Lexus uses an average everyday normal idiot to write copy instead of AI

Category assigned: ROFLMAO.

 

Only 3.2 million vehicles in the U.S. have a current "park outside" recall lol

 Reported here:

... An estimated 3.2 million vehicles nationwide currently have an outstanding “park outside” recall, according to vehicle history provider Carfax, which described the surging numbers as “concerning.” ...

“For consumers, there seems to be no easy choices,” Kane said. “Where are you going to park it?”...

Well of course the choice is easy.

Don't buy a Kia, Hyundai, or Jeep.

Do Michigan auto workers know that the UAW, which has endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, also endorsed anti-auto Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez in NY-7?

 How the UAW abandoned auto-workers to back radicals 

... The UAW is no longer all about building cars. The union, desperate to build its shrinking ranks, has been adding members in all kinds of professions and trades, including signing up some 100,000 people who work in higher education. That group, which includes post-doctoral researchers and adjunct faculty members, now constitutes more than 25 percent of UAW membership, according to the Detroit Press, and has led, not surprisingly, to a significantly more progressive and activist union profile.

This is why the union’s 2022 changes to its election process, intended to “give a greater voice to rank-and-file members,” has instead empowered an ever-more radical constituency of university teaching assistants. UAW’s resulting leftward lurch made headlines recently in New York’s Democratic primary contests, where democratic socialist Claire Valdez won her race to represent New York’s District 7 in Congress. Valdez had previously worked at Columbia University as a program assistant in the visual arts department, where she joined the UAW. The union boasted, “UAW Region 9A mobilized thousands of members across NY-07 to help deliver a victory for New York’s working class.” 

Here is what we know about Valdez: she went to the exclusive School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where tuition runs about $60,000 per year. Also, she hates cars. Her campaign embraced the normal lefty litany: abolishing ICE, Medicare for all, universal rent control and so forth. But one distinctive item was her promise to “fight to redirect federal dollars toward public transportation, walking, and biking” and “reverse the proliferation of surface highways.”

Do UAW workers on Detroit’s assembly lines know that their union’s favored candidate hates automobiles and wants to shut down federal highway spending? Is that in their best interests? ... 

Big 3 salaried labor cuts of 19% return levels to pre-pandemic era

 Detroit automakers have cut more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs as AI threat looms

 

 

Honda to reverse EV missteps at a cost of $9 billion amid lost focus on its famed gasoline engines

 Honda shares rise over 7% as investors shrug off first operating loss in nearly 70 years

... Honda swung to an operating loss of 414.3 billion yen ($2.61 billion) for the fiscal year ending March, compared to an operating profit of 1.2 trillion yen the year prior. Provisions made for its ailing electric vehicle business and related investments, competition from its Chinese rivals, as well as a U.S. tariff impact of 346.9 billion yen weighed on its earnings.

... As part of its efforts to reorganize its EV business, the automaker said it will cancel market launches and development of some EV models initially planned for production in North America. The Japanese automaker said it expects the restructure of its EV business to cost over $9 billion.

... Honda engines used by Aston Martin were found to be causing battery failures and in January the Japanese automaker was slapped with a lawsuit in Canada over a defect in the 1.5L turbocharged engine in three Honda models. ... 

 

The good news is you can still get the 2-liter four cylinder gasoline non-turbo engine in the base Civic, MSRP $26,345, with a theoretical highway range of 508 miles.

 

 

It's OK when I do it: Hypocritical Trump lauds $36 billion Japanese investment in U.S. oil and gas, one week ago bashed Reagan era $25 billion equivalent in U.S. automotive sector

But Trump's sin could end up dwarfing Reagan's by 22 times. 

 

 Trump lauds Japan’s pledge to invest $36 billion in U.S. oil, gas and critical mineral projects

U.S. President Donald Trump has welcomed Japan’s pledge to invest nearly $36 billion in oil, gas and critical mineral projects in Texas, Ohio and Georgia. 

