Sept. 23, 2025 | Former Congressman Mike Rogers Part 1; JLR extends shutdown

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Welcome to Daily Drive for Tuesday, September 23, 2025. I'm Kelvin Walker in Las Vegas.

Today on the show, JLR extends its shutdown again after this month's cyber attack.

California Governor Gavin Newsom says GM's Mary Barra, quote, sold us out on EV tax credits.

And Nitz's new chief says he wants to modernize safety standards. Plus, we continue our series

of interviews with candidates for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat with former Congressman Mike Rogers,

who says President Trump's tariffs are working to boost U.S. manufacturing investments.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

Jaguar Land Rover is extending the closure of its factories until October 1st. That's following

a cyber attack that left JLR's operations paralyzed and smaller suppliers struggling.

The automaker previously expected the production halt to end on Wednesday. JLR's factories in

Britain produce about 1,000 cars a day, and the automaker is said to be losing tens of millions

of pounds. There's concern about the impact of the stoppage on JLR's British supply chain,

which includes many smaller companies and supports 104,000 jobs across the country.

It turns out California will not backfill a $7,500 federal tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles

that is set to expire this month. Governor Gavin Newsom recently reversed an earlier pledge to

restart the state's own EV subsidies. Newsom's declaration all but dashes near-term hope among

EV makers such as Tesla, Rivian, Hyundai, and Volkswagen that the country's largest

auto market would fill that void. Those automakers and others had urged the governor

and state leaders to create a $5,000 EV incentive. Newsom also took aim at the Detroit

Three automakers, saying General Motors and CEO Mary Barra, quote, sold us out. The governor

argued that GM led the effort to stop California's ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles

in 2035. GM declined to comment. And the nation's new top auto safety regulator says

his agency should encourage industry innovation by modernizing outdated rules that add cost and

roadblocks. The Senate confirmed Jonathan Morrison to lead NHTSA last week. He said

at the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars in Detroit

that NHTSAs should work to identify and update existing rules that have become

antiquated through technology advancements. And those are today's headlines. You can find

more details on all those stories at AutoNews.com. Joining me now for an update on JLR's production

stoppage and the fallout from its recent cyber attack is Richard Truett, who covers the automaker

for us at Automotive News. Richard, welcome back to Daily Drive. Good to be here, Cal.

So Richard, how is this affecting U.S. dealers and what does it mean for them the longer this

production delay drags on? Right now, you could go to a Jaguar Land Rover dealer and you might not

think that there's anything wrong, but there's trouble brewing, big trouble. And let me tell you

why. With no new vehicles coming in, the number of vehicles on the ground are going to shrink.

And what does that mean? It means consumers may not be able to find the exact color and vehicle

that they want. And it also means that Jaguar and Land Rover, who make a lot of money selling what

they call bespoke vehicles, which are you walk into the dealer and you say, I want my Land Rover

painted Madagascar orange with a purple interior, they'll build it for you. Well, they can't take

those orders right now. That's the immediate effect is that there's going to be less choice and no

special orders. But there's an even bigger issue brewing out there. And that is JLR is not shipping

any parts to the USA right now. If you go to a Jaguar service department, a Jaguar Land Rover

service department, you'll see that they've got lots of vehicles to fix because guess what?

Their quality is not real great. And so there's always the service departments are always busy.

And I spoke earlier today with a retired executive from JLR is very familiar with

how parts and service works at these dealerships. And he tells me that dealerships don't often

stock a lot of parts. They just prefer to get overnight delivery or next day delivery and

not have to invest in shells full of parts. Right now, that's not so much of a problem,

but it could very well be a problem in the future, especially if there's a recall and tens of thousands

of parts are needed and they can't be shipped. Here's a picture of the inventory situation on

new vehicles. According to cloud theory, which is a Grand Rapids based business that tracks

inventory and supply and demand, Land Rover at this very moment in time has 17,163 vehicles

on the ground or in transit down about 20% over April. Jaguar has 2,805 vehicles that

dealerships were in transit. And that's down around 22% over April, which was a normal month.

So the situation is okay for now, but it's not going to stay that way for a long time.

And Richard, do you think JLR could lose customers because of this?

