The Jeep Compass is a small SUV that can handle rough roads and is good for everyday driving. It's a popular choice for people who want a mix of adventure and comfort.
Car
RAM pickup
The RAM pickup is a type of truck that is known for being powerful and good for carrying heavy loads. It's a favorite for people who need a tough vehicle for work or play.
An electric vehicle is a car that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. They are known for being better for the environment because they produce no tailpipe emissions.
A federal tax credit is money you can subtract from what you owe in taxes. For electric cars, this means you can pay less when you buy one because the government gives you some money back.
Luxury brands are expensive car companies that make high-quality cars with lots of special features. They are usually bought by people who can afford to spend more money on a car.
MSRP is the price that the car maker suggests you should pay for a new car. It's like a starting point for how much a car should cost.
LIVE
This podcast is brought to you by AutoVision and its new AI Assistant, Avery. Avery delivers data-driven appraisals, pricing, and detailed strategies for every vehicle. Visit AutoVision.com to learn more about Avery, where precision meets profit. Welcome to Daily Drive for Wednesday, October 15, 2025, I'm Kellyn Walker in Las Vegas. Today on the show, Stellantis pours $13 billion into the US.
Biggest move since Chrysler was founded 100 years ago. CEO Antonio Filosa joins us to break it all down in an exclusive interview. We share, obviously, the goal of that is to create jobs, American jobs, the US plants, as we are doing the weekies investment.
Meanwhile, Stellantis and GM are on a list of mysterious DOE award cancellations. And EV registrations surged in August, revealing clear winners and losers from the tax credit rush. Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
Stellantis plans to spend $13 billion over the next four years to increase its US manufacturing output by 50%. The automaker is building the move as the largest in the 100 year history of the company founded as Chrysler Corporation.
It will support five vehicles, a new engine, and the addition of more than 5,000 manufacturing jobs in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana.
Stellantis plans to reopen its Belvedere, Illinois assembly plant in 2027, are firming an earlier commitment to do so. But instead of building a mid-size RAM pickup, the plant will make the Jeep Compass and Cherokee that were slated to be built outside the US.
The RAM pickup will now be assembled in Toledo, Ohio, starting in 2028. We'll have more on this story in a minute, including our interview with Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa.
Significant auto industry initiatives were not mentioned earlier this month when the Department of Energy terminated funding awards for 233 projects, it called part of, quote, the Left's Climate Agenda.
Now the industry has its eyes on a mysterious list first published by the news outlet Semaphore that includes five awards for General Motors, two for Stellantis, three for Bosch, four for Plug Power, and others tied to battery manufacturing, electric vehicles, and infrastructure.
The list contains columns for the organizations receiving the awards, the DOE office issuing the awards and the amounts.
But for billions of dollars in grants, rows and rows of the spreadsheets say the same word, terminate.
John Miller is a managing director at TD Cowan covering sustainability policy.
It's unclear what that means. Has that decision been made? Was that a request to Trump and he hasn't made a decision or determination on it yet?
So we just don't know. So a lot of questions and a lot of big dollars at play.
You can find more details, company statements, and the full list embedded on our website at autonews.com.
And new electric vehicle registrations climbed 24% from a year earlier in August to about 138,000.
That's as buyers rushed to get an expiring federal tax credit and cash in on deep automaker discounts.
There were clear winners and losers in August as shoppers chased the best deals on mainstream models, while largely avoiding luxury brands.
Auto-Pacific Chief Analyst Ed Kim says that's not a surprise.
If you're someone who's in the market for a $60,000 to $70,000 vehicle, getting $7,500 off that, obviously that's a big deal.
But when you're talking about a vehicle that has an MSRP and like, you know, the $40,000 price range,
well, as a percentage of that MSRP, $7,500 is a much bigger deal.
S&P Global Mobility says EV share of the US light vehicle market reached 10.3% in August, again of 1.7% points.
And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories at autonews.com.
Stellantis' historical investment in the US is a win for several states and auto workers here, but it's causing a lot of concern north of the border.
The auto maker no longer plans to make the redesigned Jeep Compass in Brampton, Ontario after halting work to retool the Canadian plant in February.
Now it looks like Jeep will build the Compass in Belvedere, Illinois. So, where does that leave Brampton?
Greg Lason is the digital and mobile editor of our sibling publication Automotive News Canada and the host of the Automotive News Canada podcast.
He joins me now to talk about it. Greg, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Thanks for having me.
So Greg, Belvedere has been without a product to build for about two years. Now it's getting one from Canada.
The question has come up in our news meetings already. Is Brampton the new Belvedere?
Yeah, you just described Brampton. Brampton has been without production since Christmas, 2023.
That's when the last muscle car and 300 rolled off the line there and it's been idle ever since.
Expecting a retool to build the very product that has now been allotted to Belvedere, Illinois.
This is the exact same situation and now we are playing the waiting game in Canada.
The union's upset just as the UAW was. The province and the federal government is upset just as state and federal government was in the United States with an idle Belvedere plant.
It is the exact same situation and now we wait.
Interesting. And you brought up the union and UNIFOR is the union representing most Canadian auto workers. What is it saying about all of this?
It's actually, I mean, Lana Payne is a master wordsmith. She's a former columnist in the newspaper industry.
She is very blunt in her criticisms of Donald Trump.
She is saying this is a sacrifice at the altar of Donald Trump.
She has been relentless in her attacks on tariffs and the trade war and US President Donald Trump.
She continues to be relentless in her attacks now on the Canadian and provincial governments.