The commitment represents the first tranche of investments by Japan following a landmark trade deal between the two countries, one in which Tokyo pledged to invest $550 billion in American-based projects and Trump cut tariffs on most Japanese imports to 15%. ...

 

The U.S. state capitalist EV boondoggle comes to an end, shape-shifting automakers take well-deserved $50 billion hit

 

 Detroit Automakers Take $50 Billion Hit as EV Bubble Bursts

... Following years of investments into EV technology, the Detroit Big Three ... have announced more than $50 billion in combined write-downs.

EV sales fell more than 30% in the fourth quarter, after a $7,500 federal tax credit that had juiced U.S. sales expired in September. ... 

Automakers’ retreats and massive write-downs have come as Republican lawmakers abolished a lucrative federal tax credit for EVs last fall, while also doing away with federal fuel-efficiency mandates. Even with federal support, EV demand was below expectations. ...

Ford Motor blames tariff timing and fires at an aluminum plant for earnings miss when it was its electric vehicle business

 

Ford reports worst quarterly earnings miss in four years, guides for better 2026

 

... On an unadjusted basis, the company’s net loss of $8.2 billion last year was its largest since the Great Recession in 2008, according to FactSet. That included $15.5 billion in special charges during the fourth quarter largely related to a pre-announced pullback in its all-electric vehicle plans.

Automakers commonly exclude “special items” or one-time charges from their adjusted financial results to provide investors with a clearer picture of their core, ongoing business operations.

Ford reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $11.1 billion, or a loss of $2.77 per share, compared with net income of $1.8 billion, or 45 cents per share, in the same period in 2024. Adjusted for the one-time charges, the company reported earnings of 13 cents per share.

 

Trump cuts vehicle fuel economy goal to 34 mpg by 2031 from 50 mpg by 2031 under Biden

 CNBC.

AI says the current US light duty vehicle fleet gets about 26 mpg.

Donald Trump is building out the police state on the nation's roads through U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol's license plate reader program

 Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns

... Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years. ... 

The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars. ...

The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels. ...

... it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities ... beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. ...

Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.” ...

Today, the deserts, forests and mountains of the nation’s land borders are dotted with checkpoints and increasingly, surveillance towers, Predator drones, thermal cameras and license plate readers, both covert and overt.

Border Patrol’s parent agency got authorization to run a domestic license plate reader program in 2017, according to a Department of Homeland Security policy document. At the time, the agency said that it might use hidden license plate readers ”for a set period of time while CBP is conducting an investigation of an area of interest or smuggling route. Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed,” the document states.

But that’s not how the program has operated in practice, according to interviews, police reports and court documents. License plate readers have become a major — and in some places permanent — fixture of the border region. ...

The Border Patrol also has access to a nationwide network of plate readers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, documents show, and was authorized in 2020 to access license plate reader systems sold by private companies. ...

Nissan Leaf EV comes down with a bad case of thermal runaway at the grocery store in Littleton Colorado

 

CNBC has a good table of all the stuff that cost more in August 2025

I had to shell out a grand for new brake lines on one old car last month, and nearly half that on a tune-up for the other.

Beats buying a new car by a long shot, but holy hell, motor vehicle repair up 15% yoy.

 

 Here’s the inflation breakdown for August 2025 — in one chart

 

 

Redesigned Ford Expedition, an ICE vehicle which gets 18/19 combined mpg, sees best sales in 21 years

Ford’s redesigned three-row Expedition SUV is seeing explosive growth.

The Detroit automaker reported Wednesday that it sold 8,724 Expeditions in August, up 53.7% from the same time last year and marking its best sales in 21 years. It’s sold 61,022 of the vehicles so far this year, a 13.1% increase from the same period in 2024. ...

More. 

GM to make new EV production cuts in Tennessee and Kansas City according to Reuters

 

... GM will stop production of two electric Cadillac SUVs at its assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, during the month of December, according to a person familiar with the matter and communications to GM employees viewed by Reuters.

The plant produces the midsize Cadillac Lyriq — a relative hit and one of GM’s top-selling EVs — and the Vistiq, a larger electric SUV.

