The Trump administration said it’s ending a credit for automakers that install a so-called “start/stop feature” in the vehicles, part of a broader rollback of environmental regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The start/stop feature, which is today widely used in newer vehicles, shuts off gas engines when cars idle, such as when they’re stopped at a red light or stuck in traffic. The Environmental Protection Agency described the technology as “almost universally hated” in its Thursday announcement about the broader overhaul.
About two-thirds of cars are now manufactured with the start/stop feature, which is aimed at making internal combustion engines more fuel efficient while reducing carbon emissions. One analysis found that the feature can improve fuel economy by between about 7% and 26%, depending on driving conditions.
While that may seem like a benefit to drivers who want to cut down on fuel costs, the Trump administration has linked such features to a sharp rise in automobile prices in recent years. In comments at the White House on Thursday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the regulatory overhaul will help save consumers an average of $2,400 when they purchase a new car.
“There will be no more climate participation trophies awarded to manufacturers for making Americans’ cars die at every red light and stop sign,” Zeldin said. “It’s over, done, finished.”
What’s happening with auto start/stop?
The Trump administration on Thursday said it will no longer regulate greenhouse gases emitted from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants.
The action formally repeals what is known as the “endangerment finding,” which provides the legal and scientific underpinning for the federal government to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
As part of the action, the EPA said it would eliminate credits given to automakers that install the start/stop functionality.
Most cars allow drivers to turn off the start/stop feature, but not shut it off permanently, notes Consumer Reports. That means drivers must turn off the feature each time they drive.
Has the start/stop feature increased vehicle costs?
The Trump administration’s action pushes back on a broader range of environmental regulations that it says has pushed up car prices.
The average new vehicle currently costs almost $50,000, up nearly 43% from a decade ago, according to Cox Automotive.
The rise in auto prices stems from several factors, including a shift to more luxurious models and showroom markups, rather than more stringent fuel-efficiency standards, according to the National Consumers League, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.
“Federal safety and fuel economy standards save households thousands of dollars over the life of their vehicle while having a marginal effect on vehicle prices,” Daniel Greene, the group’s senior director of consumer protection and product safety, said in a Feb. 3 statement.
What do automakers say?
Automakers largely applauded the Trump administration’s overhaul, with Ford saying in a statement that it appreciated the effort “to address the imbalance between current emissions standards and customer choice.”
Stellantis said it welcomed the decision “because it enables us to continue offering Americans a broad range of cars, trucks and SUVs – including BEVs, REEVs, hybrids and efficient internal combustion engines – that they want, need and can afford.”
Cadillac has become the first American auto giant to step into the fiercely competitive world of Formula One with a dedicated team. The storied U.S. brand unveiled the official team livery for its inaugural 2026 season during the Super Bowl Sunday night.
The Super Bowl ad, which aired during the fourth quarter, shows the black and white livery. It features part of President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech in which he said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
“That challenge is one that we are willing to accept … and one which we intend to win,” the edited speech said in the ad. The short feature closed out with the phrase: “THE MISSION BEGINS.”
Leading Cadillac’s effort is team principal Graeme Lowdon, who’s built the team from the ground up, including new facilities in Indiana, the home of Indycar; North Carolina, the home of NASCAR; and Silverstone, England, the home of F1.
Speaking with CBS before the livery reveal, Lowdon called the road to get Cadillac into the F1 game “lengthy, with lots of twists and turns.”
He recently shared that Cadillac had hired more than 500 people to join the new team, from a pool of some 143,000 applicants.
“There’s a lot of expectation, and quite rightly so,” Lowdon told CBS News. “General Motors is a hugely respected and impressive entity … so there is that pressure, but that’s what Formula One’s about.”
On the track, the American brand will be represented by former Mercedes team driver Valtteri Bottas, originally from Finland, and Mexican former Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. Widely considered to be veterans in the sport, they have a total of 16 Grand Prix victories and more than 500 race starts between them.
Cadillac’s Formula One team principal Graeme Lowdon, left, with driver Valtteri Bottas.
Cadillac Formula 1 Team
Having that level of experience behind the wheel, for an otherwise new team, was the chief motivator behind signing those two drivers, according to Lowdon.
“These guys know how to win,” he said. “But above all else, they have an ability to gel a team together, so they’re the focal point for the engineering activities, the garage activities, everything to do with operating a team at the highest level.”
A slow start in a fast sport?
Experts say American fans hoping Cadillac will deliver a blockbuster first season as it steps into the ring against longtime heavyweights such as Ferrari and Mercedes may be disappointed.
The odds of Cadillac winning an F1 race, or even finishing on the podium this season, aren’t generally considered very strong.
A winning Formula One car, and a winning team behind it, can take at least several seasons to develop, and require consistent investment.
Ross Brawn, the man widely credited as the architect behind German F1 sensation Michael Schumacher‘s success, told CBS News at the 2026 Autosport Awards in London that American fans may need some patience.
“It’s very tough,” Brawn said about the expectations for the Cadillac team this season. “They’ve got some very good people there. They have been sensible in choosing a lot of experienced people, but it’s going to be very tough, so give them a bit of time.”
David Croft, a prominent Formula One commentator for Britain’s Sky Sports network, urged fans this year to look for development, not podium placement.
“Wherever they start the hope for me is that that’s not where they’ll finish,” he told CBS News at the 2026 Autosport Awards. “They’ve got the drive and the determination, and they’ve got the right people in place to be a success eventually in Formula One, but it’s going to take a bit of time.”
Formula One’s growing popularity in the U.S.
According to ESPN, which has long held Formula One broadcasting rights in the U.S., 2025 was the biggest season to date for average viewership for the sport, with 16 of the 24 races setting viewership records. The broadcaster has said that over the past eight years, average viewership per Grand Prix more than doubled, from 554,000 to 1.3 million in the U.S.
Formula One is still dwarfed in the U.S. as a racing spectator sport, with overall viewership for the Nascar Cup Series, for instance, averaging 3.2 million in 2025.
But insiders say the trajectory is undeniable, and encouraging.
“There was a time we’d go to Austin, the U.S. Grand Prix, and nobody would know what Formula One is when we got to passport control, let alone who we were,” Croft told CBS. “Now people know who we are and what Formula One is, what it stands for.”
Many pundits see the success of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” series behind F1’s rising popularity in the U.S.
Croft also credited the addition of two more races in the United States, in Miami and Las Vegas. Alongside races in Texas, Mexico, Canada and Brazil, a total of six F1 races now take place within American time zones, making it easier for fans to tune into the action live, he noted.
Lowdon hopes Cadillac can ride the wave of popularity, and that fans will enjoy following the new team’s journey – even if it means settling for relatively small “wins” at first.
“It’s really so difficult to achieve success that, if you come along and join the journey … then [fans] can enjoy, if you like, the minor victories along the way,” he said. “Even just producing a car as complex as this is a minor victory in itself.”
