physics (energy density/entropy) says it’s just a pipe dream.
If you can extract value today and push the entropy, the waste, the carbon footprint, the recycling, the heat, the human rights violations, the bad and the ugly onto future generations or different continents, that’s considered a win in post-modern accounting.
In these systems, a Professional Engineer isn’t hired to solve any physics; they are hired to “engineer the loophole” just enough to pass a compliance algorithm. It turns carbon reduction and safety into just a legal buffer rather than a physical reality.
When the goal is actual wealth extraction rather than energy transition or safety, this forced-green future illogically twists into resource cannibalism.
2019 FHWA audit of ODOT in Ohio NEPA Assignment:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/FHWA-2019-0001-0004
In the four FHWA audits of Ohio’s NEPA Assignment (2017–2020), the federal review teams selectively spot checked a combined total of 220 project files out of over 4100 eligible actions in Ohio. Of the four Ohio NEPA audits, there is only one specific non-compliance observation. Audit #2 for 2018 did not single out one specific project by name as being “flagged.” Instead, it identified a systemic non-compliance issue across multiple project files regarding missing legal language from public disclosures.
Otherwise, 4200 adverbs??
The FHWA has completed four mandatory annual compliance “audits” for the ODOT in Ohio NEPA Assignment program, as “required” for the first four years of participation. Following the fourth audit in 2020, the program transitioned into a “monitoring” phase…
Link to final Ohio NEPA audit:
https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/federal-register-documents/2022-13172
The Google a.i. and Microsoft Copilot analysis of the four Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) audits of Ohio’s NEPA Assignment program indicates a combined total of approximately 3,900 to 4,200 adverbs used. There are zero nouns or verbs in any of the four audits that represent “actual verifiable safety improvements” in the sense of human experience or physical road infrastructure changes (e.g., “installed roundabout” or “reduced fatalities”) backed by any facts or data…