The federal EV tax credit is a money‑saving offer from the U.S. government that lowers how much you pay for an electric car, up to a certain amount. It ended on September 30th, so buyers no longer get that discount.
When fixing an electric car, the parts that use a lot of electricity are called high-voltage. Repairing these parts needs special tools and safety steps.
If your car is still under warranty, the maker will fix any problems at no cost to you. This usually covers parts and labor for certain issues.
Concept
independent shops
These are local garages that aren’t part of the car company. They can fix your car too, but they might not have the same parts or warranties as a dealer.
An internal combustion engine is the kind of engine that burns gasoline or diesel inside its cylinders to make a car move. It’s what most cars use, but electric cars don’t have one.
Big O Tires is a store chain that sells tires and does simple car repairs like changing your wheels or fixing brakes.
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Welcome to Daily Drive for Monday, November 5, 2025.
I'm Kellen Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, a Michigan dealership
gets its license suspended for selling used loaners as new.
The Supreme Court makes a ruling on Trump's tariffs
and whether the president acted lawfully
in his decisions against trading partners.
Plus, our own Lawrence Iliff joins the show
to talk Slate Auto and how the EV startup
is taking its own conventional path
to cut costs and simplify services.
We're going to have places near you
where you can get service, right?
And we're going to work with these independent people
to make sure they can fix your EV.
We're going to certify them.
We're going to be active in this process.
We're not just saying, hey, go to a website
and figure it out yourself.
Let's run through all the news you need to know
to keep up in the auto industry.
The Michigan Department of State has suspended the license
of LaFontaine Chevrolet Buick GMC in China Township
after finding the dealership sold
used loaner vehicles as new,
a major move against one of the state's largest auto groups.
Investigators said the store ignored warnings
after a 2024 investigation uncovered similar violations.
LaFontaine denied wrongdoing,
calling the issue a paperwork dispute
tied to Michigan's quote, outdated vehicle titling laws.
The suspension halts operations
at one of the state's most well-known dealerships
and comes less than a year
after another LaFontaine store faced similar penalties.
The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing
whether President Donald Trump overstepped his authority
by imposing sweeping global tariffs
under a 1977 emergency powers law.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett
questioned the legality of Trump using a law
meant for national emergencies
to collect billions in tariffs each month.
A ruling against Trump could trigger
more than $100 billion in refunds
and strip future presidents of similar tariff powers.
But a decision in his favor
could dramatically expand executive authority
over trade policy.
The case marks one of the most consequential tests yet
of Trump's use of emergency powers
and could reshape how the U.S. manages trade
and economic crises going forward.
And the top U.S. suppliers say
they can handle the latest supply chain hit
from Dutch chip maker Nexperia
even as shipments from China remain halted
under new export controls.
The disruption adds to a year of trade tension,
tariffs, and production setbacks,
including a fire at a key Novelis aluminum plant.
Still, suppliers such as Magna and BorgWarner
say they're finding alternative chip sources
and keeping production steady,
while other suppliers including Aptiv and Lear
express confidence that production will stabilize
once governments resolve the chip dispute.
And those are today's headlines.
You can find more details on all those stories
at autonews.com.
Now joining me to talk more about
how U.S. EV sales performed last month
amid the end of federal tax credits is Hannah Lutz,
the director of the tech and innovation team
for us here at Automotive News.
Hannah, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Hi, Kyle.
Okay, so EV sales took a huge hit in October.
Now, did the industry expect this,
especially with the end of the federal EV tax credit?
Yes, so the federal EV tax credit went away September 30th.
So October was a chance to see
how EVs would perform without it.
We don't have a full picture yet
because not all brands report monthly.
Some just report quarterly.
But among the brands that have reported,
EV sales took a big hit.
Sales of four models actually decreased
by more than 90% last month compared to a year before.
Wow, and how are automakers responding?
So they've kind of already been responding
even before these numbers came out.
They're cutting EV output,
canceling programs and delaying launches.
So really adjusting to the market.
And I think that we will continue to see that
as we see what the natural demand for EVs is.
And I will note too that,
once we get a full picture at the end of the quarter,
we'll be able to see some really big EV players
that we're not seeing now, including Tesla and General Motors.
Perfect.
Hannah Lutz, director of the tech and innovation team
for us here at Automotive News.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks, Kyle.
And speaking of EVs,
coming up, Jeff Bezos backed startup Slate Auto
is rethinking how EVs get serviced.
Our own Lawrence Iliff explains how partnering
with independent repair shops
could help the company keep prices low
and customers close to home.
That's next on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive, I'm Kellen Walker.
Slate Auto is taking a new approach at EV ownership
by cutting costs and simplifying how repairs get done.