The founder of First Brands and his brother were indicted on fraud charges Thursday, the latest development in a legal saga involving the beleaguered auto parts company, which filed for bankruptcy in September.
The indictment, unsealed in a federal courthouse in New York on Thursday, accuses Patrick James and Edward James of bankrupting First Brands and fraudulently obtaining billions of dollars behind the backs of the company’s lenders and financing partners.
The legal filing alleges that from 2018 to 2025, the brothers enriched themselves by falsely inflating invoices for accounts receivable and payable, falsifying financial statements and hiding substantial liabilities from lenders, among other practices.
“These schemes yielded billions of dollars in financing to First Brands and enabled Patrick James and Edward James to reap millions of dollars in proceeds derived from their fraud,” the legal filing claims.
A First Brands spokesperson said the company plans to pursue all available claims and causes of action against the James brothers, and that its board of managers is conducting an independent review of the company’s historical business practices.
“This is a tragic situation that has disrupted the lives of employees, families, and communities who depend on this business,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We recognize the very real human toll of these events and the uncertainty many are facing.”
$9 billion in liabilities
The James brothers face charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud.
Seth DuCharme, the attorney for Edward James, told CBS News that his client has “conducted himself with integrity and dignity over decades of hard work.”
“Today, the government issued a long list of accusations, but has not produced a shred of evidence against him,” he added.
The indictment claims the brothers’ actions destabilized First Brands finances and were ultimately responsible for the company’s demise.
The company filed for bankruptcy in September 2025. At the time, more than $2 billion in funds couldn’t be accounted for, leaving investors scrambling.
At the time of its bankruptcy filing, First Brands had $12 million in cash in its corporate bank accounts and over $9 billion in liabilities, according to the Department of Justice. Patrick James resigned from the company in early October.
Patrick James founded First Brands in 2013 and grew it into a dominant automotive parts manufacturer. The Cleveland, Ohio-based company sells brakes, windshield wiper blades and other automotive products. Edward James had served as a senior executive at First Brands, according to the Justice Department.
Part of Patrick James’ growth strategy involved acquiring other businesses through borrowed money, which the indictment says created additional financial pressure. Fram filters, Autolite sparkplugs and Anco windshield wiper blades were among the companies First Brands acquired, helping it expand its foothold in the auto industry.
First Brands also used a financial arrangement known as factoring, which involved selling its accounts receivable to retail partners in exchange for near-term cash. The practice left the company exposed to cash-flow disruptions, increased its dependence on external financing, and became a vehicle for fraud, the indictment alleges.
“First Brands factored billions of dollars’ worth of customer invoices through arrangements with lenders,” the legal filing claims.
At the Minneapolis Convention Center, it’s horns honking, engines revving and car gurus gathering under one big roof.
The Twin Cities Auto Show began on Saturday. This year, it’s running earlier than normal.
“I like the old stuff, you know, the older vehicles. I love ’em,” said Mickey Strickler of Minneapolis.
The show welcomes everyone under the sun to “lookie-loo” or wander in with a purpose. Chris Leeman of Zimmerman is getting a look at possible future rides for his wife.
“We came here just to get kind of an all-around fit and feel of what she might like in the next year or two,” Leeman said. “The Toyota cars right now ain’t quite to the standard that I think I want my wife to be in.”
There’s more than 325 vehicles inside the convention center. Nobody is able to sell or haggle on the showroom floor.
“The show reflects the car business in a lot of ways,” said Scott Lambert, president of the Twin Cities Auto Show. “Electric vehicles are in a big reset right now.”
WCCO spoke to some attendees who gave their opinions of the automotive industry’s current state.
“I think it sucks,” Strickler said. “It’s not like it used to be. It’s hard to find good vehicles now.”
“I like the Mazda 90 because of the inline-six engine,” said Laun Aiken of Sauk Rapids. “I’m old school. I grew up driving inline-six vehicles, and so for them to reintroduce it into their line is kind of interesting.”
The show runs now through Jan. 11. Tickets can be purchased online. First responders get in for free.
At Ford’s Michigan Assembly outside Detroit, more than 4,500 hourly employees turn out about 100,000 Broncos a year – a new one every 60 seconds.
For obvious reasons Ford’s been touting its commitment to American manufacturing. It advertises itself as employing the most hourly workers in the country – and more than 80 percent of its vehicles sold in the U.S. are indeed made in America. That’s the highest share of any Detroit automaker.
But Ford imports many parts, and has been hit hard by President Trump’s tariffs. Ford CEO Jim Farley says it’s not affordable to make all the parts here, and that if Ford only used American-made parts, American-made cars would be too expensive for many Americans to buy.
And there are some components, Farley says, that no one even makes in America: “There are parts, fasteners, wiring looms from other countries. And we pay our tariffs, sometimes up to 70 percent on those parts. That’s giving us a $2 billion bill. About 20 percent of our global profit is going away in tariffs.”
And who is paying for those tariffs? “Well, the company right now,” he said. “And in the end of the day, it’s all these workers.”
Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley with correspondent Kris Van Cleave.
CBS News
Farley has deep roots in Michigan. His grandfather was Ford Motor Company’s 389th employee – one of the first to help build the Model T. But Farley himself is not a Ford lifer. Before joining the company in 2007, he spent nearly two decades at Toyota.
And how did that go over in the Farley family when he went to Toyota? “Not well,” Jim laughed. “Because at the time, you know, they were just, all through the ’70s, there was just job loss after job loss across southeast Michigan. And my grandfather was thinking about all the people that lost their jobs. And they were like, Why? Why are you doing this?“
I asked, “Do you see similarities between the ’80s, when the U.S. auto industry was facing the increased competition from Japan, to today where it’s China?”
“Oh, I think it’s exactly the same thing, but it’s on steroids,” Farley replied.
“A completely different level of risk for our industry”
Ironically, it’s a Biden-era tariff that has so far spared Detroit from that competition. In May of last year, the U.S. imposed a 100% surcharge on Chinese-made electric vehicles, which effectively bans them from the American road. But Chinese EVs are gaining ground in Europe, Latin America, and especially China, the world’s largest market.
Farley has called these small, inexpensive, tech-savvy cars an existential threat. “They have enough capacity in China with existing factories to serve the entire North American market, put us all out of business,” he said. “Japan never had that. So, this is a completely different level of risk for our industry.”
“Are the Chinese cars being made today something Americans would want to buy?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Farley. “I drive a Xiaomi SU7. High quality, great digital experience.”
“You’re driving a Chinese car? Why?”
“Because of the competition. And to beat them, you have to know them.”
Farley’s firsthand experience with Chinese EVs is a big reason Ford is pivoting to smaller, more affordable electric vehicles. This past summer, in announcing production of a new midsize electric pickup truck to sell for $30,000, Farley said, “It represents the most radical change on how we design and how we build vehicles at Ford since the Model T.”