GM also plans to significantly curtail production of those vehicles during the first five months of next year by temporarily laying off one of its two shifts of workers, according to the sources. The company will additionally shutter the plants for one week in October and November.

The automaker is also planning to indefinitely delay the start of a second shift at an assembly plant near Kansas City, which is still slated to begin production of the Chevy Bolt EV later this year, the person familiar with the matter said. ...

More. 

Population adjusted vehicle miles traveled in the first half of 2025 is lower than at the bottom of the Obama travel depression in 1H2014

Ain't got no where to go, I guess, with all that new delivery availability spawned by the pandemic.

 

 

OMG the dumbest line in this story: people who buy trucks often use them to haul things

 Well no shit, Sherlock.

The Electric Pickup Truck Boom Turned Into a Big Bust

... many electric versions just aren’t up for the task. ... 

Pickup sales, first half of 2025:

EVs 35,000

Internal Combustion: 1,600,000 

Power hungry data centers break the utility model of socializing electricity costs: Seventy percent of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand

 

 As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act

... Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year’s increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand. ... 

PJM [Interconnection, the mid-Atlantic grid operator], has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power. 

In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a “massive wealth transfer” from average people to tech companies. ...

 Demand for Electricity Takes Off. US Power Generation by Source in 2024: Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Wind, Hydro, Solar, Geothermal, Biomass, Petroleum 

The quantity of electricity generated in the US by all sources, from natural gas to rooftop solar, rose by 3.1% in 2024 from 2023 to a record of 4,304,039 gigawatt-hours (GWh), according to data from the EIA today.

This is now clearly a breakout in demand, after 14 years of stagnation, from 2007 through 2021, when electricity users, to reduce their costs, invested in more efficient equipment – lights, appliances, electronic equipment, industrial equipment, heating and air-conditioning, etc. – and in better building insulation, shading, etc., to reduce their power costs. This relentless drive for greater efficiency kept demand roughly stable for years despite the growing economy and population. And it mired many power generators and electric utilities in a no-growth business where it was difficult to justify investment.

Now the scenario has changed, largely due to the growth in demand from data centers (AI, cloud, crypto) and the increasing penetration of EVs in the national vehicle fleet – EVs accounted for over 10% of US vehicle sales in 2024. ...

EV sales achieve record high 9.1% of total sales of passenger vehicles in July, 90.9% sold still internal combustion lol

 

EV sales soar as Trump axes $7,500 tax credit: ‘People are rushing out’ to buy, analyst says

Consumers are racing to buy electric vehicles before a fast-approaching deadline to claim tax credits worth up to $7,500, according to auto analysts.

Legislation championed by Republicans on Capitol Hill and signed by President Donald Trump in July eliminates the tax breaks — available for new, used and leased EVs — after Sept. 30.

The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act had originally offered the tax breaks to consumers through 2032.

“We’re expecting Q3 may be [a] record for EV sales because of the tax incentives going away,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, a senior analyst at Cox Automotive.

“People are rushing out” to buy, she said.

Consumers purchased nearly 130,100 new EVs in July, the second-highest monthly sales tally on record, behind roughly 136,000 sold in December, according to Cox Automotive data. The July figures represent a 26.4% increase from June and nearly 20% increase year-over-year, Streaty said.

The share of EV sales in July also accounted for about 9.1% of total sales of passenger vehicles that month, the largest monthly share on record, according to Cox.

“We’re seeing significant volume in new EVs,” said Liz Najman, director of market insights at Recurrent, an EV marketplace and data provider. ...

 

Population-adjusted total-vehicle-miles-traveled in the United States is lower in April 2025 than at any point in the Obama depression and is down almost 9% since the April 2005 peak twenty years ago

 

The average price of a new vehicle in 2024 ran ahead of inflation from 1978 by about 75%

 

The average price of a new vehicle in 1978 was about $5,780.

Adjusted for inflation to 2024, that would be about $27,852. 

The actual average price in 2024 was about $48,724.