We haven’t built a loyal readership without knowing a thing or two about what makes you lot tick. Rusty old Ford Rangers rank pretty high on the list. Phil’s adventures at his local junkyard, too. And, oh yeah – big square sedans from the 1980s.

This is why we’re finally publishing pictures of this Hyundai concept, even though it dropped earlier this week and parroted by every cab blog from Anchorage to Zephyrhills. If anyone can appreciate what Hyundai has done with this one-off EV, it’s the Best & Brightest.

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While this year’s L.A. Auto Show will be the location in which Subaru shows its new all-electric Solterra on this side on the pond, the new EV – developed in conjunction with Toyota – popped up in an official capacity at a reveal event in Japan. Save for having its steering wheel on the opposite side of the cabin, the machine you see here will be much like the one appearing next week in Los Angeles.

It also looks a lot like its Toyota cousin – much more so than some industry observers expected.

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Blaming the global shortage of semiconductors and related supply chain challenges, Stellantis has announced another round of cuts at one of its factories. According to a report in the Detroit News, about 400 workers have been informed of an ‘employee reduction’ that will take effect early next calendar year.

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You’ll notice an intentional and obvious use of the word ‘some’ in that headline. At the COP26 global climate summit currently being held in Glasgow, a handful of automakers and two dozen countries committed to an agreement calling for the end of fossil fuel vehicles by 2040 or earlier.

Headline signatories include the likes of Ford, GM Volvo, and Mercedes – along with reps from places such as Canada, the U.K., and Sweden. Not everyone chose to jump on board, however, including a couple of major world powers and two of the planet’s largest car companies.

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Our fancy-pants Managing Ed. is currently enjoying the sunny and rocky environs of Moab, sampling different variants of the new-for-’22 Jeep Grand Cherokee. His impressions will appear on these digital pages in due time but, until then, let’s examine what might just be The Right Spec of this popular SUV.

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There’s an initiative to convince Congress to pass legislation that would pour billions of dollars onto chip manufacturers at play that’s being led by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. A letter, signed by nine other governors, was issued asking like-minded lawmakers to send $52 billion in economic aid so that the chip shortage so that the supply issues that have been plaguing various industries (including the automotive sector) can finally be resolved.

Backed by the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the “CHIPS for America Act” is just one of several programs designed to use the National Defense Authorization Act to create federal funding for chip suppliers. The governors (all of which are from states manufacturing automobiles) say they want a cash injection by the end of 2021 so that domestic chip manufacturing can build new factories right away. But SIA lobbyists are pressing for numerous plans that would result in extensive tax breaks and annual investments from the government that is all focused around the proposed CHIPS legislation and piggybacks on the recently passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA).

Alright, let’s break this down.  (Read More…)

While no one around this neck of the woods would call themselves experts in finer points of the stock market, we do know how to add. Talking heads at the Wall Street Journal are reporting Rivian has set an initial share price of $78 for its IPO, a heady sum to be sure. What drives this story to another dimension is they’ve allegedly sold 153 million shares at this price.

For those keeping track, that means they raised nearly $12 billion – making RIVN the biggest listing so far in 2021.

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Back in 2010, if you wanted to be seen as an eco-conscious consumer who was on the cutting edge of forward-thinking tech, you drove a Toyota Prius. Heck, even George Clooney drove one to the Oscars – and Clooney is cooler than you (or me, anyway). The Prius was such a hot seller that Toyota reportedly looked into the possibility of spinning it off into its own brand.

That, as they say, was then. Today, Toyota has fallen significantly behind market leader Tesla in the race to bring EVs to the mainstream. There are many reasons for that, of course – but big bets on stillborn hydrogen fuel cell technology and more than a little bit of overconfidence in the size of its market lead certainly played a part.

It didn’t have to be that way – and, in fact, Tesla’s trillion-dollar story could have gone very, very differently for Toyota. All they needed was a little bit of money, and a lot of cynicism.