That hands-on approach is one holdover from his days at Toyota. Another is his annual road trip to see his products in action. “I believe in genchi genbutsu. It’s a Japanese word that means ‘go and see where the work is actually done.’ I took a Lightning through California with my son. And it became pretty clear that we had a big problem with our charging network. So, after that trip, I called Elon [Musk]. Out of the blue, never met him or anything. I was like, is there any way you would share your supercharging network with Ford?”
Ford CEO Jim Farley.
CBS News
If you heard his name and noticed the resemblance to the late actor Chris Farley, you weren’t wrong: the “Saturday Night Live” star was Jim Farley’s cousin. “I think there’s, uh, a little bit of kid in all of us Farleys, a little bit of that kind of devilish, little snarky tomfoolery,” he said. “On the other hand, I would say I was, you know, kind of on the pretty serious side of the Farley spectrum!”
Jim Farley will need every bit of that serious side to steer Ford through one of its biggest economic and political tests in decades – building a future that keeps tens of thousands of American auto workers on the line. “What I care about is that transformation of Ford,” he said. “I’d like to be able to come back here in 20 years, if I’m still alive, and see all the people, that they’re still busy, like my grandfather. My grandfather had nothing until he had the Ford job. Our jobs as leaders are about them.”
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Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Chad Cardin.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now we know better.
Hertz, reeling from a bankruptcy and the pandemic, announced plans to buy 100,000 Teslas in late 2021. The splashy move certainly helped Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker, which saw its market cap surge past $1 trillion for the first time.
Hertz enjoyed a bump in its market value as well, and the car-rental giant hired NFL star Tom Brady to show off its new fleet of Teslas.
“How do we democratize access to electric vehicles? That’s a very important part of our strategy,” interim CEO Mark Fields said at the time. “Tesla is the only manufacturer that can produce EVs at scale.”
But Hertz paid close to list prices for the Teslas, rather than demanding a large discount as car-rental giants often do. That decision would come back to bite it.
Last year, Musk’s EV maker cut prices across its lineup to boost sales. That not only angered individual customers who’d recently bought a Tesla at a higher price, but it also crushed the resale value of Hertz’s used EVs.
‘Elevated costs’ of EVs
This January, the rental giant revealed that it was selling off 20,000 electric vehicles, noting the costly depreciation, weak demand, and pricey repairs. It took a $245 million hit and suffered its steepest quarterly loss since the pandemic.
“The elevated costs associated with EVs persisted,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said at the time. “Efforts to wrestle it down proved to be more challenging.”
This week, Hertz announced that Scherr would be replaced by Gil West, the former COO of General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi unit. While Scherr took over after the Tesla deal, under his leadership Hertz continued its focus on EVs, placing big orders for them with GM and Polestar.
The ill-fated EV push followed a difficult stretch for Hertz that culminated in billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn unloading his substantial stake in the car-rental company in 2020 days after its bankruptcy. In 2014, Icahn had begun acquiring his stake in Hertz, which was struggling. He called Hertz “a great brand” that he hoped would “return to its former glory,” and three of his allies soon had board seats, while the hunt for a new CEO began.
After selling selling his stake, Icahn said, “Yesterday I sold my equity position at a significant loss, but this does not mean that I don’t continue to have faith in the future of Hertz.”
The following year, the company announced the decision to buy Teslas. Now it’s about to welcome yet another new CEO, again tasked with turning things around.
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One major problem for automakers as they transition to electric vehicles is that traditional cars still generally cost less. That matters to everyday car shoppers trying to make ends meet.
In China, however, EVs are actually more affordable than gas guzzlers. And increasingly, Chinese EVs are being exported to markets around the world and sold for prices that are tough to match.
That has leaders of automakers outside China worried. This week, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares likened China’s automotive emergence to the arrival of Japanese carmakers in the U.S. in the 1970s, followed by South Korean rivals three decades later.
Now it’s China’s turn to make its mark, he suggested, and that poses a threat to existing carmakers like Stellantis, whose brands include Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, and Maserati.
“The Chinese offensive is possibly the biggest risk that companies like Tesla and ourselves are facing right now,’’ Tavares said. “We have to work very, very hard to make sure that we bring out consumers better offerings than the Chinese.”
The most-feared Chinese carmaker is probably BYD—backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway—which recently topped Tesla in global EV sales.
“No one can match BYD on price. Period,” Michael Dunne, CEO of Asia-focused car consultancy Dunne Insights, recently told the Financial Times. “Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea, and Japan are in a state of shock.”
BYD keeps its costs low in part because it owns the entire supply chain of its EV batteries, from the raw materials to the finished battery packs. The battery accounts for roughly 40% of a new electric vehicle’s price.
Taking on Chinese EVs
Chinese EVs are not flooding American roads today thanks to protectionist measures—a 25% tariff on Chinese-made cars on top of a regular 2.5% one on imported cars. But American lawmakers fear that Chinese carmakers will use factories in Mexico to avoid such tariffs, taking advantage of the North American free trade agreement.
“So do we want that the Chinese carmakers take a significant share of the U.S. market in the next 20 years, or the next 10 years? I don’t know. That is the question,” Tavares said. “So how do we prevent that from happening beyond all the protectionist decisions, which are out of my reach? Well, by making our consumers happy.”
Tavares said that while Stellantis will launch 18 new EVs this year, eight in North America, the “job is not done” until prices for EVs match those of traditional cars.
In Europe—where carmakers are less protected from Chinese competition—Stellantis is taking orders for the new electric Citroen e-C3. It’s priced to take on budget models from Chinese rivals like Great Wall Motor. The e-C3 sells for 23,000 euros ($25,100) and has a range of 320 kilometers (199 miles). It will hit showrooms in the second quarter. An entry-level version slated for 2025 will sell for 19,990 euros.
Avoiding a ‘race to the bottom’
Both models will be sold at a profit, Tavares noted. Last month, he warned about the perils of getting drawn into a damaging price war.
“If you go and cut pricing disregarding the reality of your costs, you will have a bloodbath. I am trying to avoid a race to the bottom,” he said. “I know a company that has brutally cut pricing and their profitability has brutally collapsed.”
He didn’t elaborate on which company he was referring to, but his comments came shortly after Tesla cut prices on its Model Y across Europe and both its Model Y and Model 3 in China.
Tesla, in a call with investors last month, warned of “notably lower” sales growth this year after a disappointing fourth quarter. CEO Elon Musk said his EV maker is “between two major growth waves.” Hoping to better compete against both Chinese rivals and cheaper gas-powered cars, Tesla plans to start producing an entry-level EV starting at $25,000 next year.
Musk, too, is warily watching BYD and other Chinese carmakers.
“If there are no trade barriers established,” he told investors last month, “they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world. They’re extremely good.”