Well, that's a question that I've been trying to get other people to answer for me. And here's

the thing about that. You would think that if somebody wants a Range Rover and they can't get

it, well, they'll just go buy the Bentley or whatever. But that may not be the case because

the Land Rover brand, despite the fact that it has quality issues, is people are very,

very loyal to it. And I don't think that if the cyber attack situation is solved here

in the next month or two, that it's going to hurt them. But if this drags on and people can't get

a vehicle in a reasonable amount of time, JLR is going to be in a situation where they have to

extend leases or do something else to keep customers from drifting away. I don't think it's

an immediate concern. But if I'm an executive at Jaguar Land Rover right now, I bet you better

believe I'm making contingency plans. Wow, good stuff. Richard, thank you so much for joining

me. You're welcome, Kel. Coming up, former Congressman Mike Rogers joins the show to talk

about his policy goals for the auto industry if he wins Michigan's open US Senate seat. That's

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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellan Walker. In recent weeks, our own Molly Boygon has been

interviewing candidates for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat in 2026. It's a race that could have

an outsized impact on the control of Congress moving forward and policies affecting the auto

industry. We've brought you interviews with Democrats Hailey Stevens, Abdul El Sayed,

and Mallory McMurray. You can find all those at AutoNews.com. Today, we'll hear from Republican

Mike Rogers, a former U.S. Congressman. Here's the first part of that conversation.

Candidate for U.S. Senate and former U.S. Representative from Michigan, Mike Rogers.

Thanks so much for joining us on Daily Drive. Molly, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Congressman, you've supported President Donald Trump's tariffs on the auto industry. Can you tell

us what about the tariffs you think is effective? The most important thing about tariffs is getting

back to made in America. What we've seen is General Motors announces after that $4 billion

in investment expanding the Orient facility right here in Michigan. Ford is coming back.

Whirlpool announced it's coming back to the United States. We have other foreign companies

realigning their production facilities back here to the United States. Why is that important?

We've lost 30,000 manufacturing jobs since 2019. When you look at that, that tells you we have a

problem. China has been eating our lunch on supply chains, on critical minerals. All of this helps

realign to make sure that Michigan working families and American working families are

manufacturing again, which is really the backbone of the middle class. I say that as someone who

was working on a factory floor making convertibles, making Sebring convertibles. My brother was a UAW

member. This is an important thing to me. Watching really a dwindling auto industry here in Michigan

is just hard to see. Every time we lose one of those 30,000 manufacturing jobs, guess what? That's

middle class family that's going to be struggling to stay in the middle class. There are five other

jobs associated with those 30,000 that pack up and leave with them. That's where I think

that we've made tremendous progress. We have to do it now. You cannot wait. China is moving out

smartly. They're trying to capture world market and they're doing it with American consumer money.

Realigning that I think has been really, really important for Michigan working families and getting

these jobs back. The higher paying jobs, by the way. When you talk about foreign companies

realigning manufacturing back into the US, it reminds me of the Hyundai LG Battery Plant

immigration rate that happened a couple of weeks ago. You have the companies and the industry saying,

this is a situation where those companies feel like they need to bring in their foreign labor

to complete some of the technical tasks that are required to get the plant up and running and that

this is something really common in the industry. How do you think the government can address what

those companies describe as a technical expertise shortage and make sure that those jobs are going

to American workers? Yeah. Well, first of all, the Trump administration said they're going to try

to deal with these temporary engineering jobs for startup operations. I think that's wholly

appropriate that they're not here. They're not permanent jobs. They don't move here and take

that job forever. I do think having boundaries on those visas is going to be important.

You also mentioned the unions. I wonder if you have any concerns that the unions that have

profit sharing agreements with some of the domestic manufacturers may start to feel some pain as the

elimination of some profits because of the tariffs is reflected in those profit sharing

checks. How are you thinking about that? Yeah. Well, the good news is PPI has shown that inflation

hasn't gone up. So that's the great news for working families, number one. So think of that.

We're getting a realignment of better manufacturing jobs back here in the state of Michigan.

That's a plus for people who get up and try to play by the rules every day. That's key. Number two,

listen, if realigning away from China is the best thing they're going to do for their bottom lines

and if we reengage in the kind of manufacturing we used to do and still can do in the great state

of Michigan, guess what? That is going to be far better for any profit sharing check

than we've gotten today. In watching this slow decline in atrophy as we keep sending things to

be made in China, that I think is something that we can do better and I think we are doing better.

And I think that's why the unions have come out and supported some of the tariffs that

President Trump is doing. Speaking of China, Congress has eliminated tax credits benefiting

domestic battery manufacturing. How do you think that will impact reliance on China for battery

components? Well, right now we can't really build batteries without China. And so you don't want to

use taxpayer dollars to reward companies for buying goods and services from China, which is exactly

what's happening. And so we have got to realign our supply chains back to the United States.