She's also going after Stellantis saying they need to live up to their pledge to retooling that plant.
To say Lana Payne, the national president of UNIFOR, and her members are upset is an understatement.
They feel as if the rug has been pulled out from beneath their feet on this because this has been a longstanding promise since 2022 that they were going to retool this plant.
And now here we are in 2025, almost 26 and still no product.
I'm very interested to see how this all shakes out. Greg Lason, thank you so much for joining me.
Anytime.
Coming up, we'll hear about the $13 billion US investment from Stellantis with CEO Antonio Filosa.
That's next on Daily Drive.
Automotive news shift podcast brings you the latest on automotive technology, trends, and transformation. I'm Hannah Lutz.
And I'm Molly Boygon. We're the new co-host of SHIFT, and we're excited to bring you new conversations with experts and industry insiders like this one with Larry Dominique, president of LD Management Consulting.
Do you believe the legacy OEMs are falling into a trap? They've got to find a way to, in some ways, build new airplane while they're still in flight.
Catch SHIFT available every Sunday, wherever you get your podcast.
Just when you think you've priced a vehicle perfectly to sell fast, the market changes and potential profits slip through your fingers.
After all the work of scouring auction sites, tracking competitor rates, and analyzing market trends, the loss of time and money leaves you frustrated.
Meet Avery, your AI assistant from AutoVision. Avery revolutionizes how you acquire, price, and sell vehicles by analyzing every detail from retail values to market trends.
And the best part, Avery doesn't just give you numbers. It explains every recommendation, so you know everything that was factored in.
Picture this, faster appraisals, smarter stocking decisions, and more profitable sales all without the exhausting legwork. With Avery, you don't just stay competitive, you lead the pack.
Ready to see Avery in action? Visit AutoVision.com.
Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellyn Walker. After Antonio Filosa became CEO of Stellantis in June, he set a clear priority for his team to grow the company in the US, where sales and profits had been declining.
Now the company is making a historic investment to do just that. Filosa spoke with Automotive News reporter Vince Bond Jr. in an exclusive interview just after he announced the plans.
So there is a lot of uncertainty right now around tariffs, but it looks like you're still very confident and you're still willing to make some big investments in this market.
So why is this a good time to make these investments?
Oh yeah, I mean, first of all, let me recap a little bit what you are talking about because I believe it's so exciting that I cannot wait to to to pay you the numbers.
So again, it's $3 billion. This is an investment in the next four years that will benefit all our four American brands that you know very well.
We'll benefit all our US plans. We'll deliver 19 product action plus five all new products plus one all new engine.
And we'll generate a tower plan to US a digital 5,000 jobs. We estimate that we'll generate in our supplier US plans additional 20,000 new jobs.
And we'll boost our production by 50% in the business. So we're very, very, very excited.
And on the timing we decided, well, I showed you took the job less than four months ago. I see you're still on this.
I set up for my team a clear priority, which is to grow in the largest market where we operate, which is US to grow with our four American iconic brands.
And to grow here because here is a very good business to grow. And this business will keep improve just because we understand that this market will keep growing in the future.
So here's the why of the timing and here's the why of the large investment that we're announcing today.
All right. And then for the company to share he that will be produced in Belvedere, will they still be produced in Mexico as well?
Well, the investment itself is only about Belvedere when we talk compass and shadow case. So what we are doing is we are preparing the Belvedere plan.
We are industrializing the plant itself and the suppliers to produce one of those two new vehicles in 2027 and the other in 2028.
So we are very excited for that. What we will do in Mexico is most probably keep producing them for the rest of the world.
I mean, especially Mexico Central America and South America for exports.
While all the US sales will come out of the Belvedere plant and we can export also from here to other countries in the North and Emmysfield.
So were any of these plans by already made under Tavaris?
Well, not really. Those are fresh new plants right that we started to work intensely this year.
And we have already a lot of months and now we're in. So those plans are you, will you?
And so were these decisions driven by the Trump administration at all and is pushed for more North America production or more US production?
Well, those decisions have been made in a contest where we decided firmly to grow in US and the only way we know to consistently grow in such company market is to launch the right product.
With the right brand, the right tech and the right power. So how we did that?
First we decided to put our customer at the center or anything we do.
We ultimately started listening to him and her and to engage a lot of our dealers.
And that's how we came out with our growing plan, right? And it is very important.
And then at the same time, by doing that, we will increase our production by 50% our jobs by 5,000 jobs.
That means that we share obviously the goal of paying the Trump to create jobs, American jobs, new US plans as we are doing with this investment.
And we actually do that because we believe strong with our people, now we're feeling in our suppliers and we are in a manufacturing system.
Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa spoke with our own Vince Bond Jr. That's daily drive for today. I'm Kellyn Walker.
Thanks to automotive news executive producer Jake Nier, as well as our wrong Molly Boygon and Lawrence I live for their reporting for today's podcast.
We also had reporting from Greg Lason of our sibling publication Automotive News Canada.
You can get the latest news on manufacturing investments, EV registrations, 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 and 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 so you never miss an episode.
About this episode
Stellantis is making waves with a historic $13 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, the largest since its founding as Chrysler a century ago. CEO Antonio Filosa discusses the ambitious plan to create over 5,000 jobs and boost production by 50% across several states. The episode also delves into the implications of recent DOE funding cancellations affecting major automakers and the surge in electric vehicle registrations driven by expiring tax credits. Insights from industry experts highlight the shifting landscape of auto manufacturing and the competitive market for EVs.