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Elon Musk’s Tesla is off to a difficult start in 2024, and it’s probably no surprise to Akio Toyoda. The Toyota chairman has long been skeptical of electric vehicles hype, steering his company to focus more on hybrids. That’s turned out to be a smart strategy.
Tesla shares are down about 24% year-to-date, knocking Musk off his perch as the world’s richest man, an honor now bestowed upon French luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault.
Investors did not react well to Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings, when the EV maker warned that this year’s sales growth might be “notably lower” than last year’s—not reassuring when it cut prices in 2023 to prop up demand. In California, a key market, registrations of Teslas actually fell in the fourth quarter, the first time that’s happened there in more than three years.
Toyota, by contrast, can’t make its hybrids quickly enough, and demand for them is strong without price cuts. The Japanese giant was the world’s top-selling carmaker for the fourth year in a row in 2023, selling 11.2 million vehicles globally, a respectable 7.2% increase from the previous year.
Tesla sold 1.8 million vehicles, in comparison, jumping an impressive 38% year over year.
Hybrids over EVs
Toyoda, however, does not believe that electric vehicles will take over the world. Last month, he predicted that adoption of EVs will peak at just 30%, saying they’ll share the roads with hybrid, gas-guzzling, and hydrogen-powered cars.
Hybrids, meanwhile, have been on a tear, not just for Toyota but for other automakers as well, including Ford and Honda. From January to November in 2023, hybrids accounted for 9.3% of new light vehicle registrations, beating EVs by 1.8 percentage points, reported Reuters, citing S&P Global Mobility data, and Toyota was the biggest seller of hybrids in the U.S., with more than a third of the those registrations.
Edmunds wrote on its website in mid-December that the hybrid market share in the U.S. increased to 9.7% in November 2023, a 99% jump from the year prior, whereas the EV share increased just 25%. “The transition to full EVs has slowed, and hybrids are the more comfortable choice for the majority of Americans seeking electrified options right now,” it added.
For many consumers, hybrids have the feel-good factor of burning less fuel than normal cars—friendlier on the environment and the wallet—without the range anxiety and other doubts surrounding EVs. (Hybrids maximize efficiency by alternating from gas to battery power.) It also helps that hybrids are priced much closer to traditional cars than are EVs.
Toyota, which will report earnings on Tuesday, with analysts expecting a strong quarter, does sell EVs, but despite their rapid sales growth they make up just a sliver of its shipments.
The carmaker has taken pains to emphasize that it is not “anti-EV” but rather lets consumers choose which type of vehicle they want and offers each king. Toyoda hinted at his philosophy a few years ago when he said, “Toyota is a department store of all sorts of powertrains. It’s not right for the department store to say, ‘This is the product you should buy.’”
To be sure, Toyota has its problems, among them recent recalls and, last month, the suspended shipments of 10 vehicle models due to testing irregularities for engine certifications. And some industry observers fear the auto giant will be caught flat-footed if consumers switch the EVs faster than it expects.
But it clearly called things right with regards to hybrids, if not in the long run then certainly for now.
In 2011, Musk laughed at the electric vehicles made by Chinese rival BYD, which recently passed Tesla in global EV sales. And in 2022, Musk dismissed hybrids as a “phase,” saying it was “time to move on” from them.
But many car buyers, we now know, do not feel the same way.
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Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood has long been bullish on Elon Musk and Tesla. She’s also been expecting Detroit automakers to follow the path Musk has forged with electric vehicles.
“We expected a lot of traditional auto manufacturers to see the writing on the wall and rush as quickly as they could into scaling big-time into electric vehicles,” she told Bloomberg Surveillance this week.
Instead, they’ve been decelerating their EV plans, wary of EV growth that—while still strong—has lately slowed. Wood, coming off her best month ever in November after a wobbly stretch, views their decisions as being good for Tesla in the long run.
General Motors had planned to build 400,000 EVs over a roughly two-year stretch ending in mid-2024. But in October, it abandoned that target, with CFO Paul Jacobson citing a slowdown in the EV market. Production of the electric pickup trucks Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra in suburban Detroit would be delayed by a year, the company said.
This month, Ford said it’s cutting production goals for its signature F-150 Lightning pickup, down from 3,200 to 1,600 per week due to slowing demand. And in November, it restarted work on a EV battery plant, but with scaled-back ambitions, saying it would produce roughly 40% fewer batteries than planned.
While EV growth has slowed in recent months, it’s still robust. According to J.D. Power, some 869,000 fully electric vehicles were sold in the U.S. in the first 10 months of 2023—a 56% jump over the year-ago period, but a slowdown from two years earlier.
“The narrative has taken over that EVs aren’t growing,” Ford CFO John Lawler said in October. “They’re growing . . . It’s just growing at a slower pace than the industry, and quite frankly, we, expected.”
Ford recorded a $1.3 billion loss in its EV division in the third quarter, and has forecast a full-year loss of $4.5 billion for the unit.
But such losses are necessary and expected, believes Wood:
“Both GM and Ford have said, ‘We’re stepping back. We’re not going to do this until it’s profitable.’ The problem with that is in order to be profitable, they need to scale. That’s how this works. These are learning curves that they are writing down, and those are expressed in cost declines.”
Their hesitation, however, will only benefit Tesla more, she thinks.
“The fact that they’re pulling back,” she said, “means there’s more share for Tesla and others who choose to go for it.”
A whole lot of drivers want to get rid of their cars, apparently.
Google searches for “give car back” have reached record highs, a trend first spotted by podcast host, CarDealershipGuy, who then posted the revelation on X, and showcased that searches are nearly double compared to almost 10 years ago.
The discovery that people are looking to ditch their vehicles isn’t exactly a shock considering the soaring costs associated with auto ownership.
The average monthly payment for a new car has increased by 28% over the past three years, according to data from online auto resource Edmunds, per Investopedia. The increase in car payments aligns with the rise in new car prices — which hit $46,229 in June, a 31% hike from three years ago, per the outlet.
An uptick in sticker prices also means more drivers took on auto loans, and now, auto loan debt currently stands at $1.58 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an all-time high.
All of this has left many Americans in a bind.
“I’m paying a ton of money right now for a car that I don’t really need, and I’ve been struggling and struggling to sell it,” Sean Miller, who took out an auto loan in 2019, told CNBC. “If I were to sell it today, it would probably be at a $10,000 to $15,000 loss. This is something that right now is preventing me from being able to save up in order to start a family.”
Rising car loan rates havecoincided with increasing interest rates, reaching levels not seen since 2008, subsequently leading to the surge of borrowing money, per Bankrate.
On the bright side, the Fed decided on Wednesday to maintain interest rates within a range of 5.25% to 5.50%, offering temporary relief from escalating interest rates.
Ford announced on Thursday that it delaying a $12 billion investment in electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing facilities, includinghalting the construction of a second battery plant in Kentucky, per CNBC.