Only a fraction of shops
can currently handle high-voltage EV repairs,
but Slate says it's working to expand that network quickly.
Lawrence Iliff is a staff reporter
who covers electric vehicles and automotive tech trends
for us here at Automotive News.
He spoke with our own Jake Neer
about how the startup company, backed by Jeff Bezos,
is planning to navigate its repair strategy
and how that could reshape expectations
for affordable EV service.
Lonnie Iliff, welcome back to Daily Drive.
It's great to be here.
Slate has gotten so much attention,
you know, Jeff Bezos-backed EV startup,
and really looking to make EVs affordable
in their own unique way.
Talk about what their plans are for repair shops,
because this is one of those things
that can be a major expense for automakers,
especially startups that just don't have the network.
Right, so, you know, Slate Auto does have backing
from, you know, Jeff Bezos and a bunch of rich people,
but they are trying to make a, you know,
$25,000, $26,000, $27,000 car,
and to launch it into the U.S.
and to make a bunch of them and have people buy them.
So they're trying to be really innovative,
and this is very interesting
with the independent dealers, right?
So rather than try to build out a network
and go through all the teething pains,
and, you know, people will say,
I can't buy a Slate Auto
because there's not a service center near me,
or the wait times are for months,
and then you have a warranty repair,
and you can't drive your car.
They're saying that from the beginning,
they are going to partner with these independent shops
through a recommendation service called RepairPal,
which is owned by Yelp,
and so they are going to certify the independent shops
to service the Slate vehicle,
and then you would go there
and they would handle warranty repairs,
and it would be direct reimbursement.
So it would be like going to a dealer, right?
Slate would reimburse the shops,
they'd agree on prices, you know,
they would bring all that to the table, right?
And so for Slate, they don't have to spend
billions of dollars to build out a service network,
and for customers, you have a network in place,
hopefully close to you, right?
And that just kind of builds on what they're trying to do,
break the part of the industry that makes cars so expensive
because, you know, the average transaction price
is like $50,000.
Obviously, it's less if you just include mainstream cars,
but it's still really expensive.
So they have to find ways to save a lot of money
so they could pass it on to the consumer
while not making you suffer too much.
I think, you know, hopefully there's one near you
is maybe one of the key questions here.
In your story, you note that RepairPal
has about 4,000 shops nationwide
under its certification program,
but I gotta imagine not all of those shops
are gonna be able to repair slate vehicles.
Is that right?
Yeah, so at the beginning, right,
you have your slate vehicle and it comes out
and it's what they call a blank slate, right?
So it doesn't have any paint on it.
It just has plastic panels.
That way they don't have a paint shop or a stamping shop.
And then you can get a vinyl wrap.
You can get accessories.
It comes with roll-up windows,
but you can buy a kit to make electric windows.
So at least at the very beginning,
these shops can install those things for you
if you don't wanna do it yourself.
It's designed to be do it yourself,
but Slate will certify these people
to install all these accessories
that people are gonna want, right?
And so at the beginning, that's kind of okay.
You know, RepairPal has, you know, 4,000 shops
and Slate will certify, you know,
a certain number of them
that wanna get involved in the program.
And hopefully you'll have a shop close to you
if you wanna do your accessories.
It becomes more complicated if you have warranty repairs
on a high voltage electric vehicle
that nobody's ever seen before, right?
Yeah.
And so it was interesting in the press release,
Slate said that while there's 4,000 RepairPal shops,
only 200 have high voltage repair, right?
And so that's a much longer, that's, you know,
that's only, there's 50 states in the United States.
So that's not very many shops
and that could be more complicated.
And what Slate told me was that they're going to work
to get, you know, make that number a much higher number.
They're also gonna have, you know, over the air updates.
So hopefully a lot of warranty repairs
could be through software
and they're gonna, you know,
work with these independent service centers
to try and make sure that the customer
has options near them.
Yeah, you know, to be cliche,
it's a very much a double-edged sword, right?
Because with EVs, I drive an EV.
One of the great things about it
is that I'm not in the repair shop very often, right?
That, you know, there are much fewer things
that can go wrong with it.
You don't have to replace as many belts, filters,
or any of those really.
And there's no internal combustion engine.
The brakes don't need to be replaced very often.
So that is in some ways an advantage here.
But like, you know, as you mentioned,
when it comes to the things
that do sometimes need to be repaired,
sometimes they're extremely complicated.
And even, you know, we've seen Tesla grapple with this
over the years,
even though they have their own repair shops,
Rivian and even franchised dealers for legacy automakers
have had their own challenges
with making sure that they're able to repair
their own brand's EVs.
So talk a little bit more about
if there are risks here for Slate.