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Rare Rides has featured three of Saleen’s sporty creations in past: A one-off Thunderbird styling exercise, a hot hatchback, and the company’s full-on supercar. Today’s Rare Ride is probably more familiar than those other three, as it’s Saleen’s most basic take on the SN-95 Mustang.

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Automakers love a good teaser campaign, despite their propensity for giving away some of the good secrets like a movie trailer that drags on too long. Subaru has jumped on this marketing bandwagon for their upcoming Solterra, which is both an all-electric compact crossover and the company’s first EV.

Playing a riveting game of I Spy with this teaser photo, it’s safe to say the Solterra will fit in Subaru showrooms quite comfortably.

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Mazda has announced that the 2023 CX-50 will debut on November 15th, foreshadowing its production launch in January of 2022 at the Alabama plant it shares with Toyota. That means odds are good that the model will share more than a few components with the Toyota Corolla Cross. But Mazda has been adamant that CX-50 is a unique vehicle riding on its very own platform.

Unique is a relative term, however, when the upcoming model represents another “lifestyle vehicle” designed to convince consumers that a jack-of-all-trades crossover is ready and willing to drag them up the side of a mountain. Officially, Mazda is claiming this one caters to adults with particularly active lifestyles and has surrounded it with nature-themed marketing materials. That presumably has something to do with the CX-50 boasting “enhanced all-wheel-drive capabilities.” (Read More…)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced it is making its first ever whistleblower award. The U.S. regulatory body has decided to give over $24 million to a whistleblower providing information related to Hyundai Motor America and Kia Motors America. While not named by the NHTSA, it’s undoubtedly talking about Kim Gwang-ho — a South Korean engineer who flew to Washington in 2016 to squeal that his employer had been skirting safety regulations.

Armed with an internal report from Hyundai’s quality control team, Kim told the NHTSA the company was not taking sufficient action to address a presumed engine defect that increased the risk of crashes. It looks like the decision paid off for him, too. Hyundai Motor Group was struck with sizable regulatory penalties and Kim is now getting a huge payout from U.S. regulators right before the Department of Transportation proposes updated regulations pertaining to the automotive whistleblower program Congress created in 2015.  (Read More…)

If you’re a Volkswagen Golf GTI fan, you were probably worried that Volkswagen would screw it up as they refreshed it for 2022. Here’s the good news – the company (mostly) didn’t do that. Especially when it comes to the most important part of GTI ownership – on-road driving performance.

Subaru of America will be canceling Starlink telematics subscriptions on all new 2022 vehicles sold in Massachusetts thanks to the state having an amended right-to-repair law that’s wildly unpopular with global automakers. If you’ve been following our coverage, Massachusetts has become ground zero for consumer advocacy groups, independent repair shops, and car buyers that have grown concerned with the industry’s increased interest in data hoarding.

The argument is that the automakers are now building vehicles that violate customer privacy — by wirelessly transmitting information back to manufacturer data farms — while also setting them up to make independent repairs nearly impossible. This resulted in an extended legal battle where the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI) went to bat to ensure the industry retained this lucrative venture. But it was stymied by the grassroots campaign launched against it. Massachusetts’ updated law currently requires all vehicles sold within the state (from the 2022 model year onward) using telematics systems to be equipped with a standardized, open-access data platform that would allow customers and unaffiliated mechanics to gain access.  (Read More…)

Cadillac is expected to have lost one-third of its U.S. dealerships this year — going from nearly 900 physical locations at the start of 2021 to an estimated 560 by year’s end.

But there’s allegedly no need to worry about the brand because this is part of a planned electric offensive. Last year, Cadillac asked dealers to spend the capital necessary to install charging stations, update their service centers, and retrain staff to better tackle EVs or take a buyout before the automaker’s first battery-driven car (the Lyric crossover) hits the market early in 2022. It would seem that a meaningful portion of the whole decided to bow out, which Cadillac seems totally fine with.  (Read More…)