Fordsaid in a media briefing on Thursday that growth in electric vehicle sales is not materializing at the pace the company had initially anticipated, and noted that a significant portion of its North American customer base is unwilling to pay a premium for electric vehicles compared to alternatives.
“We’re not moving away from our second generation [EV] products,” CFO John Lawler said in the briefing, per CNBC. “We are, though, looking at the pace of capacity that we’re putting in place. We are going to push out some of that investment.”
Ford’s Blue Oval City project in Tennessee will still proceed as planned.
Ford’s EV business has been incurring losses, with approximately $1.3 billion lost in adjusted earnings during the last quarter in its electric vehicle business unit, marking nearly double the loss compared to the same period the previous year.
Meanwhile, one big company has optimism in the EV market.
BP, the oil and gas company, made a deal this week to acquire $100 million worth of electric vehicle chargers from Tesla, CNN reported.
Beginning in 2024, BP will install the 250 kilowatt fast chargers, typically referred to as “Superchargers” by Tesla. The specific quantity of charges remains undisclosed in the announcement.
BP intends to deploy the chargers at a range of BP-owned locations, while some of them will be placed at third-party sites, such as Hertz centers.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain is scheduled to give an update Friday on the union’s labor contract negotiations with Detroit’s Big Three automakers, with some signs the sides are narrowing their differences as the strike inflicts an increasingly heavy financial toll.
Fain could yet call for additional targeted strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis facilities, where about 25,000 workers at five vehicle assembly plants and 38 parts warehouses have walked off the job since the work stoppage began on Sept. 15. But UAW and automaker representatives made meaningful progress during talks Wednesday, the Associated Press reported, raising hopes of a possible thaw in the contentious negotiations. A source with the UAW also told CBS News that the sides are engaged in “active talks.”
What automakers are offering
The UAW’s demands include a 36% pay increase over four years, annual cost-of-living adjustments, pension benefits for all employees, greater job security, a faster path to full-time jobs for temporary workers and a four-day work week.
Along with a wage hike, the union also wants the automakers to eliminate a two-tiered wage system the companies adopted in 2007 as the companies were struggling financially.
Ford said in a statement that it sweetened its proposal to the union this week, offering a general wage increase of more than 20% over four years. The company also said it offered to increase retirement plan contributions and include temporary workers in profit-sharing.
GM made its latest offer to the UAW on Sept. 21, the details of which neither side has made public. The automaker’s previous offer included a 20% wage increase “over the life of the agreement” and cost-of-living adjustments.
GM on Wednesday announced it has lined up a line of credit of up to $6 billion in light of the possibility of a longer strike. The company said it is “being prudent in the face of uncertainty.” GM also said it estimates the strike will cost the company about $200 million in lost production in the third quarter.
The most recent offer from Stellantis (the parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram) also includes a 20% wage increase through 2027 for full-time employees, and a 6% company match for retirement contributions.
Layoffs piling up
The UAW launched a coordinated strike last month when nearly 13,000 autoworkers walked off the job in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. Since then, the automakers have furloughed or laid off thousands of non-union workers at plants in five states.
Ford this week expanded its layoffs to 350 workers at a transmission plant in Livonia, Michigan, and 50 workers at an axle plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Those workers were officially laid off Thursday, bringing Ford’s total layoffs to 1,330, the company said in a statement.
“These are not lockouts,” Ford said. “These layoffs are a consequence of the strike at Chicago Assembly Plant, because these two facilities must reduce production of parts that would normally be shipped to Chicago Assembly Plant.”
GM has laid off more than 2,100 workers across four states, while Stellantis has idled nearly 370 workers, Reuters reported.
So far, the strike has cost the auto industry about $3.9 billion, according to an estimate from Michigan-based consulting firm Anderson Economic Group. That includes $325 million in worker wages, $1.12 billion in losses for the automakers, $1.29 billion in losses for parts suppliers, and $1.2 billion in dealer and customer losses.
The UAW so far has avoided strikes at factories that manufacture large pickup truck and SUVs, which account for much of the automakers’ profits.
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering business, consumer and financial stories that range from economic inequality and housing issues to bankruptcies and the business of sports.
The United Auto Workers is expanding its historic strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers to include General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers across 20 states.
UAW President Shawn Fain said during a Facebook Live address on Friday that workers at 38 GM and Stellantis facilities will walk off the job at noon local time. GM and Stellantis “are going to need some serious pushing” to get closer to an agreement, said the union leader, who wore a black-and-white camouflage-printed union shirt.
“We’re not going to wait around forever for a fair contract,” said Fain. “The companies know how to make this right.”
Notably, the labor group is not targeting Ford for additional strikes. The union is making progress with Ford on wage, job security and other issues, according to Fain, who said the company “is serious about reaching a deal.”
Ford has agreed to dismantle the two-tiered wage system at its Components and Sterling axel assembly plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, according to Fain. The automaker has also agreed to reinstate cost-of-living adjustments — which were eliminated in 2009 — and the right to strike over plant closures. Other concessions Ford made include beefed-up profit-sharing payments that will also be offered to temporary workers who have been on the job for 90 days.
“Ford is working diligently with the UAW to reach a deal that rewards our workforce and enables Ford to invest in a vibrant and growing future,” the company said in a statement Friday. “Although we are making progress in some areas, we still have significant gaps to close on the key economic issues.”
Roughly 5,600 Big Three workers will join the nearly 13,000 who are already on strike.
“In selecting the parts distribution centers, the UAW creates a scenario where manufacturing disruptions will be more difficult to predict or manage, and could be widespread,” Joe Langley, associate director of North American production forecasting at S&P Global Mobility. “A vehicle has thousands of parts, and if one is missing it cannot be completed.”
The UAW’s move to escalate the work stoppage highlights how far the side remain apart on core union demands, which include a 36% pay increase across a four-year contract, annual cost-of-living adjustments, pension benefits for all employees, greater job security and a four-day work week.
GM and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep, have rejected the union’s proposals for job security, reduced-use of temporary workers and profit-sharing, which is why the union’s expanded strike targets their facilities, Fain said. Those plants will remain on strike until GM and Stellantis submit more substantive offers, he said.
GM said in a statement Friday that the strike targeting 18 of its facilities is unnecessary and that it adversely impacts “more than 3,000 team members plus their families and communities.”
“We have now presented five separate economic proposals that are historic, addressing areas that our team members have said matters most: wage increases and job security while allowing GM to succeed and thrive into the future,” the carmaker said in a statement. “We will continue to bargain in good faith with the union to reach an agreement as quickly as possible.”
Stellantis didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The automakers argue they’re facing pressure to keep costs low in order to compete with Tesla and foreign car makers, while also investing money into the rapidly growing electric vehicle market. The companies also say their counteroffers are reasonable, while signaling they are willing to negotiate further.