And so when, you know, graph graphite is a great example to me, China controls 90%

of graphite production. Now either it's either getting it out of the ground or processing.

You can't get graphite without really going through China. And so when you give Americans

taxpayer hardworking folks taxpayer money on a program that rewards buying and purchasing from

China, to me, that is absolutely the wrong answer. And so we're going through a realignment. And I

think this candidly, we should allow these automakers to buy cars that people want to buy.

And this I think is a part of that week is so heavily subsidized. I mean, we're giving

millionaires and billionaires $7,500 to go down and buy up $120,000 or whatever

electric vehicle of any sort. I don't know on what planet that makes sense to anyone. What we

ought to be doing is making sure that we can compete in EVs by making that market work for

the consumer. And it just doesn't today. And so I think that companies should build EVs,

because I think there's a market for them. I happen to drive two in our family plug-in hybrids.

And you know, they have they have both pros and cons. Honestly, love it when we're just bopping

around short short tours around town. But when we got to drive to the UP, guess what, we need gasoline.

And so that's a consumer choice that I made. I think every consumer should be able to make

that choice. And the government EV mandates, which, you know, the Biden administration has

just rammed down our throats. Hey, it screwed up our company's ability to plan in a five-year

or even shorter business cycle and what cars to build. That was a mess. And so given all of these

subsidies in a way that may artificially made other things more expensive, I just think is

wrong. So I think realigning to make sure that we do made in America, and I don't care what it is,

I don't care it's EV or plug-in hybrids, whatever that is, you know, that to me is the most important

accomplishment we can get through this process. And right now, I mean, I talked to a guy the other day,

he announced that he's going to put on a second shift for the first time in 25 years.

And, you know, if you're not actually, if you've never actually worked in the auto industry,

you don't understand how important it is. Now, this isn't a big union shop. It's a smaller shop

that is getting more domestic auto companies looking for ways to build it in America. That's

a win. And I just don't think we do it by spending our money, encouraging that money to be sent to

China or other places around the world. Before we turn more to the EV part of the conversation,

I just want to try and nail something down. There's been a little bit of sort of mixed messaging

from the Trump administration about whether the tariffs are aimed at permanently reshoring

domestic manufacturing, and therefore that the tariffs themselves are permanent,

or whether they are a temporary bargaining chip that the administration is using to garner better

trade deals, better arrangements for the duty that Americans pay. Do you see the tariffs as

permanent? I think he's working through that. I think we've seen that the president will

gave some auto exceptions in that first tariff. I think he understands

that in order to reshor for American jobs, person needs to be a part of that discussion.

And remember where we are today. So you have no appreciation. As a matter of fact, it's down,

I don't know, one tenth of one percent. And that means working families not paying more

for that. And we have this massive investment happening in the United States. General Motors

alone, $4 billion. And by the way, it's these American companies calling those small shops like

the guy that ad that can shift for the first time in 25 years because they're reshoring and trying to

build back here in America. So I just think we have to let this thing go. We have to give them

some rope here to let these things work. And they're working so far for people who want those

middle class jobs so that we can kind of stay. We don't have to tell our kids here in Michigan.

They have to leave to find good work. We can do it here. This, this, the way that it's going about

it is going to allow better jobs here in Michigan. And oh, by the way, we can also be back into the

notion that we're building for our defensive industrial base, which we lost years ago. We

ought to reclaim that. Michigan was the arsenal of democracy. I think it can be again. And one

way to do it is encourage this alignment to people building things in Michigan.

Republican former Congress and Mike Rogers spoke with her own Molly Boygon.

You can hear the rest of that interview on our upcoming bonus episode of Daily Drive,

which will be available Sunday morning. That's Daily Drive for today. I'm

Wallace Aaron, Richard Truett and Lindsey Van Hully for their reporting for today's podcast.

You can get the latest news on tariffs and trade, JLR cyberattack and production shutdown,

and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back tomorrow for a

conversation with experts about the state of U.S. tariffs and their impacts on the global

auto industry from this month's automotive news Congress. That's our message to suppliers is

you need to set up your decision in your strategic planning process to include

guideposts to say if this decision happens, I think we can go ahead with this decision.

And it can't just be once a year. It's got to be monthly or quarterly.

We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show when the topics we cover today.

Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.

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