You know, it seems like they've thought this out,
but what could be the other side of the coin?
Okay, so there's kind of two set of risks, right?
One is the set of risks
that Tesla and Rivian and Lucid went through, right?
Which is to build up their own service centers.
And there's lots and lots of complaints.
You know, Tesla's gotten much better.
The complaints have gone down.
They put a lot of money into it.
They are a very profitable company.
Rivian, you know, you see people complain about wait times
or driving 150 miles to a service center.
You know, Lucid, I saw a forum comment says,
I'd love to buy a Lucid, I can't.
My service center's 300 miles away, right?
So there's that set of things
that Slate can get away from, right?
By having all these centers.
But the other one is, the problem they could have is,
do these repair shops wanna get certified for EVs?
You know, where are they located, right?
Maybe, you know, there's a lot in California,
but there's none in other places.
I've gone on the RepairPal site and looked around
and some of them are, you know,
Valvoline oil change centers and things like that,
that, you know.
Not a lot of EV experience.
Not a lot of EV, but to your point about EVs,
they don't need oil changes.
They don't need a lot of those things,
but new EVs, new Teslas, new Rivians,
I've seen a lot of warranty work on them.
You know, they're brand new vehicles.
They have teething pains.
You know, maybe they have a suspension thing
that can't be fixed over the air.
Tesla's had suspension things, Rivian too.
Lucid has had some things
where you also need a physical mechanic.
And so, you know, you could get into a situation
where a lot of people who want to buy a Slate,
who want to buy this mass market vehicle, this 27,
may also not be able to find an independent service center
that can service them.
Or maybe they don't even, you know,
you buy a new car and you're used to kind of
that experience of going to the dealer
and having, you know, the service center,
and maybe they pick up your car.
Ford does that for me for free.
Maybe you go there and there's a place to work
on your laptop,
and it's going to be a different experience, right?
If you're going to a mom and pop store,
you know, a chain service center,
like Big O Tires or something.
So what is Slate saying about this?
Are they pretty confident
that they can overcome those obstacles, I assume?
Yeah, I mean, they're really playing up the fact that,
look, we're going to have places near you
where you can get service, right?
And we're going to work with these independent people
to make sure they can fix your EV.
You know, we're going to certify them.
We're going to be active in this process.
We're not just saying,
hey, go to a website and figure it out yourself, right?
And, you know, I asked,
well, do you think that people, you know,
might find the mom and pop stores or the Big O Tires,
you know, less than a satisfying experience?
And they said, we don't think so.
We don't think that's what people are obsessed about,
that they want to get service.
They want to get fast service.
They want to get friendly service.
They want it to be near their house.
And we don't think they're going to be that hung up on,
you know, how nice the lounge is.
I mean, when I take my car in,
really it's just how quick can I get it back?
How easy is it to get to the shop
and how friendly are the people there?
Right, and that's their whole philosophy.
It's not just about repair.
It's not just about their whole philosophy.
We want to give you an experience without all the fluff.
And we're going to put money back in your pocket
because we're going to give you a less expensive vehicle
and that you can build out yourself with accessories.
You could even change the color every couple of years
for, you know, $1,000 or whatever.
And so it's really a completely different philosophy.
Lonnie Iliff, always great having you here on Daily Drive
and very excited to hear more about where Slate goes
in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Thanks again for joining us.
Great to be here.
That's Daily Drive for today.
I'm Kellan Walker.
Thanks to Automotive News Executive Producer, Jake Neer
and Tierra Riddick, as well as our own Lawrence Iliff
for his reporting for today's podcast.
You can get the latest news on the Supreme Court's ruling
on Trump's tariffs, the latest updates
on the LaFontaine dealership scandal,
and everything happening in the auto industry
at autonews.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
Let us know what you think of the show
on the topics we covered today.
Send us an email at dailydriveatautonews.com
or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
And if you enjoyed the podcast,
remember to like, leave a review, and subscribe
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About this episode
A Michigan dealership faces suspension for selling used vehicles as new, raising concerns about compliance in the auto industry. The Supreme Court deliberates on the legality of Trump's tariffs, which could significantly impact future trade policies. Meanwhile, Slate Auto, backed by Jeff Bezos, introduces an innovative approach to EV servicing by partnering with independent repair shops to reduce costs and improve accessibility. The episode also discusses the recent decline in EV sales following the end of federal tax credits, prompting automakers to adjust their production strategies.
The Michigan Department of State suspends the license of a well-known dealership, alleging it sold used loaners as new. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court hears arguments on Trump’s sweeping tariffs and whether the president was lawful in his decisions. Plus, our own Laurence Iliff joins the show to talk about Slate Auto and how it plans to simplify its services.