“If we don’t continue to invest, we will lose ground — quickly,” GM President Mark Reuss wrote Wednesday in an op-ed published in the Detroit Free Press. “Our competitors across the country and around the world, most of whom are non-union, will waste no time seizing the opportunity we would be handing them.”
What does the UAW want?
The UAW is also seeking limited use of temporary workers and more paid time off, as well as stronger job protections, including the right to strike over plant closings.
The union argues that the Big Three reaped hefty profits as car prices surged during the pandemic, while workers failed to enjoy the same benefits.
“Autoworkers have waited long enough to make things right at the Big Three,” Fain said in a video earlier this week. “We’re not waiting around, and we’re not messing around.”
“Companies have made some significant offers, but I believe it should go further — to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts,” Mr. Biden said.
Why target the parts facilities?
Among other issues, the UAW is pushing automakers to eliminate the two-tiered wage system present at all three companies. Higher-tier workers — anyone who joined the company before 2007 — make roughly $33 an hour. Anyone who joined after that year is classified as lower tier, and their pay starts at around $17 an hour. Lower-tier employees also don’t receive defined benefit pensions, and their health benefits are less generous.
Fain said employees at parts distribution centers are disproportionately impacted by the pay structure.
“At Stellantis and GM… workers at parts distribution centers are permanently stuck on a lower wage scale,” he said. “For workers hired after 2015, top pay maxes out at just $25 an hour, and it takes eight years to get there.”
Although GM has offered to raise those wages, the UAW is also pressing for cost-of-living increases and more job security, Fain said.
Staging walkouts at the GM and Stellantis parts distribution centers is aimed at making it harder for the companies to repair cars at their dealerships, Fain said.
The move “goes at the hearts and lungs of auto operations for GM and Stellantis given the ripple impact/pressure points and is a clear shot across the bow at both,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a report.
Lynne Vincent, a business management professor at Syracuse University, said the UAW’s “selective striking” strategy is aimed at maximizing the worker’ leverage while keeping the automakers off balance.
“It gives them the power of surprise so the Big Three cannot fully strategize and create their own counter tactic,” said Vincent, an expert on the psychological impacts of strikes.
United Auto Workers members and supporters on a picket line outside the General Motors Co. Ypsilanti Processing Center in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.
Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The UAW’s so-called stand-up strike — a rhetorical nod to the Flint, Michigan, “sit-down” strike against GM in the 1930s — kicked off on September 15 when Ford, GM and Stellantis workers in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio walked off the job after negotiations between the automakers and the UAW failed to yield a new labor agreement.
The automakers responded by announcing temporary layoffs at some factories, beginning with Ford Motor which had temporarily laid off 600 non-striking workers at its assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, on September 15, only hours after employees at the facility had walked off the job.
Stellantis announced this week it was temporarily laying off 68 workers at a plant outside Toledo because of the ongoing strike, with more layoffs expected at its transmission plant in Kokomo, Indiana. GM said it will lay off 2,000 workers at its plant in Kansas City, Kansas, because there’s no work for them since they depend on parts from the Wentzville facility.
Workers from those plants, as well as those walking off from the 38 distribution sites added Friday, will be paid through the UAW’s $825 million strike fund.
Experts say the economic impact of the UAW strike could extend beyond the auto industry. A work stoppage lasting three weeks could cost the U.S. economy $415 million, according to an estimate from The Perryman Group.
Here are the GM and Stellantis parts distribution facilities where workers are set to strike.
General Motors
Pontiac Redistribution (Pontiac, Michigan)
Willow Run Redistribution (Belleville, Michigan)
Ypsilanti Processing Center (Ypsilanti, Michigan)
Davidson Road Processing Center (Burton, Michigan)
Flint Processing Center (Swartz Creek, Michigan)
Lansing Redistribution (Lansing, Michigan)
Cincinnati Parts Distribution (Westchester, Ohio)
Denver Parts Distribution (Aurora, Colorado)
Hudson Parts Distribution (Hudson, Wisconsin)
Chicago Parts Distribution (Bolingbrook, Illinois)
Reno Parts Distribution Center (Reno, Nevada)
Rancho Cucamonga Parts Distribution (Rancho Cucamonga, California)
Fort Worth Parts Distribution (Roanoke, Texas)
Martinsburg Parts Distribution (Martinsburg, West Virginia)
Jackson Parts Distribution (Brandon, Mississippi)
Charlotte Parts Distribution (Charlotte, North Carolina)
Memphis AC Delco Parts Distribution (Memphis, Tennessee)
Philadelphia Parts Distribution (Langhorne, Pennsylvania)
Stellantis
Marysville (Marysville, Michigan)
Centerline Packaging (Center Line, Michigan)
Centerline Warehouse (Center Line, Michigan)
Sherwood (Warren, Michigan)
Warren Parts (Warren, Michigan)
Quality Engineering Center (Auburn Hills, Michigan)
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering business, consumer and financial stories that range from economic inequality and housing issues to bankruptcies and the business of sports.
United Auto Workers – the union that represents workers at the Big Three automakers in Detroit – on Friday launched a historic strike over stalled contract negotiations. One of the changes the union wants to see is a four-day workweek, working 32 hours for 40 hours of pay.
UAW President Shawn Fain gave an address last month on Facebook Live, explaining the demands of the union. “Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet. That’s not living. It’s barely surviving and it needs to stop,” he said.
After receiving a contract proposal from Ford, which Fain said “insults our very worth,” he gave another address on the platform.
“The labor movement once fought for a vision of work life in which everyone had 8 hours for work, 8 hours rest, and 8 hours recreation,” he said. “Sadly, it feels like we’ve gone so far backwards that we have to fight just to have the 40-hour workweek back.”
In an interview with In These Times, a monthly progressive publication, Fain said he learned that UAW had advocated for 35- and 32-hour workweeks back in the 1930s and 1940s. “And you know, 80 years later, in bargaining in 2019, our leadership was agreeing to seven-day, 12-hour schedules,” Fain said.
“I don’t consider [a 30-hour workweek] ambitious. I consider it almost a human rights issue,” he said, adding that many workers’ health has been impacted by the long hours, with some suffering injuries. “That’s the reality of standing there on assembly lines working day after day, seven days a week, 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day.”
UAW isn’t the first group that has advocated for four-day workweeks – and in some industries, the change has been made.
Hundreds of U.S. school districts have adopted a four-day workweek, including Independence School District in Missouri, one of the largest districts in the state to implement the change. Superintendent Dale Herl told CBS News earlier this year that 35 minutes will be added to each day to make up for the loss of Mondays, and childcare on Mondays will be offered for $30 a day.
The four-day school week helps schools experiencing a teacher shortage recruit staff. “The number of teaching applications that we’ve received have gone up more than four-fold,” Herl said.
The change for a shorter week may be a result of the pandemic, when workers in some industries found a better work-life balance while working from home. A survey from the International Foundation of Employment found that 75% of corporate and single employers have employees working remotely on certain days of the week.
And while 80% are not considering a four-day workweek, 14% are, with 1% already implementing pilot programs and another 1% formally implementing the change.
Nearly 70% of employers that are considering a four-day workweek come from five industries: manufacturing or distribution, health care and medicine, professional service firms, nonprofits and high technology, according to the survey.
The main reasons employers are not adopting four-day workweeks? Lack of interest by upper management, difficulty implementing it organization worldwide, unsure if it would work with organizational structure and concern that it would hurt business operations, the survey showed.
What are UAW’s other demands?
The four-day workweek is just one part of the UAW’s demands for the Big Three – Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler. The union also wants big pay raises – which Fain says the Big Three can afford, since their CEOs saw a 40% pay increase on average in the last four years. They also want more paid time off and a benefit pension, among other things.
They also want to restore COLA – cost of living adjustments – that ensure the working class receives the benefits needed to survive in the current economy. COLA is used by the Social Security Administration, which increased benefits for 70 million people by 8.7 percent in 2023.
UAW says 65 Big Three plants have been closed in the last 20 years, which they say devastates hometowns. The union wants to implement a “working family protection program” that pays UAW to do community service work if the companies shut down a facility.
The strike of more than 140,000 union members is looming and the automakers have until 11:59 p.m. Thursday to reach an agreement.
Their original contract expired at 11:59 p.m. local time on Thursday. After the Big Three failed to meet UAW’s demands, about 12,700 employees from those companies went on strike, according to Reuters. UAW’s strike fund will pay employees about $500 a week, The Associated Press reports.
How much do UAW workers make?
In one of his addresses, Fain said the Big Three raked in a combined $21 billion in profits in the first six months of 2023. “Record profits mean record contracts,” Fain said.
UAW wants Ford and GM’s full-time assembly plant workers to make $32.32 an hour and Stellantis’ full-time employees to make $31.77 an hour.
Fain said starting wages have decreased from 2007, when new workers made $19.60 an hour, or $28.96 an hour to account for inflation. Now, starting wages are $18.04 an hour.
In 2007 it took three years to reach $28 an hour – now, it takes about eight years to reach $32 an hour.
The deadline is Thursday at 11:59 p.m. More than 100,000 members of the United Auto Workers, the biggest auto union in America, will find out whether they’ve won anything close to the four-year contract with a 46% wage bump they’ve been demanding, or whether they will be launching a historic strike. Detroit’s Big Three automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, the successor to Chrysler—might be forced to shutter factories just as the industry struggles to rebound from the pandemic.
Joe Biden has a lot at stake too. A ten-day strike could cost the economy an estimated $5 billion. But the ramifications for the president extend far beyond the particulars of how the immediate negotiations play out. Biden, who recently declared himself “the most pro-union president in American history,” has been lining up the support of major labor unions for his 2024 reelection campaign—with the glaring exception of the UAW, which has pointedly withheld an endorsement. When Biden, over Labor Day weekend, said he didn’t think a strike would happen, the UAW’s new president, Shawn Fain, threw a brushback pitch. “I think a strike can reaffirm to him where the working class people in this country stand. And, you know, it’s time for politicians in this country to pick a side,” Fain told CNBC. “Either you stand for a billionaire class where everybody else gets left behind, or you stand for the working class.”
A Democratic operative close to the issue tells me that Fain’s forceful flexing of leverage caught the Biden team somewhat off guard. The president has tried to walk a tricky line when it comes to the auto industry: Two of his prized legislative achievements—2021’s infrastructure bill and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act—included hefty financial incentives for companies that invest in electric-vehicle plants. That angered the auto unions because fewer workers are needed to build EVs than traditional cars, and because most of the batteries needed for EVs are manufactured either overseas or in non-union American factories.
The administration tried playing catch-up in August, announcing $15.5 billion in funding and loans, the bulk of the money targeted at converting existing auto plants to EV facilities and retraining union workers. As you might expect, his presumed 2024 Republican challenger is trying to make mischief. “Biden’s Electric Vehicle mandate will murder the U.S. auto industry,” the Trump campaign claimed last week, “and kill countless union autoworker jobs forever.”
The dealmaking in Detroit is only one part of a wider struggle between workers, industry, and Washington politicians as technology reshapes the economy. Much like EVs, artificial intelligence is also a major point of contention—but in Hollywood, where studios and striking writers and actors have been locked in a months-long standstill. “The question is, Who is going to have the balance of power? Who is going to have control over these things and make money from them?” says Alex Colvin, the dean of Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “This is a critical period.”
For political alliances as well. Democrats have spent years chasing white working-class voters, mostly in vain. In 2020, Biden won back a crucial share of them in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Union membership rates in states like these remain at a historic low, but there are signs of a shift in momentum, with organizing efforts at Amazon warehouses and Starbucks stores as well as behind the Uber and Lyft wheels. Not to mention: the economic and racial mixture of unions has also grown more diverse. How Biden navigates all of these labor currents will have a big impact on what are likely to be close races in 2024 battleground states.
“We’re clearly seeing an upsurge of worker activity with an understanding that technology, whether it’s AI or other impacts on their workplace, is changing their leverage with employers,” says Neal Kwatra, a Democratic strategist who has worked with both labor unions and elected officials. “There are definitely some Democratic elected officials around the country who are pro-worker, who are pro-union, who are finding ways to be concretely and substantively helpful to these workers’ struggles. But I do not think the party as a whole understands the moment that we are in.”
One Democrat who clearly gets it is Elissa Slotkin. “What I’ve said to my friends and supporters in labor is, if we don’t use this moment, shame on us. You’re seeing that with UAW right now,” says the Michigan congresswoman, who is running to become one of Michigan’s US senators. “We’ve got to make sure that people at these new [EV] factories are paid a living wage. That’s what just went on in Lordstown—they unionized and they’re leveraging that affiliation for more money, more benefits. We have to get that right. But in terms of who is supporting policies that are pro-union, there is only one party doing that. I know Donald Trump has made electric vehicles his new ‘woke’ culture war. Those vehicles are going to be made. And I am always going to pick Team America over Team China making those damn vehicles.”
In the past year Biden has dodged three labor bullets—standoffs at UPS, West Coast ports, and in the freight railroad industry, all of which could have blown holes in the economy, ended in agreements, not strikes. Maybe he’ll get lucky again in Detroit tonight. Earning the votes of union members next year, though, is still going to take a lot more than luck.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said Wednesday that autoworkers and the Big Three automakers are still far apart, although negotiations continue, and that the union may strike all of the Big Three at once.
“We’re keeping all of our options open. An all-out strike is still a possibility,” Fain said during a webcast with members.
The UAW and Ford Motor Co. F, +1.53%,
General Motors Co. GM, +0.57%
and Stellantis NV STLA, -0.42%
have made progress during their talks but were still far apart on the union’s key priorities, though negotiations will continue until the deadline of 11:59 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, Fain said.
“For the first time in our history, we may strike all of the Big Three at once,” Fain said, adding that he looked at this time as “our defining moment.”
He said if no deal is reached, there’s also the possibility of doing “standup strikes” at certain plants, designed to keep the companies guessing. These could escalate and spread elsewhere in order to give the union leverage in bargaining. He told UAW members that they should not strike unless their local is called to do so.
A targeted strike helps the UAW avoid distributing strike pay, set recently at $500 a week per member, to all 150,000 of its members. But it could have a broader effect.
“It is possible for strikes at critical parts plants to have much wider implications,” Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said in an interview with MarketWatch on Wednesday.
He noted that the 1998 strike against GM, a work stoppage by 9,200 workers at two of that company’s plants in Flint, Mich., resulted in shutdowns that affected more than 150,000 workers.
Jody Calemine, a senior fellow and director of labor and employment policy at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said Wednesday that the union is employing an interesting strategy.
“It will turn the screws slowly and probe for weaknesses, and try to get as much movement out of companies as possible while keeping the options to escalate,” he said.
Calemine said Fain has done a “masterful job” of painting the fight as a “real showdown” between working families and the companies. But he added that “the principal danger for the union would be losing the narrative. Other places would continue to work, or get laid off or locked out.”
That’s reflected in some of the online comments by UAW members who watched Fain’s update. One worker said on Facebook: “Strike us all or none at all.”
The UAW president quoted scripture, repeated his calls for unity and said the “strike plan is driven by faith that together we can and will move mountains.”
Fain said the companies have revised some of their offers: On wages, Ford has put forward a 20% increase over the life of the four-year contract, up from its previous offer of 9%, while GM’s latest offer is 18% and Stellantis’s offer is 17.5%. That’s compared to a wage increase of 40% — or 46% when compounded annually — that the union sought originally and later revised to 36%.
“Their proposals don’t reflect the massive profits that we’ve generated for these companies,” Fain said.
The union has pointed out that while the Big Three’s profit has risen 65% over the past four years, and the pay of each of the companies’ chief executives have risen 40%, the UAW top wage rate has risen 6% over that time.
A GM spokesperson said Wednesday that the company continues to bargain in good faith and sent a statement that reads in part: “We are making progress in key areas that we believe are most important to our represented team members. This includes historic guaranteed annual wage increases, investments in our U.S. manufacturing plants to provide opportunities for all, and shortening the time for in-progression employees to reach maximum wages.”
Ford and Stellantis did not immediately return a request for comment.
The most recent U.S. autoworkers’ strike was at GM in 2019, which lasted for nearly six weeks and involved about 50,000 workers.
Boston — Cars are getting an “F” in data privacy. Most major manufacturers admit they may be selling your personal information, a new study finds, with half also saying they’d share it with the government or law enforcement without a court order.
The proliferation of sensors in automobiles – from telematics to fully digitized control consoles – has made them prodigious data-collection hubs.
But drivers are given little or no control over the personal data their vehicles collect, researchers for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation said Wednesday in their latest “Privacy Not Included” survey. Security standards are also vague, a big concern given automakers’ track record of susceptibility to hacking.
“Cars seem to have really flown under the privacy radar and I’m really hoping that we can help remedy that because they are truly awful,” said Jen Caltrider, the study’s research lead. “Cars have microphones and people have all kinds of sensitive conversations in them. Cars have cameras that face inward and outward.”
Unless they opt for a used, pre-digital model, car buyers “just don’t have a lot of options,” Caltrider said.
Cars scored worst for privacy among more than a dozen product categories – including fitness trackers, reproductive-health apps, smart speakers and other connected home appliances – that Mozilla has studied since 2017.
Not one of the 25 car brands whose privacy notices were reviewed – chosen for their popularity in Europe and North America – met the minimum privacy standards of Mozilla, which promotes open-source, public interest technologies and maintains the Firefox browser. By contrast, 37% of the mental health apps the non-profit reviewed this year did.
Nineteen automakers say they can sell your personal data, their notices reveal. Half will share your information with government or law enforcement in response to a “request” – as opposed to requiring a court order. Only two – Renault and Dacia, which are not sold in North America – offer drivers the option to have their data deleted.
“Wiretaps on wheels”
“Increasingly, most cars are wiretaps on wheels,” said Albert Fox Cahn, a technology and human rights fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. “The electronics that drivers pay more and more money to install are collecting more and more data on them and their passengers.”
“There is something uniquely invasive about transforming the privacy of one’s car into a corporate surveillance space,” he added.
A trade group representing the makers of most cars and light trucks sold in the U.S., the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, took issue with that characterization. In a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. House and Senate leadership, it said it shares “the goal of protecting the privacy of consumers.”
It called for a federal privacy law, saying a “patchwork of state privacy laws creates confusion among consumers about their privacy rights and makes compliance unnecessarily difficult.” The absence of such a law enables connected devices and smartphones to amass data for tailored ad targeting and other marketing — while also raising the odds of massive information theft through cybersecurity breaches.
The Associated Press asked the alliance, which has resisted efforts to provide car owners and independent repair shops with access to onboard data, if it supports allowing car buyers to automatically opt out of data collection and granting them the option of having collected data deleted.
Spokesman Brian Weiss said that for safety reasons the group “has concerns” about letting customers completely opt out but does endorse giving them greater control over how the data is used in marketing and by third parties.
Some “sexual activity” data collected
In a 2020 Pew Research survey, 52% of Americans said they had opted against using a product or service because they were worried about the amount of personal information it would collect about them.
On security, Mozilla’s minimum standards include encrypting all personal information on a car. The researchers said most car brands ignored their emailed questions on the matter, and those that did offeried partial, unsatisfactory responses.
Japan-based Nissan astounded researchers with the level of honesty and detailed breakdowns of data collection its privacy notice provides, a stark contrast with Big Tech companies such as Facebook or Google. “Sensitive personal information” collected includes driver’s license numbers, immigration status, race, sexual orientation and health diagnoses.
Further, Nissan says it can share “inferences” drawn from the data to create profiles “reflecting the consumer’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.”
It was among six car companies that said they could collect “genetic information” or “genetic characteristics,” the researchers found.
Nissan also said it collected information on “sexual activity.” It didn’t explain how.
The “creepiness index”
The all-electric Tesla brand scored high on Mozilla’s “creepiness” index. If an owner opts out of data collection, Tesla’s privacy notice says the company may not be able to notify drivers “in real time” of issues that could result in “reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability.”
Neither Nissan nor Tesla immediately responded to questions about their practices.
Mozilla’s Caltrider credited laws like the 27-nation European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and California’s Consumer Privacy Act with compelling carmakers to provide existing data collection information.
It’s a start, she said — by raising awareness among consumers, just as happened in the 2010s when a consumer backlash prompted TV makers to offer more alternatives to surveillance-heavy connected displays.
